Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 1: Excited to be joined this morning by Amber Frost. She
Speaker 1: is a writer, activist, former co host of Chapo traph House,
Speaker 1: and author of the brand new book Dirt Bag Essays
Speaker 1: and Put It Up on the Screen, available wherever books
Speaker 1: are sold.
Speaker 4: Now. Welcome Amber. It's great to meet you.
Speaker 3: Nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: So first let's start with, like, what made you decide
Speaker 1: to write the book? Now, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about is you felt like this particular arc,
Speaker 1: either in national left politics or in your life had
Speaker 1: kind of come to an end, and so if you
Speaker 1: felt like it was an appropriate moment to write the book.
Speaker 1: So what is the phase that you feel like came
Speaker 1: to an end that enabled you to write this.
Speaker 5: Book, well, honestly, I started writing it before it came
Speaker 5: to an end, which you know obviously required some retooling,
Speaker 5: and we knew that sort of going into it.
Speaker 3: I knew that I.
Speaker 5: Wanted to start sort of with where I came from
Speaker 5: and how I ended up, you know, on the left,
Speaker 5: quote unquote whatever that means, and I ended up in
Speaker 5: Occupy Wall Street. So I had already seen that end,
Speaker 5: and I knew through a lot of smaller moments that
Speaker 5: most of these things do kind of fizzle out. But
Speaker 5: you know, when I was trying to get a book deal,
Speaker 5: Bernie was very much still on the table and very promising.
Speaker 5: And I think all of us on the podcast and
Speaker 5: most of the people I knew going into it, were like,
Speaker 5: you know, not Bertie's gonna win, But we're like, this
Speaker 5: is the best opportunity we've had in a really long time.
Speaker 5: So I went into it with like this baby kind
Speaker 5: of attitude. And then I was like, what's going to
Speaker 5: happen if what is most likely to happen will, which
Speaker 5: is that he doesn't win.
Speaker 3: And then I was like, I'll deal with that later.
Speaker 4: But figure that out if again, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Which touch which took a lot longer than I thought,
Speaker 5: because COVID sort of threw me for a loop and
Speaker 5: I sort of struggled with kind of trying to find
Speaker 5: a bow to put on the end of it. And
Speaker 5: then I guess at some point I just thought, well,
Speaker 5: you don't have like the happiest ending in the world,
Speaker 5: and you should just be honest about that. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: doesn't mean it's the end of the world, but sometimes
Speaker 5: you lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is life, especially life in left politics. I
Speaker 1: want people to understand this is not just like a
Speaker 1: you know, a retelling of what happened with Bernie, either
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty. It's I mean, you
Speaker 1: can tell me if you think that this description is right.
Speaker 1: It's like part memoir, part you know, description of the
Speaker 1: journey of yourself and as an activist, but also tracking
Speaker 1: these major movements from Occupy to Bernie twenty sixteen to
Speaker 1: Bernie twenty twenty, and you know, a part of COVID
Speaker 1: that unfolded in recent years on the burning piece.
Speaker 6: Though.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you think that some of the
Speaker 1: other retellings of Bernie's loss in twenty twenty, what do
Speaker 1: you think that they sort of missed or what do
Speaker 1: you think that they perhaps got wrong.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that there are a lot of very
Speaker 5: early post mortems which I wanted to avoid. I think
Speaker 5: people rushed and to say exactly what happened immediately, which I.
Speaker 3: Mean, you don't.
Speaker 5: I feel like my first impressions walking away were correct,
Speaker 5: but I did want to give myself some space. I
Speaker 5: think there were a lot of sort of well, Bernie
Speaker 5: didn't win because, you know whatever, his coalition was too
Speaker 5: woke or whatever. I think that come from a place
Speaker 5: of anger that I fully understand that there was kind
Speaker 5: of a cannibalistic, you know whatever left that was a.
Speaker 3: Part of Bernie's coalition. But really I think it.
