Transcripts For CSPAN2 Robby Soave Panic Attack - Young Radicals In The Age Of Trump 20240714

And that could be a big problem. Good afternoon welcome to the Cato Institute from the Cato Institute we are here today to talk about panic attack young radicals in the age of trump. I thought it was very interesting i have to say. It was thoughtprovoking it was all over the ideological spectrum and treated many different phenomenon with a common rubric so what are those commonalities . That so many people have simultaneously lost their minds . [laughter] and i am here today in part because i hear a great deal of the art of not losing your mind and asking questions about how do we return to a more sane place in politics . And for two main locations in that environment and the other social media. What do these have in common . So my answers are as follows. First the de tocqueville effect is a wellknown phenomenon in Political Science where a society takes to reform itself is often precisely the way in which those conditions make it even more intolerable that somehow things end up seeming worse. And there have been a number of social positive changes in recent years. People have met with social acceptance and the quality. We have had a great deal in our past and very much evidence nowadays but yet somehow we are angrier than ever before and we have seen a resurgence perhaps some degree of racism but also in that is puzzling with the subject of the book we have seen things formerly regarded as watershed with significant positive developments and one example is that big boys dont cry which was to talk about how durant transgender people for as they actually are and now seem that problematic. So at the time they were not considered problematic at all. So the second point i would suggest is that both in the college environments and all through social media there is a strong incentive to play to an audience so to be outside your group and you raise your own social esteem and standing within your group. And so it seems simultaneously we seem to do this to our own social groups. And they hate the idea there are other ideas but it is my experience this is the case someone social media we also segregate and on campuses there is a strong degree of selfsegregation and this is why it seems we are also angry now. Were all finding the worst from the other side and presenting that to our own side to raise our own social standing within her own groups. This is a dangerous dynamic. I dont know how we pull out of this and the third dynamic that is very similar on social media and College Campuses with these potential gatekeepers. And by his grace yes there were nazis or environmental terrorist or crazy abominable people out there. And they were not on our blog and that is great. That is enough for go that is all that was needed. We are okay. But suddenly everything politics changes. Try to capture those gatekeepers to take our side to keep the other people out and that is something social media has brought to the online experience that was not present before. But in the social media age as to the internet before social media. They now have the prospect of a gatekeeper and everyone tries to please you or become the new gatekeeper. So those were three of the many thoughts that i had while reading the book and im sure our panelist will have many of their own. Of course our author, associate editor at reason a commentator in many different venues with his work with Sexual Assault alleged at the university in 2015 Southern California Journalism Award accomplishing as his writing appeared in the New York Times, new york post, cnn, usa today and newsweek in 2016 he made the 30 under 30 list for law and policy and a regular guest on fox news, cnn and other radio programs. He will speak first of next is james a senior politics editor at fox. Com with the gop in the far right also a cohost of the popular podcast that weeds her work has been featured espn magazine and other venues. Lastly craig is an attorney New York Times bestselling author and president of the foundation for individual rights education the author of unlearning liberty censorship and debate and fires guide to campus and most recently he coauthored the American Mind of these ideas are setting up a generation of failure. This New York Times bestseller expands on september 2015 the atlantic cover story he did with his coauthor and the executive producer of a featurelength documentarys scoring the division without rage culture on and off campus. Please welcome our panelists. [applause] thank you all so much for coming here today. The subject of my book panic attack is the culture of activism at the moment particularly on College Campuses where a number of progressive activists particularly the elite educational institutions, have engaged in attempts to shut down speakers who they may disagree with, professors who may be well to the left who they object to something and offer investigations of them or through other student groups whose activities they dont agree with. This is a problem more pervasive like at harvard and yale man liberal arts institutions where the culture not all students our most students but a small number of progressive radical fringe believe that ideas that they disagree with our not only a tactical political scheme but to represent their wealth one her health and wellbeing and that should be unfavorable on a College Campus. This is a problem with the National Media started to pay more attention to beginning late 2015 when there was notable events at yale as the dean was there for that event and his wife had written an email to the students saying that they rejected the guidance Previous Administration had given the students over Halloween Costumes that you can decide for yourself what is appropriate to wear for halloween and a number of students got rejected. This attempted not to be materialistic and berated him for a long time. Asserting it was his role on campus to provide a safe space for them from discomfort and emotional harm. And he failed in his obligation to do that explicitly they said that is the role of the ministration to provide this overbroad safety from ideas