It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBZ Cooston's met video.
Thank you very much, Al Griffith, as we move into the nine o'clock hour here on Nightside. Last I guess it was last Saturday. I read a pretty interesting essay in the New York Times Colleges have to be much more honest with themselves, and it was penned by the president of Assumption University, which is a great school in central Massachusetts, I think technically in Worcester, Massachusetts. And with me now is the president of Assumption University, President Greg Weiner.
President Winer. Welcome to Nightside.
How are you, sir, I'm time, Thank you for having me.
Well, yeah, I thought this was a very interesting take at a time when there's a lot of controversy on various college campuses and university campuses around the world. You are the president of a school which is a Catholic university. I think you mentioned in the article that you're the first president of the school who's Jewish, which, as as someone who is Catholic, it seems to me to be
pretty logical. I don't know if everyone would agree with me, but we all come from a Judaeo Christian tradition those of us who follow either Judaism or Christianity. I always like to tell my friends that the guy that found that my religion happened to be Jewish. So I think it's great that that you you were bringing a different viewpoint to a Catholic university. And and also I thought it was great that you would take the time to
write this article. This clearly is something you strongly believe in. Let's just talk about the headline and will ease into this. Colleges have to have to be much more honest with themselves. I've read the article, I know what you mean. For those who haven't read the article, just give us a quick synopsis and we can get the conversation going.
Sure, we're in an environment in which higher education is under attack, and a lot of what is motivating that attack is a perception of political bias on college campuses. And my belief is that the attack is the wrong way to approach the problem. But we are at colleges and universities are having difficulty getting that message through because we are denying the fact that our critics have a point about political bias. Not all, and I would say not on ours, but on many campuses.
Yeah, so I have sensed that for a long time. I've covered I don't know how much of a chance you've got to listen to this show or we talk about this a lot, not a lot, but we talk about it frequently. And college campuses, not all college campuses, but there are a lot of college campuses. Is where if you happen to be a conservative professor, you're in the distinct minority, or if you happen to be a
conservative student, you're in the distinct minority. You make so many great points in this in this essay, and obviously you know I've said the same thing. You're right, there's neither conservative chemistry nor progressive calculus that is saying that same. The same is true of honest efforts to reflect on the great works of literature or philosophy, and and that is true. But a lot of college professors bring their
own viewpoint. Matter of fact, I think you said fifty five percent of faculty members said that they have discussed climate change or other issues that are not involved in
the in the in the course that they're teaching. I think what has happened, and I think you agree, But you have a much better perspective than I do, is that a lot of the universities or the universities as a whole, have become kind of echo chambers, where if everyone in the faculty thinks the same way, whether they teach science or the humanities or in the athletics problem, and if they all feel the same way, they then to come to the people that they interact with, they
assume the rest of the world feels or the rest of the country feels that way. Is that part of the problem.
I do think that's part of the problem. I think the more significant problem is that it really shouldn't matter what a professor's political beliefs are in the classroom. They should be teaching as I think we do well at assumption the subject matter of the course. And I've said often I wouldn't care if every member of our faculty voted Democrat or every member of faculty voted Republican, as long as they were excellent teachers and scholars of the discipline.
I do think there is on a lot of campuses that are I would say more out of controller, at least out of touch politically. There is a I take an echo chamber, and it almost results from an attempt to be charitable toward others. So if the assumption is all good people agree with me, then Dan, I'm doing you a favor by being charitable to you by assuming that you agree with me, because I think you're a
good person. So I do think there are campuses out there where there's genuine surprise that there are diverse news out there.
Well, it's interesting different schools took different approaches. Harvard University is now sort of the target rich environment for the Trump administration, and I think the Trump administration is out over the skis. I think that they're threatening Harvard, which, of course an endowment that every university would I would love to have. The Trump administration, I guess, is threatening to withhold some nine billion dollars. I mean that's a
lot of money. And there's an article that's going to be coming out in the Globe in the next few days. I think it's already been up digitally by a woman, a young conservative Globe editorial writer. She actually the core of people on the editorial page. Her name is Karine Hajar, and she points out that conservatives should not be thrilled that the Trump administration is trying to force colleges to heal because the shoe could be on the other foot
four or eight years from now. I assume that that you're concerned about what the administration is trying to do, not HARV but other universities around the country.