Speaker 5: Was as simple as you know, he faced more opposition
Speaker 5: from the Democratic Party than he did from the Republicans.
Speaker 5: We didn't expect him to catch on as much as
Speaker 5: he did the first time.
Speaker 3: But when we.
Speaker 5: Really went into it for twenty sixteen, like in earnest,
Speaker 5: they you know, it was a kneecap job. And I
Speaker 5: think that's one of the most frustrating things is because
Speaker 5: you know, maybe even if they hadn't.
Speaker 3: Have done that, he wouldn't have won. But now we'll never.
Speaker 1: Know, right, Yes, but that's also part of the nature
Speaker 1: of being a like, you know, a lefty trying to
Speaker 1: compete in the Democratic Party. You have to just assume
Speaker 1: that that's going to be part of what you're facing
Speaker 1: and what you're up against. How do you feel like
Speaker 1: the unquote left broadly, however you wanted to find that
Speaker 1: in America has responded to that loss. I mean there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of you know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of fracturing. There's been a lot of you know, ugliness
Speaker 1: on Twitter, There's been I feel like a good amount
Speaker 1: of nihilism.
Speaker 4: What's been your reaction to sort of this like post
Speaker 4: burning moment.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's difficult because I think most of the
Speaker 5: people I know have pretty strong heads on their shoulders.
Speaker 5: I do have a few friends that just straight up
Speaker 5: lost it afterwards.
Speaker 3: They didn't know what to do with themselves.
Speaker 5: They had all of their eggs in that one basket,
Speaker 5: and that makes it difficult. I you know, it's difficult
Speaker 5: to cope with loss, and I think if you don't
Speaker 5: sort of, you know, cut your teeth on smaller ones,
Speaker 5: it can be really devastating.
Speaker 3: With something like Bernie.
Speaker 5: I mean, as far as like the left there's not
Speaker 5: really a left in the country.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of you know.
Speaker 5: Leftists or socialists or whatever. But if you were to
Speaker 5: describe the left as sort of a powerful political movement,
Speaker 5: which I would say has something having like at the
Speaker 5: very least a party in a labor movement, it's not
Speaker 5: something we really have. What we have right now is
Speaker 5: a lot of people that are even further disfus diffused.
Speaker 5: Bertie really was kind of a north star, and without that,
Speaker 5: I think people are really scattered.
Speaker 3: They're doing the best they can.
Speaker 5: Obviously, I'm encouraged by a lot of the union work
Speaker 5: that's going on. I'm very happy that I personally don't
Speaker 5: have to pay that much attention to electoral politics living
Speaker 5: in California. You know, I've lived in blue states for
Speaker 5: the last many years.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm not. I don't have to carry
Speaker 3: water for a lot of things.
Speaker 5: And then it's partially upsetting because it means like I
Speaker 5: have to wait for the odd, like very odd left
Speaker 5: insurgent candidate that has a shot. Yeah, it ain't great,
Speaker 5: but you know, you just don't know what's going to
Speaker 5: happen until it happens. I never really saw Bernie coming
Speaker 5: in the first place, and I still think he was
Speaker 5: an amazing opportunity and the closest we've come in my lifetime.
Speaker 5: But before that, I was just chugging away at kind
Speaker 5: of labor stuff. Yeah, you know, nothing is nothing is
Speaker 5: going to happen until one day it happens. So you
Speaker 5: have to sort of just leave room for that chaos
Speaker 5: energy and tried laying the track. Right now, it's the
Speaker 5: very dull, boring political work of trying to sort of
Speaker 5: keep people together and focused on smaller projects.
Speaker 1: Like you, I've been extraordinarily excited by the new energy
Speaker 1: and the labor movement, which is very different than anything
Speaker 1: we've seen in our lifetimes, where you're actually like, it's
Speaker 1: not concessionary contracts. You see these democratic reform movements within
Speaker 1: large labor unions. You see them, you know with the
Speaker 1: American people, you know firmly behind them. Is not even
Speaker 1: partisan people overwhelming on their side. You see the grassroots effort.
