WTW35: When 'The College Fix' Attacks

Transcript

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

0:00:41 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke, this is episode, and I'm Thomas, that over there is the brains of the operation, how's it going, Lydia? Yeah.

0:00:50 Lydia: Good, but I also couldn't tell you what episode it is.

0:00:52 Thomas: Who cares, doesn't matter, no.

0:00:54 Lydia: We're here. We are here.

0:00:55 Thomas: It Does very Much matter. Make sure you haven't missed any, I want, next time I have more time, for lawsuits, I want to sue podcast, podcasts, I know I say it all the time, but I, now that I switch to iPhone, it doesn't, it just, it just marks episodes is played that I, I never played, just decides like if I mark, yeah, it's like some weird glitch where if it was next in the queue, but I decide to do a different one, it is like, oh, okay. So then you, you want to make sure you never hear about this again. It is like a really passive aggressive, like, oh, I line this one up for you and you, oh you are not going to listen. Oh, guess what?

0:01:11 Lydia: Don't need to listen to that one. Yeah.

0:01:28 Thomas: You will never see it again. Say goodbye.

0:01:28 Lydia: I will say Say my, my Android phone does not do that, so it's great, this episode sponsored by, oh gosh

0:01:35 Thomas: I know. No, Podcast Addict is, I why there isn't just an an Apple version of that app why is that such a, anyway talking about podcasts, that's so irrelevant to this audience let's talk about something relatable, okay, here we go

0:01:50 Lydia: Yeah So we're gonna do another, uh, into Campus Craziness, um, again looking at at the lens of when the conservative, I block of folks, or alt -right or whatever, is going after professors that they deem to be too liberal for the classroom.

0:02:10 Thomas: Campus craziness. I can't wait to be more bummed out by some completely reasonable professor. I don't know, talking about their kid an illness and then Tucker Carlson being like, this is a Marxist who's going to take your guns and then be super bummed out about it. So here we go. I love it. It's my favorite thing in the world.

0:02:23 Lydia: Yeah yeah. I know. So we're actually going to talk about another political science professor. So our last episode we talked about Dr. Albert Ponce a political science professor out of Diablo Valley Community College in California. Today we're going to talk about Dr Kenneth Mayer who is a political science professor out of University of Wisconsin Madison And he got his bachelor's in political science from UC San Diego, and then his master's and PhD in political science from Yale University.

0:02:57 Thomas: By my dumb brain was like, he got his master's in PhD. Wow. That's, that's amazing. I don't know why you would do that, but yeah, it's like, He's like I'm, he's like I don't know everything about PhD. I'm not a PhD in PhD, but I am a master's in PhD so.

0:03:01 Lydia: Meta. I am a master's in PhD. And.

0:03:15 Thomas: No, I was admitting that I'm an idiot. For a second and my brain was heard that is

0:03:19 Lydia: Yeah, research interests include campaign finance, election administration, elections, political institutions, the presidency, unilateral powers, and also Australia. I don't know why, but that's an interest.

0:03:32 Thomas: There like a wild card component to the like credential

0:03:36 Lydia: You know, and I read this out of order because they do it alphabetically, you know, for the zing. But yeah, Australia is listed there.

0:03:43 Thomas: That's good, I do like the idea that whatever institution that was, determined at, they're like, well, we have, okay, weird rule we have here, you, uh, you gotta spin a big wheel for your last thing

0:03:51 Lydia: Pick a country any country Yeah. Um, he is actually an expert witness, often on matters of campaign finance and redistrict, voter ID litigation issues at the state level, but also the federal court level. Um, he was the expert in Gill v. Whitford in Wisconsin regarding their partisan gerrymandering, this was, um, years ago, I think that one was like 2016, '16. But he also an expert report for the 2024, you in the middle of with Joe over on SIO for Wisconsin gerrymandering. He issued a report regarding the redistricting proposal that the Democrats put together. And I'll link that in the show notes, too, because that's pretty interesting. Anyone If wants to check that out, kind of a little crossover bit. It.

0:03:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Oh. Okay. Speaking of uh, are we in modern era, what do we, you know Okay. Well.

0:04:40 Lydia: No, no, we're going to go back to 2019.

0:04:43 Thomas: Spoilers, now I know he survived.

0:04:46 Lydia: You know, he survived to write reports, but you don't know what else is going to happen. It'll be an interesting journey. He is alive. Yes. So we're we're doing a lot of research. We're going to go to the beginning of the spring semester in 2019. So January 2019, classes were just getting started for the semester. And my personal favorite part of the semester, the syllabus was distributed.

0:04:48 Thomas: Oh. You could Yeah, all right, okay. Such

0:05:13 Lydia: Literally my favorite part.

0:05:14 Thomas: A dork. Oh.

0:05:16 Lydia: You know why? Because I wanted to pull out my calendar. I wanted to put in like all the dates for everything. Yeah. I wanted to be really organized.

0:05:19 Thomas: Ah. Wow. That is you know, I think we did the opposites attract SIO, didn't we? Didn't I do that with somebody? Worked for us somehow, in some ways, but not in a million other ways. Ooh, syllabus for me as an ADHD is irrelevant. I mean, you're telling me things we're doing at a time that's not this minute. Why would I need to know?

0:05:27 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In others. Oh, Yeah.

0:05:45 Lydia: Mean, I still procrastinated plenty, but I really liked calendars. Yeah.

0:05:50 Thomas: Sure, it's but like for my brain it's like my, like you don't need any of this, like would just hear like a tone for the whole claim, like there's nothing because it doesn't my, I will, I just know that it will be gone from my mind long before it mattered that I knew it, you know, because it's just, and then it'll just happen, so it's like, cool, just let me know when that happens. Oh, I wish I, I've clearly suck. It's not a good way to go through life.

0:05:58 Lydia: Oh, man. It was the best. Yeah, so interesting. Yeah? No, don but, I t know, Not that this is an episode about teaching, but I think it is interesting because I'm sure you're not the only person who's like that. And, you maybe that's something that a college professor should be listening to.

0:06:27 Thomas: I I remember. Yeah. We'll, we're we'll going to get back to the, to the real talk, which is podcast addict. But, um, remember I always thought like, I'll tell you what I'll nevermind syllabus day was actually my favorite day as well, because I knew it was a free day. I knew It was like, ah, nice first day of all my college courses. And I don't mind hearing a little bit about what the thing's going to be. Maybe get to know some people, whatever. I'm not going to have to do any fucking work. It's going be, you I know I can just tune out because I don't care about the information.

