The Rise of US Totalitarianism | Panel | Jordan B Peterson Podcast S4 (2022): E93

I'd like you to walk me through what's happened to you since the events in Evergreen and and bring everybody up to date on my end so man maybe you could start with what happened at Evergreen although I suspect many of the people watching this do know is that does that seem reasonable sure um yeah we can we can start there I think we should um probably err in the direction of being sparse with the details and see where it leads us so in 2017 I was teaching at Evergreen as was Heather my wife and she was literally evergreen's most popular Professor I wasn't too far behind I was very popular as well our classes were always over full and we accepted more people than we had to and had to turn some away anyway and then in actually 2016 the new president of the college George Bridges began an initiative or a set of initiatives surrounding diversity equity and inclusion and these initiatives included the impaneling of a committee That was supposed to look into racism at the college its impacts and to propose Solutions and as it became clear what they were alleging and proposing Heather and I became very alarmed and I began to speak out at first in faculty meetings and then when the ability to speak out in faculty meetings became non-existent I took to our faculty and staff email list to talk about the threat to the college that was created by these initiatives and that of course brought about exactly what she would imagine which were accusations that I was motivated by some kind of racism or white supremacy or white fragility or who knows what the accusations were exactly but um but in any case I fought back anyway and my sense was I had tenure and I was well liked and I was well known at the college I had been there for 14 years and so I didn't think they had the power to uh to get rid of me and that gave me the ability to say what needed to be said about these proposals well the upshot is that ultimately protesters 50 students that I had never met showed up at my classroom accused me of racism demanded that I either be fired or resign I told them I wouldn't and riots broke out at the college in which faculty and administrators were kidnapped I was apparently hunted car to car on campus by protesters the police were stood down by the college President and we were basically left to fend for ourselves with student patrols roving the campus with weapons baseball bats and the like so it was a chaotic scene there was a lot of interest in it because it was very colorful but of course most people back in 2017 dismissed this as um yes an overreaction but you know how college students are and those of us who saw it up close knew that that couldn't be the case that it would ultimately spill out into civilization and um we of course were right and now it's everywhere we see it taking over institution after institution in the U.S and Canada we see it making tremendous strides in government and there's no telling where it ends and what is I mean I have a bunch of questions that come out of that so I'm gonna I'll lay out three why in the world did this bother you enough so that you took a stand especially given your political leanings because you were which I'm not criticizing by the way I'm just stating that it isn't obvious to begin with why it would be you that would take a stand say rather than someone else but you did and so I'm curious about why and um what is it that you saw coming and what is this it that you're referring to you've had a lot of time to be thinking about this now it's been four years I mean you're and the other thing I want to ask you about is your life was thrown completely upside down you and your wife you don't have your job at the University anymore either of you despite the fact that you were tenured professors um it's not an easy thing to get another Toe Hold in Academia once you've been a tenured professor somewhere especially if you've gone through what you went through because no hiring committee anywhere is going to give you any consideration once you've been um once you've been tarred by Scandal regardless of what your role in it was they're far too conservative to ever do anything like that and so okay so let's I don't know if I can remember the order in which I I asked those questions but the I think the first one was why in the world did you why in the world were you compelled to to object to object and what is it that you were objecting to do you think well it's a funny A funny question for you to pose to me because I have the feeling that the answer will be entirely native to you I literally don't believe I had any choice people frequently ask me why I stood up and my sense is if I think through the alternative I simply can't live with it I can't sleep yeah but that doesn't seem to bother most people so I don't get that like why why you well right I mean I guess that's the the thing I'm discovering um so you alluded to my political leanings and you and I both know what you mean by that I'm uh a liberal and I would actually I describe myself sometimes as a reluctant radical um by that I mean that I believe we must engage in radical change if we are to survive as a species but I also know that radical change is very dangerous and so it's not like you know I find most people who would call themselves radicals feel like radical change is always called for and I don't my my sense is I hope to see change that makes civilization good enough that I get to be a conservative that I get to say actually we're doing so well that we have no choice but to preserve this if we try to improve it we'll mess it up that's where I want to go but what I'm discovering is that the Bedrock of my liberalism is nothing like the underpinnings of the so-called liberalism of most of the people on the left side of the political Spectrum my liberalism comes from a sense that yes compassion is a virtue but that policy must be based on a dispassionate analysis of problems um it is based on an understanding that there that the magic of the West comes from a tension between those who aspire to change things from the better for the better and those who recognize the danger of changing them at all and and so in any case I think the short answer is we look around the world and everybody makes arguments that sound as if they come from first principles but most people do not arrive at conclusions from first principles if they extrapolate it all they don't do it very well and that results in a severe compartmentalization of thought and that means that when confronted with um changes that threaten a system on which we are dependent most people don't recognize it and if they do recognize that they wouldn't know what to do about it so uh how can I how can I put it in in plain terms I had no choice because I was as if on a ship where somebody had proposed to fix our course through uh a field of icebergs and navigate based on some absurd Theory with no grounding in fact somebody had to object and I was a little surprised at how few and far between the objectors were but you know if I'm to be totally candid about it at the point that things