Speaker 1: So I think if more of that had happened pre Bernie,
Speaker 1: you would have had more of the infrastructure actually to
Speaker 1: support a candidate with his political agendas. So that does
Speaker 1: make me help hopeful for the future. I was wondering also,
Speaker 1: you know what you make of all of the grassroots
Speaker 1: organizing and activism in favor of a ceasefire and against
Speaker 1: Israel's assault on Gaza, and if that also, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's like one of the most horrifying things I've
Speaker 1: ever seen unfold, But the fact that there's been so
Speaker 1: much organizing and energy around it also has been sort
Speaker 1: of hopeful and inspiring to see as well.
Speaker 5: Oh sorry, I'm not going to give you a good
Speaker 5: one of this. I'm not very optimistic as far as
Speaker 5: what has already happened. It seems pretty it's it's it's
Speaker 5: already pretty devastating. I don't think even at this point
Speaker 5: that I mean, okay, so has happened for me? The
Speaker 5: first time during the Iraq War you realize there was
Speaker 5: a huge popular opposition to this thing, you know, right,
Speaker 5: and then you also realized that.
Speaker 3: The nation as a as a as.
Speaker 5: A political entity has zero accountability to the rest of
Speaker 5: the world, much less popular opinion. So I think, I mean,
Speaker 5: it heartens me and it gives me faith in humanity
Speaker 5: that this many people are disgusted and in many many
Speaker 5: of them deprogramming themselves from a lot of propaganda.
Speaker 3: What bothers me is the fact that.
Speaker 5: We don't have a nation that's accountable to broad popular
Speaker 5: opinion or moral disgusted.
Speaker 3: I think the fact that the US.
Speaker 5: Is supporting this and has been not just the occupation,
Speaker 5: but like, you know, just just put in the boot
Speaker 5: down this obviously and this brazen when without any world
Speaker 5: support or popular support, is really disturbing. But I do
Speaker 5: think just to go back to what you were saying about,
Speaker 5: you know, the labor could have laid the groundwork.
Speaker 3: I actually don't. I think that Bernie in some ways
Speaker 3: invigorated the labor.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure that they would be where they were
Speaker 5: without that. It's kind of one hand washes the other thing.
Speaker 5: And one of the things I do see being more
Speaker 5: powerful is at some point when a trade union movement
Speaker 5: is large enough, they do get to influence things like
Speaker 5: foreign policy. Unfortunately, we have to have sort of a
Speaker 5: you know, a hand and the government to to even
Speaker 5: get to that point already, So it's going to be
Speaker 5: a slow build. But I don't know's it's incredibly devastating
Speaker 5: to watch. It's really horrifying, and I I think we've
Speaker 5: already foreclosed on a happy ending.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh yeah, that's the ship has sailed.
Speaker 3: That's pretty brutal.
Speaker 1: What do you make of Bernie and his reaction. I
Speaker 1: just saw a pac tweeting out, you know, their amplifying
Speaker 1: his opposition to a ceespar. I know you describe yourself
Speaker 1: as a Bernie loyalist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean at this point too.
Speaker 5: Okay, So there's it's very interesting again to go back
Speaker 5: to Labor.
Speaker 3: A friend of.
Speaker 5: Mine in a very large union, we'll say, has been
Speaker 5: a part of hostile internal debate about whether or not
Speaker 5: they should make a statement interesting on Israel.
Speaker 3: Uh, And I'm I'm sympathetic to both sides.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: One is like, well, we should talk about what is
Speaker 5: right and you know the horrible things that's going on there.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 5: Uh, They're like, look, we aren't in the best position
Speaker 5: in the world right now. This is going to be
Speaker 5: very distracting from building the union. And you know, a
Speaker 5: weak unions grow unions. Strong unions influence things outside of
Speaker 5: the Union. As far as Bernie goes, he's always been
Speaker 5: to the left of nearly everyone on foreign policy. At
Speaker 5: the same time, he's a man of a certain age.