I'm a student dan of American political thought, and there are two beliefs that have traditionally been associated with conservatism. One is that generally speaking, the private sector does things better than the public than the public sector does, especially when there's a variety, a great deal of variety in
the market. Is there is an higher education. The second conservative belief, at least it's traditionally been associated with conservatism, that it's important for there to be a layer of civil society between the individual and the state, and that that layer needs to be independent. So I'm not inclined to think that these are the ideal ways to handle this problem, especially when things like medical or scientific research or collateral damage. But we have to be honest with ourselves.
There's a significant extent to which higher education has brought us on ourselves by refusing to acknowledge what I think is clearer to most people and probably to most people on college campuses, which is that there really is a problem, and if we want to be independent, as we should, we have to we have to be better about addressing it ourselves.
My guess is the president of Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Assumption has grown in recent years. I did a little bit of research on it today, but I want you to just brag on the school a little bit. You have undergraduate as well as graduate students, correct, we do. So give us just a little sense of it, and we're going to go. We're going to take a break in a minute or so. But I just wanted to have people get a better sense of the school that you are now the president of.
There are a lot of unique things about Assumption, but I will mention too quickly what one is that we are. There are different types of Catholic institutions, and of course different types of Catholic universities. We're one that expresses our Catholic identity through the nature of the education we provide, which combines enduring ideas with professional skills. And it's the enduring ideas that make things, make that understanding last, that
discernment last when technology changes. The second is we have extraordinary students and some of them have extraordinarily high test scores. Others of them don't. But what they all have is which I hear from employers is highly valued, is a grit and a determination and a feeling that the world doesn't owe them anything, that they're they're in college to learn and they know they've got to work for what they have.
Well, I think that that is the type of university that anyone should be interested in. Again, I know it's you've been there now how long? If I if I could ask, I did not do a deep die your CV.
Oh sure. I started teaching an Assumption in twenty eleven, and I became an interim president and then president about three years ago.
Okay, again, you're listening to Professor to President Greg Weiner, the president of Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He wrote a really interesting piece in the Boston in the New York Times. Colleges have to be much more honest with themselves.
I'm going to at some point in the next break, in the next segment, I should say just quote a couple of the lines that I think are particularly pertinent, and I'm going to invite all of you to join the conversation and let us know what you think about this, and as I say, we will certainly reference what the Trump administration is trying to do. And I think it's pretty heavy handed and I'm not sure that it sets
a good precedent. I think that a lot of universities probably are like the President of Assumption and recognize that maybe the colleges and the universities this country need a little bit more philosophical balance or philosophical diversity. But we'll see where the conversation takes us. Back on Nights Side, if you'd like to join the conversation, you know, the numbers is six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty
or six one seven, nine three one ten thirty. Back in a couple of minutes after a couple of commercials with President Greg Weiner of Assumption University of Worcester, Massachusetts.
It's Night Side with Dan Ray Boston's news Radio.
By the way, a quick apology to the president of Assumption University. I have mispronounced your last name and I apologize for that deeply, Professor, mister president. It is Greg Wiener. I should have gotten a pronouncer before we spoke, and I apologize for that, but.
Not at all. Dan when you have a name lake wan or you don't mind it being mispronounced.
Well, also, my name it's spelled r A, And I can tell you as a kid how many teachers rea orrera or something it got badly got mangled. A couple of excerpts from the column that you wrote. We must confront the fact that the culture of prevailing political opinion on campuses is also complicit in limiting free expression. Can you amplify on that a little bit for the audience.
If you read political thinkers like John Stuart Mill, who's a progressive hero, Alexis to TOEFL and others, they note that Toko actually says that the ability of majority opinion to crush descent is more than that of any absolute monarch. It is a different dynamic, certainly with government suppression of speech, and I'm absolutely opposed to that as well. But peer
pressure is a very powerful thing. And when there is a single dominant opinion that has a way, whether it's intended or not, I think often it's not that has a way of simply shutting down descent by the sheer force of consensus. People don't want to sense of themselves, They don't want to speak up they you know, Tokefel explainings will when you hear so many other people saying something, you think something must be wrong with with you for disagreeing.
We have a responsibility as scholars and as educators to challenge ourselves and also to draw out a diversity of abuse from our students and from one another one other.