went haywire at Evergreen I had watched video of you reacting to protesters in Toronto and it had made so much sense to me at a number of different levels you know I recognized you as somebody who knew that although the initial proposals were arguably symbolic that they were connected to things that ultimately were very much about an exercise of power and a transfer of well-being and that it was therefore um you know you felt obligated to stand up and say no which resulted as you know better than anyone in you being mocked for overreacting and then here we are years later and it turns out that you saw with absolute Clarity what others couldn't even imagine yes but I certainly didn't see what was going to happen to me you know so I don't think it's root it wasn't possible to see what would happen with specificity but I am I correct in uh seeing that you knew that something very dramatic was likely to come from your standing on principle and that that didn't provide any license to do anything but make that stand I I really can't say you know um it's a it's a while ago now so that that's part of it but so much has happened to me that's been so strange in the last four years that I have a very difficult time making any sense of it I can't even really think about especially the last two years I can't really think about them in any consistent and comprehensive way I mean my my family situation has been so catastrophic and my illness and my wife's illness it's just been although she recovered completely thank God it's just been so utterly catastrophic that that my my thinking about it is unbelievably fragmented I'm and I'm I'm struck dumb still to some degree by by all of what emerged as a consequence of me making the First videos that I made you know I went downstairs talk to my wife and my son my son was living at home at that time temporarily and I said this piece of legislation is really bothering me because it calls for compelled speech and I looked at the background documents and something wasn't right and I said I need to say something about they said well go for it you know we'll see what happens and all hell broke loose and continues to break loose for that matter which is one of the things that's so bloody strange about it is it doesn't seem to end and I would have thought when it first started I thought oh well you know I'd be a flash in the pan for a week or something or two weeks or a month or six months or a year or two years or but it doesn't stop and I really can't understand that it's it's it's beyond my comprehension now I guess it's partly because I continue to communicate my thoughts to some degree even talking to mainstream media people although increasingly less and perhaps not at all from here on in I mean I I had an interview with the London Times two weeks ago three weeks ago it was published and you know it was just another complete absolute bloody nightmare for my family my daughter in particular because they took her to task and I'm extraordinarily nasty way and uh you know in the journalist who did the interview was completely she you couldn't invent her you know not only the way she she was she was so deceitful in what she did but I I learned more about her background afterward as a consequence of another journalist who wrote about her and you know she's um a very singular person to say the least and so I did feel at the time like you did I guess that I was more afraid of not speaking than I was afraid of speaking and I have something against being told what to say it's like I'll pay the price for what I have to say I'm not going to pay the price to say what you want me to say you go say it yourself and see what the hell happens and you know maybe that's just a kind of incomprehensible stubbornness in some sense um although I did I think I did see what has I did see the beginnings of what has unfolded since that although I can't even really put my finger on what it is that's happening so well I I wonder a little bit about um you know in some ways you know there's nothing good about why you were absent from the scene uh but there may be something good about your having not been there for every moment of it and being able to come back to the discussion with something like fresh eyes because a lot of this is Developmental and you know you say you're surprised that um that this is continuing and I must say I'm having the same experience I feel like I was picked up you know my whole family was picked up by a tornado and we haven't been put down and you know I sort of feel like uh we were joined in the tornado during 2020 it was such a crazy year that a lot of people whose lives were continuing in some normal fashion are suddenly aware that things are wildly off kilter and so what was it like going to teach at Grace at Grace Church School well it was it was really nice because I was used to a corporate environment I guess I you know because of my time that I had done in a previous job at HBO um I was a technical manager it was a whole other career and you know my I was I was very concerned that I reported to the right people or you know what's the orchestructure you know and they were just like well you know just you have colleagues and you can discuss things with them and we're not going to make you do anything you can you can talk to us it was it's a very friendly um environment I mean there were serious expectations like you know uh and and everyone took their jobs very seriously but there really was a sense of belonging and Community they were very it was that was very welcoming actually and very energizing I will say because I wasn't used to that I didn't expect it and so I would be remain aloof from it you know at the beginning like what's you know these people why are they always smiling at me like what's going on you know like I don't know why I just but gradually loosen up and you you know it was kind of corny but I would kind of go along with it and I I yeah it's a good kind of corny yeah and I it did actually you know I warmed up a little bit I felt I did feel like I was a part of things and I was able to sort of transmit that to others too and so what happened over time um it was a very gradual change that you know I would say well the within the first three years one of the tenets of our our school was that you every employee and every faculty and staff member had to attend a seminar called undoing racism that was your HR department was it or who yeah it was it was a you know it was a mandate from the dean of Faculty at the time and the it was a requirement yeah yeah and you know um so I went to that and that was a very interesting experience you know it's hard to um what would you say refuse a call to anti-racism sure I mean let me do that what kind of monster yeah um and I you know you I went into it and I actually felt energized and I was converted you know I had a sort of you know I am white and I'm privileged and you're right we need to take care of this and there were people in a circle and people of all different races and backgrounds and it was facilitated and you know later I look back on it and I I realized sort of how they how they did it they did it in