Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #397

1. 0:00 – 2:11

   Introduction

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff0:00

      If the goal is the project of human knowledge, which is to know the world as it is, you cannot know the world as it is without knowing what people really think, and what people really think is an incredibly important fact to know. So every time you're actually saying, "You can't say that," you're actually depriving yourself of the knowledge of what people really think. You're causing, uh, w- what Timur Kuran, who's, who's on our board of advisors, calls preference falsification. Um, you end up with an inaccurate picture of the world, which by the way, in a lot of cases, um, b- because there are activists who want to restrict more speech, they actually tend to think that people are more prejudiced than they might be. And actually, one very real practical way it makes things worse is when you censor people, it doesn't change their opinion. It just encourages them to not share it with people who will get them in trouble. So it leads them to talk to people who they already agree with, and group polarization takes off.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:57

      The following is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, free speech advocate, First Amendment attorney, president and CEO of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and he's the author of Unleashing Liberty, co-author with Jonathan Haidt of Coddling of the American Mind, and co-author with Rikki Schlott of a new book coming out in October, that you should definitely pre-order now, called The Canceling of the American Mind, which is a definitive accounting of the history, present, and future of cancel culture, a term used and overused in public discourse, but rarely studied and understood with the depth and rigor that Greg and Rikki do in this book and, in part, in this conversation. Freedom of speech is important, especially on college campuses, the very place that should serve as the battleground of ideas, including weird and controversial ones, that should encourage bold risk-taking, not conformity. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Greg Lukianoff.

2. 2:11 – 16:42

   Cancel culture & freedom of speech

   1. LFLex Fridman2:11

      Let's start with the big question. What is cancel culture? Now, you've said that you don't like the term as it's been, uh, quote, "dragged through the mud and abused endlessly by a whole host of controversial figures." Nevertheless, we have the term. What is it?

   2. GLGreg Lukianoff2:25

      Cancel culture is the uptick of campaigns, especially successful campaigns, starting around 2014 to get people fired, expelled, deplatformed, et cetera, um, for speech that would normally be protected by the First Amendment. Um, and I say would be protected because we're talking about circumstances in which, um, it isn't necessarily where the First Amendment applies. But what I mean is, like, as an analog to, uh, say, things you couldn't lose your job as a public employee for, um, and also the climate of fear that's resulted from, uh, uh, from that phenomena, the fact that you can lose your job for having the wrong opinion. And it wasn't subtle that this, there was an uptick in this, particularly on, uh, on campus around 2014. Um, Jon Ronson wrote a book called So You've Been Publicly Shamed that came out in 2015, already documenting this phenomena. I wrote a book called Freedom From Speech in 2014 and, and but in, but it really was in 2017 when you started seeing this be directed at professors and th- when it comes to the number of professors that we've seen, you know, be, be targeted and lose their jobs, I've been doing this for 22 years and I've seen nothing like it.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:34

      So there's so many things I wanna ask you here, but-

   4. GLGreg Lukianoff3:37

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:37

      ... one actually is just look at the organization of FIRE. Can you explain what the organization is? Because it's interconnected to this whole fight and the rise of cancel culture and the fight for freedom of speech since 2014 and before.

   6. GLGreg Lukianoff3:50

      Sure. So, uh, FIRE was founded in 1999 by Harvey Silverglate. Um, he is a famous civil liberties attorney. He's, he's, uh, b- been on the show. Um, he's the person who actually found me out in my very happy life out in San Francisco, but knew I was looking for a First Amendment job. Um, I'd gone to law school specifically to do First Amendment, um, and he, he found me, which was pretty cool. Um, hi- his protege, Kathleen Sullivan, was the dean of Stanford Law School and this remains the best compliment I ever got in my life is that she recommended me, uh, to Harvey. And since that's the whole reason why I went to law school, I was excited to be a part of this new organization. Uh, the other co-founder of, of FIRE is Alan Charles Kors. He's just an absolute genius. Um, he is the, one of the leading experts in the world on the Enlightenment and particularly about Voltaire. And if any of your listeners do like The Great Courses...

   7. LFLex Fridman4:44

      Mm-hmm.

   8. GLGreg Lukianoff4:44

      Um, he has a lecture on Blaise Pascal, and Blaise, of course, is famous for the Pascal's Wager, and I left it just so moved and impressed and under- with a depth of understanding of how important this person, uh, was.

   9. LFLex Fridman4:59

      That's interesting, uh, you mentioned to me offline connected to this that there is, um, the, uh, at least it runs in parallel or there's a connection between the love of science and the love of the freedom of speech.

   10. GLGreg Lukianoff5:10

       Yes.

   11. LFLex Fridman5:11

       Um, can you maybe elaborate where that connection is?

   12. GLGreg Lukianoff5:14

       Sure. Um, I think that for those of us who are really, you know, uh, who have devoted our lives to freedom of speech, one thing that we are, uh, into whether we know it or not is epistemology. Um, you know, the, the, the study and philosophy of knowledge. You know, freedom of speech has lots of, um, moral and philosophical dimensions, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it is necessary because we're creatures of incredibly limited knowledge. We are incredibly self-deceiving. I, I always love the fact that Yuval Harari, uh, refers to the Enlightenment as the discovery of ignorance because that's exactly what it was. It was suddenly b- be- being like, "Wow, hold on a second. All this incredibly interesting folk wisdom we got..." Which, by the way, is, can be, can be surprisingly reliable here and there. Uh, when you start testing a lot of it...... is nonsense, um, and it doesn't hold up. Even our, even our ideas about the way things fall, you know, as, you know, Galileo established. Like, even our intuitions, they're just wrong. (laughs) And so a lot of the early history of freedom of speech, um, it was happening at the same time as sort of the Scientific Revolution. Uh, so a lot of the early debates about freedom of speech, um, were tied in. So certainly Galileo, uh, you, you know, um, I always point out like Kepler was probably like the even more radical idea that they weren't even perfect spheres. But, but at the same time, largely because of the invention of the printing press, you also had all these political developments. Um, and, you know, I always talk about Jan Hus, you know, from the, uh, a famous Czech, um, uh, hero who was a, um, who was burned at the stake in, I think, in 1419. Um, but, uh, he was basically Luther before the printing press. Uh, before Luther could get his word out, you know, he didn't stand a chance and that was exactly what Jan Hus was. But a century later, thanks to the printing press, everyone could know what Luther thought and boy did, did they. But it led to, of course, this completely crazy hyper disrupted period in, in, in European history.

   13. LFLex Fridman7:20

       Well, you mentioned, uh, to jump around a little bit, the First Amendment. First of all, what is the First Amendment and what is the connection to you between the First Amendment, the freedom of speech and cancel culture?

