The Rise of US Totalitarianism | Panel | EP 246

I'd like you to walk me through what's happened to you since the events in Evergreen and bring everybody up to date on my end. So maybe you could start with what happened at Evergreen, although I suspect many of the people watching this do know. Does that seem reasonable?

Sure, um yeah we can start there. I think we should probably err in the direction of being sparse with the details and see where it leads us. So in 2017 I was teaching at Evergreen, as was Heather, my wife, and she was literally Evergreen's most popular professor. I wasn't too far behind; I was very popular as well. Our classes were always overfull, and we accepted more people than we had to and had to turn some away anyway. In actually 2016, the new president of the college, George Bridges, began an initiative or a set of initiatives surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. These initiatives included the impaneling of a committee that was supposed to look into racism at the college, its impacts, and to propose solutions. As it became clear what they were alleging and proposing, Heather and I became very alarmed. I began to speak out at first in faculty meetings, and then, when the ability to speak out in faculty meetings became non-existent, I took to our faculty and staff email list to talk about the threat to the college that was created by these initiatives.

That of course brought about exactly what you would imagine, which were accusations that I was motivated by some kind of racism or white supremacy or white fragility, or who knows what the accusations were exactly. But, um, in any case, I fought back anyway. My sense was I had tenure, and I was well-liked, and I was well-known at the college. I had been there for 14 years, and so I didn't think they had the power to get rid of me. That gave me the ability to say what needed to be said about these proposals.

Well, the upshot is that ultimately protesters, 50 students that I had never met, showed up at my classroom, accused me of racism, demanded that I either be fired or resign. I told them I wouldn't, and riots broke out at the college, in which faculty and administrators were kidnapped. I was apparently hunted car to car on campus by protesters. The police were stood down by the college president, and we were basically left to fend for ourselves, with student patrols roving the campus with weapons, baseball bats and the like. So it was a chaotic scene. There was a lot of interest in it because it was very colorful, but of course most people back in 2017 dismissed this as an overreaction. But you know how college students are, and those of us who saw it up close knew that that couldn't be the case that it would ultimately spill out into civilization.

We, of course, were right, and now it's everywhere. We see it taking over institution after institution in the U.S. and Canada. We see it making tremendous strides in government, and there's no telling where it ends.

And what is... I mean I have a bunch of questions that come out of that, so I'm gonna lay out three. One: why in the world did this bother you enough so that you took a stand, especially given your political leanings? Because you were, which I'm not criticizing, by the way, I'm just stating that it isn't obvious to begin with why it would be you that would take a stand rather than someone else. But you did, and so I'm curious about why. And, um, what is it that you saw coming? And what is this "it" that you're referring to? You've had a lot of time to be thinking about this now; it's been four years. I mean, you're... and the other thing I want to ask you about is your life was thrown completely upside down. You and your wife; you don't have your job at the university anymore either of you, despite the fact that you were tenured professors. It's not an easy thing to get another toe hold in academia once you've been a tenured professor somewhere, especially if you've gone through what you went through, because no hiring committee anywhere is going to give you any consideration once you've been tarred by scandal, regardless of what your role in it was. They're far too conservative to ever do anything like that.

And so, okay, so let's... I don't know if I can remember the order in which I asked those questions, but I think the first one was why in the world did you… why in the world were you compelled to object? To object, and what is it that you were objecting to, do you think?

Well, it's a funny question for you to pose to me because I have the feeling that the answer will be entirely native to you. I literally don't believe I had any choice. People frequently ask me why I stood up, and my sense is if I think through the alternative, I simply can't live with it. I can't sleep.

Yeah, but that doesn't seem to bother most people, so I don't get that. Like, why you?

Well, right. I mean, I guess that's the thing I'm discovering. Um, so you alluded to my political leanings, and you and I both know what you mean by that. I'm a liberal, and I would actually describe myself sometimes as a reluctant radical. By that, I mean that I believe we must engage in radical change if we are to survive as a species. But I also know that radical change is very dangerous, and so it's not like, you know, I find most people who would call themselves radicals feel like radical change is always called for. And I don't. My sense is I hope to see change that makes civilization good enough that I get to be a conservative, that I get to say actually we're doing so well that we have no choice but to preserve this. If we try to improve it, we'll mess it up. That's where I want to go.

But what I'm discovering is that the bedrock of my liberalism is nothing like the underpinnings of the so-called liberalism of most of the people on the left side of the political spectrum. My liberalism comes from a sense that yes, compassion is a virtue, but that policy must be based on a dispassionate analysis of problems. It is based on an understanding that the magic of the West comes from a tension between those who aspire to change things for the better and those who recognize the danger of changing them at all. And so, in any case, I think the short answer is we look around the world and everybody makes arguments that sound as if they come from first principles, but most people do not arrive at conclusions from first principles. If they extrapolate at all, they don't do it very well, and that results in a severe compartmentalization of thought.

And that means that when confronted with changes that threaten a system on which we are dependent, most people don't recognize it, and if they do recognize that, they wouldn't know what to do about it. So, how can I put it in plain terms? I had no choice because I was as if on a ship where somebody had proposed to fix our course through a field of icebergs and navigate based on some absurd theory with no grounding in fact. Somebody had to object.

