EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,384 words- 0:02 – 5:22
Grievance studies hoax and the Portland State investigation
- JRJoe Rogan
In four, three, two, one. Hello.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Hello, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, this is exciting. I, I don't think I've ever had a conversation as long as we're about to have.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) I've been listening to The Happiness Hypothesis over the last few days, and I really, really enjoy it. I'm, I'm really enjoying it. And it's really fascinating stuff, man. Um, but one thing I wanted to talk about, because we were talking about it right before we got started, was what's happening with Peter Boghossian-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... at Portland State University.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
For folks who don't know the story, he and, um, I forget, his two colleagues, uh, James-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, Helen Plethros, and ... Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Helen Plethros and James Lindsay?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. They, uh, released these fake papers, um, on, uh, like, homoeroticism and rape culture in dog parks and just really preposterous-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, crazy stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
... papers that are almost like an article from The Onion. And some of them, not only did they get peer reviewed and accepted into these journals, but they got lauded as being these amazing pieces of-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, one did. One got an award. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (laughs) .
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And now, he's getting in trouble.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And, um, we were just talking about it, and I just want- would love to know your thoughts as a professor. Like, what-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, sure. Yeah. So, you know, for those who don't know, I guess most of your listeners probably do, but, uh, you know, it was called the grievance studies hoax.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh, because ... And, and you know, this is one of the big issues going on in the academy, which I hope we'll talk about, uh, is, um, you know, what does it take to have good scholarship? And, and the argument is that in some fields, as long as you hate the right things and use the right words, you'll get published. And that's not scholarship. That's activism. And so, these three, these three people who did this hoax, um, they were trying to show that that's the case. And so, they wrote these papers. One of them was actually a section of Mein Kampf-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... and they just substituted in something about feminism for Nazism, something like that. And, um, I don't remember if that, that one actually got pub- ... I think it did. At any rate, the point is, they were trying to show that this is ... Some of these fields in the academy are not really about scholarship. They're just about showing that you hate the right things. They're activism. And so, uh, there's no way to break in within those closed worlds, so they did a time-honored thing. They did a hoax. They published ... They submitted these papers. They made up fake names, and, and a lot of them got accepted. And now, what's happening is that, uh, the univers- uh, Portland State University, which is, uh ... Only one of the three is at a, is a, is a professor. He's a assoc- uh, assistant professor, so he's not tenured. Um, you know, of course, uh, he has a lot of enemies, and, uh, of course, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But it looks like some of them wanted him investigated for violating the IRB, the Internal Review Board, because the claim is they fabricated data. Because one of the papers says, "I inspected the genitals of 10,000 dogs in the dog park."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
You know, it's like, obviously absurd.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh, and he said, you know, "And 63% of the, uh, of the attempted humping ..." 'Cause the, the thing, the thing of the article was the, the idea that, you know, you go to a dog park and you see dogs humping each other, and they were interpreting this as rape, as doggy rape.
- 5:22 – 7:59
Two incompatible campus “games”: truth-seeking vs political combat
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right. So, uh, the way... uh, and I think the way to make sense of all of this is you have to always look at what game is being played. So human beings evolved in small scale societies. Uh, we have all kinds of abilities to function in those small scale societies. One of those is religious worship. We're very good at making something sacred and circling around it. Another is war. We're very good at forming teams to fight the other side. And we love that so much we create sports and, you know, video game battles with team versus team. So there's all these different games you can play, and the truth-seeking game is a, is a really special one and a weird one, and we're not very good at it as individuals. And m- in my view, the genius of university is that it takes people and puts them together in ways where each person, each... like, scientists aren't these super rational creatures that are, you know, looking to disconfirm their own ideas. No, we're not looking. We wanna prove our ideas. We love our ideas. But a university puts us together in a way in which you are really motivated to d- to disprove my ideas, and I'm motivated to disprove yours. You put us together, we cancel out each other's confirmation biases. So the truth-seeking game is a very special game that can only be played in a very special institution with special norms. Okay, so we're doing this for, you know, my whole time in academia. I started grad school in 1987 at the University of Pennsylvania. And then just in the last few years, it's like some people are playing this really different game. And it's like if... you know, if I'm playing tennis and I hit the ball to you, like wa- uh, you know, we're in a seminar class.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
I give you a question or I challenge you, and you come back, and we go back and forth. And in the process, we learn. So that's like, kinda like playing tennis. So I'm doing this and then suddenly, like, someone tackles me. Like, what? That- you don't do that in tennis. No, no, but they're playing football, you see. And in football, it's a much rougher game, and you're trying to destroy the other side. I mean, not really in football.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
But I'm saying-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... it's, you know, it's a, um... and so as norms of combat come in, and what I mean by that is political combat, uh, as some people i- within universities see that what we're doing here is not seeking truth, we're trying to fight fascism, or we're trying to defeat conservatism, or we're trying to fight racism, or whatever, some sort of, uh, political goal, and these games are completely incompatible. And so that's why this madness has erupted where you see professors saying something, maybe it's a little provocative. I mean, going back to Socrates, that was kind of the point was to provoke, um, and you see these bizarre reactions, emotional reactions, m- uh, uh, groups organize to demand that a professor be fired, because we're playing different games.