   14. GLGreg Lukianoff7:31

       Sure. So I'm a First Amendment lawyer, as, as I mentioned, and that's what I, uh, that's my passion, that's what I studied and I think American First Amendment law is incredibly interesting. In one sentence, the First Amendment is trying to get rid of basically all the reasons why humankind had been killing each other for its entire existence. That we weren't going to fight any more over opinion, we weren't gonna fight any more over religion. That you have the right to approach your government for redress of grievances. Um, that you, you have the freedom to associate. That all of these things, in one sentence, we're like, "Nope. Um, you, the government will no longer interfere with, with your right to have these, have these fundamental human, uh, human rights." And so one thing that makes FIRE a little different from other organizations is, is however, we're not just a First Amendment organization. We are a free speech organization. And so, uh, and, and, but at the same time, a lot of what I think free speech is can be well explained with reference to a lot of First Amendment law.

   15. LFLex Fridman8:33

       Mm-hmm.

   16. GLGreg Lukianoff8:34

       Partially because in, in American history, some of our smartest people have been thinking about what the parameters of freedom of speech are, um, in relationship to the First Amendment. And a lot of those principles, they, they transfer very well just as, as pragmatic ideas. So like the biggest sin in terms of censorship, um, is called viewpoint discrimination. That essentially you allow freedom of speech except for that opinion. Now it's, and it's found to be kind of more defensible, and I think this makes sense, that if, if you set up a forum and like we're only gonna talk about economics-

   17. LFLex Fridman9:04

       Mm-hmm.

   18. GLGreg Lukianoff9:04

       ... to exclude people who want to talk about a different topic. But it's considered rightfully, um, a, a bigger deal if you've set up a forum for economics, but we're not gonna let people talk about that kind of economics or have that opinion on economics mo- most, most particularly. So a lot of the principles from First Amendment law actually make a lot of philosophical sense as good principles for when like what is protected and unprotected speech, what should get you in trouble, um, how you actually analyze it. Which is why we actually try in our definition of cancel culture to work in some of the First Amendment norms just in the definition, so we don't have to bog down on them as well.

   19. LFLex Fridman9:42

       You're saying so many interesting things, but if you can linger on the viewpoint discrimination, is there any gray area of discussion there? Like what is and isn't economics for the example you gave?

   20. GLGreg Lukianoff9:52

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman9:53

       Is there, is there, uh, I mean, is it a science or is it an art to draw lines of what is and isn't allowed?

   22. GLGreg Lukianoff10:00

       Yeah. You know, if you're saying that something is or is not economics, well you can say everything's economics and therefore I want to talk about poetry. There, there'd be some line drawing exercise in there. But let's say at once you decide to open up, um, uh, to poetry even. Um, it's a big difference between saying, "Okay, now we're open to poetry." Uh, but you can't say, you know, "Dante was bad." Um, like that's a forbidden opinion now officially in, in this otherwise open forum. That would immediately, at an intuitive level, strike people as a bigger problem than just saying that poetry isn't economics.

   23. LFLex Fridman10:34

       Yeah, I mean, that intuitive level that you speak to, I hope that all of us have that kind of basic intuition when a line is crossed. It's the same thing for like pornography.

   24. GLGreg Lukianoff10:47

       Yes.

   25. LFLex Fridman10:47

       You know when you see it. I, I think there's the same level of intuition that should be applied across the board here.

   26. GLGreg Lukianoff10:54

       Mm-hmm.

   27. LFLex Fridman10:54

       Um, and it's when that intuition becomes deformed by whatever forces of society, that's when it starts to feel like censorship.

   28. GLGreg Lukianoff11:02

       Yeah, I mean, people find it a different thing, um, you know, if someone loses their job simply for their political opinion, even if that employer has every right in the world to fire you. I think Americans should still be like, "Well, it's true. They have every right in the world." And I'm not making a legal case that maybe you shouldn't fire someone for their political opinion, but think that through. Like what, what society do we want, what kind of society do we want to live in? And it's been funny watching, um, you know, and I point this out. Yes, I will defend businesses', uh, First Amendment rights of association to be able to have the legal right to decide, you know, who works for them. Um, but from a moral or philosophical matter, if you think through the implications of if every business in, in America becomes an expressive association in addition to being a profit maximizing organization, that would be a disaster for democracy. Because you would end up in a situation where people would actually be saying to themselves, "I don't think I can actually say what I really think and, and still believe I can keep my job." And that's where I was worried I felt like we were headed, because a lot of the initial response to people getting canceled, um, was, uh, very simply, um, you know, "Oh, but they have the right to get rid of this person."Um, and that- and- and that's- that's the end and be- beginning and end of the discussion. And I thought that was a dodge. I thought that wasn't actually a very serious way of- that if you care about both the First Amendment and freedom of speech, of thinking it through.

   29. LFLex Fridman12:29

       So to you, just to clarify, the First Am-Amendment is kinda a legal embodiment of the ideal of freedom of speech. And if freedom of speech-

   30. GLGreg Lukianoff12:40

       As applied to government.
3. 16:42 – 25:27

   Left-wing vs right-wing cancel culture

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff16:42

      way.

   2. LFLex Fridman16:42

      Every time you say something, I always have a million thoughts and a million questions that pop up but since you mention there's a kind of drift as you write about in the book and you mention now there's a drift towards the left in academia. Uh, we should also maybe draw a distinction here between the left and the right and the cancel culture as you present in your book-

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff17:02

      Sure.

   4. LFLex Fridman17:02

      ... is not necessarily associated with any one political viewpoint but there's mechanisms on both sides-

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff17:08

      Oh, yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman17:08

      ... that result in cancellation and censorship, uh, and violation of freedom of speech?

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff17:13

      So one thing I wanna be really clear about is the book takes on both right and left cancel culture. They're different, uh, in a lot of ways and definitely, you know, um, cancel culture from the left is more important in academia where the left is more- dominates. Um, but we talk a lot about cancel culture coming from legislatures. We talk a lot about cancel culture on campus as well because even though, um, most of the attempts that come from on campus to get people canceled are still from the left, there are a lot of attacks that come from the right that come from, you know, uh, attempts by, uh, different organizations and, uh, sometimes when there are stories in Fox News, you know, like they- they'll go after professors and about one third of the attempts to get professors punished that are successful actually do come from the right and- and we talk about, um, attempts to get books banned, um, in- in the- in the book. We talk about, um... And, uh, I talk about suing the Florida legislature. Ron DeSantis had something called the Stop WOKE Act, um, which we told everyone this is laughably unconstitutional. Um, th- they tried to ban, you know, particular topics in higher ed and we're like, "No. This is a joke." Like la- this will- this will be laughed out of court. Um, and they didn't listen to us and they brought it, uh, they passed it and we sued and we won. Now they're trying again with something that's equally as unconstitutional and we will sue again and we wo- and we will win.

   8. LFLex Fridman18:39

      Can you elaborate on the Stop WOKE Act? So this is presumably trying to limit...... certain topics from being taught in school?

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff18:46

      Yeah. Ba- basically woke topics. Um, you know, it, it's more, it came out of the sort of attempt to get at, uh, critical race theory. Um, so it, it's topics related to race, gender, et cetera. Um, I don't remember exactly how they tried to cabin it to, um, uh, to, to CRT. Um, but when you actually ... The law is really well-established that you can't tell higher education what they're allowed to teach without violating, uh, without violating the First Amendment. And when this got in front of a judge, it was exactly as, uh, uh, he was exactly as, uh, uh, skeptical of it as, as we thought he'd be. I think he called this dystopian. Um, and it wa- it wasn't a, a close call.

