Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank You're far too kind checking each check our faces
Speaker 2: are bad.
Speaker 3: I love to see you guys.
Speaker 1: By the way, I bring the Latin love to the
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I always say how much I love
Speaker 1: you guys, how much I miss you, how much I
Speaker 1: like you. You see, that's the Latin language speaking through me me.
Speaker 4: I miss you every day.
Speaker 3: You see.
Speaker 1: That's your Chilenyan side being actually transparent with our friendship.
Speaker 3: That's nice.
Speaker 2: And then I go, guy, stop being awkward. I don't
Speaker 2: even want to know that you have feelings, let alone
Speaker 2: what they are.
Speaker 4: His Anglo Saxon awkwardness coming in.
Speaker 2: Excuse me. I am neither Anglo nor Saxon. Even worse,
Speaker 2: I am Germanic.
Speaker 4: Germanic.
Speaker 1: He's an orientalist from now Oh yeah, he's purely a
Speaker 1: boot It's just one of those Odin worshippers.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, I would love to tell you about Fabava, but
Speaker 2: we're gonna pay it because we missed a lot of news,
Speaker 2: and this is a lot. Most of the news is
Speaker 2: just like funny, we got we got the tariffs and
Speaker 2: the trade wars, Trump crashing the market like the worst.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows this already, but it's just too fun it's
Speaker 2: the it's the first time that like one person has
Speaker 2: caused the crash of a market instead of like COVID
Speaker 2: or nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: And I kind of find what we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about today funny too. I don't know if you're very
Speaker 4: implying that it's not funny. I think it's very funny.
Speaker 5: I heard it was the biggest market downturn of the
Speaker 5: doubts the twenties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.
Speaker 5: Which is a typical I always feel it feel like
Speaker 5: it's a typical thing to hear when I go on
Speaker 5: news binges.
Speaker 4: Great big question, it's the biggest, No, not since it's
Speaker 4: a great depression.
Speaker 2: The biggest COVID, I thought.
Speaker 4: Oh, COVID, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's already larger than that.
Speaker 2: They said, like all time it was the big doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: We're gonna move on.
Speaker 3: It's agree.
Speaker 2: The only thing that's potentially about this, like the market crashes,
Speaker 2: which is you know, it just does that. That's a thing.
Speaker 2: Line goes up, line goes down. But the the the
Speaker 2: unthinkably damaging thing that has happened there is the treasury drop.
Speaker 2: Because usually when the market drops, then treasury securities go up,
Speaker 2: and this time they didn't go up. I haven't. I
Speaker 2: haven't checked what they are at this week, but that
Speaker 2: could be. That's like that changes the future, that changes
Speaker 2: the hegemony of the American dollar potentially.
Speaker 5: But hooray I mean this and this also may explain
Speaker 5: Trump's push into crypto and to deregulate crypto just just
Speaker 5: as hedging in case everyone flees the dollar as the
Speaker 5: reserve currency into These things.
Speaker 4: Are all so boring compared to what we're actually going.
Speaker 2: To talk about. Hey, crashing the market is base. If
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders had one, he would have to do all
Speaker 2: the same stuff.
Speaker 5: Or yeah, aren't we all still waiting for the big one?
Speaker 4: Like it?
Speaker 5: You know there's ups and downs two thousand and eight COVID.
Speaker 5: When's the big one coming that everything goes?
Speaker 1: I think, comrade Trump, it's going to push us into
Speaker 1: the future unwillingly.
Speaker 5: That's the portal to the future. Is the is the
Speaker 5: downward the crash?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right, we also never talked about, like Canada politics,
Speaker 2: massive shift. It's completely just based on.
Speaker 4: The the rise of the car.
Speaker 2: But let's not let's not go to into detail. But
Speaker 2: the Conservatives we're going to have a majority government and
Speaker 2: now they're not. Now the Liberals are are they set
Speaker 2: for majority or still minority government?
Speaker 4: Majority?
Speaker 5: I heard they were up, but I don't know by home.
Speaker 2: That is just the most insane one eighty And it's
Speaker 2: just because we vote with our feelings, and our feelings
Speaker 2: are we don't like are Alberton, Ron de Santis nerds?
Speaker 3: So where's Canada again?
Speaker 4: That's yeah, that's such a it's right above the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just as a geography lesson, we share a border with them.
Speaker 2: It's kind of big. It's hard to miss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are mostly concentrated on very very small places.
Speaker 4: But you saw how Trump thought when he was talking
Speaker 4: about Canada becoming the fifty first state. He looked at
Speaker 4: He's like, look at it. It'd be a beautiful big
Speaker 4: thing if it became a that's the reason you know
Speaker 4: what you want. But also, like a note on Karney,
Speaker 4: Mark Karney, the very very likely new prime minister. Totally incidentally,
Speaker 4: someone like randomly bought me this book like years ago,
Speaker 4: which is right here. It's his It's Mark Karney's actual book,
Speaker 4: and I thought it'd be quite funny. Maybe we could
Speaker 4: cover it on the podcast. Maybe there's something funny in
Speaker 4: here that we could read all values. It's like his philosophy.
Speaker 2: I love both value and values. These are important terms
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cool, cool terms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, that's intriguing. What's why is the s anyway?
Speaker 2: Well, you got marks for value and Niatzure for values.
Speaker 3: And these guys doing both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet.
Speaker 2: There's a ton of marks in that book.
Speaker 4: I'll bet you that was just a I'll bet you
Speaker 4: that was the publisher, like his editor being like, we
Speaker 4: need him a clever title, Pier, let's just do with.
Speaker 5: Let's put this s under rature exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what we're covering today is not all the
Speaker 2: stuff that we just talked about. Maybe we will know
Speaker 2: at some point, but we want to talk about Trump
Speaker 2: declaring war on universities because most of us have spent
Speaker 2: I think, are all of us still in a university
Speaker 2: close enough? Ifiliating you're taking a degree right now? Right? Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: we've spent a combined like fifty years in a university.
Speaker 4: I'm still very affiliated with universities for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we know what's wrong with them, having spent
Speaker 2: so much time there. And we're going to decide whether
Speaker 2: Trump knows what's wrong with them? If they are, they're
Speaker 2: a sickness I think was what he said on Truth
Speaker 2: Social And I love when people say things like sickness
Speaker 2: because then you get all the religious metaphors in there.
Speaker 2: And there's no doubt that universities do some annoying shit.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt that university heats are corrupt. So I'm
Speaker 2: not crying over here. Eric at one point on this
Speaker 2: podcast did a deep dive into the corruption of his
Speaker 2: university where the board had all these ties to a
Speaker 2: nonprofit and then all the money was like circled through
Speaker 2: there for building contracts on campus, building completely unnecessary buildings
Speaker 2: on campus, just because the construction or the builder is
Speaker 2: like the brother of on the board. So this stuff
Speaker 2: happens all the time at universities. I'm sure they're basically corporations,
Speaker 2: no doubt, and academics, with their pursuit of wisdom and
Speaker 2: free inquiry, that could happen at a university, but it's
Speaker 2: not guaranteed. But Trump hates all the university and we
Speaker 2: agree generally speaking as academic side, that we hate university administrations.
Speaker 2: The academic hates them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of hate both sides of this. Debate,
Speaker 3: So it's going to be pretty cool. I agree.
Speaker 4: I kind of hate both sides of this to too.
Speaker 5: What are what are both the sides?
Speaker 3: Trump and the universities?
Speaker 4: Trump and the university?
Speaker 5: Oh oh, in terms of that, yeah, Trump versus Trump
Speaker 5: versus higher education and the universities that he chose as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was selective.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, maybe this is maybe gonna be a controversial
Speaker 4: thing to put on the table. But like there were
Speaker 4: a couple of Trump's demands that I was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a good idea. Maybe which ones like one or two,
Speaker 4: Like I would say.
Speaker 1: Should be like prefaced by setting people on the mood
Speaker 1: and like telling a little bit of the behind story.
Speaker 4: And we read some New York Times articles here for this,
Speaker 4: maybe we should just give them a quick run.
Speaker 1: I randomly choose Eric to do that, to give the
Speaker 1: rundown of what's random selections?
Speaker 4: Random selection deliberately chosen by Yeah.
Speaker 3: Totally random.
Speaker 1: It was determined by previously existing material conditions.
Speaker 5: So was it a April eleventh?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: These demands were sent to Harvard, which which included ending
Speaker 5: DEI and critical race theory, kinds of connected programs and
Speaker 5: things that are funded overall to well reduce the autonomy
Speaker 5: of the university governance, basically by instituting merit based hiring
Speaker 5: practices instead of instead of I guess would you call
Speaker 5: them like a dei quota or affirmative action type stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 5: targeting international students. We've been hearing a lot about that
Speaker 5: and the deportations and referring to protests as riots.