- 7:59 – 12:36
Why campus culture changed after 2014: the six causal threads
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. How did this start?
- JHJonathan Haidt
How did it start? Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause it seems like there, there has to be an event or something.
- JHJonathan Haidt
It's... yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or a, a trend.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well, so, so the, you know, the book that, uh, um, the book that I just put out in September, uh, with Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I read the first chapter of that as well.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay. Well, thank you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... for admitting that it was only one chapter. Usually-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I-
- JHJonathan Haidt
... uh, you know, when you're-
- JRJoe Rogan
... I- I dove into that one, because, uh, the... uh, unfortunately, uh, I was, I was reading that and then I got on a flight and I just wanted to zone out, and so I listened to this one on tape.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay. All right. Well, I'll tell you all about it. Uh, but the key thing is that that book, The Coddling of the American Mind, was something that we wrote because Greg began observing this weird stuff happening in universities in 2014. It all starts in 2014. Um, most of your listeners have heard about safe spaces, microaggressions, bias response teams, trigger warnings, all that stuff. That stuff pr- didn't exist before 2014. It just begins creeping in then, and then it kinda blows up in 2015. And so our whole book is an exploration of why. Why did this happen? And so to your question about was there an event, our answer is, there are six different causal threads, there's like all these social trends, some going back to the '80s and '90s, that came together around 2014 so that students are a little different, and then there are certain forces acting on them that are different. And so you get this weird new game, you get this explosive mix, you get some students who are actually very drawn to grievance studies. Uh, and so, um, very briefly, like, the... it's things like, um, rising political polarization. So left and right never particularly liked each other, but in the '70s and '80s, if you look at surveys done of how much you hate people on the other side, it's not that intense. It begins going up in the, in the '80s, and then especially after 2000, it's gone up very steeply. Uh, at the same time, university faculty, who have always leaned left throughout the 20th century, uh, but it was only a lean, and in the '90s, it begins shifting much further left, so that now faculties, especially in the social sciences and humanities, are pretty purified. They're overwhelmingly on the left. So you have a more left-leaning university at a time when left-right hostility is getting more and more intense, and so any question that has a political valence, now there's a lot more people who want to do the football game, not the truth-seeking game-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... but the we got to defeat the other side, don't give me nuance, don't give me data. We know what we believe, and damn it, we're gonna... you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So you got this, uh, changing political situation, and then you've got a couple of threads about what we've done to kids. So, um, uh, and I've got... this is a whole nother area of conversation for us, but we basically took away free play and gave them social media. The same- basically kids who were born in 1995 and after, Gen Z, they had really different childhoods, and they're not as prepared for conflict and, and college. We'll get into that later. But you put all these things together, you get kids who are much more anxious and fragile, much more depressed, um, coming onto campus at a time of much greater political activism, and now these grievance studies ideas about America's a matrix of oppression, and, and look at the world in terms of good versus evil, it's more appealing to them. And it's that minority of students, they're the ones who are initiating a lot of the movements.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's such a strange time to be on the outside and watch this, because...... a person like myself has always counted on intellectuals and professors and people like yourself to sort of make sense of things. And to, uh, reinforce the idea that freedom of speech and free debate are critical aspects to knowledge. And one of the things that's most disturbing when you- you see in schools is people that are even marginally right-leaning or centrist-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... being called Nazis-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and being silenced and they're pulling fire alarms when they're speaking. And even people like Christina Hoff Sommers, who's a, a feminist-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... gets shouted down and, and people are yelling at her-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and calling her a fascist.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just very strange. It's very strange-
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right. (laughs)
- 12:36 – 15:37
How widespread is the problem? Elite campuses, media incentives, and trust collapse