And then there would be the occasional class that was like, all right, here's the syllabus. Look it over. Yep. And maybe one note or two. All right. First Lesson. Here we go. And it's like, what the? Come on, man. This is supposed to be a mandated holiday. I didn't know. I didn't even bring anything to write with. Like I'm barely dressed I don't know yeah like what we're gonna have the first lecture on the first day are you out of your mind, when I get a job, will I have to work on the first day, what are you guys talking about? College communist?

0:06:31 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Really? Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

0:07:26 Thomas: Okay. Back to the real stuff all

0:07:26 Lydia: So Gonna head on over to Tucker Carlson and let him introduce us to what happened at UW Madison. What kind of nonsense I

0:07:35 Thomas: Right. Just the facts. Oh,

0:07:40 Clip: No secret that political indoctrination is replacing teaching in many college classrooms, but sometimes it's useful to see just how bad the rot is and just how unimpressive the people involved are. Deeply unimpressive. Case in point, a professor at the University of Wisconsin has been called diverting a course on the presidency into the most banal possible strip of the

0:07:43 Thomas: Sound mixing what

0:07:54 Lydia: Can Pause that for a second. Sorry. Deeply unimpressive. I just read you all his his background.

0:08:07 Thomas: The oh has a Master's in PhD. I don't think Tucker has that if you want to know something about PhD, he could tell you. Well, not everything because again he doesn't have his doctorate in it, but he could telling you most stuff.

0:08:08 Lydia: Yeah. All

0:08:24 Thomas: He can tell you what he's going to know when he gets his doctor in PhD. Okay. Okay. Oh,

0:08:19 Lydia: Right, continue. I said continue

0:08:32 Clip: Trump administration illustration. His name is Kenneth Mayer. He's a professor there, and his syllabus for the American presidency spends an entire paragraph ranting about Russian collusion and testimony from Michael Cohen and promising that other shoes are almost certain to drop and lots of other cliches that college professors would probably be above in an ideal world but are not at all in 2019 America. McKenna Collins knows this well. She was a student in that class and has publicized the syllabus, and she joins us tonight.

0:08:59 Clip: McKennna, thanks very much for coming on. Are we overstating this syllabus in its ludicrousness and just sort of doctrinaire Democratic talking points or is that really what it was? Well, it's good to be with you, Tucker. I gotta tell you, I took one glance at the syllabus and had to double check and make sure that I was in an actual academic course and not in a course called Trump Derangement Syndrome 101. I mean, it was unbelievable the amount of overt bias that this

0:08:57 Thomas: Jesus. Christ are

0:09:07 Lydia: No

0:09:27 Thomas: So like if you took a class named Trump Drangeman Syndrome 101, would they that professor wouldn't have Trump right because then they that would be really self-aware of them. Okay, how

0:09:32 Lydia: Don't know

0:09:41 Clip: Professor explained in what was supposed to be a course description. But it's not even interesting. I mean this is like midday, Sunday afternoon, third string MSNBC guest talking point stuff. Oh, absolutely. I mean the part that rubbed me the wrong way, I mean there were numerous things. First of all, it's an oversimplification and misrepresentation of what Trump supporters

0:09:49 Lydia: Yeah.

0:10:06 Thomas: What is, I don't know, they haven't told me, like it just as a viewer yeah but like you can't just be like, so it had a parent, by the way, the syllabus, we're talking breaking news, a college course's syllabus is about the fucking weakest news item I could possibly imagine to put on your national you top cable network show. Let's read, I didn't read my my syllabi for the courses I was in. And you're going to try to, anyway. Not only that, they're like, there was a paragraph in it.

0:10:09 Lydia: It's literally the course description yeah yeah yep Yep.

0:10:37 Thomas: Okay. What, yeah.

0:10:37 Lydia: And they never share a

0:10:39 Thomas: What was in it?

0:10:39 Lydia: Visual of it. Yep.

0:10:40 Thomas: What was it? And this is just run, you know, I love the idea too. This is us a of which, you you know, there are not infinite in the, uh, country, but there are a lot, you just love the comparison to have a third, rate MSNBC. Well, that's someone who's on TV. Like, if your course had, that someone who's like the third host of an MSNDC show, you'd be like, that'S wow. That's awesome. Are you kidding me?

0:10:40 Lydia: Yep.

0:11:03 Thomas: We got, yeah, Jesus. You've, you've mixed up your numbers in terms of like, what's more rare, you know, a professor out of all of them, or the third string MSNBC whatever idiots sorry, so dumb

0:11:03 Lydia: I'd love to learn from them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's

0:11:18 Clip: Actually stand for and what they appreciate about the president. The complete lack of discussion about all of the policy accomplishments and achievements of the president serves to sway students to kind of form this certain perspective of the President. So what if you dissent? What if you say, look, I came to this class to learn about the history of the American presidency.

0:11:45 Clip: You're giving me the CNN crap instead. Why don't you stop and just teach me what happened? What would happen to you if you said that?

0:11:41 Thomas: I dissent professor you'd be killed

0:11:53 Clip: I'm sure that I would be penalized for that. You know, and it's not the course that I signed up for. The course I signed that for was to take a critical, objective look at the history of the presidency of the United States.

0:11:54 Thomas: Okay

0:11:57 Lydia: So insane. Yep and that's what it

0:12:04 Clip: Now, if this professor is going to, you know, spew unfounded claims, claims that, you know, have turned out to be largely false, I mean, this is something that needs to be addressed not only by the Dean of Students, acknowledged by the professor, but I hope that this shows students who are uncomfortable with this kind of bias infiltrating the classroom that they need to stand up and use their voices. It's not even smart. They're not even small. All the smart people, I guess, went into finance or something.

0:12:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:04 Lydia: Was so So wrong.

0:12:14 Thomas: Wrong.

0:12:31 Clip: All the rich and private equity, all the dumb kids wind up teaching at the University of Wisconsin.

0:12:30 Thomas: You're not even you're smart, you're just like not smart Oh.

0:12:32 Lydia: Insane.

0:12:36 Clip: The political proselytizing is unbelievable. And it's not just me. Democrats and Republicans alike have reached out to me and said that this is unacceptable behavior, that the professor needs to acknowledge that he's wrong. Students have messaged me and have said that they have had to, you know, change their opinions just to get an A in a class. So I'm certainly not the first person that this has happened to. No, I bet you are. Don't hold your breath, McKenna.

0:12:44 Thomas: Yeah. Was

0:12:49 Lydia: Sure.

0:12:58 Clip: They've got tenure.

