How did the congressional hearing on antisemitism last week go so awry? Was the resignation of University of Pennsylvania’s president just another cancellation, only this time on the other side of the political aisle? How can we fix our broken universities? And what’s at stake if we don’t?
Bari, you do an outstanding job of articulating DEI/Woke propaganda movement. As a conservative, I have never felt that what started out as “political correctness” was a good thing. Now that you have exposed the fact that the purveyors of political correctness/DEI/Woke employ a double standard, it occurs to me that the whole Woke thing has nothing to do with conservative/liberal or left/right but is actually a problem of human decency which is (or certainly should be) non-political.
This is an excellent piece. Please keep up the good work. The Free Press is my most trusted news source.
Dear Bari, in answer to your request for listener feedback, I really got a lot out of this new podcast format and appreciated the in-depth analysis/arguments against DEI’s predominance in learning environments. College should be a safe place for all students, not just for those who felt “othered” before they even stepped onto campus.
I taught for forty years in a college every bit as PC as Harvard. While I supported PC's guard of liberation for women, blacks, gays, etc., I was bothered by the constant tendency of PC to get ever more "refined" and obsessive about hunting out micro-aggressions, as well as by the attempts of "victim" groups to constantly try to outrank each other in the oppression sweepstakes: e.g., black feminists over white feminists, then black lesbian feminists over black straight feminists, etc., etc. I'll never forget a 1980 MLA session in which Gayatri Spivak, a tall, superior Indian expert on Derrida, imperiously looked down on the entire room of professors anxious to hear words from the guru because she held so many aces in an academic world in which feminism, post colonialism, and deconstruction all in one package simply could not be beat. Socratic education, the opposite of PC indoctrination, should obviously involve making ALL students question their deepest beliefs, with the local Socrates doing his best to shatter them in dialogue. (That would, of course, apply to the pro-israel beliefs of a Bari Weiss as much as to the pro-Hamas beliefs of someone else.) Bertrand Russell nailed it when he said the goal of a liberal education is to move the student from a state of inarticulate certainty to one of articulate doubt. (My problem with Bari is that I have yet to hear her doubt. She seems as cocksure as any DEI fanatic in everything she writes and says.) I taught great literature myself, and literature's greatness is always a matter of its brilliant, profound ambiguity, leaving all certainties (and "moral clarities" of the Bari Weiss or DEI type--both are equally morally certain, just with opposite moral values) shattered in their wake. Typical of great literary art is the script of Jean Renoir's masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, a film exposing the decadence (and antisemitism) of the French upper class on the eve of WWII. Renoir's great line is this: "There is one terrible thing about human life. Everyone has his reasons." That's my kind of humbling liberal education wisdom, a realization of the muddled moral complexities of the human condition. Sure, by all means fight Nazis and Donald Trump passionately. But after you've incinerated the people of Dresden in the process, feel proper guilt, too. "With God on Our Side" by America's latest Nobel for literature sums up the evils of being self-righteously cocksure, whether you're Gayatri Spivak or Bari Weiss. Whether you're Bibi Netanyahu or the leader of Hamas, BOTH of whom totally have "God" on their side. The Palestinians have a moral case to make about oppression, just as the Jews have a moral case of their own. As Fitzgerald noted, "The test of a first-rate mind is to be able to hold two opposite ideas in your head and still function."
That was point one. Point two is that Bari Weiss is living in a dream world if she thinks she or "we" (including wealthy Jewish donors) can wipe out DEI in our best colleges, and keep it from trickling down into even our mediocre ones. We need to recall, of course, that DEI started in the 60s in various liberation movements which were either spearheaded by Jews (feminism and gay rights) or in which Jews played the most prominent role of any white people (Civil Rights Movement). After the 60s, large numbers of Jews became professors leading the DEI charge. The students of those professors, themselves often Jewish, are leading the charge today. There is no way liberal education can be transformed into oppression studies and have a carve-out for Israel. There is no way that the influence of Edward Said and the massive prominence of postcolonial studies cannot have a huge effect on the perception of Israel and the Palestinians in our best colleges, as they obviously have. DEI is totally tenured, coast-to-coast. Good luck in trying to replace it any time soon with a curriculum friendly to Israel. The more wealthy Jewish donors try to impose their ideas of how a college's curriculum should ge favorable to Bibi's Israel, the stronger the resistance will become.