   10. LFLex Fridman19:24

       So if you're against that kind of teaching, the right way to fight it is by making the case that it's not a good idea as part of the curriculum, as opposed to banning it from the curriculum?

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff19:34

       Yeah. Uh, it just, the state doesn't have the power to simply say, to, to ban, um, you know, what, what teach, what professors in higher education teach. Now, it gets a little more complicated when you talk about K through 12 because the state has a role in deciding what public K through 12 teaches because they're your kids. They ... It's taxpayer funded. Um, and generally, the legislature is involved. Um, there is democratic oversight of that process.

   12. LFLex Fridman20:00

       So for K through 12, is there also a lean towards the left in terms of the administration that manages the curriculum?

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff20:06

       Yeah. Um, there, there, there definitely is, um, in K through 12. The, the, I mean, my kids go to public school. Um, I have a five and a seven-year-old. Uh, and they have lovely teachers. Um, but we have run into a lot of problems with, with education schools at fire. Um, and a lot of the graduates of education school end up being the administrators who clamp down on free speech in higher education. And so, I'm, been trying to think of positive ways to take on some of the, some of the problems that I see in K through 12. I thought that the attempt to just dictate, "Y- you won't teach the following 10 books," you know, or 20 books or 200 books was the wrong way to do it. Now, when it comes to deciding what books are in the curriculum, again, that's something the legislature actually, you know, ca- can have some say in. And that's pretty uncontroversial, um, in terms of the law. But when it comes to how you fight it, I had something that, since I'm kinda stuck with the formula, I called Empowering of the American Mind. Um, I gave principles that were inconsistent, um, with the sort of group think and heavy emphasis on, uh, identity politics of, that, um, you know, some of the critics are rightfully complaining about in K through 12. Uh, and we, we ... That is actually in Canceling of the American Mind, but I have a more detailed explanation of it that I'm gonna be putting up on my, uh, blog, the Eternally Radical Idea.

   14. LFLex Fridman21:27

       Is it possible to legally, and this is a silly question perhaps-

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff21:31

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LFLex Fridman21:31

       ... create an extra protection for certain kinds of literature, 1984 something, to, to remain in the curriculum? I mean, it's already, it's all protected, I guess.

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff21:40

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman21:40

       I g- I, I guess, to protect against administrators from fiddling too much with the curriculum, like stabilizing the curriculum. I don't, I don't know what the machinery of the K through 12 public school.

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff21:54

       In K through 12, uh, you know, state legislatures, you know, um-

   20. LFLex Fridman21:57

       They're part of that, okay.

   21. GLGreg Lukianoff21:58

       They're, they're, they're part of that, and they can say like, "You should teach the following books."

   22. LFLex Fridman22:01

       Right.

   23. GLGreg Lukianoff22:01

       Now, of course people are always a little bit worried that, um, if you, uh, if they were to recommend, you know, teach, uh, teach the Declaration of Independence, you know, that it will end up being, well, they're gonna teach the Declaration of Independence was just to protect slavery which-

   24. LFLex Fridman22:14

       Yeah.

   25. GLGreg Lukianoff22:15

       ... it wasn't.

   26. LFLex Fridman22:15

       Yeah, so teaching a particular topic matters which textbooks you choose, the which perspective you take, all that kinda stuff.

   27. GLGreg Lukianoff22:21

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman22:21

       Of course, there's, like religion starts to creep into the whole question of like how, you know, is the Bible, are you allowed to teach, incorporate that into education?

   29. GLGreg Lukianoff22:29

       Uh, don't, yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman22:30

       (laughs)
4. 25:27 – 28:07

   Religion

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff25:27

      was fascinating.

   2. LFLex Fridman25:28

      So what ... Is there ... It'd be interesting to ask, is there a tension between the study of religious texts or the, the following of religion and just believing in God and following the, the various aspects of religion with freedom of speech?

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff25:44

      Um, it ... In the First Amendment, uh, we, we have something that we call the religion clause and I've never liked calling it just that because it's two brilliant things right next to each other. The state may not establish an official religion, but it cannot interfere with your right to practice your religion. Mwah. That's beautiful. Two thi- two, two, two things at the same time and I think they're ... And I think they're both exactly right. And I think sometimes the right gets very excited of, of, of the free exercise clause and the left gets very excited about establishment and I like the fact that we have- we, uh, we have both of them together. Now, how does this relate to freedom of speech? And how does it relate to c- the curriculum, like we were talking about? Um, I actually think it would be great if public schools could teach the Bible, like in the sense of, like, read it as a historical document. But back when I was at the ACLU, every time I saw people trying this, it always turned into them actually advocating for, you know, a Catholic or a Protestant or some ... Or Orthodox even, kind of like, read on religion. Um, so if you actually make it into something advocating for a particular view on religion, then it crosses into the, uh, establishment clause side. So Americans haven't figured out a way to actually teach it, so it's probably better that you, you know, learn, l- learn about it outside of a public school class.

   4. LFLex Fridman26:57

      Do you think it's possible to teach religion, um, from like a world religions kind of course-

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff27:06

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman27:06

      ... without disrespecting the religions?

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff27:09

      I think the answer is it depends on from whose perspective. Um-

   8. LFLex Fridman27:13

      Well, like, the practitioner, say, you're, like, an Orthodox follower of a particular religion.

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff27:17

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman27:19

       Is it possible to not piss you off in teaching, like, all the major religions of the world?

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff27:25

       For some people, it ... Y- the bottom line is you have to teach it as true.

   12. LFLex Fridman27:30

       Ah.

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff27:31

       Um, and with that ... Under those conditions, then the answer is no. You can't teach it without, uh, w- without offending someone at least. Um-

   14. LFLex Fridman27:38

       Can't you say, "These people believe it's true."

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff27:40

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman27:40

       Can you reform it? So you have to walk on eggshells essentially.

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff27:43

       Y- y- you can try really hard and you will still make some people angry, but serious people will be like, "Oh, no, you actually tried to be fair to, to, to the beliefs here." Um, and I, I, and I try to be respectful, um, as much as I can about, um, a lot of this. I still find myself much more drawn to both Buddhism and Stoicism though.

   18. LFLex Fridman28:03

       (sighs) Where do I go?

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff28:05

       (laughs)

   20. LFLex Fridman28:05

       Okay, let's ...

5. 28:07 – 34:15

   College rankings by freedom of speech

   1. LFLex Fridman28:07

      One, one interesting thing, to get back to college campuses, is, um, the FIRE keeps the college free speech rankings-

   2. GLGreg Lukianoff28:14

      Yes.

   3. LFLex Fridman28:14

      ... at rankings.thefire.org.

   4. GLGreg Lukianoff28:17

      I'm very proud of them.