Speaker 5: I I don't I don't put anyone in in Congress
Speaker 5: or the Senate, or even local politics to the standards
Speaker 5: I hold for a let's say, a millennial podcaster in
Speaker 5: terms of foreign policy, it's just it's just an old holdover.
Speaker 5: And at this point I'm like, it's it's it's not
Speaker 5: it's and I don't mean Zionism in particular. I mean
Speaker 5: like this idea of you know, Israel as as the
Speaker 5: good guy.
Speaker 3: That's kind of a.
Speaker 1: It's a very it's like a very cold war mindset,
Speaker 1: like there's the good countries that are on our side,
Speaker 1: there's the bad countries that against us.
Speaker 3: It's a bag over.
Speaker 5: I I you know, for my part, it's the holidays.
Speaker 5: I try and stay on message and say, look, I'm
Speaker 5: against the occupation and you know, there are no excuses,
Speaker 5: but there are reasons. And if you turn up the
Speaker 5: heat high enough, water's gonna boil.
Speaker 4: Amber.
Speaker 1: You have a chapter in your book that you talk
Speaker 1: about like sort of your disgust with the liberal theatrics
Speaker 1: around Trump and how you really rejected you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of like performative, who can act the most afraid,
Speaker 1: who can act the most outraged, et cetera. But what
Speaker 1: are you feeling about the fact that it is very possible,
Speaker 1: if not very likely, that we end up with another
Speaker 1: four years of Trump.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: First of all, I can't really draw a bead on
Speaker 5: what the possibility for that is.
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, first of all, we didn't see it coming
Speaker 5: in the first place, and that was a real wake
Speaker 5: up call for me because I was like, oh, the
Speaker 5: death of local newspapers and the lack of you know,
Speaker 5: news coverage and in quote unquote flyover Country has really
Speaker 5: missed some major sentiments going on with most of the people,
Speaker 5: Like wow, that we didn't see that coming at all.
Speaker 5: And I think what that made me realize is that
Speaker 5: we don't really have a way to check the temperature anymore,
Speaker 5: you know that. It's it's it's not just having like
Speaker 5: newsdesks locally, but it's about having like local newspapers. It's
Speaker 5: about having labory press. So I would say the weirdest
Speaker 5: part of it is that I'm.
Speaker 3: Not sure what the actual possibility is.
Speaker 5: I do think, you know, Biden's infrastructure bill, God knows,
Speaker 5: I hate to give him or you know, whatever Svengali's
Speaker 5: running him any credit, but the infrastructure bill is very
Speaker 5: encouraging it's something that should have happened a million years ago,
Speaker 5: and Bertie would have done a better blah blah blah
Speaker 5: blah blah.
Speaker 3: I would be.
Speaker 5: Interested to see if that has any effect on the
Speaker 5: ground with voters. I think what a lot of people
Speaker 5: voted for in Trump was like the return of manufacturing
Speaker 5: on shoring American jobs.
Speaker 3: I mean, jobs are a big deal. People like them.
Speaker 3: They remember when they had them and they missed them.
Speaker 3: Good jobs.
Speaker 5: And I think with the investment in infrastructure it's actually
Speaker 5: going to it is creating more of those jobs.
Speaker 3: We're now seeing a labor shortage and in the.
Speaker 5: Hard hats, which are a lot of time excellent jobs
Speaker 5: that you can get without.
Speaker 3: You don't have to.
Speaker 5: Pay to get into them. It's not like, you know,
Speaker 5: you have to have a four year degree. It's skilled labor,
Speaker 5: and you're in a union. You can get a pension
Speaker 5: and all your benefits. And I think if that shows
Speaker 5: any yield in time for a broader public, I don't
Speaker 5: see like the resentment, the resentment for the Democratic Party
Speaker 5: that really fueled a lot.
Speaker 3: Of Trump voting coming to fruition and she does get
Speaker 3: to like I mean, I have no idea.
