The Viral Educator: Warren Smith on Wokeness, Campus Culture, and Losing His Job

24 Nov 2025 · 1 h 15 min · 32 chapters

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In short

Warren Smith, a professor/filmmaker/content creator, discusses his viral Socratic-style video questioning a student’s claim that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, the fallout that led to his firing, and his broader critique of “wokeness” and campus culture (2016–2020). He also compares experiences at Emerson and Columbia, argues that elite colleges use “equity” and “decolonizing the canon” to suppress debate, and discusses President Trump’s pressure on universities.

Guest backgrounds

Warren Smith teaches at Emerson College (one course per semester). Previously he taught full-time at a special education school for students with behavioral challenges, using multimedia/video/photo/3D creation. He later became a content creator after being fired.

Key claims

The viral video changed a student’s mind through respectful questioning. Campus “wokeness” rewards identity performance, lowers expectations, and can silence dissent (e.g., being told as a white student to “secede your space” and “just listen”). He argues some “racism” dynamics stem from policies and social status incentives, and that some research justifies taxpayer funding poorly. He says Trump’s approach has a valid underlying critique but is often handled recklessly.

Notable examples

the Rowling classroom exchange; his firing and alleged NDA; Emerson protests over racism; anonymous bias reporting/Facebook group; a professor telling him not to talk during a racism-focused pedagogy class; “decolonize the canon” comments; shutting down discussion about how “it’s working in China”; and his comparison to Evergreen’s Brett Weinstein controversy.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Warren's Viral Experience and Background

0:05 to 0:30

Warren shares how his viral video emerged and his teaching background.

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Warren's Viral Experience and Background

1:44 to 4:00

Warren shares how his viral video emerged and his teaching background.

“On this show, we've spent a lot of time having honest, unfiltered discussions around Israel, Zionism, and anti-Semitism.”

The Firing Incident

4:00 to 6:40

Warren discusses the circumstances around his firing from the special ed school.

“How did you get to be the kind of professor that engages that way?”

Corporate Concerns and School Policies

6:40 to 9:31

Discussion of the school's legal concerns and the implications of Warren's video.

“What was the reason for the firing and how did that go down?”

Campus Culture and Personal Reflections

9:31 to 12:08

Warren and Coleman reflect on their experiences in progressive campus environments.

The Impact of Campus Politics on Identity

12:08 to 14:00

Examining how identity politics shape experiences and perceptions on campus.

“I don't know when that was, maybe like a year ago or half a year ago.”

Campus Experience and Political Evolution

14:00 to 15:00

Explore how college environments shape political views and the challenges of communication in such settings.

“pretty hardcore against anti-black racism.”

The Impact of Social Justice Ideology

15:00 to 18:00

Discuss the influence of social justice ideology on academic expectations and teaching practices.

“And then trying to point that out to friends that I grew up with, hey, have you seen this guy, Jordan Peterson?”

Racism, Expectations, and Academic Performance

18:00 to 23:00

Analyze the concept of low expectations based on race and its implications for academic achievement.

“And that's the phrase for that is the bigotry of low expectations.”

Narratives of Victimhood and Social Alienation

23:00 to 27:40

Examine how narratives of victimhood affect student behavior and feelings of alienation on campus.

“But I remember him sighing and saying under his breath, decolonialize the canon, like shaking his head, like he was not happy with it, but he was still going along.”
Show all 32 chapters

The Experience of Minority Students in Elite Colleges

27:40 to 28:00

Investigate the challenges faced by minority students in elite educational environments, including feelings of inadequacy and cultural disconnect.

“Now, that's a very hard thing to face, right?”

Cultural Alienation in Education

28:00 to 29:10

Discussion on feelings of alienation among minority students in schools.

“That's what it is to be, to come from a minority culture, right?”

The Impact of Racism Language

29:10 to 30:20

Exploration of how race-related language influences social dynamics.

“and taking responsibility and trying to take good steps and blaming the world for your bad feelings, most people choose to blame the world, blame some aspect.”

Personal Experiences with Racism

30:20 to 32:00

Warren shares his personal experiences with racism and cultural dynamics at Emerson.

“of those very liberal policies that are intended to help black people.”

Navigating Cultural Sensitivities

32:00 to 34:30

Challenges faced by Warren regarding cultural sensitivities in a diverse academic setting.

“the housing fair when I first arrived, they go around and did pronouns and I'm dyslexic and I could not remember what a pronoun was.”

The Burden of Self-Denunciation

34:30 to 37:15

Discussion on the pressure for white males to denounce their identity in social settings.

“You have to be like, you have to be very like disparaging towards yourself as your ticket in the door and accept a certain level of subordinated status, which is a really unnatural thing to do.”

Trump’s Influence on Academia

37:15 to 39:59

Exploration of Trump's influence on university policies and funding.

“And so that was all around Columbia too when I was there.”

Historical Dynamics of Harvard

39:59 to 41:10

Insight into Harvard's historical role leading up to World War II.

“And if Trump limited himself just to the reasonable version of a response, then I would be behind it 100%.”

Legacy of Power and Influence

41:10 to 42:03

Reflection on the concentration of power among elite students at Harvard.

The Influence of Elite Student Bodies

42:03 to 42:45

Discussion about the historical context of elite students and power dynamics.

“lens of the student body was really interesting.”

The Role of Professors in Campus Culture

43:25 to 47:04

Exploration of professors' influence on student perspectives and indoctrination.

“Because I remember, you know, I tried to pick my classes wisely so that I was avoiding most of the classes with indoctrinated professors that were basically woke ideologues.”

Challenges of Teaching Postmodernism

47:04 to 49:47

Discussion on the difficulties of discussing postmodernism in academia.

“You think that there is a right way to behave.”

Critique of Postmodern Philosophy

49:47 to 55:28

In-depth analysis of postmodernism's claims and their implications.

“every college i personally would be like i'm paying 60 grand a year i don't want to it feels like a waste of money for me to be, but a lot of those students need to be challenged on these topics.”

Ethics and Postmodernism

55:28 to 56:00

Examination of the relationship between ethics and postmodern thought.

“And so he's not the only one to make this point, but it's, postmodernism actually refutes itself.”

The Ethical Implications of Postmodernism

56:00 to 57:20

Discussing how postmodernism affects language, ethics, and morality in modern society.

“somewhere, but they take that to the next level.”

Celebrating Death: A Question of Principles

57:20 to 59:10

Exploring the inconsistencies in celebrating the deaths of political figures across the political spectrum.

“I remember one of my favorite posts from Scott Alexander, who's a great writer.”

Evil and Its Construct in Society

59:10 to 1:02:10

Examining the concepts of good and evil within the context of political violence and societal perception.

“but I make an effort, at least, and I think it's very important to make that effort.”

Navigating Discussions in Academia

1:02:10 to 1:07:00

A personal account of the challenges faced while discussing controversial topics in a college setting.

“they should not want to get rid of objective truth.”

Creating Solutions in Education

1:07:00 to 1:10:02

Discussing the need for reform in educational institutions versus creating new alternatives.

“It's people, it's just listening to that.”

The Challenges of Modern Education

1:10:02 to 1:13:48

Explore the complexities facing higher education today and potential solutions.

“have, they just have a certain level of credibility in the bank, no matter how much they mess that up.”