a very interesting seductive way um and what way was that well you know as I recall they they started out um well it was sort of two parts the first part was the history since you know the slave ships landed on American soil and then throughout time leading up to the present and then they focused for the second half of the session they focused on you know how to help a community that has been shaped by all of this and very early in the very early in the session they said we want you to withhold any Judgment of anyone's choice or agency anyone you know any of you know the the minority black populations that we're talking about here we want you to Simply bracket or put you know hold hold withhold any analysis of the choices that people make because you know they that will often lead to misunderstanding or insensitivity towards what's happening so why do you focus on that specifically that issue specifically well because you know it was as as they retold the history and as they talk about the present circumstances they never actually Revisited that so you you know you're you're constantly focused on the oppressed population in in terms of what is acting upon it at first acting upon those individuals and you know to me that's like denying a certain agency right and that but they never actually lifted the blinders off at the end like they they would put these everyone sort of acknowledged that they were going to go along with this at the beginning and I was like really we're going to do that we're going to treat people as less than human well okay I just it must be like a temporary thing and why did you see that as treating them as less than human I mean I presume that the people on the other side of the fence would say well you know we're we're we're all caught like corks on the sea in in the throes of vast social movements over which we have little or no control and and who are you to cast judgment on people who have been um the Rel relatively deprived in that regard compared to you it's possible to make a fairly stringent moral case that that's the appropriate mode of behavior but you were there was something in you that objected to that and and you remember that now yeah despite the fact that you said that you were energized by this and pulled in by it why do you think why do you think it caught you as well well it was a social thing right it was it's the people in a circle and people are talking about their experiences and people are saying as a black person I have this has happened to me and at one point they asked they actually you know they it's empathy right you you care about people you you feel if you're sitting face to face with someone of course you're going to be I'm going to be sympathetic and empathetic and and people are narrating um you know but the problem I think is generalizing that to groups and you know getting you to make a different set of assumptions about those groups based on a sort of you know selective way that the empathy is leveraged I would say well there's also the implicit there's the implicit um uh what would you say the implicit perceptual and categorical structure that comes along with it which is the a priori assumption that the appropriate classification for human beings is by group yeah and and that that that's so implicit but so pervasive that in some sense never needs to be stated and as soon as you assume that the group level is the appropriate level then you're bound to minimize or even forbid discussion of such things as individual agency so tell us about the blog when did you start writing your blog in July 2019 and why did you start to do that I mean you have your research career you're an undergraduate or you're you're a teacher as well um you're working in the community you have a full life what what compelled you to to start a blog I love to write uh and I think it's it's a reflex that I have from war so I used to write my my diary in Arabic and in French and I have time with me that came from with me in a box and went of across three provinces I love to write so uh in July 2019 I didn't have the chance maybe to say what I wanted to say on a platform so I decided to have my own blog and just write for the pleasure of writing I write about Lebanon um maybe half of the time I write about Canada Quebec here I just write and express uh views in relation to what is happening in Canada and in the world and I think I'm seeing something very worrisome and maybe that's part of why maybe I'm writing because I'm seeing that we are uh in times where we can't talk about things or look what's happening in my story like we people are afraid uh they may think things um when they are at home privately but they may not express them publicly or maybe because of you know political correctness or whatever I'm not that type of person like what I write or Bambi the name of the person writing is actually the meaning of my first name Rima it means a little dear in Arabic and that means that deer so bambers of car are Bambi's thoughts so I I what I write is actually who whom I am what my own thoughts uh privately and on that blog uh I sometimes write maybe you know personal things about birthdays of loved ones or whatever it's a Blog right so uh that's it and what kind of audience does your blog have well at first I thought it had maybe 10 people maybe first myself I was writing for myself but I thought family family members and then when that story happened uh I for once I search I usually don't have the time to do that and I thought it was like really getting 2 000 on one day and then like I don't know another day I checked 500 something like that and I thought oh my goodness like I was really thinking I'm writing you know I'm using uh during the pandemic my in-laws or my parents sometimes with some submissions or writing about the Beirut explosion I interviewed friends uh about what they are going through with the financial crisis you know things like that right so it had expanded beyond the small number of people that you had assumed were reading it absolutely exactly what happened to you so you were you were living what I would presume was a pretty comfortable and and happy life as you've described being a teacher and a researcher you spun off this blog on the side and then what happened one day you were notified by the university tell us exactly the story I can tell you but I want to say yes I'm extremely happy even in the pandemic even despite the Beirut explosion and everything like I'm fighting my ways of you know living coping where New Brunswick is amazing um for Canada but but we're also lucky to be in the semi-rural areas where even the pandemic did not hit us as hard as as thrawn or bigger places in Montreal so in that sense um it I was all okay until that February 22nd where I can tell you that story because it's my story that's my part so and and it's in the media actually I was I was having symptoms of actually like covid-19 I wasn't sure and I was very very very sick and that I usually run fast and jump and go on the stairs and I couldn't take the stairs I would stop you know couldn't breathe and uh so on that day the Monday where it happened I went for