Finally, ambitious Jewish parents still have nowhere else to send their smart kids but our best colleges, if the kids can get in. Where else can Jews get the credentials and the connections they will need to end up at Goldman or Microsoft? I know: Auburn was all Tim Cook needed. But how many Jewish families are really going to send their kid with 1600 SATs to Auburn, fine as it may be? Does Goldman really recruit at Auburn? Besides, the main problem for ambitious Jewish families these days is that their kids can't get in to Harvard or Columbia in the first place. Jews were 28% of Harvard students at their high-water mark in 1992 Now they are 9%, about the same as in 1900! And it wasn't affirmative action that kept Jews out; it was more academically talented Asians. Asians will be quite happy for Jews angry over DEI to boycott Harvard. Why shouldn't Harvard have 50% Asians? Jews are at the all-time apex of their achievement, wealth, and power in America right now because of their massive presence at Harvard and the rest thirty years ago. Thirty years from now, Jewish power will be as reduced as the Jewish presence sat Harvard. is today. Asians will have replace Jews at the top of the American pecking order, for the very reasons Bari applauds: hard work and sheer intellectual excellence.
I would love to see American colleges return to what they were before the explosion of DEI from the 60s on. I would love to see Shakespeare taught for the beauty of his language and his capacity to produce the same articulate doubt and confusion in the face of ambiguity Russell thought the hallmark of the liberally educated mind. Instead of teaching Shakespeare to attack him for his DEI lapses into "racism," "sexism," or whatever other "insensitivities" we can pin on him. If I were the educational czar, I would want the goal of our colleges to produce people as wise, complex, contradictory, profound, learned in the ancients, and humble as Montaigne, who lived of course in an age of fanaticism on all sides every bit as bad as our own. But I'm not sure Bari would include herself in Montaigne's greatest generalization about the human race, when he notes that it is a good thing to realize that you've done a foolish thing. But it's a much better thing to realize that you [and everyone else who ever lived] are nothing but a fool. That's the idea I would want all my students to leave college with. It would destroy DEI, of course, but it would also destroy the one-sided views of Israel shared by Bari and many like her. Maybe, as Conrad would surely say, Jerusalem too has been "one of the dark places of the earth," along, of course, with Teheran.
So, comments on whether this format is a good thing. Occasionally, yes. This was excellent - in the same way that Sam Harris on Islamism, featured by Honestly, was excellent. I also listen to the Commentary podcast and mostly find that excellent too. So, carry on
First, I think mixing in some opinion pieces along with the straight journalistic segments is a great idea, especially on extremely important issues of the day. Bari does a wonderful job of articulating the dangers of DEI ideology. No reasonable person would argue with phrases like stop racism. But what the DEI folks are doing, as was so clearly articulated by Bari, is calling any disparity in outcome racism. It’s not going to be easy to stand up for meritocracy and a system of color blindness, given the cancel culture that is still out there and is real, but those of us who believe in this Country and want to leave a better place for our children and grandchildren, must stand up now. I believe there are more of us than people think!
Bari – Congrats on the one year anniversary. You’ve created a wonderful platform. Yes, this short occasional podcast, with your personal thoughts is terrific. For someone who is a trained ‘writer’, you are also a fantastic speaker.
You said something in this DEI related podcast that was spot-on (as are most of your observations). “Double Standard”. The Left – Liberals – Progressives – Media - Academia live by the double standard. And, THAT‘s on a good day. On a bad, they have no standards – it’s all “relative”, or about “feelings.
Beautifully said Bari. It gives me pause to see the abundance of ignorance and visciousness of today’s culture. We should all be compelled to be kinder and more impeccable with our thoughts, actions and words
Read the Columbus Dispatch today, December 17. There is an article titled Will lowering reading standard goals hurt Columbus City Schools third graders? What is going on with the Columbus Board of Education??? Children rise to their expectations. Don't lower what the children should accomplish.