Speaker 4: And I just quickly added that the stick he's using though,
Speaker 4: is like federal funding, right, so he's going to cut
Speaker 4: I was going to get I was.
Speaker 5: Going to get to that. One broad thing he's done
Speaker 5: in all of his post Project twenty twenty five strategies,
Speaker 5: including this one, is to weaponize federal funding. And those
Speaker 5: are the basic that's basically he sent these demands by mistakes,
Speaker 5: some say to Harvard, and I mean, I guess that's
Speaker 5: similar demands that were sent to Columbia and similar demands
Speaker 5: he's putting on. But Harvard is also fighting back and
Speaker 5: suing Trump, being like, we're a private institution, First Amendment,
Speaker 5: freedom of speech, blah blah blah. Government overreached. So those
Speaker 5: are the two sides Trump's demands and Harvard like retaliatory lawsuit.
Speaker 1: And can I just just for context, I think this
Speaker 1: is this is is an ongoing fight between the Republicans
Speaker 1: and the universities versus all these critical race theories and
Speaker 1: saying that universities are supposedly Marxist hellholes that are forming
Speaker 1: revolutionaries and whatnot. But I think what I think it
Speaker 1: was the event that really triggered this direct attack against
Speaker 1: educational institutions. What was the predominance of protest in favor
Speaker 1: of the Palestinian people and against the genocide that is
Speaker 1: going on in Israel. I think that was the main trigger,
Speaker 1: and that detonated into like a completely a defeat in
Speaker 1: the propaganda war because I think now the majority of
Speaker 1: millennials and centennials in the US are pro Palestinia and
Speaker 1: against Israel. And I think that is a little bit
Speaker 1: of context and backdrop to justify why Trump is attacking
Speaker 1: the universities.
Speaker 4: On that point. Like in our group chat, Pills assigned
Speaker 4: a little bit of homework and you know, I want
Speaker 4: to be the good boy who you know, the good
Speaker 4: student who did his homework. And one of them was
Speaker 4: was he said, you know, focus on like the narratives.
Speaker 4: I guess I don't know. I mean I'm just kind
Speaker 4: of kidding here. So I was just trying to think
Speaker 4: to myself. I was like, what are the two narratives?
Speaker 4: Maybe this isn't even what Pills meant by narratives, but
Speaker 4: I was thinking to myself and kind of to Diego's point,
Speaker 4: I see, like the Trump side narrative is like universities
Speaker 4: are like bastions of left wing indoctrination, hostile to white
Speaker 4: and Jewish students, and on a accountable to like the
Speaker 4: broader public and its public responsibility. And I would say
Speaker 4: that he's trying to and he's framing himself and like
Speaker 4: people like Christopher Ruffo and all these people as restoring
Speaker 4: balance and freedom right, especially for conservative speech. And then
Speaker 4: I would say that the university's narrative, like Harvard's narrative,
Speaker 4: is institution's value autonomy, academic freedom, non partisan inquiry, and
Speaker 4: this crackdown is an authoritarian overreach that's like trying to
Speaker 4: use weaponizing research funding. And you know, they have this
Speaker 4: idealized vision of the university as like stewards of an
Speaker 4: independent inquiry. You know, they advanced knowledge through academic freedom
Speaker 4: and that requires insulation, and they see this as like
Speaker 4: an infringement on that those are kind of like the
Speaker 4: way that I see the two narratives. I don't know
Speaker 4: if that's what you're looking for, pills, but that's that's
Speaker 4: what I came up with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was looking for the mythology. Part of the
Speaker 2: mythology here doesn't it doesn't exactly make sense. I'm not
Speaker 2: really sure why Trump would be or the closest people
Speaker 2: to Trump are concerned about anti Semitism.
Speaker 4: Well, this is what this is why to me, it's
Speaker 4: clear and like not to sound conspiratorial, and it's just
Speaker 4: so easy when this topic comes up to sound like,
Speaker 4: you know, like someone who's into Jewish conspiracy Jewish conspiracy theories.
Speaker 4: But it's just simply true that like the Jews, like
Speaker 4: the Israel Lobby does have a lot of influence in
Speaker 4: like the Trump administration and both the Democratic and Republican parties,
Speaker 4: And I just like know if it's just like it's
Speaker 4: just almost certain that like in the wake of October seventh,
Speaker 4: like there's many people in the administration who are like, look,
Speaker 4: the universities are like contributing to this, you need to
Speaker 4: do something about this, And they're kind of framing it
Speaker 4: as like an attack on Jewish students and then this
Speaker 4: is leading to these kinds of demands. So like it's
Speaker 4: just you know, and they're they're and they're funding a
Speaker 4: lot of election campaigns. And sorry if that makes me
Speaker 4: sound like a fucking Israel conspiracy theorist, but like that
Speaker 4: shit just seems true.
Speaker 5: I mean, since since the war between Hamas and la
Speaker 5: could right, it's been anti semitism on campus charges all
Speaker 5: in the media. Even in Canada. We experienced it, hear,
Speaker 5: that's why we're talking about this. We have some experience
Speaker 5: with it, and those those kinds of things. Anti semitism
Speaker 5: on campus was like really you know, trumped up as
Speaker 5: after the war started.
Speaker 2: So I don't who knows whether or not Trump himself
Speaker 2: cares about anti Semitism. People around him might, people around
Speaker 2: him might. But also there's so much in this of
Speaker 2: like Rufo. We read Rufo a while ago, and he's
Speaker 2: he's the big the CEI mind virus is taking over
Speaker 2: these universities and we need to cleanse and purge them.
Speaker 2: But I think it's one of the things is funny
Speaker 2: because they the demands were to purge your departments that
Speaker 2: are known for anti Semitism, including including like Middle Eastern studies,
Speaker 2: South Asian Studies, I believe, and Harvard Divinity School. And
Speaker 2: by the way, the Harvard Divinity School it's probably like
Speaker 2: two or three hundred years old, I'm sure, and Protestant,
Speaker 2: so I'm sure they did the oldest they did some
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 5: It was an endowment from the late seventeen hundreds by
Speaker 5: some British trader or something. It's a permanent endowment, so
Speaker 5: they can only ever use that endowment money to re
Speaker 5: up that divinity professor position. So that's why it is
Speaker 5: still there because like permanent endowments, you just have to
Speaker 5: keep using them for their original purpose, even if it's
Speaker 5: two hundred years old.
Speaker 2: But let's keep going. Let's keep going into this a
Speaker 2: little bit because there's, first of all, this is the
Speaker 2: administration and the university lawyers that are dealing with Trump.
Speaker 2: These are not academics, so do they care about academic freedom.
Speaker 2: They kind of have to for like brand purposes. But
Speaker 2: if we compare now Columbia University to Harvard Columbia University
Speaker 2: storied school, a lot of the the greats went there
Speaker 2: or went through there. It's reputable, and Trump says, you
Speaker 2: guys have to stop funding the South Asian Studies Department
Speaker 2: and surveil your students better because anti Semitism, and Columbia,
Speaker 2: this prestigious center of learning, just goes, yes, sir, you mean,
Speaker 2: we'll get right on that. And now now this like
Speaker 2: not to be too self righteous here, because this is
Speaker 2: probably the right move. You just say to Trump, yes,
Speaker 2: we're going to get our best people on it, sir,
Speaker 2: and then you don't really have to do anything because
Speaker 2: he just wants the He wants the nod. And then
Speaker 2: you get your billions of dollars of funding continue and
Speaker 2: the academics who are who are getting funded continue to
Speaker 2: get funding. No one lose their jobs. But you look
Speaker 2: like a dog for capitulating. And I think Harvard, whether
Speaker 2: or not they I mean they certainly could follow follow suit,
Speaker 2: but I think this would be this is like so
Speaker 2: damaging to your reputation as an independent center of learning.
Speaker 2: And then just to capitulate to a complete clown who actually,
Speaker 2: well Trump, Trump did have a university, so maybe he uh,
Speaker 2: maybe he actually does know what he's on about here.
Speaker 1: When I was doing my homework on this, I wanted
Speaker 1: to do Marx, Lacan and the Lose on like as
Speaker 1: a framework to address this topic, But I think, like
Speaker 1: the Lose, we can probably leave if we have time,
Speaker 1: because it's the least interesting.
Speaker 2: Wait what you we think you have time for Marx
Speaker 2: and Lacan?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well only have time for too.
Speaker 3: I did. I did in my homework.
