WTW113: Harvard Professor Announces His Exit Because History Dept. Needs More White Classes

Transcript

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

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there's Lydia. How you doing? That's right. This is the Crazy Professor Show. Might as well be called.

0:00:45 Lydia: Hello, I am doing great because I'm excited to talk about a crazy professor. It's been a while since I've gotten to go down that kind of rabbit hole. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, yeah, this guy's interesting. Let me just tease it a little bit before we dig into the meat. This crossed, man, I think it was maybe like one of my Google alerts or something like that for woke, like anyone who uses the term woke. Yeah. But, but this is titled

0:01:12 Thomas: Professor Asshole is an asshole. Just a bunch of alerts on that. These damn kids. They can't understand woke. Oh. Compact?

0:01:20 Lydia: Why I'm Leaving Harvard. And it's published in Compact, which is like an online magazine that is severely paywalled. And I tried so hard to access this article without paying for it, and I couldn't. And I was like, I have to know what this freaking thing says. So I signed up

0:01:36 Thomas: Whoa. Wow. Never heard of it. I like the idea of it being heavily paywalled. Like you had to pay like three different fees for it.

0:01:40 Lydia: For Compact for about a month, and then I canceled it. But yeah, well, it's heavily conservative conservative magazine severely paywalled yes yeah it felt that way to me honestly but it didn't disappoint I sit here poor for having done it but richer in some ways too because I think we have some really good material for today and it sent me in an exploration of academia and tenure and

0:02:03 Thomas: Oh yeah oh man I I don't even know so someone's leaving harvard over it being too woke I'm sure

0:02:10 Lydia: The classics of course so I think we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about today kind of sort of

0:02:19 Thomas: Yeah okay can't wait I love that classically woke university harvard famously woke can't

0:02:20 Lydia: But yeah, not yet, because we have to let people know that if they want intensely, yeah, overwhelmingly, pick your adjective.

0:02:28 Thomas: Wait to hear it should I push play on the podcast oh no if you want to support lydia's habit of subscribing to have severely severely paywalled intensely conservative bs crap then go to patreon.com/wheretheresw oke and 100 of your donation will go to conservative media it's exactly no sorry no not 98 of your your donation. No, just kidding. Thank you for supporting everybody. We love you and we'll take a break and get to it. All right. So an asshole says what? Yeah. 40. Oh, wow. I just had a thought

0:03:18 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to start off with part of his article. I think we're going to read quite a bit more of it, but there's a lot that we're gonna want to break down. So just kicking it off, this came out end of December, and so many things were going on, but I was like, oh, I gotta hold on to this. I need to do this article. So it starts off, two weeks ago, I gave my last lecture at Harvard, where I've been a history professor for 40 years. I don't even think I said his name. His name is James Hankins, and we'll hear from him soon. My four decades of experience at one of the world's leading universities have given me a unique vantage point to trace the replacement of Western history by global history. Yeah, yeah.

0:03:58 Thomas: That like, this is this guy's retirement plan. Like he didn't save for his pension or whatever. He's like, Oh, I've been here 40 years. Shit. I don't have an ounce. I didn't have a dollar to my name in retirement all right well um I quit after 40 years the woke kids have made me quit just like that's his way of bankrolling uh I imagine his financial advisor like going like

0:04:09 Lydia: So funny. So I have theories about this, too, and you'll hear it in about two more sentences.

0:04:24 Thomas: Okay I think you should do this sure isn't sure the hell isn't sorry the fact that we're not

0:04:24 Lydia: There's a lot of money in the right wing. This change is part of the reason why the younger generation finds itself in a state of moral and intellectual disorientation. That we're not doing Western Civ as much as we're doing global history.

0:04:39 Thomas: Reading yeah no that's uh oh yeah because the global is the globe is just moral turpitude but west yeah stupid whoa hmm was four years ago the israel thing already oh okay uh president

0:04:50 Lydia: Any other culture except Western culture is immoral. My decision to retire was not a sudden one. I am coming to the end of a four-year retirement contract that I signed in the fall of 2021. That year, I decided I no longer wanted to teach at Harvard. And so then he gives reasons for this. One of the things, well, okay, I'll have you guess. What do you think sparked his decision that he wanted to leave Harvard? No. 2021 is what we're looking at. Yeah. So it was COVID, their COVID requirements. And yeah, so he says, we had just endured almost two years under the university's strict COVID regime. This was a form of emergency governance that mirrored to a fault the whole country's uncritical acceptance of, capitalized, the science and its proclivity when backed by public power for tyrannous invasions of private life.

0:05:24 Thomas: Biden I don't know oh really oh geez I said I've like moved past that in my brain like that anyone could still have okay yeah yeah uncritical I cannot stop hearing you idiots criticize it

0:05:53 Lydia: You keep going. Yeah. We're hearing about it now from you.

0:05:56 Thomas: It's been five years and I've still every day I feel like I hear somebody criticize the response to covid that happened for two seconds until everyone quit

0:06:03 Lydia: Yeah. At Harvard, professors were told we had to lecture in masks and give seminars on Zoom.

0:06:07 Thomas: Uh-huh there is a pandemic you see god I don't what I don' t know beyond it this the wokest I

0:06:14 Lydia: Neither practice accorded with my idea of liberal education. There's another reason why he decided to retire. What do you think the other reason is? The year earlier, the university had collectively taken a knee during the, in capitals, Summer of Floyd.

0:06:32 Thomas: I don't know. The Summer of Floyd.

0:06:39 Lydia: The Summer of Freud. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

0:06:40 Thomas: This is, yeah, okay. So this is a throwback. I think what's killing me is somebody being on the time delay of like, four years ago, I signed a retirement contract. I have to go back to like four years of stuff and I'm just not in that mindset right now.

0:06:50 Lydia: Exactly. So I think that's so interesting, like this idea that I signed a retirement contract four years ago, and I've had four years to plot how I'm going to write this essay.