0:12:58 Thomas: Your opinion Uh, something unfactual. I, uh, trying to be a doctor, I had to change my opinion on whether or not, um, are still the relevant way to look at, like, the human body. I have to, you Fucking, they made me change my opinon. Fascists, Is love this, I already love this, 10 out of 10. I, my favorite thing is that, you know, sometimes you get their presentation of it and you're like, okay, well, I better hear the debunk, because yeah, it sounds a little bad. This is, we're not going to tell you what it is, but there was an alleged paragraph in a syllabus. And again, we are going to tell you almost nothing about what was in it, but rest assured, it is so terrible that we are are already writing this guy's obituary and I'm like, I don't, what do I do with this information, this, even if I want it to be a piece of shit, what do, oh man, that nothing that I know now is bad when

0:13:10 Lydia: Right. Yep. Yep, yep. Yeah.

0:13:56 Lydia: Yeah, if like you're just a regular Fox News viewer, though, was posted to her her Facebook, and then College Fix picked it up. And so it was, it lives on the internet in that capacity.

0:14:08 Thomas: You say this, you mean like she did a, okay.

0:14:09 Lydia: The syllabus itself.

0:14:11 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha, oh, did you add it to your planner, Lydia's version of fantasy football is like, man, if I was in this class, oh god, I'm gonna to draft some classes, like, we'll do a draft and get with my friends and then we'll all write what our schedules would be if we I've just invented a new eSport or something or whatever.

0:14:11 Lydia: Yep. So I have it in front of me and want me to read to you. Yeah, I know. I, I went back to my 2019 planner and I added in these dates. That's true. That's actually true. Yep, mm -hmm. Keep going. It's the best. Right. So this is a 10 -page syllabus. And the course, I will not read the whole thing to you.

0:14:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:48 Lydia: Don't worry.

0:14:47 Thomas: That's a lot. Yeah, I was going to say yeah.

0:14:48 Lydia: Yeah. The title of the class is The American Presidency or What Do We Know and How Do We Known It? The course description says, there is no such thing as a bad time to study the American presidency, but sometimes, times, now for instance, are better than others. We are two years into the most, how shall we put it, unconventional presidency in American history, with a president who gleefully flouts the norms of governing and presidential behavior that have structured the office since George Washington.

0:15:03 Thomas: Yeah, he would say that himself. His supporters would brag about that. Yeah wow

0:15:18 Lydia: To his supporters, this is not a bug, but a feature, and they rejoice in his contempt for what they insist is a corrupt D.C. establishment. If are against it, Trump's supporters are for it.

0:15:29 Thomas: Accurate information they would agree with that.

0:15:29 Lydia: OK. Yep. To others, he is a spectacularly unqualified and catastrophically unfit egomaniac who poses an overt threat to the republic. And this was before U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian operatives, with the approval of Putin himself, hacked DNC computers and carefully leaked embarrassing emails as a way of damaging Clinton, all with the goal of helping Trump. Before multiple campaign officials pled guilty to lying to the FBI or to other crimes, before federal prosecutors said in a court filing that Michael Cohen was acting at Trump's direction to violate campaign laws by making payoffs to multiple women who said they had affairs with Trump and ordered to buy their silence during the campaign, or that Cohen lied about ongoing efforts during the campaign to build a Trump tower in Moscow. Other shoes are almost certain to drop, and evidence continues to emerge of ongoing contacts and engagement between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence assets and government officials. We will leave space in the schedule in case the report from the special counsel is released sometime in the semester.

0:16:08 Thomas: Yeah. Oh wow.

0:16:29 Lydia: Is a course about a peculiar American political institution, the presidency. Throughout the course, we'll focus on four fundamental questions about their role as formal head of the executive branch of government and head of state, but also as the focal point of public attention. And then it gets into things that are not about Trump, basically. I mean, there are questions in there about, like, can Trump pardon himself? You know, questions that people legitimately had when someone, as Dr. Mayer put it, someone unconventional entered the office. Imagine, This, this is not the first time he taught this course. And this was an opportunity to add in things that we've never really thought about before. To his point, what an interesting time to be taking that class.

0:16:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:12 Thomas: If I'm being honest, yeah, there's some embellishment there. Like, obviously he's, you know, he did one sentence on supporters would say this, others would say, and then a whole bunch of stuff. And it's like, yeah. No, I'm with like, it's, it's here's the thing. It's accurate. So whatever, like, and also, um, funny how little they give a shit about the hypocrisy because the other thing they cover on campus craziness is that a teacher wanted to, you know, know use the n -word or something, a student complained and they're like, isn't there such a thing as academic freedom?

I don't understand aren't the Orwellian thing, it's like it'll be on the same fucking episode that they'll be taught. It's, it's that they don't ever understand. Do we, do you want academic freedom or not? Because if you don't, then well, fuck off, I, that's stupid. If you do, well, then this is something that comes with it. Like, sometimes you're gonna have a professor that is making like pretty much accurate points, but you know, maybe, maybe he's embellishing a little bit, whatever. It, that's well within the realm of like academic freedom. That that would be silly to call that anything else.

0:17:45 Lydia: Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:18:15 Lydia: And this was like peak, you things were kind of tumbling out.

0:18:15 Thomas: Yeah. Peak. Trump. Derangement syndrome.

0:18:19 Lydia: Yeah. Peak Trump derangement syndrome. And it was overwhelming. I mean, for everybody who was experiencing it, you're like, "Oh, my God, like it's just constant." And I guess we're living a little bit of that now too. But like, especially then, it's the things that no one had ever heard of. And now you have a political science professor who is an expert in elections and an expert in campaign, and now there's all these instances in which those things have been violated.

0:18:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:18:44 Lydia: Right. You additional pages go on to like the materials that they'll cover, you class policies, everything like that. But really, that's where the crux of the issue was, was that paragraph.

0:18:43 Thomas: For Sure, yeah, good point. They did do a whole segment, segment on the show later of like, and his homework do-over policy was kind of mean. Didn't love it.

0:18:58 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. When posted this to Facebook, Collins, just very quick note about her. She was finishing up her college degree. At that point, she had taken a year off because she she

0:19:11 Thomas: She's Dressed Like a 1700s child bride? Sorry, I had to say it. It's just Miss

0:19:16 Lydia: Took a year off to compete in, um, America, and no, Miss Amerika, actually won Miss Wisconsin, um, she competed in that and then went on to compete in the Miss Amerика pageant and so, um, yeah, yeah, um You, interesting because like her platform, according to, you know, the Miss America website, was about, like, Like, you being civil to one another and ensuring that like discourse is fair and, OK, whatever. She had said that she wanted to go on to potentially like work in Washington, D.C., maybe like, in the you know, an aide or a staffer or something of that degree. She had interned with Paul Ryan previously, you you know, pretty active in terms of the college Republican, I, that she had, you very clearly like a Trumper.

