« Commentary Magazine Podcast

Commentary Podcast: Oberlin Gets a $33 Million Smackdown

2019-06-17 | 🔗
Today's podcast largely concerns the stunning slam of Oberlin College by an Ohio jury, which found it liable for the defamation of an off-campus business, the venerable Gibson's Bakery. What does this portend for racial politics on campus and the disgraceful conduct of out-of-control college administrators? Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine. Podcast today is Monday and will have to find the date because June, seventeen and twenty nineteen, I am huh towards the editor of commentary, the seventy God. You wrote monthly of intellectual analysis, political probity in cultural criticism from a conservative perspective. Please join us a commentary magazine dot com. We give you a few free reads: ass. You subscribe ninety ninety five for digital subscription and twenty nine eighty five for an all access subscription, including our beautiful monthly magazine.
A box eleven times a year, we just closed our double summer, issue July August, featuring a remarkable eight thousand word article by our own, Christine Rosen, on the problems of Facebook, that we will, I think, discussed at length on the future podcast I have a big piece in the issue about the yiddish production, the fiddler on the roof and what it tells us about America and Jews and popular culture and assimilation, and a lot of other stuff peace by Joseph else, Epps time on them. The once famous now forgotten Chicago writer. All grim peace by Robert Phil POT, on whether the carbon essay some of the Labour Party. Is the future of the American Democratic Party and a lot of other great stuff, so take it there issues up online now get a take a few free
Reed's and then subscribe, as I just said, Steam Rosen in Washington. How are you I'm dead, real good, a Green Senor Writer senior editor senior whatever I can't speak today. How are you well carryin no arrangement associate that having some health problems over the last couple weeks, but he doesn't look. You look I mean nothing. I intend to share with you dear listener. This is between me and my doctor. Yes, I'm back in the saddle. Ok, so I think we as well as everybody else who pays attention, into these issues, are of race and college and stuff were stunned and fascinated by the verdict. Last week, In the case of Gibson, bakery, a business that has been in there has existed since
the eighteen eighties in the small town of Overland, Ohio that is home to America's oldest oh educational, liberal arts, Institution Oberlin College, which has been there since eighteen thirty two, I believe gibsons bakery one, a. Eleven million dollar com hence a tory damage suit, followed by two two million dollars in punitive damages for a total of thirty three, in dollars against Oberlin, for defaming Gibsons bakery as a racist institute. Christine you wrote a highly regarded blonde post on this matter last we can, you fill us and some of the details. Shore and then the whole case started the day after Donald Trump was elected, president, which is important because Trump comes up in the universe
he's defence of its behaviour later on so the day after the election, a student- name Jonathan Aladdin, who is african american and under age- tried to use a vague idea to buy some wine or had a vague idea and we're not sure about the specifics of that. But in any case, he ended up walking out of Gibsons Bakery have stone a bottle of wine or tried to work? The owners, whose name is Alan Gibson, saw him stopped him tried to apprehend him scuffle ensued, which then was taken outside when, when Aladdin fled and Gibson pursued him, having told someone in the store to call the police, when the police arrived, they found Gibson on his on the ground being kicked and in in and assaulted, by an end to a London's companion, so the police arrested all three of those students who were all african American and took away very quickly
as new spread around campus that this had occurred. The reaction, was immediate and swift, and completely irrational and day. This is called an incidence of racial profiling. A protest was organised at the protests: E Oberlin administrator, nay, Meredith, Raimondo, passed out literature talking about Gibsons bakery as being a racist business, profiled african american students. Eventually, a boycott was called for by various student org, nations, and this proceeded despite the fact that pretty quickly, it became clear that these they did confess to having stolen the wine. They eventually pledges d to misdemeanor theft and they stay.
In the public record that they did not think that they had been racially profile. But the protest happened. The boycott was for Wild Oberlin College did boycott no longer by goods from Gibsons Bakery, so there is a real effect on the business and were fast forward to the lawsuit being filed by gibsons, which is unusual right. I mean they dig. The kids were were dealt with by law enforcement, but Gibson said you know you, ve defamed Eric station. We are not racist and they suit the union civil case and the testimony that was revealed during the trial, which a blog called legal insurrection, followed the case extremely closely. If you went details about the testimony the trial it's worth. Taking a look at their sight, it became pretty clear Oberlin college administrators, particularly someone they Meredith Raimondo, was was instrumental in leading students in their protests in an encouraging this. This these defamatory statements about the college, so that the vote
when it came down last week. Was there out of a small family own business, standing up to what I think a lot of conservatives feel is kind of this. These ongoing politically correct mobs on campus and saying no You know where our reputation matters is linked to our success in the health of our business and we're going to fight this and a jury agreed with them it's a massive award, and for those of us who worry about towards reform, it's kind of discouraging Missy that amount of money, but in terms of jobs, This serves to college strangers who feel that they can hide behind for
speech was to encourage defamatory statements about small businesses. It it's definitely victory well, but you know sorry. I agree with you about the size of the award and being problematic that you know this amount of money could be awarded and needs to be said that I think it's pretty clear that at any point along this course gibsons would have dropped the case had overland apologized be made a statement saying that it did not believe Gibsons was racist and and you know saying that whatever and Oberlin not only refused to do so, but actually dangled the possibility of doing so. Only if the losses were dropped
exactly did try to use its its imprimatur as a negotiating chip to get itself out of the bind that it had placed itself in which I think opens up to the notion that each it was right that the book be thrown at at Oberlin, which behave them and spectacularly high handed manner, even after the verdict was delivered so Bill Jacobson. My friend, who runs legal insurrection, the blog who is himself up at a lawyer, professor of administrative law at Cornell and but was a practising lawyer for twenty years, was a stir, own did when the first verdict was announced. The eleven million dollar compensatory damage work was announced that an hour later, Oberlin released a statement disagreeing with the jury's Verde then saying the jury had misunderstood the facts and didn't know,
was going on which he said was insane, because the trial was not over, because Still had to they still to deal with the question of the punitive damage award and the ordinary thing for any defendant in a circumstance like this to do, would be either say nothing or to apologize immediately and hopes that the punitive damages heard would not be enough. If you, if you make clear that you don't understand why you lost the case, then the punitive images are obviously justified and people because they are supposed to be here because you are a need to be punished for what you did: nothing who says I didn't do anything wrong after the jury's already found you at fault, then the jury he's going to do now, drop of Danville on your head, so the madness that I think gripped Oberlin in the course of this entire process.