I was a little surprised at how few and far between the objectors were. But you know, if I'm to be totally candid about it, at the point that things went haywire at Evergreen, I had watched video of you reacting to protesters in Toronto, and it had made so much sense to me at a number of different levels. You know, I recognized you as somebody who knew that although the initial proposals were arguably symbolic, that they were connected to things that ultimately were very much about an exercise of power and a transfer of well-being. And that it was therefore, um, you know, you felt obligated to stand up and say no, which resulted, as you know better than anyone, in you being mocked for overreacting. And then here we are, years later, and it turns out that you saw with absolute clarity what others couldn't even imagine.

Yes, but I certainly didn't see what was going to happen to me, you know. So I don't think it's... it wasn't possible to see what would happen with specificity, but am I correct in seeing that you knew that something very dramatic was likely to come from your standing on principle and that that didn't provide any license to do anything but make that stand?

I really can't say. You know, it's a while ago now, so that's part of it. But so much has happened to me that's been so strange in the last four years that I have a very difficult time making any sense of it. I can't even really think about especially the last two years. I can't really think about them in any consistent and comprehensive way. I mean my family situation has been so catastrophic, and my illness and my wife's illness—it's just been, although she recovered completely, thank God—it's just been so utterly catastrophic. That my thinking about it is unbelievably fragmented. I'm struck dumb still to some degree by all of what emerged as a consequence of me making the first videos that I made. You know, I went downstairs, talked to my wife and my son. My son was living at home at that time temporarily, and I said, "This piece of legislation is really bothering me because it calls for compelled speech." I looked at the background documents, and something wasn't right, and I said, "I need to say something about it." They said, "Well, go for it. You know we'll see what happens." And all hell broke loose, and continues to break loose for that matter, which is one of the things that's so bloody strange about it; it doesn't seem to end.

I would have thought when it first started, I thought, oh well, you know, I'd be a flash in the pan for a week or something, or two weeks, or a month, or six months, or a year or two years, but it doesn't stop. And I really can't understand that. It's beyond my comprehension now. I guess it's partly because I continue to communicate my thoughts to some degree, even talking to mainstream media people, although increasingly less and perhaps not at all from here on in. I mean, I had an interview with the London Times two weeks ago, three weeks ago; it was published, and you know, it was just another complete absolute bloody nightmare for my family, my daughter in particular, because they took her to task in an extraordinarily nasty way. And the journalist who did the interview was completely... you couldn't invent her. You know, not only the way she was—she was so deceitful in what she did, but I learned more about her background afterward as a consequence of another journalist who wrote about her, and you know, she's a very singular person to say the least.

And so I did feel at the time like you did, I guess, that I was more afraid of not speaking than I was afraid of speaking. And I have something against being told what to say. It's like I'll pay the price for what I have to say. I'm not going to pay the price to say what you want me to say. You go say it yourself and see what the hell happens. And you know, maybe that's just a kind of incomprehensible stubbornness in some sense, although I did... I think I did see what has... I did see the beginnings of what has unfolded since that, although I can't even really put my finger on what it is that's happening.

So, well, I wonder a little bit about, you know, in some ways, you know, there's nothing good about why you were absent from the scene, but there may be something good about your having not been there for every moment of it and being able to come back to the discussion with something like fresh eyes because a lot of this is developmental. And you know, you say you're surprised that this is continuing. I must say I'm having the same experience. I feel like I was picked up, you know, my whole family was picked up by a tornado, and we haven't been put down. And you know, I sort of feel like we were joined in the tornado during 2020. It was such a crazy year that a lot of people whose lives were continuing in some normal fashion are suddenly aware that things are wildly off kilter.

And so what was it like going to teach at Grace Church School?

Well, it was really nice because I was used to a corporate environment, I guess. I, you know, because of my time that I had done in a previous job at HBO, I was a technical manager. It was a whole other career. And, you know, I was very concerned that I reported to the right people or, you know, what's the structure? You know, and they were just like, well, you know, you just have colleagues and you can discuss things with them, and we're not going to make you do anything. You can talk to us. It was... it's a very friendly environment. I mean there were serious expectations like, you know, and everyone took their jobs very seriously, but there really was a sense of belonging and community. They were very... it was... that was very welcoming actually and very energizing. I will say because I wasn't used to that. I didn't expect it, and so I would be remained aloof from it, you know, at the beginning like, what's, you know, these people, why are they always smiling at me, like what's going on? You know, like I don't know why. But gradually I loosened up and, you know, it was kind of corny, but I would kind of go along with it, and I... yeah, it's a good kind of corny. Yeah, and I... it did actually, you know, I warmed up a little bit. I felt I did feel like I was a part of things, and I was able to sort of transmit that to others too.

And so what happened over time?

Um, it was a very gradual change that, you know, I would say, well, within the first three years, one of the tenets of our school was that every employee and every faculty and staff member had to attend a seminar called Undoing Racism.

That was your HR department? Was it, or who?

Yeah, it was a, you know, it was a mandate from the dean of faculty at the time, and it was a requirement.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so I went to that, and that was a very interesting experience. You know, it's hard to, um, what would you say, refuse a call to anti-racism.