And some of this is is argument supporting. But this understanding of academic freedom of freedom and again, President, quoting from your article from the audience in the recording from your article in the New York Times of last Sunday, last Saturday, this understanding of academic freedom is rooted in the virtues associated with teaching and learning, the humility to know one's own views may be wrong, the courage to chat consensus opinions, and the charity to assume that those
whose ideas trouble us are our allies in pursuing truth. I think that is a very powerful statement. And again, if we could just have you amplify on that a little bit from my audience, I would appreciate it.
Courage and humility, Dan may seem like they don't go together, but there are really two sides of the same coin. In an educational setting. You know, I often say, and I said it quite a lot more during some of the campus protests class spring, there are two reasons to go to college. One is that you already know everything and you just want to tell everyone, and you can do that for free. The others that there are things you don't know that that you want to learn, and
that's that's that's the reason to go to college. That's that's also, by the way, the reason to teach in a university setting, and that that begins with with humility and courage comes into it when we're we're talking about an environment of consensus, and you want people to be the one person in the class who raises their hand and says that doesn't sound right to me. That doesn't have to be about politics. Might be what what does
Aristotle mean? And in his book on Ethics that it might be, But what's what's the meaning of a particular passage in literature or an event in history? Purity I think is so important. There's certainly there are things we hear from other people that are objectively offensive and that that we shouldn't tolerate, but it's so important in education. And I would argue in politics, to listen for what people are trying to say, and that most a charitable disposition.
Well, you know, there are things that are objectively offensive, and I think that there is a genuine consensus on things that are objectively offensive, and there will be some people who will identify with what everyone would agree with is objectively offensive. And to those people I often apply
the phrase often mistake and never in doubt. And what I'm talking about there are, you know, the people who are extreme racists from one point of view or another, and do not celebrate the individuality of people which should
be celebrated on college campuses. You conclude by saying this colleges and universities a compelling story to tell, but we will have neither an audience for that story nor the moral authority to tell it until we are as fearless about examining ourselves as we are about decrying interference from beyond our walls. Now again, I think that's pretty clear
to me. But if you want to just you know, amplify on that a bit, so my audience understands they haven't had the opportunity to read the article as I have.
Sure, I'll go back to my former wife as a political consultant. It's very hard to engage on a solution when what you're actually doing is denying the problem. So the administration really has the floor to itself because colleges and universities are gone into lockdown mode, at least in
many cases. And as a result of that, I think most Americans look at colleges and no is I thinkrepin all about it, But no, there's some political bias, and when all we're doing is denying at there's just no room is for a constructive conversation about solutions.
My guest is the president of Assumption University school university, you're what about it? I think is it about one hundred and twenty five years old? Now, not you personally, but the school.
Is that I feel one hundred and twenty five. We were founded in nineteen o four by the Augustinians of the Assumption. So the class where recruiting right now will be the the for this fall. We'll graduate in our one hundred and twenty fifth year.
Great, great, great tradition. Okay, we're going to get to phone calls, and I ask folks, if you've never had an opportunity to speak with the president of a university. Please be respectful as you are to all of my guests. I think it's an extraordinary article that President Wiener has written. I would commend it to you. Colleges have to be much more honest with themselves, and we will be talking. I see that Harvey Silverglade, our great friend from Harvard,
has has called in. I reached out yesterday to Professor Steve Pinker at Harvard University, who is a conservative, and there is there are a group of self identifying conservatives at Harvard University. And I look at this, but I also look at what the Trump administration is doing, and I think that sometimes the reaction can be more than
it is justified. And so I'm pretty conservative guy. I consider myself a right of center, but I don't think that it's helpful for government, either Democrats or Republicans, to use the force of government to make universities come to heal. So that's the conversation. Love to have you join the conversation. We'll introduce you to Harvey Silverglate, who I'm sure Professor
rather President Wiener knows well. And I suspect Harvey probably has written some columns like this, and I would be very surprised if Harvey didn't read this in the New York Times last Saturday. We'll be back on nightside if I got a couple of lines one at six one, seven, two, five four ten thirty and one at six one, seven, nine three one ten thirty. We will change topics at
ten o'clock. The proverbial elephant in the room is what happened again today for the second day of the row on the stock market, and we want to know how you're handling it. We'll be back on nightside, and by the way, we'll finish tonight at the twentieth hour. I'm going to ask everybody to tell me something positive, something upbeat. This has been a tough week in so many respects, so many respects, and other than the Red Sox winning
at home today, there's been little to sell it. We'll be back on night's side right after the news at the bottom of the hour with my guest, the President of Assumption University in Worcester, President Greg Wiener.