Thing has not. You know, even though the bracing splash freezing water. That must have come. We now when the verdict came down, wasn't enough to wake Oberlin up out of it. Insane pc stupor to recognise the damage that was being done to its own Christine correct me if I'm wrong, but those the legal rational. Here. As I understand it, is that there is a distinction between calling someone, racist, which is the family Tory, but can be chalked up to hyperbole specially if it's a private individual Or that there's an earth were rather there's a big difference to saying somebody's racist and that they committed a racist act in this case discriminative discrimination right because You heard that the charge it was about profiling in one of the flyers that was being handed out actually said. You know this is a racist, racist establishment that has engaged in it's a don't buy from them. It's a racist establishment with a long, a
the racial profiling and discrimination to the flyers that were being handed out in part by this one Oberlin College, Illustrator Meredith, Raimondo and by the students, actually accuse the bakery of Bee of racist acts. So we should say: she's, not just Odin Oberlin oh official. She is the dean of students of overlap. Oh, she is a scene. Our official, whose responsibility it is to deal with the student body and the reserve astonishing moment in emails that were revealed as a result of discovery where there is a professor at Oberlin in the soup, history of theatre, Amateur Data Department named Copeland, who has been quoted? Who is himself a man of the left like every single person Oberlin, but has been quote. In an earlier had been quoting earlier. Articles about overloads serve campus, app
sphere saying. The lot of this stuff is going too far. Like another thing, I can't even teach I'm here to teach the history western theatre. They don't even want western Theatre taught you know something like so he apparently issued some. He said something either the school paper, something saying that he thought that this was unfair, something like that and in an since Merriment Meredith Armando said she was king essentially about unleashing the students on Professor Copeland. She said: F Copeland. You know if I didn't want everything to come, down. We would unleash Helen Emerson, so so the dean of students wanted to incite a protest was was Thinking about inciting protest against a professor at Oberlin for having incorrect political views, you know that has nothing to do with the gives. It just goes to the state of mind of
is going on on campus and this stalinist. I dont know that there is any other word to called the Stalinist or Maoist kowtow atmosphere that has gripped that camp. In others. It is a real lawless dimension to the schools thinking here, because one of the other, the came up as they wanted gibsons, to instance, a policy whereby the store would not get them get the law involved in cases of first time shoplifting, so essentially to give a sort of a shot off a free shoplifting pass. That's really familiar right because it dovetails with the essential effect of the twenty eleven dear colleague letter, which was too remove from the justice system cases of alleged sexual. I will we need to explain why that is so. The key the Obama Department of Education issued a letter in twenty eleven
on really on sexual harassment and sexual assault charges on campus. That said that it would hold campuses liable in terms of their federal funding, They did not change their understanding of how to apply the law or how to apply sanctions against students who were queues of sexual assault from a Listen until proven guilty standard to what is called a preponderance evidence standard meaning. If you have fifty one fifty point, one percent of evidence that suggests somebody did it as opposed to forty nine point. Nine percent evidence that that he may not. You go with the fifty point, one percent And so this, as I think as no saying this, that encourage this is this is not the way we punish people in the United States Terminal
That's not as a civil trial standard of evidence. So yet this is was essentially rooted in and I read about it. My book and social justice because it is rooted in a feminist theory of justice that assumes that the justice system has been devised by the mind of man and is therefore a sexist construction of how to interpret justice and crimes generally, especially physical crimes against women. So things like evidentiary standards, concomitant with it, with a violent crime The standard rub, a shadow of a doubt, is too much to forsake alleged victim to confront her accuser and court room is too traumatic. Therefore, you have to
remove all these burdens and, as a result in the people who were tried in the star chambers, had their rights of a bridge. They had their first fifth and sixth amendment rights. Abridge millions of dollars were paid out to the people who are abusing this chamber's, but the bottom line is that the justice system itself is corrupt. The adjudication of justice, as we understand it, objective blind justice is correct because it doesn't view the identities of accused an accuser as being evidence in and of them cell. So you have to withdraw these cases from the justice system right now on this, and this was this is actually exactly when the college continue. Oberlin college continues to make this argument right, even after the verdict think even statement and in Europe. I'm that they said they blamed the bakery. They said it has an archaic, chase and detain policy regarding shoplifters and that's what caused it actually set. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to the cause of these protests and the litigation emits as its astonishing. She vicious work well. What I read
It actually reminded me a little bit of the south citizen movement, I mean it's, it's it's different in a great many ways, but sovereign citizen woman, is wacky fringe movement. In the. U S whereby up people believe in it. It is ideological. They believed that that taxation is a crime and its illegal and their adherents. Leave this, I believe, is an they don't pay taxes right up until they have to face trial and they're always found guilty. Pay your taxes, but there is an archaic system of common law, justice in the history of universities that speaks to this. You guys know the truth town gown, the town gown, the stances, yes, ok,
the town gown distinction, is based on Oxford and Cambridge, and the idea was that, if you were in Oxford student or Cambridge, this is from them. This is from the middle ages, onward you're in Oxford or Cambridge student, and you leave the campus and you come into the village. You are required, as a student, are your academic gown this, whether it was true as late as the nineteen fiftys. When my father was a student declare college in Cambridge and the idea was to be a readily identifiable member of the academic community, because it was understood that the academic community police, its own and that it would it would. You were representing the college when you're out in the town and if you miss, behaved in your gown, you would be what is the term novels that use when you're kicked out of Oxford sent up to London. I can remember what is but you're. They say.