Speaker 5: Man The weird thing is that, you know, again we
Speaker 5: all were sort of like freaked out and happened.
Speaker 3: We're like, oh, holy shit, it's this crazy, and then you.
Speaker 5: Oh, this is just kind of a consistently, like a
Speaker 5: consistent trajectory of things getting slightly worse.
Speaker 3: Like this is not a.
Speaker 5: Rapid decline compared to Obama. It's not great, and it's
Speaker 5: not an improvement. But the strangest thing was that there
Speaker 5: wasn't a huge disaster. It was just a little shittier
Speaker 5: every day, just like it had been for the past
Speaker 5: however many years.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of what you anticipate if we get
Speaker 1: a second Trump term.
Speaker 3: I mean I could see it for sure.
Speaker 5: It is you know, he doesn't want to get in
Speaker 5: strange wars. He always wants to see, like who wins
Speaker 5: in the end. He tends to I think most of
Speaker 5: spend most of his He spent most of his last
Speaker 5: administration doing like, I don't know, castle intrigue, court politics.
Speaker 3: He was more obsessed with it was way more obsessed with,
Speaker 3: you know, his.
Speaker 5: Own cabinet and hiring and firing people and doing the apprentice.
Speaker 3: He wasn't that active of a president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting perspective because he was obviously incredibly visible,
Speaker 1: like it felt like he was an active president, but
Speaker 1: then not actually that much. I mean, his biggest accomplishment
Speaker 1: was a bunch of tax cuts for rich people, which
Speaker 1: anyway Republican president would basically do. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: the thing that does make him different is all of
Speaker 1: the insanity around the election and January sixth, and like,
Speaker 1: yeah it was Keithstone, cops, but he legitimately wanted to
Speaker 1: steal the election.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean I would say though, but
Speaker 5: like he didn't and I don't know, but that The
Speaker 5: interesting thing that I saw later after this, during that
Speaker 5: January sixth stuff, is they talked to White House Security
Speaker 5: and they said a lot of people that were there
Speaker 5: were a lot of people that were there January sixth
Speaker 5: calling in saying like, hey, I left my purse there.
Speaker 5: I was there at January sixth. Could is there a
Speaker 5: way I could pick it up?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And like the head of White House Security was like,
Speaker 5: they literally don't know that what they did was He's like,
Speaker 5: you know, these people are not fully in orbit, Like
Speaker 5: it's like that they believe that the president told them
Speaker 5: to do something, and so that it was allowed that
Speaker 5: they did it. It's like it's like the kind of
Speaker 5: American mindset when you get like pulled over and you
Speaker 5: see those people who are like, actually, I'm a sovereign
Speaker 5: citizen and it's like, oh my god, we told you
Speaker 5: things work.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I think after that one, that's kind of thing
Speaker 5: is less likely to happen because it wasn't effective. And two,
Speaker 5: I think Trump doesn't like the amount of trouble he's
Speaker 5: getting into for yeah, let's say, yeah, uh waving the see.
Speaker 4: I actually sort of feel the opposite.
Speaker 1: I feel like once something happens once, it's actually more
Speaker 1: likely to happen again in religure. Wait, yeah, definitely, I've
Speaker 1: sort of like riped the band aid off of oh well,
Speaker 1: that thing is now on the table, that thing is
Speaker 1: now possible.
Speaker 3: But like an Overton window thing, yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: It did look like they were having fun, but a
Speaker 5: lot of them did go to jail. I could see
Speaker 5: it also happening in something like not particularly related to Trump.
Speaker 5: I don't know if the energy would be behind in particular.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he seems to have he doesn't
Speaker 5: quite have like the shine for the youth that he
Speaker 5: did during the time, you know, the the downwardly mobile
Speaker 5: young men who appear to have moved on. But I
Speaker 5: mean I could see it around something else, because that
Speaker 5: energy is still there, that that restless resentment, no doubt,
Speaker 5: that feeling of unfairness, and that mental illness, they're all
Speaker 5: still there.