Final Thoughts on Educational Reform

1:13:48 to 1:14:01

Warren Smith shares his insights on returning to core educational values.

“unless you have seen it, which is really the big takeaway from our entire conversation, I think.”

Final Thoughts on Educational Reform

1:14:18 to 1:14:38

Warren Smith shares his insights on returning to core educational values.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01Coleman Hughes:This episode is brought to you by Fox one. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA world cup live in 4k for just$19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights and instant replays. The FIFA world cup streaming live on Fox one offers a subject to change. See Fox.com for complete terms and conditions. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Warren Smith. Warren is a professor, filmmaker, and content creator. He bursts onto the scene with a viral video that you may have seen in which he asks a student to explain why J.K.

0:45Coleman Hughes:Rowling is a bigot and ends up changing that student's mind simply by asking questions. She's being attacked by a large group of people and people are calling her. Like you said, at the beginning of this conversation, you said, given the fact that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, how do you feel about Harry Potter? Now, retroactively looking at that statement, do you think that that was the best way to phrase? No, I feel like an idiot now. He was subsequently fired from that teaching job. So in this episode, we begin by talking about that fiasco. Then we move on to compare notes about what it was like to be on a college campus between 2016 and 2020.

1:22Coleman Hughes:Warren was at Emerson at that time, and I was at Columbia. but our experiences confronting wokeness were remarkably similar. So it was fun to reminisce about some of those crazy stories. We also talk about Trump's attempts to bend the character of elite colleges to his will. And finally, we talk about what can actually be done to fix higher education. So without further ado, Warren Smith.

1:54Coleman Hughes:On this show, we've spent a lot of time having honest, unfiltered discussions around Israel, Zionism, and anti-Semitism. And if our conversations have made you more curious about any of these topics, I have a recommendation for you. Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam is a podcast hosted by two of the leading Jewish voices of today, Noam Weissman and Michal Bitton. On their show, Mihal and Noam are finding fresh perspectives on tough subjects. They've explored the war on Iran from the viewpoint of Persian Jews, poked fun at anti-Semitism with comedians, and asked prominent rabbis about the future of religion.

2:29Coleman Hughes:If you value nuance over hot takes and want to get past all of the noise, this show is for you. Search Wondering Jews with Mihal and Noam on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube and subscribe. All right, Warren Smith, thanks so much for coming on my show. Thanks for having me. So, you know, like many people, I think I first encountered you in your J.K. Rowling video. This video, I think people will remember, you are basically doing a kind of Socratic dialogue with one of your students at the time who believed J.K. Rowling was transphobic. and you modeled the perfect example of how a professor should lead you down a conversation like that.

3:21Coleman Hughes:And it turned out this student really hadn't thought so deeply about whether Rowling was actually transphobic. And it went fairly viral, I think, because it just stood out by contrast to the current online culture of just hurling insults without much deep thought. So I think it would be good for my audience to get a sense of like, who were you at that time? And also, what's your backstory? How did you get to be the kind of professor that engages that way? And then how did you get to be sort of putting this content on the internet? Sure. So I was teaching at a special ed school for students struggling with behavioral challenges.

4:18I still teach at Emerson College, one course a semester. But at the time, yeah, I was teaching full time. students that had been the public school system couldn't handle them for whatever reason so they would send them here so i was working in kind of a therapeutic way teaching multimedia content creation video editing photo editing 3d printing and so we would often be having conversations we were doing a newscast at a student they'd requested a specific student that student was feeling nervous so i was like let's just do a warm-up kind of like what we're doing now and i He said, just what do you want to talk about?

4:58And the student asked to talk about J.K. Rowling specifically, because I think he knew I was like a Harry Potter fan. And that's, so we just hit record and that's where that came from. And I had uploaded it to my teaching portfolio, I kind of would call it, which was my YouTube channel, which no one was really watching it. So I didn't think anyone would see it. And some people did see it and someone pulled it and put it on X, where I did have an account. I wasn't really active on X. And that's where it kind of, a bunch of people saw it. And a door kind of opened. You kind of reach a fork in the road at that point where it's like, you realize you're, it's one of those moments.

5:39It's probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to try and make something of it. I make very little money as a teacher. Every two weeks I would get a check for$1 ,400. So there was always this kind of looking for something, writing my backgrounds in filmmaking i was always working on projects in some way to try and connect with an audience so it was pretty interesting and to be in that position and i was i'm genuinely a fan of the space so i've been watching many of the people i've gotten to speak to at this point i've been watching their content for years and i never expected to actually get to talk to them but i felt like the door was kind of cracked open and it was like this is never going to happen again so So I'm going to try and make the most of this.

6:20So me and one other teacher set up this space where I am now. And once a week, we would just kind of record and try to see where it would take us. And that went for about two months. And then I got fired. So, and then, yeah, that's really how, and then I just went all in after getting fired.

6:39Coleman Hughes:So you got fired from the special ed school. Yeah. What was, can you talk about that? What was the reason for the firing and how did that go down? yeah i think it was primarily a lot there was a lot of people that were coming up to to me in the hallway the next day after that went viral they were like how are they how are you still how have you not been fired already and i just kind of acted like it didn't happen i didn't know what to do about it there's no putting it back in the bottle so but that didn't work pierce morgan wanted to have me on and i was in this mindset of like am i going to go through the door or not just like sure i'll go and pierce morgan and it was just like a 15 minute one-on-one and the next day after that i think that kind of pissed them off and because then i had to then the principal was like i don't know what to do about this like i don't blame you for doing that and wanting to do this he's like this is beyond me i don't blame you um the head business person who makes all the decisions because this is a business it's not like most public schools it was like yeah we need to have a meeting she called all the lawyers and we had a meeting and essentially they said well you didn't break any rules i have all the releases we have students put content online all the time it would be in my mind it's like logically it's no different than the music teacher who was helping me set up the space if a student and him were to record a song and that song were to go viral it's there was no student on camera it's just their voice but the subject matter there was concern around oh well if if there's mean comments and things like that that there's no way to control that and i think so they they told me like congratulations you didn't break any rules you handled it well and we know you're going to probably want to make the most of this and i think they were just trying to handle it legally and so i did i tried to make the most of it and i guess there was like a rule change but i things were just shit it's just a it's just a game you know or like i can understand why they would want to be like uh this might be a liability uh some people don't like what you said in there the problem with that is you know if anyone people should go back and watch the video it's very easy to find on your youtube channel but you you put them in a pickle because you were so respectful and restrained in how you led through the conversation.