testing was finally negative but I went came back that my work day and then and the at the end of the day was lying on the couch thinking that I was resting I got a phone call from a kind former student telling me Dr Azar and you're uh you need to know what is happening and I thought are you okay what is happening was worried and he said no I'm fine you are in trouble in big trouble so the story started in the social media I'm not on social media myself um so for me I chose that blog because it's what suits my personality see what I you know writing and having enough space to write and so anyways I enjoy reading social media and I do but I'm I'm not on it so so I went I read quickly and I thought okay uh it's you know it was there and this was where this was on Twitter this was all happening on Twitter or where was it on Twitter if it was happening on on elsewhere as a Facebook I guess but I saw the Twitter myself uh and then an email got out of the University uh publicly so not on Twitter on Facebook um or the public channels of the University saying um you know it's public so I'm not saying what is not public um trigger warning that blog we dissociate ourselves from it and and you know uh on an encouraging complaints okay so what people what were people saying on Twitter and who who was it that would say it and how many of them were there do you know a lot uh and like it was it was a big thing on like and and there has been also at one point you know a threat of violence on social media and things like that so it was it was then I don't want to forget that part but when the there were three student organizations asked for my removal from my position at my University and also affiliations elsewhere like University of New Brunswick invested in Moncton as well uh so it got really okay so I want to zero in on this so there's there's some students primarily on social media on Twitter primarily and they're complaining about your blog and they're students who are part of student organizations and do you and then the student organizations themselves three of them are contacting your the people that you're working for or with suggesting that you're not the sort of person they should be associating with and asking for your removal exactly you said there were lots of of students doing this and I'd like to get something an estimate of something like a number so does a lot mean 500 or does it mean five so in between maybe I don't know precisely the answer well the reason I'm asking is because one of the things I'm curious about is just how many people have to complain before complaints are taken with some degree of seriousness now I've dealt with ethics boards for example at my own University and they have a policy that every complaint should be investigated thoroughly and I'm not very fond of that policy particularly because there are a lot of people who cause a fair bit of trouble for absolutely no reason and it seems to me that complaints need to pass something approximating a reasonable threshold before they're dealt with let's say seriously and so you know it's striking when you're talking about this that you don't know how many people actually came after you because they came after you on on social media and it's certainly not in the hundreds it's unlikely to be and correct me if I'm wrong it's unlikely to be in the dozens is it is it 10 is it 15 and were they students who were actually in your classes or were they just people who read your blog and and what were they objecting to in your blog exactly what did you say that was in principle or do you even know what it is that they're upset about what I've read is that you made some claim that Canada wasn't systemically racist that wasn't the right way of looking at the country and is there so and to me that means now is that the case now that at a university if I stand up and say that I don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to analyze Canada especially compared to other countries that now I'm so reprehensible that I deserve to be suspect ended if a couple of people object is that the situation that we're looking at or am I being too hard on the University well I think it's hard to answer that question I know the numbers that I know of now I know them because of what happened and how many people but before I didn't know anything I personally found it amazing that my University my employer that I that I love and it's Tech you know I did not call me to tell me what was happening that that I learned it in that did your union my I my union is doing what needs to be done and I'm very grateful but uh but I didn't know about that I knew that's how I knew it and then after that first call friends from Nova Scotia Emerson's question called Hearing in the news and the radio it was all everywhere um I have to admit I may be wrong but there may have been a flavor for that during that month so like it was like like my story was sort of a scapegoat for something that is much bigger than a deer a simple deer a silly deer sometimes we're not allowed to write serious things or silly things or be wrong or change our mind so what precisely I don't know but I do I personally am allergic to Identity politics given my background so I I may have written things about that or or about uh you know it's hard to tell you're still not sure you're still not sure what it is that okay so you're not sure exactly who you offended or how many of them there are and you're not exactly sure why you offended them and you're so unsure that what you say is that as far as you're concerned you can't safely write down what you think despite the fact that you have your opinions given where you came from given the fact that you've immigrated here that you can take a look at Canada from the perspective of an Insider and an outsider you're not sure what your crime is no but now because it's in this in the media I can talk to that I'm so I'm I'm sad that I'm not respecting the confidentiality of the process of the investigational report it's in the media there is another game well you get it you get the chance to defend yourself in any case I mean you've been suspended correct in the fall okay and you said your University didn't even call you when all this blew up which is typical in my experience of the way institutions are reacting to this sort of thing so an unnamed number of students made comments that you have used that are in some sense reprehensible even though you don't know what they are and the response of your University despite the fact that you have tenure that you're an accomplished scientist that you're a popular undergraduate researcher that you have tenure the response of your University was to notty call you but suspend you for the fall what pending an investigation an investigation into what exactly have they told you what you did wrong of course I I saw those complaints um uh and um I can tell you I think that part I can say it is most of them are related to the blog and that's fine people have the right not to like uh what you say what I say what anyone else is saying that's fine but when we get into uh false allegations um it's a different story there's also a