that could trouble us. This is an undercurrent of activism that has propped up time and time again since this incident some of you are aware of some of those that have attracted more National Attention and asked the college to stop between a conservative Charles Murray or a liberal is the activist actually attacked not only prevented the speaker but actually put him in a neck brace and berkeley are prevented from being far right speakers trees were set on fire and the events were not taken place. This isnt just happening on the far right people people like Brett Weinstein and those students who objected and had her investigated. This continues to today with the news over the last few weeks at Harvard University ron sullivan who is well known he was an advisor to senator obama to help free wrongfully incarcerated as you do with your defense attorney with those accused murderers are terrorists those that were accused of Sexual Harassment and assault those that had protest said that sullivan made the campus unsafe for women and should be impermissible not as law professor but one of the residential colleges and to say that he is concerned of those institutions that they are now dictating the policies that are overwriting values that the left used to believe very strongly in those are two areas where libertarians and progressives are in close proximity. And with those despicable people to defend their free speech and process rights but now the aclu has that activist culture with william and mary two years ago the aclu and they talked over her to prevent that from happening and they gave the mic to the leader. Of the Free Speech Movement i actually learned in 1963 the far left very Progressive Student Group invited nazis to campus to make a freespeech point and with that whole nazi regalia nobody heckled him but they just laughed at him when he was done. And this is something that the progressive students did that we are for ironclad freespeech campuses would be shut down as a national day of mourning and how the Mental Health of the entire campus was negatively affected to the point nobody could go to classes or take exams. So this is a survey of the problems i described in my book and i talk about different activist groups that have been active over the last ten years and specifically their goals though without getting too hyper specific i will just very briefly talk about the trends linking these groups and contributing to them choosing these tactics. So i spoke to some of these activists, specifically at university of michigan and thats where the event Charles Murray was supposed to speak and they prevented him from speaking. And i would say things doesnt this make him look more sympathetic and you look foolish for thinking he cant even be allowed to speak . But what they told me then over and over if you let somebody speak who makes people feel they disagree with on campus or marginalize on campus or uncomfortable then that can take place so we are committed to not having these Uncomfortable Conversations with people who are not left us to speak on campus because the result of that will be mental trauma and that exist on that same spectrum that obviously the campus is obligated to prevent and those tactics are justified and necessary to protect peoples lives and their health. That is a new trend that poses a complication for those of us that believe campuses should be a place were Difficult Conversations can take plac place, where a range of ideological viewpoints could be aired and discussed and have wide latitude to tackle difficult subjects in the classroom with students complaining to administrators to be investigated for something they disagree with and just as a joke yesterday talking to a friend of mine who is an education policy for a think tank and she just talked to a professor she is friends with and the professor was horrified he has a review pending for him to be investigated because at the start of class one of his female students announced she is not on the gender binary and not to be identified with a pronoun which he was willing to do but this was news to him he accidentally said she instead of they and not intentional so the student left the classroom and went straight to the administration to report this and now is being investigated. There is a climate speaking out of self victimhood on campuses that stems from that phobia and also as the most victimized person. The philosophy that i think of that intellectual trend that enhances that way of thinking is intersection nullity which is incredible importance of activists and the term comes from a sociologist who coined it in the late eighties to describe you can have different sources of oppression working against you if youre a woman you could have racism but if you are a woman of color you have sexism and racism intertwined so many of these activists are on campus offer gender identity Sexual Exploitation disability status age et cetera. Many are indeed sources of oppression but if you ask everybody to be worked up about all of this at the same time and you also say you only want to work from that perspective with people on these categories, now you have narrowed down the range of people who are okay or in Good Standing with you to be a very small tiny fringe. Many of the activist that i spoke to talking about the womens march after the trump inauguration, hundreds of thousands of people marched to object to his history of statements about treatment of women. They said they hated the whole march it was bad because it was not run and organized by the oppressed maybe they only checked off one or two boxes not trans women of color. That is my criticism not that they are wrong but that this can be selfdefeating and self cannibalizing in addition to no longer holding freespeech and due process is a recipe for disaster and my concern is these values although played on College Campuses are permeating social media meet moving forward with these values realizing this isnt real life anyway it doesnt matter but now it is moving to real life and firms and organizations have their policies around their demands of the small tiny subset of these political young people