I was sent up beaming, that's that was the end of me. I had to go to go back home, so there is weird archaic history of these towns that have these. Colleges in them, and the idea is somehow that you know there's a there's. A kind of unwritten compact between the town and the college the college polices, the kids in the college and will do so. Rigour, silly so that the the town doesn't have to get involved. Now. What we read by the way is that there is a huge shoplifting problem and overlap, and this may be true of colleges everywhere I mean imagine, you have eighteen to twenty one year old kid. You have these boys in particular, who don't have there? What is that class of they fully have their fully formed who's the neuroscientist here. You know that thing in the bread not fully formed. So that's why they speed there. Heedless goes there. They haven't they there their risk group there there. I can't do it.
Fear centre british, whatever ok anyway, whenever it is not fully developed, so vague. So this is why maybe you don't wanna have kids have. I was going to say front quartet yearning yeah, pre, frontal, cortex, bravely aware it is that's right. You know you want them to drink till there, twenty one. Maybe you shouldn't you know it's not such a great deal to give boys drivers licences when their teenagers. All of that, so it's you know it's a classic impulse purchased. So we know you can't buy the wine to putting your pants and try to sneak out right so this may be a problem on campuses everywhere, but it apparently has been a particular problem at Oberlin with stores So Overland came up with the idea that you should not yet its art, but by the way. So that is its archaic to restrain a shoplifter until the police come that's an archaic, because, of course,
and that this is where you start getting some question, how crazy Oberlin, as which was started by the minute. Does that mean because private property is an archaic m? Is you know, is? Is the idea violence against the shop cause he's the representative of the capitalist system. That's also archaic, so it's ok to beat the crap out of some guy. Because he's I think, also was together with the crap out of patently took martial arts classes, so the college actually argued that, with a straight face that he couldn't possibly have been injured, the way he said because he had taken let's talk as it was one against three. You know one. One of the things I have to point out here is the absolute obsessing class attitude that is brought to bear on this right. There, idea that oh it's just a little bit of shoplifting. Why are they making such a big deal of it? This is their business and if they are, our people to steal from their business. They will go out of
in the idea that the that Oberlin College administrators can sort of say what's a little shoplifting. Just let him off once you know, let him off the hook what's right. This is. It shows a kind of unwillingness to understand some businesses You have the luxury of allowing people to steal from them because they don't have. You know their margins of profit aren't Praxis Vasquez College administrator at Oberlin, so that really struck me as well as being completely ridiculous, so you got into it a little bit. Oberlin has the unlovely repeated of being one of the most insanely left, leaning campuses in the United States. It has been due for a reckoning for some time and it has received it now, and it's as such, it has become something of a fixation with politically active conservatives. Politically active conservatives are,
all over the story, loving every single take on out and wanting to talk more about it. Before we go to the first devices. Let's talk about some of the crazy Oberlin, stopping short, ok SK, as this is the thick. The big case came in twenty fifteen when a black studies, professor name joy Coregos tweeted out or went to Facebook to say that it is real, had done. The massacre at Charlie have them and that is rules also behind nine eleven. So very People at overland went crazy. You know Absolutely trustees of this college got involved. She was spend it, and then she was fired apparently because she could be is not that easy to fire
so either she was an adjunct or something anyway, so that a sled to huge protests on campus other reproach. Arrests that same year be has sushi- was served in the dining hall in a manner was deemed culturally inappropriate or insensitive. Don't ask me how also mexican food at another dining hall, apparently huge, called culturally inappropriate in a huge way, but overall
leftism is actually in a variety of racial hoaxes, some of which are our north idea. There was a moment I more over it than others that in particular the clan outfit I was of turned out to be a bathrobe, but it shut down the campus for several days. That was an inadvertent somebody believed they saw somebody in a clan robe on Oberlin campuses, which sent you should trigger your scepticism impulse, but rarely didn't, but also members of I believe that was the bias response incident team, which was a student, let group responsible for objecting to incidences of racial and ethnic biases on campus. It turns at work, committing incidences of racial and ethnic biases on campus in order to properly popularize the idea that there is a racial, biased problem on campus. Now we should talk. Here's the thing so Oberlin, which is America Oberlin has no defence against any of this, even though it is the car. Are you a blue, the institution, the United States, that should have the most to store called defence for its bona fide ace on racial matters? It was the first
integrated College in the United States, matriculated the first black student in eighteen, forty, something like has been integrated, since the eighteen thirties has, you know, was an app wishlist. A centre of abolitionists thought you could not become a professor or the price of the school. Unless you were an abolitionist, an opponent of Jim Crow. There was a very large Christian elements tube with began as most colleges did begin was started by Presbyterian. You know, educators in the eighteen thirties and threw out its history has been a, center of into nation IST. You know race, blind, colorblind, thought then, in the early nineteen eighties,