Think I read an article where she had Trump, you stickers on her laptop and said that, you know, she could tell people were like their eyes and looking at her when she opened her laptop. But she ended up getting married shortly after this, actually, and she and her husband have a, a huge real estate business out in Wisconsin. And they're called like Properties. Now they have like a

0:19:20 Thomas: Child. Wow. Don't let anyone into that fucking thing. Okay.

0:19:42 Thomas: Oh,

0:20:26 Lydia: Building arm also. I looked around and I think it's I

0:20:26 Thomas: For fuck's sake. But how do you, did she come from wealth or marry into wealth? Like, ten years old in this. I don't understand.

0:20:33 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know about her. Family Collins is just like too vague of a name. I haven't been able to piece her ancestry together. I found a little bit about her husband and his family. I that they are decently well off is something like, you know, a family business, though not in Wisconsin. So his had experience with real estate to some degree. And then they leveraged a lot of like borrowing and think they bought like a hundred million dollar apartment property at one point.

0:21:01 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:21:01 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, they have a lot lot of money.

0:21:02 Thomas: How would you do that without a bajillion dollars?

0:21:06 Lydia: Well, because they bought their first house and then renovated it and then they like flipped it essentially. And then they turned it into an Airbnb. And so then, yeah.

0:21:13 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, so that got them like, you know, $20 ,000. Okay. So how did they get the other hundred fucking million?

0:21:19 Lydia: Well in Wisconsin, I don't know.

0:21:21 Thomas: Hundred million? They worked a little overtime.

0:21:22 Lydia: Worked closely with, I mean, eventually, no, eventually they got to that amount, but they work closely with a bank within Wisconsin and they just kind of pitch them their ideas for business.

0:21:28 Thomas: Yeah. That's what I was. Yeah. Oh. I haven't been working close enough with my bank. I got to get.

0:21:35 Lydia: Guess not.

0:21:36 Thomas: Let's call Chase and be like, can we get closer or somehow? I haven'T been working closely enough. Up a million. Okay.

0:21:40 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. So they are a huge presence in Wisconsin. I looked into, because my initial reaction with Patriot Properties, I was like, all right. And it's like an American flag in the shape of a house or something, I don't know, for their logo. But what it seems to be is that they actually just really support the troops kind of thing. And so So they do a lot of connecting with veteran communities and trying to get folks into housing. And so I don't think it's necessarily tied to MAGA or anything like that. Yeah. From what I can tell, unless they're hiding it really, really well, but nothing explicit that I've seen. And maybe our Wisconsin listeners will chime in and say, no, actually they are. And happy to be corrected about that. But for my research, that's what I'm seeing. Mentioned, she had posted this on her Facebook. College Fix picked it up from there. And their headline was American Presidency Class on Trump. And then in quotes from the course description, catastrophically unfit egomaniac poses threat to republic.

0:22:09 Thomas: Really? Wow.

0:22:40 Thomas: Boy, you left out a few crucial words there that are provide some context, you know?

0:22:41 Lydia: And yeah, yeah, exactly. Of the things that they mention in this article from College Fix is Mayor motions more is coming, writing that other shoes are almost certain to drop. And then

0:22:56 Thomas: Sorry. Think I I had a stroke. Mere motions, more is coming. What was that? What?

0:22:59 Lydia: Mayor, the professor, Mayor motions, more is coming about

0:23:01 Thomas: Oh, okay. Motions. I get, I don't, that's an insane sentence, I don't understand, but they're just saying he's suggesting more is coming. Well, maybe that's because we knew a hundred percent more was coming, because the more he's coming with, that he's talking about, it had to do with, like, proceedings. Yeah. It's like there is a schedule on, we definitionally.

0:23:17 Lydia: Muller report literally special counsel

0:23:22 Thomas: Yeah. It's definitely coming, it did in fact come.

0:23:22 Lydia: Yeah yeah Yeah. The And more is coming could also be that more is coming now. Now it's resolved. Right. And more is coming is that there is nothing more. Maybe that's what it was. But, you know, we know that's not true.

0:23:34 Thomas: No, that's an unnecessary defense.

0:23:39 Lydia: All right. You're right. I'm trying to be too kind. She gave an email interview to the College Fix and said his one-sided, lengthy articulation of the anti-Trump position in the syllabus stands in stark contrast to the feeble, effortless explanation he offers for the pro-Trump position. His choice of language serves only to set a negative partisan tone about the subject matter before students even set foot in the classroom.

0:23:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So was that present? Because that's at least acknowledging the context somewhat. Was that present from the beginning or just in a follow-up thing?

0:24:11 Lydia: Present in They do talk about some other quotes around it, So right? She posted about on Facebook. It It got sent over to College Fix or reached out to them I do not know. Is no information about that. But then they asked to interview her via email. And so these quotes are not coming from her. She the syllabus to them as well. And like I I said it was publicly on her Facebook.

0:24:16 Thomas: And sure. Yeah, mm hmm.

0:24:34 Lydia: Says the professor's implicit bias against Trump supporters has robbed students of the opportunity to think objectively about the subject matter and formulate their own opinions. This is day one. This istay one from a paragraph.

0:24:46 Thomas: That's weird. How is she doing that, allegedly, then? Weird. I, for one, escaped the mind control device by not looking directly into it. But other students will be unable to think for themselves. Really? Reading some sense? OK.

0:24:48 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yep. They, they reached out to University of Wisconsin Johnson, Madison. They wanted to speak to him. He declined an interview, but they ended up speaking to the spokesperson. She said, "Ken Mayer is a popular instructor and award-winning presidential scholar who leaves his political opinions at the classroom door and asks his students to do the same." Then they talked about the assigned readings that they're going to be doing and everything. And it's like really just sort of basic, right? I would have loved to take this class.

0:25:28 Lydia: This sounds super interesting. I'm just learning about the presidency and the history of the presidency, and not just scandals related to Trump. Like, he's not the only person. Clinton is talked about in here, too. Like how you navigate the presidency for that, how you investigate the presidency. And, you know, it's not all about just anti -Trump. After it was picked up on College Fix, have then a state legislator getting involved. This Representative Dave Murphy, saw the article, I guess, in College Campus Fix. Um, I'm

0:25:28 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Yeah, probably.

0:25:58 Thomas: Are you surprised about this? This is republicanism now. They run.

0:26:02 Lydia: Sorry, it's depressing, though.

0:26:02 Thomas: Oh, I know. Yeah, sure. Oh, by all means. Yeah, let's be actively depressed about it. But

0:26:06 Lydia: Like, just bothers me like he's wasting his time. Again, this was literally a paragraph in a syllabus for a college course. But this is someone who, from I understand, his someone staff scour course catalogs for the different Wisconsin colleges, identifying courses that he might have a problem with so then he can get mad about it. And he's very honest about that because there was a previous course that he got really incensed about called, I think it was like "The Problem with Whiteness," and, you, like, insisted that the professor be, you know, let go. I think it was like an adjunct sort of position and that the class not be held.