9:09Coleman Hughes:You weren't foaming at the mouth with any kind of bigotry. You were literally asking Socratic style questions to the student and leading them by the hand to think about the issue more deeply. So there's just nothing in the video where you can say, okay, this guy was being nasty. And so that put them in a heart. It would have been easier for them, I imagine, if you had said something actually you know mean yeah they could have they they had every right to fire me I mean because at that school you sign a contract you can be fired for any reason and it's they have the right there it shouldn't be forced to pay me if they don't want to so but I honestly I think there was a big component of as the channel was getting some some traction it wasn't like what it is right now and it's still pretty small i'd say but i think it became kind of this this is a liability type thing it's just easier to get and they were just looking for a way to make that move and they finally and i think there was also a component of kind of waiting for the storm to pass because the public eye to move on and so that's what happened and i can understand where if they were just like yeah it's kind of a liability it's just not we understand you want to do this youtube thing it's kind of hard for us to take it on at the same time so we we got to part ways fine but that's not how it felt it felt like something else that was it was like they wanted me to sign an nda and then they were like we'll pay you if you sign this nda but you can never talk about being fired you can't and i couldn't afford a lawyer but i managed with i think i don't know if you've spoken with peter bogosin before but yes i have yeah he was the person to help he was he'd reached out to me and he was kind of this voice of reason he helped me find a lawyer and and there was this whole potential path that i could have gone down like yeah you'll be able to do these podcasts if you sue the school and take legal action and but i don't think there was a road to go it also just didn't morally feel like the right thing to do but also i don't think it would have ever worked but there was that moment of like what do i do and um and it's interesting like the day after pierce morgan that i came home because i did pierce morgan and i had to go to the fire department to do this certification training like directly from the van i got out of the van and like jumped in my car to go and then i got home from training and i got a call from the free press a reporter that claims they worked at the free press and the article never came out i don't know what but it was interesting the questions that she was asking she said she was based in la it might have been someone completely faking it but they were asking me questions like why would the school care why would they be worried about this and this was literally the day after it just happened well i mean some people are not going to be happy about this you know it's so anyways yeah so i i heard you on joe rogan I don't know when that was, maybe like a year ago or half a year ago.

12:14Coleman Hughes:And you talked a lot about what it was like to be at Emerson, I guess. Were you in a grad program there starting around 2016? Yeah, graduate student, getting my master's for three years. Okay, so what you said on Rogan, it struck me as so similar to my own origin story. So I was at Columbia undergrad. I was two years older than the other undergrads, but I started in 2016, same year as you were at Emerson. And presumably, I mean, you know, I don't know the culture of Emerson, but from what you described, it seemed extremely similar to the culture at Columbia, namely extremely progressive. of wokeness is the water that pretty much everyone swims in.

13:00Coleman Hughes:There is a certain what people used to call the oppression Olympics, this sense that the more racial and identity cards you had to play, the higher your status, right? Like the proverbial, the trans black disabled woman is at the top of the hierarchy simply by virtue of her identity cards. And obviously the straight white male is at the bottom of the heap, kids would claim to be oppressed by white supremacy, right? They would claim white supremacy is everywhere on campus. It was the exact same at Columbia. It was literally people writing in the newspaper that I, as a black student, encounter white supremacy every day on this campus.

13:45Coleman Hughes:And I was on the same campus as an equally black student looking for this alleged white supremacy and not finding it. And finding, in fact, that places like Emerson and Columbia are some of the most progressive spaces in the world with respect to being pretty hardcore against anti-black racism. You know, it's one of those things that if you haven't been on a college campus in the past 10 years, it can just sound alien to you. It can sound like we're making it up but i got you yeah it's it's actually i guess i wanted to know like what role did being you being you in that kind of environment play in your political evolution it it as you said it's unless you've seen it it's difficult to describe it or for people to believe it which is really if i were to boil down what i'm trying to do with my work now that's really because you can show it you can't describe it really but if there's video clips of it you can analyze those video clips and kind of shine a light on it but that had everything to do with it that and then talking to people in my own life at home as well they were still echoing the same ideas so it was larger than just college campuses it was mainstream thought at that point i would describe so that was weird too like jordan peterson kind of dropped on the scene right and that was I remember, whoa, this is really interesting.

15:15And then trying to point that out to friends that I grew up with, hey, have you seen this guy, Jordan Peterson? And I'd play five minutes of the Kathy Newman conversation and they're literally recoiling from it. And I thought, that's really interesting. That's strange. No, it's so bizarre. You have to see it to believe it because Emerson college it's not it's it's definitely one of the most liberal i can't imagine a campus being more liberal i mean i bet i haven't been on all the camp i can't compare them in that way but it was extremely liberal you've never been to barnard then no i haven't been to barnard but but emerson is up there and i could i would i would guess and yeah they had students protesting that emerson was too racist and they wanted they had specific demands and i saw the faculty kowtow in fear for their careers and that was when i was trying to transition into teaching i was doing a lot of ta work and i was scheduled to start teaching my first class not as a ta but actually teach the course with undergrads yeah and i remember um one of the preff they had this web this facebook group was the only shred of evidence they had.

16:32And they would just, I mean, there was things at Emerson like anonymous bias reporting. There's this social justice center, literally called the social justice center. They recently rebranded that to the office of equal opportunity, which is interesting because they're starting to, it's still this kind of a charade, but they're switching up their lingo. And there was anonymous bias report. People were putting things on this Facebook group and this teacher who was, I had been TAing for and she wanted me to teach her class was one of the professors that had been some something she said that someone didn't like and i talked to i think i told joe rogan about this briefly but this student had not been coming to class or doing any work and she was talking to me about this just before the protest like yeah so warren remember when you're teaching this class don't let the students run all over you like be fair hold them to account then there's the protest right after it she's like yeah warren remember that conversation I had I was I was wrong I forgot to take into account their lived experience and the fact that this student is black so I wasn't taking into account how difficult it is to be black at Emerson and that's why they weren't coming to class and didn't do any of their work and so yeah I was wrong to say you should fail them there's exceptions that can be made I remember that moment specifically I remember where I was standing so it was it was a strange culture.

17:55Yeah.

17:56Coleman Hughes:What she's saying is that it's okay to lower your expectations for this student because of their race. And that's the phrase for that is the bigotry of low expectations. And I think there, you know, what I never understood about this way of thinking is why it is so comfortable with allowing, giving people a pass to take advantage. Because if you understand, like if I'm a black student at an elite school like this, and I understand that my professors will actually let me off the hook for doing no work and not showing up to class, and all I have to do is play up my sense of victimhood and trauma as a black person, that is extremely tempting.

18:49Coleman Hughes:Like you are dangling. Like my view about this is that human beings are mostly by default lazy. Like this is just my memory of being a student. I happen to be a very good student. But if you told me you don't have to go to class today, if you say this one thing and there's no penalty, I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to stay home and do something way more fun. If you're telling me I don't have to study for that test, I don't have to turn in that essay, and all I have to do is perform this set of words, well, I mean, a lot of people are going to do that. And in my view, it's like this sort of failure of putting yourself actually in the shoes of another self-interested human being and understanding, having this totally weirdly naive view that like my view is as zora neale hurston said black people are no better and no worse than any other people and human human beings if you give them a total pass to like get a good result without putting in any of the work most people will go down that path yeah people are like water but you're right by and large people are going to take the path of least resistance.

20:02It's easier to be foolish than to be wise. We see this throughout history. That's why it's easier to fall in line with these very appealing narratives. My theory is that we are narrative creatures. We make sense of the complexity of the world through stories. And when you're being sold this story that everyone around you is buying into, and it feels good to be a victim, and the story tells you that you're a victim, and that you're being oppressed in this, and it's all a power game and the stakes are high. That's the core law of narrative is that conflict drives story. You need the stakes to be high for a story to be successful.

20:42And those components all fall into, I would argue it is postmodern thinking, though most of these students would never be able to tell you what postmodernism is, But they're just echoing the story at that point. But we can trace the thinking back and see the components very clearly.