0:07:03 Thomas: Yeah. Well, or my question was going to be, has he written this a bunch of times?

0:07:05 Lydia: We don't have the details. We don'T know.

0:07:07 Thomas: But like, was he not allowed to talk about it? No, I mean, like, Was he not allowed to announce that he was retiring or not?

0:07:12 Lydia: I will say he doesn't actually have like a huge online presence.

0:07:15 Thomas: You know, like wouldn't he have already done? He could have already done an article that was like, I'm going to retire because of this bullshit.

0:07:26 Lydia: He contributed to Harvard Crimson, their student newspaper, once, and it was about pushing back on ending legacy admissions. So he wrote a piece about that. The only other time I really see him in the Harvard Crimson besides this piece, and, you know, we'll get into where he is now, is a 1991 article, History Prof denies charges of sexism.

0:07:38 Thomas: Another great take. Why the age of consent is too high.

0:07:56 Lydia: Them. So, you know, we can get into that if you want to. But yeah, yeah, no. Yeah. He allegedly

0:07:57 Thomas: That was him writing about another professor, right? No, I am just kidding. He did some reporting on a different professor. No, that is obviously him. Date rape.

0:08:08 Lydia: Said, quote, feminists have invented sexual harassment and date rape in order to gain dominance in our society. Yeah, one of the students said, I turned around after the comment and every girl in the class was sitting there with her jaw dropped, including my section leader. Male student in the classroom said people took it that he was saying that date rape and sexual harassment are kind of being made up in a sense. It sounded really bad. And then apparently in response, Hankins during the class said, I hope one of you won't report me to the dean of political correctness. 1991. Yeah. Yeah, well, so here's his statement. Nothing ever happens. Here's his

0:08:14 Thomas: That is a wow. Holy crap, dude. Oh my God.

0:08:38 Thomas: What year? Oh my God. God, these idiots have been doing this forever. It's so consistent. It's nothing new. It's the same bullshit. How did he not get fired then? God, nothing ever happens to these idiots.

0:08:53 Lydia: Statement in response. I use the word invented and that was the origin of the problem. Feminists do claim to have invented the concept of date rape, but the reality is there and has always been there. People thought I was denying the reality of date rape, which I don't deny. I didn't say that feminists use this as a way of controlling the world or anything like that. This is a natural reaction of the female sex to get control of its relationships again after the anarchy of the sexual revolution. Yeah. He explicitly said, I'm not going to make an apology because I don't think

0:09:00 Thomas: What are you talking about? I always love the, yeah, keep explaining. Keep explaining what you were thinking. I'm sure it will make it all better.

0:09:26 Lydia: There's anything to apologize for, but I am going to explain tomorrow what I meant. And then, of course, he later goes on to say, he said that his own wife, quote, has been sexually exploited a lot. So yeah um trying to like indicate like no this is serious to me because my wife has been sexually

0:09:40 Thomas: A lot. Yeah, some of my best friends have been sexually exploited a lot.

0:09:48 Lydia: Exploited a lot yeah exactly this is back 1991 you know yeah I know I know it's incredible so

0:09:50 Thomas: A lot, a lot, look she's been sexually not just a little bit either not just like one of you Johnny come lately's god that is so Jesus these people hey dude hey dude you were already over the edge

0:10:05 Lydia: During the summer of floyd for him uh I think another piece of this that pushed him over the the edge was um yeah yeah so he thought that the way that harvard responded in the wake of george

0:10:14 Thomas: I just heard your take from the years when George Bush Sr. was in office for Operation Desert Storm I heard you were already over the edge you didn't need to be put over the edge you were already there you're an asshole you've always been an asshole forever was going to be

0:10:33 Lydia: Floyd's murder was going to be virtue signaling so he wasn't like initially really concerned with it yeah like like he thought it was going be like oh harvard you know just kind of like pretending or whatever and then he was on the receiving end of this because quote in reviewing

0:10:46 Thomas: No, you weren't. No, no. So there were no, no white males were admitted that year. I guess if we

0:10:47 Lydia: Reviewing graduate student applicants in the fall of 2020, I came across an outstanding prospect who was a perfect fit for our program. In past years, this candidate would have risen immediately to the top of the applicant pool. In 2021, however, I was told informally by a member of the admissions committee that, quote, that, meaning admitting a white male, was, quote. Not happening this year. Yeah, right. And that's one of the biggest things I like spent so much time looking at demographics of.

0:11:13 Thomas: Checked the records they're like hey step one maybe don't tell your students that date rape

0:11:20 Lydia: This is the history department. It is historically incredibly white, incredibly male. And this has been a pervasive problem for decades. And like, you know, the various organizations around history scholarship have been trying to find ways to expand this. And little pin in this, teaching history related to other countries. Yeah, yeah.

0:11:48 Thomas: Is made up by feminists that would be just to get more women involved you know that would be one way yeah uh-huh that could help that could

0:11:54 Lydia: And also teaching history relevant to other people and their heritage, I think, is also a way to encourage that.

0:12:01 Thomas: Could help. Oh, so somebody that, so his student was applying elsewhere and they didn't get in

0:12:02 Lydia: So this is something that really, really bothered him. He said that an undergraduate that he had tutored at school, he said, who was literally the best student at Harvard, was rejected from all of the graduate programs to which he applied. He, too, was a white male who had applied to various graduate programs. I don't know that he necessarily applied to Harvard. I don' t see anywhere that he applied to Harvard. So James Hankins' position wouldn't matter. Yes, he said he had tutored him. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:12:31 Thomas: Somewhere. Oh okay. Too white. Yeah. Oh no, this is made up. This is not real.