Speaker 1: So, like the quick question that I found very interesting
Speaker 1: when when applying the Marxist critique of even the relationship
Speaker 1: between ideology, what's the role of academia in perpetuating the
Speaker 1: existing ideology and Trump's movement is very interesting because now
Speaker 1: the way I see it is that Okay, wait, so
Speaker 1: Harvard as a university within capitalism, it's another company. It
Speaker 1: behaves as another company. I think even one of you
Speaker 1: guys said in the chat that the if Kara traded
Speaker 1: in Wall Street, it would be trading like between the top.
Speaker 3: Five hundred companies.
Speaker 1: Is like full of money, full of endorsements, is washing
Speaker 1: money everywhere, evading taxes.
Speaker 3: So it's a big company.
Speaker 1: So we know it is actually a company, but it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be working as a as a university, as
Speaker 1: an academic institution. But regardless, like if we take the Marxist
Speaker 1: analysis the role of institutions is to perpetuate the existing ideology.
Speaker 1: So what Trump is doing is weird to me because
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like, okay, if capitalism has this
Speaker 1: intrinsic characteristic of being ever expanding like this in a
Speaker 1: globalist neoliberal trend, of tearing down whatever resistances have, it
Speaker 1: melts everything into solid into thin air. So capital has
Speaker 1: this ever expanding growth strategy. It's more represented in Harvard
Speaker 1: than in Trump. And according to me, what Trump is doing,
Speaker 1: it's more like, I don't know if he's been anti
Speaker 1: capitalist by punishing the freedom of an institution that is
Speaker 1: perpetuating the ideology the religion of capital, because let's be honest,
Speaker 1: like what Harvard does is like the supreme Church of capital,
Speaker 1: even even if in the humanities or whatever they do
Speaker 1: that is supposed to be left leaning, everything is like
Speaker 1: the Church of Capital in Harvard. So Trump, by censoring them,
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird move. So my my conclusion, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear from you guys, is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: So what is Trump doing in this in the relationship
Speaker 1: between universities perpetuating the currently existing ideology?
Speaker 4: Well, I have that's interesting. That's that's I feel like
Speaker 4: that's almost that's so much deeper than I was going
Speaker 4: to go, like, like I think in a way like
Speaker 4: to me, I guess, okay, Like so my first reaction
Speaker 4: to that is I feel like that analysis is sort
Speaker 4: of premised on the idea that everyone knows the material
Speaker 4: conditions are what matter, and I don't think that's true.
Speaker 4: I think many, many people, especially in this American political moment,
Speaker 4: actually think that the culture war is what matters. More So,
Speaker 4: you and I could agree that they're wrong about that,
Speaker 4: but it's also just true that that's what they believe.
Speaker 4: So but they think that they think the online.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what they believe.
Speaker 4: But their behavior is still gonna like I think, so
Speaker 4: maybe that's maybe we do disagree with them because I
Speaker 4: think like their behavior is going to be Like like
Speaker 4: Christopher Ruffo, I don't think that like his behavior is
Speaker 4: necessarily like it's going to be mediated by material conditions,
Speaker 4: but he really thinks that like, you know, stopping DEI
Speaker 4: and wokeness like matters the most, right, Like that's what
Speaker 4: he thinks matters the most. And I and I think
Speaker 4: like there's also some short term thinking going on here
Speaker 4: where like right now Trump and like the conservatives see, oh,
Speaker 4: like we won this last election because we had advertisements
Speaker 4: that said, you know, she's for they them, Trump's for
Speaker 4: you and me. Right that worked, Like, let's keep attacking
Speaker 4: this because that's what's gonna win us the next election
Speaker 4: if we can put all this wokeness stuff on the defense. So, like,
Speaker 4: I don't think that they're thinking that long term, that
Speaker 4: big picture. They're just like people don't like wokeness. Attacking
Speaker 4: wokeness won us the election. Universities are seen as part
Speaker 4: of this elite woke discourse. Let's attack the university. That's
Speaker 4: gonna win us brownie points. Like, I think it's as
Speaker 4: simple as that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But but I also think it connects back to
Speaker 1: the way Peels was talking about religion last episode in
Speaker 1: a way that in a way, now religion as ideology,
Speaker 1: it's working as a stabilizing agent, and you know, and
Speaker 1: this this recoil to previous belief systems, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an intention for for stability.
Speaker 3: That that was my reading.
Speaker 2: I think you're onto something, but you're you're being a
Speaker 2: little too simplistic with it, Like who's capital and who's
Speaker 2: anti capital? I think this is more like capital versus capital.
Speaker 3: It's a yeah, I too think it's capital verse.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say that, yeah, And I think a
Speaker 5: helpful concept would be like hegemony.
Speaker 2: Right, it's too factions one. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: call it like you could call it something like well,
Speaker 2: you could call it something like new money versus old money.
Speaker 2: But like, because he's got he's got the tech people,
Speaker 2: he's got the new conservatives, they're trying to they're trying
Speaker 2: to get their piece of the pie. And Harvard and
Speaker 2: Columbia kind of represent like democrat, you know, old money
Speaker 2: even even like Bush is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I looked at it as Pills did,
Speaker 5: and and I think I agree with Diego. But but yeah,
Speaker 5: you know that they're competing models of capitalism that you
Speaker 5: can sort of loosely group under, like the right wing
Speaker 5: and the left wing. And and Trump's Trump's right wing
Speaker 5: version is different than the previous ones, right like the
Speaker 5: neo conservative kinds of different kinds of traditional So he's
Speaker 5: fighting against like a kind of liberal creep, as they
Speaker 5: sometimes call it, and he's fighting against like a different
Speaker 5: conservative model that's been much closer to the interventionist kind
Speaker 5: of George Bush style conservatism, which Trump wants to reverse,
Speaker 5: which is why all the warhawks are going over to
Speaker 5: the Democrats. And this attack on the universities, I think
Speaker 5: it serves I think it serves various purposes. You know,
Speaker 5: I don't think we can just look at it even
Speaker 5: you know, what does Trump care about? Does he care
Speaker 5: about the who cares what he cares about? Because, like
Speaker 5: Diego said, his beliefs don't matter, right, his behavior is
Speaker 5: determined within the horizon of capitalism, and he is looking
Speaker 5: at the ideological front. Harvard doesn't produce anything, it changed,
Speaker 5: it doesn't. It's not a productive entity. But it is
Speaker 5: an ideological state apparatus. I guess you could call it
Speaker 5: and remember it's a private institution, but Alficer said that
Speaker 5: doesn't matter if it's a private institution or a public institution.
Speaker 5: It's still an ISA, right, So he's just taking it
Speaker 5: to the hegemony side, right. And so you know the
Speaker 5: anti Semitism stuff, right, that serves other purposes that are
Speaker 5: closely allied with Netanyahu. You know, the NDI, the attacks
Speaker 5: on LGBT and transgender women in university sports, and like
Speaker 5: the motherhood stuff. That's another block of the ideology there right,
Speaker 5: And that's you can see that in the university attacks,
Speaker 5: you know, limiting immigration, targeting immigrants, targeting radical ideologies, that's
Speaker 5: another block, another front of his attack.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: These are all just whether or not he believes in
Speaker 5: any of these things or cares about any of these things. There,
Speaker 5: they're justifications or framings, right, And that's what we were
Speaker 5: looking at with the news too. Are there counter framings
Speaker 5: going on here in the New York Times? Not really,
Speaker 5: They just refer to it as a culture wars. We're
Speaker 5: back in that old myth of succession. But and then
Speaker 5: obviously Fox and the the media that's more likely to
Speaker 5: be Trump friendly, is saying, you know, these demands, Harvard
Speaker 5: is rejecting very reasonable demands.
Speaker 4: But isn't it Isn't it also notable that like none
Speaker 4: of the STEM stuff is being attacked.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it's ironices bros.
Speaker 4: All the tech bros are like are obviously behind Trump,
Speaker 4: and they're like the STEM work is important, like all
Speaker 4: everything that's in STEM is is.
Speaker 5: But they're not behind Trump because of the tariffs now, right,
Speaker 5: and the timing is super important. Columbia, My theory is
Speaker 5: that Columbia must have collapsed when things looked very different. Harvard, yes,
Speaker 5: is a much richer institution, but they also decided to
Speaker 5: push back at a later date when you know, it's
Speaker 5: so obvious now that the tech bros, at least as
Speaker 5: far as Elon Musk represents them, are on their way
Speaker 5: out of the center of influence because Tesla is fucked
Speaker 5: and the doge is insane and everyone knows it now,
Speaker 5: and Musk is is making his graceful entrance exit with
Speaker 5: trying to save as much face as possible.