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on w b Z Boston's news radio.
Thank you very much, Suzanne. We are joined and delighted to be joined by the President of Assumption University School of in Worcester, right outside or in Worcester. Let me get that straight. Are you physically in Worcester? Are you contiguous to Worcester.
We are in Worcester at five hundred Salisbury Street.
Gotcha? Okay. The President of Assumption University, Greg Wiener, joins us and we're talking about his column op ed Peace guest essay in the New York Times last weekend of March twenty ninth, last week ago tomorrow. Colleges have to be much more honest with themselves. And by the way you worked in the in the essay, you may who worked in democratic politics before. So I think that gives
you even greater credibility to to express the opinions. I mean, you have a right to express your opinions no matter what. But I do think that it gives you even greater credibility because you were basically saying, hey, colleges have to have to recognize that maybe there is an imbalance. Someone who I think will agree with you in large part
is my dear friend, Harvey Silverglade. Harvey, I hope you have perhaps met President Wiener before, but if not, let me introduce you to Professor Greg Wiener of Assumption College, Assumption University, Harvey Silverglade from Princeton and Harvard Law School.
Gentlemen, right, we have not met before, but we agree completely.
I may have said this before in a prior phone call, but I was invited by Dean James Warrenberg or the Harvard Law School back in the early nineties to teach a course in criminal trial practice. They didn't have a course in criminal trial practice, and it was very popular. The students gave me high evaluations. They were very interested in the course, and Warrenberger called me into his office at the end of the semester and said, Harvey, I'd like to offer you a tenure track physician and I
turned them down. He said, what nobody's ever turned me down for an author of a tenure track physician. I said, well, I'm turning you down. The ideological uniformity of the faculty back then was stifling. It was all progressives and I'm not a progressive. I'm I'm a libertarian liberal, but they doesn't matter what I am. I thought it was stifling
that everybody agreed. I was at faculty meetings, I was listening, and you would think there was only one point of view in the world, and so I turned it down. And I agree completely with President Wiener the the they talk about diversity and inclusion, but there's only it's only race when they talk about diversity and inclusion, they didn't they do not talk about ideological diversity.
I think that President Wiener will be able to identify with that. Professor your comment on on what Harvey had.
To say, a couple of comments.
One is I.
Can't quite to know anything about criminal trial procedure, but I can't imagine there's a democratic or republican or liberal or libertarian way to.
Teach it.
And I think that's so important in the concept of that academic freedom is that and this is from the American Association of University Professors, which is no one's idea of a reactionary organization, and it's certainly one that's been
holding by the banner of academic freedom. That there's a power relationship they say in the in the classroom between teacher and student, and for that reason it's important that that scholars not abuse their classroom authority, whether deliberately or not, by introducing extraneous material into the in the course work. I think there are a range of ways to look at diversity and belonging, and I think they're all important.
I think we all of us bring unique backgrounds. But I think one trap that we've fallen into in the academy it's just a fact that most administrators and factory members are white, is instead of in an attempt to champion, for example, people of color, we don't pause and say, what is it that you're actually bringing to this conversation, what do you need to help you succeed? And we forget what is obvious to anyone who's read exit polls,
for example, from any recent election. But there's a diversity of views within all these groups themselves, which should not surprise surprise anyone. So I think we've got to take all those ideas of diversity into account.
Okay, Can I also adds one thing? I agree with all of this, but I think it's very dangerous for the schools to knock alongo like Columbia did to the Trump administration. And what I would suggest at Harvard, for example, is that they tell the president to go to Hell, and that they eliminate ninety percent of their administrators whom I consider to be unnecessary and save some dough and just weather the storm.