21:01Coleman Hughes:And am I right that there was at Emerson, when you were there, something similar to Brett Weinstein's fiasco at Evergreen College where white people were expected to be silent for some period of time? Yeah. Yeah, so the day after the protest, I was taking a pedagogy course taught by the dean of undergrad, this undergrad student body. So it was a great opportunity, great class. Met once a week, it was a four-hour class. And we were joined that night by the head of the Social Justice Center. And there was also the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which they have since changed the name.

21:44And I remember it because I'd never met them before and they were sitting there. there was probably 10 students in this room and the whole point of the class pedagogy the philosophy of teaching the art of techniques for teaching and the entire four hours were spent addressing the crisis on campus around racism because the protest that just happened so they devoted the time to allowing the students to voice their grievances so that we could remedy them. But when I spoke up, I, I, I asked the only thing I said, I said, what can I do? Cause at that point I was new to all this too. I've thought, geez, would they genuinely, there, there must be a problem here.

22:25What can I do? I had no, I remember feeling like to this one guy, he was talking, I was like, I had no idea you felt that way that every time you come to class, you feel essentially victimized in a sense what can i do as a white person right and and the response i got was just don't talk uh secede your space give your space to everyone else and just for the next four hours just listen so it wasn't comparable to what brett went through at evergreen but there are components of that still it's the same ideology it just played out differently but yeah I was told told point blank to just not talk and to to listen and to give up my space based upon the color of my skin and I and then they were also talking about decolonializing the canon because I rode the elevator down after class with the dean it was just me and him in the elevator I remember him he was frustrated but there was the sense of fear like he didn't want to show it too much.

23:29But I remember him sighing and saying under his breath, decolonialize the canon, like shaking his head, like he was not happy with it, but he was still going along.

23:39Coleman Hughes:Yeah. I mean, I find that very interesting because if you went back to the civil rights movement, say, and you said to Martin Luther King or Bayard Rustin, I'm a white person. I'm hearing, I'm hearing you, like, what can I do? They would have pulled out a list of 10 things you could do today concretely. Write a letter to your congressman saying we want to get rid of the Jim Crow laws that prevent us from riding wherever we want on a bus. Write a letter to your congressman in support of the civil rights legislation that has been proposed that would do this specific thing that would outlaw literacy tests for voting rights.

24:25Coleman Hughes:Like they would have a very specific program of complaints and very specific ways you could address each one concretely. And they did that because the oppression they faced was actually real and rooted in legal boundaries that circumscribed their life and could in principle and in practice be changed. But if you go to these, you know, these activists at Emerson or any similar college and you say, okay, I'm hearing your pain. What can I do? And instead of giving you a list of policies that are harming them directly, they say, well, what I need you to do is to be silent, like to actually silence yourself.

25:11Well, because they're claiming that the, my racism is subconscious so it's coming through microaggressions so there's no need for real objective evidence they would argue that it's no less real though the oppression is no less real it's just systemic so yes yeah there there are not laws in place that i can point to like the busing laws but that doesn't mean that the dynamics are no less real i disagree with that but that's the argument that you're gonna you're gonna face and once it becomes subconscious i don't i'm not even so you're telling me and this is the argument that's made you're telling me that i'm so deeply racist that i can't even see my own racism so i don't even know when i'm being raised that therefore the need for evidence goes out the window it's a very effective but they genuinely believe it though it is also convenient because there's impossible to it's not impossible because it's not built on logic.

26:11Coleman Hughes:Yeah. I think, you know, I've always felt that part of what is going on in those cases, this is specifically at elite universities, a place like Emerson or Columbia, is that some of the black kids there and Hispanic kids, some of them feel genuinely socially alienated from their environment. And there could be many reasons for that. So one reason could be if you are an affirmative action admit in other words if if the average sat score of the kids sitting next to you in class is like 2200 and yours is like 1900 then you are going to feel stupid compared to the people you are around even though you are like way above average intelligence in the general population.

27:06Coleman Hughes:So what happens is like, as you know, teachers by default teach towards the middle of the class, wherever that level of preparedness is, wherever the level of natural smarts is, you're going to tend to teach towards the middle because you don't want to teach too slow for the smartest kids or too fast for the kids that are struggling. So if you admit systematically, which affirmative action does, a particular group of students, whether that is student athletes, children of professors, or black and Hispanic students under a lower set of guidelines, they're going to be finding themselves towards the bottom of every class.

27:42Coleman Hughes:Now, that's a very hard thing to face, right? Because you're constantly feeling stupid, even though you're not stupid, just because of the level of the kids that are around you. And then on top of that, if you don't come from all the same sorts of networks of private schools, feeder schools and stuff that tend to feed into these colleges, well, maybe you don't really socially mesh. like maybe you want you really would like to get into that like sorority but they don't like they don't really like you for some reason and it's not because you're black but it is correlated with like you know the black girls aren't going to get invited to that sorority not because they're black again but it's like it can feel that way if you're from a kind of a socially and culturally different part of the country than most of the kids around you.

28:44Coleman Hughes:That's what it is to be, to come from a minority culture, right? Like by definition, you're not being represented as often. You're not seeing, you're not seeing yourself in the mainstream culture. So then you put that all together and you have black and Hispanic kids feeling socially alienated. And then, you know, I forget whose quote this is, but like given the choice between blaming yourself and taking responsibility and trying to take good steps and blaming the world for your bad feelings, most people choose to blame the world, blame some aspect. So I think part of what happens is what they're telling you is like, I feel alienated.

29:27Coleman Hughes:Like I feel low status here. Like I feel like a low status person here at this school. And there's no specific policy of the school that is creating that. And there's also no genuine animus or racial animus towards me. But I still feel low status. And I'm going to basically blame whiteness around me, you know, the white culture. and I think that's sort of where some of it stems from and so that gets translated as this language of racism because that works really well. Like if you say the word racism, the white liberals around you will suddenly pay attention to you and perk up and be like, wow, like it gives you enormous power but I think some of it is actually downstream of those very liberal policies that are intended to help black people.

30:25yeah but it's true because it's a strange dynamic because at the same time looking back at my time at emerson i would claim that there was real racism it's as i've just as a numbers game as a white guy i was a minority first of all the the majority were actually chinese students i had several classes every class this is not an exaggeration and most people think it is most classes were over 50 % Chinese. Most of them would probably be around 75%. I had several where I went in and I was not the only non-American. I was the only non-Chinese student. They were all speaking in Mandarin or whatnot. And that was very challenging.

31:10But no, I would say that there was real racism at Emerson. There was that dynamic that you're describing that is the result of policies. There was this, like I was trying to make a, I did make my thesis around World War II. I originally was going to do it just on Winston Churchill. And I was told, well, Winston Churchill is racist. I was writing a movie about a guy who built a flying machine that looked like a gypsy wagon. I was told, well, that's racist. You can't say, or it was politically incorrect. There was a real sense of, if you're a white male, you have to like dance a specific dance to be included.