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, but one thing I can say that, um, that might be helpful here is that from the outside, what you see is the news reports. And the news reports are going to be very selective. And so especially what happens is because, you know, universities have always leaned left and so the right-leaning media have always been suspicious. So the right-leaning media has huge coverage of every little thing. And sometimes it's, it's exaggerated. Sometimes it's misinterpreted. Um, but for the most time there was something there. Left-leaning media tends to ignore it. And so I go around the country and, you know, people on the right expect that, "Oh my god, it's chaos and mob violence on campus," which isn't true. That's an exaggeration. And the left is like, "Problem? What problem? There's nothing changing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, and so I think the key thing to keep in mind here is that there's about 4,500 institutions of higher education in this country. Most of them are not selective schools. They'll take anyone who comes. Um, and in those schools not much is happening. Um, but if you go to the elite liberal arts colleges in the Northeast and the West Coast, then usually something is happening. And so, uh, at Heterodox Academy, it's a group that I co-founded of professors that are pushing back. It's bipartisan. We have as many people on the, on the left as on the right. Um, we created a map of where all the shout downs have taken place. And they're all right in the Northeast or along the Pacific Coast, like from, you know, Evergreen s- you know, down to, you know, Berkeley and all that. Uh, and then a couple in Chicago. So from, in most of the country, this stuff is not happening. Most schools, the culture hasn't really changed much. But at the top schools in general, it has. Um, so that's one thing to just keep in mind. There is a moral panic on the right about this, which doesn't mean that there's not something real. There really is a, a huge problem, but it's not as pervasive as it's sometimes made out to be.
- JRJoe Rogan
So is it a- akin to looking at violence in the news media? Like, you, you're, when you read about violence in terms of robberies and murders, in general, you're not gonna encounter much in your life. The, the, the world is a large place.
- JHJonathan Haidt
(clears throat) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But we concentrate on these really bad moments.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. It's a little bit like that, except that, um, you know, um, one of the reasons that we took child- ... we took free play away from kids is that we were afraid that they'd be abducted. And that almost ne- ... That was so rare. Uh, and, uh, but we got a lot of coverage of that in the '80s and '90s. And we changed our behavior because of that, and that was a gross overreaction. The situation on campuses is not like that. It's, it's, your odds of being nailed are much higher than that. Um, and so, you know, I hear every day, or at least every week I get an email from a professor who says, "You know, I, I, I used a metaphor in class and somebody reported me." And like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... you know? And so i- once this happens to you, you, you, you pull back. You change your teaching style. What we're seeing on campus is a spectacular collapse of trust between students and professors. And when we don't trust each other, uh, we can't, we can't do our job. We can't, we can't risk provoking, being provocative, raising new ideas-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... raising uncomfortable ideas. We have to play it safe, and then everybody suffers.
- 15:37 – 25:02
Social media, call-out culture, and the new prestige economy
- JRJoe Rogan
Is social media partially to blame because-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, my ... It's huge.
- JRJoe Rogan
Huge. Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Social media is a huge part of this problem. So, um, uh, in a couple ways. Um, so one is the generational thing, that we have, uh, um, uh, kids born after 1995 got this in middle school. It had a variety of effects on them. So kids coming in are more conversant with call-out culture, and so that's a big part of this. Um, the other thing, though, is that we used to have what you would call a reasonable person standard. So, uh, you know, so, um, you know, if a professor, uh ... What's one? Oh, so a professor just wrote to me recently. He said he, you know, he got frustrated while trying to explain something and he said, "Ugh, shoot me now." Um, and a student was offended by this because, "Are you making fun of people committing suicide?" And okay, you know, had she come to him and said, "You know, Professor, I know you didn't mean anything, but that was kind of insensitive." Okay. That would have been great. Like, that's the way to handle it. But for this generation raised with call-out culture and social media, you almost never hear of a student coming to someone else in private because you don't get credit for that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So you only get credit when you call them out publicly.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
