Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Lawrence M. Krause, theoretical physicist, president
of the Origins Project, best selling author and editor of
The War on Science. Thirty nine renowned scientists and scholars
speak out about the current threats to free speech, open inquiry,
and the scientific process. Lawrence, thank you so much for
joining us on this edition at the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great to be with you, at least virtually.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, And you know, I think about the War
on Science and the elements of that have hit us
in this battle virtually over the last several years. Obviously,
the methods of communication and the delivery of science have
changed over the years. What has in particular changed has
been this kind of group think, this idea that politics
is science, and I think that is what is really
at the core of your new book. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, The notion that activism has replaced scholarship in many
disciplines in academia is worries. And now as a scientist,
we used to kind of laugh, you know, thirty years
yars ago, when I was press for at Yale, we
looked down the hill at the English Department which was
doing deconstructionism, which is basically said there was no objective
knowledge and no meaning, and everything was we did interpret
in terms of power and oppression. We laughed at that
and said, well, it never hit the sciences. But what's
unfortunately happened is the same kind of nonsense has infiltrated
the sciences as well, and so it not only hurts
the credibility and quality of the science being done, but
what's even more of greater concern is that there are
bureaucratic organizations within universities that are enforcing rules that are
and faculty are sometimes losing their jobs or just speaking
out and asking questions, and of course, asking questions is
the heart of scholarship and science. Science is a dialectic.
It's based on open debate and free inquiry, and if
that gets stopped, then scientific progress gets stopped. And if
scientific progress gets stopped, the nations in trouble, no.
Speaker 1: Doubt about it. I think that as I look back
at my early education and higher education, I think that
when I was going to school as a snot nosed
kid at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee back in the early
nineteen nineties, that whole notion that you talked about from
the English department was really starting to hit in a
lot of different disciplines. How far do you would you
estimate being an academia, how far does this go back?
Speaker 2: Well, you know it does. I was teaching at Yale
in the nineteen eighties, and it went and it sort
of started that this idea of poster modernist thought, I
think through a French philosopher, Michelle Foucault, the notion which
is really based on the idea that knowledge is subjective,
there's no such thing as objective knowledge, and that all
statements had to be viewed in terms of power structure.
It's a very Marxist viewpoint really actually, and that had
infiltrated some area is of academic research from English to
you know, of course, has been a big part of
some of the marginal academic disciplines like gender studies and
some other things for a while, but it didn't really
enter the mainstream and begin to permeate, especially the hard sciences,
which really, you know, should have it should never have
arrived at probably till about a decade ago, maybe maybe
two decades Some people began to notice it two decades ago.
Greg Lukanof, who's from a Foundation for Individual Rights and Education,
probably started to talk about that, maybe over a decade
ago or two decades ago, something like that.
Speaker 1: I think about how preposterous some of the stuff is,
and it has become unfortunately mainstreamed. I think about the
notion of equitable math, equitable sciences, and I'm sure that
you have dealt with it, and some of your colleagues
who are writing on this subject have had to dealt
with deal with it. But you know, it's it would
be absolutely laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's dangerous for a bunch of reasons. Yeah, there
are a bunch of the you know, there are thirty
nine people, as you point out, who've written and there
are two mathematicians who talk about the attack on mathematics
and decolonizing mathematics, as if that has any meaning. The
notion that somehow proofs in mathematics were done by European
scholars implies that they're European and not universal. You know,
the notion that pie somehow is is universal, or the
power series to describe it. The wonderful thing about math
is it is probably the most area most divorced from
human political concerns. Yet saying somehow that students should should
be suspicious of it because recent mathematical proofs have been
done in the West, or I mean even worse. In California,
there was a white paper produced by groups that were
funded by the state and various private organisations recommending curricular
changes in mathematics in California, saying that things like getting
the right answer or showing your work were examples of
white supremacy and should be removed. That kind of nonsense
is dangerous for educating our children. So education is one thing,
but in other areas where where this kind of group