31:52If you don't, then you're, it is not political. I wasn't political. It was just the housing fair when I first arrived, they go around and did pronouns and I'm dyslexic and I could not remember what a pronoun was. I had never heard of this before. And I was trying, they were going in the circle i was trying to pick up on the pattern of like what are they doing here like literally this and um when it came to me i feel stupid now because it's so obvious what a pronoun is i said something ridiculous like yeah my name is warren smith i'm from north carolina it's like us all i said something and i don't remember and everyone like stared daggers at me and i had no idea what was happening and i quickly got this reputation of because I did a little documentary about with the Chinese students, like what made you want to come to Emerson?

32:48I just thought this was really interesting that there was so many Chinese, like directly from China just to study here. And this was not unique just to Emerson. And so I did a small documentary about that. And there was this, like I could not get a single student to work on my thesis film. I did it all by myself outside the school with my own equipment, with someone from North Carolina when I went home over the holidays, filmed it mostly there.

33:12Coleman Hughes:Why? Because they didn't want to be in the film? No one would, yeah, they didn't want to work with me on it. Why was that? I don't know. I don't know, honestly. Is it part of that you had some kind of reputation from your other stumbles? There was definitely, yeah, there was this one class. It was, I still have the textbook. Cultural Media Studies. Chapter one in this textbook is literally Karl Marx. and is talking about the power dynamics of at this art studying this at an art school of how the audience consumes media content art and how that's used in the power dynamics of the west chapter one carl marx and we were talking one day about uh can we control the internet and 80 % of the students are Chinese in the class, 15 students.

34:08And I remember I said, that's really interesting. Well, I'm not sure that we can, the government can control the internet. I'm not sure that would work in America. We can ask like, what do you guys think? How's it working out in China? And the professor goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, can't say that. And like literally stopped it right there. I thought, what are we doing? This is a graduate level class talking about this topic but we can't talk about that someone told me warren you were born in the wrong century i feel like i don't know why because of that comment not because of that comment it might have been because of my interest in winston churchill who was i was told point blank by people that my approach to winston churchill was flawed because he was racist and represented he's one of the figures that is a great villain of the the white male you know the the colonial apparatus so i i don't and it's been so many years this was 16 17 17 18 19 and graduated in 2019 but those are just some examples that popped to my mind booth yeah yeah i mean i have uh we've had very similar experiences i mean it's it's

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35:26Coleman Hughes:in some way that the attacks on me were a little different because i'm black and hispanic obviously so no one was calling me a straight white male and and i was under no pressure to condemn my own identity like you mentioned that there is a way to get within their good graces if you're a white guy, but what you have to do is like put down white guys. You have to be like, you have to be very like disparaging towards yourself as your ticket in the door and accept a certain level of subordinated status, which is a really unnatural thing to do. And, and so I always felt I respected more the white people that didn't do that because like in order to if you do that what you're basically saying is you are so desperate to be liked that you're willing to just accept blanket discrimination against your identity as as the price of entry into this room of like being liked and I always thought there was something really disgusting about people that did that like if you really believe all the stuff, it's like, okay, you're a true believer.

36:43Coleman Hughes:And then you could actually have an interesting conversation. But if it's clear you're doing it as just the method of being liked in this particular weird environment you find yourself in, I found that to be very off-putting. And I respected more the people that were like, no, I'm not doing that. Why would I ask anyone of any race, anywhere in the world, to say the price of entry into this social club is you've got to condemn yourself first on the basis of your race. Like it's so, there's something really sick about it. And so that was all around Columbia too when I was there. I'm curious if you pay much attention to what President Trump has been doing vis-a-vis Harvard and Columbia and other schools in order to try to pressure these schools to reverse all this stuff.

37:39Coleman Hughes:Do you pay much attention to that, and do you have an opinion on it? Yeah, I mean, enough to be able to, I can share my thoughts on it. I have real concerns around taxpayer money going to these universities. I'm trying to remember if Emerson is taking any of that money. I don't, I should know that, but I know Harvard is. and the justification you're going to get if you debate this is well they're conducting important research but then when you talk to professors there and i worked at harvard as a videographer recording classes i'm not like a faculty there or anything but i've spent a lot of i did my thesis at harvard spent a lot of time in the archives there and have spoken with many professors some admit that a lot of this research is it's not going it doesn't really justify the taxpayer money and i i agree that if if there's actual and what i i would argue that you would see actual racism it's just it's just the opposite of what they think it is like if you're telling people that your value and your ability to get grants for films or for example if your race is playing a role in that if you're implementing equity there's a real it's just illogical and I think you could make a very strong case that you should not be getting tax payer money.

39:04I understand the concerns around freedom of speech and the, the concerns around Israel, Palestine. And if that, I don't know how, what is true. We can, we could come at this as if X, then Y now. So if X is, well, there, there are students that are sharing their opinion on Palestine or whatnot, I'm against that. But if there is what we're describing with this racism towards white males or white people, if that's going towards Jewish students as well, there's a real problem there. So I think you could make a strong case. And how Trump goes about many of these things is going to be like the bull in the China shop.

39:45And I'm not going to agree with everything he does and how he does it. But the underlying philosophy, the underlying problem is there. I've seen it. And it's strange. So I can understand the argument. But does that answer that question?

39:58Coleman Hughes:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's similar to my opinion. I think it's a real problem. And if Trump limited himself just to the reasonable version of a response, then I would be behind it 100%. But he tends to find the reasonable version and then blow past it and do something else. Yeah. So like a good example I use is the, uh, I haven't talked about this publicly, but the alligator Alcatraz is like, to me, I was like, what are you doing? And the fact that you're bragging, it's be like one thing. If you were to, we have to build this facility and it happens to be in a swamp. All right. That's one thing.

40:36It's another thing to brag about how efficient it is to use alligators as prison guards and it's free labor. They're highly effective they just sit there and then if someone does what they're they make great prison guards you know so we're going to incorporate that into our brand what we're going to even call it and then we're going to make t-shirts it's like so yeah to me i was like oh but there's going to be things like that and i think that's kind of what we're describing with the uh the with harvard and the other there's real problems with the ivy league dynamic it's a really interesting conversation to be had around that.

41:13I really fell into a really deep hole that was very interesting though, which is what my thesis was on in the lead up to World War II, the role that Harvard played in World War II where Roosevelt used James Bryan Conant, the president of Harvard, to go meet with Winston Churchill because he couldn't do it because he was up for re-election for his third term third or fourth term which is a crazy thought and so the president of harvard flies to meet with churchill in the middle of the blitz and then they smuggle back all this intelligence build a secret lab and start that led to oppenheimer and we saw that movie we saw how that story went but that was all going way before pearl harbor ever even happened there was this entire secret gear up they knew war was inevitable and you find all of this written and then looking at it through the lens of the student body was really interesting.

42:05But what really interested me was the power concentration of how many senators sons were there. The president of the student body was God's son to Roosevelt. His roommate was John F. Kennedy. His older bro, brother Joe was at college at the same time. He was supposed to be president, dies in the war. JFK later becomes president. It's just this wheel is unseen, but has, uh, it's a strange, it's a strange state of affairs that we are in today. I don't know how to get back from it. I don't know how to save it. As scientific discovery changes the landscape, advances in cancer care may offer new hope

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43:20Coleman Hughes:Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. What role do you think professors are playing in all of these problems? Because I remember, you know, I tried to pick my classes wisely so that I was avoiding most of the classes with indoctrinated professors that were basically woke ideologues. But I did end up taking some of those classes, not only because I was curious, but because, you know, whatever, my friend wanted to take it with me. So I've been in the class with the professor who is literally the caricature of what Fox News believes woke professors are, down to the look and the beliefs and the style of teaching.