0:12:31 Lydia: I called around to friends at several universities to find out why on earth he had been rejected. Everywhere it was the same story from probably all of his white friends. Friends, graduate, graduate admissions committees around the country had been following the same unspoken protocol as ours and then he said the one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female so yeah he goes on to talk about where he's going

0:12:58 Thomas: That's so weird. So if we go to the records, we'll see that there just aren't white men in college at that time. Like they're just, they don't all of a sudden, isn't it weird that every university just all of a sudden there weren't white people there it was alarming I gotta say I'm on this guy's side uh hell yeah hillsdale oh god florida is he going to oh is he gone to the stupid

0:13:20 Lydia: Um do you have an idea of where he might be going well so he's not quitting teaching he's not retiring as a as a professor he's just moving to a different school and I think we have a couple choices here what yeah what what state do you think he's gonna end up in yeah florida no not

0:13:37 Thomas: University that uh okay they're trying to take back hamilton like we're gonna reclaim our word

0:13:39 Lydia: New college he's going to university of florida because they established the hamilton school of classical and civic education so this is under ben sass yeah it's ours he says the reason why

0:13:52 Thomas: Word you're not allowed to use that word it's ours oh wow wow yeah so obviously racist yeah

0:14:00 Lydia: Is that the hamilton school is committed to teaching the history of western civilization when late liberal pedagogy replaced western civilization courses with global history serious harm was done to the socialization of young americans when you don't teach the young what civilization is, it turns out people become uncivilized. And I was aghast when I read that sentence. I was like, Jesus Christ. So before we dig into talking about like Western civ courses and stuff like that, because I think we should talk about that. I want to hear from the man himself when he gave an interview to, wouldn't you know it, PragerU. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.

0:14:27 Thomas: This guy looks exactly like what you would think of what no more western people oh like in terms of topic okay okay is that not part of history right okay I I'm gonna I'm

0:15:11 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Right. Memorizing dates and yeah, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah so I found an article on historians.org

0:15:52 Thomas: I'm going to pause them right there. The number of students who are taking these history classes, I didn't take a history class in college, like not a one, how many people, like the, maybe you have some gen ed and maybe you could make the argument that like, oh, now they're the gen ed is not like that. And so that, but it's kind of a, it's, it's tough to, to try to make the argument that civilization itself hinges on like a general education course that maybe maybe some students take because those aren't required to usually take different ones in different subjects I had again not a one in history nothing. I hate history, or I hated, I hated history just as a class like I wasn't good at it I was interested and I'm more interested than ever in history itself I just was not good like at that kind of class yeah so I was like well no fucking way I'm taking that and I just didn't and the number of students who take a a history course might be some, what could it be? 10%, 20%. But the amount who take more than one to the point where like even matters, you know, like it's an actual focus of what they're doing. It's gotta be a fraction of a fraction of college students. What is? Oh yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.

0:17:05 Lydia: This is a serious problem for people who care about history and academia the decline in history majors. It is really, really bad. The article starts out, history has a majors problem.

0:17:13 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, that just aren't the jobs I imagine where people are like, so,

0:17:17 Lydia: It's fallen precipitously after the Great Recession of 2008. It's improved a little bit, but usually what you see is double majors, right? You don't see a dedicated history major, which I think is fine. I don't think it's a problem to double major. I think that's really great. I wish I had double majored in something because I just wanted to get out of college as fast as quickly. Right. Yeah. So it says in 1967, okay, if we go all the way back,

0:17:37 Thomas: And specifically after that time when people get way more sensitive about like, oh shit, I got to do something that makes money. Back when this guy was a young, budding, racist piece of shit, KKK member. And that's like the heyday. That's like, yeah, yeah. I hear all that. But

0:17:49 Lydia: History accounted for 5.7% of all bachelor's degrees. That was the heyday. And so as of 2019, it was slightly less than 1.2% of all bachelor's degrees. And again, like that could include people who are double majoring. So it's something where they do struggle to have people pursuing this major. It's also, I think, one of the things too that he really gets hung up on is, you know,

0:18:17 Thomas: Just from the structure, like if you're just a person hearing this guy, I think that a lot of people, and I myself for a second, went into the mindset of like, oh yeah, we're not teaching kids history. But he's a professor at fucking Harvard. Like it would be one thing if you were trying to to say and they all I know they also do try to say this but I'm taking this guy's arguments if you're trying to say like oh well you know in elementary school they're only teaching the blah blah blah you'd be like oh okay well that's affecting kids I guess this is like nobody is affected by it like fucking nobody is affected by the choices of history taught at universities the only people who are are a select group of people who want to do that and they should be exposed to a bunch of different history that's probably good that is not all if you want to try to pin like the collapse of our civilization on a class that 1.2% of people take, take maybe, you know, like, and, and that class being slightly different than it was, it's just silly. It's so hysterical. I love how it's either, it's either Western or global. Like he said,

0:19:26 Lydia: That we had mentioned before is the global history and the ideas there. But again, I'm just going to reiterate. Right. Yeah, exactly. But they're white people. Yeah. And they also like to claim

0:19:35 Thomas: French revolution. I was like, well, that sounds global, but no, but now they're the, one of the good ones there yeah I got a question which is closer to us France or South America just I'm not very good at this stuff but like you would think that would be more relevant like just spatially and we are way more involved way more as a country in a lot of their history recently that's important I don't know shit about that because no one teaches it yeah I bet this guy

0:19:43 Lydia: Greece and Rome as part of. Yeah? Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hm. Yeah yeah definitely. Yeah but history has also been one of the least diverse disciplines in all of academia. You know I'm just looking at this graph here and I'll just send you this this screenshot because I think it's honestly shocking.