So when he caught wind of this and, you know, clearly this professor's anti -Trump, he took it upon himself to write a letter to the professor and he cc'd the Board of Regents for University of Wisconsin, the president, the chancellor for University Wisconsin -Madison, as well as members of the legislature in the state Senate and the state assembly and their joint committee on finance, basically threatening pulling funding if this wasn't addressed. So in his letter, he says that he was appalled by your, Professor Mayer, politically polarized characterization of the Trump presidency. I am a fierce advocate for academic freedom,

0:26:20 Thomas: Yeah, boy, this sucks. Yeah.

0:27:31 Lydia: And it is your right to

0:27:31 Thomas: Oh, really? Really? Are you? That's weird because I just my wife just read me a bunch of stuff and it was all the exact fucking opposite of that.

0:27:41 Lydia: Include such statements in your course syllabi. However, your choice to include such a statement cannot go without criticism, and including it is a disservice to your students and the University of Wisconsin -Madison. He calls these hyper -partisan value judgments on actions of the president, that it has a chilling effect on any future class discourse. Course, any students who identify as Trump supporters will be encouraged to, quote, parrot liberal views that you clearly sympathize with or remain silent in an attempt to mask their conservative opinions.

0:28:16 Thomas: That's just every day. But did you say he threatened to withdraw funding, though, or are you saying he normally does that? It's

0:28:21 Lydia: Normally does, and he cc'd the Joint Finance Committee for the for Wisconsin legislature on this. So it's a little bit of a power play.

0:28:28 Thomas: Like he makes yeah well Well, it's just, uh, talking out of both sides of your mouth. I value academic freedom, that's why I'm only criticizing this and taking away your funding. Yeah.

0:28:29 Lydia: Yeah. That's why I'm telling your mom and dad kind of thing. Yeah. You calls this a lack of perspective, that it's a slap in the face to the sort of academic rigor that should be a central focus at an institution such as UW-Madison, and that the end as a good faith effort to promote a healthy academic exchange of views on campus. I encourage you to invite a member of the Trump administration to speak with your students.

0:28:38 Thomas: What

0:29:07 Lydia: Not gonna do it. Yeah. That was really shocking to me is that like watching a member of the legislature, state legislature, engaging in this sort of thing. You know, as I'm researching this, I'm seeing like all these links and stuff. And one of them is from Heterodox Academy. Right. And I that exact same reaction. I was like, oh, God, what are they going to say? And so I pulled it up. And it's actually it's amazing because

0:29:06 Thomas: The Fuck Are you talking about? That's A shit Assholes Oh Yeah, okay.

0:29:37 Lydia: It's in defense of Dr. Mayer.

0:29:40 Thomas: So At The very least, yeah, Heterodox Academy may be the kind of people who just take the one side of the argument and don't try to do both you know, yeah.

0:29:48 Lydia: Maybe back in 2019. I don't know if that's necessarily true now.

0:29:51 Thomas: I don't know if it's true now, but But at least, so my impression is that that's a lot of the assholes that are, um, more like came sort of from the left, allegedly kind of, uh, craziness people, it's still campus crazness, but I think it's more, more from the side of, can you believe what these students are pressuring us teachers into doing?

0:29:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:11 Thomas: And so I think they're more consistently on that side. And so for that reason, this makes more sense because they're, Fox News and other Republican fucking members of state Congress are shameless. They don't care about doing both ends of the argument. Even though that guy like acknowledges it, he still just acknowledges it and then does it. It's weird to be like, no, now I'm, I definitely respect whatever, but I'm kind of, you're funny, that's stupid, that's, you're doing the thing that you say you're not doing. But, um, academy, I'm sure they're just fine with taking that one part of the argument. They're like, nope, teachers should be able to do whatever because we want to later be really mad at students for getting offended when someone says the N word or something, you know?

0:30:16 Lydia: They're they're professor. Yeah yeah yeah yeah well and so this was written specifically by someone who has worked with Dr. Mayer in a variety of different instances but heterodox publish it on their site. But what he said here was, name's Donald Moynihan.

0:30:57 Thomas: Uh, okay. Who is, is there somebody I know or, okay,

0:31:05 Lydia: I, Georgetown University, and it looks like in public policy. See, so he wrote, here was, um, you, he's a regular co-author of his, a friend of his, additionally they worked together for 13 years before he moved on, um, to his other school. And so he wanted to provide some context to you know what Fox News may not have gotten from that clip that we just watched. And so he says that a long record of working with a loosely affiliated group of UW-Madison faculty members called the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, fought for free speech on campus since the 1990s. Loves them. So that should appeal to those folks.

0:31:48 Lydia: I think some of the people involved in there, I'm not big fans of them because they're super Catholic and they have one of the, little, what the Witherspoon Institute is for Princeton, right, they have like a little center that they've developed of classical thought on UW -Madison campus, and the person who's like the head of that worked closely with Dr. Mayer on this member committee for free speech. And And they, Madison, tried to adopt a campus speech code and Dr. Mayer actually argued against it and said that, you, constitutional question about what, what a campus speak code actually could be, encouraging students to understand that offensive speech is a part of the price of free speech, which, you know, is up for debate, I think

0:31:47 Thomas: A red flag Well

0:32:30 Lydia: Um, know

0:32:30 Thomas: It Really All depends on the context, like what speech are we talking about, when did it take place, how, who Was it, when, why, but also none of these are, I mean, it's kind of interesting to me, these are all kind of beside the point, it's like, no, you don't understand, he's a great guy and he does support, it's like that has nothing to do with the syllabus, it's, it's interesting that it's not more defensive of, like, yeah, here's the class, here's what it was.

0:32:30 Lydia: Sure Well Think What he's trying to defend here, so like the next piece that he says is, um, of the last times I saw Ken, he reported on bringing a group of students to see a Charles Murray event on campus, and So No, because Because It was an invited speaker, and I, I don't know, it wasn't required, it was more like he I

0:32:52 Thomas: Oh, fuck this guy. All right. I now hate this guy. Yeah. You're saying this professor brought people to a Charles Murray talk race

0:33:16 Lydia: It's from this idea of engaging with with that you don't. Well, I'm not trying to excuse Charles Murray here at all. The school brought him on campus. And I think the professor was I want to speak to his intentions here. But students, I guess, wanted to attend. And I don't know if it was something where they attended that and then analyzed it in class afterwards. My point, and I guess the point that I'm trying to get from what Dr. Moynihan shared here, is that Dr. Mayer is not a hyper -partisan. Well, and it's like he's engaging across because free speech is important to him as as well. For himself and

0:33:20 Thomas: Science. Yeah.