Sure, I mean, let me do that. What kind of monster?

Yeah, um, and I... you know, I went into it, and I actually felt energized, and I was converted. You know, I had a sort of... you know, I am white and I'm privileged and you're right we need to take care of this, and there were people in a circle, and people of all different races and backgrounds and it was facilitated, and you know, later I look back on it and I realized sort of how they... how they did it. They did it in a very interesting, seductive way.

Um, and what way was that?

Well, you know, as I recall, they started out... well, it was sort of two parts. The first part was the history since, you know, the slave ships landed on American soil and then throughout time leading up to the present. And then they focused, for the second half of the session, they focused on, you know, how to help a community that has been shaped by all of this.

And very early in the... very early in the session, they said, we want you to withhold any judgment of anyone's choice or agency. Anyone, you know, any of, you know, the minority black populations that we're talking about here. We want you to simply bracket or put, you know, hold... hold withhold any analysis of the choices that people make because, you know, that will often lead to misunderstanding or insensitivity towards what's happening.

So why do you focus on that specifically, that issue specifically?

Well, because, you know, it was as they retold the history and as they talked about the present circumstances, they never actually revisited that. So, you know, you're constantly focused on the oppressed population in terms of what is acting upon it at first, acting upon those individuals, and you know to me that's like denying a certain agency, right? But they never actually lifted the blinders off at the end.

Like they would put these... everyone sort of acknowledged that they were going to go along with this at the beginning, and I was like, really, we're going to do that? We're going to treat people as less than human? Well, okay, I just... it must be like a temporary thing.

And why did you see that as treating them as less than human?

I mean, I presume that the people on the other side of the fence would say, well, you know, we're all caught like corks on the sea in the throes of vast social movements over which we have little or no control, and who are you to cast judgment on people who have been, um, the relatively deprived in that regard compared to you? It's possible to make a fairly stringent moral case that that's the appropriate mode of behavior but there was something in you that objected to that, and you remember that now?

Yeah, despite the fact that you said that you were energized by this and pulled in by it, why do you think it caught you as well?

Well, it was a social thing, right? It was... it's the people in a circle, and people are talking about their experiences and people are saying, as a black person, I have... this has happened to me. And at one point they asked, they actually, you know, they... it's empathy, right? You care about people. You feel if you're sitting face to face with someone, of course you're going to be sympathetic and empathetic, and people are narrating.

Um, you know, but the problem I think is generalizing that to groups, and you know, getting you to make a different set of assumptions about those groups based on a sort of, you know, selective way that the empathy is leveraged, I would say.

Well, there's also the implicit... there's the implicit, um, uh, what would you say, the implicit perceptual and categorical structure that comes along with it, which is the a priori assumption that the appropriate classification for human beings is by group.

Yeah. And that that's so implicit but so pervasive that, in some sense, it never needs to be stated. And as soon as you assume that the group level is the appropriate level, then you're bound to minimize or even forbid discussion of such things as individual agency.

So tell us about the blog. When did you start writing your blog?

In July 2019.

And why did you start to do that? I mean, you have your research career, you're an undergraduate, you're a teacher as well, you're working in the community, you have a full life. What compelled you to start a blog?

I love to write, and I think it's... it's a reflex that I have from war, so I used to write my diary in Arabic and in French, and I have time with me that came from... with me in a box and went across three provinces. I love to write. So, in July 2019, I didn't have the chance maybe to say what I wanted to say on a platform, so I decided to have my own blog and just write for the pleasure of writing.

I write about Lebanon, um, maybe half of the time, I write about Canada, Quebec here. I just write and express views in relation to what is happening in Canada and in the world. And I think I'm seeing something very worrisome, and maybe that's part of why maybe I'm writing because I'm seeing that we are in times where we can't talk about things or look what's happening in my story. Like we... people are afraid; they may think things when they are at home privately, but they may not express them publicly or maybe because of, you know, political correctness or whatever. I'm not that type of person.

Like, what I write or Bambi—the name of the person writing is actually the meaning of my first name, Rima. It means a little dear in Arabic, and that means that deer. So Bambi's of car are Bambi's thoughts. So I... what I write is actually who I am, what my own thoughts, privately, and on that blog, I sometimes write maybe, you know, personal things about birthdays of loved ones or whatever. It's a blog, right? So, uh, that's it.

And what kind of audience does your blog have?

Well, at first, I thought it had maybe 10 people—maybe first myself I was writing for myself—but I thought family, family members. And then when that story happened, uh, I for once... I search—I usually don't have the time to do that, and I thought it was, like, really getting 2,000 on one day and then, like, I don't know, another day I checked, 500, something like that. And I thought, oh my goodness! Like, I was really thinking I'm writing, you know, I'm using... during the pandemic, my in-laws or my parents sometimes with some submissions, or writing about the Beirut explosion. I interviewed friends about what they are going through with the financial crisis, you know, things like that.

Right? So it had expanded beyond the small number of people that you had assumed were reading it.