you will have a very hard time having people who disagree or having uncomfortable discussions in the workplace and modern society because that is what these activists want to. I will leave it there. Thank you. [applause] hello everyone thank you for inviting me to be a part of the panel. I am not an editor yet just for correction sake. [laughter] and i want to start out by talking about talk about conservativism on the right and what was particularly interesting and why i am on the panel to have a discussion about these ideological barriers because i have been working on a lot of pieces how the biggest philosophy of oppression taking place are not inherently coming and chris a couple of years ago was so offended with an American Flag with a tiny sock on it to demand it be displayed and it had to be removed and somebody had to do something about it. And that telling incident because those other republicans have championed the idea with the free speech and Free Expression and the alternative is that orthodoxy but it turns out everyone has a form of speech everybody finds deeply offensive and they would rather not do. Everyone. Right now this obsession about social Media Companies and whether they are too big and what they allow or dont allow. In right now section 230 of the Communications Decency act is proposed to be changed so social media have to submit to the fc fcc, the unelected commissioners of the fcc, verification that the moderation policy that the Companies Use is neutral so its important to note to say the activists you are engaging where the rage does not matter as much but to be very clear for not talking about all College Students there are millions of people in college to be a midi middle barry or yale they are attending Community Colleges dealing with major funding issues and bigger institutions for the instances of speech are complex and on the Administrative State of College Campuses that is a topic of conversation i find fascinating so to hire someone to be an expert diversity i am kind of surprised nobody has asked me. So how we talk about these issues is just as important. Is not most students are all students at the university of michigan i was washing dishes for four years that was my job so i remember campus activism at the time there was a group that is referenced in the book with the efforts to end affirmative action on campus even Young Americans for freedom which it was catch the illegal immigrant day and with those affirmative action bake sales. If you look at the spy versus spy cartoons are these the same people cracks you just keep switching so its important to recognize that culture of campus activism what we think of as the left and of the right if they say i am rightleaning thats why the government should regulate social Media Companies but its important to recognize that culture is something of worthy of having this conversation. Not necessarily they are doing activism wrong but in the way that colleges have to do it its difficult when youre on a College Campus then you have no power to change your mind about anything. Your politics are fungible and changeable as they are for everyone but if you are on a College Campus right now the Republican Party controls the white house and the senate and the vast majority of statehouses that determine how colleges receive funding and that is a giant issue where education has taken place under the Republican Administration so if you are on a College Campus and interested in a particular issue, there is a strong drive to a type of liberal radicalism because the alternative seems almost unworkable. You have no space to make actual change you get into spy versus spy of what i would call they could call it virtues signaling but activism signaling to talk about white people in a certain way or even the professor list you can report professors for being mean or leftist so that kind of activism that idea when you get down to it very much of this idea we dont actually want to do this but this is the only way people will listen to us. With the idea the squeaky wheel gets the grease to say we should kick all people off College Campuses by National Media are asking how they get those issues and then to talk to the loudest person when they say im working two jobs to pay off my College Loan Debt so i cant really get involved in campus activism even though there is far more of that person than yelling and screaming. I want us to be incredibly careful there is very much a tendency in our politics to cast dispersions to a wide swath of people to say we didnt mean you but in this case lets be extremely clear who we are talking about an extremely small group of people that is largely the result of how activism is created for a long time in the early 1970s that africanamerican student groups are taking over College Campuses nixon was assembling a black cabinet and then were disassembled and to argue for the placement on the Supreme Court that segregation should be the law of the land so that they arent divorced from the lands of the politics but i also think its important and im really glad he raised these issues because what he does in the book is to talks to the students in a way that he talks to trans people after the womens march felt like they were being pandered to. And those who felt a lot of that effort towards diversity is to hire another diversity coordinator that doesnt do anything about the issue and i remember when i was at michigan and somebody said to me do you know why all of these black kids are here quick that was very interested to hear their answer which apparently was sports nobody told me thats why i was at there and i was thrilled to find out so i appreciate him talking to students because even right now were talking about college kids not to them i really encourage us those are getting further and further away from her own College Experience that we can start to remember with a haze we were having civilized debates over glasses of purse and that is not what you were doing. Dont lie. But talking about millions of people and campus activists whose activism is created and to be fair to those students and the issues they are dealing with and the biggest