Speaker 4: I was I was going to say also, I was
Speaker 4: going to say also that the thing about the budget
Speaker 4: and the endowment, like because because the pills earlier, you
Speaker 4: asked like Columbia wasn't like, didn't resist. Columbia's endowment is
Speaker 4: a measly fourteen point eight billion with an important detail,
Speaker 4: thirty six thousand students total. Okay, and Harvard uh, and
Speaker 4: Harvard is there there. Endowment is fifty one billion for
Speaker 4: twenty thousand students.
Speaker 3: Wow, for half.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's so insane.
Speaker 5: Harvard is wealthier than the wealthiest four Americans. It's it's
Speaker 5: very it's the world's wealthiest. Like public university, I believe,
Speaker 5: not a public university, private university.
Speaker 2: I don't want I don't want to get too into this,
Speaker 2: but you can't like directly pull from your endowment to
Speaker 2: fund research projects like that. So I know it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they have all this money, but their money is like
Speaker 2: assigned to other stuff. And then but they need the
Speaker 2: budgets like that if you get.
Speaker 5: It, like the Divinity chair we mentioned, but they do.
Speaker 5: That's a permanent endowment. They can only ever use the
Speaker 5: money to re up that channel.
Speaker 4: But they do also have like a hedge fund like
Speaker 4: that makes them more money.
Speaker 2: No doubt.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, that's they're worth like nine hundred billion I
Speaker 5: think total assets. The the endowment is just the whatever
Speaker 5: fifty billion endowment. That's what they have. And it's a
Speaker 5: combination of permanent endowments, so strings always attached, temporary endowments,
Speaker 5: strings attached for a while. Then they can use it
Speaker 5: for whatever they want. And then there's just endowment endowments.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: They just come through the foundation wing, that private foundation
Speaker 5: wing that universities love to have, and they can. The
Speaker 5: board then decides how that money and it's and its
Speaker 5: proceeds are used.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love my position in this podcast that the
Speaker 1: guy that that like throws well theory out there, and
Speaker 1: then you guys with a proper education like ground me
Speaker 1: and find the nuances in what I said. I absolutely
Speaker 1: adore it, but I want to just taking the advantage
Speaker 1: of my ability to stretch. I just want to say this,
Speaker 1: It's almost as if there's a self aware mechanism within
Speaker 1: the logic of capital that knows that the excess in
Speaker 1: the stretchability of liberalism, the metaphysics of liberalism, what was
Speaker 1: impeding the growth of capital. You know, it's as if that, okay,
Speaker 1: so capital will go as a flow of water like whatever.
Speaker 1: There's lease resistance and more ability for self reproduction like
Speaker 1: this self awareness of lise resistances and ability to replicate itself,
Speaker 1: and wokeness was now becoming a cost for capital, was
Speaker 1: becoming a.
Speaker 3: Burden for capital.
Speaker 1: It's as if this is like capital itself turning itself
Speaker 1: down a little bit so it can continue to exist
Speaker 1: because that path was already becoming a jopar d for capital.
Speaker 2: Global Can you explain how wokeness stops capital?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the sense in the sense that it became
Speaker 1: a for example, a problem for self replication. It didn't
Speaker 1: like in the nineties and in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Everything that was connected to this sense of humanities and
Speaker 1: helping others was explain that the sense that you when
Speaker 1: you buy a coffee in Starbucks, you're already paying for
Speaker 1: the guilt, you know, So like wokeness, green washing, pink washing,
Speaker 1: purple washing, was already assuming the guilt in consumption and
Speaker 1: charging it to you. And that model worked for like
Speaker 1: a decade or two. But now it seems like the
Speaker 1: guilt is no longer enough to justify the cycle and
Speaker 1: the expansion of consumption.
Speaker 2: I guess I kind of see it differently. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't really think that wokeness has anything to do
Speaker 2: with with capital's own movement. It has to do with
Speaker 2: the people who are who are in power in the structure.
Speaker 2: They need to feel that they're doing good things. Well
Speaker 2: they're not, so.
Speaker 4: It actually it actually helps capital, I would say often.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but then you get the Trump faction. The Trump
Speaker 2: is the reaction the people that, like every single Trump
Speaker 2: supporter already hates Harvard, so they're gonna they're gonna be
Speaker 2: appeased by this. They are left out of success abundance.
Speaker 2: They've been left out for a long time.
Speaker 3: And then here's a gain contradictory.
Speaker 1: This is what is really contradictory because ninety seven percent
Speaker 1: of the like of the wealth of the country, it's
Speaker 1: in half of the billionaires in the in the in
Speaker 1: the capitalist class in the US. And these are the
Speaker 1: people that are going to Harbor in Colombia, you know,
Speaker 1: like this this is what is really weird. Like the
Speaker 1: working class of course they hate Harvard. They will never
Speaker 1: go there, like they couldn't care less about it. But
Speaker 1: the issue is that it's it's like when you say
Speaker 1: there's two wings of capital competing against itself, Like I
Speaker 1: don't see it, Like the capitalist class is very small,
Speaker 1: Like there's a bunch of people with know class consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is different, but the capital is class is actually
Speaker 1: very very small.
Speaker 4: But that but doesn't that tell you, like I.
Speaker 5: Mean, there's two branches of capitalists ideology, maybe not not
Speaker 5: individ capital numbers of a class.
Speaker 4: The more I think about it, the more I'm starting
Speaker 4: to feel persuaded that like within kind of capitalist in incentives,
Speaker 4: there's like disagreement about like how are like to put
Speaker 4: it really simply, like how are we going to be rich?
Speaker 4: Are we going to be rich in like this globally
Speaker 4: interconnected world, or are we going to be rich in
Speaker 4: like our in the United States as American where we
Speaker 4: get to be like church going people or something like that.
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe that doesn't.
Speaker 5: Make Sense's the protectionist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the protectionist exactly. It's like, are we going to
Speaker 4: be rich like alone over here? Are we going to
Speaker 4: be rich? And like that does seem like there's maybe
Speaker 4: a disagreement in within capital among capitalists.
Speaker 5: Which is the other side of the coin of the
Speaker 5: anti interventionist thing is protectionism. That's the other side of
Speaker 5: the coin and universe these be like doing those attacks
Speaker 5: on the international students serves a couple different purposes again, right,
Speaker 5: because he can say all those they are radicals, we
Speaker 5: need to ideologically vet them to make sure that they
Speaker 5: are comply with American values. That's part of his demands
Speaker 5: and sort of the broader Project twenty twenty five vision
Speaker 5: of all American institutions, not just the Department of Education,
Speaker 5: but you know all of them, you know, Trump friendly
Speaker 5: people with the coud American values, right, And that's that's
Speaker 5: so this like sort of conformity and ideological vetting type
Speaker 5: of thing he wants to put in there. But yeah,
Speaker 5: that's another side of that coin, right, Like universities are
Speaker 5: not for educating people's kids and then sending back to
Speaker 5: their country and we lose their intellectual capital. Right, it's
Speaker 5: for it's for educating Americans right here in America kind
Speaker 5: of thing. Right. I think that fits. That's the vision.
Speaker 5: There's at least that's that's the framing of it, right.
Speaker 5: You can you can frame it in different ways, and
Speaker 5: and I think it's connected to those issues anyway. That's
Speaker 5: why I say this is like a you got to
Speaker 5: look at the menu and be like, Okay, there's all
Speaker 5: these things we want to do. What's next? Okay, something
Speaker 5: that the Department of Education. Okay, but all right, let's
Speaker 5: hit the anti semitism button, the LGBTQ thing. How do
Speaker 5: we get people worked up about that. I'll run something
Speaker 5: on the transgender women in sports that'll get people upset
Speaker 5: and then we can do this. Okay, what's next? Uh?
Speaker 5: Traditional family values? All BLM. Let's show kids a video
Speaker 5: about how BLM is like a criminal organization that promotes
Speaker 5: anti police sentiment and in our like you know all
Speaker 5: that it's just like a menu they just select, you know,
Speaker 5: how it's the framing today, what what the researchers say,
Speaker 5: These things resonate with the people we want to resonate with, Okay,
Speaker 5: but like it has nothing. Yeah, that's that's how I'm
Speaker 5: kind of imagining it in a weird metaphorical way, that
Speaker 5: these things are going.