Absolutely, exactly. What happened to you? So you were... you were living what I would presume was a pretty comfortable and happy life, as you've described being a teacher and a researcher. You spun off this blog on the side, and then what happened? One day you were notified by the university? Tell us exactly the story.

I can tell you, but I want to say yes, I'm extremely happy even in the pandemic, even despite the Beirut explosion and everything. Like, I'm fighting my ways of, you know, living, coping, where New Brunswick is amazing for Canada, but we're also lucky to be in the semi-rural areas where even the pandemic did not hit us as hard as as, you know, the larger or bigger places in Montreal. So in that sense, um, I was all okay until that February 22nd where I can tell you that story because it's my story; that's my part.

So, and it's in the media, actually. I was having symptoms of actually like COVID-19. I wasn't sure, and I was very, very, very sick. And that I usually run fast and jump and go on the stairs, and I couldn't take the stairs; I would stop, you know, couldn't breathe and so on. On that day, the Monday where it happened, I went for testing, was finally negative. But I went... came back that my work day, and then at the end of the day was lying on the couch thinking that I was resting, I got a phone call from a kind former student telling me, "Dr. Azar and you're, uh, you need to know what is happening." And I thought, are you okay? What is happening? I was worried. And he said, "No, I'm fine. You are in trouble—in big trouble."

So the story started in the social media. I'm not on social media myself, um, so for me I chose that blog because it's what suits my personality. I see what I, you know, writing and having enough space to write. And so anyways, I enjoy reading social media and I do, but I'm not on it. So I went, I read quickly and I thought, okay, uh, it's... you know, it was there. And this was where... this was on Twitter; this was all happening on Twitter, or where was it?

On Twitter. If it was happening on elsewhere, as a Facebook, I guess, but I saw the Twitter myself, uh, and then an email got out of the university publicly. So not on Twitter, on Facebook, um, or the public channels of the university, saying, um, you know, it's public, so I'm not saying what is not public, um, "trigger warning, that blog, we dissociate ourselves from it," and, you know, "on an encouraging complaint."

Okay, so what people... what were people saying on Twitter, and who was it that would say it, and how many of them were there, do you know?

A lot. Uh, and like it was... it was a big thing on like... and there has been also at one point, you know, a threat of violence on social media and things like that, so it was... it was then. I don't want to forget that part, but when the... there were three student organizations asked for my removal from my position at my university, and also affiliations elsewhere, like University of New Brunswick invested in Moncton as well, so it got really...

Okay, so I want to zero in on this. So there's some students, primarily on social media, on Twitter primarily, and they're complaining about your blog. And they're students who are part of student organizations. And do you... and then the student organizations themselves—three of them—are contacting your... the people that you're working for or with, suggesting that you're not the sort of person they should be associating with, and asking for your removal?

Exactly. You said there were lots of students doing this, and I'd like to get something—an estimate of something like a number. So does a lot mean 500, or does it mean five?

So, in between maybe—I don't know precisely the answer.

Well, the reason I'm asking is because one of the things I'm curious about is just how many people have to complain before complaints are taken with some degree of seriousness. Now I've dealt with ethics boards, for example, at my own university, and they have a policy that every complaint should be investigated thoroughly. And I'm not very fond of that policy particularly because there are a lot of people who cause a fair bit of trouble for absolutely no reason, and it seems to me that complaints need to pass something approximating a reasonable threshold before they're dealt with, let's say seriously.

And so, you know, it's striking when you're talking about this that you don't know how many people actually came after you because they came after you on social media. And it's certainly not in the hundreds; it's unlikely to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's unlikely to be in the dozens. Is it 10? Is it 15? And were they students who were actually in your classes, or were they just people who read your blog, and what were they objecting to in your blog exactly? What did you say that was in principle—or do you even know what it is that they're upset about?

What I've read is that you made some claim that Canada wasn't systemically racist; that wasn't the right way of looking at the country. And is there... so, and to me that means... now is that the case? Now, at a university, if I stand up and say that I don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to analyze Canada, especially compared to other countries, that now I'm so reprehensible that I deserve to be suspended if a couple of people object? Is that the situation that we're looking at, or am I being too hard on the university?

Well, I think it's hard to answer that question. I know the numbers that I know of now; I know them because of what happened and how many people... but before I didn't know anything. I personally found it amazing that my university, my employer that I love and it's tech, you know, I did not call me to tell me what was happening, that I learned it in that... did your union?

My union is doing what needs to be done, and I'm very grateful. But, uh, but I didn't know about that; I knew that's how I knew it. And then after that first call, friends from Nova Scotia, Emerson's question, called hearing in the news and the radio. It was all everywhere.

Um, I have to admit I may be wrong, but there may have been a flavor for that during that month. So like it was like... like my story was sort of a scapegoat for something that is much bigger than a deer—a simple deer, a silly deer. Sometimes we're not allowed to write serious things or silly things or be wrong or change our mind.

So what precisely? I don't know, but I do—I personally am allergic to identity politics, given my background, so I may have written things about that, or about—you know, it's hard to tell.

You're still not sure? You're still not sure what it is that...