0:33:49 Thomas: Libtard.

0:33:58 Lydia: As well for students and his colleagues.

0:33:59 Thomas: So what I'm identifying here is I, sort of resent that what this feels like to to me is someone, uh, I don't know exactly who the Morning Hand guy is or is a part of the bullshit project of scaring people about kids on campus, a part of it, a little bit probably more right wing than, you know, Tucker, and like those those assholes. Sounds to me like this professor is more to that heterodox side than I'm not saying he's like a right wing or something, but more to that side than maybe we would have thought. And it sounds like the defense is, "No, you understand this is one of ours. This guy is fine." That's what it feels more like to me.

0:34:11 Lydia: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

0:34:43 Lydia: Interesting. OK.

0:34:44 Thomas: Like, "Oh, I know this guy." Guy, look at all these things that he's done that signal that he is not one of these freaking campus crazy lefties and it is like that is nothing to do with the matter at hand, you know? That is just like, you come on, this is one of the good ones. And it's interesting because it is sort of like the old "I never thought leopards would eat my face," says leopard is eating face part. Whatever, is like Trump is so horrible, and a lot of people adjacent to that, like Tucker Carlson, are so horrible, that those things barely matter. Like friendly fire, usually you would probably be like, "Oh yeah, you're a shit," friendly fire, whoopsie. But because we've reached a level of fascism that's like, I, I don't remember if you've seen the movie Brazil, but it's, it's so darkly funny, and the and one of of the jokes is that, I um, think it's Michael Palin's character, the, the whatever leader guy calls his wife by the wrong name every time. And Michael Palen just like, says like, "Okay, that's your name now."

0:34:52 Lydia: I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:40 Thomas: Like that's, and it's like that level of thing. You don't understand her name is this, you know, it's it's, even matter now. Like if it's friendly fire, it'S like, it DOESN'T matter. It's Trump. So whatever he said, I don't care. I'm going to defend whoever the guy is like that. I feel like that's the the day and age we live in now. But anyway, that's what I take from this. It feels more like a personal defense of like, no, he's one of the good ones. I know this one versus like what happened and the principles of it.

0:36:04 Lydia: So, it is a long piece. And so this is kind of the beginning where he's talking about who he knows Mayer as a person. He also cites that when this story went out And Collins, McKenna Collins kind of made her rounds and stuff. UW-Madison College Republicans actually issued a press release saying that that no, saying Dr. Mayer is an intellect.

0:36:25 Thomas: Dorks. I don't know. I'm not a dork. I know. They're dorks? I know what you're about to say from the context. They are still dork marks press release

0:36:29 Lydia: OK. Yeah. Just they said he is an intellectually honest professor that treats conservatives fairly. Pretty much the ideal among moderate conservative intellectuals of what a poli sci professor should be.

0:36:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Red Flag. Yikes. Hate that.

0:36:48 Lydia: But I think I think when you're talking about, you in our previous episode, we talked a lot about how a professor, when they're engaging with students, They probably don't want their politics to be known. It's not relevant in the spirit of of learning necessarily. And so if he's able to engage students, regardless of their political beliefs, I don't think that's a bad thing.

0:37:13 Thomas: No. Yeah. I know, I'm mostly kidding. Um, but yeah, no, it is interesting because, does sound like that, maybe that's a genuine, um, trait of this guy, because it, like, had you just read me the beginning, it did seem like he was going out of his way a little bit on, on bashing Trump in that syllabus, not in an improper way, but just taking a little extra time on that part of the syllabus. He is genuinely one of those people who's wanting to keep things heterodox, as they say, or wanting to...

0:37:13 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:41 Thomas: And that's interesting.

0:37:42 Lydia: And thing that that article calls out is that Collins in her, you of tirade a little bit never mentioned, but other students chimed in on Twitter that not just going over the course requirements as part of the first day of class. But the syllabus, he gave his stump speech that he usually does on the opening day of class, where he asks them to set aside their partisan identities to be open to new ideas. All opinions are welcome in the classroom debate. Ideas should be expressed freely. Right. Encouraging viewpoint diversity and that not everyone is going to agree on every single thing. But we're coming here to have those open conversations and All learn from each other. And actually, after she attended a couple lectures, McKenna Collins herself ended up saying, "I'm not concerned with the course itself being biased." Yeah.

0:38:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:33 Thomas: Asshole. I just wanted to be on TV, so I seized on the first thing that I could. Yeah.

0:38:34 Lydia: Yeah. Never went back to Fox, obviously they weren't going to call her, and that was the only thing, only time that she was quoted as saying that, really, in like one article, but by that point it had just spread.

0:38:40 Thomas: Wow. I've made a horrendous mistake, I'm going to fix it by doing absolutely nothing.

0:38:48 Lydia: Yep. Yep, and I mean, just, just talk about, like, how experience on this show, when misinformation spreads, or this narrative spreads in a particular way, backtracking and correcting that record is incredibly hard, if not absolutely impossible.

0:39:08 Thomas: Oh. Yeah, it does almost nothing. But it's bare minimum you should do, but it, yeah, it's, it's once the cat's out of the bag, yeah, it's hard. Wait,

0:39:10 Lydia: Yeah. Doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. You know, Breitbart had covered it, College Fix had covered it, obviously Fox News had covered it, um, you know, we have a a representative issuing a memo that, ended the up total it number of people it went to was 58, by the way, like, a lot of people got that letter, which, um, is kind of ridiculous, that

0:39:34 Thomas: We get a full apology and retraction from that gentleman, or okay?

0:39:38 Lydia: Nope.

0:39:38 Thomas: No.

0:39:38 Lydia: So, you know, Moynihan's point this piece is literally millions saw Mayer falsely portrayed. Relatively few heard the full story. News media in Wisconsin followed the case, but that was pretty much it. And that if he were under the like real threat of losing his job, like would be really, really intense. Right. Creating there, that of situation for professors is just incredibly unfair, incredibly unfair. Fair, they had to take down his contact information from the website, he deleted his Facebook account for a while, um, know, there's no reports here that I've seen of the specific, uh, that he received during this time or anything like that, um, yeah, it is, it is pretty incredible. No, you

0:40:07 Thomas: Yeah. Well, did he die though? Oh, man, I already knew that, ah, sorry

0:40:28 Lydia: Already knew, sorry, I spoiled it. I know, but I thought it would be kind of fun to share what syllabus looked like the following year.

0:40:29 Thomas: Damn it, I can't. Oh, Okay, that's interesting.