And so that's why we're all walking on eggshells, 'cause most of our students are great. Most of them are fine. But if I have a class of 300 students, a lecture class, I know that some of them subscribe to this new call-out culture, safetyism morality. And so if I say one thing, it's not a reasonable person standard. It's a most sensitive person standard. I have to teach to the most sensitive person in the class.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's also that person has the opportunity to score, right? They have-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
They throw up that virtue flag, like, "I've got one on the board here. Look what I did. I nailed the professor on saying, 'Shoot me now.' And, uh, now I'm a hero."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
"And I've made this a safer space for everybody else."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Tha- that's right. And so, and so that's really what is messing us up at so many levels of society. And the fact that a lot of these problems, the, the m- difficulties of democracy, the rise of authoritarian populism, the ... There, there are a lot of weird trends that are happening in multiple countries, and I think it's the rise of, of devices and social media is the main way we can explain why it's so similar across countries.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that this is ...... a sh- is- is this some sort of a trend that will eventually correct itself when these kids get out into the real world and then go through a whole generation of that, and then people realize the error of their ways and the disastrous results of having-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... these unprepared or emotionally unprepared kids?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. No, I'm-
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- JHJonathan Haidt
... pretty confident that it will not correct itself. I think that o- once we understand it, I think there are a variety of things we can do to change it. But I think here's the way to understand it and why it's not gonna change itself. So, so I'm a, I'm a social psychologist, is my main, my main area. Um, but I, I love all of the social sciences. I love thinking about complex systems. And systems composed of people are really different from systems composed of stars or, or neutrons, or anything else. And so, um, if you have a complex system composed of people, these people are primarily working to increase their prestige. So I mean, once we have, our needs for, you know, food and things like that are set, we're, we're always interacting in ways to make ourselves look good, uh, and to protect ourselves from being nailed, you know, or accused of something. So we're always doing reputation management. Now, um, think about w- a- in any group, what gives you prestige? And so if you look in a group of teenagers, you might have a group, uh, in which it's athletics. And so if that's how you get prestige, then all the kids are gonna be working out and training and practicing, and that doesn't hurt anybody. That doesn't impose an external cost on anyone else. But you could have some really sick prestige economies. Uh, and so there's, uh, there's an ethnography about a Ph- uh, uh, um, a- an indigenous population in the Philippines, uh, by Sh- Shelly Rosaldo, is the anthropologist. I think it's called Knowledge and Passion, about the Ilongot, which is a name for a, a tribe in the Philippines. And in this tribe, it's a headhunting tribe. They, they find people and cut off their heads. Not just for fun, for prestige. So in a lot of societies, um, you have a lot of male initiation. Boys have to do something to become a man. And if the thing you have to do to become a man is you have to cut off someone's head-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
... okay, so that imposes rather a heavy cost on outsiders. All right? So this is a sick culture. This is not one where we can say, "Oh, well, that's just the way they do things." Okay?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
This has to stop. Um, and e- ideally, they would cut off a stranger's head, like they find someone from another tribe or someone, you know, from, you know, a government agency. They'll just cut, cut off his head. Um, uh, but if, if necessary, if there's a fight or if there's somebody within their larger community, that can also get you points. So this is a really sick culture. Now, head, uh, now, um, call-out culture is not quite that bad, but it's the same logic. Okay? So if you have a group of teenagers or college students who are all struggling for prestige, as we all are, and if you get a subculture in which the way you get prestige is by calling someone out, showing that they're racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, whatever it is, if you can catch them, you get the points. What you're doing here is you are imposing an external cost on others. And that's what makes you so insufferable, because you are playing your game, but I'm paying the cost of your game. And so that, I think, it, it's hard to, people aren't gonna break out of that themselves. But once we understand what's happening, I think, in a sense, we can all come together and call out call-out culture and say, "Stop. Stop imposing these costs on us."
- JRJoe Rogan
How, but how are we gonna reach those kids if professors are so terrified to speak out and to cause controversy in class and no one wants to criticize them? Because if you do, you risk your job.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You risk them organizing against you.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, how does this shift?