Speaker 4: So no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 1: Well, Amber, I've been really enjoying the book. I think
Speaker 1: you're a fantastic writer. I think your you know, your personality,
Speaker 1: your voice really comes through, and so I encourage people
Speaker 1: to check out the book. It's excellent. Congratulations and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for sharing some of your insights today.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me on no more.
Speaker 8: University campuses have once again become a lightning rod for
Speaker 8: free speech. Last week, three university presidents, Harvard's Claudine Gay,
Speaker 8: Penn's Liz McGill, and MIT Sally Kornblooth appeared before Congress
Speaker 8: to testify about rising anti semitism on their campuses.
Speaker 9: I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews.
Speaker 9: Does that constitute bullying?
Speaker 3: Harassment?
Speaker 7: If it is directed and severer pervasive, it is harassment.
Speaker 9: So the answer is yes.
Speaker 7: It is a context dependent decision.
Speaker 9: Congresswoman, calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute
Speaker 9: bullying and harassment.
Speaker 3: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews
Speaker 3: on our campus.
Speaker 9: But you've heard chance for intifada.
Speaker 5: I've heard chance, which can be antisemitic depending on the context.
Speaker 7: Anti Semitic rhetoric. When it crosses into conduct that amounts
Speaker 7: to bullying, harassment, madation, that is actionable conduct, and we
Speaker 7: do take action.
Speaker 9: So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide
Speaker 9: of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 7: Again, it depends on the context.
Speaker 8: All three presidents have since face calls for resignation. Many
Speaker 8: high profile donors have threatened to pull millions in funding
Speaker 8: from these universities. One of these presidents, Liz McGill of
Speaker 8: U Penn, has already since resigned over the last few days.
Speaker 8: Of these developments have entered the cultural zeitgeist, so much
Speaker 8: so to the point that even the likes of Dave
Speaker 8: Portnoy have gotten involved tweeting one down, two to go.
Speaker 8: Some university faculty have pushed back on such efforts to
Speaker 8: censor free speech on campus, one of them being Professor
Speaker 8: Walter Johnson of Harvard.
Speaker 6: In these past few weeks, I've become wary of my
Speaker 6: own words, of speaking, my mind, of being overheard in
Speaker 6: a way that I have not been afraid those today's
Speaker 6: on the weeks, then the months after nine to eleven,
Speaker 6: when I was living in New York and people who
Speaker 6: I had fought were my friends literally lost their minds,
Speaker 6: their composure, their sense of proportion, and their basic human decency.
Speaker 6: And I see that happening again with the ferocity that
Speaker 6: has astonished me. I am aware of the irony of
Speaker 6: standing before those of you who have been singled out
Speaker 6: and targeted, doxed, harassed, and blacklisted to warn you that
Speaker 6: the boundaries of what you can safely say are closing.
Speaker 8: In so joining us today is Walter Johnson, Professor of
Speaker 8: History and African American Studies at Harvard University. Thank you
Speaker 8: for being with us today, Professor, it's my pleasure. First question,
Speaker 8: what compelled you to make such a public statement regarding
Speaker 8: free speech on campus.
Speaker 6: I think, in the first instance, it was the palpable
Speaker 6: climate of fearfulness among many of my colleagues and many
Speaker 6: of my students. I guess I'd have to say I
Speaker 6: felt called to speak up. Many were many of the
Speaker 6: students were. I felt it was important for somebody on
Speaker 6: the faculty to speak up and stand with the students.
Speaker 6: I was also, I think, at that moment, aware of
Speaker 6: things that later came to light about actual censorship happening
Speaker 6: at Harvard Law School, which was where that event took place,
Speaker 6: in the case of one student who had been involved
Speaker 6: in a protest and had the university president had issued
Speaker 6: a statement condemning the phrase from the river to the sea.
Speaker 6: So I think in some sense that was an early
Speaker 6: response to a climate of intimidation and fear that I
Speaker 6: feel like has only become, has only intensified in the meantime.