part of the disagreement that i have with the book is that toward the end the thought that liberal activism could push people to the open arms of the alt right and thats an argument that was made historically and those who spend a lot of time on College Campuses born in 1878 but he follows in the tradition he went on a college tour in the sixties you can look up at the university his entire point was any effort of protesting me is to say is to push people towards me. Or to stop my expression of free speech all i am asking is for the sharing of ideas and civil discourse. But then in an interview with alex haley and to say repeatedly i hate the teetwelve niggers and the jews and the people do not join political entities because they are approached to do so those who had so many approaches that did not use that because the professor of missouri was a liberal so because they decided to do so and engage in a liberalism themselves i want to be clear there are a host of people who have been responded to with cruelty and liberalism on social media are College Campuses and did not decide that Richard Spencer in his stupid suit and we should give College Students more credit than that and we should be thinking about how we can talk to them on these issue issues. And thank you for writing this book. [applause] i put all my notes on my phone im not just tweeting. So the ground that i would like to cover that this year is the foundation for individual rights and i have been with fire over 18 years , close to 19. And to be a First Amendment lawyer its what ive always wanted to do with my life and washing what has changed on campuses it has been pretty dramatic but i want to say where i agree on some things first. I do agree on what she said that there are not that many people on the right like professors and the threats come from offcampus but Tennessee Legislature North Carolina and texas legislatures when they are on the wrong side of that than that has been a real fight and its hard to defeat. I had a lot of fun to defend richard against the university of oklahoma and then to say evolution is in him proven popular theory that i enjoyed getting to do these fights and then also the media bias isnt exactly what you would think i was talking to a younger person who said free speech on campus stories as of 2015 but try doing that in 2008 but often times to be as horrified as what we saw today and we have a lot of examples of students and professors on the left getting in trouble as well and including lisa who was fired from her job in new jersey after going on Tucker Carlson to be a black lives matter party. Interestingly she didnt go to that school or attend these parties but nonetheless university was afraid they would get in trouble for defending that she was fired from her job. Others had to step down but her name doesnt come up that much. So there is a peculiar pattern so with a political stereotype it is well covered both for the right leaning media however somebody on the left getting in trouble on campus that get some coverage like to say ha ha the right do it to like okay. So there is a big center of cases that get virtually no coverage at the Polytechnic Institute they tried to dissolve the Student Union that due to Eminent Domain they could not protest on the campus cracks that does not make sense by the way it is a nonsensical argument and even though it is fairly elite. So i do agree with a lot with those that have changed it wasnt subtle and for my career starting in 2001 day consistently with the free speech on campus they were better than professors which was a surprise and certainly better than administrators. And then to start see demands of micro aggressions all over the course of six months. And we could take for granted students from the right side of this issue with those organizations to explain they are good on freedom of speech and something dramatic happened with a critically small number of students now i do think there are reasons for that over the last 15 years and why those animal videos could be protected. And one thing that they just dont seem to know is the freedom of speech protects minority rights and at a grade school level to talk to student students, i have to explain that in a democracy freedom of speech of the majority is protected if you have 51 percent, you have freedom of speech or if youre a favorite person of the king in a non democracy. You only have to have freedom of speech for a minority that the only reason why you need to have it. But to experience it is one which is polarization that are less homogeneous than they were. Meanwhile, in the cybersphere you could be isolated from people in a way that simply was not possible in previous generations. You could read opinions all day and still not get to all of them. So that is something that is happening outside of the university. But one thing im hesitant to say is that part of the reason why with the political tilt of the university is dramatic and sam abrams from Sarah Lawrence University Try to made the argument and then to protest and dad is off the table and they wanted to go deeper into it and something that i knew was bad if it is 31 one. Some have literally no conservatives let alone the trump voters but but what it does and i didnt fully appreciate to whose parents were with the idea that were aggressive students that they would be told that they are bothering me and are told by the administration in the eighties no. Im sorry. Freedom of speech. This has gone on generation after generation and after a while its not that surprising students say freedom of speech i worked at the aclu in San Francisco they had the impression that prevents us from having hate speech laws it also allows my performance artist friend to actually have those rights. So it leads to the impression that freedom of speech has the bully and the bigot and the robber. By the way rich people generally do well under every system kings come to them asking for money. But we do have a skewed perspective of those universities that are so skewed in the direction politically that basically what i really want to say is i enjoy robbies book and was like having your living