Speaker 2: The rich kids, the rich people's kids are still they're
Speaker 2: going to Harvard, Yale, and Columbium, but these rules and
Speaker 2: stipulations they don't target those people. They like, if we
Speaker 2: have a university's it's like point oh five percent that
Speaker 2: are doing cultural studies, gender studies, those those kinds of things,
Speaker 2: they have to identify this as as being representative of
Speaker 2: the university as a whole. So I find it. I
Speaker 2: do find it interesting that the Lawyer's Administration Board, they
Speaker 2: are saying to Trump, no, we're not going to do
Speaker 2: this on behalf of those, on behalf of those you know,
Speaker 2: point oh five percent of their their faculty or whatever
Speaker 2: it is. So I don't know, it's almost like they
Speaker 2: actually do believe in the university mission, or at least
Speaker 2: they say they do, because this would be very damaging
Speaker 2: to their brand if they were just to say yes
Speaker 2: to to Trump's demands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I was going to say.
Speaker 5: There's that word again. Believe what they believe in. It's
Speaker 5: without the psychological tones. I would agree, because, like I said,
Speaker 5: I think it's just that Harvard just refused when things
Speaker 5: looked different. Columbia caved when things looked like they were
Speaker 5: going in a different direction.
Speaker 2: And now I think you're being a little cynical to
Speaker 2: just think that Harvard is a corporation that only cares
Speaker 2: about making profit, because if they were, this would be fine.
Speaker 2: They don't. They don't need these five people. They can
Speaker 2: say yes, Well, I would.
Speaker 5: Look at the beliefs I guess according to ideologies like
Speaker 5: we were talking about earlier, and like you know, what's
Speaker 5: the hegemony that the university represents right now? And what
Speaker 5: does Trump want it to be? And what are like
Speaker 5: other maybe other models of what that like that, what
Speaker 5: what kind of ideology do I want coming out of
Speaker 5: the university system here? And like who's who's there and
Speaker 5: might agree with me? And who's preventing me? Like who
Speaker 5: might be out of line with my direction and vision
Speaker 5: of things?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: So that's why you know they're dragging the presidents of
Speaker 5: universities in front of like who is that that other one?
Speaker 5: That got canned, right, Like.
Speaker 2: This was Clyde and Gay like plagiarized something.
Speaker 5: Like sending a message basically saying, you know, you can't
Speaker 5: you know, do whatever you want. We can get to you, right,
Speaker 5: we can. We can change your administration if we want to, right,
Speaker 5: which is the message he wants to send, also to
Speaker 5: the Federal Reserve. He wants to send it to every
Speaker 5: major institution that like, you know, we control you. Right now,
Speaker 5: it's just with withholding funds, but eventually it's going to
Speaker 5: be more direct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's a cool part of
Speaker 3: this story.
Speaker 1: Like it it takes away the the clothing of universities
Speaker 1: and just reveals them as they as what they are, mercenaries.
Speaker 1: I think Colombia was the quicker mercenary and Harvard is
Speaker 1: probably going to negotiate a little bit more. But in
Speaker 1: the end they respond their mercenaries. They're up for sales.
Speaker 2: That's what I don't see it, Like Harvard's suing Trump
Speaker 2: suing Trump. Yeah, a cynical company, well cynically as cynical
Speaker 2: as I can be. Trump Trump's demands to Harvard don't
Speaker 2: don't harm their bottom line, Like I don't. This is
Speaker 2: what I'm still saying it doesn't harm the bottom line.
Speaker 2: They could capitulate. But as cynical as I can be,
Speaker 2: because you're you're saying, well, this is revealing what they are.
Speaker 2: I'm saying people still act like they believe in something
Speaker 2: like academic freedom because they said no too far. Now
Speaker 2: the cynical, as cynical as I can be is to say, well,
Speaker 2: this is a branding decision for them, because if they
Speaker 2: were best for us. But I still, you know, I
Speaker 2: have I have more faith that there's something more than
Speaker 2: that that some people in the universities, even in the
Speaker 2: administration that we all hate, some of them believe in
Speaker 2: something like academic freedom, free and quiry.
Speaker 4: I agree, I totally agree. It's so uncommon for you
Speaker 4: to be the optimist on the panel here kill he's
Speaker 4: a b.
Speaker 2: I would not call this optimism. I would call this
Speaker 2: like you're painting thousands of kids.
Speaker 4: It's not optimism, but it's but it's a certain kind
Speaker 4: of it's a certain kind of centrism. Centrism, well, it's
Speaker 4: a certain kind of resistance to like the most cynical take.
Speaker 3: I thought I thought people was going to be team
Speaker 3: tanked top.
Speaker 4: But that's just because. But but you're totally right. I mean,
Speaker 4: I entirely agree with you. I think like the cynical
Speaker 4: take can only get you so far, and I just think,
Speaker 4: like it's just true there are a lot of people
Speaker 4: in the university who believe in these things. I think,
Speaker 4: I think that's true. I totally think that's true. And
Speaker 4: I think that I agree. The most cynical take, I
Speaker 4: think you had you hit the nail on the head
Speaker 4: is like to look at this the most cynically. It's
Speaker 4: like it's bad for the Harvard brand if they capitulate
Speaker 4: like so, that's like a self interested decision. It's like
Speaker 4: their brand would look bad if they just capitulate to
Speaker 4: like someone who's seen as a proto fascist.
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe it's cynical to say, Okay, they're looking at
Speaker 5: their brand, they're looking at their public image. But I
Speaker 5: don't think the lawsuit. You can't say Harvard is standing
Speaker 5: up to Trump because they're thinking about their image. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like a standard thing. You know, this is a
Speaker 5: different kind of cynical. Right, They sued Trump because that
Speaker 5: was like the best course of action, right, Like they're
Speaker 5: in such a good position to win immediate gains from that,
Speaker 5: and then to be fully resolved is going to take
Speaker 5: years and years, and it's going to end up in
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court in years, and those Supreme Court judges
Speaker 5: are then going to have to decide whether this is
Speaker 5: a conflict of interest because they were fucking educated at
Speaker 5: Harvard too, and so are the lawyers and everybody was.
Speaker 5: Harvard has its own law school, right they can they
Speaker 5: can like do all this in house. But anyway, No,
Speaker 5: it's not about public image and it's not about grand
Speaker 5: beliefs valorizing education. It's just like this was the best
Speaker 5: move right. They've attacked us and would take the cultural
Speaker 5: the cultural temperature and say, Okay, now's the time to
Speaker 5: move instead of capitulating, let's try this right. Because they
Speaker 5: probably Columbia probably considered the same options and decided against
Speaker 5: it because they thought they might not have been as
Speaker 5: well positioned. Harvard obviously thinks it's well positioned, and all
Speaker 5: it really wants to do. The purpose of this lawsuit
Speaker 5: is just to stave off the attack. It's just if
Speaker 5: they did nothing, that would be ridiculous. So they did
Speaker 5: something because obviously the Trump administration is in a position
Speaker 5: this time where they have less boundaries and less holding
Speaker 5: them back from doing them we want to do compared
Speaker 5: to the last time around. But they're still shit at
Speaker 5: it and making humongous mistakes, and their messaging is completely
Speaker 5: self contradictory.
Speaker 4: I e.
Speaker 5: Some people say it was the demands were sent by mistake.
Speaker 5: How do you mistakenly send a that people signed assigned draft? Like,
Speaker 5: who's ever heard of that accidentally sent to the person
Speaker 5: that you were not supposed to send it to? Plus
Speaker 5: like all the other leaks and crazy shit that's going on, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's obviously just a lie that they sent it
Speaker 2: by mistake, because because they pushed back.
Speaker 5: Sure, but it's a mixed message, that's all of it.
Speaker 5: It's still a mixed message. Whether or not it's true,
Speaker 5: it's a mixed message. It's out there. There's some people
Speaker 5: saying this and some people saying that, and they appear
Speaker 5: to be from the same team, saying opposite things or
Speaker 5: sending mixed messages explaining the facts differently, Like the Beatles, right,
Speaker 5: they always explain the same story completely different ways.
Speaker 2: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what's actually like,
Speaker 2: What's what's very sad about this? Because you might think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're we're poor, we're never getting into Harvard. Good go
Speaker 2: fuck you. But something else that happened last week was
Speaker 2: Linda McMahon w WWE star Linda McMahon said that right
Speaker 2: before they get Rufo gets his way and they dismantled
Speaker 2: the Department of Education. She said, we're gonna uh refer
Speaker 2: all student loans that are in default to debt collected
Speaker 2: debt collection God, which is, I don't know, that's sane,
Speaker 2: that effects I think like fifty million people was the
Speaker 2: number I saw, which is, I don't know, that's just cruel.
Speaker 5: It's ending loan forgiveness was on the list of things
Speaker 5: that they sent.
Speaker 1: You guys have more student debt than credit card debt.
Speaker 4: That's American, the Unadian.
Speaker 3: Sorry sorry, the US sorry, sorry, my bad. Soon.