Speaker 8: You mentioned the phrase from the river to the sea. Now,
Speaker 8: phrase like that that could mean different things to different
Speaker 8: groups of people. Some like Congresswoman Rashida to Leib say
Speaker 8: it's a quote aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and
Speaker 8: peaceful co existence. Other groups like the ADL deem it
Speaker 8: to be a call for ethnic cleansing against Israeli Jews.
Speaker 8: For such phrases like this, how can we consistently apply
Speaker 8: the First Amendment right to free speech?
Speaker 6: What you said is exactly right. I mean, you said
Speaker 6: that it's been read to imply different things. I don't
Speaker 6: think that within that broad spectrum there's a there's a
Speaker 6: lot of room for contestation and debate. So what the letter,
Speaker 6: what the you know, one of the letters, the many
Speaker 6: letters that I've been involved in over the past couple
Speaker 6: of weeks, that was, well, the university needs to slow down.
Speaker 6: The university needs to slow down, not to condemn statements,
Speaker 6: but to encourage investigation and debate. That's what a university
Speaker 6: should do. And I think again that was you know,
Speaker 6: I don't want to get too braggy about it, but
Speaker 6: that was pressure right because within a week it comes
Speaker 6: out that this, you know, comes into general knowledge. There
Speaker 6: were specialists who knew this, but this very statement appears,
Speaker 6: is very phrase. It appears in the Lacude founding platform.
Speaker 6: So clearly it's history and multiple meanings need to be discussed.
Speaker 6: It can't simply be condemned.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I want to get your perspective more on what's
Speaker 8: going on at the universities. The fallout of Harvard's clouding
Speaker 8: Gay pens Liz McGill and MIT Sally Cornbluoth collectively. In
Speaker 8: the mainstream media, their testimony has been seen as many
Speaker 8: as a disaster. All three presidents have since faced calls
Speaker 8: for their resignation, major donors threatening to withhold millions of
Speaker 8: dollars in donations pens. Liz McGill has already since resigned.
Speaker 8: So what do you think does this set the right
Speaker 8: precedent for the future of university discourse?
Speaker 6: So I think that that you know to me that
Speaker 6: hearing looked McCarthy. I I do not think that a
Speaker 6: congressional investigation of words said on a college campus, in
Speaker 6: which college presidents are asked whether or not they believe
Speaker 6: in the principal values of another country, is an appropriate
Speaker 6: mechanism of appropriate usage of state power. I think it's
Speaker 6: a dangerous usage of state power. Now I will say this,
Speaker 6: and I'll say this straight up. I think that there
Speaker 6: has been speech made on the Harvard campus that approached
Speaker 6: the advocacy of genocide. Because there was an affiliate of
Speaker 6: the university who stood in Harvard Yard and implied that
Speaker 6: students at Harvard supported terrorism and said the words those
Speaker 6: who justify terrorism are lower than animals. I believe that
Speaker 6: was an episode of genocidal speech I made on the
Speaker 6: campus of Harvard University. And as far as I know,
Speaker 6: there's been no coverage outside of a brief mention in
Speaker 6: the Harvard crimson of that, there's certainly not been a
Speaker 6: congressional investigation of that, and as far as I know,
Speaker 6: that individual has not been subjected to university discipline. So again,
Speaker 6: I think that you know.
Speaker 10: Part of what's happening is we're living in a shadow
Speaker 10: world where there is an inordinate amount of attention paid
Speaker 10: to certain types of speech, very little attention of the
Speaker 10: same sort of attention being applied to other types of
Speaker 10: speech at the very same.