room described to you at the time but i am glad to see attention on this and if i do ever criticism that would be more moving for me but thank you for those contributions. Thank you. [applause] now are part to take part in the discussion please wait to be called on please give your name and affiliation and please leave in the form of a question and no comments. Then we can have something to discuss. How do we solve the problem cracks . [laughter] so if we talk very literally on campus the heavyhanded Solutions Even trump declared the executive order how Research Grants university and free speech could even work so to add insult to that but i think when people in the university have stood up to the friends you want to shut down the event they have been successful. When professors feel more comfortable to criticize their students and that the administrators would take seriously those investigation demands there needs to be an internal policy cultural shift where the lack of freedom where students are encouraged if they are at an event to hear a person speak the minority people in the room try to shout down the teacher you can stand up to say no. I want to hear them i have seen that and administrators doing that as well. Protesters dont necessarily have to be dragged out in handcuffs and arrested if the administrator say we respect the majority most of the time for those to take place to stand up and declare that to be so. Then you can have the power of the mob take away from that. I went to enter the answer that personally its really frustrating for me as a conservative audience what will we do cracks or nothing we can do how many of you went to college . Most of you. Almost all of you. I published five things you have to contact your elmo matter alma matter and asked the president to stop violating the law. 30 percent of schools have speech codes and tell them to start doing that. Recommit to freedom of speech with the statement produced by the university of chicago updating the Academic Freedom standard 63 colleges i think have actually adopted these so University President has no excuse number three defend free speech actively and loudly and clearly they need your back that if there is the unpopular opinion comes up that is required then they come out strong and early and clear those cases can go away or teach free speech from day one virtually no school has an orientation that teaches Academic Freedom or freedom of speech. Every campus has to have that we cannot blame students for not knowing because they have never been taught. And the scholars it is very clear that if more workingclass campuses micro aggression or trigger warnings is not that big of a deal but meanwhile the school where my impression that they can give up to disagree but what we need are universities committing to collect data about their own students and to discuss them on campus those are five easy things the president should do. Also for students to protest these people coming together but this is not the issue. He showed up at auburn talking about to shut down the Football Program because as i you get the black students offcampus and as students are cognizant of that to have that separate event and then to talk about feminism make them talk to nobody. Like folks like Charles Murray that is a bell curve and those are contained within the bell curve and with that research. Talk about that on a separate avenue as a former Sports Writer i blame myself we have gotten into these debates so a lot of these campus protesters that if i Say Something maybe the person im yelling at will change their mind and thats not how this will work but there are ways to protest the dont violate anyones rights to free speech and encouraging student protests that are for every hour that we will donate money to this fund for immigrants or lgbt people there are a lot of ways to protest that really irritate these people in the ways to do that are encourage students to do that. I was raised by activist hippies who go out to try to do something that wouldnt give credence and there are a lot of ways to protest that are more creative and effective and dont involve the sympathy vote and then to save my free speech but they are speaking to an empty room and you gave them free speech. On the president of the board of Public Access television station and of Course Congress passed the Communications Act for people to state their views in any subject of their choosing so we spend time to defend people with those radical views. But my question is has there been a line of leadership what can we do with those educational associations Media Organization organizations, constitutional or law or members of congress themselves to take up that position with those rights of free speech . What do we do to pressure leaders to come forward devoid of that idea that it means something in our constitution especially talking about those in congress you present a problem to a lawmaker they want to solve it in ways that the efforts right now to solve the perceived bias on social media sites or on google you can have a debate if there is a bias but also what could be done about i it. There is a lot of people like the missouri senator has come out with a proposal that has some protection of platforms. So whether or not you think these entities are biased against conservatives that these policies would not help with more conservative speech and to say who can say what is a disaster that the right should strongly oppose. I tend to not recommend to the lawmaker specifically and say you need to do something about this. But what grade talked about i agree with. And that we should support the right to protest obviously. If you decide im obviously it is no one elses fault, but kind of got there from seeing these ideas so strongly suppressed, or seeing the more mundane versions of them suppressed. Like the things Charles Murray thinks. These two people are being characterized as nazis were having in the same beliefs and when they find out the beliefs, i may quibble with them but they are not terribly crazy and think they lied to me about how dangerous these ideas are and then you end up going down a rabbit hole. There