think has taken place, in particular, after all, science of
public policy should be based on empirical evidence and testing,
And there are a number of writers here who are
doctors or talking about medical education and medical research. Those
are areas where really lives depend upon upon a rigorous
empirical basis and not based on ideology. And there are
many examples that are quoted there where the lives of
children or the lives of people are now being affected
by this kind of political correctness and woke ideology. Even again,
in Canada and in the United States, the medical curriculum
is being being changed. An organization in Canada, can Meds,
suggested and wrote that when it comes to medical education,
critical social justice theories and activism is more important at
teaching medical students than medical knowledge itself. And similarly, the
American Medical Association is also recommended that kind of methodology
important for educating the next generation doctors. I think most
people who go to a doctor would far prefer they
knew something about medicine than that they were concerned. I mean, look,
the concerns are real ones, social inequities and the things
like that. They the intent, the original intent of all
this was good, but what happened is good intentions often
go awry, and when they become ideology, when you can't
question them, when they suggest that every problem is due
to racism or sexism, when it has nothing to do
with that. It background demographics, the fact that certain diseases
are more prevalent in certain racial groups sickle cele anemia,
for example, and the fact that that when you try
and study it you can't You can't basically openly argue
that the subject should in that case be more black
than white. Is a problem of studying. How to cure
that problem, and in fact people are now openly saying
you can't. You can't look at genetics and race in
any way to see if there's any correlation, and that's
that that hurts the very groups that are that are
being affected by diseases. So when ideology gets involved in medicine,
then lives are at stake. In other areas, lives may
be at stake too, because the quality of the science
that's coming out when you can't hire based on merit,
when you when you have to hire based on identity,
either gender or race or sexual preference, when you're not
hiring the best people, you can be assured that the
quality of the work that's coming out decreases.
Speaker 1: Well, you do remember what the great poet William Blake
said hundreds of years ago that the road to hell
is paved with DEI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a modern interpretation of there.
Speaker 1: It might be, it might be yes, but but no
doubt about it. I mean, you have an example of
where you are in Canada, you know, and we have
seen this kind of thing. Although there has been and
we can talk about this more, but there's been a
legal fight against this in the United States, and it's
been a successful one over the past few years. I
would say, because we're really getting into, you know, due
process issues, we're getting into discrimination. We're getting into laws
that have been on the books for fifty sixty plus
years to fight discrimination. And I know that what it
was a university recently in Canada that hosted.
Speaker 2: Yeah on the radio program and Universe who Ought to Love?
But it's not the only one. Sure adds like that
which say specifically for science for stem professorships. This one
happens to say this call is open only to qualified
individuals who self identifies women, transgender, gender fluid, non barinar
are two spirit but there are many because in Canada
there's a ridiculous law that basically says two wrongs make
a right. It says counter past discrimination, you're allowed to
discriminate now.
Speaker 1: Anti racism, right, I mean, that's that's the whole theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's awful because what it says is
that somehow, any example of hiring that doesn't match background
demographics exactly is due to racism or sexism. And the
federal government of Canada has taken the most prestigious government
funded chairs Canada research shares they have to match the
background demographics exactly. So fifty point nine percent afty women.
You know, it goes on and on and regardless of
in the field what the background applicant pool is like.
So you find places like the University of Toronto, which
is one of the premier research institutions in that country,
saying they will not consider white males for those positions
for the next five years. I mean, I think that
is just shocking. And of course what you're seeing in
the United States that in the United States, of course
there are constitutional regulations that preclude doing that explicitly, but
you can see it implicitly in hiring a search committees
once again looking for hiring people based on gender or race.
And now look, originally, once again, the intentions were good
fifty sixty years ago. It was hard if you're a woman,
say to be hired in science. And when I was
in a physics department years ago, whenever, even thirty years ago,
this was of concern, and whenever we didn't hire someone
who was a woman, we had to write an explanation
for why. And I understood that. When I was chair,
we hired the first two women faculty members in my department.