difference between having the right not to like what you say on your blog and aggregating behind your back and conspiring to contact all your employers and to insist that you be removed because you're reprehensible and hypothetically a danger to the let's say the safety of students and to have you removed from your position and have your reputation dragged through the mud and have you exposed in the media I mean that's not merely not liking what you said that's an all-out attack and it's amazing to me that the this handful of students an unspecified number has the power hour to move the administration to produce such a dramatic response and you and you you keep um wavering in some sense as to the nature of your crimes you said you think it might you think it's likely the blog but I guess there are allegations that go outside the blog as well have you ever had trouble with your students in classes that have resulted in complaints never all those who know me personally who can guess who who I am in the blog because I think it shows a little bit that you know I write I write I write a lot so you can guess you can see you can make links you can see so for example I may criticize uh a certain uh politician and one on one block but I can say thank you on another one for doing something good you know I'm writing because we cannot comment on art media articles um many times you know the comment section is closed right so for me it's my way of doing it so if if they well it doesn't seem to me that it's something that needs to be justified I mean first of all you're a citizen of a free country you have right to express yourself any way that you see fit second of all you're a tenured professor and your thoughts are actually protected to a fair degree and it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly and the fact that this has happened despite your tenure well I guess part of the question that people who are watching might be asking is why the hell should they care about this and the reason I believe that people should care about this first of all is that what happens in the universities ends up happening everywhere else very very rapidly and if it can happen to Someone Like You it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time in any place and this this this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the in the face of unwarranted allegations as long as they're the right flavor is something that should be tremendously worrisome to everyone tell us about no safe spaces first and then tell us about you know your your attempts to get it distributed or the attempts to get it distribute fitted well I'll I'll start with the the movie and then Dennis will go on to the uh attempts to be distributed um well I actually wanted it to reverse okay the moment that's fine either way um you know Dennis and I are very different we have very different backgrounds but we do have common sense in common and I have found more and more and I'm assuming you guys feel the same way which is just finding someone with common sense seems to Trump all the other characteristics that we're constantly talking about about you know where what region you're born in or who your team is or what color your skin is uh Dennis and I always had common sense in common and we struck up a great friendship we've done many speaking engagements we've always had a great time in each other's companies and so when the producers came to us with the this idea I immediately jumped at it just because it's selfishly seemed like we could spend a lot of time together talking about a subject that we're both pretty passionate about which was free speech and since the time we made this movie I I I I feel like things have gotten much worse I think the movie was a bit ahead of its time in terms of what it is the subject matter and now I feel like in just the three or four years since we started this free speech issue has gone into overdrive go ahead Dennis yeah a word on the movie and then a word on the distribution I I've said from the beginning and I um I I I'm neither arrogant nor humble I I I I I I just pretty much try to see myself in life objectively uh and I so I have said uh this is a great movie and it's not a great movie because I'm in it might be a great movie because Adam is in it but the truth is it's a great movie and Adam and I happen to be the quote unquote stars but that's not the point of the movie uh I have watched this about five times I have the attention span of a child and so for something to keep me riveted five times uh speaks um uh immensely about it it is it is it truly is an important movie it's more important today even than when it was made about free speech and it's gotten movies within the movies and anyway people should see it I should I'd like to point out too just just as an advertisement of sorts there's a Canadian equivalent to that movie called better left unsaid that has faced the same sort of distribution problems that you guys have faced and it focuses on issues that are more germane to Canada although also relevant to the US and so um well they deserve a no they did they deserve to mention so I'm glad you pointed out I happen to think that things are worse in Canada than in the U.S uh but uh that's an interesting discussion for either another time or later on uh today so what was your impetus for making I'm in the movies yes yes Netflix refused to distribute it uh uh to to stream it which is incredible given how uh popular the movie is okay so make a case for that like why okay so Netflix should have been incentivized as far as you're concerned by the fact that the movie was economically successful and there are other streaming agencies too online that are fairly powerful so Amazon Etc have you had any interest from any of the streaming agencies yes well it's interesting I don't know the I'll look up the amazon question I know that the Walmart doesn't sell it in its stores they they have the same thing uh all you need really in in at Netflix or Walmart or any of these is one or two people who were awoke to tell you know we can't do this we're going to get a bad name uh and then you know what what is it to Netflix not to listen to somebody who says oh Dennis Prager we know we know for a fact that it was my name that was the trigger which is an interesting thing which I one day would be fascinating to discuss uh because whenever my name is is raised uh as this Bugaboo I always say well can you say anything in 35 years of broadcasting 10 books literally 1 000 columns on the internet plus tens of thousands of hours of the radio recorded say one thing that I have ever said that strikes you as extreme and so there's never an example this literally never the New York Times did a piece on me they couldn't find one sentence uh they made up something in fact they said Prager suggested and I always tell people if they don't say said don't believe the line suggested is the New York Times not what I said and then they had no quotes but anyway I've had the same experience Dennis you know hours of course I have I know that I can't find a thing you've ever said that isn't ennobling I I love your work I wrote the