44:05Coleman Hughes:I even wrote one of my first articles, I talked about how I was in two different classes reading Foucault. So I think it was probably History of Sexuality or one of Discipline and Punish, whatever, one of Foucault's famous books. and in one class I had a great professor and we were allowed to disagree with Foucault if we thought he was full of shit we could point out his logical flaws you could agree with it if you wanted you could say anything you wanted as long as it was based in the text and in in some kind of good faith engagement professor didn't would would similar to what you did in the JK Rowling video would ask you critical questions about how you're thinking through your opinion and hopefully lead you to a more interesting resolution.

44:53Coleman Hughes:This other class, we read the exact same book, and she was teaching it as a preacher would teach you the Bible, you know, like the most doctrinaire form of religious instruction. Like, this book is true. Everything Foucault says about sexuality being constructed is correct, and if you don't agree, you are part of the problem. These are the kinds of things she would say. And that filters into the consumption of art. So modern art, for example, I was taking that course and her husband was taught by this professor. Her husband has a power position, was like the assistant dean of the program. So if I was going to teach, I had to be on his good side.

45:34She was a cool teacher. She was cool, fun, but she was pushing a doctrine. And this was modern art, yet that's still reflecting Foucault and postmodernism all the way through because it's really an attack on them. There's no standards. Everything's a social construct. The modern art, the banana nailed to the wall, is beautiful. It's just a matter of perspective. There's no such thing as right behavior versus wrong behavior. There are no objective lines in life. And this, we can see how this echoes through all of these subjects. There were some cases where I would have, yeah, it's totally fine if you want to.

46:14It's important for students to talk about postmodernism, Marx, and all of these things, but do it like you were describing in a way where it's, you can challenge things. But when I'm in the class, that professor that shut that conversation down when I asked about the Chinese students was like, how is it working in China? Like, what are you genuinely asking it like that? He was like that caricature. He ran, he, I don't know if he's still doing, probably is. He was running this thing called the Engagement Lab. And this is an example. This is what Emerson's research would be. We were talking about Harvard and that's the justification for the tax money.

46:47This is what Emerson would describe as their lab for research. And it's just researching how people engage with content. there's no re and money is going towards that there's no real there's nothing tangible that's beyond it's just reinforcing these ideologies and that's the kind of so let even if that professor had not shut down that conversation and he would not he would challenge me on certain things and i was always one to like just call out the logic when i see it and i think that's what kind of led to that the students kind of othering me it's not that i wasn't political i was just like the banana on the wall nailed to the wall that's not art like i'm sorry like this is stupid like in more words than that you would actually kind of get into the theory of it but if you were to say that banana is not i don't i think we're going down a weird road here and this is why even if the student the professor allows that conversation to occur all the students in the class are like, oh, this is because it's going against this deep story that they've there.

47:54You think that there is a right way to behave. You think that there are beauty standards. These are oppressive ideas of the, of this social construct of the West, which is just reinforcing. And of course you do. You're a white guy. You're a male too. And you're straight. So it's like so there's no there are good professors there one professor who retired he got fed up with it but he has appeared on my youtube channel has helped but i just got off the off a call yesterday with sam richards and his wife at soc 119 he's the professor i told joe about joe rogan about this i think this is the only guy who's actively teaching that i see doing this online they live stream everything he teaches sociology at penn state and i've made a couple videos on him but like the day after charlie kirk got shot he talked to his students about it in a way that was real and he's really trying and he's pushing them and he's doing it in a an effective way and that was the video that i've never had a video perform like that because it was So it's the conversation that needed to be happening with the students, which are people are, it's like a window into the sausage being made that you can't find anywhere else.

49:16And the whole theme of the call was like, how do we keep this from getting shut down? His wife was like, I don't know how the college is even letting Sam do this for all these years. She's like, I'm amazed that because it's the same philosophy that got me shut down because it's a liability and what the there's potential for bad comments and things like that it's just easier for the college to say it's no we're not going to allow you to live stream this and i think that's why no one else does it but that's honestly if you took what sam is doing and you did that at every college i personally would be like i'm paying 60 grand a year i don't want to it feels like a waste of money for me to be, but a lot of those students need to be challenged on these topics.

50:02And I think, I think a lot of them are taking it because it's just, they view it as an easy grade. But when you watch the videos, he, he's there now and then he really does do something important. So they're out there. That's my point. The professors are out there, but they are far and few between.

50:18Coleman Hughes:Yeah. You know, one thing I've always wondered is there is this constant dismissal of straight white men. And when it comes to the canon, you were mentioning decolonizing the canon. And this is a debate we had every single year at Columbia. We have a sort of, we're sort of famous for having the, what we call the core curriculum, which is one of the school, like the central selling point of the school relative to the competitors like Harvard and Princeton and Yale is that Columbia has had the same core curriculum roughly for, you know, whatever, 200 years. Like we're reading the same people that whoever went to Columbia a hundred years ago read and that puts you in part of a tradition.

51:03Coleman Hughes:And that's kind of a story that the school sells and tells. And that core curriculum is like constantly, constantly under attack every single year for having too many dead white males. It's so dumb. But like one thing that I was... So we've talked about like Foucault and Marx in this conversation, right? Foucault wasn't straight, but they're both dead white males. In Marx's case, he is like on record having called black people the N-word in German, the equivalent. obviously Foucault has a dodgy quasi-pedophilic history in certain ways why is it that those two people have escaped this criticism of being dead white males because they can their defenders claim they're misunderstood and that we are not accurately representing the vast complexity of their ideas and it's a tactic that's often used you over complicate to obfuscate.

52:11You just put so much out there. There's a number of YouTube channels that are defenders of these ideas, and they love to attack Jordan Peterson, and the common attack is always he's not accurately representing these ideas. Personally, my favorite video I've ever made was looking at Joe Rogan talking to a postmodern professor, a professor who specializes in postmodernism so that it removes that tactic from the table because you're hearing the words come directly out of this person's mouth. So I'm not really critiquing Foucault or Marx. It's like, he's literally claiming that morality and ethics are superstition.

52:57Everything ultimately, because knowledge, because we don't have absolute knowledge and knowledge is going to change, we're going to gain new knowledge therefore there's no such really such thing as knowledge and we've seen where this goes that he's literally in the same video he's claiming that yeah male female their social constructs penis is just a word therefore it's you can't make it up and it that's why it does well it did well because of that but that's why it's so that video meant so much to me because it's so important. It really goes to the heart of everything. I've done two on that professor.

53:36One is him debating, I'm forgetting the other professor's name. I'm sure you've seen his work. He's talking to Peterson a number of times. It's just the same tactic. It's the same problem of why it's so difficult to challenge postmodernism because people's eyes glaze over because it can be so difficult to wrestle with because everything's malleable. There's no objective truth. So when you're talking to someone like that, it can go, it feels like it can just go anywhere. It feels like they're, and you're not standing on a foundation. I describe it in the most simple form as postmodernism claims that there is no such thing as objective truth, that objective truth exists.