0:20:20 Thomas: Guy looks like someone did an amalgamation like overlay of every history professor like every

0:20:21 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. A little AI. Yeah. So this image is how stark the difference is in the racial makeup

0:20:25 Thomas: College like and it's like all distorted and weird he's not he's he's a good-looking man sorry to look shame but uh he looks like the racist he is whoa yeah we got a line graph

0:20:44 Lydia: Of history majors. Yeah, white, non-Hispanic, and it's brown. Yeah. Move. I'm going to go with

0:20:46 Thomas: And it what it looks like to me is you've got one line ironically that's brown that's white people I I don't I love that choice you know sometimes when I'm doing recordings I do the track colors And I'm like, should I make the only girl pink on the track? No, I can't. No, but sometimes I do because I feel like you would like the nice lavender-ish color that, or no, what is that? It's like a pink, whatever. I don't know what that is, but I'll assume you're right because I don't know what that color is. It's, like, that, but they've decided the white people line needs to be brown. Hey, the Asian one is yellow.

0:21:18 Lydia: That this is an unfortunate excel okay this is

0:21:21 Thomas: Just in case anyone was wondering, the Asia line is yellow."

0:21:25 Lydia: An article though about like how we need to fix the diversity problem so I'm I'm gonna think that this

0:21:25 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's fair. It isn't, you know, it's a tough, you're literally painted into a corner.

0:21:30 Lydia: Is like an excel you know like I will say had I

0:21:34 Thomas: Like it's a tough it's a tough choice like how do we just my first thing would have been Asian is not yellow like that would have my first like okay yeah but it

0:21:43 Lydia: Prepared this chart that's something I would have fixed. I would have, like, done an Excel, you know, like like the automatic color selector and then I would have been like no this won't work. Oh, okay.

0:21:47 Thomas: Is hold up this would be a really good skit if no one's ever done it like it would be it's almost like remember that weird comedy skit you see I've well I people will probably know this but I only ever see it in like meme form where the guy's talking about the abbreviations for the states or whatever that's like kind of funny I don't know if you know that one it

0:22:05 Lydia: Okay. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, so we're all just aliens. Mm-hmm. Yeah yeah it is pretty shocking how

0:22:05 Thomas: Would be like a that but for like figuring out which color the lines are going to be for each race. And you're like, okay, well, white can't be white because the graph is white. Okay, that doesn't work. So it can't go literal. Asian, we can't do yellow. And then like by the time you piece it all together, you're stuck with some really tough decisions. I would just go all neon craziness colors. Like, you know, like make it all colors that are never associated with human beings in any way. Like that's what I would do. Different like just bright like purples and pinks and you know just like all but no yeah but anyway the joke I started to say is what this looks like is a graph that has one line that's the white people one that's brown and then the rest is like here's the other colors we would use if anyone was in it here's a color here's crayons that we have ready if anyone else ever graduates with a history degree that isn't white that's what it looks like

0:23:02 Lydia: How stark the contrast is here so over time you know this goes back to 1997 we have just over 20,000 degrees awarded to white people. And we have fewer than 2,500 for the other races of the categories, right? So we have Hispanic or Latino is one of them, Black or

0:23:18 Thomas: Jeez huh I've never heard of that country it's probably because we aren't taught the history

0:23:23 Lydia: African-American, other or unknown, Asian, non-Hispanic. Temporary visa holder has its own line here, which I think is interesting. Yeah. And then American Indian, Alaska Native.

0:23:34 Thomas: Of the temporary visa holder country that we probably bombed at some point oh yeah what is

0:23:39 Lydia: But one thing I also want to point out here well we see a huge increase in you know around 2005 six seven um in in degrees awarded we're you know getting closer to 30 000 for just white people getting history degrees and then it sort of like plateaus a little bit we see

0:23:57 Thomas: That like an iraq war boom or something I don't know if you were like let's learn about the

0:23:58 Lydia: That's what I was wondering that yeah maybe it was related to that that. What do you mean that we shouldn't be doing this? I feel like I've missed a lot in my high

0:24:02 Thomas: Countries we're bombing right now hmm yeah a lot of that's probably just like population dynamics

0:24:09 Lydia: School history courses. And then the drop come 2013. The only demographic that's really grown over time is the Hispanic population pursuing history degrees. Yeah, could be, could

0:24:23 Thomas: I imagine, because a lot of this also I was going to wonder if the the surge in 2001 and three is also just like a college attendance surge a little bit, because it was like I think I think things were going well, like dot com era into like some some pretty good economic stuff until the economic collapse.

0:24:24 Lydia: Be. Oh, right. No, no. Just pretty straightforward numbers. Yeah. And

0:24:45 Thomas: And that's like the peak so it could just be that as well but it also so like this isn't like controlled for anything right so it's just like this is just number of degrees yeah so who knows anyway point is one way or the other the point is it's all white people yeah because some women

0:25:01 Lydia: And then there's always been a pervasive gender disparity in history departments as well, which this article points out is really unfortunate because humanities disciplines tend to be kind of flipped the other way, where they have more women representation in them.

0:25:14 Thomas: Were involved in history too yeah right yeah good point geez huh maybe dinosaurs like this racist

0:25:24 Lydia: And even just bachelor's degrees in general at or near 57 percent for women receiving bachelor's degrees as compared to men. But in history, the highest it's ever gotten is 42 percent. And it's, you know, been around 40, 41 percent. And they can't make gains there, whatever they do. And so, you Know, we don't know why from this article what's going on. Yeah. But something thing clearly isn't working and and why but he has some thoughts on women in this field

0:26:02 Thomas: My wife's been sexually exploited a ton but what was it again god that quote it's a lot

0:26:10 Lydia: Yeah that's pretty my wife has been sexually exploited a lot yeah a lot of times

0:26:12 Thomas: A lot it's so perfect this guy that's the most awful thing because it's like it's so not specific like he clearly hasn't listened during whatever this story was or something Oh, yeah, she always talks about how she was sexually exploited. Like, what? Like, if I were going to talk about anything like that involving you, I'd be a bit more sensitive than being like, yeah.

0:26:35 Lydia: I just also like to be his wife and to like have it cited in like the student newspaper I'd be like

0:26:36 Thomas: Just, oh, man. Like, seven. Like, tons. Ugh. Yeah. God.