pref I wrote the introduction to your biography I had uh I had this experience as well and then I have another thought which is uh I got into a lot of trouble and I got out of favor with critics because um it was widely said that Adam Carolla said women weren't funny now this is perfect and you guys have experienced a version of this I did an interview years ago and the person said at the end who's funnier men or women and I said well I think men are I think it's based on them trying to have sex essentially so they had to exercise that muscle a little bit but I know many female comedians that are funnier than anybody any guy I ever went to high school with that then turned into Adam Carolla said women weren't funny and then they just ran with it and that's up there with that well look it's it's pretty credible what you say because my sense is is that there's been a couple of things I've said that have been blown up in the Press you know and they were exaggerations of the sort that you're describing taken out of context I think that in the current climate if you've ever said anything reprehensible on public record that you will be slaughtered for it and so if you haven't been slaughtered for it the probability that you haven't said anything reprehensible is pretty damn High because people are combing over the the utterances of people like you trying to find a smoking pistol I don't know if you can comb over things to find a smoking pistol but I I was at a senate subcommittee on the suppression of free speech uh testifying about what's happening to prageru where uh hundreds of our videos are placed on the restricted list meaning if you have a filter against pornography and violence you actually can see the video so one of them was in fact one one that I had given I only give one tenth of the videos ninety percent of other people but I I have given a number of videos on the Ten Commandments for example and so Senator Ted Cruz asked the representative of Google why did you people could see this on YouTube it is still there why did you uh why did you put Mr prager's uh talk on uh on uh on the Ten Commandments on on the restricted list and the man looked at Senator Cruz and said because it mentions murder and I remember I remember humming the uh Twilight Zone Theme because I I felt I had entered an alternate universe so what do you think the reason was Dennis I mean obviously look that's got to be a bit of a PR nightmare for Google to do something like that so it smacks of a certain degree of incompetence to begin with and I I like to hypothesize incompetence before malevolence so so why do you think it was censored that specifically and then why with regards to is it reasonable to call what's happening with prageru censorship and why do you think it's happening because well I'll tell you the the I'll answer the last one first and this will help you realize that I think there's more malevolence than incompetence there is never an instance in the history of the world and this is my field of study since I was in Graduate School of Columbia that's why I studied Russian was to read Pravda and visit the Soviet Union on multiple occasions and other and other communist countries there is no instance in world history that is since the Russian Revolution of the left gaming power and not suppressing speech Liberals are for free speech conservatives are for free speech the left has never been for free speech okay so let me ask you a clarifying question there all right because you know I come I'm a Canadian and I suppose along with the Scandinavian countries were tilted a fair degree to the left compared to the U.S and so I mean freedom of speech is in reasonable shape in our countries those countries that I mentioned and so when you talk about the left tell me more specifically what you mean and how you would Define that particular shape because you're not talking about the Democrats per se I can't imagine or perhaps you are the Democrats used to be I was a Democrat the Democrats used to be liberal the Democrats when I was a kid in the 70s Nazis real Nazis not people they just call Nazis real Nazis with swastikas uh demonstrated in uh in Skokie Illinois because a lot of Jews live there especially Holocaust Survivors it was a particularly vicious Act and uh Jewish groups the ACLU liberal groups the Democratic Party All defended their right because in America anybody could say anything except the elk fire in a crowded theater that is no longer the position you you look you're why did you why did you get in trouble and you're you're worried about that for a long time no well I'm if you're wondering I'm not you uh you said something the left didn't like that you were not going to be told by the government what pronoun you will use we need institutions that we can respect and that and that hold up the standards that have made them what they are and if they fold well how can you expect normal people say not to be cowed and intimidated by the same tactics absolutely absolutely actually I mean there were two other episodes on my mind one of which sort of confirmed my theory about what was happening in your case the other which suggested different sorts of motivation so one of them was a case that occurred around the same time as yours which was a case of a research fellow at Saint Edmunds College here in Cambridge um who was doing research he was a sociologist that broke well then respectable sociologist he had workers work profiled in the economist and top journals um he was fired because there was again there was a more protesting about his associations conferences he'd been to journals that he published in which other people that they found distasteful published in and so on again Donald said nothing illegal that was one case which again I think illustrates the sort of pressures that I think were being brought to bear again what were the topics for that the topics of race and intelligence yes yes yes the intelligence literature is is rough that's for sure I mean the whole the whole thing was so challenging because it was It was decided by an inquiry that was Kept Secret nobody's going to know what the evidence was in this inquiry um so the whole thing was was terrifying um the other case was slightly different so there was another case that concerned me which was a case where it was it was an event for the Palestinian Society where there was a chair from that Society um was the University threatened to shut down because they thought they were worried that the chair might be an extremist or something she wasn't at all she was a respectful respectable academic from psoas um and the university imposed its own its own share on that now that was slightly different because that was responding to another another threat of free speech which is the government's legislation on prevent and anti-terrorism um but those three events were sort of coalescing in my mind around the time that I tried to change the um change the University's Free Speech policy okay so what did so let's talk about the change in the Free Speech policy what what changes did you propose and then it took a couple of years as I understand to really get this