Okay, so you're not sure exactly who you offended or how many of them there are. And you're not exactly sure why you offended them, and you're so unsure that what you say is that as far as you're concerned, you can't safely write down what you think despite the fact that you have your opinions given where you came from, given the fact that you've immigrated here, that you can take a look at Canada from the perspective of an insider and an outsider, you're not sure what your crime is.

No, but now because it's in this, in the media, I can talk to that. I'm so sad that I'm not respecting the confidentiality of the process of the investigational report—it's in the media. There is another game.

Well, you get the chance to defend yourself, in any case. I mean you've been suspended, correct?

In the fall.

Okay, and you said your university didn't even call you when all this blew up, which is typical in my experience of the way institutions are reacting to this sort of thing. So an unnamed number of students made comments that you have used that are in some sense reprehensible even though you don't know what they are, and the response of your university, despite the fact that you have tenure, that you're an accomplished scientist, that you're a popular undergraduate researcher, that you have tenure, the response of your university was to not call you but suspend you for the fall, what pending an investigation? An investigation into what exactly? Have they told you what you did wrong?

Of course, I... I saw those complaints, um, and, um, I can tell you I think that part I can say it is most of them are related to the blog, and that's fine. People have the right not to like what you say, what I say, what anyone else is saying, that's fine. But when we get into false allegations, um, it's a different story.

There's also a difference between having the right not to like what you say on your blog and aggregating behind your back and conspiring to contact all your employers and to insist that you be removed because you're reprehensible and hypothetically a danger to the, let's say, the safety of students. And to have you removed from your position and have your reputation dragged through the mud and have you exposed in the media, I mean, that's not merely not liking what you said; that's an all-out attack.

And it's amazing to me that this handful of students—a specified number—has the power hour to move the administration to produce such a dramatic response, and you keep wavering in some sense as to the nature of your crimes. You said you think it might... you think it's likely the blog, but I guess there are allegations that go outside the blog as well. Have you ever had trouble with your students in classes that have resulted in complaints?

Never. All those who know me personally who can guess who I am in the blog—because I think it shows a little bit that, you know, I write—I write a lot so you can guess, you can see, you can make links; you can see. So for example, I may criticize a certain politician in one blog, but I can say thank you on another one for doing something good. You know, I'm writing because we cannot comment on art media articles, um, many times, you know, the comment section is closed, right?

So for me, it's my way of doing it. So if they... well, it doesn't seem to me that it's something that needs to be justified. I mean, first of all, you're a citizen of a free country; you have the right to express yourself any way that you see fit. Second of all, you're a tenured professor, and your thoughts are actually protected to a fair degree, and it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly. And the fact that this has happened despite your tenure—well, I guess part of the question that people who are watching might be asking is why the hell should they care about this?

And the reason I believe that people should care about this, first of all, is that what happens in the universities ends up happening everywhere else very, very rapidly. And if it can happen to someone like you, it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time, in any place. And this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the face of unwarranted allegations, as long as they're the right flavor, is something that should be tremendously worrisome to everyone.

Tell us about No Safe Spaces first, and then tell us about, you know, your attempts to get it distributed or the attempts to get it distributed.

Well, I'll start with the movie, and then Dennis will go on to the attempts to be distributed. Well, I actually wanted it to reverse.

Okay, that's fine. Either way.

Um, you know, Dennis and I are very different; we have very different backgrounds, but we do have common sense in common. And I have found more and more, and I'm assuming you guys feel the same way, which is just finding someone with common sense seems to trump all the other characteristics that we're constantly talking about, about, you know, where what region you're born in or who your team is or what color your skin is.

Uh, Dennis and I always had common sense in common. And we struck up a great friendship; we've done many speaking engagements, we've always had a great time in each other's companies. And so when the producers came to us with this idea, I immediately jumped at it just because it selfishly seemed like we could spend a lot of time together talking about a subject that we're both pretty passionate about, which was free speech.

And since the time we made this movie, I feel like things have gotten much worse. I think the movie was a bit ahead of its time in terms of what it is—the subject matter. And now I feel like in just the three or four years since we started this, the free speech issue has gone into overdrive.

Go ahead, Dennis.

Yeah, a word on the movie and then a word on the distribution. I've said from the beginning and I... I'm neither arrogant nor humble. I just pretty much try to see myself in life objectively. Uh, and I... so I have said, uh, this is a great movie. And it's not a great movie because I'm in it; it might be a great movie because Adam is in it, but the truth is it's a great movie, and Adam and I happen to be the quote-unquote stars, but that's not the point of the movie.

Uh, I have watched this about five times. I have the attention span of a child, and so for something to keep me riveted five times speaks immensely about it. It is... it truly is an important movie. It's more important today even than when it was made about free speech, and it's got movies within the movies. And anyway, people should see it.

I should... I'd like to point out too, just as an advertisement of sorts, there's a Canadian equivalent to that movie called Better Left Unsaid that has faced the same sort of distribution problems that you guys have faced, and it focuses on issues that are more germane to Canada, although also relevant to the U.S.

And so, um, well they deserve a... no, they did—they deserve to mention, so I'm glad you pointed out. I happen to think that things are worse in Canada than in the U.S., but, uh, that's an interesting discussion for either another time or later on today. So what was your impetus for making I'm in the movies?