But this has been going on for years and there's
no there is no explicit racism or sexism. The universities
are probably used to be one of the most enlightened
places in our country. And to say, for example, in
physics there are fewer women and it's because women are
excluded is ridiculous, because if you actually look now in
the life sciences, it's overwhelmingly female, and in fact, in
universities right now, in undergraduate levels it's basically sixty percent
to forty percent female versus male. And if you look
at all undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees, females outnumber males
in almost every case, so certain areas. It's clearly an
example of preference in some ways, and there are interesting
arguments why perhaps there's a gender preference for choosing life
sciences over physics. But to argue that every time things
don't match background demographics it's to due to racist they're
ridiculous there, or gender or sexism. I mean, there are
many more men roofers or garbage collectors. It doesn't I
don't think that's an argument for sexism. So to always
assume that racism or sexism behind this is ridiculous. And
you see what's really worse is you see the heads
of institutions buying into this just for the sake of
virtue signaling. Francis Collins, who I knew was a friend,
he was head of the National Institutes of Health, and
he said that, you know, after the George Floyd incident,
that the biomedical sciences were systemically racist. If you really
believe that, as someone who had been head of the
nationalis Suits of Health for a decade, he should have resigned.
But he was just virtue signaling. And that kind of
virtue signaling by institution leaders is awful. They would rather
now get ahead of the social media mobs than defend
scientific integrity or free speech, or free inquiry or academic freedom.
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan was right, and it's worse than we thought.
The watch doot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet. If I'm
from the government and I'm here to help, isn't bad enough.
The government spends one hundred and eighty one billion dollars
per year on direct cash to private businesses. Did you
see a check in the mail? Whether it's happening in
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci and others,
if we go five years plus back in twenty twenty,
that was a very difficult time for exactly what this
book is about, what your colleagues are writing about. In
the War on Science, thirty nine renowned scientists and scholars
speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry,
and the scientific process. How many scientists were silenced by
the Group Think during COVID.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, this is a good point, and you
know there's been a lot of discussion about this, and
it's a real sad thing for me what happened during COVID,
because I've viewed it as a great chance for the
public to see how science has really done that at
the forefront, there are uncertain is we don't know everything,
and it takes time to resolve things. So you see
debates and you see experiments, and by the way, vaccines
saved millions of lives. So I want to make it
clear that I think the search to produce COVID vaccines
was heroic effort. But the fact that some people would
make reasonable arguments for why perhaps schools shouldn't be closed
or or you know, vaccines should be the way vaccines
should be rolled out to be different, and there's open
there were good debates. I don't agree with all of
those statements, but those people shouldn't have been silenced. And
it's true that that now the current head of the
NIH was someone who was silence, a professor at Stanford.
And it's unfortunate because the public could have seen how scientists,
by baby steps arrive at conclusions and we acknowledge our uncertainties,
and that would have been a wonderful learning experience. And
I was kind of sad that people would say the
science is settled at a time when it probably wasn't.
But on the other hand, it's I do worry about
people who somehow claim that vaccines killed, you know, have
ultimately killed more people than they say. That's just not true.
The empirical evidence is the opposite in that regard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can understand that, but I think it was
a difficult time, certainly for media outlets that were trying
to report on what these silenced scientists were trying to
get out to the public. And so we at the
federalists know that better than any I mean, we were
absolutely in some quarters in social media shut down. Elsewhere
there was a concerted government campaign to silence those people.
And I think.
Speaker 2: Absolutely you're right and I agree with that, and there
should never be government campaigns to silence people people. You know,
free speech is what the kind of free speech that
you need to defend is the speech you disagree with,
not the speech you agree with. And governments and other
individuals fall into that trap all the time. And let
me say I first learned it from my late colleague
chrispher Hitchins, who got it from the philosopher David Hume
and other a long time ago. Free speech is important
not just to defend the people you disagree with, but
it's important for you because if we silence free speech,
you have no opportunity to learn that you may be wrong.
You won't even hear the artifics that disagree with you,
and often we need to hear them to see if
we're wrong.