- JHJonathan Haidt
So the, so I'm hopeful that we can shift it because most people hate it. So even the people who do it-
- 25:02 – 34:17
Teaching under surveillance: anonymous reporting systems and “safetyism”
- JRJoe Rogan
When you're teaching classes, uh, uh, and a, a subject comes up that may be controversial, d- do you, do you have, like, this overwhelming feeling that y- you're treading on dangerous ground?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. So, um, I, I taught Psych 101 at the University of Virginia, and I would do all k- ... I would take them into, you know, sex differences, the origin of sex- sexual orientation. I would even do race differences. Um, and, uh, you know, because there was a reasonable person standard, and I trusted my students and they trusted me, and we had a great time and we covered a lot, a lot of stuff. Um, but now ... And then I moved to New York University in 2011, um, uh, when my last b- previous book, The Righteous Mind, came out. And it's not a- ... It's not about UVA versus NYU, it's just about the changing time. Um, now, uh, as I said, I have to teach to the most sensitive students, so I teach a course on business ethics, on professional responsibility, and we have a section on, um, uh, on discrimination and employment law, which is important to cover. We have to cover it. Uh, you know, MBA students have to know where the lines are, what the law is. Um, and yeah, I'm kinda scared when I teach that, uh, because, you know, I'd like to get into all sorts of things. Um, I'd like to get into, well, you know, what do numerical disparities mean? If there's a gender difference in, you know, in the percentage of tech, uh, uh, but not in the percentage of non-tech, uh, employees in Silicon Valley, w- what does that mean? I would like to talk about that. But if a single student thinks that I am denying the existence of sexism, they could be offended by that. And in every bathroom at NYU, there's a sign telling them how to report me anonymously, and they put these up in 2016 in response to student requests.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, and it means that all professors are on notice that they can be reported anonymously at any moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
By children.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well, these are ... Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
... uh, uh, I'm not gonna call them children. I mean, my students are MBA students.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
But, uh ... But the undergrads, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Barely-
- JHJonathan Haidt
They're 17, 17 to 21 year olds-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... for the undergrads. Yes, that's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Barely not children anymore.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And there's an incentive to this, this ... what we were talking about before, this, th- e- uh, this incentive that gives them attention. They get prestige, they get value from it, and this, th- this culture encourages these things.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm. That's right. And this is a terrible lesson to teach them, um, so, you know, the subtitle of our book is called The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. And so these microaggression reporting systems ... That's basically what it is, um, a microaggression reporting system ha- uh, has a good intention behind it. Um, there are cases of professors who make ethnic jokes. Okay, they should stop doing that. I mean, maybe that was okay 30 years ago. You know, there are, there are, there are legitimate complaints and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... and, and faculty do ... There should be some accountability, some responsibility. So there's a good intention behind it, but it's usually based on no empirical evidence. And because it's based on pressure applied to a bureaucracy, not by a committee thinking, "Hmm, how can we improve the climate for everyone?" No, no, it's like, "We make these demands and we demand 10 things," and the administration says, "Okay, we'll give you five of them." Um, um, th- there's not thought put into, "What would happen if we give the students an East German-style anonymous reporting system, and so everybody's on notice that they can be reported at any point? What might happen to the social dynamics?" Like, nobody thought that through.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so the net e- eh, the net effect, again, is the spectacular collapse of trust on campus.
- JRJoe Rogan
God, to be in the middle of that has gotta be so bizarre, th- having taught for so many years-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... before that, and to watch almost like this virus-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... overtake the institutions.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's what it felt like, um, and that's why ... So, uh, you know, Greg Lukianoff came to me in 2014 ... So Greg ... I'll just t- briefly tell the story of the book. Um, Greg is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, um, he at FIRE. And they defend free speech rights on campus, and they were always, um, pushing back against administrators who would say, "Oh, you know, we need a free speech zone," and they were always afraid of liability. And so ... But sudden- uh, suddenly in 2014, Greg starts seeing students pushing back on, on speech rights, saying, "We want ... You know, ban that speaker. Do you know ... Uh, uh, uh, we need a, you know, safe space if a debate is gonna be held." Um, n- new stuff, weird stuff. And Greg, who is prone to depression, um, he had a suicidal depression in 2007. He's hospitalized. When he gets out of the hospital, he learns CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and in that you learn these, like, 15 or so cognitive distortions like catastrophizing, um, um, over-generalizing, Black and white thinking. So Greg learns to not do those himself, and then he goes back to work at FIRE. And then in 2014, he sees students saying, "Oh, if, you know, if Christina Hoff Sommers comes to campus, you know, people will die or they'll be, you know, people will be, um, harmed, injured." Um, and so there's this, uh, this n- new way of thinking, and Greg thinks, "Wow!... how are students learning to do this? Like, are, are we teaching them on campus to think in these distorted ways? And if we are, isn't that gonna make them depressed? So, Greg comes to talk to me in May of 2014 to tell me this idea, a- and I think it's really brilliant. I think it's a great idea, 'cause I'd begun to see this, you know, the safe spaces, the microaggressions, the trigger warning requests. Um, so we, we wrote up our, our essay, uh, submitted it to The Atlantic. It came out in August of 2015, and it was like we were just seeing the first outbreaks of a, of a virus. And then in the fall of 2015, it, it, it becomes an epidemic. And so many of your listeners will have s- heard of or seen the videos of what happened at Yale, um, in, in au- in, uh, November of 2015 when Erika Christakis wrote an email saying that, "Wait a second. Yale is telling you how to do your Halloween costumes. Maybe we should think this through ourselves. Maybe you're old enough to make your own decisions." Some students get very upset. They protest. They bring demands to the president. They were screaming at her husband. Uh, so it was then, when that protest was successful, when, uh, the president of Yale basically said, you know, "We, we're wrong. You're right. We validate your narrative. We'll give you as much as we can of your demands," um, when, when that happened, then the protest went national. And so throughout 2016, you have, um, you have groups of students making these demands, demanding microaggression reporting systems. So that's when NYU put in its systems, its microaggression reporting systems.