Yes, yes. Netflix refused to distribute it, uh, to stream it, which is incredible given how popular the movie is.

Okay, so make a case for that, like why?

Okay, so Netflix should have been incentivized, as far as you're concerned, by the fact that the movie was economically successful, and there are other streaming agencies too online that are fairly powerful, so Amazon, etc. Have you had any interest from any of the streaming agencies?

Yes. Well, it's interesting. I don't know the... I'll look up the Amazon question. I know that Walmart doesn't sell it in its stores; they have the same thing. All you need really in at Netflix or Walmart or any of these is one or two people who were awoke to tell you, "No, we can't do this; we're going to get a bad name."

Uh, and then you know what is it to Netflix not to listen to somebody who says, "Oh, Dennis Prager, we know for a fact that it was my name that was the trigger," which is an interesting thing, which I one day would be fascinating to discuss, uh, because whenever my name is raised, uh, as this bugaboo, I always say, "Well, can you say anything in 35 years of broadcasting, 10 books, literally 1,000 columns on the internet, plus tens of thousands of hours of the radio recorded, say one thing that I have ever said that strikes you as extreme?"

And so there's never an example. This, literally, never. The New York Times did a piece on me; they couldn't find one sentence. In fact, they said Prager suggested—but I always tell people, if they don't say "said," don't believe the line "suggested" is the New York Times, not what I said. And then they had no quotes. But anyway, I've had the same experience, Dennis, you know, hours.

Of course I have; I know that I can't find a thing you've ever said that isn't ennobling. I love your work. I wrote the preface; I wrote the introduction to your biography. I had... I had this experience as well.

And then I have another thought, which is, uh, I got into a lot of trouble, and I got out of favor with critics because it was widely said that Adam Carolla said women weren't funny.

Now this is perfect, and you guys have experienced a version of this. I did an interview years ago, and the person said at the end, "Who's funnier, men or women?" And I said, "Well, I think men are. I think it's based on them trying to have sex, essentially, so they had to exercise that muscle a little bit."

But I know many female comedians that are funnier than anybody any guy I ever went to high school with. That then turned into Adam Carolla said women weren't funny, and then they just ran with it.

And that's up there with that. Well, look, it's pretty credible what you say because my sense is that there's been a couple of things I've said that have been blown up in the press, you know? And they were exaggerations of the sort that you're describing, taken out of context.

I think that in the current climate, if you've ever said anything reprehensible on public record, that you will be slaughtered for it. And so if you haven't been slaughtered for it, the probability that you haven't said anything reprehensible is pretty damn high, because people are combing over the utterances of people like you, trying to find a smoking pistol.

I don't know if you can comb over things to find a smoking pistol, but I... I was at a Senate subcommittee on the suppression of free speech, testifying about what's happening to PragerU, where hundreds of our videos are placed on the restricted list, meaning if you have a filter against pornography and violence, you actually can see the video.

So one of them was, in fact, one that I had given—I only give one-tenth of the videos; ninety percent are other people—but I have given a number of videos on the Ten Commandments, for example.

And so Senator Ted Cruz asked the representative of Google, "Why did you people put this on YouTube? It is still there. Why did you put Mr. Prager's talk on the Ten Commandments on the restricted list?" And the man looked at Senator Cruz and said, "Because it mentions murder."

And I remember humming the Twilight Zone theme because I felt I had entered an alternate universe. So what do you think the reason was, Dennis? I mean, obviously, look, that's got to be a bit of a PR nightmare for Google to do something like that. So it smacks of a certain degree of incompetence to begin with, and I like to hypothesize incompetence before malevolence. So, why do you think it was censored, that specifically? And then why regarding—is it reasonable to call what's happening with PragerU censorship, and why do you think it's happening?

Well, I'll tell you, the... I'll answer the last one first, and this will help you realize that I think there's more malevolence than incompetence. There is never an instance in the history of the world, and this is my field of study since I was in graduate school at Columbia—that's why I studied Russian, was to read Pravda and visit the Soviet Union on multiple occasions and other communist countries—there is no instance in world history that is since the Russian Revolution of the left gaining power and not suppressing speech.

Liberals are for free speech; conservatives are for free speech; the left has never been for free speech.

Okay, so let me ask you a clarifying question there, alright? Because, you know, I come... I'm Canadian, and I suppose, along with the Scandinavian countries, we're tilted a fair degree to the left compared to the U.S. And so, I mean freedom of speech is in reasonable shape in our countries—those countries that I mentioned.

And so when you talk about the left, tell me more specifically what you mean and how you would define that particular shape, because you're not talking about the Democrats per se, I can't imagine, or perhaps you are. The Democrats used to be—I was a Democrat. The Democrats used to be liberal.

The Democrats, when I was a kid in the 70s, Nazis—real Nazis, not people they just call Nazis—real Nazis with swastikas demonstrated in Skokie, Illinois, because a lot of Jews live there, especially Holocaust survivors. It was a particularly vicious act, and Jewish groups, the ACLU, liberal groups, the Democratic Party all defended their right because in America, anybody could say anything except the elk fire in a crowded theater.

That is no longer the position.

Why did you... why did you get in trouble, and you're worried about that for a long time?