Speaker 1: I think that is true in science and every walk
of life, of course. But I wanted to ask you
what did that experience in COVID when we had the
silencing of scientists, when we had the suppression of important
scientific findings, when we had a growing group of scientists
who said, well, wait a minute, maybe shutting down schools
in society in general is not how to confront this.
Maybe the better way is to deal with our most
vulnerable and you know, go after different tracks. How much
did that play into wearing down the faith in science
in our society.
Speaker 2: It's a good point. I think it played a lot
into wearing down the faith because once again, it made
it seem that these decisions were ideological because there were
different political groups arguing in favor of them instead of
instead of allowing the open scientific debate, and it made
it seem like science was a close discipline, controlled in
some cases by certain ideological predilections. And it isn't, I
should say, in general, but for the as far as
the public is concerned, what this great learning experience could
have been to see how wonderful science is and allowing
open debate and understanding uncertainty. Instead, for many people it
caused them to distruss scientists. And I still see it
today when I write about this. You know, there are
people who basically say we can't trust any scientists, and
that's unfortunate because it hurts everybody. And I will say
just to make it clear that I think that is
part of the problem of what's happening with the Trump
administration right now, who, in response to the kind of
ideological wokeness that we're discussing sort of, then do broad
brush painting of all scientists as woke or leftists, and
instead of attacking the real problems, they cancel funding for
really important science projects. It's really important not to attack
this with a sledgehamber, but with a scalpel, and to
realize that most scientists were not actually woke or leftists.
What they were doing was just hiding under the radar
and trying to get their work done, and the best
scientists we're doing excellent work. Sure, Harvard did have rampant
anti semitism, did discriminate against white males and Asians in
many cases, that's all true. But at the same time,
at Harvard, the best scientific research in the world was
being done. And you've got to make sure that you
don't hurt one for the other. So I do worry
about overreach in many cases from the left in the
case we've been talking about when it comes to covid
in vaccines, but now in this case to some extent,
from the right in response, and we have to, you know,
fight both both efforts to quell sort of responsible science
and equally. And so I do want to point that out.
I get it, and I will say, what's one of
the reasons why when I chose the thirty nine people
for this book, you'll find scientists from the left and
the right here because they don't always agree, and I
think it's important to when it comes to ideology, they
agree on the science, and that's what's important.
Speaker 1: Indeed, our guest today is Laurence M. Krausse, theoretical physicist,
president of the Origins Project, best selling author and editor
of The War on Science, thirty nine renowned scientists and
scholars speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry,
and the scientific process. You were talking about this before,
and I think it deserves a little more time. You know,
what was originally thought to be an idea to battle against,
you know, racism, to stand up against racism and discrimination
in the sciences and in all walks of life in
this country has now turned into more discrimination. It's sad
to think about that after what this country has has
gone through. But not only that lawrence, we are dealing
not only with if you want to call it reverse discrimination,
I think discrimination of any kind is discrimination, But we
are dealing with the mutilation of children. That's where this
woke ideology infused into the sciences has landed us. How
do we get out of that particular egregious conduct in
the sciences?
Speaker 2: Oh? Look, there are probably four or five doctors and
medical scientists who in book talk about gender issues and
in particular the issue of gender firming care for young children,
and the United States is an outlier. Now England, through
the Cast Report and Europe have have begun to recognize
that claims of that that claims that are made, for example,
that that children that young individuals who are who have
a gender dysphoria are likely to commit suicide if if
if active intervention is not made in either drugs or surgery.
There they they relate to claimed scientific studies which in
fact did not ever make that claim. And and what
you see is there is those references to those studies,
or worse, references to people who then reference those studies
are made to justify and the past of the American
Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatric Specialists, or whatever
it's called, all of these organizations in the United States
promote this active gender affirming care to miners. And now
you're seeing in other parts of the world people saying
hold off. It's inappropriate, especially since they're below the age
of consent, to take as someone who for at one
reason or another, feels uncomfortable in their body, as a feeling,
you know, if they're a boy or a girl, feeling
like they're a boy or a girl, and those are real,
those are real issues, those are real problems. But then
actively choosing to do something that will then later on
cause them to lose any ability to have sexual pleasure
or later in life, and miners should not be operated
on without it because they're below the age of consent.