is a long history i talkd about italkabout in the book abe shutdown activities just calling more attention to the people they were shutting down because back from like 100 years ago, you would have no idea how to join the fascist groups unless the newspaper was writing about iand discarding their activitie. The speakers we had to do that if they were making news. So, while i absolutely support the right of the students who protest i think they need to bee a little before choosing about what we are protesting. Its important why we are talking about free speech we are talking about all kinds of free speech and im glad you brought up Public Access television because it is where you can say whatever it is the want and then you learn how to come and there is an idea i appreciate your point regarding speech because i think that when i talk to students on the right and i ask them do you think a speaker should be able to Say Something like abortion is great and everyone should have one, that would be bad. They wrote an editorial that basically said all white people should die, which is bad. But the response, he has to be kicked out of school, and its like this was his point more attention than he probably deserves but the idea is that freedom of speech means the freedom of all speech, even ipad nation of islaivehad natia in a couple of times. I protect your speech, but its a speech that you are allowed to say, and im allowed to say thats stupid, but its worth noting i appreciate outlets like Public Access television. Freedom of speech is one of those issues you will save you support free speech and either College Students you are talking to me are like absolutely but then you get down to those famous rulings and sometimes it is Westboro Baptist church. Sometimes it is crushing videos and sometimes they are going to get really gnarly and it is going to be permitting speech from people. In order for the speech being protected a think its important to make that extremely clear we are talking about all forms of speech. I do want to stress what are we to do, commit yourself to after the session go and write a short email as an alum to your graduate schools or whatever and say listen, i think that you should teach about free speech and due any of the following things we recommend that you should stand up for. Its amazing how powerful even if you are not a donor they do care what you have to say. Even one major alum sometimes completely unknown and so dont feel disempowered on this. Go out and do something about it. From penn america. The type of speech you have been talking about where its directly associated with the rhetoric that motivates hate crimes is there an affirmative nonrestrictive way that campuses should be responding to that . Im wondering if perhaps responding in some sort of them affirmative way they allow them to have safe spaces what would yowhatyou all think about that . When these things happen, the administrators tend to say here is a room you can go to meet with Mental Health facilities of the campus and heres a place you can go to sort of chill out and talk with other people. I mean, they typically do this for the really far right speakers. We have these efforts of Richard Spencer type people but a lot of what i talk about in the book is also just efforts to censor people on the left. You mentioned were jason mentioned the director for boys dont cry, its not the just purpose or objective, they put on the podium like a f you, i dont know if we can swear on cspan, but they would do this to stop him from talking. Being bad on free speech i completely agree with and coastline and that doesnt surprise me. And some of the efforts like on the left would be to stop people also on the left from speaking to. Last week i wrote about a high school in San Francisco. Its bad on the censorship issues with this painter hated the idea of a George Washington was being portrayed as a saintly figure in all of the textbooks if he wanted to portray the truth which they send forces to and we had a bad history with slavery and all that and that is reflected in the painting that now leftist members of the San Francisco community are trying to get repainted and it cost 600,00 600,000 the school distt because it is problematic. Again that is the point is to show they are not going to whitewash it has become prevalent. We are not just talking about the rights of nazis to speak on campus. I keep going to the talks like what this hate speech have to do with why the newspaper got to be funded by conservatives, how does that relate to. In my career, theres only been one person lik might richard spr to show up on that campus, so if you look at the freespeech list you will find some incredibly tame speech is that the people in trouble in the past and sometimes it is just an administrator has about four people. What can you do when Richard Spencer comes to campus, i think the best example of the way you make friends and influence people the best example of that is when the group decided to go after my beloved comic con in san diego. Look that up on facebook. They completely made fun of him. It was counter protesters. It was creative, memorable, sunny, and the exact right way that you should approach. I highly recommend the videos. There was a march into someone followed them with a tuba. [laughter] thats it, thats only need to do. I wish that we could have known about this. Like 1964, following the members. [laughter] print college student. What you think should be the proper way to address students that are concerned that they are in fact being physically threatened by certain types of speech or writing as . I have some thoughts on that. When i have had my own college and funds coming to campus, when someone comes to campus who is homophobic, i understand that level of threat. There are some things to be said like imagine imagine if you werg to dinner, all you have to do is just go to dinner and it turns out the next table if someone really hates you and they are not at your table that youre talking about in the third person how terrible you are and it would be better if you just didnt exist and for the students on campus, especially when the idea of the type of speech, it is difficult to. Theres a space to say that its really hard to come an, and i fh that. I remember there were a couple of times on campus in which you didnt even have to attend talk about how it is. Lets take both sides. But thats also the time to activate your free speech. When you are feeling hurt or injured or threatened, that is the time to go and talk about that in a florida man to talk about why and talk about what is the best thing to do about that. I think that that is something that was really done very effectively in the 1990s and 2000. There are a lot of people who instead of responding to the people who told us that we were terrible and evil, they didnt respond by trying to stop the ss speech, thethespeech, they resph their own form of speech. And things like samesex couples with children. They responded with couples had been together for 60 years. They responded with their own forms of speech to basically nullify the argument, and so by the time the decision was made four years ago today, you had a vast shift in how the issue was portrayed. Not because anyone speech got shut down or they tried to stop her from making arguments about what lgbtqi people are like. They just kept throwing the arguments in. So when you are feeling threatened i think to respond to that with more speech and why thats wrong, respond with im here to talk about my own experiences come and you dont even have to give them the opportunity to respond. Come up with your own affirmative speech. I think that is how i would deal with it in College Campuses today. For me, the thing if im really messed up the evidence ie is extraordinarily starting around 2012 when they start noticing it is much worse than we thought and when people ask me these kind of questions, i am like the first thing we have to do is stop taking it much worse because if you have people who are already anxious if they by the way this person we are here for you when you have your predictable breakdown and theres nothing begindoublequote you other than argue about it. Setting up a selffulfilling prophecy, i think that is what we are doing is we are teaching a generation of students and wondering why their anxious and depressed by the way you will be broken forever if you actually pass a certain point of experiencing something that is negative. So, i think that we have to start a lot earlier doing no harm in terms of the speech versus violence distinction, that is something you have to actually be taugh taught becausi will sometimes have students go just realized this is just a societal invention and then its like of course it is a societal invention we make a major distinction between these actions but its one of the best that we have ever come up with and it has to be explained to people, because when they start arguing its like welcome to the 13th century to the rest of history when we chop off and make them leave our village. For some of the stuff they have to be taught and some of it i think is taking like the Mental Health crisis a little more seriously. It seems we are committed to doing things that actually will almost guaranteed to make students are isolated and depressed, more anxious and that somehow is going to fix this. One of the arguments i encounter against the freespeech position from the students because there are power imbalances, we shouldnt have freespeech. As a platform you have office privilege that i lack and we exist in a freespeech yugoslav affair talking to each other were capable of talking to each other. If i have and an equal power relationship may be your speech should be suppressed or not care about and how much power do you have over this person is one thing this privileged people can get a major ceo of a Company Fired if they all team up on them but it cant be possible for some governmental thing to decide how to. Free speech is a regime and culture and ethos and legal system how they work out who has these privileges and what other rights we should work out to equalize the society. We have time for one more question in the back. I agree with the points made but i do have one question regarding the intersection and that is how important is the form you described as only a few people hold that belief to go with it so even major events on the political left in ways that dont follow these principles so i wonder if something that is a big deal when i was younger, the deconstructionism and turnout hardly anybody believeit turnedn it other than on the left so it turned out not to be a big deal for the society as a whole and i wondered if the intersection might be in a different way. Its ultimately a fringe movement. The word is used so commonly which most young people talk about. Now this information law because she saw how many endured in a couple of specific cases discrimination that happened for example, i think you talk about the effort in the book, but theres a couple specific instances, and i think one of the things about this is that when i wrote a piece about it and talked about how the service is responding, pretty much everybody inside yes. Your experience is going to be different. Or if you are a woman who your experience is going to be different. I would kind of compare that to how diversity became a buzzword everyone used not really knowi knowing. You now see 2020 candidates using it like this movement will be an intersection where it doesnt make sense logistically i can see as we get further away what they are trying to talk about, and more towards the College Campuses in the intersection coordinator that would pay 150,000. Thats where i kind of see it. It isnt a specific theory that there are different sources of a person working in conjunction and i agree with the vast. So, the person generally speaking you should have more authority and power if you have more sources of depression infringing on you because they are the experts on their own oppression. That is part of worsening mentag Mental Health issue on campus because if you want t want to sa status of authority, you cant. Its harder to take some of these categories in. Its common for the activists to do that in their biographies on websites like the first thing they tell themselves they have ptsd or trauma or Something Like that and to stigmatize these things to get the help they need but i interviewed a professor for my buck said every student at some point said they had ptsd at a prestigious liberal arts college, but there is no way they all had ptsd, so that is giving activists incentives to see themselves as sufferin suffa Mental Health problem. The power detached from what they actually mean is universal. I was talking about how ideal marxist but they shouldnt have the means of production. So, when we talk about it we also get people that believe in it and that isnt really what exciting. Its a observation in some ways it is valid. But here is why i think it is a kind of big deal. Combined with the privilege theory and distractibility that essentially if you have more oppression and more status in certain senses, it is too tempting of the rhetorical tactic. So, the reason i end up being very sensible on this is very this is where i first started being called out over and over again and if they won an argument every time, if that version of it really does alienate people where its kind of like someone shouting at you about tommy about your drama and then im forced t to tell people about my trauma, that is what i think it is going to happen to. People will call his intersection even though it is something that is denounced as being unconstructive but i do think that version of it is easy to depict that its going to be around for a while. We are just a couple of minutes before the scheduled end of the session. Is there anyone with a really quick question. Im sorry to have passed you over earlier. Over here i see that they changed the other institute using the pinellas indoctrination is. Dont you think that since world war ii use of freedom of speech, freedom of justice, democracy, everything is manipulated by reach on the real issues that were given during this time and to have the others involved in this different issue of freedom, so on and so on. I think that these issues matter for everyone. Some folks like why are these issues important when the climate we still have to be able to talk to each other. If we have got 12 years come is going to be 12 years of us having conversations with each other and after the 12 years, we can get to like zombie murderer type. Its not a distraction to talk about how we talk to each other about the most important issues of sexuality and race that resulted just barely removing which the federal government banned people from working for any government entity. And its because of heroes like a lot of people that spoke up and said no. I think that the society and people marching out of the white house in 1965 carrying signs that said i am a homosexual which is a crime, and you think about the people who spoke. The reason why we have the right to have this conversation today is because people took advantage of their free speech. So i dont think its a distraction from bigger issues. I think the speech that we can have about how much the media is controlled, thats free speech being able to talk about that in the work thats possible because of this free speech which right now is under threat in brazil and its important the issues of how people want to live and what people look like. Those are all deeply integral to the experience. And i think that when a lot of folks on the left, we just have to talk about class. And id like to welcome you directly class and all these issues have intersected in interesting ways and the only reason to talk about them is to talk about them with speech that is free. As the moderator, i would be premised to say the following. We asked cato hold panels on a wide variety of topics and if it is to your liking or seems important to you, i would encourage you to come to the other panels. When it comes to freedom of speech, is this indoctrination, i dont know. I could figure out but when it comes to freedom of speech and distraction, my god. Freedom of speech is not normal. It doesnt come normally to people. Its rare and fragile and needs to be protected. They came out with a good book people criticize the same but every year it essentially but there is a series of essays i believe published at the end of world war ii that explains one of the reasons why we were able to succeed against nazis and the japanese empire is because they could fix errors more quickly because we actually had someone but said that is never going to work. Actually not only does it improve the ability to respond unless you know what they are in the first place, they do stupid things because no one thought to say it. So absolutely isnt taking it for granted right now is. I occasionally wish that we would focus on Different Things into some of the issues that seem very slight or not as significant to me. Their activism of concentrated on Different Things and i have a brief section and the buck titled deafening silence. Its about the antiwar movement, which doesnt exist at all. Maybe a decade ago or so, maybe less flashy than the news media. So, it is my agreement with some of the things to address the progressive activists want that causes them to want to be better to criticize the tactics and not unlike some conservative side. Please join me in thanking our panel one more time. [applause] it is one of the fastest if not the fastest areas in terms of growth in the country. With help from our spectrum people purposely take youtube boozman montana. The most famous formation is the hell creek formation, and thats where we go to find triceratops and t. Rex, so two of the most iconic dinosaurs known from this formation coming and we have that here in montana. In an incredibly beloved author in montana and gives voice to the working people. Watch the cities tour this saturday at 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan2 book tv. Working with our cable affiliates as we explore the american story. Heres a look at our live coverage thursday thursday the forthcoming political memoirs discuss their books that include Samantha Power former u. S. Ambassador to the un, ambassador susan rice, former National Security advisor and Virginia State senator