   5. LFLex Fridman28:18

      I highly recommend 'cause it ... Forget the even just the ranking, you get to learn a lot about the universities from this entirely different perspective than people are used to when they go to pick whatever university they want to go to. It just gives another perspective on the whole thing and it gives quotes from people that, uh, are students there and so on, like about their experiences and, and it gives different ... Maybe you could speak to the, the various measures here before we talk about who's in the top five and who's in the bottom five. What, what, what are the different, uh, parameters that contribute to the evaluation?

   6. GLGreg Lukianoff28:50

      So people have been asking me since day one to do a ranking of schools according to freedom of speech and even though we had ... We had the best database in existence of campus speech codes, uh, uh, policies that universities have that violate the First Amendment or First Amendment norms. We also have the best database of, of, uh, what we call the disinvitation database. Um, it's ... But it's actually the ... Um, it's better name, the deplatforming database, which is wh- what, what we're gonna call it. Um-

   7. LFLex Fridman29:17

      And these are all cases where somebody was invited as a speaker to campus-

   8. GLGreg Lukianoff29:22

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman29:22

      ... and they were disinvited.

   10. GLGreg Lukianoff29:23

       Disinvited or deplatforming also includes shouting down. Um, so-

   11. LFLex Fridman29:27

       So they showed up and they couldn't really speak.

   12. GLGreg Lukianoff29:30

       Yeah, exactly.

   13. LFLex Fridman29:30

       Right.

   14. GLGreg Lukianoff29:31

       Um, and, and, uh, and so having that, what we really needed in order to have some serious social science to really make a serious argument about what the ranking was, um, was to be able to, one, get a better sense of how many professors were actually getting punished during this time. Um, and then the, the, the biggest missing element was to be able to, um, ask students directly what the environment was like on that campus for freedom of speech. Are you comfortable disagreeing with each other? Are you comfortable disagreeing with your, uh, with your professors? Do you think violence is acceptable in response to a speaker? Do you think shouting ... Uh, do you think shouting down is okay? Do you think blocking people's access to a speaker is okay? Um, and once we were able to get all those elements together, we, uh, first d- did a, a test run, I think, in ni- 2019, about 50, and we've been doing it for four years now, always trying to make the methodology more and more precise to better reflect the actual environment, uh, at, at particular schools. Um, and this year, the number one school was Michigan Technological University-

   15. LFLex Fridman30:36

       Mm-hmm.

   16. GLGreg Lukianoff30:36

       ... which was a, a nice surprise. Uh, the number two school was actually Auburn University, um, uh, which was, uh, nice to see.Uh, in the top 10, the most well-known prestigious school is actually UVA, um, which did really well this year. University of Chicago was not happy that they weren't number one, but University of Chicago is 13, and they had been number one or in the top three for years prior to that.

   17. LFLex Fridman31:00

       Really? So can you explain? It's almost surprising. Is it because of, uh, like the really strong economics departments and things like this? Or what? Why?

   18. GLGreg Lukianoff31:07

       They had a case, uh, involving a student. They wouldn't recognize a chapter of Turning Point USA, and they made a very classic argument, um, that we ... And classic in the bad way, that we hear campuses across the country, "Oh, we have a campus Republicans, so we don't need this additional conservative group." And we're like, "No. I'm sorry." Like, we've seen dozens and dozens if not hundreds of attempts to get this one particular, um, conservative student, uh, student group, uh, derecognized or not recognized. And so we told them like, "Listen, this ..." Like, uh, w- uh, we told them at FIRE that, uh, you know, we consider this serious, and they wouldn't recognize the group. So that, that's a, that, the, that's a point down in our ranking, and it was enough to knock them from ... They probably would've been number two in the rankings. Uh, but now they're 13 out of 248. They're still one of the best schools in the country. I have no problem, uh, saying that. The school that did not do so well-

   19. LFLex Fridman32:02

       Mm-hmm.

   20. GLGreg Lukianoff32:03

       ... um, at a negative 10.69-

   21. LFLex Fridman32:06

       Mm-hmm.

   22. GLGreg Lukianoff32:07

       Negative 10.69, and we rounded up to zero-

   23. LFLex Fridman32:10

       Mm-hmm.

   24. GLGreg Lukianoff32:10

       ... was Harvard.

   25. LFLex Fridman32:11

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GLGreg Lukianoff32:11

       And Harvard, uh, has been, um, not very happy with that result.

   27. LFLex Fridman32:15

       The only school to receive the abysmal ranking.

   28. GLGreg Lukianoff32:17

       Yeah. And there are a couple people-

   29. LFLex Fridman32:19

       Oh, Harvard.

   30. GLGreg Lukianoff32:20

       Oh, Harvard. And there are a couple people who have actually been really, I think making a mistake by getting very Harvard, um, sounding by being like, "I've had statisticians look at this, and they, and they, they, they think your methodology's a joke." And, uh, uh, and like pointing out, "And, and this case wasn't that important, and that scholar wasn't ... That scholar," like, the arg- One of the arguments against one of the scholars that we counted against them for, uh, punishing was that that wasn't a very, you know, famous or influential scholar. And I'm kinda like, so your, your argument-
6. 34:15 – 48:50

   Deplatforming

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff34:15

      as well.

   2. LFLex Fridman34:15

      So how do you push back on deplatforming? Well, who, who would do it? Is it other students? Is it faculty? Is it the administration? What's the dynamics of, of, uh, pushing back of ... Basically, 'cause I imagine some of it is culture, but I imagine every university has a bunch of students who will protest basically every speaker and-

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff34:37

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman34:37

      ... it's a question of how you respond to that protest.

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff34:40

      Well, here's, here's the dirty little secret about like the big change in 2014. Um, and, and FIRE and me, me and Height, um, have been very clear that the big change that we saw on campus was that for most of my career, students were great, um, on freedom of speech. They were the best constituency for free speech, absolutely unambiguously until about 2013, 2014. And it was only in 2014 where we had these very, you know, kind of sad for us experience where suddenly students were the ones advocating for deplatforming and new speech codes, kind of in a similar way that they had been doing in say like the mid-'80s, uh, for example. But here's the dirty little secret. It's not the, it's just the students. It's students and administrators, some, uh, sometimes only a handful of them though, working together to make, uh, to, to create some of these problems. And this was exactly what happened at Stanford when Kyle Duncan, uh, a Fifth Circuit judge, tried to speak at my alma mater and a fifth of the class showed up to shout him down. Um, it was a real showing of the, o- of what was, what was going on that 10 minutes into the shout down of a Fifth Circuit judge, and I keep on emphasizing that because I'm a constitutional lawyer. Fifth Circuit judge- judges are big deals. They're one level below the Supreme Court. Um, you know, about a fifth of the school shows up to shout him down. After 10 minutes of shouting him down, an administrator, a DEI administrator gets up with a prepared speech that she, that she's written that's a seven-minute-long speech where she talks about, uh, free speech, maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And we, we, we're at this law school where people could learn to challenge these norms. So it's clear that there was coordination, you know, among so- some of these administrators and, uh, from talking to students there, they were in meetings, e- extensive meetings for a long time. They show up, do a shout down, then they take an- an- additional seven minutes to, to, to lecture the speaker on free speech not, uh, being, uh, not... The juice of free speech not being worth the squeeze. Um, and then for the rest of it, it's just constant heckling, um, a- a- after she, after she leaves. This is clearly... And this... And, and something very similar, you know, happened a number of times at Yale where it was very clearly administrators were helping along with, with a lot of these disruptions. So I think every time there is a shout down at a university, the investigation should be first and foremost, did administrators...... help create this problem? Did they do anything to stop it? Because I think a lot of what's really going on here is the hyper-bureaucratization of universities with a lot more ideological, uh, people who think of their primary job as basically like policing speech more or less-

   6. LFLex Fridman37:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff37:16

      ... they're encouraging students, the- the, sorry. They're encouraging students who have opinions they like-

   8. LFLex Fridman37:20

      Mm-hmm.