And I think most people are now in other countries
are now realizing that we have to be very careful
and that the studies that claims that we're saving people
from suicide are not valid studies. And as I say,
the United States is an outlier. And you've now seen
the Supreme Court decision when it comes to Tennessee that
basically finally is now saying, yes, you you should not
basically operate on minors who may feel gender dysphoria because
they're not in a position to make decisions as adults.
And that and that's not suggesting once again that there
that there are not people who have gender dysphoria, and
they're not are not people who later on in life
as adults, choose to reflect a different gender than they're
than they're than their sex. That's all valid and those
people should not be discriminated against because of those issues.
But as children, we they're not in a position to
be able to make those decisions.
Speaker 1: But the political identity science, and that's what it was
and that's what it is it still is was and
is wrong. I think we're getting a better idea now,
but I just I guess there are a lot of
people like me that are struggling looking at the scientific community,
those who have used the science, manipulated the science to
get their political points across, or to drive their political
ideas and agendas. This to us, to me, it seemed
wrong from the very beginning. I mean, how did we
get here? How did we arrive here?
Speaker 2: Right? In one real sense where the science is completely historic,
we talk about that, the confusion between gender and sex,
the fact that many even scientific organizations will not open
we will punish people for saying sex is binary. Sex
is binary depends on the size of game meats, females
of large gam meets males of small gammets. And it's
true throughout the throughout the animal kingdom. It's not just
for humans. And you know, one of the people who
wrote for this book, Carol Hooven, said on I think
it was a Fox interview that sex is binary. She
was later harassed so much at Harvard that she had
to resign your position. And you know, take another one
of our people who wrote for us, Elizabeth White, and
an anthropologists, archaeologists, who studied studies ancient skeletons at the
American Anthropological Association, I think that was the meeting they
had a session on the sex of skeletons that was
removed by the organization because it might offend or harm
certain individuals, when in fact, of course, it's important if
you're trying to understand early cultures under and that the
roles of how they worked skeletons are but yet based
on sex. Female skeletons are different than male skeletons because
the physiology is different, and to deny that is to
deny the science based on ideology. And when professional organizations
start doing that, that is a real problem. And then
when you have scientific journals that will actually come out
and say it, like the journal Nature Behavior, as their
editors have said, if there are scientific articles that might
offend some groups or make them feel like there's harm
against them, we will not publish those articles, even if
they're scientifically correct. And that is the I mean, that
isn't an athematic science because it obviously the science is
important and whether it offends anyone or not is irrelevant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is absolutely an ethematic science. I mean, that's
it couldn't be any farther from the scientific process, the
scientific method, It couldn't be any farther from reality. So
let me ask you, this is the war on science
in many aspects of war on reality.
Speaker 2: Of course, it is because science is our best way
of understanding reality. We don't understand by assuming it in
advance and forcing the universe to conform to our beliefs.
We have to force our beliefs to conform to the evidence,
and that's the way science works. We all are human,
we all have biases, we all have things desires that
we wish things were true. The wonderful thing about the
scientific process and the reason it works, is it's a
methodology for overcoming our biases. That we say, we think this,
We do the experiments, and we see if the evidence
tells us it's true, and if the evidence tells us
it's false, we throw it out like yesterday's newspaper. That's
the way it works, and then we keep doing the experiments,
we keep testing, and that's the way we overcome the
intrinsic biases that individual sciences may have. That's why the
scientific method is worth explaining and teaching children and everyone else,
because ultimately, public policy should be based on the same thing.
If you make a policy, and you know, we all
can make policies for how we think the world should working.
Politicians have to work that we have to do that
based on incomplete evidence. But then you you enact the policy,
and if you find out it's not working, then if
you're responsible, you should say, well, we should change the policy.
It should be paced on empirical evidence. And you know,
in many areas of science things are more caught dry.