and then, of course, as the Sixtys and Seventys, when it became a classically left wing college. Like everything else and then in the early eighties. They hired open The other side is that it has the the Americas oldest music conservatory, which is an extraordinarily distinguished, classical music instruction location in which many of the greatest musicians The United States have passed and is still hot high, distinguished place to study classical music and become a classical music in the late seventies, early eighties, Oberlin hired as its president a
an expert on communism, who was also a musician named Fred STAR S, Frederick STAR, who became the president of the college and the conservatory for about twelve years and his whole ten year was marked with discomfort because he wasn't, though, he wasn't like an active anti communist. He was a sceptic of communism and was ought to be somebody who was excessively corporatist because he wasn't interested in serve like fanning the flames of leftism. He wanted Oberlin to be considered a distinguished academic institution, which you would think would be a good thing for the president of a university to want now, they started selling tee shirts. That said, things like Harvard is the Oberlin of the east. This apparently was a cause of great offence
add Oberlin, I don't know exactly and finally Fred STAR said I'm gettin the hell out of here, and you know, after ten eleven years and bolted and since then they just have a series of classic you now, third rate administrator commie, you know suck up student creeps one after the other. So that the reason that overtones, legitimate claims to integration and, racism and, and all that are now insufficient to the left- is because the the ethos now on the left says that America and all its institutions are built by white supremacist. Even their attempts at integration and open mindedness are really of further tools.
Of that oppression and therefore, all of it must come down. Ok. So this gets back to my original question from a little bit about the extent to which this is pervasive, because the analogue to that on the right is that this kind of social justice waggery is overtaking american legal system, corporate world judicial system, political world. Everything is falling in line behind this kind of nonsense, and so this is. This is a pedagogy that had opened. That is almost universal in american institutions of higher learning, and so this is a great attack on them, but it is, you know I guess by no means sufficient, because they sort of gloss over the fact that the judicial system is essentially come down on their side. So what extent is this preventative, his Oberlin representative of a broader social malady. I think the right sees it as a sort of a universal where there should be a little bit more circumspection applied too that the scope of the threat well, ok, so go go.
I would ask you to say all of this, even if you're on the most liberal campus can be avoided. If you stay out of certain areas of study right, I mean any kind of ethnic or gender study Is it Oberlin Itsy comparative American Studies programme? What seems to be the most politicized and proudly politicized. If you're, science or math major you probably can get through. I hope you can still get through an undergraduate for your education, avoiding a lot of this stuff. You know I mean I don't know I don't know depends on the school. I think over limits, probably very hard now over by the way, I think, if you're a conservatory student them, what you do is you Europe studying the violin all day, then yeah you can avoid but I mean I don't think you can go to a place like Overlean and read on a corallina without having to read it in the frame a view now. Let's understand what twenty health is trying to say here or let's fit
what the social rang taxes according to which Anna is a slave, and you now right, we should also add there was that there is a lot of a trigger warning talk lead on Overman's campus in the past few years. Right, you know, students complaining about wanting to be about being traumatized by content. Let it there is a distinction between for engaging in a thought, experiment, even an identity and thought experiment particularly in camp setting and applying that to the real world in the way in which Oberlin has attempted to do in the way which the Obama administration tried to do that. That's sad springing the campus into the into the real world and that's the threat the conservatives are rightly focused on, but at times I fail to apply certain circumspection. Ok won't so that the question about this is- and I dont know where conserves are in this- is a matter of general policy because it just happened on Friday. So I'm now, I think we're extrapolating a little bit from. We know how how people are going to react to it. I think mostly people are reacting with shy.
And then a lot of shot and freight on the right and a lot of shock in the left. In this bizarre coverage, like it in the New York Times, story on the case was like fourteen paragraphs on Oberlin defence, and then one paragraph is stating that the case in paragraph fifteen, while the incorrectly said the bakery prosecuted, the shoplifters Magnano. That was not the bakery prosecuted, and I find that one paragraph that essential goods that are really annoyed. Romania, absolute, but little chronicle of higher education is quoting quoting Stetson law. Professor colleges are caught in an impossible situation and
something is resolved. On the one hand, they are being ordered by the President of the United States to create a market place of ideas on campus and protect speech broadly, but then in doing so, they can get you sued for defamation. These things are near conflict. So I think the real question is a lot of us go through have gone through this pc. You have this leave a pc on campus, not we kids at so as kids, yet in colleges we welcomed all all gone to college ourselves and we went to college when things may be seen the crazy then, but not like this now whatever and then we think. Ok, well, you know something's gonna, give you can't go on like this forever. Right cannot go on like this reverend there. These moments on the way.
Where you think water was splashed. What reality has now hit people in the face right there? I think the the most remarkable one, of course, was the Duke lacrosse case in which the entire campus rose up against her the book for Profesori and I'm campus rose up against these Duke students who were falsely accused of raping us stripper a hooker with for a party in the at when this, when the dusted all settled the dossier in the case, sir, went to jail for supporting evidence, and you know it.