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff37:21

      ... um, to do shout downs. Um, and that's why you, they really need to investigate this. Th- th- and it is, uh, at Stanford, the administrator who, who gave the prepared remarks, um, about the juice not being worth the squeeze, she has not been invited back to Stanford. But she's one of the only examples I can think of when these things happen a lot, where an administrator clearly facilitated something that was a shout down or a deplatforming or resulted in a professor getting fired or resulted in a student getting expelled where the administrators, uh, has got off scot-free or probably in some cases even gotten a promotion.

   10. LFLex Fridman37:55

       And so a small number of administrators, maybe even a single administrator, could participate in the encouraging and the organization and thereby empower the whole process.

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff38:06

       And that's something I've seen throughout my entire career. And the only thing is kind of hard to catch this sort of in the act, so to speak, and that's one of the reasons why it's helpful for people to know about this, you know? Uh, because it, it... there was this, this amazing case. This was at University of Washington. Um, and we've actually featured this in a documentary made in 2015, 20- that came out in 2015, 2016, called Can We Take a Joke?

   12. LFLex Fridman38:28

       Mm-hmm.

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff38:28

       Um, and this was when we started noticing something was changing on campus. We also heard that comedians were saying that they couldn't use their good humor anymore. This was right around the time that Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock said that they couldn't, uh, they didn't want to play on campuses 'cause they, they could, they, they, they couldn't be funny. Uh, but we featured a case of a comedian who wanted to do a musical called The Passion of the Musical, making fun of The Passion of the Christ, with the stated goal of offending everyone, every group equally.

   14. LFLex Fridman38:56

       Mm-hmm.

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff38:56

       It was very, uh, very much a South Park mission.

   16. LFLex Fridman38:59

       Mm-hmm.

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff38:59

       Um, and it's an unusual case because we actually got documentation of administrators buying tickets for angry students and holding a, an event where they, where they trained them to, to jump up in the middle of it and shout, "I'm offended." Like they, they, they bought them tickets, they sent them to this, this thing with the goal of shouting it down. Now unsurprisingly, when you send an angry group of students to shut down a play, it, it's not gonna end at just, "I'm offended." Um, and it got heated. There were death threats being thrown, uh, the, um, the... and, and then the Pullman Washington Police told, uh, Chris, uh, Chris Lee, the guy who made the play, that he, they wouldn't actually protect him. Now, it's not every day you're gonna have that kind of hard evidence that, that, that, of actually seeing the administrators, uh, be so, uh, so brazen that they recorded the fact that they bought them tickets and sent them. But I think a lot of that stuff is, is going on and I think it's the, the, uh, it's a good excuse to cut down on one of the big problems in higher education today, which is hyper-bureaucratization.

   18. LFLex Fridman40:05

       In your experience, is there a distinction between administrators and faculty in terms of, uh, perpetrators of this, of these kinds of things? So if, if we got rid of all, like Harvey's talked about, uh, getting rid of a large percentage of the administration, does that help fix the problem? Or is the faculty also-

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff40:23

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman40:23

       ... small percent of the faculty also part of the encouraging and the organization of these kind of cancel mobs?

   21. GLGreg Lukianoff40:29

       Yeah. And, and that's something that has been profoundly disappointing, um, is that when you look at the huge uptick in attempts to get professors fired that we've seen over the last 10 years, and actually over the last 22 years as far, as far back as our, our, our records go, um, at first they were overwhelmingly led by administrators to, um, attempts to get professors punished. Um, and that was most, you know, I'd say that was my career up until 2013 was, was fighting back at administrative excesses. Um, then you start having the problem in 2014 of students trying to get people canceled. Um, and that really accelerated in 2017. And the number... so one, one way that, one, one thing that makes it easier to document is, are the petitions to get professors fired or punished, um, and how disproportionately that those actually do come from students. But another big uptick has been fellow professors demanding that, uh, their fellow professors get punished. And that to me-

   22. LFLex Fridman41:25

       Makes me really sad.

   23. GLGreg Lukianoff41:26

       ... is kind of shameful. You, you, you shouldn't be proud of signing the petition to get your fellow professor. And what's, what's even more, uh, more, more shameful is that we get st- this, this is a, this has almost become a cliché within fire. When someone is facing the, one of these cancellation campaigns as a professor, I would get letters from some of my friends saying, "I am so sorry this has happened to you." And these were the same people who publicly signed the petition to get them fired.

   24. LFLex Fridman41:54

       Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, integrity.

   25. GLGreg Lukianoff41:58

       (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman41:59

       Integrity is an important thing in this world. And I think some of it... (sighs) I'm so surprised people don't stand up more for this.

   27. GLGreg Lukianoff42:09

       Well...

   28. LFLex Fridman42:09

       'Cause there's so much hunger for it. And if you have the guts as a faculty or an administrator to really stand, stand up, uh, with eloquence, with rigor, with integrity, I feel like it's impossible for anyone to do anything, because there's such a hunger. It's so refreshing.

   29. GLGreg Lukianoff42:30

       Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman42:31

       I think everybody agrees that freedom of speech is a good thing.
7. 48:50 – 53:53

   Whataboutism

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff48:50

      lives.

   2. LFLex Fridman48:51

      It would actually be really fun to talk about this particular aspect of the book, and I highly recommend if you're listening to this, go pre-order the book now. Uh, when does it come out?

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff49:01

      October 17th.

   4. LFLex Fridman49:02

      Okay. The Canceling of the American Mind. Okay. So, in, uh, in the book, you also have a, uh, list of cheap rhetorical tactics that both the left and the right use and then you have a list of tactics...... that the left uses and the right uses.

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff49:19

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman49:19

      So there's the rhetorical, the perfect rhetorical fortress that the left uses and the efficient rhetorical fortress that the right uses.

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff49:26

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman49:27

      First one is Whataboutism.

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff49:29

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman49:29

       Maybe we can go through a few of them that capture your heart in this particular moment as we talk about it and if, if you can describe examples of it or if, uh, there's aspects of it that you see that are especially effective, effective. So, uh, Whataboutism is defending against criticism of your side by bringing up the other side's alleged wrongdoing.