My Aora physics happily that we do experiments, we have
one hundred billion results and we can therefore test things
with extreme accuracy. It's certain areas like medicine and other
areas that you have smaller groups and things are more uncertain,
but you continue to do the experiments. And you know,
Richard Dawkins, who was one of the first papers in
the book, talks about double blind tests, which is the
beauty of it's used in medicine where you where you
basically neither the doctor nor the patients know in some
cases what's being done, so that there are no biases
that can affect the results of the experiment. And you
learn by that, and you learn by baby steps and
and there's no place for ideology, even though we have
to recognize that. Of course, individual scientists can have inherent biases.
But the great thing about science is it overcomes those biases.
The whole methodology overcomes it. And when you start imposing
ideology and not allowing those experiments to be done or
not publishing the results, well you're hurting everybody.
Speaker 1: Indeed, how many scientists were lost in this recent modern
day purge of politics ing injected into science, Well.
Speaker 2: It's hard to know. It's hard to know. Of course,
you never know the ones who didn't, who didn't end
up becoming scientists. But it is problematic when there are,
first of all, scientists who lose their positions for simply questioning.
You know, there's one of the scientists here is like
another Canadian who who was fired from a tenured position
for questioning several things including whether indigenous knowledge and astronomy,
which could be taught culturally as useful, was useful in
introductory astronomy classes, for understanding stellar evolution or things like that.
She questioned it, and ultimately it was determined that she
produced a hostile work environment and resmoved from her tenured position.
That nonsense and that kind of awful culling of people
who ask questions and she's not the only one for example,
is awful. But then, as I say, there are others
who've been lost because of this effort to hire based
on identity rather than merit. Universities have to be a meritocracy.
And of course there are inequities in our society, and
to deny that, of course is ridiculous. But you don't
overcome the inequities, be the a gender or racial at
the level of a professor at a university. If you're
worried about inequities to say in inner cities and the
United States and where there may be, you know, people
have less access to education, you've got to address those
at the primary school level. But you don't solve them
at the level of a tenured professor. It's just not
the right way to attack the problem.
Speaker 1: Well, science also is nothing without ethics. There has to
be a basis, There has to be some kind of
ethical core at it all. How much have ethics been
been hurt through this modern era, this brave new world
of science.
Speaker 2: Well again, ethics, I mean ethics is a more subtle issue,
right because you know, people can make reasonable arguments for
very different what some people would think was a moral morality,
and ethics have to be distinguished. But I think the
key point is that those philosophers in particular discuss ethics
would argue, and they're utilitarian philosophers and others who would
argue that one should bath our ethical decisions once again
on empirical evidence. But it's important. What's most important is
while there can be reasonable disagreements, that those Greek disagreement
should be voiced, that not just one side should be
able to say what's right or wrong. I mean, and
let me again phrase this in a way that was
going back in time where it was done wrong. In
the opposite direction, to argue that homosexuality is a moral
or unethical is to misunderstand the ultimately science, and to
argue that those people should be persecuted, as used to
be the case, was wrong, and happily in society for
the most part, we now overcome it. In the United
States or rules that you can have gay marriage and
other things, and you know, and there are lots of
examples and other species. A sheep are to ten percent
of sheep of long term monogamous gay relationships. Same sex
relationships and to argue that somehow they're moral or ethical
is ridiculous. So, you know, it's happened in the past,
and it's important that we have overcome that to some extent,
and it's more important now that we overcome it in
the opposite direction and we don't say, for example, we
don't label people who say that biological sex is biological.
It's not cultural, and we can't and to label them
as transphobic and to try and cancel them, whether they
be the author of the of the Harry Potter series
or someone else, is to is to once again, you know,
have this kind of branding of people as unethical on
the basis of ideological grounds.
Speaker 1: Well, I know there's there's probably a big debate in
the scientific community over this.
Speaker 2: I know there is.