0:40:39 Lydia: Yeah. So And the the following semester. So, the next time he taught the class, it was, semester one of 2019, August or September. And he the beginning before the course description, he wrote a blurb. And says, before we start, I want to to make a few things clear. First, no one in this class or any other that I teach will be penalized, rewarded, or otherwise evaluated based on ideology, partisanship, political views, vote preferences, or anything other than the requirements set out below and in course assignments. Second, a key component of an education is developing the ability to distinguish between statements of fact and evidence and interpretations about what those facts mean. Third, a statement, interpretation, or idea that goes against your priors, or even one that you find offensive, is not by definition a personal attack. The ability to listen, engage, respond, and counter-argue in the situation is an essential element of becoming a critical thinker. Then he quotes a University of Wisconsin kind of motto thing, because of some academic freedom issues that they faced in the past. That is, "Whatever may be limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that

0:40:40 Thomas: He Yeah.

0:41:52 Lydia: The great state University of Washington should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." And then he closes it out with, "Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Now let's get on with it."

0:42:04 Thomas: You know, to be serious for a second, um, as much as I, were I am, I guess I just am a little bit on alert for that rhetoric to go a little bit too far into the, like, "you academy" fucking is a fine line, I think, between, um, this guy may be expressing, which is a, you know, a good healthy view about, uh, kinds of things, especially in the university, and a lot of this language that's really just disguising, they want, again, to be able to say slurs without getting in trouble, and it's a fun, it's fine line, and so I'm probably like a little too on alert for that because To be serious for for a moment, you got to remember, and I should remember most of all, these are very young people we're talking about, if not, you know, I won't say children, I think that's a little infantilizing, like they are college students, so they're, they're young adults, they're people.

0:42:35 Lydia: Yeah.

0:42:50 Lydia: I mean, this is a 400 level course. So theoretically, I guess that these would be fourth year student, fourth year college students. So like 21, 22.

0:42:56 Thomas: They're younger young adults and If they're anything like me, they, uh, may someday change a lot of these bullshit opinions and, uh, one day very much regret the opinions that they held at this time, and it's actually good to have those people be comfortable expressing themselves, because that's likely the best way for them to, you know, kind of of politely be shown that they're full of shit at that time, maybe. That Not that's inevitable, but it might happen. So, yeah, maybe, you know, it sounds like maybe this guy is a very solid professor on this topic and doing the right thing. I get a little worried with some of that talk, you Know, like, oh, this isn't a personal attack, because it's a lot of that same rhetoric is used, you to make people of color feel like they shouldn't complain when they feel offended kind of thing. And I, you now, it's fine line. It's hard to know, you You know, like Like, and it's, it's about how it's being used. That usually tells you that. And maybe I, maybe this man, an apology. Maybe he's a saint. I don't know.

0:43:20 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair, yeah. And with regard to your call out, he, that did devote some significant words, and maybe it was a little, uh, a little embellished in terms of the vocabulary that he chose in that initial syllabus. In this one, he pairs it down quite a bit. Instead of just listing things, he ends up kind of summarizing like things that are going on with the Trump presidency and then footnoting it to, you know, sources, articles. Like if you're interested in reading more, you can check it out here. And so I think that's a, that's a smart move, yeah.

0:44:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. That's all very objective. Like you could do a very objective syllabus. That's four hours going off about how unprecedented Trump's presidency was. Yeah. Like that. Yeah, absolutely. It was more just that, like, you didn't really need to, in the syllabus, bit, it's like, yeah, no, we get it, this is syllabus, yeah, yeah, okay, you've made the point after a few of those sentences. Anyway. Oh,

0:44:32 Lydia: Yeah. Um, posted, you know, later on, with Twitter, I think this was, yeah, 2022, he posted on Twitter that, you, end of the, the semester, he always asks his students in his introductory American government class what they think his partisanship is. And he gives different options. It's like a multiple choice and they select what they think he is, which I thought was really cool. And so he shared the results of this from, you know, like mid -May, end of May 2022. question was, everyone will get credit it for this. I'm just curious. What do you think my partisan affiliation is? And the options are A, you're quite discreet about it, but among other things, your self -proclaimed status as an institutionalist and rule follower, even when you don't like the rules, actually sounds pretty conservative. You're a Republican of the John McCain-ish sort.

0:45:00 Thomas: That's a long answer.

0:45:36 Lydia: I know these are long answers. B, your obsession with individual autonomy and religious liberty and the way your eyes sparkle when you talk about marijuana legalization are the tells. You're a libertarian, even if you're not a particularly doctrinaire one. Option C, you have enough disdain for both Democrats and Republicans that I bet you're one of those third -party spoilers. Option D, seriously, you're a professor at the University of Wisconsin in freaking Madison. You are obviously a Democrat. Hell, you are probably a communist when you get right down to it. And option E, you pretty much treated all politicians like a Bernie's Mountain Dog treats lawns after eating, for example, dumping on all of them. I'm going to go with foul mouth golden retriever loving independent. He's a big dog lover. The results were 250 responses from his students.

0:45:36 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:46:22 Lydia: Nine percent said Republican. Nineteen percent said libertarian. Five percent said third party. Thirty-eight percent said Democrat and 28 percent said independent. So So what that just kind of tells me is like, well, it's kind of, you know, spread out like, yeah, a of people probably are seeing it right. I imagine he's fairly democratic. It's not hard and fast. It's not obvious across the board. And so I just thought it was kind of like a cool exercise that he does for in like a political science sphere.

0:46:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:52 Thomas: I mean, it's probably something he prides himself on, you know, trying to not, like, give it away, but that's just kind of, of, becomes a game at a certain point, but yeah.

0:46:55 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. So the last thing that I want to talk about is, you know, that kind of closes out Dr. Kenneth Mayer. He did not lose his job. He's still teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As I mentioned, he just issued an expert report regarding the Wisconsin redistricting efforts. And I'll link that in the show notes for people. Um, I found this, um, being on his Twitter, um, he linked to someone named Dr. Michael Phillips. Michael Phillips is a history professor, at, well, he was a history professor at Collin College. He is also not dead. He is alive. Um, let me just get that out there now.

0:47:36 Thomas: And this professor who is not dead

0:47:40 Lydia: Yeah. In Texas. And is a really interesting college. Is a small public community college that does not offer tenure to its professors. So all of the professors are offered either one -year contracts or three -year contracts. And as the contract expires, then there's negotiation for the next contract if if there is a renewal or not. And Michael Phillips has when a new president came to the college, he kind of was critical about that new president because their credentials were from an unaccredited religious institution.

0:47:40 Thomas: Oh, Wow. Wow.

