I Think Free Speech is on FIRE | The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

anytime you're ready well why don't we do it now seeing as no one's getting paid by the hour around here especially you nothing in our constitution is more Central to our ability to live as individuals than our right to speak freely not the right to speak without consequences but the right to not be silenced simply because people in power don't like or agree with whatever it is they're hearing I ionically I learned that in college a place that used to be a Bastion of self-expression but has since become a place where the actual right to speak freely has been trumped on countless occasions by another right an imaginary right the right to not be offended the number of instances in which unpopular speakers and unpopular professors have been shouted down by students and protesters who simply don't want to hear anything they find objectionable are too numerous to Chronicle the intolerance is stunning but so too is the resolve of the man you're about to meet his name is Greg lukanov and when it comes to Defending Your Right to speak freely you might say he's on [Music] fire great lukanov I can't help but notice you're wearing the moniker of your uh recently reidentified uh organization well we used to be the foundation for individual rights and education and we are now completely different name foundation for individual rights and expression so much of everything that you did seemed to be limited to the college campuses but this expansion is significant we were founded in 1999 at fire and almost since you know day one people have been asking us to go off campus to to take on the mantle of the nation's Premier Free Speech Defender I think you the country really needs that nonpartisan defender of freedom of speech that they can always count on to be on the right side of of of free speech cases and that's one of the things that I'm really trying to make sure that fire you know becomes we call them like we see them we explain the facts as clearly as we possibly can and we defend Free Speech even if I don't like what someone's opinion is free speech is an American value that black white liberal conservatives um with the exception of a pretty you know tiny Elite up at the top Americans love freedom of speech they care about it and I think they've all been kind of doing this for a couple years kind of like you know afraid to say they actually care about Free Speech because you know on places like Twitter and Facebook or for that matter in the workplace they feel like they can have their career ruined at any moment and what we're trying to do is break the spell and say actually Americans love freedom of speech it's this really kind of weird powerful Elite that doesn't what happened that it made speech so breathtakingly tenuous on campuses 2020 was the worst year for freedom of speech I at least in the United States that I have seen in my career from 2001 to late 2013 the students had been the best constituency for freedom of speech on campus without question they understood that you don't have a right not to be offended they understood offensive lyrics they got edgy comedy and then suddenly that all ended in 2014 like lightning struck then you have 2017 where you start seeing the first explosions of violence on campus at a large scale in response to the election of Donald Trump and so things were already like not so great but 2020 it was just all coming to the head and I think that covid drove everyone a little nuts I think the lockdown drove everyone a little nuts but worst of all I think when people become their Twitter Avatar 24 hours a day it prevents this kind of like what I call benign hypocrisy that essentially like you could be very political and very strident in a pre social media and still go out for drinks with your Republican or Democrat friend that you disagree with it seems like for the first time in the history of the world billions of people are able to talk to each other in a weirdly unfettered way I don't know that that's ever happened before never I talk about like our relationship to social media as being like Henry VII in 1521 he wrote his first ban on unlicensed printing presses in Britain because even though though the printing press was invented in the 1450s this was the first time you saw a real clamp down on them because they were responsible for religious wars they were responsible for an uptick in in the witch trials from the perspective of 1521 it's like why did we even build this thing in the first place so I think we're in a moment where we can't see that adding billions of people to the conversation will at some point be shown to have real advantages however in the meantime there's no way that we're not going through like a seriously kind of crazy period cuz it was a big deal when thousands of people could suddenly talk to millions of people thanks to the printing press when you're adding billions of people to the conversation for the first time in human history it's going to be disruptive there's no easy fix to the fact that we just experienced a massive phase switch but hopefully we can learn how to be smarter about living with social media in our lives about remembering some of the old ancient wisdom about not being so pompus not being so moralistic not being so um judgmental so certain oh c yes I think that certainty in a lot of cases is is the enemy I know we first amendment people can sound obnoxious um and self-c ourselves but the principle we're defending is that I know I'm wrong about any number of things um I know I'm not all knowing and I suspect you aren't either and this is a great small D Democratic idea this is a great way to live to be kind of okay with like you know I I I I don't know everything there's a wonderful quote that sounds like a Zen cone when I say it to students on campus today where it says this true Spirit of Liberty is that which is not that sure that it is right huh good God that's great people will tell you that there's never been hate speech laws in the United States because of that darn First Amendment that's not true they have been trying to clamp down on hate speech on campuses since the'80s and guess what it actually looks like when you give power the ability to go after people for opinions they don't like they go after opinions that people in power don't like they go after students that they don't like they go after professors they don't like it ends up being incredibly unprincipled it doesn't do anything to stop actual bigotry and it ends up being used by people empowered to punish people with wrong thinking so speaking of headlines part of me wants to ask you about Stanford what in the actual hell is going on Judge Kyle Duncan he's a trump Ando he's conservative and he doesn't shy away from controversy he's also a circuit court judge he is one level below the Supreme Court these are the kind of people that lawyers are highly deferential to because you know like we are trained that when you're talking to someone who's that eminent that usually you kind of try to behave yourself he had some conservative rulings Rel to voting rights you know where uh I I don't agree with them on on some of the stuff but again conservative judge no no no no shock here who was invited who was invited to speak so it begins with a shout down then an administrator a Dei administrator gets up with a pre-prepared speech speech and the speech she gave she asked is the juice worth the squeeze over and over again which is just such an irritating kind of it's just borderline dirty too I mean I don't want to inject that into this so she asked this and she and what she's talking about is is there anything that that possibly that you could deliver that would be worth the pain that you're causing this community it's kind of like he's a circuit court judge this is a he he came with a speech about how the fifth circuit deals with the Supreme Court it was very much like it's something that any constitutional law nerd should have been like dying to get get into it's like of course the juice is worth the squeeze this is what you're here to study last time we spoke I think we acknowledged that in many cases things have to go Splat things have to get a little worse before they get better and when you Embrace that idea you look at a travesty like this thing at Stanford this this temper tantrum but then there's good news right cuz she's been somewhat repudiated ated by the big cheesee overwhelmingly the public gets that shouting down this judge was wrong and the students behaved abysmally but after that Dean Jenny Martinez she came out and she apologized to the judge appropriately and then the students revolted again saying that counter speech is Free Speech true but counter speech is also not shouting someone down she came out with this great statement on free speech that says listen we're not supposed to be the speakers ourselves the university is noted supposed to be taking political positions the Free Speech actors the academic freedom actors on campus are the professors themselves and the students themselves basically nothing made me feel more despondent than the initial Behavior at my alma mater I felt like these are students who have been miseducated about Free Speech since they were little they don't understand the idea that they they they don't get to shout down whoever they like they don't understand the double standards that they were applying also nothing's made me feel like more hopeful about the possibility that we are we we could start to turn a corner that then Dean Martinez's response which was the best response I've seen out of elite school possibly in my career so talk a little bit if you would about fire and whether or not these kinds of things reinvigorate in you the sense of purpose that drove you to do this in the first place you need a Twitter mob for free speech you need a Facebook group saying hey actually you know what don't fire the pizza a guy who has an opinion you don't like don't don't don't don't get rid of someone from their regular job because they cracked a joke people are tired of living like this the danger is people can get used to the idea that yeah okay I have political opinions but I can't really share them or also lose my job but Americans don't want to live like that it seems like the the key to better speech is more speech not less but also to make it useful you should do some listening too free speech is essential it's a human right democracy can't work without it and by the way it's a lot more more useful if you listen to people sometimes two ears one mouth and if fire does its job well then you know everybody's going to have a chance to open their big mouths and make a fool of themselves it's better to know what people really think is my main argument about freedom of speech you're not actually safer for knowing less about the [Music] world

Channel: Mike Rowe

Views: 132,776

Keywords: greg lukianoff, greg lukianoff debate, foundation for individual rights in education, free speech on campus, higher education, coddling of the american mind, libertarian, first amendment, speech codes, pluralistic ignorance, reason foundation, heterodox academy, sam seder, cancel, reassurance seeking, cancel culture podcast, cancel culture explained, mike rowe, mike rowe dirty jobs, mike rowe podcast, mike rowe tbn, somebody's gotta do it, m1m2m3, m1k3r0w3, m1m2, j03s, r0w3

Id: edhGTseaDOU

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024