While I’m very interested in “Bari’s thoughts,” I think that would best if launched separately. I’ve only been following Honestly for the last year so I don’t know how it’s grown and changed from the beginning, but if I recall correctly, in this episode she states “trying something new”.
So, if Honestly is about “honest conversations” then I think “stating my opinion” is a different mission, even if it doesn’t post as frequently.
At the same time, I moan at the idea of following another podcast lol but I’ll get over that.
Students now graduating from our elite colleges and universities are no longer the country's best and brightest. They are the offspring of a failed affirmative action experiment which has sadly resulted in the rise of Anti-Semitism and the cancerous spread of DEI throughout the land.
I love this podcast format. Your talk on this topic and the suggestion that we do away with DEI are spot on. I was stunned by the responses by the university presidents. Depends on the context? Ok, how about this context: The Holocaust happened. You still can’t answer yes a call for genocide constitutes harassment and bullying? Good grief. DEI is just another term for Big Brother. Say or think the “wrong” thing and you’re in big trouble. Dismantle DEI.
Senate Hearing: I am a free speech absolutist with boundary where one yells “fire” in theater or calls for violence. Genocide is obviously violence.
Uprooting DEI: Each state has a State AG, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the state. The Minnesota AG needs to be reminded that per coroner report, cause of death for George Floyd was cardiac arrest (heart attack), not asphyxiation (suffocation). Chauvin’s knee per MRT procedure was on shoulder, not neck. Floyd was killed by lethal amount of fentanyl in his body. DEI structure in Minneapolis-Gov allowed an unfortunate death to become a “murder hoax” to justify DEI pet-project “Defund Police”.
Sadly Jon, we now live in a post truth world. Just as the objective truth is that Floyd died of drugs, and the subjective truth is that it was murder. Same with Matthew Shepard, the objective truth is he was murdered by his former lover over unpaid drug loans; however the subjective truth is he was murdered by bigots.
Is a transcript available?
Bari, you do an outstanding job of articulating DEI/Woke propaganda movement. As a conservative, I have never felt that what started out as “political correctness” was a good thing. Now that you have exposed the fact that the purveyors of political correctness/DEI/Woke employ a double standard, it occurs to me that the whole Woke thing has nothing to do with conservative/liberal or left/right but is actually a problem of human decency which is (or certainly should be) non-political.
This is an excellent piece. Please keep up the good work. The Free Press is my most trusted news source.
Dear Bari, in answer to your request for listener feedback, I really got a lot out of this new podcast format and appreciated the in-depth analysis/arguments against DEI’s predominance in learning environments. College should be a safe place for all students, not just for those who felt “othered” before they even stepped onto campus.
I taught for forty years in a college every bit as PC as Harvard. While I supported PC's guard of liberation for women, blacks, gays, etc., I was bothered by the constant tendency of PC to get ever more "refined" and obsessive about hunting out micro-aggressions, as well as by the attempts of "victim" groups to constantly try to outrank each other in the oppression sweepstakes: e.g., black feminists over white feminists, then black lesbian feminists over black straight feminists, etc., etc. I'll never forget a 1980 MLA session in which Gayatri Spivak, a tall, superior Indian expert on Derrida, imperiously looked down on the entire room of professors anxious to hear words from the guru because she held so many aces in an academic world in which feminism, post colonialism, and deconstruction all in one package simply could not be beat. Socratic education, the opposite of PC indoctrination, should obviously involve making ALL students question their deepest beliefs, with the local Socrates doing his best to shatter them in dialogue. (That would, of course, apply to the pro-israel beliefs of a Bari Weiss as much as to the pro-Hamas beliefs of someone else.) Bertrand Russell nailed it when he said the goal of a liberal education is to move the student from a state of inarticulate certainty to one of articulate doubt. (My problem with Bari is that I have yet to hear her doubt. She seems as cocksure as any DEI fanatic in everything she writes and says.) I taught great literature myself, and literature's greatness is always a matter of its brilliant, profound ambiguity, leaving all certainties (and "moral clarities" of the Bari Weiss or DEI type--both are equally morally certain, just with opposite moral values) shattered in their wake. Typical of great literary art is the script of Jean Renoir's masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, a film exposing the decadence (and antisemitism) of the French upper class on the eve of WWII. Renoir's great line is this: "There is one terrible thing about human life. Everyone has his reasons." That's my kind of humbling liberal education wisdom, a realization of the muddled moral complexities of the human condition. Sure, by all means fight Nazis and Donald Trump passionately. But after you've incinerated the people of Dresden in the process, feel proper guilt, too. "With God on Our Side" by America's latest Nobel for literature sums up the evils of being self-righteously cocksure, whether you're Gayatri Spivak or Bari Weiss. Whether you're Bibi Netanyahu or the leader of Hamas, BOTH of whom totally have "God" on their side. The Palestinians have a moral case to make about oppression, just as the Jews have a moral case of their own. As Fitzgerald noted, "The test of a first-rate mind is to be able to hold two opposite ideas in your head and still function."