54:20We're constantly trying to map onto it and reach it. We're trying to understand it. And that's what we describe as knowledge. And yes, that's going to grow. And that's why what you said is so important about the canon. We can trace back the first century, all the way to the first century, how that map of the fabric of reality has expanded and expanded. And then postmodernism comes in and just completely upends that. It claims that there's no, even if we don't, even if we can, And it's true. We cannot articulate. We don't fully understand objective truth. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

54:55Right.

54:56Coleman Hughes:Have you heard of Thomas Nagel's book, The Last Word? No. So yeah, this philosopher Thomas Nagel, who's fantastic, he has a short book called The Last Word. And it is a masterful refutation of postmodernism. I mean, one point he makes is, if you're going to argue there is no objective truth, that you're open to the question, well, is that itself an objective truth? Yeah, it's a paradox. And so he's not the only one to make this point, but it's, postmodernism actually refutes itself. It is an incoherent philosophy. yeah they would counter that by claiming no i'm not claiming an absolute truth claim okay then why should i take it seriously right right right i'm just saying that all of our understanding is flawed in some way and all it's true that language is a social construct literally it's created by human beings their words are tools every italian is different an italian came from somewhere, but they take that to the next level.

56:08It's like, therefore, all words are malleable, but words are so, because words are the tools, that's why they're important, because that is how we map onto reality. We see where this is going today. We've seen the consequence of this. It's the source of endless debate because, well, we can just change what that word means. And that's postmodernism in a nutshell. It's like, it means what we say it means. But what's really getting concerning is when you take it to ethics, morality is superstition. He says that line. You will hear him say that sentence. And that echoes directly to what we're seeing today in the response of Charlie Kerch's death.

56:41It's just a matter of perspective. Yeah, like people celebrating his death. People at Emerson were throwing parties celebrating this. And that's the sentiment on campus. It's not like I'm going out and sherry picking cases. It's like, that's the mainstream majority thought at my college. And I claim like that's objectively, I can say that's objectively wrong behavior, and this is why. Even if we can't quite articulate it, I believe that we can feel it. There's something ingrained within us that echoes, that mirrors that fabric of reality, but that's kind of a spiritual idea, and postmodernism is like, absolutely not having that.

57:19So, I think we're in a real state of affairs today.

57:22Coleman Hughes:I remember one of my favorite posts from Scott Alexander, who's a great writer. He used to go by Slate Star Codex. Now, I think He goes by Astral Star Codex. He has one of the best blogs on the internet, in my opinion. I remember a long time ago, he had this post where he just, he made the very simple observation that when Osama bin Laden was killed, whenever that was in Obama's, at the end of Obama's first term, you know, the thing that liberals and progressives said was essentially, look, no one should celebrate a death. Like, obviously, Osama bin Laden was a terrible guy and a mass murderer.

58:02But we shouldn't be so glib and so...

58:05Coleman Hughes:We should never be celebrating anyone dying, right? Even if it's a bad person. And then, shortly after that, Margaret Thatcher died. And all the same people were, like, dancing around singing ding-dong, the witch is dead, you know? And he made this point because it was such an obvious example of how partisanship blinds you to simple principles. Like, either it's true that we should never celebrate someone getting killed or it isn't. And you should be consistent with that principle. Now, my view on this is like, I guarantee, I condemned Charlie Kirk's death in the strongest possible terms. And I guarantee you, if the left-wing equivalent of Charlie Kirk was assassinated tomorrow, I would say the same exact thing.

58:51Coleman Hughes:I would not mince words about it. because I really do try to, to the best of my ability, not be sucked in by the vacuum of partisanship and actually think first about what my principles are and then try to apply them in a nonpartisan way. Now, I'm sure that I'm not perfect in that, but I make an effort, at least, and I think it's very important to make that effort. Yeah, what's really been disturbing to me beyond obviously celebrating his death is wrong, but it's disturbing to me the people that don't celebrate it and they're like, no, political violence is bad, of course. This is really the dominant sentiment because most people aren't stupid enough to openly admit that they would celebrate it, but many people will say it was bad that it happened.

59:42What's your main concern? Well, my main concern is that someone will come along and pick up his mantle and carry on his ideas. What's really bothering me are people that are, i think you could make a logical case they're blatantly lying about many things that he has said and most people because they're viewing it through the partisan lens they don't take the time to really delve into the logic of what he's saying around black pilots like that's blatantly racist they claim and it's just like it's really frustrating because it's just it really bothers me when people are like misrepresenting what is and it goes back to the idea of it's all just a matter of perspective.

1:00:18So I've been trying to kind of like shine a light on that. But like my immediate response when it happened, my brother called me and he was like, yeah, this isn't about, this is the response of most people. I think it was like, this is not left versus right. This is like good versus evil. But then I'm like, wait a minute. That's the exact sentiment that caused someone to shoot him. They thought they were genuinely fighting evil. We have to be very careful about that, but that doesn't mean evil doesn't exist. Like a really good question for a postmodernist is, is evil a social construct? And see how they respond to it.

1:00:52Because I think the capacity lives within all of us. It's ingrained within that fabric of reality.

1:00:57Coleman Hughes:No, but I think Steven Pinker has made a similar point that let's imagine that you have a politics of anti-racism, very progressive, very left-wing. Core to your politics are going to be certain objective truth claims, like slavery was a real thing and slavery was bad and the slaves weren't happy. That's just one example, right? If those are your politics, you're not going to want slavery is bad to just be an opinion. It has to be a fact. It has to be a fact that you can demonstrate, right? And so it's even refutes the political instincts that people on the left have if they say there are no objective truths, because there's got to be objective truths, even for your own politics to be persuasive to anybody.

1:01:49Coleman Hughes:You know, the Holocaust really happened. That's not an opinion. That's an objective truth that can be demonstrated. And so all of these political projects rest on top of claims about objective truth that are like the engines of the emotionality of that project. And so you can't actually, even just in their own self-interest, they should not want to get rid of objective truth. I mean, I just, let me tell you one other story that I was, it just came back to me when you were talking earlier. I remember in college being in this class called Philosophy of Feminism. And this is the class where we were reading Foucault and it was the professor that was teaching it as gospel.

1:02:35Coleman Hughes:And obviously, this professor believed that gender is a social construct. We were reading Judith Butler, I think Thomas LaCour, all these people. And keep in mind, like, I am absolutely terrified to speak my mind in this class. Like, fucking mortified. Nobody ever challenges the professor in this class. Nobody challenges the texts we're reading. Nobody says, I disagree, because it is literally just like everyone is just silently nodding along and suppressing whatever critical thoughts that they had because this professor is just so intimidating, right? so for some reason I got the nerve to like make a comment at one point because I just I don't know I guess I had enough of sitting through all of this without ever being able to have an interesting discussion but I was very clever so I tried to figure out like how could I possibly make a point about gender being real that a woman like her might possibly accept.

1:03:48Coleman Hughes:So instead of citing all the research on biological gender differences in humans, instead of saying that all of our closest animal cousins, including chimpanzees, have obvious behavioral differences between the genders, that can't be a social construct because they're chimps. They don't have culture, really. They only have their hard wiring. All that stuff I knew she would dismiss as bullshit. And sexist bullshit meant to uphold the blah, blah, blah. So my idea was, okay, what if I just cite the fact that when transgender people begin hormonal interventions, like when a female, a natal female, begins taking testosterone, own.