- 34:17 – 43:21
Microaggressions, shifting definitions, and identity politics: common enemy vs common humanity
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, in your book, you, you actually identify the moment where these microaggressions sort of made their appearance, and they were initially a racist thing?
- JHJonathan Haidt
(clicks tongue) So yeah, so the idea of a microaggression, (clears throat) it goes back to, um... I forget the schol- It's an African American sociologist in the '70s first coined the term. But it really becomes popular in a 2007 article, uh, by Derald Wing Sue at Teachers College. And so he talks about this concept of microaggressions, and there are two things that are good about the concept that are useful. And so one is, as racism, as explicit racism has clearly gone down, by any measure, explicit racism has plummeted, uh, in America and across the West, um, but, you know, there could still be subtle or veiled, uh, racist claims. So perfectly legitimate point.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you define the difference between explicit racism and...
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well, explicit racism is, you know, calling someone a racial slur, or, "I hate you because X."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're identified because of they've been reported as crimes, or...
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well, I would just say that, um, f- if you are a member of a culture, you can tell when someone is saying something to insult, to put down, or to express hostility.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And that's something, a judgment we can make.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And as that's become socially unacceptable in most circles, so explicit racism is way, way down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but how... uh, I'm, I'm sorry, but my, the, my only question is how are they measuring this?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, that... Well, how do you measure microaggressions?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, how do you measure even explicit racism?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How, how do you say it's down?
- JHJonathan Haidt
(clicks tongue) Um, certainly attitude measures. So there are... so surveys done in private. Uh, um, how would you feel if a, you know, if a, if a Black family moved in next door, if a Filipino family-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... moved in. So how would you feel if your child married a, you know, a Jew, a Muslim?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So explicit surveys show it. Um, certainly, um, I mean if, if, when you do surveys of people's experience, right? Um, uh, uh, people of, of race, of every race, when they report how often this happens to them every year, the numbers are actually fairly low. So, uh, there are ways of measuring experiences of racism.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Um, how accurate are these? 'Cause like, first of all, (smacks lips) I used to have a joke about this, but the idea is that the problem with surveys is you're only getting information peop- from people so stupid they take surveys. Like, who's taking surveys?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so some surveys are subject to that. But-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... in general, if you, if you approach a question from multiple perspectives, and say in one condition you pay them for an accurate answer or not-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... or in one condition they're anonymous or they're not. Um, so you can get a sense of how much the answer moves around depending on external conditions. Um, and so anyway, the, the point I just wanted to make is that, um, the acceptability of using the N-word or other things, you know, if a bunch of White people are talking, the acceptability of using the N-word I think has gone way down in general. Would you agree with that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay.
- 43:21 – 59:52
Privilege debates and the risk of teaching moral invulnerability
- JRJoe Rogan
Another thing that's alarming to me is the redefining of terms like sexism and racism. Um, where sexism against men is impossible, racism against White people's impossible.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's redefining as these prejudices only exist if you're coming from a position of power. That's really weird.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it also, i- i- it opens up the door to treating people as an other. Literally, the people that are the victims of racism are now using racism against other people-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and feeling justified because of it. And i- and having a bunch of people that will agree with them, that this is in fact not racism, and this is pushing back on White privilege and saying all these-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... different, weird things that ... You know, and, and they feel really comfortable in saying-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... these open, racist, generalizing things about White people or about White men, or about, you know, fill in the blank, but whatever group-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that you're, you're attacking. And it's, it's really strange. It's really strange to see.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. But again, it makes sense if you look at the different games.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So if you're on a university and you think you're playing the truth game, and philosophers are great at this, they're always unpacking terms. And so you might try to define racism or, or any sort of ISM and y- a common sense view would be an expression of hostility or, or resentment-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... or limitation on a group based on their identity. Um, but that's if you're playing the truth seeking game. If you're playing the, the politics game or the warfare game, um, you wanna define the terms to give your side maximum advantage. So there's a wonderful social psychologist named Phil Tetlock at Penn, at Wharton, and, and he talks about these different mindsets we get into, and one of them he calls the intuitive prosecutor. So if, if I'm ... If my goal as a scholar is to prosecute my enemies and maximally convict them, and I am always trying to defend, you know, seven different identity groups against the straight, White men, they're the, the, they're the accused, I want to define my terms to make it maximally easy to convict. And so I'm going to say, "Racism and, uh, you know, microaggressions, it doesn't matter what the intent was, all that matters is the impact. All that matters is what the person felt." That way, as long as someone's offended, I get to charge you with a crime.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So, uh, and also on racism, um, you can say, as, as, you know, a lot of kids are learning in high school the- these days, "Racism is prejudice plus power." So by definition, a Black person or a gay person or whatever, any, you know, cannot be racist or whatever other term, because they don't have power, regardless of their social class. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is actually being taught?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The- So the professors are ... This is coming-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
... out of their mouth? Teachers are saying this?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well, this is ... So, uh, this is taught in a number of high schools. Uh, my, uh, nephews went to Andover. Uh, they learned this.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's an offensive thing-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes, it's deeply offensive, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
... to be teaching children-
- JHJonathan Haidt
And it's not just that it's offensive and obviously hypocritical, it's that it's crippling.
- 59:52 – 1:05:39
Antifragility: peanut allergies as a model for resilience-building
- JHJonathan Haidt
Let's, okay, but let's, let's, okay, let's go back to the beginning. Let's start with child development.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And let's, let's, let's start with, um, what should we be doing with kids to make them tougher so that, you know, as they live in a, the world's safer and safer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Cars are safer. The death rate for kids is, has been plummeting for all, uh, all causes other than suicide, which has gone up. Um, so as kids live in a safer and safer world-... they also have the internet, which is gonna expose them to virtual insults forever and ever. So, how are we gonna raise kids to be maximally effective in this new 21st century world? Which is physically very safe, but virtually unsafe. Okay? How are we gonna do that? Um, and I think the key idea that we need to put on the table here, and that I think everybody who works with kids needs to keep in mind every day, is antifragility. I know you've talked about that on this show before-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... uh, but I'll just, I should, uh, I can just give a very brief, you know, explanation of it, 'cause it's such an important concept. Um, so, uh, antifragility, a lot of listeners will know, is a word coined by Nassim Taleb, the guy who wrote The Black Swan, um, because there are certain systems ... And he was, I think he was motivated by the collapse of the banking system. So, he had predicted the collapse because he said, "The banking system is really convoluted and it's never been tested. A system needs to be tested, challenged, shocked in order to then develop defenses against it. And our system has not been tested, so if anything goes wrong, it's all going down." All right. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you reference him quite a few times.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes, that's right. He's really-
- JRJoe Rogan
In the concept of antifragile.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. That's right, it's a key idea in, in our book. And it's, I find as I talk about this around the country, once you explain this to people who work with kids, like everybody gets it right away. All right. So, so Taleb says there's no word for this property. He says, "We, we, we know that some things are fragile." And so, like if you have a glass, you know, if you have a wine glass on the table and you knock it over, it breaks. Okay? It doesn't get better in any way. And so, uh, you know, you don't give kids a wine glass. You give them a plastic sippy cup, 'cause plastic is resilient. But if a kid knocks over a sippy cup, it doesn't get better in any way. And Taleb wanted to know, what's the word for things that do get better when you knock them over? And the classic example is the immune system.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So, the immune system is an incomplete system. It's a miracle of evolution that we have this system for making, you know, antibodies. Um, but it doesn't know exactly what to be reactive to. That has to be set by childhood experience. And so, if you keep your kids in a bubble and you use bacterial wipes and you don't let them be exposed to bacteria, you're crippling the system. The system has to get knocked over. It has to get challenged, threatened. It has to have, um, it has to learn how to, uh, expand its abilities. And so, um, so this is why peanut allergies are going up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that was a really shocking part of your book.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right. It's stunning how fast this happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ple- could you please explain that to people?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