That was point one. Point two is that Bari Weiss is living in a dream world if she thinks she or "we" (including wealthy Jewish donors) can wipe out DEI in our best colleges, and keep it from trickling down into even our mediocre ones. We need to recall, of course, that DEI started in the 60s in various liberation movements which were either spearheaded by Jews (feminism and gay rights) or in which Jews played the most prominent role of any white people (Civil Rights Movement). After the 60s, large numbers of Jews became professors leading the DEI charge. The students of those professors, themselves often Jewish, are leading the charge today. There is no way liberal education can be transformed into oppression studies and have a carve-out for Israel. There is no way that the influence of Edward Said and the massive prominence of postcolonial studies cannot have a huge effect on the perception of Israel and the Palestinians in our best colleges, as they obviously have. DEI is totally tenured, coast-to-coast. Good luck in trying to replace it any time soon with a curriculum friendly to Israel. The more wealthy Jewish donors try to impose their ideas of how a college's curriculum should ge favorable to Bibi's Israel, the stronger the resistance will become.
Finally, ambitious Jewish parents still have nowhere else to send their smart kids but our best colleges, if the kids can get in. Where else can Jews get the credentials and the connections they will need to end up at Goldman or Microsoft? I know: Auburn was all Tim Cook needed. But how many Jewish families are really going to send their kid with 1600 SATs to Auburn, fine as it may be? Does Goldman really recruit at Auburn? Besides, the main problem for ambitious Jewish families these days is that their kids can't get in to Harvard or Columbia in the first place. Jews were 28% of Harvard students at their high-water mark in 1992 Now they are 9%, about the same as in 1900! And it wasn't affirmative action that kept Jews out; it was more academically talented Asians. Asians will be quite happy for Jews angry over DEI to boycott Harvard. Why shouldn't Harvard have 50% Asians? Jews are at the all-time apex of their achievement, wealth, and power in America right now because of their massive presence at Harvard and the rest thirty years ago. Thirty years from now, Jewish power will be as reduced as the Jewish presence sat Harvard. is today. Asians will have replace Jews at the top of the American pecking order, for the very reasons Bari applauds: hard work and sheer intellectual excellence.
I would love to see American colleges return to what they were before the explosion of DEI from the 60s on. I would love to see Shakespeare taught for the beauty of his language and his capacity to produce the same articulate doubt and confusion in the face of ambiguity Russell thought the hallmark of the liberally educated mind. Instead of teaching Shakespeare to attack him for his DEI lapses into "racism," "sexism," or whatever other "insensitivities" we can pin on him. If I were the educational czar, I would want the goal of our colleges to produce people as wise, complex, contradictory, profound, learned in the ancients, and humble as Montaigne, who lived of course in an age of fanaticism on all sides every bit as bad as our own. But I'm not sure Bari would include herself in Montaigne's greatest generalization about the human race, when he notes that it is a good thing to realize that you've done a foolish thing. But it's a much better thing to realize that you [and everyone else who ever lived] are nothing but a fool. That's the idea I would want all my students to leave college with. It would destroy DEI, of course, but it would also destroy the one-sided views of Israel shared by Bari and many like her. Maybe, as Conrad would surely say, Jerusalem too has been "one of the dark places of the earth," along, of course, with Teheran.