Speaker 5: So, if you look at the weirder elements of Trump supporters,
Speaker 5: you get the sense of where the myth comes from,
Speaker 5: the myth makers around the Trump brand. And the best
Speaker 5: I could come up with is like a succession myth,
Speaker 5: you know, like Trump is like Zoo and Biden and
Speaker 5: the old order is like Chronos or something, and he
Speaker 5: wants to like castraight the old order to give to
Speaker 5: give your a Lacinian way, and it's a it's he's
Speaker 5: he's he's threatening. He's threatening the system with castration, is
Speaker 5: what he's doing. The new gods are taken over and
Speaker 5: they're and they're they're protectionist, anti interventionist libertarians.
Speaker 4: I was also I feel like I should say because
Speaker 4: I said at the beginning of the episode, like one
Speaker 4: of Trump's demands that I kind of liked, So I
Speaker 4: feel like I should probably just like share that. I
Speaker 4: don't know, Yeah, well, it's like ending DEI and hiring,
Speaker 4: like I'm I'm for that. I think, like as someone
Speaker 4: who's been on the job market, like right now, I think,
Speaker 4: you know, like having to write a DEI statement, it's
Speaker 4: just so stupid and redundant.
Speaker 2: You have to write a DEI statement.
Speaker 4: Often for many positions. You have to write like explaining
Speaker 4: like how you'll contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion in
Speaker 4: the university, And I.
Speaker 2: Do you col yourself Latin X on applications.
Speaker 4: There's a box to check, Yes, I do. Of course,
Speaker 4: I'm fucking gaming the system as best as I can.
Speaker 4: But I'll say that like the reason why, like I
Speaker 4: just find it objectionable and unredundant, because like, when I
Speaker 4: write my teaching statement, I think like good pedagogy means
Speaker 4: making students feel included, making everyone feel welcome, like they
Speaker 4: have a part, like you cover that in your teaching statement.
Speaker 4: So it's like, then you have to do this other thing.
Speaker 4: And I do like, maybe this is going to sound hyperbolic,
Speaker 4: but I do see it as like an ideological litmus test.
Speaker 4: It's like are you up, Like, are you like fully
Speaker 4: on board with intersectionality and all this stuff. That's basically
Speaker 4: what it is. And I do think it's inappropriate and
Speaker 4: I disagree with it. So that's my most anti woke
Speaker 4: feeling about the university.
Speaker 5: I completely agree with you, and I think it's absolutely
Speaker 5: fine to say, you know, I have criticisms of the
Speaker 5: higher education system, very colish criticisms of it, and I'm
Speaker 5: glad there's change coming. I just do not agree at
Speaker 5: all with the purposes or the ways that these changes
Speaker 5: are being brought about. And I don't and I simply
Speaker 5: don't agree with all of the changes either. And some
Speaker 5: of the changes I agree with that is something that
Speaker 5: should be changed, but the way that they want to
Speaker 5: change it and the way they're going about changing is
Speaker 5: the complete fucking opposite, Like, don't centralize control of the
Speaker 5: universities under the president and then centralize the control of
Speaker 5: all the universities under the president of the United States, Right,
Speaker 5: that is stupid. Get rid of the governors, get rid
Speaker 5: of the boards of governors and the investors and all
Speaker 5: the business fucks that make all the decisions, and bring
Speaker 5: in collegial governance. Empower the Senates, empower the departments to
Speaker 5: make their own decisions in autonomy. That's we're going in
Speaker 5: the complete opposite direction of that. Just like DEI is
Speaker 5: a ass covering MECHANI, right, it's a butt covering mechanism.
Speaker 5: They can say, well, this guy was racist, but according
Speaker 5: to our form, he's not a racist.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: We gave him the personality test and everything, and he
Speaker 5: came out not racist. So we're clear, right, we're not
Speaker 5: on the hook for this great great Okay, send him
Speaker 5: to jail, Send off. Where did Hyde go to university?
Speaker 4: Off?
Speaker 5: Who fucking cares? He signed a DEI thing when he
Speaker 5: got in there.
Speaker 4: We checked and he's read and agreed to quit with
Speaker 4: Kim Kimberly Cranch.
Speaker 5: Look, and it's another version of ideological vetting, like asking
Speaker 5: that's the thing that's international students if they agree with
Speaker 5: American values.
Speaker 4: That's just well exactly de That's that's what I find
Speaker 4: so objectionable, is like it gives that. But like there's
Speaker 4: a lot of I think academics who are in denial
Speaker 4: about that, but I do think. And actually it's funny.
Speaker 4: I was doing interview prep because I did an interview
Speaker 4: for this job that I didn't end up getting, but
Speaker 4: I uh, I did some interview prep with one of
Speaker 4: my professors, and I found out that like in our department,
Speaker 4: like when when we do interviews, like there's a question
Speaker 4: literally on their preliminary interview that's what does diversity mean you?
Speaker 4: Like what kind of a trap? Bullshit question? Is that?
Speaker 4: Like that is like like that's literally just a trap.
Speaker 4: That is an ideological trap.
Speaker 5: That's like to check your shock test.
Speaker 4: It's a ror shock test, and like it's like if
Speaker 4: you hesitate, it's like then they can see, oh, you're
Speaker 4: probably a conservative, and like we don't want you here,
Speaker 4: Like if you hesitate for a second. And I just
Speaker 4: find that to be totally.
Speaker 5: Eat your body language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet you. They don't if you're applying for
Speaker 2: a job at the law school. I doubt you'd have
Speaker 2: to answer this question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know these attacks, you know, when they've
Speaker 5: created these associations, uh say, when the Trump administration wants
Speaker 5: to do X or Y whatever they want to do.
Speaker 5: So they create these associations, right like DEI whatever it is,
Speaker 5: wherever it originated. You know, it's okay, DEI is going
Speaker 5: to be mentioned in the same sentence as critical race theory,
Speaker 5: which is going to be mentioned in the same sentence
Speaker 5: as Marxist radicals, which is going to be mentioned in
Speaker 5: the same sentences, foreign funding, all these things, right, So
Speaker 5: they just try to create these completely arbitrary sets of associations, right,
Speaker 5: Which is the fun thing so Sarah taught us about
Speaker 5: language is there's a lot of arbitrarity in there, and
Speaker 5: you can just try to create these mental associations and
Speaker 5: that's just the hegemonic strategy.
Speaker 4: The funny thing my professor said, I was like, does
Speaker 4: anyone ever answer that question? Well, like what is diversity?
Speaker 4: And she admitted she was like not really, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: like something So I'm like, why are you guys, Like
Speaker 4: what are you doing? Like like I didn't say that professor.
Speaker 4: But I was just like, but I was just like,
Speaker 4: why are you doing this? Then? Like, what's the point
Speaker 4: we'd like to see you suffer.
Speaker 2: This is the thing that drove Peterson insane exactly. But
Speaker 2: if we're talking about like it, to consider I e
Speaker 2: to consider like wokeness as a religion. This is the
Speaker 2: kind of rituals that belong to it is you know,
Speaker 2: like like there's it's not a law to put your
Speaker 2: your pronouns in your email signature, but it would be
Speaker 2: really good if you did.
Speaker 3: But if you want to belong you have to.
Speaker 4: Well it's a signal.
Speaker 5: It's a signal a killer.
Speaker 2: If you did. It's not a lot to give a
Speaker 2: land acknowledgment, but you probably should. It's kind of belongs
Speaker 2: to the HR section of the university, which is the
Speaker 2: most it's more woke than the departments.
Speaker 4: You know, I recently learned because I saw this, Like
Speaker 4: I was looking at a colleague's like website, they're on
Speaker 4: the academic job market, and I noticed that they had
Speaker 4: something which I had never seen before, which described themselves
Speaker 4: as a settler scholar, and I kind of and and
Speaker 4: I had that reaction. I kind of laughed. I was
Speaker 4: like okay, like settler scholar, Like what kind of new
Speaker 4: like woke thing is this. But then a colleague explained
Speaker 4: to me that there's actually a legit good reason for
Speaker 4: having it, especially because this person works on indigenous issues
Speaker 4: in politics. So like the thing is like it's actually
Speaker 4: plays a function where if you're working on indigenous issues,
Speaker 4: it's a way of making clear I'm not indigenous basically
Speaker 4: because there is, because there can be like a weird
Speaker 4: thing and it's happened in the past where like white
Speaker 4: people kind of like adopt and co opt and pretend
Speaker 4: to be indigenous when they're like really into indigenous issues,
Speaker 4: So like I can at least respect that. There's like
Speaker 4: it's playing a function. It's not just like pronouns or
Speaker 4: just like something that doesn't or like having a land
Speaker 4: acknowledgment in your email where it's really just like virtue signaling.