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff49:51

       I wanna make little cards of these-

   12. LFLex Fridman49:53

       Yeah.

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff49:54

       ... o- o- of all of these tactics and start using them on X all the time because they are so commonly deployed and Whataboutism I put first for a reason.

   14. LFLex Fridman50:02

       You know what would be an interesting idea to actually integrate that into Twitter/X, where people, you know, instead of clicking heart-

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff50:10

       Uh-huh.

   16. LFLex Fridman50:10

       ... they c- they can click which of the, uh, uh, which of the rhetorical tactics this is. And then, 'cause, you know, there's actually community notes, I don't know if you've seen on X. There, pe- people can contribute notes-

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff50:22

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman50:22

       ... and it's quite fascinating. It's-

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff50:24

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman50:24

       ... it works really, really well, but to give it a little more structure?

   21. GLGreg Lukianoff50:28

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman50:28

       That's a really interesting method actually.

   23. GLGreg Lukianoff50:30

       Yeah. I, I actually... When I was thinking about ways that X could be used f- to argue towards truth, I wouldn't want to have it so that, you know, everybody would be bound t- to that, but I think that i- y- I imagine almost being like a stream within X that was truth focused that, th- that agrees to some addit- additional rules on how they would argue.

   24. LFLex Fridman50:49

       Man, I would love that, where like there's, in terms of streams that intersect and could be separated, the shit-talking one where people just enjoy talking shit.

   25. GLGreg Lukianoff50:59

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman50:59

       Okay.

   27. GLGreg Lukianoff50:59

       Go for it, man.

   28. LFLex Fridman51:00

       And then there's like truth and then, um... I mean, there, like, then there's humor, then there's like good vibes. Like, you know, it's... I'm not like somebody who absolutely needs good vibes all the time, but sometimes.

   29. GLGreg Lukianoff51:13

       It's nice to have.

   30. LFLex Fridman51:14

       It's nice to just log in and not have to see like the drama, the fighting, the bickering, the, the cancellations, the mobs, all of this. It's good to just see... Uh, that's why I go to Reddit r/Aww or like, uh, one of the cute animals ones, wh- where there's cute puppies and kittens and it's like-
8. 53:53 – 1:01:29

   Steelmanning

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff53:53

   2. LFLex Fridman53:53

      We took a long dark journey from Whataboutism-

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff53:56

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman53:56

      ... and, uh, related to that is straw manning and- and steel manning-

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff53:59

      (sighs)

   6. LFLex Fridman53:59

      ... so misrepresenting the- the- the- the- the perspective of the- the opposing perspective. And this is something also, um, I- I guess it's very prevalent and it's difficult to do the- the reverse of that which is steel manning. It requires empathy, it requires eloquence, it requires understanding, actually doing the research and understanding the- the- the alternative perspective.

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff54:23

      My, uh, wonderful employee, Angel Eduardo, has something that he calls star manning and- and I find myself d- doing this a lot. It's- it's nice to have, you know, two immigrant parents, um, because I remember being in San Francisco, uh, in a- uh, in the weird kind of like ACLU/Burning Man kind of cohort and having a friend there who was an artist who would talk about hating Kansas and that was his metaphor for Middle America, is- is what he meant by it. And... But he was kind of proud of the fact that he hated Kansas and I'm like, "You got to understand, I still see all of you a little bit as foreigners and think about... Like, change the name of Kansas to Croatia. You know, change- ch- change the name of Kansas to- to- to some..." That's what it sounds like to me. And the star manning idea, which I- which I like, is- is the idea of being like, "So you're saying that you really hate your dominant religious minority?" Like... And that's... When you start actually detaching yourself a little bit from it, how typical...... America is exceptional in a number of ways. But some of our dynamics are incredibly typical. It's one of the reasons why like when people start reading Thomas Sowell, for example, they start getting hooked. Because one of the things he does is he does comparative analysis of a country's problems and points out that some of these things that we think are just unique to the United States exist in, you know, 75% of the rest of the countries in the world. Francis Fukuyama's, um, the, the book that I'm reading right now, Origins of the Political Order, actually does this wonderful job of pointing out how we're not special in a variety of ways. This is actually something that's very much on my mind. And, uh, Fukuyama, of course, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a great book. It's not... it's stilted a little bit in its writing 'cause his term for one of the things he's concerned about what destroys societies is repatrimonialization-

   8. LFLex Fridman56:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff56:16

      ... which is the reversion to societies in which you favor your family and friends.

   10. LFLex Fridman56:23

       Hmm.

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff56:24

       And I actually think a lot of what I'm seeing in sort of, um, uh, in the United States, it makes me worried that we might be going through a little bit of a process of repatrimonialization, and I think that's one of the reasons why people are so angry. I, I think having a... I think the, the prospect that we, you know, we ver- we very nearly seemed, um, to have an election that was gonna be, you know, Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton, it's like are we a dynastic country now? Is, is that what's kind of happening? But also it's one of the reasons why people are getting so angry about the, about legacy admissions, about like how much, you know, certain families seem to be able to keep their people in the upper classes of the United States perpetually. And believe me, like I, I was, we were poor when I was a kid and I went to, and I got to go to, I got to go to one of the fancies, I got to go to Stanford. Um, and I got to see how people, they treat you differently in a way that's almost insulting. Like ba- basically, like suddenly to a certain kind of person, I was a legitimate person. And I look at how much America relies on Harvard, on Yale to produce its... I'm gonna use a very Marxist-sounding term, ruling class. And that's one of the reasons why you have to be particularly worried about what goes on at, at these elite colleges. And these elite colleges, with the exception of University of Chicago and, and, and UVA, do really badly regarding freedom of speech, and that has all sorts of problems. Um, uh, th- it doesn't bode well for the future of the protection of freedom of speech for the rest of the society.

   12. LFLex Fridman57:58

       So can you also empathize there with the folks who voted for Donald Trump? Um, because as precisely that is a resistance to this kind of, uh, momentum of the ruling class, this, uh, this royalty that passes on the, uh, the rule from generation to generation.

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff58:20

       I try really hard to empathize with, to a degree, everybody and, and, and try to really see where they're coming from. Um, and the anger on the right, I get it. I mean, like I, I, I feel like the, um, the book... So Coddling the American Mind was a book that I, that could be sort of a crowd pleaser, uh, to a degree partially because we really meant what we said in the subtitle, that th- these are, uh, good intentions and bad ideas that are hurting people. Um, and if you understand it and read the book, you can say it's like, okay, this isn't anybody being malicious. You know, th- this is people trying to protect their kids. They're just doing it in a way that actually can actually lead to greater anxiety, depression, and strangely, e- eventually pose a threat to freedom of speech. Uh, but in this one, we can't be quite, uh, me and my, uh... Oh, I haven't even mentioned my brilliant co-author, Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old genius. She's, she's, she's amazing, I started working with her when she was 20, who's, who's my co-author on this book. Um, so when I'm saying we, I'm talking about me and Rikki.