0:26:45 Lydia: I didn't say that was okay like I know yeah yeah it could be yeah what does that have to do with

0:26:47 Thomas: I know, but somehow they always are okay with it or something. I don't. I never understand that. I always expect that like next headline is a asshole kicked out of house immediately and divorced. And then it's always like, no, she's it's I don't know what it is. Do they just like I think they just, like, pretend it doesn't exist. These women sometimes are just like, well, I'm married to this guy. Either they're that they're as shitty as the guy or they're just like I'm just going to tune it out. I don'T KNOW. It'S WEIRD. Yeah. We'RE TALKING ABOUT WOMEN.

0:28:26 Lydia: With women quotas. Yeah. Yeah, you're not a math professor. James Hankins. Yeah right. Yeah it's a

0:28:26 Thomas: Yeah women are not a culture are they she's been sexually exploited a ton so yeah one of the good ones yeah the best we got we got one oh yeah sure well no it's actually the opposite of true because I mean there's okay just speaking obviously this guy's full shit in every different way but like speaking mathematically just for fun to entertain this stupid thing you could argue that like if you have to open something up to more people hypothetically you could there's an intuitive sense in which you're like oh that would mean you're reducing standards if the candidate pool overwhelms the number of positions you have then opening your position which it does obviously like how many professors are we talking about like how any any job openings are we talking about here? I mean, a dozen. Yeah, maybe at most. So in the end, if you're, let's say right now, I don't know what it is. Let's say it's fucking, it can't be that many, right? Cause there aren't that many majors. So let's see, there's fucking five professors and it's four men and one woman or like, you know, and so do you really expect me to believe Mr. Idiot that changing that from a, say a, like a five, let'S say it'S six and a five and one changing that to a three and three is you're going to have to dramatically to have two additional professors that are women you're gonna have because there was only one qualified woman in the whole world and now you're have to go down to the next tier to get two more and if I'm wrong it's not by much let's say it's 20 like what it's nothing I mean, if you count like, I don't know, every different kind of position within the department or something, let's say, for example, what could you have? 20? 30? It's like nothing. So the idea that you can't get, these are very exclusive places. And so you're already getting the best of the best. There isn't a perfect mathematical linear model of quote unquote, quote, how qualified professors are, that goes in number order and you have to dip down to a different, no, it's a bunch of people at this level, the Harvard level, it is a bunch of people who are 10 out of 10. So, you just, instead of only gatekeeping out the 10 out of 10s who are women, you get the 10 of 10 who are woman and then you don't get some of the maybe 10 out 10s, although I don't think they are sending their best, as evidenced by this, I hate even saying that with this guy, but yeah, it has elitely qualified people. It's the same thing with like the president where it's like, they're like, we're going to have to reduce our standards. It's like what? It's one person. Like you can have the highest standards ever. Yeah. Wait, who is that? Oh, okay. Yeah, it's compounds. It is harder to publish as well. I was just going to say that already.

0:30:17 Lydia: Handful. Yeah no. I looked at their faculty roster. It's definitely not 30. Yeah yeah. And I want to to be clear, too, about specifically what he was complaining about here was the idea of getting rid of this two-book standard as part of tenure. And in his piece, he says that standards being lowered by getting rid of the standard of tenure, he's saying that the standard is being lowered by getting rid of this two book expectation. Feminists denied vociferously that this was happening. The real problem, they said, was the inability of men properly to value female scholarship. Those who took the opposite view were branded as sexists. I was myself identified as a sexist when I opposed quotas as a member of the faculty council and on history department committees. This is James Hankins still. So one of the things that I think is interesting to discuss here, too, is this is actually a new study that came out last week. And there is research demonstrating that scientific papers by women take longer to publish. There is bias against female authorship. So when a woman is listed as the first author on a scientific paper, and granted, you know, I'm not talking history here, but we see the same issues in publishing as well. It takes longer for that paper to move through peer review and reach publication than when a man is listed as the first author. And they looked at millions of biomedical research articles to come to this conclusion. And they said it's not just that it, like, delays your paper from being published. It ends up having a compounding effect over time where it slows your ability to put out more research. So your production slows now, and now your CV is slowing down, right? You have fewer articles that you're able to say published on your ability-to-seek jobs. So these are very, very real things. Yep. Yep, right. Yeah. Yeah, I think they found anywhere between 7.4% to 14.6%

0:33:57 Thomas: Like there's fewer women in the field itself, there's fewer, it's harder to, you know, often it's like you have to get co-authors. It's going to be harder for the women to get the, you know, to do all that stuff. It's just going to compound. It doesn't take much in those kinds of systems, like a little bit of bias. And there might be a lot of bias, but like it only takes a little bit to, to over time, like really offset that because it compounds on itself. Like it makes it harder on one stage, which makes it harder on the next stage, what makes it hard on the next stage and multiply that by 30 years. And it's like yeah okay there's women have way less published wow that's crazy and that's just isolating the variable of like it's a woman on it or the name geez yeah yeah obviously

0:34:34 Lydia: Longer for women's publications, women-led publications over men. It is a woman as a first author. It says first author, corresponding author, or both. And that was the median time difference there. And as James Hankins would agree, publication output is a way to measure success in academia, for better or for worse, right? And they make decisions about funding. They make decisions about hiring, about promotion, about access to tenure, all depending on how frequently you're publishing. So it's not just like that one paper. We're talking about entire careers, not to mention just what women experience in the workplace anyway, which is a lot of women leave the workplace when they're trying to start families or they have older family members that need a caregiver. That disproportionately falls on women. And it is impossible to do all of those things. So women often have to make those tough decisions. And

0:35:37 Thomas: Oh great dude look at the graph man look at how could you look at all the different like

0:35:39 Lydia: I want to go back a little bit because he decides he's going to quote Ibram X. Kendi. He's talking about the issue of discrimination and him as a white man.