The whole peanut allergy thing? Um-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Yeah, so peanut allergies used to be really rare. And most of us, you know, older folk, we brought peanut butter sandwiches to school. Uh, and when my son, Max, started, um, preschool in, uh, 2008, uh, you know, they went on and on about no nuts, nothing that touched a nut, nothing that looks like a nut, nothing that has the word nut in it. I mean, it was crazy how defensive they were about nuts. And as we were writing the book, I thought back on that and I said, "Wait a second. Like, why ... You know, we're freaking out about nuts and the more we freak out about it, the higher the allergy rate goes." And it turns out, there was a study done and published in 2015 where, um, the, the researchers noticed that the allergy to nuts is only going up in countries that tell pregnant women to avoid nuts. And they thought, "Well, maybe that's why." And so, they did a controlled experiment. They got about 600 women who had given birth recently, and ha- um, and whose kids were at higher risk of an allergy. 'Cause they had eczema or some other, you know, immune system sort of issue. So, uh, about 300 of them are told standard advice. "Your kid's at risk of a peanut allergy, so y- you should not eat peanuts while you're lactating and keep peanuts away from your kid." And the other half were told, "Here is an Israeli snack food. It's a puffed corn with a peanut, uh, uh, peanut powder dusting on the outside. Give it to your kids starting at, you know, three or four months, whenever they're ready to, to eat." And so ... And they monitored them. They made sure that there weren't, you know, fatal reactions or s- or, or strong reactions. And then, uh, at the age of five, they gave them all a very thorough immunological test and, of the ones who followed the standard advice, 17% had a peanut allergy. They would have to watch out for peanuts for the rest of their lives. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's such a high number.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Because these were, because these were-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... kids were already predisposed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, and but the half that were predisposed but given peanut powder, 3%. Just 3% had a peanut allergy at age five. In other words, we could almost wipe out peanut allergies by giving peanut powder to kids. And sci- uh, just a few months ago in Science, the front page article was on doing that. And so again, good intentions and bad ideas. We're trying to protect our kids so, "Oh, keep them away from peanuts."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJonathan Haidt
But that's exactly the wrong advice, because kids are antifragile. And so, we're doing the same thing, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Most of them. The p- the real issue is the people that have an actual severe allergy.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
If that's your child.
- 1:05:39 – 1:18:24
Free play, bullying vs conflict, and the harms of overprotection
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay, so now let's bring this to the playground. All right. So, um, you know, when, when you and I were kids, you know, boys and girls have different social interactions. But boys tease each other, right? Insult each other.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
They throw around insults, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And that's part of developing to be a boy. Now, if it turns into bullying, like a bunch of kids are want- you know, is, uh, are, are after one kid day after day, okay, that's terrible. We have to do something about that. I'm not saying bullying is okay. But as we've cracked down on bullying and as we've gotten more and more sensitive about harm in general, we're cracking down on any kind of teasing, cruelty, exclusion. So, my kids go to New York City public schools.... uh, which are generally pretty good. Um, but on the playground, you know, there's a monitor and the playground monitor lo- you know, if there's conflict, he comes and checks it out. If a kid is crying, he checks it out. Um, you know, seems like a good thing to do, but it's like treating kids like they're allergic to peanuts.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Kids have to have thousands and thousands of conflicts. They have to be exposed to insults and exclusion and teasing. And if you can imagine, if you could keep your daughter in a protective tank where nobody would tease her or insult her or hurt her feelings for 18 years, would you do it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Absolutely not. Yeah. It's not imp- it's, it's important that they do experience some assholes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
They j- they just have to know. But the, the, on the flip side, there are certain people that are damaged for the rest of their life by bullies. And some-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like I have a friend, um, and his brother used to beat him up when, when they lived together, and it still fucks with him to this day.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he's in his 50s.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like I h- I think he has a certain level of depression-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's directly correlated.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And, uh, I mean, I can't say about your friend, but the research shows-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... the research does show that, um, bullying can leave permanent scars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so there are a couple things we have to, uh, uh, keep our eye on. Kids are anti-fragile, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
But?
- JHJonathan Haidt
But, um, two things. One is they need challenges that are graded to their level of ability.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So if they're overwhelmed and if the suffering goes on day after day, so if kids are bathed ... if their brain is bathed in cortisol, so cortisol is a normal stress hormone. You have to ha- experience stress, you have to have cortisol and then it drops. It goes up and down, up and down. But kids who are raised either in an environment where they're bullied or they're abused at home, they don't have a secure attachment relationship, then they get brain damage. Then you, you, you're hurting kids if it's chronic.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
Episode duration: 2:05:10
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Transcript of episode FG6HbWw2RF4