   14. LFLex Fridman59:24

       She's a libertarian.

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff59:25

       Libertarian journalist.

   16. LFLex Fridman59:27

       And a journalist, yeah, has a brilliant mind.

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff59:30

       Yeah, and but we can't actually write this in a way that's too kind because cancelers aren't kind. Th- there's a cruelty and a mercilessness about it. I mean, I started getting really depressed this past year when I was writing it and I didn't even want to tell my staff why I was getting so anxious and depressed. It's partially because I'm talking about people who will, you know, in some of the cases we're talking about, go to your house, target your kids. Um, so, uh, so that's a long-winded way of saying the, um... I, I kind of can get what sort of drives the right nuts to a degree in this. I feel like they're constantly feeling like they're being gaslit. Um, elite education is really insulting to the working class. Um, like it, part of the ideology that is dominant right now kind of treats almost 70% of the American public like they're... The... We ta- we developed this a little bit in The Perfect Rhetorical Fortress, like they're to some, in some way illegitimate, um, and not worthy of respect or compassion.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:00:30

       Yeah. The, the general elitism that radiates, self-fueling elitism that radiates from the people that go to these institutions.

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff1:00:40

       And what's funny is the, the, the elitism has been repackaged as a kind of... It masquerades as kind of infinite compassion, that essentially it's based in a sort of very, to be frank, overly simple ideology and an over simply, uh, simple ex- explanation of the world and breaking people into groups and, um, judging people on how oppressed they are, uh, on their, on the intersection of their various identities. Um, and it came to that, I think initially with, with, with, uh, and it had appeal from a compassionate core, but it gets used in a way that is... can be very cruel, very dismissive, compassionless, uh, and allows you to not take seriously most of your fellow human beings.

9. 1:01:29 – 1:12:09

   How the left argues

   1. GLGreg Lukianoff1:01:29

   2. LFLex Fridman1:01:29

      It's really weird how that happened. Maybe you can...... explore why a thing that has, kind of sounds good at first-

   3. GLGreg Lukianoff1:01:37

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:01:38

      ... can be, can create s- can become such a cruel weapon of canceling and hurting people and ignoring people. And this is what you described with the perfect rhetorical fortress.

   5. GLGreg Lukianoff1:01:50

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:01:50

      Which is a set of questions. Maybe you can, um, um, elaborate on what the perfect rhetorical fortress is.

   7. GLGreg Lukianoff1:01:55

      Yeah, so the perfect rhetorical fortress is the way, um, that's been developed, uh, on the left to not ever get to someone's actual argument. Um, I, I wanna make a chart, like a flowchart of this about like, "Here's the argument and here is this perfect fortress that will deflect you every time from getting to the argument." Um, and I started to notice this certainly when I, when I was in law school that there were lots of different ways you could dismiss people. And perfect rhetorical fortress step one, and I can attest to this because I was guilty of this as well, that you can dismiss people if you can argue that they're conservative. They don't have to be conservative, to be clear. You just have to say that they are. Um, so I never read Thomas Sowell because he was a right-winger.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:02:40

      Yeah.

   9. GLGreg Lukianoff1:02:41

      I didn't read Camille Paglia because I was, I, someone had convinced me she was a right-winger. There, there are lots of authors that, um... And when I was in law school, it e- among a lot of very bright people, it really was already a, an intellectual habit that if you could designate something conservative then you didn't really have to think about it very much anymore or take it particularly seriously. That's a childish way of arguing. But nonetheless, I engaged in it, it was a common tactic. And I even mentioned in the book, there was a time when a, um, uh, a, a gay activist friend who was, I think, decidedly to my left, but nonetheless had that pragmatic experience of actually being an activist, said something like, "Well, just 'cause someone's conservative doesn't mean they're wrong." And I remember feeling kind of scandalized at, at, at some level of just being like, "Well, no. That's kind of, isn't that the whole thing what we're saying is that they're just kind of bad people with bad ideas?"

   10. LFLex Fridman1:03:31

       You can just throw a, "Oh, that guy's a right-winger." You can just throw that.

   11. GLGreg Lukianoff1:03:35

       Boop. Don't have to think about you anymore.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:03:37

       Yeah, and then it can, um, if you're popular enough, it can be a little s- it can be kind of sticky.

   13. GLGreg Lukianoff1:03:41

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:03:42

       And, like, and it's weird because-

   15. GLGreg Lukianoff1:03:45

       Because it's effective. That's why it keeps on getting used. It essentially, it w- it should have hit someone's... Because it, because I, you know, I have a great liberal pedigree, you know, everything from working at the ACLU to doing refugee law in Eastern Europe, to, uh, I was part of an environmental mentoring program for inner city high school kids in DC. You know, I've been, I've been, um, I, I, I can ex- you know, defend myself as being on the left. But I hate doing that.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:04:12

       Mm-hmm.

   17. GLGreg Lukianoff1:04:12

       Because there's also part of me that's like, "Okay. So what?" (laughs) Like, "Are you really saying that if you can magically make me argue or convince yourself that, that I'm on the right, that you don't have to listen to me anymore?" And again, that's arguing like children. And the reason why this has become so popular is because even among, or may- maybe especially among elites that it works so effectively as a perfect weapon that you can use uncritically, "If I can just prove you're on the right, I don't have to, I don't have to think about you," it's no wonder that suddenly you start s- see- seeing people calling the ACLU right-wing and calling the New York Times right-wing because it's been such an effective way to delegitimize people a- a- as thinkers. We've, you know... Um, Steven Pinker, who, who's on our, on our board of advisors, he refers to academia as being the left pole, um, that essentially it's, it's a position that from, uh, from that point of view, everything looks to its right, uh, looks as if it's on the right. Uh, but once it becomes a, a tactic that we, um, accept, it ju- it will... And it's one of the reasons why I, you know, I'm, I'm more on the left. I'm a, but I think I'm left of center liberal. Uh, Ricky is, you know, more conservative, libertarian, and initially I was kind of like, "Should I be, really be writing something with, with someone who's more on the right?" And I'm like, "Absolutely, I should be." I, I have to actually live up to what I believe on this stuff because it's ridiculous that we have this primitive idea that you can dismiss someone as soon as you claim-

   18. LFLex Fridman1:05:37

       Mm-hmm.

   19. GLGreg Lukianoff1:05:38

       ... rightly or wrongly that they're on the right.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:05:39

       Well, uh, I feel, correct me if I'm wrong, but I, I feel like you were recently called right-wing, uh, FIRE, and maybe you by association because of that debate.

   21. GLGreg Lukianoff1:05:50

       Oh, uh, the LA Times.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:05:50

       You supported. The LA Times.

   23. GLGreg Lukianoff1:05:52

       Oh, fun. Let's talk about the LA Times.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:05:54

       So yes, there's an article, there's a debate. I can't wait to watch it 'cause I don't think it's available yet to watch on video.

   25. GLGreg Lukianoff1:06:01

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:06:01

       You have to attend in person.