That that there is a huge turn around on that case. Lydia ride the uv case, the of the false brain Aruba semi, with rubber, read the profile and rolling stone and then, of course, enable talking about this. What happened on the campus, the University of Missouri Colombia right and in twenty fifteen? There are some similarities to to what to what went on an Oberlin, Natalie the, which is that there was also a false k, K K, citing at at the University of Missouri, that was part of a larger mosaic of claims about racism on and off campus.
That built and built and built into a series of protests against the President, Timothy Wolf of the of the University of Missouri system- and this culminated in protests during which a student videographer was attempting to film the protests and insistent professor of communication of all things named Melissa Click. You can- and you can see this through the video. What was will went went viral. The time is trying to shut down he student videographer. His attempts to film the protest when she fails. She turns to the approach
resting students and requests. Can I get a little muscle here to physically intimidate the student videographer from from from filming the protests she was fired. She faced the salt charges, but they were dropped in exchange for her doing community service. She did eventually resurface another at another. Universe, in stayed Washington, but the president of this of the Missouri system unless had to step down so did the chancellor of the flagship campus and is forty, and there were
it draw a huge rather than you drop in applications received forty percent drop in applications, Nursing Missouri in the following year, which really is the only if you think about it. That is the only way to punish insertion of higher education is for people to decide. They do not want to go there for whatever reason, because federal funding is getting at cut, there will always be donors. You know all of that. If you, if, if kids in Missouri decide, they dont want the education at the flat ship institution of the state system- that's the kind of thing that can change hearts in Missouri fall. That incident was sparked by the US the claims of students african american students that there was a truck going through campus with people screaming off as all other kinds of framing racial epithets, and that I believe that that is the university had
responded with sufficient, something or other Russia condition get under way in which they react to. That was was indicative of of how we believe in this room that live over hyped, the nature of the races threat in this country, because that event was interpreted by themselves to be so traumatic because they never experienced that kind of overt racial hostility in their lives that it was a cause for two to go. Nuclear go to eleven, get everywhere. So that's! That's! If you take this, if you take them at their word, rightly right a direct. Yet you believe that these that these reactions them at their word and ruin on their word alone, The notion is that they have not experienced right. Racism, they say is pervasive threat american institutions right so in this great article, but overland by made them Heller in the new Yorker, which was published on twenty six,
in you know he says these african american students will become the great activists. You know everybody told them that everything was getting so much better Obama was elected, there were some less this there's so much less that and then they saw the crime. Then they saw the evil and the evil is Michael Brown. You know, are there like three or four Tammy Rice, Tamar, Rice, Michael Brown, and something else and took inflate those. Of course situations is rational. Well to mere rice to mere rice happened forty miles around Merlin, that's the was the shooting of a twelve year old kid by a by Cleveland Police officer who believe that he was holding the he had a toy gone or some thought was holding a gun, shot him it's a terrible story, as is out there. These, of course, these terrible stories. The Fernando Castille story in the twin cities in the store
is of unarmed black men. Getting getting shot are just horrible and you know A very different but Michael Browser is an extremely too, even though it was the one that promotes the most street violence right, so the point was interesting about. This is that is that the story says there were these cases that led them to believe that America was still you know as racist, if not more races than than the legends that they had heard. But these are all things that happened not in their site, not in their experience and are not can be numbered on one hand, this isn't daily abuse. This is, as you know, the daily abuse that up an african American have to suffer. You know in a southern town forever or you don't city or or you know that these it's off. All becomes a matter of theory, and then there is this idea about that
Feelings are no different from injuries right. So it's like the trigger warning that you're going to read a book. That's going to have a scene, that's upsetting to you right now. First of all, any really great book that has seen that depict something that is supposed to be upsetting to. You should be upsetting to otherwise either failing to re, write or it didn't doesn't do the doesn't have the effect that it's best to have exposed to upset you and then the ideas that you are feeling about. It is in some That's no different, then reading a story about somebody getting raped and it's no different than getting raped. Witches A moral perversion of everything that win that human experience- it's it's it's you know it it trivialize is crime, it turns it into narcissistic reflect and this is if this is what higher education has become an
education is the opposite of education. While I mean we are. Probably everybody in this audience is familiar with John Pike and Gregg. Look now spoke about this, which is to send a cobbling American March is essentially based on the Atlantic article, which is essentially the lead theory as to how this all went down when a particular generation came of age around twenty thirteen, they were born of a generation of parents who grew up with the understanding that the streets were not safe, that these were the kids in the mill carton faces generation who conveyed to their children that a certain sense of safety was was the paramount objective of parenting and something they sheltered them for
a lot of experiences in the world that previous generations had had without parental supervision that they were able to define their own level of danger, and this was denied this particular generation and in concert with the fact that they grew up with a lot of experiences in the world that press generations did not. That robbed them of their sense of physical safety. Nine, eleven and their sense of financial safety, two thousand eight, and so they were. They have a heightened sense of threat and vulnerability and have responded to it like psychopaths, sociopath right. So the reason I mention the dew case- and you know the Missouri case in these now. I think our friend Casey Johnson, whose written for us about false claims of sexual assault on campus, who keeps a database of the number of judgments that had been issued against college colleges and universities for disciplining people on the basis of no evidence in actual courtrooms.