Speaker 1: It's no probably about it. But you know, I believe
in the progress of science, and science is a core
part of the human experience, very necessary part of the
human experience. But I also believe in faith in the
human experience, and I think over the last several years
there has been you know, a war between the two
going on that we talk about and in some ways understandably,
so I'm curious what are the broader implications of this
war on science? And I'm certain that you have colleagues
who have you know, that's really what this book is about, ultimately,
is what happens when you are injecting politics into science
and you know, taking away the goal, the ultimate goal
of science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, look I frame it more generally than
just politics. I can take frame it as ideology. And
that ideology can come from political background, it can come
from religious beliefs, and it can come from many areas.
And what you want to move is dogma. Dogma basically is,
and whether it's religious or political or secular, basically says
certain ideas are heretical and you cannot discuss them, and
the people who discuss them are bad. And that notion
is an an aathematics science, and nothing is sacred in science.
Any question is askable, regardless of who it offends. And ultimately,
it's nature that determines what's reasonable and not human beings.
And we've determined that by doing experiments, not by revelation
or prejudice. But we do experiments, and we test, and
nature tells us what's real and what isn't and that
and when we give up that understanding of reality. It
inevitably comes back and bites us in the button you
know later on, because whenever you base your decisions on
some unreal phenomena, you're going to find yourself having problems
down the road.
Speaker 1: We are seeing, you know, a seed change Americans thoughts
on the whole DEI movement and the dangers therein, and
so you have seen a movement to you know, change
course on that. We are also seeing universe cities threatened
with funding issues, as we talked before, you know, changing
or at least publicly facing changing those things. But we're
seeing a lot of those institutions of higher education going underground,
continuing to do what they do to drive out those
in the science, their scientific communities, asking important questions that
don't fit the ideological mold. Where do you see all
of that going in higher education moving forward?
Speaker 2: Well, look, there's been there's been problems at universities, and
in general those problems, I mean they're not universally located
in one area, but universities have built these huge bureaucracies
called diversity, equity, inclusion bureaucracies. And those words sound like
good words. Everyone's in faith, you know how could you
be against diversity or inclusion correctly, But in fact those
are buzzwords and they're used to do the exact opposite,
to exclude and to have inequities. You know, what we
should be arguing for is equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
And that's the key difference. We want to give everyone
the opportunity to excel, but the fact that some people
don't excel is not necessarily due to racism or sexism
or anything else. And in particular in universities, some people
are better than others and in certain fields, you know,
in their talents or the work they've done, or whatever
it is, and that has to be judge on the
basis of the results. Now, these divergency an equity inclusion
of bureaucracies unfortunately have become significant in many universities and
have governed hiring, have governed in various rules of things
that students have to be taught, and that has to
be fought. Now that's being fought, and one of the
positive things that I would say that the Trump administration
has done is made it clear that those kind of
organizations which do discriminate or enforce ideology have to be
removed from universities, so that that is that's a good result,
that's helping. And the more the public realizes that's a problem,
the more pressure there will be on universities to reduce
the impact of those bureaucracies and also not relabel them
so that they continue to operate. And you're seeing it.
A lot of universities are disbanding those groups, and that's
good and really a university should be run by the faculty,
not by these administrators. And unfortunately, in many universities, these
administrators are It's like a cancer. There are more administrative
hires than there are students. It's awful, it really is awful.
But at the same time I want to try I
want to make it clear that the solution of this
is not to then require as some states have done
and to some extent, the current administrations. I argue that
you cannot discuss the issues behind diversity ecre inclusion, including
critical race there, which I think is nonsense, But you can't.
I can't legislate that people can't discuss that. The proper
thing is for people to be able to discuss it,
and for people like me to then have a platform
to be able to argue why it's nonsense. That's how
good ideas get rise up and how bad ideas eventually disappear.
So you know, you can't fight intolerance with intolerance. You
can't fight bad ideas by imposing your own ideas and
not allowing the opposite. You have to allow the free
and open debate.
Speaker 1: Well orwell livest about it. Nineteen eighty four is very
prevalent in twenty twenty five. This debate will continue to
go on, and it is a very important debate, a
very important conversation to have. Thanks to my guest today,
Lawrence M. Krause, best selling author and editor of the
War on Science thirty nine Renowned scientists and scholars speak
out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry, and
the scientific process. You've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent
at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray