WTW34: When CampusReform Attacks

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That's co-host Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:46 Lydia: I'm Lydia. I'm good.

0:00:50 Thomas: What?

0:00:50 Lydia: I don't know. I was trying to introduce myself a little bit. Yeah. Take your job, maybe.

0:00:51 Thomas: Trying to climb. Yeah. Wow. All right. Fine. I'll just sit here. Do nothing.

0:00:58 Lydia: No.

0:00:58 Thomas: This is the one bit of value I added was being able to say your name. Now what do I contribute?

0:01:03 Lydia: Yeah, I know. I don't even get to look at you like while we're recording.

0:01:06 Thomas: How are you doing - yeah. The only other thing I had was a face for Radio. No. How are, are you doing good

0:01:11 Lydia: Yeah Oh, pretty well. How How are you?

0:01:18 Thomas: I'm excited for the usual end of the month flurry of stuff, yeah.

0:01:22 Lydia: Bear with us, folks.

0:01:23 Thomas: No, that's, uh, it's how we do it, and it gives people, you know, a month to listen to a bunch of stuff, nothing wrong with that, are we talking about, uh, today, so

0:01:28 Lydia: Yeah. Kind of going on the flip side of some of the things that we've explored with one professor, Mr. Kilbourne, there are instances in which campus reform, for example, reports on professors that are doing pretty normal things in the classroom. Room and of like targets them to some degree.

0:01:52 Thomas: If professor Kilbourne is kind of a stupid thing and was barely targeted and then flipped out like he was being crucified, we're doing the mirror image of that, which is sometimes there is such a thing as cancel culture, interesting, let's find out, yeah, we're gonna, hey, we call it like we see it, when there is something like cancel culture and and all that, we'll call it out and we'll see how that comports with our worldview.

0:02:02 Lydia: Right. Yeah.

0:02:19 Thomas: I

0:02:17 Lydia: Right? So Campus Reform is a website that reports on, according to them, you know, liberal bias on college campuses. And have student reporters that speak on liberal bias on their college campuses from their perspective. And this is an example of an instance in which not just campus reform, but also another entity called College Fix, which is very similar, also reported on this.

0:02:45 Thomas: Yeah these are two websites I've been on a lot, oh

0:02:49 Lydia: Yeah. And, this is Dr. Albert Ponce from Diablo Valley Community College, actually out here in California. And he is a political science professor. Also the co -director of the social justice studies at Diablo Valley College and mentors students in a variety of different on -campus associations and clubs. He is also a member of the Diablo Valley Dreamers Alliance to support and build solidarity undocumented students. He got his Ph .D. in political science, specializing in race, ethnicity and politics politics and political theory from UCLA. And has his bachelor's in Chicano studies as well as political science from UC Berkeley and was a McNair scholar.

0:03:17 Thomas: In other words woke studies

0:03:36 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Identity studies. Studies. He yeah.

0:03:37 Thomas: Yeah victimology is what his major was in, dear

0:03:46 Lydia: So he focus is very specific to this. And there was a lecture that he was giving that ended up getting picked up not first by campus reform or college fix, but actually the Red Elephant. Do you know the Red Elephant?

0:04:02 Thomas: God, no, what, I didn't know, I imagine

0:04:04 Lydia: Well, I'll take you on a journey.

0:04:06 Thomas: Imagine it's like a 10th rate anti-woke thing, like a oh

0:04:10 Lydia: It's worse. So the Red Element is that no longer exists because it was founded by Vincent James Fox, who is a major white supremacist, BFFs with Nick Fuentes, and the Red Elementary at the time that this happened. This was October 26, 2017, when the lecture occurred just a couple months after Charlottesville and Unite the Right rally. And this Vincent James Fox, super alt -right, super white when you search for his name in Google, the first thing that pops up is a ProPublica investigation from October 2017 about the Rise Above movement, again, focusing on the Unite the Right rally and the groups behind it. That

0:04:11 Thomas: God wow rise above is in a, focusing on, as in, that's one of the racist groups, or that's somebody looking at

0:05:01 Lydia: Major white supremacist group. And is implicated in this article because, quote, Fox wasn't just documenting the violence at the rally, he was inciting it. On video, Fox posted to YouTube, he can be heard repeatedly encouraging ram members and others to assault people. "Get that fucking cuck," he screamed, when a ram member and four or five other men grabbed a counter protester and began beating him. "Charge," Fox yelled, as a mob of right wingers went on the offensive, yeah, um, a bad person, yeah.

0:05:01 Thomas: I wow, so we're a little dated here, we're talking about back, 2017, back Shiloh'sville, okay yeah, oh

0:05:31 Lydia: But he was like pretty prominent, so he, he he followed around these groups and essentially was like the propaganda arm for them, filmed everything. He had a YouTube channel, Twitter. Obviously, he got banned from all of those things.

0:05:46 Thomas: Good, did he get unbanned by fucking Elon Musk, so

0:05:48 Lydia: He has a new account, but I think he primarily. Yeah, but I think he primary operates on like the alt -right sort of social media ecosystem they've been building.

0:05:51 Thomas: Yes, yeah, Oh yeah, the truth social, blah, blah blah, yeah

0:05:59 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Like parlor and a bunch of other things. And there's, know, this just these things are are crazy. He has been popping up again recently. He lived in California, actually, and then moved to Idaho, of course. He's talking about running for office out there. Is a speaker sometimes and they like try to like I think it was. Shoot. I can't remember the exact details because this is a whole other rabbit hole, of course. I'm trying to, you know, get us back on track. But he speaking at something like like a city council event or something like that. And they they left their calendar blank on that day on their Web site because he's so controversial.

0:06:02 Thomas: Oh, oh wow,

0:06:40 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. He's he's a bad person. In. He has a new, you know, these new companies when he moved to Idaho. He has three kids, too, which kills me. I'm like, oh, God, please escape.

0:06:40 Thomas: Yeah The New racist is born every minute.

0:06:52 Lydia: Yeah. He has a new website called Daily Veracity. And so now he just does video content on there. He actually just posted very recently Elon Musk going after Anti -Defamation League. And he's like, hey, this is all the stuff I've been saying forever. And and I got banned from Twitter for saying it. And here we have Elon Musk.

0:06:52 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he makes a good point. Yeah. Like, you did get to ban from Twitter back when Twitter wasn't run by the head fucking Nazi in charge, this

0:07:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yep, yep. This is someone who responsible for this video getting out in the way that it did. And what I sent you to play, so this is the Elephant Man. Yes.

0:07:27 Thomas: Is the elephant man, you just, and this is, what was his name, the Fox, the Elephant okay, so

0:07:31 Lydia: Vincent James Fox. He has a YouTube now, also under a different name, but most of his old content has been, you know, taken down because the account was suspended.

0:07:40 Thomas: He was the one to break this story wide open, okay.

0:07:43 Lydia: Was, he was.

0:07:43 Thomas: That's

0:07:44 Lydia: A student, according to him, a student sent this to him. And what posted was to, you Elephant website and his YouTube before they were taken down. But we do have a copy of this, the clip version that he put together from his Facebook page that he's in charge of. That's Film Your Marxist Professors.

0:08:06 Thomas: The name of the page, does it still exist? Yeah, I guess that's not, not like directly white supremacy, so it hasn't gotten banned.

0:08:07 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Exists. Yep. Right. So And we'll go ahead and play that and see what we're looking at here.

0:08:13 Thomas: Okay. What I would love is if there's somebody who like innocently is like, oh, I'm taking Marxism. I'm supposed to film. Okay, I'll film my Marxism, kind of weird, but yeah, sure. I'll post all the lectures online in case you want to learn about Marxism? Sounds good.

0:08:25 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eastern European philosophy, Western European philosophy.

0:08:32 Thomas: Yeah. Like, All right, let's see what this fox, elephant, whatever nonsense is.

0:08:34 Lydia: Yeah.

0:08:39 Clip: There were people here who did their part to pay to us the very heavy price for this project that has been foaming of white supremacy. So, we begin with the fact that we exist in a white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative capitalist system. Thomas Jefferson, All men are created, let alone our whole 200 slaves when I break many of them. We own the law. If you can write it, you can convince all others to follow it, just like all of us do today.

0:08:48 Thomas: Okay. Okay, sure.

0:09:13 Clip: We should be modulating those laws. We're taught to get up and pledge allegiance to the flag on every single day. A flag that's not really representative of everybody who's standing up in that room. What are we used for? This flag represents stand up. In this room, they stand up for the white

0:09:39 Thomas: We should note it's cutting not just going in order. Like there's it's clearly stitched together.

0:09:43 Lydia: It's all cut. Yeah?

0:09:45 Thomas: So I know it sounds a little bit crazy, but we're going to play this whole thing. Okay.

0:09:48 Lydia: Yes.

0:09:49 Clip: Man's constitution. And we still get up before the ball game and we're supposed to these folks here are supposed to respect our flag. When Colin Kaepernick stands up, that stands up for justice, for what is right, what happens to me. Karl Marx, one of the most profound thinkers in the history of Western philosophy, said it is a pity when the white supremacists of old with white suprematists of today exist and sit. They are smiling in the White House. Abolition. What does abolition mean? Abolitions means we must destroy them, not reform them. No voting is going to help. I don't like your congressperson. You need to smash rights to Tennessee. I'm trying to use legal means. But my legal means are not. And so we have to bear.

0:11:02 Clip: Well, we do legal in the United States.

0:11:08 Lydia: So as you mentioned, this is clipped together from what was an hour and 16 minutes. And

0:11:15 Thomas: Okay. OK, but I got to say, like, what the hell was this? Because like, I don't I just reacting to it. I don't know. You're the debunker. I'm the I'm just the person I I don't know what the hell class that is. I mean, it seems a little weird, but oh, That

0:11:30 Lydia: So it's not a class. That's the first piece of this. It is not a class.

0:11:35 Thomas: Seems like important information to have. Well, shoot, what is it then?

0:11:37 Lydia: Yep. So this was a lecture series through the community education department at Diablo Valley College, and they had speakers over the course of a period of time that came and visited and spoke about these different things, again, two months after Unite the Right rally. And this was the second speaker that they had. Students did get extra credit from attending these lectures, but they weren't mandatory. They weren't necessarily being taught by anyone who was speaking at these events. They were, you know, sitting in on you and I have done that before where we've gone to, you college to attend a speaking engagement. Right.

0:11:56 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:12:20 Thomas: But is this a professor at that college?

0:12:22 Lydia: Is a professor at the college. Yes. Yep. It was available to the public. And so you have members of the community that are there, too, essentially saying we're going to have this. The title of this talk is this led by Dr. Albert Ponce. Attend, you know. If you're a student or faculty or whatever, it's free to you. If You're a member of the community, it is open to you, but it was like, you know, $10 or something to get in.

0:12:23 Thomas: OK.

0:12:43 Thomas: Is this a community college?

0:12:44 Lydia: It is a community college. State -funded. Yeah. So the here, what you are missing from these clips is nuance. Always, always, always nuance. For And, example, there's one clip in there where it It just says, you brilliant philosopher Karl Marx and what he's actually getting out. If you watch the entire hour and 16 minutes like I did, which I'll provide to everybody, because honestly, it was it was a really good lecture.

0:12:45 Thomas: Okay. Not Yeah. Karl Marx. Yeah. Jeez. Oh, okay.

0:13:11 Lydia: It was well done. It Was interesting. He was

0:13:13 Thomas: What was the name of the fucking lecture?

0:13:15 Lydia: Supremacy in the United States. Yeah. With the Karl Marks bit, what he's actually saying there is that when United United States was was moves to, you bring in Mexicans as part of the country and, you know,, kind of like defeat them through all the wars and everything. Karl Marx was like, oh, that's good. Right. So he was kind of talking about like this person who we understand to be a great thinker, a great philosopher. And, you Know, you might agree or disagree with his ideas, is. But even he is upholding this.

0:13:16 Thomas: Oh, Okay.

0:13:48 Thomas: Like colonialist kind

0:13:49 Lydia: Yeah, because was it's the pervasive Western, you the West. And, so you see it even in those places where, you who are very far left and love Marx, they, part of our minds already, it's been ingrained in us. And he plots through the history of how we got there. Some some really interesting things about, he talks about in Spain, how they had a system that basically indicated based off of how purebred you were essentially as a Spanish person.

0:13:50 Thomas: Of. Oh, I didn't know that, right? Yeah.

0:14:20 Lydia: And, the royalty issued things that were like certificates. So you could buy more whiteness and move up in your class.

0:14:30 Thomas: Can I by less whiteness? Can I, I'm, I'm kind of kind of full of whitenness? Yeah.

0:14:32 Lydia: Get more interesting. Yeah.

0:14:36 Thomas: Can I sell some? Oh, what's the going rate?

0:14:39 Lydia: Maybe, maybe that's the maybe

0:14:40 Thomas: Yeah. Well, Thing to remember, uh, is, um, of history trumps everything, you know, like even if, if somebody seemed really cool as a historical figure, possibly, you know, whoever it is, and then I'm sure you can find an issue where they're like, well, yeah, but women shouldn't fucking vote or something. You know, there's gotta be something.

0:14:41 Lydia: that'S the 21st century. Yeah, yeah.

0:14:59 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, of course, and, you know, being there, but it's really trying to demonstrate his point through this entire thing, and like, and you track through it, he's talking about how white supremacy as a system, and he's very clear about that multiple times in this. I am not talking about, you, that you are a white supremacist, or you're a white supremacy. What do we do about white supremacy is a system, because the system that we have is innately white supremacies, because it values Western thought historically for hundreds and hundreds of years as the right thought, and not being open to, you, learning from Mexico and the people who lived there.

Right. It was the idea of manifest destiny. He talks about that a lot. And he has like a quip in there that I really was surprised none of the right wing sources picked up on this, because he talks about affirmative action, and he was like, well, well, what was manifest destiny, if not affirmative action for white men? And kind of goes on to talk about that, that it's only a problem when other people are like, hey, what about us? You know, 300 years later.

0:15:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Right. Yeah.

0:16:08 Lydia: He, you talks about all of these different things. And towards the end, he ,you has a picture of Trump with sessions. In And between is Andrew Jackson. And so that's what he's getting at with, you Know, a white supremacist of old. We know that Andrew Jackson was a terrible person who thought less of indigenous folks and carried out some really awful things. And so what he's trying to demonstrate there, again, historically, you know, you have this system that existed then continues to exist now. And we by reflecting on this and that's what he gets into a lot of in the Q &A. Reflection is a privilege if you have the time to do it.

0:16:27 Thomas: To say the least. Yeah.

0:16:49 Lydia: And so when you have people who don't have the the time they're, you for the man. They're working two jobs there. Disfavors folks that are marginalized because don't they have the luxury of time. They don't want to have that leisure to sit and philosophize and reflect on like how we can make these changes that are hard and sweeping. And so when you can't reflect on it, then what, what ends up happening is you just kind of keep perpetuating it, a lot of times unknowingly. And his flag example is that, I know you and I have talked about, where it's, know, in kindergarten you stand up and you start saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But is anyone tries to say, well, hang on a minute, let's talk about this. Where does this flag actually represent? Does it represent me? Does it representation my community and my culture? Am I, am I in the eyes of, you know, a flag, I guess, if it had eyes, but symbolically. Right.

0:16:49 Thomas: Mm -Hmm. Mm -Mm.

0:17:43 Thomas: Well, It's also what I endorse everything this country is doing and has done throughout history? And why am I pledging to a fucking flag? Who cares?

0:17:45 Lydia: Right. But it starts when you're five. And we've run into this with Phoebe. Yeah, exactly.

0:17:54 Thomas: Yeah. Talk about indoctrination. Film my fucking nationalist kindergarten teacher, which should be the should be the page.

0:18:00 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah, I Know, and I, it's one of those things that as a child, you are not questioning those things. It just kind of becomes part of your routine, and by the time you get to an age where you can question it, a lot of times people don't, um, know. For myself, I stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance and I would just always leave out "under God" because I didn't believe in that, um, but now, to this day, I don't really want to participate in the flag at all.

0:18:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:24 Lydia: Um, that's that's

0:18:25 Thomas: Other day I was like, hey, hon, do you want a flag? And you're like, I'm not participating in the flag. And I was damn it. I need someone to flag with. Darn Yeah.

0:18:29 Lydia: No. Not me. Good.

0:18:33 Thomas: I, from a very early age, somehow just due to my personality, possibly, was just anti-fucking anything ever. So my brain was like, "What, why do we all need to do this?" Like, even as a, like, first grader, I'd be like, "Well, everyone's saying I don't know why, do I have to? What does my voice add to this cacophony of 30 you year old saying this dumbass thing, who cares?" Yeah.

0:18:55 Lydia: So funny, because my reaction is, it will be very obvious if I don't lend, like, my voice to this. Is that?

0:19:01 Thomas: I would just watch, like, kind of the teacher and I just be like, I'm not, I don't care, this is worth and then if they were looking at me I'd, like, uh, you know, uh

0:19:04 Lydia: Okay. Yeah, but I mean to this day when we go to like Sharks games and stuff like you don't stand up for the national anthem, right?

0:19:18 Thomas: I might stand up sometimes

0:19:19 Lydia: You stand up for Canada.

0:19:19 Thomas: Just because that makes people, that makes want to have some sort of conflict with the people immediately around me. But I'm, I'm NOT gonna fucking, like, sing and cry eye, but we have to do this shit before every single game every game. Look, don't, tend to notice, those things, those things don't count. When Colin Kaepernick kneels, that counts, that's politics, that's bringing politics into a thing, and that's a blah blah blah, but when, like, the fucking military funds all this, like, flag jack-off bullshit before, it's not just before, like, oh, the championship game, it's every goddamn hockey

0:19:25 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the time.

0:19:42 Lydia: Yep. Yeah.

0:19:56 Thomas: Game, it'S ever, that'S, there are 80 of them in it, like, it'S every other day we have to be like, oh, oh, oh, sick, and you're like, God, I've heard it yeah it'S when you take a step back, it'S really Like, it really is.

0:20:02 Lydia: Little League. It's, yeah community events. It's constant. Disturbing. Yeah

0:20:10 Thomas: But we've been literally indoctrinated into it. So most people are like, yeah, no, that's just normal. Of course you have to worship a cloth before you play a sports game. That's how that works.

0:20:11 Lydia: It feels like North Korea. Yeah yep.

0:20:21 Lydia: Ultimately, like, what I got from this lecture is, first of all, a lot of really interesting history, and then second of all, this idea that you had the opportunity of reflection, and so now he's sharing that reflection and his studies with the broader community, so then you can ask yourself and be like, oh yeah, that does seem weird, let me look more into that, or, oh, I never thought about it that way. Um, what ended up happening here is after this was posted to the Facebook, professor, blah, blah, it got picked up in Campus Reform with the headline, "Professor Urges Abolition of White Democracy During Lecture." What you see here is, you things that are reflective of that two minute, 24 second clip. And it's kind

0:21:11 Thomas: Yeah. But it also really fucking matters what it is. Like honestly, if you told me like, Yeah, this was just like a math class. I'd be like, well, yeah. That kind of fucking, yeah that's dumb. But like Like, and yeah, and if it was, honestly, if it was any class, I'd probably be a little, because you really, even as, you know, lefty as could be, you don't really want the class to be, here's my teacher's political views. Like we actually don't want that. You know, like that's not what the left does. Don't even think that's what any college professor really wants to do.

They don't often teach a class that's called my political views, you think the right thinks they they do because when they teach facts, often the facts are denied by the right. So that's looked at as some leftist agenda. If you just teach like certain, you things. If if the class was just, I'm going to give a lecture on my my, political views and what we should do, that would be a little weird, but Hey, you notice some key information is this wasn't a fucking class. Like you said, I mean, that's very

0:21:20 Lydia: Of random. Why is he pulling up these slides?

0:22:04 Lydia: Yeah.

0:22:04 Thomas: Important. And so I know that all the boomers who who are sharing this shit and raging about it, I guarantee you that this was deliberately shared as though like, yeah, this is probably just like, you know, algebra. And then he just, this this, professor who has a last name that, is a scary to me, a white boomer.

0:22:22 Lydia: Yeah.

0:22:23 Thomas: He's just talking about how we should abolish all this stuff in a, in a class.

0:22:23 Lydia: But I will push back because I this were in a class, he's a political scientist professor. And so what he's presenting here is not his personal political beliefs necessarily. It's it's like an argument. Right. Right. This is based off of X, Y and Z. This is what I see through through my knowledge and understanding of history and this works within America now in the Constitution. Right. Like it's it's a well -developed thesis and not necessarily like I don't like Donald Trump.

0:22:54 Thomas: Well, yeah. But I mean, some of the language, like it is, you can tell it's not a class because I don't think he would talk that way. He would probably speak a little bit more, you know, a little bit more carefully, probably to represent. There's nothing wrong with representing those views, but you can just tell in the language like it, you know, it stood out to me not knowing what it was like that.

You know, that's a little more, I'm not saying it like, you don't know if that's, I don't know all the rules of college and, but I just don't having attended college that that would have stuck out to me if it were some class, but Like, I, I don't mean that that means it's like illegal or something, but yeah, no, you you can tell that it's not like I think I think it's very, you know, most college professors, 90 something percent of them are responsible enough to know the difference between when you're teaching a class and when you can giving like an optional lecture that's not tied to like the curriculum necessarily. I think that's a major difference. People the students don't have to be there. They don't have to go and there could probably be guess what? Fucking Ben Shapiro is probably visiting later to, do a

0:23:16 Lydia: Yeah. Hmm. OK. Yeah.

0:23:55 Thomas: Speech, probably not out of community college. Cause you know, he's so big time, but like, yeah, that's kind of how that works.

0:24:00 Lydia: You towards the end of this, of one the things that I think is miscommunicated a lot in the footage that was carried over and I'll get to that is just during the Q&A session, one student Asked, you can I do as, you student of color to help change this? What can the community do to help change this. And he was talking about, you know, you need to start demanding change of your professors, of your college. Like when you are in a space and you see something that reflects on, you know kind of this um belief to be inherent you know the Western thought um back and his point was you that was more it's more than just the individual level like you have a neo -nazi you example is Richard Spencer even if Richard Спencer is gone the system will remain and so so it's imperative that those conversations, that pushback, you you're not going to change the system by yelling at somebody's face at a protest. You, you need to have those conversations through your institution.

0:24:12 Thomas: Yeah,

0:24:59 Lydia: And then, you work through the local government, the state government, then the federal government and sort of that grassroots sort of effort there. And what got picked up in that is this idea of like abolition, Where he says, what does abolition mean? Abolition means we must destroy it, not reform it. And I think because what he's saying here and, you know, no voting is going to help no writing your congressperson, that it's so pervasive that this one drop in this one moment in time is not enough and that we need to not be like, OK, we have a, you in our country that favors white men?

Can we do to to change that system to, you know, tweak a few things so then it no longer favors white man? And his position is it's steeped in that you have the system we have because it has always favored white men in order to get a system that doesn't that is not rooted in that white supremacy. We kind of have to start over and and about what we want that to look like. And that's what he's talking about with the grassroots, you know, moving your way up from local up to state up to federal.

0:25:11 Thomas: Sure.

0:26:02 Thomas: But I mean, all this is a little bit neither here nor there. I mean it's interesting to talk about, but I don't really know if I entirely agree with that, but it doesn't matter. What white people need to do is realize that someone somewhere might have an opinion that you disagree with and not overreact to it. Like, I don't know that I entirely agree with that. I don't, maybe I'm wrong. Like he, he might be right. I might be wrong, but it doesn't fucking matter. Like if someone's giving a lecture and their view, it's a, it's not mandatory, but this is not a fourth grade classroom. This is not, you know, like it's someone giving a lecturer. Don't they always say, they always Say, Oh, isn't college where you should hear the challenging

0:26:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I put Sure. Right.

0:26:42 Thomas: Ideas. Isn't it where you should be challenged until it's the ones they they don't like. And then they're like, well, this is a Marxist professor and we need to have him killed. And it it's doesn't matter. I know you're, you did the time you want to talk about the lecture. That's fine. It's an interesting lecture, but like, I I guess I don'T want the message to be, oh no, actually this is okay because the lecture content was a little bit more blah, blah, that doesn't mater.

0:26:42 Lydia: Right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:03 Thomas: You like it's an thing, if it's a if it was you advertised somewhat appropriately and it's not the state mandating some educate-education camp bullshit that they're trying to claim it is, it doesn't fucking matter, hey, go be challenged, everyone, I thought that was what we cared about, yeah.

0:27:14 Lydia: Right? And, talked about that, you know, he's anti -white, anti -American teacher. The comments on the Facebook video are talking about, he needs to be fired, needs he to be sent back to where he came from, you know, like what they normally do. And then the College Fix reporting on it a was little more fair, because they called out that it was a lecture series, whereas a lot of other sites were not. And and again, they are just speaking to those key talking points and up this vitriol for people who then are reading these things and thinking that that that is the story, which, I mean, is wrong anyway, the way that they reacted. Yeah, it's pretty terrible, what ended up happening there. You know, Fox News picked it up not on a show, but through their their Web site. Right. And so now this is just kind of growing and growing and growing this narrative.

0:28:14 Thomas: It's This filter, it's, we've seen this forever, the the shit just filters up and it's like, it's interesting, there's almost like the farm system for conspiracy theory-esque bullshit that's happened a lot with Alex Jones, where it's like stuff gets a trial run on Alex Jones. And like, sometimes it's like, nah, it's a little too crazy to make it to the big time to make you the show, you know? And then other times it's just crazy enough. Maybe if we modify it a little bit, make it slightly less crazy, it can make the big -time.

0:28:40 Thomas: It can be on fucking Tucker. And there really is this weird, like I said, farm system, like it's the MLB or something where it's, like, the ideas get tried and tried and they make it up to different stages depending depending on how batshit they are.

0:28:17 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right, yeah.

0:28:53 Lydia: And what ended up happening is like this just got so insane that NPR actually picked up the story. But talked to him and what happened with this right wing media storm, norm found, they doxed him and he was getting, you know, obviously he was getting phone calls at the office because that was posted on the community college website, right? He was getting emails. Think when he had, NPR was interviewing him, he like had 20 new voicemails like that he just got. And I'll, I'll read some of these to you. Um, "race baiting fucking piece of trash" is one of them. Um, "Ponce, you are a piece of shit, fucking gutter slug that needs his neck snapped. Okay, call me if you need me, I'll do it for you." Um, he started getting mail at his home.

He, at the time, he had a nine -year -old daughter, and he said that he and his wife had to tell her she's not allowed to touch the mail anymore. Like, she couldn't go out there anymore. It up culminating in someone threatening to beat him up in person. And his colleagues called on the university president, Susan Lamb, to to say something like this is not okay. Um, they wrote uh a letter to her: "Whereas this morning a DBC faculty member had his life threatened once again on campus, be it resolved that the Social Science and English divisions demand that Diablo Valley College issue an immediate public denunciation of this act and provide an adequate response now and in the future to any threats, including but or any other physical harm to other forms of intimidation and harassment to staff, or students and or their extended families."

0:28:59 Thomas: Oh, wow. Oh, okay. Okay. Mm -hmm.

0:30:39 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of, I don't know the situation, and we've talked about this before, of like the classification of professors, you know, employees, yeah. Whatever.

0:30:46 Lydia: Administrators. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:49 Thomas: This But is a work safety issue. This is someone who was, He's getting threats related to an on -campus thing. That's a safety issue. So what was the response?

0:30:51 Lydia: It is. It was response was, was, is my belief, this is a portion of the email that's quoted in this Inside Higher Ed article. It is my believe and the belief of police services, the president, Susan Lamb.

0:31:07 Thomas: Hold on. Who is this? This, the, the president. Okay.

0:31:10 Lydia: It is My belief and the believe of police Services that public denunciations, especially in our current political environment, tend to create more targeting and negativity. Thus, I cannot in good conscience do something that could escalate the situation as requested in the resolution. And There was mixed response. I think some of the faculty kind of understood, I guess, that response. You know, again, this is 2017, early 2018, pretty intense during that time period. And one of them said, you know, like, I'm not dissatisfied with the response, but was hoping at least for an indication that the college was doing everything that can be done, in quotes, to address the threats. To go as far as, like, criticizing the response, because she might know more than the faculty know about the efforts that are being done and like could understand where she was coming from. But like that something was being done to protect their colleague and his family and

0:31:25 Thomas: Huh?

0:32:13 Thomas: What I was going to say is like, I, even if I maybe grant, I don't know. I think that response, maybe there's more to it. Maybe I don'T have all the context, but I think their response is pretty weak and also kind of arrogant. Like, yeah, the whole world is looking at this fucking community college president and the minute you say something, they're going to just blow up. I off, the anything, I don't. One hand, I don't really think it would do anything anyway.

0:32:20 Lydia: Don't think it was that good. Yeah. And

0:32:37 Thomas: And that's fine.

0:32:37 Lydia: That's that was her position. Yeah, yeah.

0:32:39 Thomas: Well, but it's also it goes both ways. I don't think it's going to make things worse. I don't think it's going to be better. And if it's 50 -50, maybe do the thing that supports the faculty of color whose But also, I of what I heard you read was asking about security or safety. What was the response to that? I mean, I didn't hear that addressed in the quote, at least, that you said.

0:32:39 Lydia: She's Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:01 Lydia: No, what they were looking for was just, yeah, denunciation, saying like that, you know, violence will not be tolerated at Diablo Valley College, yada, yadda, yedda. That's all they were asking for.

0:33:10 Thomas: But I thought they asked for like tangible safety. They not? I thought.

0:33:14 Lydia: Demand that they issue an immediate public denunciation of this act and provide an adequate response now and in the future to any threats. So, yeah. So what you would do?

0:33:18 Thomas: Hmm. OK, so you interpreted that as like a verbal response. I interpreted that is, you know, like a response as in some way of helping keep someone safe. That's I guess I interpreted it a little more.

0:33:25 Lydia: Yeah. Like a personnel kind of thing.

0:33:34 Thomas: Yeah, something or like let's at least notify authorities. Let's get you know. Is there a campus police? I don't know.

0:33:35 Lydia: Like, yeah, Yeah. So there is a campus police and, you article, President Lam encouraged anyone who receives a threat or anything that makes them uncomfortable to report it to police services. Just And felt that a public denunciation wouldn't make faculty safer. And that's the most important thing to her. But of that happened and the NPR article and everything came out, College Fix ran a second article titled Who Advocated Destroying White Democracy Whines About Backlash and included a picture of just like a random stock photo, I guess, of a making like a ridiculous crying face. And he's like not wearing a shirt. And it's weird. It's so weird. Saying that he's complaining about being, in quotes, targeted by right wing attacks.

0:33:50 Thomas: OK, God. Oh.

0:34:26 Thomas: Maybe that's because he was targeted by right-wing attacks, though.

0:34:29 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. And so they're almost taunting him in this. And, you some of the emails that he was receiving, Again, he like was receiving emails for months. It was, you long, long time. One was received all April 2018. So, you know, his lecture, October 2017. And says, "Hello, saw a video of you just joining the prospective dog pile of hate and wrath that the web will spew up all over you. It comes to mind that you may deserve all the slice you will suffer. All I can hope is that it has some effect on you and at least alerted you to the way you have drifted into madness. You've been publicly called out for your vile bullshit and worst of all you tech kids, I don't know, like what good did you think you were doing that you were so wise as to call for the whole system to be changed. Insert basic metaphor of how such arrogance is the first shovel in a mass grave." Weird.

0:34:48 Thomas: Jeez, yeah. Yeah.

0:35:19 Thomas: Fucking people. I mean, I've had had a little bit of this myself. It's It does have a tendency to come up at random times, you know. Something, uh, will get shared and it'll go, you know, a little bit viral again, you know, 'cause we, a lot of stuff gets shared with no date, you know, kind of on purpose to where it seems like, oh, this is happening now, kind of thing. And so, yeah, they just stir up from time to time. I love the lack of self-awareness. That's like, hi, I'm writing an email to someone about a thing a year ago that, that was fucking stupid. And you're crazy, man.

0:35:22 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I

0:35:53 Thomas: Like,

0:35:54 Lydia: Mean, this is just something that has happened to a lot of professors. Obviously, we're talking about one particular instance, but another, reflecting on her experience, and prepared a... Her name is Ferber. And she spoke with professors that these things and also reflecting on her own experience, she said that we all felt betrayed, violated, shocked, and vulnerable. We had words and materials pulled out of context and shared with the world. We all felt both mental and physical trauma. Trauma. One woman reflected that it took her two months to move away from the physical manifestations. Some found it difficult to do anything for the first couple of days due to the shock, trauma, and flood Of emails. Some faculty felt their entire semester became a disaster and found it hard to focus on work. One person explained that for weeks afterwards they were just trying to recover from having been laid out on the line. Someone else described it as physically revolting.

0:36:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:48 Thomas: Yeah. Have a little bit of experience with this and it can be really traumatizing and horrible. Know if it's the time to get too philosophical about it, but I think, you know, it might be worth talking talking about, um, of our values here, you know, like think I that what number one purpose of the show is debunking the bullshit. And that doesn't mean that like, I'm a super big fan of dog piles online, even when people have done something wrong. I actually am not like, I don't, I don't think, I think, that what's important though, is taking a proper assessment of the thing, taking a factual and accurate assessment of the thing. I think that it's actually bad. Even when someone does a bad racist thing, I'm actually not a huge fan of a big dog pile online. I don't like it. I Don't like doxing. I don't, I think there can be times when someone's like actually a person of in power and does something that actually like, um, perhaps a Supreme Court justice, uh, uh for example, who does something that, you costs lives and takes away the autonomy of millions of people.

0:36:48 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:43 Thomas: Then I don't mind if they are a little little uncomfortable, uh, socially and outside and eating in restaurants. I actually don't mind. That's fine. You are, that's what comes with power to be making decisions that are life and death for people and, uh. Doing a fucking terrible job at it. Um. It's just some person, you know, when it's the, like, maybe the it's somebody who does suck, but, like. Personally, a personal opinion, but I'm Once someone's already getting it, you You know, I don't I don't it's like the Pledge of Allegiance all over again.

0:38:09 Thomas: Once someone's already getting shit, they're already getting shot. I don't need to add to that, you know, and I disagree. Actually, it makes me kind of sad even when people find someone who deserves it. And but they're really shitty and cruel to them. I actually don't really like that. I just it's unpleasant to me. What's But important to note is that that is sort of a given no matter what. But really matters is the facts of what happened. And if we're talking about someone who did not at all deserve any sort of criticism, which he didn't really like, you could criticize the guy's ideas if you want.

0:38:09 Lydia: You could engage in debate.

0:38:44 Thomas: Yeah, but he did nothing wrong at all. And somebody else like, say, Kilborn or somebody did do something wrong and deserve some backlash, that doesn't mean I would endorse anyone. One just being endlessly shitty to Kilborn, and you, it doesn't mean that if I'm not a fan of that, that means I'm like against this quote-unquote cancel culture and blah, blah, blah. I think we've, we've reaching a moment in which, you, social media and the way we are, it means that things are pretty shitty online, no matter what, like that's the baseline.

The baseline is you're going to have people mobbing and doing all this shit. I don't like it, but that's, you don't get to say that that's the like left or something, because it's not. In fact, it's far more often the the other way. It's that are going to engage people's anger and fear responses are more often going to be people like Campus Reform and all those people who engage a right-wing hate mob. And so that's what really matters in my mind, because going through this This kind of public, you whether you deserve it in some measure or not, is honestly, in my opinion, it's it's already a punishment that's too severe for whatever the

0:38:46 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:39:48 Lydia: It's cruel.

0:39:48 Thomas: Infraction is. Yeah, that's

0:39:48 Lydia: Yeah yeah I % agree. You thankfully this is not a situation in which the college responded by firing him or anything, right? He has his job. He's still at the same place.

0:39:58 Thomas: Good. Is he still at the same place? Oh, that's good.

0:40:04 Lydia: Rate My Professor was taken over, of course, but I looking through that and a lot of previous ratings had been flagged and removed, and some of them were flagged in and deemed as, you know, accurate reviews, like actually a student who took his class and not just random people. I wanted to close this out a little bit by just reading an that was actually published in the local paper after his lecture. But before all of this fell apart, they did a profile on him because he has like a really just interesting path.

0:40:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:36 Thomas: So like before there was a backlash.

0:40:37 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. His lecture was It was posted on Facebook December. And this article came out November 20th, 2017. So like kind of right in The middle. And so they're talking about his upbringing. You grew up in a poor immigrant community, he had limited opportunities. If he wanted to do after school, he could join the military or he could work in the low wage sector of the economy. Those were kind of his options. And instead, he decided to drop out of high school at 16 and start working full time immediately because the environment to learn where he was growing up, it just wasn't conducive to learning. And once he was out of school, then he ended up traveling to Mexico for a bit and spending time with the indigenous communities there and learning about their experience and, you know, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the clash there that was going on. And that sparked something in him.