I think, he's after eighty seven sheaths different cases across the country already. So the question is, we think, ok, something's gotta give a marrow these serve explosions of what the hell is that how you know these places crazy and now everyone's gonna see that their crazy and yet nothing seems to change the trajectory. Right. Nothing see it's not like. They're getting see with yet more rational. Maybe they are maybe they are on on on assault stuff, because enough has happened and trumped Trump provoked. The letter the evil. Betsy Divorces, education of our revoked, the dear colleague Letter, so schools are no longer at risk of losing federal funding if they dont use this preponderance of evidence, Standard
Nonetheless, it doesn't seem like campuses are getting any better. Does it. It seems like you're getting worse now I mean I'm not on them, and I only read about them from Are you Norman? You think that the point of Christine's post was will largely was it is. Is the Oberlin case a tipping point right? Well, So here I mean it is anecdotal, Dodo purely anecdotal, but it is my experience I don't find me or then a vanguard of cultural revolutionary students to be particularly hostile towards ideas. A lotta students are more engaged in engaging with people with ideas,
They don't like the rather than shutting them down, but obviously out of that, has he administrators right rise guineas. I found the animals Anglesey rallying regularly administrators, who already is worded in this sort of thing it we're ahead while ours these, and they said I was it's the administrators who support that small radical. Contrary right, I mean that's. The problem is that, if the even if the vast majority of students, one of say, bring a conservative speaker to campus and hear what he or she has to say, it only takes a very small handful of loud intersections activists to go to administrators and start issuing threats and administrators cave I do think that that I think it is right to think the vast majority students probably are perfectly happy to listen to ideas it with which they might disagree without trigger warnings are or protest. But it's the many strangers there? I think the only way things are going to change or one of two ways. More colleges are you. We will have to do at the University of Chicago did and explicitly say. This is what we stand for. We don't we're in administration and the university that has these.
Principles, and we won't be you know bullied or were protests in interchange of them, or we're. Gonna have to wait for these administrators to age out because, unfortunately, they they are there for another. I mean it's another, ten or twenty years of that generation of administrators right world, such as the Bay cave. They, as we say in the case of merrily merrily Armando, they lead they they they want here on earth. Romano wanted fought seriously But setting a mob on a professor who was one of her car, except the institution, because his political view differed from hers? I mean you know so. The other problem is they can age out and then who will replace them? People if they train people whom they ve been teaching? I mean that's the story of mystery of class on campus now is these people were educated by the people.
I went to college with who then went on to graduate school, who then went on to become professors and who were all profess in these new disciplines in part, as the new disciplines you know, area studies things were created in part because of the insane aristocratic tenure system that makes it impossible for anybody young to get an actual job. In these schools, and so as they grew there was actually people were like. Why are we creating these ridiculous disciplines? Women study GEO asian american style stuff, like that, well. There was actually a telling reason for that with that, no one could say at the time, which is now no one get a job on campus every you know in the late sixties, early Seventys, when, when higher education was expanding, radically view got out of school. With a phd, you had your pic of jobs that they weren't all at. I
I mean I dated somebody. Who's father got it economics Phd in the late sixties and he had six school. To choose from, but they were the university was Then we'll walkie, you know lancing state receive Arizona Tempi this place. It so was all a question of where would you quality of life be better, wasn't distinguished, but you you a ten year track and you would get tenure and then all that they all filled up, and then every air just stayed for forty years, so they had to It is a new disciplines because they were creating new phds who had nowhere to go, had no jobs that they could get now. They're all filled up so in the old ones, are starting to desiccated. Dyke has no one is studying English literature any more and so who's gonna get their jobs, which are then show them, but the
This is what I believe so then the problem does go well beyond the radical vanguard of of students because a candidate, but it did, I ideologically it bleeds into that. Look of course, work of the non radical Stu. I would agree with that to my distinction was not at thing yet the campus, it's where the campus ends in society begins that we have. The conservative right believes there is very little distinctions are very fine distinction where I think its a bit firmer than they give credit for. Ok, well, here, the thing about the case, a case like Ireland, so I think a lot of people look at this and say, as I say well maybe this is Christine set. Maybe this is a tipping point, so the question is: will this scare some people straight? will this change some of this dynamic or are the specifics of this case so singular? Meaning a thing happened, their private and situation in the town dominated by a large liberal arts institution.
College. That has been there for two hundred years, and you know the battle lines were drawn perfectly. The college was complacent and believe that it could muscle its way out of this Administrators acted foolishly stupidly. There is no question really the Gibsons Bakery was in the right of colleges in the wrong and and the university did everything wrong in its legal proceedings and lost the case and you're not gonna, get a clean shot like this anywhere else ever so. Maybe it has no practical applications to the race madness on campus and in our you know, in our society, while luck, if you're, even if you're just looking at this from the perspective, university administrator. Who wants to prove that you know look at liability issues? I think it has to have at least a slightly chile.