No, well, if you're wondering, I'm not you.

You said something the left didn't like, that you were not going to be told by the government what pronoun you will use. We need institutions that we can respect and that hold up the standards that have made them what they are. And if they fold, well, how can you expect normal people to say not to be cowed and intimidated by the same tactics?

Absolutely, absolutely. Actually, I mean, there were two other episodes on my mind, one of which sort of confirmed my theory about what was happening in your case, the other which suggested different sorts of motivation.

So one of them was a case that occurred around the same time as yours, which was a case of a research fellow at Saint Edmunds College here in Cambridge, um, who was doing research, he was a sociologist that broke—well then respectable sociologist—he had workers work profiled in The Economist and top journals. Um, he was fired because there was, again, there was a mob protesting about his associations, conferences he'd been to, journals that he published in which other people that they found distasteful published in, and so on.

Again, Donald said nothing illegal—that was one case, which again I think illustrates the sort of pressures that I think were being brought to bear. Again, what were the topics for that?

The topics of race and intelligence.

Yes, yes, yes. The intelligence literature is rough, that's for sure. I mean, the whole thing was so challenging because it was decided by an inquiry that was kept secret. Nobody's going to know what the evidence was in this inquiry. Um, so the whole thing was terrifying.

The other case was slightly different. So there was another case that concerned me, which was a case where it was, it was an event for the Palestinian Society where there was a chair from that society, um, was the university threatened to shut down because they thought they were worried that the chair might be an extremist or something. She wasn't at all; she was a respectable academic from PSOAS.

Um, and the university imposed its own chair on that. Now that was slightly different because that was responding to another threat of free speech, which is the government's legislation on prevent and anti-terrorism.

Um, but those three events were sort of coalescing in my mind around the time that I tried to change the, um, change the university's free speech policy.

Okay, so what did... so let's talk about the change in the free speech policy. What changes did you propose? And then it took a couple of years, as I understand, to really get this through. And I also understand from James that it wasn't that easy to get people to speak in favor of your proposal, but that it was passed and when we need to go into that by an overwhelming majority of the people who were concerned and able to legislate such things, so to speak, for the university?

Yeah, so I can take you through that. What happened was this was around actually March 2020, so about a year after your case, and the university had decided that it was going to put through a new freedom of speech policy.

Um, this is obviously at a time when everyone had had other things on their mind, at least in Britain, in March 2020. They didn't offer a vote on it; they just wanted to put it straight through, and it was a policy which I found concerning, especially in light of these incidents.

One part of it was that it mandated to say that we have the right to free speech, but we must always exercise respect for other people's identities and opinions. Now that might seem innocuous, um, but of course the word respect being so vague...

It doesn't seem innocuous to me.

Indeed, I mean, it seems terrible because it just... it just removes the first part of protection for free speech. I mean if you have to be cautious about other people's opinions, much less their identity—well, who decides when that’s respectful and what?

Yeah, it's just weasel words.

Exactly.

That, indeed. And the bit about identities—I bet they had you in mind when they were saying that, actually. But whatever anyone says, I believe in free speech.

That's a good sign for me that they don't need free speech. And that was the impression that this policy gave off. Other parts of the policy, which may not have been directly explicitly new, but which certainly brought you and those other cases, for instance, the Palestinian Society to mind were rules which said that the university could stop speaker events if they thought they would threaten the welfare of students.

Welfare is defined—undefines and could be interpreted broadly, um, and indeed allowed the university to stop events under pretty much any circumstances that they like, speaker events, for instance.

So those were the... that was the proposed policy in March 2020. So why did that... why did that bother you so much? I mean, you're pretty young, and starting your academic career in many ways—maybe I'm wrong about that, but you know, it's a hell of a thing to take on, and it's not without its risks. And I'm always curious about people's motives.

It's like there's lots of professors at Cambridge; why? Why do you think this was your problem?

Well, one thing I would say is that I was like... I was slightly surprised, um, when I wrote—so after the university's policy came out, um, there was a discussion. What's called a discussion in Cambridge University really means that you write a paper, and it's published in the university magazine.

Um, and so I sent a short paper off proposing some changes to these policies and mistaking my objections, and I had expected this being Cambridge University that many other people would do the same because I didn't think I was alone in being concerned about this.

Um, nobody else did. So I was—that was the first pointed which I realized, so there was no... there was no real Brave real markup because I had expected at that point that a lot of people—a lot of other people would be would be jumping in.

Um, nobody did. So that was the point at which I realized that I was perhaps more isolated, um, than I'd expected. Um, to go back to your question about motivations, I mean I don’t know what more I can tell you—I mean these are things that matter to me. I don't really care if anyone else is doing it or not.

Did you face any trouble? So you voiced your opinion and you wanted to modify this document which had, let's say, politically correct underpinnings, and did it cause grief for you? Were people outraged by what you said, or did things proceed as a matter of course?

Well, it was interesting. So some people—some people wrote to me—in fact, quite a few people wrote to me at the time saying that they agreed with my concerns, um, which should have made it even more surprising that nobody had actually said so in public.