0:35:55 Thomas: Of how overwhelmingly white male this is and start complaining about how unfair it is to you as a white man like it's just it's

0:36:03 Lydia: So if you go back to 513.

0:36:03 Thomas: Just fucking psychotic these people we're never gonna get through this fucking thing and play it in slow motion please no currently now nope nope no part of that is true you're not even representing the problem correctly even if you disagreed with the solution no yeah yeah

0:37:06 Lydia: And he's a history professor.

0:37:17 Thomas: I know who that is I don't know the fuck you are yeah all of these you know all these anti-racism books yes no no no he's getting it's like I just can't even let him finish it again. It's not like — it just goes to show how little mental effort these races put into understanding black people's arguments or women's arguments or people of color's arguments any minority's arguments essentially because they don't have to care they don'T have to put any effort into it they can just smear it and all of their fellow white jackoff professors are gonna and these people with money and power making these fake universities and all this stuff they're just gonna give them nothing but rounds of applause and money and deals and whatever and they don't have to even look into it it's absolutely true that in order to remedy the current situation you would have to in a sense take away some of the privilege of white people but to present it as though like it's a tit for tat like revenge that's what he's saying like oh in order to make like you got to hit me so I get to hit you it's like no it's that there's no people of color and women in these fields because they weren't let in so you'd have to let them in like that's what you have to do with like there's this old thing from one of these you know one of those anti-racism books there's that no this was actually from a uh feminism book I read 10 10 fucking years ago. Now that I think about it, maybe it was God, it was around, man. I read a

0:39:00 Lydia: Hmm. Mm hmm. Right, right. Professorships. Yeah, oh, attendance. Sorry. Yes. Right? Right. Mm

0:39:03 Thomas: Lot of such really good books around the first time Trump was elected, like really good, like feminist books. And I'm realizing it's been so long that I like really can't remember which is what, and, but it's just a lot of really good thoughts. And one of the things that they talked about was, you know, Harvard at one point, or I think it was Harvard. It was, it Was either Harvard or something like that was, you know, for a long time was all men, you know, Yale, one of the things like whatever it is, it's one of these elite schools, no, attendance only — men were allowed to attend these colleges. And the whole argument was, well, if you're going to, cause like the Supreme court or something, someone made them do it. Like you have to let women in something that I think even these, well we're, we're regressing quickly, but even these these assholes would at least acknowledge that you shouldn't ban women from attending.

0:39:54 Lydia: Hmm. So many mediocre men. Yeah? Well, because the pond is actually bigger than the way that

0:39:55 Thomas: And once that happened, what they said was, well, what are we going to tell the men who now don't get to get, you're going to have to not let in so many men who had these spots. Yeah. You're going to discriminate against men who did have all these slots. And now what are you going to tell them? Yeah. It's absurd, but it highlighted the absurdity of it, which is like, oh yeah,

0:40:17 Lydia: You've artificially made it. And so now you have to actually compete, compete more than Mm hmm. Mm hmm, yeah. Because historically, they have sat in those seats. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, now, before we move on from this, I do want to just say the the actual quote from how to be an anti racist from Oh, no, that's pretty much where that bit ends. But Kendi says, quote, the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti racist discrimination. The only remedy

0:40:26 Thomas: Yeah, those aren't their spots. You know, you think of them as their spots because that's been the injustice. Yeah. In the same way that we compensated fucking slave owners and not slaves for, you know, taking away their property. You think of it as that, but it's like if Harvard was all people named Jeff and you're like, hey, Supreme Court says we have to let in other students that aren't named Jeff. There'd be a bunch of Jeffs who are like, what about all the Jeffs are going to take away their spot. It's like, yeah, whatever you have, you think is you're just entitled to forever. Oh, I can keep playing if you want. Oh yeah. Yep. Yep, yep.

0:41:16 Lydia: The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, you do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, you are free to compete with all the others and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, in order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race there is no other way and in order to treat some persons equally we must treat them differently he ain't wrong yeah I want to skip down in his essay here for a bit just to do a

0:41:54 Thomas: Yeah. It's so obvious. You can't set up the monopoly board with someone owning all the properties and say, okay, but now the rules are equal. It's like, okay. Well now I have the opportunity to land on every single property I don't own and lose the game instantly oh but it's equal rules if I if I also land on something then it's also bad for me someone who owns everything like it's just it's so fucking obvious but we we're to the point again these these assholes have won um it's not temporary either unless we pack the supreme court because the supreme court has decided this idiot's view is the view this idiot this fucking moron's view is what is the law of the land right now. The law of the land is you can't discriminate on the way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to end discrimination on the bases of race. And that means continuing the status quo, which is not good and is racist. And so that's the history. That's the law that has won because we fucking let this happen. Yeah. All they would have had to do is wear

0:43:00 Lydia: Quick fact check and then I think we're going to end focusing on this idea of western civilization as as a study it should by now be evident why harvard and its peer institutions in the ivy category do not offer fertile ground for a new flowering of courses in the Western tradition. This was already the case back in 1991 when the Bass Family Foundation offered $20 million to Yale to support the study of Western civilization. The gift would have supported seven senior professors and four juniors plus graduate assistants and administrative costs.

0:43:30 Thomas: These white sheets when they teach. Oh, come on. Yeah,

0:43:32 Lydia: The university in 1995 chose to return the gift rather than commit the enormity of teaching, Yeah, so I was like, I don't think that's true. Just quick little fact check here. So it was a $20 million donation, but there were delays in setting it up and disagreements about faculty appointments because Liam Bass, who was, you know, the alumnus from Yale, said that he would get to pick the professors. Professors. And Yale was like, I don't think so. So they went back and forth. Right. And this is like per the Los Angeles Times and they're reporting on it and they couldn't come to an agreement about it. And so then they decided to give it back. And then he redirected it to other charitable causes. It also seemed to not really bother him that much. They continue to support the university. I mean, they often are donating quite a lot of money to Yale. So it was just a a specific disagreement about this particular curriculum and the faculty that would be there. And wouldn't you know it, it's not exactly how James Hankins has portrayed it in his essay. Okay. I don't think we've ever talked about Western Civ on this show, have we? Yeah. And

0:44:06 Thomas: They don't just let you do that. Yeah. They're not hurting for money. These institutions have plenty of money. Yeah, you should study some history. I know that I have prepped it for something before and we didn't get to it, I'm pretty sure, but it's always worth talking about.