   27. GLGreg Lukianoff1:06:02

       Oh, yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:06:02

       I can't wait to see it. Uh, but FIRE was in part supporting it and then LA Times wrote, um, a scathing article about, uh, that everybody in the debate was basically right, leaning right.

   29. GLGreg Lukianoff1:06:15

       Okay. Uh, so much to unpack there. You know, B- Bari Weiss has this, you know, great, great project, The Free Press. I've been very impressed. It's, it's covering stories that the, that a lot of the media, right or left, isn't willing to cover.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:06:26

       Mm-hmm.
10. 1:12:09 – 1:24:00

    Diversity, equity, and inclusion

    1. LFLex Fridman1:12:09

       if we can take that tangent briefly with DEI.

    2. GLGreg Lukianoff1:12:13

       Yeah.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:12:13

       Diversity, equity, and inclusion. What is the good and what is the harm of such programs?

    4. GLGreg Lukianoff1:12:20

       DEI, I know people who are DEI, um, consultants. There's some, there, actually I have a dear friend who I love very much, um, who does DEI. Absolutely decent people. What they want to do is create bonds of understanding, friendship, compassion among d- people, people who are different. Unfortunately, the research on what a lot of DEI actually does is oftentimes the opposite of that. And I think that it's partially a problem with some of the ideology that comes from, uh, critical race theory, which is a real thing by the way, um, that, that informs a lot of DEI that actually makes it something more likely to divide than unite. We, we talk about this in Coddling the American Mind as the difference between common humanity identity politics and common enemy identity politics. And I think that, uh, I know some of the people that I know who, who do DEI, they really want it to be common humanity identity politics, but some of the actual ideological assumptions that are baked in can actually cause people to feel more alienated from each other. Now when I started at FIRE, my first cases involved 9/11. Um, and it was bad. Uh, professors were getting targeted. Professors were losing their jobs for saying insensitive things about 9/11 and both from, from the right and the left. Actually in that case actually sometimes more, a lot more from the right.Um, and it was really bad and about five professors lost their jobs. That's bad. Five professors in a, over a relatively short period of time being fired for a political opinion? That's something that, you know, would get written up in any previous decades. We're now evaluating, like, how many professors have been, uh, targeted for cancellation between 2014 and, uh, m- middle of this year, Ju- July of, uh, of, of 2023. We're at about well, well over 1,000 attempts to get professors, uh, fi- uh, fired or punished, usually driven by students and administrators, often driven by professors unfortunately as well. About two thirds of those result in the professor being punished in some way, um, everything from, you know, having their article removed to suspension, et cetera. About one fifth of those re- result in professors being fired. So right now we're, it's, uh, it's almost 200. It's around 190, um, professors being fired. Um, so I want to give some context here. Uh, the, the Red Scare is generally considered to have been, uh, from 1947 to 1957. It ended, by the way, in '57 when it finally became clear, um, thanks to the First Amendment, that you couldn't actually fire people for their ideologies. Prior to that, a lot of universities thought they could. They were like, "This guy is a very doc- uh, doctrinaire Communist. Uh, you know, they can't be dissuaded. I'm, I'm gonna fire them." Um, they thought they actually could do that. Um, and it was only '57 when the law was established. So, like right now, these are happening in an environment where freedom of speech, academic freedom, are clearly protected, um, at, at public colleges in, in the United States. And we're still seeing these kind of numbers. Um, during, during the Red Scare, the, the biggest study that was done of what was going on is, I think this came out in like '55, and the evaluation was that there was about 62 professors fired for, for, for being Communists and about 90-something professors fired for political views overall. Um, that usually is, it, it is reported as being about 100. Um, so 60, 90, 100, depending on how you look at it. I think the number is actually higher. Um, but that's only because of hindsight. Like, the, what I mean by hindsight is we can look back and we actually find there were more professors who, who, who were fired, uh, at- as time reveals. We're at 190 professors fired, and I still have to put up with people saying this isn't even happening. And I'm like, in the nine and a half years of cancel culture, 190 professors fired. In the 11 years of, uh, of the Red Scare, probably, you know, somewhere around 100, may- probably more. It's gon- the number's gonna keep going up. Um, but unlike during the Red Scare where people could clearly tell something was happening, the craziest thing about cancel culture is I'm still dealing with people who are saying this isn't happening at all. And it hasn't been subtle on campus. And we know that's a wild undercount, by the way, because when we, when we surveyed professors, 17% of them said that they had been threatened with, uh, th- threatened with investigation or actually investigated for what they taught, said, or, or their research. And one third of them said that they were told by administrators not to take on controversial research. So like, extrapolating that out, that, that's a huge number. And the reason why you're not going to hear about a lot of these cases is because there are so many different conformity-inducing mechanisms in the whole thing.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:17:11

       Yeah.

    6. GLGreg Lukianoff1:17:11

       And that's one of the reasons why the idea that you'd add something like a DE- like requiring a DEI statement to be hired or to get into a school under the current environment is so completely nuts. We have had a genuine crisis of academic freedom over the last, you know, particularly since 2017 on campuses. We have very low viewpoint diversity to begin with. And under these circumstances, administrators just start saying, "You know what the problem is? We have too much heter- heterogenous thought. We have, we're not homogeneous enough. We, we actually need, you know, we need another political litmus test," which is nuts. And that's what a DEI statement effectively is, 'cause there's no way to actually fill out a DEI statement without someone evaluating you on your politics. It's cr- it's crystal clear. We even did an experiment on this. Uh, Nate Honeycutt, he got something like, almost like 3,000 professors to participate evaluating different kinds of DEI statements. Um, and one was basically like the standard kind of identity politics, intersectionality one. One was about viewpoint diversity, one was about religious diversity, and one was about socioeconomic diversity. As far as where my heart really is, it's that we have too little socioeconomic diversity, particularly in elite higher ed, but also in, in education period. So we, the experiment was v- uh, had large participation, really interestingly set up, and it tried to model the way a lot of these DEI policies were actually implemented. And one of the ways these have been implemented and, and I think in some of the California schools, is that administrators and prof- uh, go through the DEI statements before anyone else looks at them and then eliminates people off the top depending on how, how they feel about their, um, DEI statements. And the one on, um, viewpoint diversity, uh, I think like half of the people who reviewed it would, would eliminate it right out. Um, and I think it was basically the same for religious diversity. It was slightly better, like 40%, um, for socioeconomic diversity, but that kills me. Like, the idea that kind of like, yeah, that actually is the kind of diversity that I think we need a great deal more of in, in higher education. You can agree with... It's not hostile to the other kinds, by the way. Um, but the idea that we need more people from the bottom, you know, uh, three quarters of American society, like in, uh, higher education, I think should be something we could all get around. But the only one that really succeeded was the one that s- that spouted back exactly the kind of, you know, uh, ideology that, that they thought the, the readers would like, which is like, okay, there's no way this couldn't be a political litmus test. We've proved that it's a political litmus test and still school after school, it, it is adding these to its application process to make schools still more ideologically homogenous.

Episode duration: 2:31:57