Speaker 4: It seems to play a role here. And also like
Speaker 4: the person too who like did it, it's like they're
Speaker 4: definitely white, but like they kind of have dark hair
Speaker 4: and dark complexion, and it's like you might it's like
Speaker 4: possible if you saw them, you'd be like, oh, maybe
Speaker 4: maybe they're indigenous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to read Trump's truth social and there's
Speaker 2: it's laden with religion. This is his post. Perhaps Harvard,
Speaker 2: this is after Harvard pushed back. Perhaps Harvard should lose
Speaker 2: its taxes exempt status and be taxed as a political
Speaker 2: entity if it keeps pushing political ideological and terrorist inspired sickness.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Just whatever, Harvard as a terrorist supporting institution.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the religious myth here that they're trying to
Speaker 1: enforce is that if you want to be an American,
Speaker 1: you cannot be you have to be Proisrael.
Speaker 2: You know, it's exactly the same thing, but reversed as
Speaker 2: what Hitler did when he says to all the universities,
Speaker 2: you guys, we're going to do some We're going to
Speaker 2: do some anti dejuification.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, purity, something about purity.
Speaker 2: This is how Heideger became rector.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's you know, definitely, that's I think that's
Speaker 5: the broader liberal principles that are under attack here are
Speaker 5: the independence of these kinds of institutions, right, like obviously
Speaker 5: the Federal Reserve. Independence is very import for the global market,
Speaker 5: especially because the US dollars, like the global reserve currency,
Speaker 5: so you don't want, you know, whatever administration comes in,
Speaker 5: you don't want them to be able to just like
Speaker 5: fire and hire whoever they want. Like some central banks
Speaker 5: are very much under the control of whatever administration is
Speaker 5: in power. And then it becomes very politicized and very
Speaker 5: unstable because it changes, especially in democracies where things are
Speaker 5: changing all the time. Right, same with the universities, right,
Speaker 5: like you know, all those those aren't just empty phrases
Speaker 5: about free speech and academic freedom and all those things, right,
Speaker 5: they mean something within a liberal framework. They do, and
Speaker 5: they're good things as far as they go sometimes, but
Speaker 5: then they become politicized and we lose the essence of
Speaker 5: the issue. Like we are a settler colonial nation. We
Speaker 5: came here and did I mean, I don't mean to
Speaker 5: say we, but like, you know, the European colonization should
Speaker 5: be taught because it's history. But then it becomes you know,
Speaker 5: this political football. We start looking at the antinomies of
Speaker 5: free speech while his hate speech free speech. Then you
Speaker 5: get into these fucking metaphysical antinomies around these subjects and
Speaker 5: you go nowhere because they've been politicized and d substantialized right,
Speaker 5: and de historicized, and then we just talk about what
Speaker 5: they mean in the infinite system of signs that they're
Speaker 5: supposedly getting their meaning from the structure of their position
Speaker 5: and whatever. But it is insightful because you know, I
Speaker 5: guess Barth, you know, in his mythology and other text
Speaker 5: distinguishes between the denotation and the connotation. Right. The denotation
Speaker 5: is just like the substantial thing that the word is
Speaker 5: pointing to. But the connotation that's the big part, right,
Speaker 5: because that's like the associative network that that word exists in.
Speaker 5: And certain words, you know, you create associations through repetition
Speaker 5: and then the connotation becomes that, right, So you know,
Speaker 5: a connotation can shift from BLM being a Black Lives
Speaker 5: Matter movement to BLM being an anti police criminal organization
Speaker 5: if the ideologists of the Trump administration can get their way,
Speaker 5: which interestingly, I had to mention this because it is
Speaker 5: related to education, but it is not higher education. It's
Speaker 5: primary education because some prayer you right, They've put out
Speaker 5: these models for K to twelve and they have all
Speaker 5: these educational videos which are pure narratives. They're amazing, they're
Speaker 5: hilarious and oh my god, some of them are just
Speaker 5: totally ridiculous. Like you know, you can get a sense
Speaker 5: of what they want to convince you, even just by
Speaker 5: like a summary of the narrative, Like it's actually interesting.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you mention that because I was yesterday, I
Speaker 4: was listening. I went on my first bike ride of
Speaker 4: the season because it's starting to get nice here in Toronto.
Speaker 4: And the nerd that I am, I listened to Supreme
Speaker 4: Court oral arguments. Uh when when I'm riding, and uh,
Speaker 4: they just did this case. It's like mock mood versus something.
Speaker 4: And it's about like people complaining that there that their
Speaker 4: children in schools have to like read LGBT like propaganda
Speaker 4: according to their like their perspective, and like most of
Speaker 4: it was like bullshit. It was like, you know, like
Speaker 4: some story about like Uncle Bob, like marrying a man,
Speaker 4: and it's like okay, like relax, like that's a normal
Speaker 4: thing that happens in life. But I will say, like
Speaker 4: in passing, there were like a few things that they
Speaker 4: mentioned that they had that they're that children were being
Speaker 4: exposed to that I did find that I did feel like, sorry,
Speaker 4: I did feel like the like like the like the
Speaker 4: religious parents have my cat's me owing at me. Uh that,
Speaker 4: like the religious parents kind of had a point like
Speaker 4: was inappropriate. Like so, for example, there's one that was
Speaker 4: like teaching like eight year olds and seven year olds
Speaker 4: that they should be resisting heteronormativity at all times and
Speaker 4: they should be resisting norms. And I'm like, that is
Speaker 4: not appropriate. Yes, it's in the record that there's like
Speaker 4: a storybook that like from like this this LGBT Alliance
Speaker 4: about like you know, helping children like challenge like you
Speaker 4: should be challenging and I'm like eight year olds to sorry,
Speaker 4: seven year olds should not be challenging norms. They need
Speaker 4: to be learning norms and fucking behaving themselves, okay something,
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 5: The project sixteen something or there's something.
Speaker 4: And there was like and I think and I think
Speaker 4: there was like one other thing about like about uh
Speaker 4: oh fuck. I can't remember what the other one was,
Speaker 4: but there were like two things that they mentioned at
Speaker 4: least that I was like, dude, that's like pretty like
Speaker 4: that like I'd be I might even be pissed if
Speaker 4: like that they were teaching that to my kids. Like
Speaker 4: of course stories about like Uncle Bob and like the
Speaker 4: fact that gay people exist and can love each other
Speaker 4: like of course, story conservatives like that's a real thing
Speaker 4: that happens in the world, but like to try to
Speaker 4: take I think the thing that I object to is
Speaker 4: like to try to take like pretty controversial and contestable
Speaker 4: academic concepts and try to cram them down the throats
Speaker 4: of like of like six year olds and eight year olds.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I remember what the other thing was. It
Speaker 4: was like a story that involved a thing about how
Speaker 4: like the doctor takes the child out and it just
Speaker 4: decides arbitrarily that it's a woman or a boy. That
Speaker 4: it's just like that that I forget what the termine
Speaker 4: in like gender theory is, but it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: when it comes out you like discursively, Like that really
Speaker 4: all gender and sex are. It's discursive, And I'm like,
Speaker 4: that's a complicated, controversial thing that six year olds and
Speaker 4: seven year olds don't need to be like learning about.
Speaker 4: Like that's a complicated thing, is it?
Speaker 2: Six year olds are reading Judith Butler.
Speaker 4: It's like a like like a child story book version
Speaker 4: according to the oral arguments, I'd.
Speaker 2: Have to I'd have to ask questions when he comes
Speaker 2: out of mommy and the doctor discursively declares it's just.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a declare. They just declare it, and it's
Speaker 4: and it's actually flexible and that you can be whatever
Speaker 4: you want. And they're just saying that and it's temporary,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, that is fucked up.