0:44:57 Lydia: It's such like a big conversation that I don't think we're going to, you know, start and finish it here. I think we'll probably carry on this conversation in plenty of other episodes. But But this is obviously a big thorn in James Hankins' side. Yes.

0:45:00 Thomas: Yeah. Dog whistle. All I hear now is dog whistle when I hear that. I can't even, And, you know, and, and maybe my, my woke ass is too, you know, woke, but like, whenever I hear anyone say Western Civ, it's just like, I, I look, I don't know. I'm not good at this stuff, but I don't know what that means. Like, it doesn't mean the cardinal direction because Western doesn't include a whole bunch of stuff that's in the West.

0:45:35 Thomas: What is it? You're going to tell me.

0:45:36 Lydia: Yeah. Well, I want to set it up with some of his misgivings about the direction that history has gone. He says, contrasted unfavorably with the perfectly liberal society promised by the prophets of the progressive future. A popular project among global historians is, quote, decentering the West, where Western countries are literally put in their place as an ugly growth on the backside of Eurasia. In this absurdist rendering of world history, Central Asian peoples, formerly known as barbarians, are presented as the drivers of cultural innovation, spreading their benign influence east and west via the Silk Road. I know, I don't even know what to say about some of this stuff.

0:46:03 Thomas: You're such a hysterical idiot. Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. Wow. God damn. I need a degree to tell how many ways that's racist. Like, I don't even know. You know what I mean? Like I need some help. Like yeah. Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah.

0:46:43 Lydia: Many now, this is skipping down towards the end a bit, it is now more than half a century since Western civ courses have been regularly required of high school and college students. Few students or teachers have retained a sense that they are inheritors of a great legacy handed down via the classical and Christian traditions. Few Westerners today understand where our civilizational commitments to free debate and rational argument, self-government, citizenship, constitutionalism, the rule of law, the idea of human dignity, and our love of personal freedoms come from.

0:47:08 Thomas: Yeah. They don't have human dignity over in those barbarian lands. Ridiculous. Yeah, uh-huh, huh.

0:47:14 Lydia: Yep. Yep. And that's such a common thing too. I have a video, I don't know if we'll get to, but I'll share it in the show notes for sure, where trying to define Western civilization and Western values is nonsense. It's nonsense. And our love of personal freedoms come from and why people in our past studied and worked and fought to preserve those things. Thanks to the pall of negativity that has settled on all things Western, fewer and fewer in the younger generation are able to appreciate Western arts and architecture, music, literature, and philosophy. Many now believe that our civilization is on the point of collapse, but few seem willing to take the steps necessary to preserve it. Civilizations are not automatically self-replicating. They need to be studied and cultivated. Few remember that Western civilizations have apparently been on the point of collapse before and have been reborn before. To hope for a change in sentiment in our leading universities is by no means absurd. Even now, there are some liberal academics who accept what used to be a matter of common sense, that the young, whatever their ethnic roots, should learn about the civilization that made them, the Western traditions that created the beliefs and institutions among which silently they now live for those like myself however who have lived through the decline of higher education in elite in quotes universities that would be a triumph of hope over experience as Johnson said of remarriage for now a better hope lies in building new institutions unencumbered by the corruption and self-hatred that infect the old. And that is so interesting to me that this is not a new debate in history. The idea that we need to expand beyond the classics, right, and Western civilization, what even is Western civilization is a pretty spirited debate among history professors and academics. Academics. I found this piece from 1996 where this author again this is through historians.org and let me give him credit. Thomas W. Davis. I write this essay with all the zeal of a recent convert to world history who's been academically energized by his newfound devotion to the subject I also write with at least some awareness of the problems involved in teaching the subject and he says he began his career in 1972. He specialized in British history. He loved it. And then he could have continued with Western Civ until retirement once he got tenure. But something kept troubling me about the course. In particular, I wondered occasionally if the rumblings about world history within the profession were worth further consideration. Increasingly, the answer for me became a resounding yes, not because of political correctness, a desire to attack Western Civ, demands for multiculturalism, or the ethnic diversity in my classrooms, but simply because of what I considered to be more easily educationally correct. It came down to a question. Yeah, it came down to a question J.H. Hexter once posed. Which of the two courses is more beneficial for our students? For today's students who will be spending most of their adult lives in the 21st century, I came increasingly to see the advantages of world history. And then he did a faculty exchange and just, I mean, I think any common sense, and maybe this is really hard for people who are like so deep in their world of of what they know and what they've learned and what they you know really care about it's almost like identity for them but it's not part of my identity

0:48:04 Thomas: Huh. I was supposed to PC. Yeah. Yeah, you're so close. It's almost like a white identity for them. Yeah yeah and then all of a sudden Trump wants Greenland because of a map being centered

0:50:43 Lydia: Yeah but I think this common sense idea is like why why would I want to limit my understanding of history based off of something that is like centered on the the people with power in a lot of those situations in the same way that Like understanding of maps, right? The map that we've seen is not necessarily the best representation. It's not necessarily the most accurate because it was drawn to center Western civilization, basically. So I think that it's just really interesting that he is decrying all of these things that have long been issues in history departments. And he has just been And so insulated by his power, by the institutional status of Harvard, by his privilege, that he hasn't ever had to engage in it truthfully. I mean, I feel like that's the big piece of this essay is he's decrying all of these things that are not new. Right, right.