Fact rate and mean that you're gonna go to your activist faculty on campus and say you know, maybe don't joined the protest or don't don't use our funds too. You know, or or just let cooler heads prevail stepped step back, but the don't know room the kids can rabble rousing, but you don't need to officially endorse this with the universities imprimatur, because we now that might mean we're being sued, and I think the reaction to there were a few feeble efforts to say. Oh, this is gonna quell free speech, John Campus, that hasn't gain much traction after the about. You know as a response to this Oberlin settlement, and I think that's good, because this really wasn't about free speech. This with this was about defamation and about you're trying to run a business out of business because they disagreed politically with their hatred of paint them with this. This racism brush when it when it would sticks, I don't know if I were a call liberal arts, colored,
president. I might sit down and talk to my dean of students and say, let's draw this distinction. Very carefully between supporting students and actually using you, know, university or I would urge funds and resources to support a protest that we're not sure is accurate. Ok, guys, let's take a break, so I can talk to you all about blinds dot com, one of our advertisers today, many of us, your blinds or whatever, having and windows as an afterthought will, with brand new made to made to order customer Covering some blinds, not com, you can really transform the look and feel of your entire home when their right everything your home, looks better, but when the wrong everything you're home looks cheap. So when I needed new blinds, there was only one place. I would go blinds dot com with fish, ten million windows covered, never thirty thousand five star customer reviews blinds that com is America's number one online retailer for affordable quality custom when no coverings
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a foe would blind cellular shades relish aids and more blinds that calm, promo code commentary rules and restrictions apply. Ok, let's take it lets us. If the Lahti was over the weekend, we have this amazing demonstration going on in Hong Kong. We talk a little about on Thursday that is ongoing, as is often the case in these cases, the administrator of Hong Kong. I tried to split the baby by saying that she, They were spending the implementation of this law that will allow people to be extradited.
Hu, the mainland, China and apologized for her hand, hand in this, and this seems only to put blood in the water a little bit like far from its satisfying in calming the protests down. The protesters are saying you know this just prove she's gonna implemented later and we're just the the separate legal system that separates us from. You know the rapidly getting harder line. Communist regime in Beijing is, is going to desiccated fall apart and carry lamb. Who was the administrator of Hong Kong is just a toady and a tool of the of the of the regime and we're not gonna stand for this. So it's it's. The least photographs are astound. Of course, Hong Kong is only a city, so what they're doing is just
filling the streets of Vienna of its commercial centre, and you know you can't believe what you're seeing two million people out of seven million in the streets. It's it's just jawdropping yeah right, I mean it's. It's put a little bit of tarnish on this notion that the technocratic, authoritarian g regime and this the Chinese Communist Party really had had wrapped up all the political opposition. To the extent that you could mobilise political opposition in these numbers in chinese street that that was a thing of the past that they had really pacify the population. In those worn pacified were swiftly jailer removed.
Were no images to be seen of them, and then the g regime has essentially yielded to the demands of ST politics, which is something there very uncomfortable with that. Probably temporary budgeted attic galleron right, but the whole world is watching. This really is that we here we ve heard four years of the g regime. There are protests inside China in these cities that are not serve in the center of the news and the odds are sixty five thousand such protest and their put down very hard right, and we know the Chinese have a history of putting them protests hard, the Wiggers. Obviously you know the Tibetans, all all that kind of stuff, so the Hong Kong Special but Hong Kong
you know Hong Kong is with ab. You know, obviously, a british protectorate until one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine- and you Know- is a major world financial center of Production center gateway to China and if they have to turn the gun, if they have to use force to suppress. Happen, I can't imagine right as Ojeda Perceval lobbying abrogation of the scene, a british pact right which of right of well. Abrogation of all sorts of things. I in the classroom, but I mean yeah the one thing that she has going forum promptly is that we,
dont care, I'm not. Nobody does well, there's really gonna. The G20 is what at the end of June in Japan, I mean you know, wait pompiers said were monitoring the situation, we might bring it up, then I mean it could become something that we see weak are made to care about, could net may I say what I think we do. We care the british and Chinese foreign ministries, representatives, foreign ministers, were meeting this week and they were tweeting about their meetings and at no point was any. This brought up right, no effort to exert any pressure on on Beijing. While I mean that is, I don't know how we could exert more pressure in Beijing and when we are in an odd way the where exerting pressure in Beijing, some of us think in somewhat illegitimate ways you know as part of a trade war. What would we do if we wanted to?
Sir Pressure in Beijing. We will have plenty of it. We would imposts was Arabs, have their profit or diplomatic sanctions or or revoke visas in and travel entries it sort out, but it had been add Neil impotence weight to impose your willingness on a farm nation that transgressors against our values. But that's one of the problems with the trade war is that we are doing this in a very parochial fashion. And taking that weapon off the table, firmware other diplomatic. So so we can't really engage in now diplomatic sanctions. We have stopping somebody's movements because that could threaten the trade negotiations, So now it's always hard and it's not in an odd way. I mean it isn't orbit that this is a this. Is the citizens of Hong Kong right attempting to protect their rights because they are
this unique legal relationship with a communist regime that was pretty lax and pretty comfortable with its separate existence and is now probably much less comfortable and is tightening up and recognising itself from everything we can tell. Since twenty fifteen and how they can best, this is where it gets interesting. We can imagine them going into the streets with guns right for so they don't have guns, they are in the same way, but if they dont what is that do in Beijing next year, when there's a protein because the economy is slow down, we're we're told the economy is now growing at six percent. Some people say that means is actually growing. A two percent populations aging there being hit was trade sanctions. All of that like there, it's a