Yeah. Well, I think that's an interesting viewpoint, and I think that the president of the Subju University would probably agree. At the same time, what they're concerned about is that a lot of the programs that might be cut, and I think everybody should be concerned about it, liberals or conservatives, Democrats are Republicans. That some of the programs that there will be impact will be research programs that deal with
medical areas of interest and research and concern. I just think that the Trump administration can continues to wield a sledgehammer when a scalp would be probably the better tool to to use under under these circumstances. Professor, it is is there a need, not necessarily at your school, but at any school for sort of an affirmative outreach to find professors, particularly maybe uh in certain courses that have
some philosophical balance. I mean, is there is there almost an affirmative action I hate to turn the table on you, hair, but is there an affirmative action obligation to say, Okay, we have you know, within a within our history department, uh, twenty professors and uh we need to get a little
a little balance in there. That that maybe every course doesn't have to be taught from the point of view that America is an imperialistic nation, from the moment that they that we were founded, at the moment that the pilgrims arrived on Plymouth Rock.
I think the the obligation is to recruit a excellent scholars and teachers, and they should. If one does that, I would say, in an open, sincere search for excellence, that then some balance will result. But again I would say it really in most cases should not matter, because you know, I teach should or taught. I should say so.
Occasionally teach American politics and American political thought, and an occupational hazard of that job is you tell somebody that's what you teach, and no matter what it was in the newspaper that morning, they'll say, oh, you must be having a field day with us and such. The reality is taught. I've taught, however, many hundreds of course meetings
of an American politics and American political thought. I have never mentioned a current event because current events change that it doesn't do you any good to learn about something today that's going to change tomorrow. Much Rather, when I taught American government, I started with the with the federalist papers. I think those enduring ideas are much more important than than an orientation toward Corona mats.
No question, Harvey. I appreciate you joining us again. Some other calls I'm going to have to get to. But as always, you you always, you always bring a point of view that's welcome here, and you know that.
Okay, good night, can Good.
Night, Harvey. We will be back with Professor Greg Wiener of Assumption University and some more phone calls six one, seven four, ten thirty or six month seven nine three one. We will change topics at the top of the hour and we will talk about, as I referred to earlier, the sort of the elephant in the room, and that is the performance or lack thereof of the stock market. Today was worse than yesterday, almost inconceivable to think of initially,
but what happens Monday. We'll be back right after this break with our concluding segment with the President of Assumption University, President Greg Wiener.
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WZ Boston's news radio.
We have one final segment here with the President of Assumption University, President Greg Wiener. Let me go to Rob in Medford, Massachusetts. Rob, you are next door Nightsiger, Go right ahead with President Wiener.
Halo, Sir.
I was wondering if if you get shed in any light, I must confessed, Dan, I'm sorry. I was listening to another radio show host this afternoon.
Well, as long as it wasn't between eight and midnight, that's all I care. Go right ahead. Please don't mention any other shows specifically, but I haven't okay, question.
Go ahead, Okay. Well, Mcgilby University in Canada, I understand has been taken over and people are chanting from the river to the sea and all into genocide. And the same thing is going on some of us in Ottawa and Toronto Universities. But McGill is totally shut down and taken over at this point. Is am I in the twilight zone or is that really happening?
Go ahead, Professor President President.
Sure, I'm not sure. I'm familiar with those events exactly. There certainly have been rampages through Montreal and some other places. I think the the Jew hatred on American campuses has been shameful in Canadian the Canadian campuses where it's where it's happened as well. I think it's been an appalling failure of universities to to protect in some cases physically, they're they're students. And you know what, You often hear university presidents say as well, this or that is complicated,
that this issue is not complicated. So some of the scenes that we saw at at places like Columbia are were pure, pure outrage that had had utterly nothing to do with with academic freedom. In fact, academic freedom actually imposes more obligations on scholars, including students, than a sort of freewheeling free speech. And we've developed this idea that universities are somehow political conventions or places where it's a
that are a natural home of protest. Liberal education at its best should be a retreat from the contemporary, from the momentary, from the transient, to focus on ideas. And I think it's it's been a blight on American higher education and it is up to us to solve that promo I.
Will I will tell you Rob that I am seeing on a number of websites that anti Israeli Israel protesters have blocked access to McGill university buildings, have disrupted classes. Uh and I see no reporting of this. I see I see it in Canadian papers. I see nothing from NBC, CB, CBS or ABC. I don't see the Times or the the Globe reporting on it as yet, and but it's been going on. I'm looking at some video right now.