0:51:17 Thomas: Weird and the projection of it being skewed. Yeah they never do. They've never had to think about Yeah, yeah, no idea, we didn't coordinate on this I just made that point like I don't I every time

0:51:56 Lydia: Right. The diversity issues in history, the gender issues in history, the debate within history itself about what do we want to teach? How do we want to set up our courses? I want to end with just looking at what is Western civilization and what are Western values? This, yeah.

0:52:19 Thomas: I hear it I'm like what does that mean what does it mean Mr. Beat yeah oh my god yeah yeah yeah

0:52:22 Lydia: And I think this is kind of a fun video where someone is trying to also define what it means. That's his cat, not ours. All right. So we can skip ahead a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, but but if you skip ahead to 410, we'll talk about Western values.

0:54:49 Thomas: Yeah I should just make the video I want to make that's this why did Adam Scott do the voiceover for that quick few seconds oh now now you have to hear it again ready no it's after this

0:56:07 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah be nice. Don't steal help people. Oh that was a Jordan Peterson jump scare. Yeah

0:56:19 Thomas: That's a that's adam's yeah oh wow yeah this isn't christopher hitchens I just want to explain

0:56:59 Lydia: Yeah. Ben Shapiro jump scare.

0:58:00 Thomas: All that kind of oh god it's getting convicted of yeah yeah right very silly yeah they can it just they can't say it because it's racist it

0:58:11 Lydia: Yeah. So we can stop there. It's basically a screen of just a ton of different things, which it's a little or a lot racist to assume that those aren't values that are present in other cultures as well. Well, again, West is not a culture either. But what this really comes down to is like people who so deeply want us to be covering Western civilization, they can't agree on what it is, what it's centered around. And they are, yeah, it is.

0:58:56 Thomas: I don't think everyone who says western civilization is outwardly specifically racist but it is racist it means white people it means europe up. Wait, how did white nationalists become offensive? Seriously? Where did the Ku Klux

0:59:06 Lydia: I agree. And so I have this piece that was when Steve King was running for Congress over in Iowa. And and and he was quoted in The New York Times asking white nationalists, white supremacists, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive? And yeah, yeah, Yeah, this guy. And, and yeah, exactly. I think that what Yeah, white nationalist, white

0:59:34 Thomas: Klan become? What are you talking? White nationalists. How did that? It's inherently offensive. Yeah. Oh, that's because it is. The racists sure think it's racist. No, he's an old

0:59:43 Lydia: White supremacists, what are you talking about? But Western civilization, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott responded, I'm unsure who was offended by the term Western civilization on its own. However, this article I was looking at links and says he would find hyperlink, many hyperlink different hyperlink people, hyperlink including classical scholars, all those things hyperlinked, arguing that Western civilization is coded language for white supremacy. And here's an example of that. If you go to American Renaissance, a neo-Nazi magazine that's online, here's an article they wrote. Western civilization is white civilization. Okay, there you go. Figured it out. That is what it is. Right. And so he's talking, the person who wrote this is talking about that same exact situation with Steve King being quoted in the New York Times about white nationalists, white supremacists, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive? And from American Renaissance's perspective, they're like, yeah, it's not offensive because, you know, none of that stuff's offensive because white people are, you know, we're awesome, I guess, is what their position is. So there's so much that we can talk about with Western civilization. But James Hankins, accidentally obtuse, purposefully obtuse? I don't know. I don'T know. But he's never really had to grapple with this stuff. I'm sure he would push back on all of this stuff. Yeah, that Western civilization is something that is inherently racist. But that's not to say you can't. It's not that like we shouldn't study history of ancient Greece.

1:01:10 Thomas: Sexist piece of shit. Yeah. Well, it's just being the default. White people get to always be the

1:01:23 Lydia: We shouldn't study history of ancient Rome. Like, yeah, we should. We should study. I would love to study the history of everything, literally everything in the world from all countries. But I think what's valuable is then also recognizing the perspective of the history that you're learning from and that it might be flawed. It might be biased to whatever culture, whatever country, whatever ethnic group or anything like that is presenting it. Yeah.

1:01:51 Thomas: Default. Yeah, wow. So what did you learn? In the end, yet another whiny crybaby racist old white

1:01:51 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. And so from my perspective, I think that these are good reckonings for higher institutions to have. I'm sure James Hankins will be very happy in Florida. He donated to DeSantis's campaign when he ran for president. He's been, you know, 100 percent on board with that guy. I don't know where he stands with Trump exactly. Later in the PragerU video, he said, you Like Trump calling this stuff out is hurting more than it's helping because it's making people have their guard up more because it'S coming from Trump when it'S, you know, going after institutions like Harvard and Columbia and stuff. Anyway, I just thought it'd be fun to kind of go down this guy's position, this history professor and how, you know, poor, poor Western Civ scholars are being cast in the in the rubbish bin. And he's fleeing to Florida in order to avoid it. Yeah yeah mm-hmm yeah yeah hopefully he will and he's you know moving to Florida

1:02:56 Thomas: Man is full of shit? Is that what we learned? That's the name of the show. So that's what we came here to learn every time. And I love too how much you brought up from, you know, 1990 fucking fucking one where they always try to sell themselves as like, wow, this is it's it's worse. It's worse than it's ever been. I used to be and he didn't really do this directly, but they always tried to give you the indication that like this is a new thing that's crazy kids are doing. And it's just it's so bad now. I can't even it's like, dude, you've been the same conservative piece of shit since before. I have memories, you know, like it's not new. You've you've always been a piece of shit. You're one of the dinosaurs holding women and people of color out of your fucking field and you should go retire and die soon. That's what I think.

1:03:46 Lydia: Where most folks go to retire and die soon so yeah yeah yeah of course

1:03:50 Thomas: Not soon enough for some of the Trump voters. All right. Well, that was fun. I love a good debunk of an anti-woke bullshit. Good times. Thanks, hon. My wife's been sexually exploited a ton.