complicated situation either way is why you dont do straight line productions ever there always fallacious they get you into a ton of trouble. Everybody's been saying that suggestion is on this. This perfect trajectory towards maximal growth year over a year and will eventually overtake the United States economically militarily and evident diplomatically, and then they dont account for the fact that this is an authoritarian system and those things fall apart. Right now reason you know it fall apart. You love, your bloodline doesn't fall apart because he shall ever wonder where your family comes from. You can discover more about them and learn more about your story by combining the ancestry dna test with billions of historic A family records ancestry. Dna gives you so much more than just the places you're from it connects you, the places in the world where your story started using precise, geographically tail and clear cut historic, Cyprus, the attic total, but I the other day about of a family friend who did access
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Really speaking in stasis, uranium is enriched the three percent level. That means it. It's like its given a little kick, but it's not that doesn't have any force bring into a twenty percent level and then getting it from twenty percent to one hundred percent is a matter of like a couple weeks to a couple of months. Someone it's a hundred percent, its them fissile, it's in a bomb it can blow over anybody up. So the whole point of the Obama deal, since the original idea was, if you wanted to get a deal with IRAN, you made it give up its vis our material. So we and everybody gave up on that and the other highly enriched highly a rich seven than the above
but the was that it would be a rich. It would take the twenty stuff they taken to twenty percent and degraded down to three percent again and IRAN is announced this week that is going to up its amount of twenty percent for sound material in response to american sanctions and all the stuff it's from going. So I just saw a little tweet out there from four put featuring a clip from San Vienna grad, whose CNN analysed used to be a national The committee council, member in the abandoned ministries in saying, Yellow ran, is today closer to a nuclear weapon than at any point during the Obama administration, as though that was making a point that would support her defence of the C p away. It is an indictment of the J C p away the break out period that everybody was talking about whose opponents of this deal was not going to be changed by the deal the deal
prevent, ran from building a bomb and a timeline short enough to make it make it a proposition that they wouldn't sign onto they only moth other centrifuges? What have you so whenever they wanted to break out? It would only take them a year now on another, not we were told by the Obama administration. It would take many much much more time than that. We would all detect everything that was changing, wouldn't be. There would be a big diplomatic fractious. He's not gonna happen that way. It's happening that way and all, but the deal also did prevent, was my american ability, to isolate run the whole time. We will, we really been opened the floodgates. This isn't a directed at us. This is directed at Europe This is a directive that I you say what they want. They want some of the economic theories listed ratified. Right, so they're trying to scare Europe. Meanwhile, there firing on you know, tankers in the
see others it even better. Is that now, as Rich Lowry, had a great observation that the same people who are telling us that it is virtually treasonous to question american intelligence officials or all questioning the Trump administrations assessment of whose, behind these multiple tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf Golly No idea, I wonder whether the best part is that we have added a where we got. It is interesting that we have it, but we have this footage of this tool. Pino, hitting one of the ships and the ship, Somebody on the shipper. It was part of that company, the ship said, Nora was hit by something that flew through the air. But we actually there's video of this coming into the hall of. It could also be an laplante shipments alone, that's a sort of up at that.
Who these have right till grounds, man into the water and then and then whatever, but even the whole thing is, if you like, the screw up against the out of the boat that was massage, Yeah yeah yeah. This is ultimately as somebody who said it was with some somebody's on somebody. None not. You know like instantly crazy or black, not of what Obama, administration officials, they have gone to the mattresses verandah. No, no, no! It's out of the guinea Obama officials that it was the most eminent, not yeah yeah generally, I suggested general questioning the notion that IRAN is behind these attacks. On Saturday you, Saudi owned tankers, in its regional there not just spouting either way. One of them's on by Japan welcomes on by saying world against them, oil them yeah, I mean so
Iran is engaged in some kind of confrontation with us and then they're trying to scare them Jesus out of Europe because they're just grand. Why would they want to do this administration officials have said for anybody willing to listen that they want to end. They want to provoke the west in the United States, in particular, into in executing some sort of pinprick strike. That would hurt, but wouldn't cripple the regime and would allow them to recover some of the lost political cohesion that they ve lost. These really rippling economic sanctions where it so there looking to create an incident that will guarantee to give them a domestic support that their fearing they're losing currencies fallen apart. The prices of consumer goods are really really staggeringly high and they ve been rolling protests in the streets of around for the last two years. Now, antigovernment protests now really afraid of those things
there should be so we are, though, Trump Administration, railways. We said in the last biogas from administration doesn't want to do it they're telling everybody who will listen, that they don't want to execute strikes on Iraq as it would derail their strategy and yet the same people who were who are saying that you know we have to question on this intelligence: insist that this is an effort to a false flag effort to provoke some sort of a war toward what end right. Well, I mean having to be the force in the world that keeps the shipping lanes clear, is a really Sukhi job. When the shipping lanes start getting challenged, I mean it's just a terrible job. The seas are very big, its incredibly easy, the target of a ship. It's very hard.
Defend. Other ships, the only thing you have as deterrents out the other funny part of the liberal assault, as this notion that oh, we care so much about. What's going on in the straits of Form INA when they are in the in the in the gulf of on. But you know the somali pirates are still active off the coast of Africa. We're not doing anything about them. I mean this is this is where the tit for TAT Nan Idiot conjugal arguments in this country, and particularly as as focused on social media, really make you want to you no sir, press free speech, not that I wanted out. Despite my great praise of free speech and Ober Leda, it's it's just it's just maddening. You know that that moronic, you know tit for tat. Somehow has the same atomic weight on a place like twitter. As you know,
a serious observation in out you remember what about ism, yet everybody cared about them for about three seconds: yeah boats. Only one about Isabel, your if heavier is engaging apparently Ok! Well, that's all the time we have heard today. I don't think I've ever said. That's all the time! soup like a wine that doesn't make any sense in podcasting cuz. You know we could. Theoretically, we could go on for like four hours, cuz who's, who was there to stop us, but that is all the time we effort today so for Greenwell, nor Rossman, increasing I'm John passports keep the camel burning.
Transcript generated on 2019-12-04.