So, comments on whether this format is a good thing. Occasionally, yes. This was excellent - in the same way that Sam Harris on Islamism, featured by Honestly, was excellent. I also listen to the Commentary podcast and mostly find that excellent too. So, carry on
First, I think mixing in some opinion pieces along with the straight journalistic segments is a great idea, especially on extremely important issues of the day. Bari does a wonderful job of articulating the dangers of DEI ideology. No reasonable person would argue with phrases like stop racism. But what the DEI folks are doing, as was so clearly articulated by Bari, is calling any disparity in outcome racism. It’s not going to be easy to stand up for meritocracy and a system of color blindness, given the cancel culture that is still out there and is real, but those of us who believe in this Country and want to leave a better place for our children and grandchildren, must stand up now. I believe there are more of us than people think!
Bari – Congrats on the one year anniversary. You’ve created a wonderful platform. Yes, this short occasional podcast, with your personal thoughts is terrific. For someone who is a trained ‘writer’, you are also a fantastic speaker.
You said something in this DEI related podcast that was spot-on (as are most of your observations). “Double Standard”. The Left – Liberals – Progressives – Media - Academia live by the double standard. And, THAT‘s on a good day. On a bad, they have no standards – it’s all “relative”, or about “feelings.
Beautifully said Bari. It gives me pause to see the abundance of ignorance and visciousness of today’s culture. We should all be compelled to be kinder and more impeccable with our thoughts, actions and words
More of this. Loved the format and content.
Read the Columbus Dispatch today, December 17. There is an article titled Will lowering reading standard goals hurt Columbus City Schools third graders? What is going on with the Columbus Board of Education??? Children rise to their expectations. Don't lower what the children should accomplish.
While I’m very interested in “Bari’s thoughts,” I think that would best if launched separately. I’ve only been following Honestly for the last year so I don’t know how it’s grown and changed from the beginning, but if I recall correctly, in this episode she states “trying something new”.
So, if Honestly is about “honest conversations” then I think “stating my opinion” is a different mission, even if it doesn’t post as frequently.
At the same time, I moan at the idea of following another podcast lol but I’ll get over that.
Students now graduating from our elite colleges and universities are no longer the country's best and brightest. They are the offspring of a failed affirmative action experiment which has sadly resulted in the rise of Anti-Semitism and the cancerous spread of DEI throughout the land.
I love this podcast format. Your talk on this topic and the suggestion that we do away with DEI are spot on. I was stunned by the responses by the university presidents. Depends on the context? Ok, how about this context: The Holocaust happened. You still can’t answer yes a call for genocide constitutes harassment and bullying? Good grief. DEI is just another term for Big Brother. Say or think the “wrong” thing and you’re in big trouble. Dismantle DEI.
Love this format, Bari. Keep it up.
In the podcast you referenced a Free Press article by Niall Ferguson. Where can it be read?
Just found it nvm
Senate Hearing: I am a free speech absolutist with boundary where one yells “fire” in theater or calls for violence. Genocide is obviously violence.
Uprooting DEI: Each state has a State AG, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the state. The Minnesota AG needs to be reminded that per coroner report, cause of death for George Floyd was cardiac arrest (heart attack), not asphyxiation (suffocation). Chauvin’s knee per MRT procedure was on shoulder, not neck. Floyd was killed by lethal amount of fentanyl in his body. DEI structure in Minneapolis-Gov allowed an unfortunate death to become a “murder hoax” to justify DEI pet-project “Defund Police”.
Hepworth says: “Defund DEI”.
Sadly Jon, we now live in a post truth world. Just as the objective truth is that Floyd died of drugs, and the subjective truth is that it was murder. Same with Matthew Shepard, the objective truth is he was murdered by his former lover over unpaid drug loans; however the subjective truth is he was murdered by bigots.
Post-truth world? Not on my watch.