Speaker 6: Moment that there is an actual material, real life mass
Speaker 6: murder removal, not bad genocide, not to mention the history
Speaker 6: of the last seventy five years.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I want to ask I want to It's a
Speaker 8: slight pive, but I want to ask you about the
Speaker 8: consistency of free speech on campus because some have likened
Speaker 8: Harvard other elite university's newfound commitment to free speech as
Speaker 8: somewhat inconsistent. They're insinuating this kind of anti semitism is
Speaker 8: a factor in this. People have brought up some past
Speaker 8: examples of universities having no problems silencing those who were
Speaker 8: critical of say, BLM, d I, LGBGQ ideology. So is
Speaker 8: there Is it fair to say that there is a
Speaker 8: level of hypocrisies that that underlies these rationalizations? Could there
Speaker 8: be something more sinister, like like I just alluded to.
Speaker 8: Is this criticism fair?
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean, I think that's an important question.
Speaker 6: I think it's an important question to answer forthrightly. I
Speaker 6: believe in the first instance, that the joining of the
Speaker 6: attack on DEI on diversity, equity and inclusion to the
Speaker 6: attack on anti Zionist speech or even speech that is
Speaker 6: critical of Israel is bailful and dangerous. Okay, But I
Speaker 6: am myself someone who thinks that the regulation of speech
Speaker 6: and civility on college campuses has come at this point
Speaker 6: to serve the universities as an alibi, universities like my university,
Speaker 6: as an alibi for the sorts of inequality that they
Speaker 6: represent and perpetuate. And so I think in a way
Speaker 6: that the weaponization of the terms of diversity, equity, and
Speaker 6: inclusion is related to the way that those terms themselves
Speaker 6: have become unmoored from a larger understanding of justice.
Speaker 8: Yeah, last question for you is how do we Because
Speaker 8: it seems to be free speech is kind of one
Speaker 8: of those things. To your point, people love free speech
Speaker 8: if they agree with that speech, and they will silent
Speaker 8: speech that they don't agree with. So, moving forward, how
Speaker 8: do we consistently apply free speech?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean again, I'm not sure there's a consistent application,
Speaker 6: because I think it's always going to be a field
Speaker 6: of political context. And so then the focus for me
Speaker 6: is on, well, how do we imagine ourselves speaking in
Speaker 6: a way that is in insistently honest and also generous,
Speaker 6: And so for me, that does not involve the sort
Speaker 6: of activity that I think has been you know, for
Speaker 6: quite a while now, we've been living in a world
Speaker 6: where the words free speech on campuses are associated with
Speaker 6: the rights and they are generally performed through acts of provocation. Right, Well,
Speaker 6: I think that this campus is not ideologically diverse, and
Speaker 6: so I'm going to bring in an extreme speaker who's
Speaker 6: bound to offend. Well, what if we imagine our commitment
Speaker 6: to free speech, like to the freedom part. What if
Speaker 6: we imagine it is not something that's defined by our
Speaker 6: ability that were allowed to do harm with our words.
Speaker 6: What if we imagine it as trying to to to
Speaker 6: really speak honestly, to really pursue justice. That's what I've
Speaker 6: been you know, thinking and that's that's not to say
Speaker 6: that that that doesn't you know, plenty of that is
Speaker 6: going to involve saying things that make other people unhappy
Speaker 6: or uncomfortable. Say that the state of Israel is in
Speaker 6: apartheid state, which I think it is right. But I
Speaker 6: don't say that because I want to do harm. I'm
Speaker 6: not trying to prove some kind of point by that.
Speaker 6: I'm not trying to prove I'm allowed to say that.
Speaker 6: I say that because I think it's true. And what
Speaker 6: if we just hold ourselves to that standard. I think
Speaker 6: that that would be you know that that's the world
Speaker 6: that I want to live in, and that's the world
Speaker 6: that I think is is under threat from any any
Speaker 6: variety of directions. And you know, to come back to
Speaker 6: your first question, I guess that's why I felt compelled
Speaker 6: to just speak out about any of this in the
Speaker 6: first place.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you, professor. This has been incredibly insightful. Thank
Speaker 8: you for your time today. This continues on, I'm sure
Speaker 8: it will. We hope to have you back in the future.
Speaker 8: Appreciate your time.