1:04:38Coleman Hughes:Their lived experience is often that their psychology and their emotions change. They find themselves getting angry a little bit more quickly, for instance. They find themselves being a little bit more irritable. They find themselves being a little bit more aggressive, being a little bit more assertive, right? And so my idea was what if, like, if trans people are reporting as their lived experience, that when they start taking testosterone, it starts affecting their emotions and their personality, why would it then not be true that the half of the human race that naturally has those hormones more won't exhibit similar differences from the other half, right?

1:05:27Coleman Hughes:And I thought this was very clever because the argument is resting on the lived and reported experiences of transgender people, which in her worldview, she has to take seriously. Right? What'd she say? She had some kind of hand-waving response where she was like, and I framed it, I was careful to frame it as, what would Foucault say to someone who said this? Because, you know, like, this is the layer of defenses I had to put on my argumentative fort in order to, like, get it through. and she goes, well, you know, Foucault kind of has a way of dealing with that. But rest assured that he thought of that and he has a good response.

1:06:11Coleman Hughes:Anyway, moving on. Like she had no answer. Then Foucault has no answer, obviously. But I tell that story only to say that like, you know, I'm like, as far as human beings go, I'm a little bit more of like a speak my mind person, obviously that's like why i'm in this profession but even even me i was so afraid to simply raise an objection that i had to like invent like the most circuitous yeah you know possible argument that could fit into this tiny opening in her worldview and and i was even terrified to do it And like, this is the, this is the culture of elite college campuses. Yeah. It's people, it's just listening to that.

1:07:03It's part of, I just wish I could sit down with that person. Now when you're a student in the moment, it's, you're not making content. There's no camera. I wish I could sit down with that person on camera. If people don't, they're going to listen to that. I think it's, they don't understand that it's real and how, how many people there are that there's no way to the fact that you're right they they don't respond they just hand wave it away someone asked me just the other day why is it that people constantly just shut down the conversation with various forms and that's really why because it's not built i think that's why it's not built on logic that's all they can do is do some form of hand waving say well she thought about it or he thought about it for coat thought about it's like

1:07:48Coleman Hughes:yeah yeah um so before i let let you go i want i want to um get your thoughts on sort of like how how we fix this because it's a it's a big problem trump has his approach to fixing it which we both agree is like a bull in a china shop and in any event trump will only be around for three more years and if history is any guide he'll probably be replaced by a democrat because americans we always vote for the opposite of whatever we just had. So there's like kind of a debate between people in my world who all agree about the problem. That debate is, do we try to fix the institutions that we have or do we just say, screw it, they're gone.

1:08:41Coleman Hughes:That ship has sailed. We have to create new ones. And to be clear, you can do both at the same time. But I have taught at University of Austin in Texas, the new university started by Joe Lonsdale, Barry Weiss, among other Neil Ferguson. And what they're trying to do there very successfully, in my view, is build a new kind of college that basically puts the healthy software into its DNA right from the start. So I taught a course there called The Legacy of Slavery for three months. And the course was literally, we're going to read half what liberals have to say about the legacy of slavery and half what conservatives have to say about the legacy of slavery.

1:09:27Coleman Hughes:And I'm going to try to pick the highest quality on both ends. And we're going to talk about it. And you're allowed to agree with anyone. You're allowed to disagree. and I'm, you know, I have my own opinions, but mostly I'm going to try to be leading you by the hand into the best version of your own opinion, whatever that is. And so it's an example of like starting a new institution. There's always a worry, a concern with that, that like, you know, it's hard to start stuff from scratch and it can feel fake until it feels real. Whereas these institutions that have been around for 300 years have, they just have a certain level of credibility in the bank, no matter how much they mess that up.

1:10:13Coleman Hughes:So that's all to say, you know, what do you think people who care about this issue should do, work within the system or try to create new alternatives? Yeah, so that's the solution for the dynamics in the classroom is what you just described. And that's what people like Sam Richards are doing. And honestly, I don't think it's that difficult to return to that. But there's other problems at play. I think it's a real problem that student loans are issued at the rate that they're issued. There's clear incentive structure. There's nothing else that you can apply for in that way. And you're just given the money like that.

1:10:48And it creates this vicious cycle that yes, these places are businesses. Then we bring in the the tax issue that we discussed earlier the people i don't think many people realize just how old colleges in america are though and i don't want to lose that because it's similar to i don't want for the same reason i don't want to throw out the canon or decolonize or decolonize the canon i mean harvard is older than america the first universities were established in the in year 1000 a.d and it's oxford cambridge a little bit after that but it's i so there's a these component these financial components that we've that need to be fixed there's that there's the dynamics in the classroom we can fix that it's absolutely possible the third component is how technology and information is changing all of this things like youtube and we don't even really understand the impact of these technologies and how like it's this exponential growth that's i mean it's just going to shoot up and you could say maybe ai is the end point we don't even know what's going to lay beyond that but the ability for human minds to propagate all of that information that was established through that university system.

1:12:17It used to be you had to go to university to go get access to the libraries, to get access to the information. Now, all this information is flowing in a way that it's never been flowing before. We don't know what the psychological impacts of that are. So it's this perfect storm. My personal advice to anyone listening is that I think this is what Jordan Peterson tapped into and why he caught lightning in a bottle is that he was trying to remind people of this truth that we all already know, that nothing will improve your life more than living in accordance with the fabric of reality. That thing that we've been talking about, that postmodernism is completely contradictory to.

1:12:58Imagine two boats. One boat is sailing in accordance with the tides, the winds, the fabric of what is. And then you have a boat that's like, there's no such thing as currents and wind and work we can strap an outboard motor on this thing and just force our way through on this it's a which boat do you think is going to get where it needs to go more efficiently and faster so be that boat right and that is what the universities need to return to it needs to the entire canon it seems that's what it originally was in the pursuit of it was all in the pursuit of how to live in accordance with what actually is and how do we increase our map of knowledge, our map onto what actually is.

1:13:43And it's just absolutely contradictory to this incredibly persuasive narrative that is far more saturated than most people realize, unless you have seen it, which is really the big takeaway from our entire conversation, I think. All right.

1:14:01Coleman Hughes:Thank you, Warren Smith. Can you tell people where they can follow your work? Yeah, it's mostly just on YouTube. Warren Smith, Secret Scholars Society, but I'm also on Exit, WTSmith17. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Warren. Thanks for taking the time. This was cool. Hey, guys. Finding the perfect gift for the food lover in your life is easy. Thanks to Gold Belly. Gold Belly ships America's most iconic foods straight from world-famous restaurants right to your door. So if you want to treat someone, to Joe's Stone Crab from Miami, Franklin Barbecue from Texas, or desserts from famous foodies like Ina Garten or Martha Stewart, Gold Belly has you covered.

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From the publisher

Today I’m joined by Warren Smith, a teacher and filmmaker. He created a viral video challenging a student to explain why they believed J.K. Rowling was a bigot. It sparked a national conversation and ultimately cost Smith his job. We talk about that fallout, compare our experiences on college campuses during the height of wokeness, dig into Trump’s attempts to reshape elite universities, and explore what might actually fix higher education.
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