through and I also understand from James that it wasn't that easy to get people to speak in favor of your proposal but that it was passed and when we need to go into that by an overwhelming majority of the people who were concerned and able to legislate such things so to speak for the University yeah so I can take you through that what happened was it was this was around Actually March 2020 so about a year after your your case and the university had decided that it was going to put through a new freedom of speech policy um uh this is obviously at a time when everyone had had other things on their mind at least in Britain in March 2020 they didn't offer a vote on it they just wanted to put it straight through and it was a policy which I found concerning especially in life of these incidents um one part of it was that it mandated said that we have right Free Speech but we must always exercise respect for other people's identities and opinions now that might seem innocuous um uh but of course the word respect being so vague the interpretation it doesn't seem innocuous to me indeed I mean it seems terrible because it just it just removes the first part of protection for free speech I mean if you have to be cautious about other people's opinions much less their identity well we should reverse that their identity much less their opinions as well who decides when that's respectful and what yeah yeah it's just weasel words that exactly and the bit about identities I bet they had you in mind when they were saying that actually um uh uh but whatever anyone says I believe in free speech parts that's a good sign for me that they don't need free speech and that was the impression that this policy gave off other parts of the policy um which may not have been directly explicitly new but which certainly brought you and those other cases for instance the Palestinian Society to mind were rules which said that the university could stop speaker events if they thought they would threatened the welfare of students welfare is divine to get undefined and could be interpreted broadly um and indeed allowed the university to stop events under pretty much any circumstances that they like speaker events for instance so those were the that was the proposed policy in March 2020. so why did that why did that bother you so much I mean you're pretty young and and and starting your academic career in many ways maybe I'm wrong about that but you know it's a hell of a thing to take on and it's not without its risks and I'm always curious about people's motives it's like there's lots of professors at Cambridge why why do you think this was your problem well you flattened me puppy young but uh uh I will say that I guess that there were two things one of them was philosophical one was more to do with the nature of the job so philosophically speaking my basic philosophical position is is what you might call classical liberal so my Basic Value is individual liberty um and uh you know I would in terms of what I'm what I do in my political engagement um even my professional engagement to some extent you know that's the the ultimate and most important important value so for me it really touched a nerve um it touched something that was the core of my identity if you want to use that that um appalling word um the other aspect which I said was professional was simply to do something I alluded to earlier which was what is this job for it's part of your duty as an academic I would have thought you know academics are normally cautious as they should be but the one thing that they shouldn't be caught us about is defending the ultimate um uh purpose of the academy and that cannot be um pursued without free speech um and without the ability to question freely um beliefs that are held by the majority also believes that are held by minorities and without worrying about who you're going to defend who's going to be hurt by your words especially in a subject like philosophy and I dare say in a subject like yours and certainly in a subject like James is you can't have free discussion if every time you talk about something you're frightened that you're going to offend the other person and then they might report you and you might get in trouble I can't do my job I didn't expect James can I don't expect you can if discussion is curtailed in that way so no scientists can because that freedom of inquiry and the freedom to upset traditional truths let's say well in some in a really fundamental sense that's what science is all about and as a let's say a creative scientist you're always working against what's established because otherwise what you discovered wouldn't be new and you're always going to be facing people who are upset for one reason or another by your hypothesis and your research so it's it's it's not it's not a side uh issue here it's it's crucial to the academy as such yeah absolutely it's it's absolutely but that still doesn't explain why you made it your problem say when so many people were perfectly willing to remain silent well one thing I would say is that I was like I was slightly surprised um when I wrote so after after the University's policy came out um there was a discussion what's called a discussion in Cambridge University really means that you write a paper and it's it's published in the University magazine um and so I sent a short paper off proposing some changes to these policies and mistaking my objections and I had expected this being Cambridge University that many other people would do the same um because I didn't think I was alone in being concerned about this um uh nobody else did so I was that was the first pointed which I realized so there was no there was no real Brave real markup because I had expected at that point that a lot of people a lot of other people would be would be jumping in um nobody did so that was the point at which I realized that I was perhaps more isolated um than I'd expected um to go back to your question about motivations I mean I don't know what more I can tell you I mean these are things that matter to me I don't really care if anyone else is doing it or not did you face any trouble so you voiced your opinion and you wanted to modify this this document which had let's say politically correct underpinnings and did it cause grief for you were people outraged by what you said or or did things proceed as a matter of course well it was interesting so some people uh some people wrote to me in fact quite a few people wrote to me at the time saying that they agreed with with my concerns um which should have made it even more surprising that nobody had actually said so in public um some people wrote to me saying they agree with my concerns but weren't willing to to say anything in public um uh James was was as always was brilliantly helpful James has always been really supportive and James has been publicly supportive throughout this process but it's because there have been a few courageous people like James and a few others you know in Cambridge at that stage that was definitely a big a big help um so there was some support I also had people warning me so I had people saying you know you might get you know