Speaker 3: We have assuming it read doctors.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wonder how many states added that to their
Speaker 5: official curriculum versus prigger. You who has been in Oklahoma, Texas,
Speaker 5: and Florida have all signed on. Right, the reach is
Speaker 5: much higher, right, I mean, as an aside, this is
Speaker 5: the worst part of polarization, right, is because each side
Speaker 5: takes the most extreme and non representative examples of bad
Speaker 5: behavior from each side and holds them up like and
Speaker 5: it talks about them in the present tense, like this
Speaker 5: is something that is done regularly. They're just pumping out
Speaker 5: there's some factory out there pumping out books about gay
Speaker 5: marriage just all the time. No, there's nothing that's like
Speaker 5: an anomaly, but it's held up as you know, that's
Speaker 5: why you're hearing all this shit about campus protests and
Speaker 5: anti semitism. And you go there, you think it's like
Speaker 5: a slaughterhouse. Then you go there and there's fucking crickets,
Speaker 5: nothing is happening. It's business as usual. You can you
Speaker 5: can take these you know, it's called the representational representative
Speaker 5: bias whatever. Anyway, that's how connotation works. But you know this,
Speaker 5: this Praeger you videos are amazing and these have been
Speaker 5: like this material can be used in a classroom according
Speaker 5: to the school boards of the states. I don't think
Speaker 5: the individual places are really agreeing with them. But here's
Speaker 5: one Los Angeles Matteo backs the Blue. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: you can see where this is going. A young boy
Speaker 5: whose family fled to Los Angeles to escape drug cartels
Speaker 5: in Mexico. So he's crime on the rise due to
Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter protests, which he compares to crime spurred
Speaker 5: by cartels in Mexico. You know, there's that's part of
Speaker 5: the narrative of this video that's aimed at K to
Speaker 5: twelve children. Okay, So they're teaching them that anti police,
Speaker 5: about anti police sentiment, teaching them be pro police, right
Speaker 5: or the other one? Another one fossil fuels, right, someone
Speaker 5: is about a kid who stands up for fossil fuel companies.
Speaker 5: Another one about Western values compares the British colonization of
Speaker 5: India and eliminating the cast system to the spread of
Speaker 5: Western values, and like the British brought prosperity and success
Speaker 5: to India as a result. No, no giant massacres or
Speaker 5: anything like that happened. They got rid of the cast
Speaker 5: system because that's the one that promotes Western values. They
Speaker 5: even have one for us. Little Jimmy or whoever it was,
Speaker 5: had to go to the States and use their superior
Speaker 5: private healthcare system because our public healthcare system is so
Speaker 5: gummed up. It doesn't work properly, right, Like it doesn't.
Speaker 5: It doesn't bankrupt anybody who gets a fucking cold, so
Speaker 5: it must not be working properly, is the message there?
Speaker 5: I guess, not really green energy in Central Africa. You know,
Speaker 5: we don't have the parts for these stupid plates. Bring
Speaker 5: in the oil instead, right, like all these and this
Speaker 5: is on K to twelve shit and that's got reach.
Speaker 5: So I don't know about like Daddy's New Friend book,
Speaker 5: how many curriculums that made its way onto But this shit,
Speaker 5: this far right craziness, which all this is all perfectly neoliberal.
Speaker 5: Diego said, where's the where's the capitalism? It's right fucking here,
Speaker 5: fossil fuel right, anti green energy, is just a version
Speaker 5: of capitalism that these people want. Anyway, Again, rant's over, but.
Speaker 4: It's but it's I mean, I agree with you. I mean,
Speaker 4: like the reason I thought about my example was because
Speaker 4: it's like a mirror image. They're just like a mirror
Speaker 4: images of each other in a way.
Speaker 2: Let's end on a fun note here I sent I've
Speaker 2: sent you guys a list.
Speaker 3: What the hell is that?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the banned word list.
Speaker 3: So what the band is?
Speaker 2: It's uh, it's allegedly the White House or some people
Speaker 2: in the White House.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: What the band word list has on it is if
Speaker 2: you're if your grant application or any of your research
Speaker 2: has any of these words in it, it's just automatically denied.
Speaker 2: They probably just ask Chad GBT did you find any
Speaker 2: of these words in the application? And then it's immediately rejected.
Speaker 2: So what's on the band word list? There's there's some
Speaker 2: good ones.
Speaker 3: There are some very good ones.
Speaker 2: Gay inclusive, inclusive. You can't say inclusive.
Speaker 1: And you can't say all inclusive, so you cannot write
Speaker 1: about hotels, resoarts.
Speaker 5: This has got to be bullshit. Elderly ethanol And.
Speaker 2: Here's a good one. Here's a good one. Peanut allergies.
Speaker 5: This can't Yeah, yeah, there's no way this is really it's.
Speaker 3: Illegal to be allergic to peanuts from now on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sex and really this was not exactly this list, but
Speaker 2: another one was published by the New York Times, So
Speaker 2: I think this is a reputable and it's it's only
Speaker 2: banned by the way for like federal grant applications.
Speaker 5: It says they're being scrubbed from websites and documents of
Speaker 5: the government.
Speaker 4: Did you see the other story about Nola gay, like
Speaker 4: the one the first woman or something to fly a
Speaker 4: plane like it got flagged at the Pentagon automatically because
Speaker 4: it had the word gay.
Speaker 3: Gay science is also for beating from now on exactly, you.
Speaker 5: Can't say the word victim connotations, change.
Speaker 2: Tribal to go with a you can't say tribal or native. Wow.
Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like that might be a place
Speaker 4: where the de I people will agree, uh with Trump
Speaker 4: on that that we shouldn't be using the word tribal.
Speaker 2: You can't say systemic or stereotype. What You're not allowed
Speaker 2: to use Latin X anymore. So Latin latinos LATINX.
Speaker 5: We all celebrate, We're done it seems a little bit.
Speaker 5: Some of these words are very general, like.
Speaker 4: Bias, slow emission, vehicle A long.
Speaker 2: Look, here's all the here's all the gender ones, gender,
Speaker 2: gender based, gender based violence, gender diversity, gender identity, gender ideology,
Speaker 2: gender affirming care or genders. Oh my god, female is banned?
Speaker 2: Male is not only male dominated? Is female is banned malely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's take that both for here.
Speaker 2: Dude, if this were if this were applied like Jordan Peterson,
Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro Prager, they would have nothing to talk about.
Speaker 2: This is this is this is fifty percent of their material.
Speaker 5: That's like a this is like a word cloud from
Speaker 5: Jordan Peterson or something. I don't know if this is
Speaker 5: a band wordless at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was Marcus Aurelius that said that the
Speaker 1: higher the degree of the decadence of an empire, the
Speaker 1: weirder their rules become.
Speaker 3: And I think this is this is, this is where
Speaker 3: we're going.
Speaker 2: You can't say the word definition.
Speaker 1: We should try one episode with at least in front
Speaker 1: of us and try to have a normal conversation avoiding
Speaker 1: those words so hard.
Speaker 5: Vowel a very limiting without this vocabulary. This is like,
Speaker 5: this is, this is like Urban dictionary. This is like
Speaker 5: what you need need to understand Reddit a list of terms.
Speaker 5: I don't understand half of them.
Speaker 4: So weird.
Speaker 3: Twitter will become like absolutely in a day.
Speaker 5: They put women and women like they, and then they
Speaker 5: put female and females like they. They make sure you
Speaker 5: put the plural on there. We don't want to leave
Speaker 5: any loopholes like.
Speaker 3: People to abuse the system. Yet.
Speaker 5: Oh that's why we say, you know, racisms, We have
Speaker 5: to say that. We have to publish a book about
Speaker 5: racisms while this list is going.
Speaker 2: You are allowed to say male, but you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to say men. Men is banned.
Speaker 5: I see men, they're men or men right above mental
Speaker 5: health and men. Oh, men who have sex with men?
Speaker 5: That's what you're not allowed to say, the whole phrase.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, okay, I made a mistake. It wasn't men,
Speaker 2: it was men who have sex with men. There's a
Speaker 2: line break there.
Speaker 1: Can you say men that make love to other men?
Speaker 1: That's that's okay.
Speaker 2: Well you can't. I guess you are allowed to say men,
Speaker 2: but you cannot say I.
Speaker 5: Think this list is exhaustive.
Speaker 2: So yeah, women is banned, and women away awesome, and
Speaker 2: feminism is banned too.
Speaker 5: So put it on the signature of all your documents,
Speaker 5: like just like, best regards, diego ps men who have
Speaker 5: love making with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are we still allowed to be an orientalist podcast?
Speaker 3: Or is that banned as well?
Speaker 2: Orientalism is allowed. It looks like, so we have survived
Speaker 2: another week, Yes we have.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, like Marxism is allowed on this list too, apparently,
Speaker 5: but that's it. I think they didn't think that one
Speaker 5: would be a problem.
Speaker 3: This is again.
Speaker 5: This is like, this is an ideological unity list, right,
Speaker 5: this is an imposition. This is exactly what like one
Speaker 5: of the fronts of the ideological battle here, one of
Speaker 5: the I think one of the actual goals of Trump
Speaker 5: is yeah, this ideological conformity with his vision of the future.
Speaker 2: All right, well there's a.
Speaker 5: Perfect example of that too.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: We can't say we can't say he him, but you
Speaker 2: cannot say they that.
Speaker 5: The language police works for both sides.
Speaker 4: The language police works in miss it works in mysterious ways.
Speaker 3: I love you, my fellow.
Speaker 5: Men, double language agents.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, see you men who have sex
Speaker 2: with men?
Speaker 5: All right, Later