So you're correct in what you what you've mentioned, and I think that the President of Assumption has given you a pretty clear clear answer. Thank you, Rob, appreciate your calling.
I appreciate that. And I wanted to say, for good men to do nothing, is it allows evil to succeed?
Necessary for easy good men to do nothing? Correct? Absolutely, Thank you very much. Let me go Lex to David in San Francisco. David been holding on. Go right ahead.
Oh, thanks Dan and President. Yeah. I went to Wikipedia and looked up Assumption there and it was in nineteen fifty three. Tornado played a lot of import into the rise in development of the university in the so you've quite a project there. What I wanted to ask you, though, a lot of the problems with education that we've been hearing about for the last number of years seems to
be tied to the textbooks and if American textbooks. As I understand that Texas is such a huge state that the textbooks of America have to pass the Texas school Book Commission.
Are you talking about just clarification, David, are you talking about high school textbooks? You're not talking about college textbooks.
I assume all textbooks sold in America have to make market forces, and the market forces of the Texas school Book Commission has been basically cheating America by forcing them to dance to their tomb. And I'm wondering if the President has an opinion about this.
Okay, let's see, first of all, if the President is aware of that. I do know that a lot of schools have used If you suggesting that the implication is that maybe authors like Howard's In and Noam Chomsky have had trouble being published, I don't think that's the case, mister President Thomas Jeffers, let me do this, David. Let's give the President a chance to respond to our coolic. We go ahead, mister President.
Sure.
I'm very broadly familiar with the dominants of states. It's realy, Texas, I think also California in secondary school textbooks, I think one of the problems, and I'm venturing outside any area of expertise with some of the controversies we've had on the right and the left about the teaching of history is that we underestimate students. We underestimate their ability to
deal with nuance and to understand that. If you look at political history, the greatest figures tend to have great virtues and great sins and the inability of it's ironic. It's it's the adults in the room who should have a sense of nuance. Don't trust the kids too. I think that's true on both the right and the left, and I think we really underestimate students.
All right, David, I'm flat out of time. I appreciate your calling your question. It's always good good to hear from you. Thank you, mister President. A fascinating conversation from my perspect active. I had the president of Vanderbilt University on last spring. He handled the demonstrations that Vanderbilt a little differently than they would handled at Columbia. You may be aware of that, but this is a breath of
fresh air for me. How can folks who may want to look at Assumption as a potential school for themselves or for their children or their grandchildren, what's the easiest way they get some more information on the school the university.
Sure, the quickest way to me to go to our website to if you're looking for accounts to apply that Assumption dot edu and Assumption dot edu is our website, and we would we're very proud of our education, very confident in it, and we'd love to have a conversation about it.
Yeah. The other thing, which is which is interesting to me, and this would be my last question to you, is that I always take the time to look at the commencement speakers at various colleges and universities every year, and there there seems to be a real bias in that. I'm just curious who have been some of the recent commencement speakers at Assumption over the years.
Well, this year we have Lieutenant General Jeffrey Tally, who is very interested, retired lieutenant general, very interesting guy, has a PhD in engineering and while serving in the military, picked up a i should say picked up earned a degree, a master's degree in religious studies from Assumption, and I think it is a wonderful example of learning for the
sake of learning. That was not a degree that was going to advance his career, and we're I think it's a terrific example for students, and we're very much looking forward to having it.
That's great. Well, I've really I really enjoyed the article in the New York Times and enjoyed our conversation. I should have had a chat with you earlier in the day, but I wasn't sure if you would have been able to find some time on your calendar. And the next time I'm in the worst area, I want to get out and see the campus and make sure that people
are aware of Assumption. There are great colleges. I certainly have newfound respect for Assumption I put it in the category of Endicott College, one of those great colleges in our you know, geographic sphere that people need to know more about. Everybody knows about Harvard and m I, T, b C and b U. But but people should realize there's a lot of great colleges and universities in New England that their children and grandchildren should think about. Mister president,
thank you very much. President Greg Wiener of Assumption University, thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you.
I've enjoyed it.
Thank you very much. When we get back, we're want to talk about the stock market today. You are you panicking? Yet? Today was worse than yesterday. Thank god the weekends here. Let's see what happens on Monday. We're going to talk about it on the other side of the break