you might get some kind of disciplinary procedure you might get some kind of Investigation I didn't expect anything at that stage then indeed nothing happened um to me at that stage and I'm pleased to say there'd be no investigations or anything out of me of me since um so that's really interesting in two ways isn't it because it shows you how those people are to do this because they're afraid and we shouldn't make light of that because this is actually no fun you know if if you do something like this and it explodes in your face like it it probably took me oh it took me a long time to recover from the disinvitation especially the way it was handled and my health and my wife's Health were extremely compromised at the time and so it came at a a particularly bad time maybe we had just received news that she probably had terminal cancer and so this came on top of that now luck that she survived thank God but you know it was a harrowing time and so I I see why people can be cowed like this because you know you don't know when this is going to explode and what's going to tangle you up so deeply that while your job's gone that's what happened to the weinsteins for example at Evergreen and I mean that was really that did them a tremendous amount of damage they're unbelievably resourceful and they go back on their feet and and you know they were a husband and wife team so they had each other and that was good but not everybody can do that and you can get seriously taken out if if something like this goes wrong so but then that ties into this issue we discussed a bit earlier which is how a small minority of you know people who whose wrath knows no bounds in some sense can be so dominant yep so it was it was it was in some ways a calculated risk and I I'm like I imagine how difficult that must have been for you Jordan it was it you know I must have been horrific um I mean one thing I saw happening in Cambridge not not by then but a little bit later was the treatment that was meted out to not an academic but to a member of the University staff so we have we have college Porters in Cambridge and these are these people who work at the colleges um uh often they're sort of you know retired policeman or military or something um really helpful they do all kinds of jobs around the college students rely on them the academics rely on them the ones in my college are brilliant there was one at a college in Cambridge who was also a labor counselor um who uh who resigned on political grounds which was to do with his view about about trans issues so he thought it was you know there was there was a motion about trans issues that he thought you know threatened women's safety and so he resigned on a point of principle and that's his political activity that's his right I could I could understand his grants for doing that the students at his college so these are typically much more privileged people than him students at his college performed a mob to try to get this man sacked um and this was this was you know this is a much more privileged people they didn't care about you know the consequences for him um they just thought because he diverted from their line of ideological Purity do you remember this case James and James may know I don't believe it yeah I'll do it it was thanks to a very brave female undergraduate I think she was in her even her second year she spoke out uh wrote a public article about it a a great Carriage uh I thought to herself and she uh there was an awful lot of resistance to her doing that but uh it was remarkable uh she got in touch with us I seem to remember and I can't remember how the case was resolved did you ever apologize did you or did you what happened with you apologize for what well that's the cool for whatever you were being accused of I never apologized for um refusing to comply with my University's mandate I never apologized for speaking publicly about it I never have and won't apologize for continuing to try to have discussions about the truth that doesn't mean that I or who I'm talking with Will will always get it right surely will make mistakes everyone makes mistakes the truth isn't a set of facts the truth is an approach to diet to discussion that's what Joe Rogan's so good at that's why he's so popular it's not because Joel knows the truth it's because he acts out the truth in his in his in his in in his speech and his actions so yeah that's a whole different thing whole different thing well Soldier Ditson was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless everyone was participating in the LIE and that the most potent anti-authoritarian action is to tell the truth and and that means to say something when you have something to say because the old not because you're brave but I think but because the alternative is worse yeah that's and it was Orwell it's so so interesting to me that it was Orwell that that that opened your eyes to that I mean it makes perfect sense but but it's still really something yeah I know it's like um that like that book I think that's when I realized oh everybody was responsible and that's when I started thinking about speaking out that's when you started thinking about speaking out I see I see and so you made a conscious decision at that point yeah why why because I knew the price of Silence because like that that was the price of real pain right like not even knowing like that's the thing like when people say like why no revolutions because if you don't know we are slaves in North Korea how do you fight to people when you don't know you're a Slave and that's a different thing like the fact that my people don't even know they're oppressed that's the thing like what carries me to this point about my father is not like he I of course I wouldn't be grateful if he ever lived in Freedom even one day but the heartbreaking thing is he didn't even know life could be this Freedom life could be this beautiful he didn't even know that like life could be so different for other human beings I just wish he can knew before he goes so he doesn't remember this life's so hard is fairly with the sadness you know and that's the thing with North Koreans we are talking a different theory about oppression you don't even know life can be this way and yeah so that was my time of understanding what happened and started believing in this freedom

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 1,007,280

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, Jung, existentialism, maps of meaning, biblical series, free speech, freedom of speech, biblical lectures, personality lectures, personality and transformations, yeonmi park, brett weinstein, bret weinstein, american totalitarianism, pinocchio, pinnochio, dennis prager, jordan petersen, safe spaces, future of US, future of america, US election 2024, canada authoritarianism, authoritarianism

Id: yyi8td2B25o

Length: 61min 54sec (3714 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/TheHairyHeathen]

Most don't believe it because they can't point to something directly in their lives. I got the FBI knocking on my door for saying mean things on Twitter.

[u/amiamusingu]

JP likes the sound of his own blather...