0:40:38 Thomas: Oh, OK. OK. Okay. Yeah.

0:41:34 Lydia: And when he came back to the United States after that visit, he got his GED and then he started community college. And I read his, you, credits earlier at the beginning. But again, went to UC Berkeley and two bachelor's degrees, graduated with a political science and Chicano studies. Then he went to UCLA and got his doctorate in political science. And then he was teaching at UCLA and he was earning his Ph.D. And then he decided, you know, that community college made such a difference in his life. And the impact that his professors had on him when he was taking classes after getting his GED just was. And he wanted the opportunity to be that for somebody else.

0:42:08 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:42:17 Thomas: That's really cool. Wow.

0:42:18 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. They interviewed some of his students and they, you know, that he sets up his classes by putting chairs in a circle so everyone can learn from each other. And one of the students says, facing one another can help you realize that you have a lot in common with the person who has an opposing view. I think this is especially important in a political science class with the current political climate. It. Also allows his students to challenge themselves to be uncomfortable. One of his students says, this course consists of studying many white male philosophers. As a female of color, I was a little apprehensive about how engaged I would be with these philosophies. Due to how Dr. Ponse has framed the course, I found myself nothing but fully engaged. He's just incredibly dedicated to not only political science and learning, but to his students and is like, you that professor for a lot of folks that he had to that made such a difference in his life.

0:42:38 Thomas: Yeah, man, that's, just so sad that these bullshit reactionaries collapse everything down to nothing. Like, it is like, actually, you know, we've got a really interesting human story here. And it just sucks that that we're in around this, you know? And I don't know how to fix that.

0:43:19 Lydia: Yeah, I know. I don't I don't know either. Abolish, I guess, is what Dr. Ponce would say.

0:43:29 Thomas: Well, I I I think that a different thing. I, I think the key is actual human interaction, you know, it's like, when, when a few episodes with Joe on polarization on Serious Inquiries Only. And, you know, it, like, really is human to human conversation, um, actually the best way. It doesn't mean I'm saying that everyone has an obligation to go try to convince an idiot or something. Like, I'm not saying that, but, like, it is actually an unfortunate truth that really that is kind of the best thing that we can do is try to have these kind of more just to person actual humanizing conversation, because what this anti-woke bullshit agenda relies on is demonizing and demonizing, and demonization pretty much only works if you're cut off from the person you're demonizing, or if you're compartmentalizing it, you know, but if you have to actually interact with the person, you're, you're instantly reminded, like, oh yeah, okay, well, that is just a human forgot

0:43:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah mm -hmm. Yeah well why like like, yeah, that right wing machine, right? It exists online. It's social media. And, you know, you're able to.

0:44:33 Thomas: Well, it can, it can exist on TV, it can exit places, but as long as like you've flattened the humanity of the thing you're targeting, you

0:44:38 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Right. I don't know. I was I was very moved by his story. And I'll include the lecture for folks to check out. I thought it was really interesting. I learned a lot. As you can tell, I wanted to talk all your ears off about it. But maybe I am. Yeah, maybe I'll drive over to Diablo Valley Community College. It's not far.

0:44:53 Thomas: Radicalized over here Yeah. Oh, nice.

0:45:01 Lydia: And yeah. Him a visit and shake his hand.

0:45:04 Thomas: This is, I think, the start of a little bit of a miniseries here. So more to come on being targeted by these websites, College Fix, whether campus reform and actually taking a look at how that goes and the effects on people. So I'm glad that it seems as though this one is a little bit, you know, if not a happy ending, it's at least like, you not the worst case. It sounds like, I mean, he went through not to minimize anything he went through, but like, kept it his job. Uh, like he was able to stay in the same place. Cause that's not always the case. And we'll see in other examples, often, uh, you can't even continue in the organization they're in. So there you have it, that, uh fantastic breakdown. And what a cool guy.

0:45:44 Thomas: That guy said, I mean, he was really teaching at UCLA and was like, nah, I'm going to do community college because it's more, I

0:45:26 Lydia: Yeah, no, no it's not. Yep. Yeah yeah super cool. I think it was, like, while he was, while he was receiving his PhD, he was teaching all those classes, and I think he had the opportunity to stay. And then he was like, "I just want to do community college," and did Lake Tahoe Community College for a little bit and then went over to Diablo Valley.

0:45:57 Thomas: Yeah, it's really cool. Community college is fucking great, by the way. Really great. And it's something that I hope we continue to provide resources for, I have no idea what the the, state of that is given the war against any sort of higher education, but community college is fantastic. You know, just giving more people the opportunity to learn from, uh, amazing professors like this. Right. Well, that's the show. Make Um, sure to pledge on patreon.com/wherethereswoke to, uh. Not have to hear the ads and to get a bonus goodies, uh always a monthly bonus and the hangout and all that good stuff. Stuff.

0:46:06 Lydia: Yeah.

0:46:35 Lydia: Have a fun one this month, too.

0:46:36 Thomas: Yeah, we do have a really fun bonus this month. So you want to be on patreon.com/wherethereswoke. If you already are, thank you so much for doing so you're the best and we'll see you next episode.