0:48:20 Lydia: And like that's what their studies were in. And he was appointed president of the community college. And so he had things to say about that. He didn't think that that was a good appointment. And then he also called for removing Confederate monuments in article. And they didn't like that. Then there a mass shooting in Texas where the who the murderer went to Collin College. And I reached out to him and like he spoke about it, I guess, and asked them not to include the college that he was affiliated with or anything like that. And they still did. And so he got in trouble for that. And then it all came to a head with COVID. So this is tracking from like 2017 through now 2020. And then during COVID, because of Greg Abbott's order that, had shared a post on Twitter.

0:48:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:13 Lydia: He took a picture basically of they had a presentation for the administration showing like, you faculty are not allowed to discuss face masks with students.

0:49:23 Thomas: Jesus.

0:49:23 Lydia: And he thought like, this is freaking stupid.

0:49:25 Thomas: Well, that's not academic freedom.

0:49:26 Lydia: Yeah. And so he took a picture of it and he was like, look at what we're being told to do. Like, this This is so dumb. And I guess, you know, Texas doesn't care if we die kind of thing. Posted that. And then from his own admission, you know, he's like kind of tried to imply, you know, like, make sure that you're doing things that make you feel safe and healthy without saying the word mask, you to not get in trouble. That's when they said, OK, your your teaching contract would not be removed Because, when his teaching contract would not be renewed again, there's no tenure at Collin College. And so he and two other professors who experienced being let go under similar circumstances, also around COVID and kind of the politicization of what was going on there in Texas at that time, they worked with FIRE.

And two of the professors ended up settling with school in advance of anything. One of the professor's part of their settlement agreement was that they got to go back to their job. He did not settle. And he to trial and the way to trial. And end of November, the decision was issued. This was a jury trial in a different county, so not in the same county that the college is located in, but in still a pretty conservative county in Texas, and he lost and the college won. And their statement, um, uh, ridiculous, it's it's pretty short. Um, "College prevailed in the complaint for civil rights violations case, Phillips v. Collin Collage. Despite repeated attacks by the plaintiff, his supporters, and various advocacy groups with their own agendas, this case resulted in a legal victory, including affirmation that the college's

0:49:32 Thomas: Yeah. Mm hmm. Oh, the way to trial. Jeez.

0:51:08 Lydia: Policies are

0:51:08 Thomas: So advocacy groups groups with their own agendas.

0:51:10 Lydia: Yeah, that's the point of an advocacy group.

0:51:11 Thomas: Yeah, we're one of those advocacy groups With no agenda, actually. We just advocate. Just how you advocate for your friends, you know, like just people need advocates. So we're just, you Know, what the fuck you talking? Okay.

0:51:12 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah. Including that the college's policies are not unconstitutionally vague, as alleged," and saying towards the end, you know, "Under the contracts that Collin College issues, there is no right or reasonable expectation of continued, continued employment beyond the term of the contract. And as an employer, the college has every right to determine who it employs, particularly based on the recommendations of supervisors.

0:51:38 Thomas: Yeah. And was this, this So having covered Professor Assholeface, I mean, I wouldn't have felt great about going to trial on something like this. Employers do have a public college, so it a little surprising to me that there's no First-y whatever argument but yeah I mean if if their contract is written in such a way you know they're already not doing the whole tenure thing they're that

0:52:04 Lydia: Yeah, I know. And I mean, that's what a lot of conservatives want, right, is to Break down things like that. And And Dr. Phillips is kind of experiencing what that situation could look like in, know, without having tenure, regardless of your regardless of the good things that you're bringing to students. Again, a community college environment. It's hard to find teachers for community colleges, like good teachers, too. And it's often a thankless job. And from my understanding of who this guy is, like he's, you know, regarded as like a pretty, significant expert with regard to like in Texas and Texas history and things like that. And that's kind of why he had positions on Confederate monuments as strong as he did, um, yeah, but how dare you, you the PowerPoint slide that we showed, um, basically said like you

0:52:11 Thomas: Yeah no

0:53:01 Lydia: Can't talk about it. Actually, let me, I'm gonna tell you what it says because it is stupid, let it, you know, fire. I know we, we rip on them a lot. No, but listen, they're very organized on their website. Yeah that's all I want to say like I like they include all the documents and stuff, it's very easy to find what I'm looking for. Well done. So the PowerPoint slide, it says COVID guidelines, be sure to read the restart plan in COVID readiness. The next bullet, we cannot have any written language signs, syllabus, anywhere, requesting, requiring, recommending, verb choice doesn't matter, masks. We also

0:53:08 Thomas: No oh yeah okay fine sure yeah wow wow

0:53:40 Lydia: Cannot encourage folks to wear them in person. This is to comply with the governor's executive order. Stick to the plan published of what sessions are online and on site, no moving sessions online last minute. If sick and scheduled to teach on site, use sick leave rather than moving class online.

0:53:57 Thomas: What a stupid fucking thing okay I

0:53:57 Lydia: Yeah. So he posted that picture and all he wrote was, note what we were told about discussing masks and COVID with students at my college today. That was it. 40 comments, 48 reactions, and he lost his job.

0:54:13 Thomas: Thought you said he said something about make a choice that didn't he I

0:54:15 Lydia: Oh, he implied those things without mentioning masks, without mentioning COVID specifically, but he implied Those things verbally to his students, according to the lawsuit. Yeah.

0:54:25 Thomas: Oh, OK. Wow. I guess the lesson is settle.

0:54:31 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah And there was like an entire board meeting like of people speaking on his behalf and stuff and it just didn't matter yeah

0:54:33 Thomas: No, Yeah. And but I find weird about is, yeah, obviously, this guy shouldn't have been fired 100 percent, but I can't believe he tried to take it all the way when why did he think that would work? I guess is it just maybe like the evidence that no, objectively, I'm a great professor, so I don't know, I just look employment law in this country, I feel feel like we're real big fans of um just stomping all over workers' rights, so Yeah.

0:55:01 Thomas: In general, I'm just surprised I I wonder who made that decision and why, but uh Anyway.

0:54:54 Lydia: Yeah especially in texas yeah yeah I don't know I mean I think they were feeling um confident I don't know what their plans are next I don't I haven't seen anything regarding an appeal but who knows yeah College

0:55:07 Thomas: Yeah. Good, um, no. Interesting. Okay, so very fascinating stories of, uh, once again, Campus Reform or, or all these essentially terrorism websites that, you know, send people after college professors. Interesting story on that. And I'm really looking forward to, we're going to be speaking to someone on the show who has studied and tried to fight back and provide resources for teachers who are targeted in this way. I'm really excited for that. We've been sort of building to that with this little mini, mini series and looking forward to that. So so next time on Where There's Woke, that, can't wait to talk to somebody who's really looked at this problem. And boy, what a problem it is.

0:55:43 Lydia: Yep. Too.