Um, and some people wrote to me saying they agree with my concerns but weren't willing to say anything in public. Um, uh, James was, as always, was brilliantly helpful. James has always been really supportive, and James has been publicly supportive throughout this process, but it’s because there have been a few courageous people like James and a few others, you know, in Cambridge at that stage—that was definitely a big help.

Um, so there was some support. I also had people warning me, so I had people saying, you know, you might get, you know, you might get some kind of disciplinary procedure, you might get some kind of investigation. I didn't expect anything at that stage.

Then indeed, nothing happened, um, to me at that stage and I'm pleased to say there'd be no investigations or anything out of me since.

So that's really interesting in two ways, isn't it? Because it shows you how those people are to do this because they're afraid, and we shouldn't make light of that because this is actually no fun. You know, if you do something like this, and it explodes in your face, like it—I mean, it probably took me... Oh, it took me a long time to recover from the disinvitation, especially the way it was handled, and my health and my wife's health were extremely compromised at the time.

And so it came at a particularly bad time; maybe we had just received news that she probably had terminal cancer, and so this came on top of that. Now, luck that she survived, thank God, but you know, it was a harrowing time.

And so I see why people can be cowed like this because, you know, you don't know when this is going to explode and what's going to tangle you up so deeply that while your job's gone—that's what happened to the Weinsteins, for example, at Evergreen.

And I mean that was really—that did them a tremendous amount of damage. They're unbelievably resourceful, and they go back on their feet, and you know, they were a husband and wife team, so they had each other, and that was good but not everybody can do that, and you can get seriously taken out if something like this goes wrong.

So, but then that ties into this issue we discussed a bit earlier, which is how a small minority of, you know, people who whose wrath knows no bounds in some sense can be so dominant.

Yep, so it was... it was in some ways a calculated risk, and I'm like, I imagine how difficult that must have been for you, Jordan.

It was, you know, I must have been horrific.

Um, I mean, one thing I saw happening in Cambridge, not by then but a little bit later, was the treatment that was meted out to not an academic, but to a member of the university staff. So we have—we have college porters in Cambridge, and these are... these people who work at the colleges, um, uh, often they're sort of, you know, retired policemen or military or something, um, really helpful.

They do all kinds of jobs around the college, students rely on them, the academics rely on them; the ones in my college are brilliant. There was one at a college in Cambridge who was also a labor counselor, um, who resigned on political grounds, which was to do with his view about, about trans issues.

So he thought it was, you know, there was... there was a motion about trans issues that he thought, you know, threatened women's safety, and so he resigned on a point of principle. And that's his political activity; that's his right. I could understand his grounds for doing that.

The students at his college performed a mob to try to get this man sacked. Um, and this was... this was, you know, this is a much more privileged people than him—students at his college—who didn't care about, you know, the consequences for him.

Um, they just thought because he diverted from their line of ideological purity. Do you remember this case, James?

And James may know, I don't believe it.

Yeah, I'll do it. It was thanks to a very brave female undergraduate; I think she was in her even her second year. She spoke out, uh, wrote a public article about it, a great courage, uh, I thought to herself, and she—I can't remember how the case was resolved. Did you ever apologize? Did you or did you—what happened with you?

I never apologized for, um, refusing to comply with my university's mandate. I never apologized for speaking publicly about it. I never have and won't apologize for continuing to try to have discussions about the truth.

That doesn't mean that I or who I'm talking with will always get it right. Surely we'll make mistakes; everyone makes mistakes. The truth isn't a set of facts; the truth is an approach to discussion.

That's what Joe Rogan's so good at; that's why he's so popular. It's not because Joe knows the truth; it's because he acts out the truth in his speech and his actions.

So yeah, that's a whole different thing, a whole different thing.

Well, Soldier Ditson was convinced that a totalitarian state could not exist unless everyone was participating in the lie, and that the most potent anti-authoritarian action is to tell the truth. And—and that means to say something when you have something to say, because the old... not because you're brave, but I think, but because the alternative is worse.

Yeah, that's—and it was Orwell. It's so interesting to me that it was Orwell that opened your eyes to that. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but, but it's still really something.

Yeah, I know. It's like, um, that book, I think that's when I realized, oh, everybody was responsible. And that's when I started thinking about speaking out.

That's when you started thinking about speaking out. I see, I see. And so you made a conscious decision at that point.

Yeah. Why? Why?

Because I knew the price of silence. Because like that—that was the price of real pain, right? Like, not even knowing, like, that's the thing. Like when people say, like, why no revolutions? Because if you don't know we are slaves in North Korea, how do you fight to people when you don't know you're a slave?

And that's a different thing. Like the fact that my people don't even know they're oppressed, that's the thing. Like what carries me to this point about my father is not like he... I, of course, I wouldn't be grateful if he ever lived in freedom; even one day, but the heartbreaking thing is he didn't even know life could be this freedom.

Life could be this beautiful. He didn't even know that like life could be so different for other human beings. I just wish he can knew before he goes so he doesn't remember this life's so hard, is fairly with the sadness, you know? And that's the thing with North Koreans. We are talking a different theory about oppression; you don't even know life can be this way.

And yeah, so that was my time of understanding what happened and started believing in this freedom.