Leighton Smith Podcast #263 - November 6th 2024 - Professor Nigel Biggar and Patrick Basham

But watching Upholster at work and seeing how accurate he and his team are is just part of the interesting game now. Whatever the outcome of Patrick delivers his usual quality commentary. Over the last few weeks, even last few days, I've realized something of importance. The FSU, the Free Speech Union, has not been overstating its case, not been for a period. I was wondering if they were in a state of overkill. It seemed that there were any number of international commentators

visiting New Zealand with some more coming. But after interviewing the latest and present guest, I've realized that the FSU is on track. The discussion with Nigel big Ar and reading a lot of his work nailed it for me. Professor Bigger wrote the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Bill twenty twenty one for Britain. But his work doesn't stop there. Well, actually did, but there's a story behind. It's interesting and

I believe that you will greatly appreciate his analysis. But in just a moment, Patrick Basham now from the Democracy Institute, Patrick Basham. Patrick actually has been very busy, how can I say it. He's been working his butt off. After spending a few days in Doha at an investment conference, he raced back to Washington. I spoke to him from the airport. Actually he raced back to Washington to cover

the election. And we had the Institute's final polling numbers twenty four hours ago, will say, and now as a result of Patrick's association with the Daily Express in the US, we have some exit poll figures. It is great to have you back on the podcast, and this is something that we've never done before and it's made difficult Patrick, as you well know by the fact that the timing of this election as opposed to this podcast, and it's their fault, not mine, that we are up against the clock,

so to speak. But that doesn't mean that a lot of people are very interested in what you have to say.

talk to you. It's such an exciting time. I mean when you say about timings, I can really appreciate it because I've been had such a whirlwind trip to Middle East and came back so sleep deprived that all of the time zones across America are challenging me with the with the polling, let alone the top there the more transcontinental one you're dealing with, But there's already lots to chew on, I think, so I think it should be an interesting conversation.

you know, it's a guess. It's a guestimate, and we thought that we would be able to hoped we would be able to pick up in a national exit pole whatever what was that was changing or whatever it was most meaningful. So that's that's the sort of risk we took.

had already voted, I mean the vote. The voting is still going on in most places, so you know, because you have to get these things done and in a little early we hope it's not premature in terms of results, but you know, you just try to you just try to nail down what you can and and cover your basis and would say your butt as well as you can. But you know, I mean, as a long standing critic of exit polls, I'd be the first one to say that these are as much art as science.

are fed back. One of the problems with that, of course, is it's it's you have to you know, it's you have to which locations do you choose? But the biggest problem, what we thought the challenge was was the fact that at the time time when we arranged this with the newspaper, we were looking at about thirty five forty percent of

people had already voted for exit poles. Correct, it's now more than half before election day, So that means even if you do a fantastic job of an exit poll on election day, you're going to miss half the voters. So we thought it made you know, that's really the

main reason we did what we did. And so when we started it, especially early today with the calling, it was we were pleasantly surprised that the comparative willingness of people to want the ability of people to speak because disproportionate number of people had already voted, and so we could start getting some serious data and numbers in results in you know, well before you would have traditionally expected.

is fifty to forty seven in Trump's favor. This is fifty one to forty seven. So that part of it tells us, well, I guess you might say, tells us we're going to be doubly right or doubly wrong. But it gives us some sense of security that we weren't way off. At least our methods are consistent. And of course,

as exit polls. One of the problems with the exit polls the outcome of the outcomes in North America anyways, they tend nearly always to be biased towards the liberal or left wing party or candidate, and whether the results turn out to be accurate or not, and often they're not. And so we didn't know whether that might be more an outcome of the sort of method or whether it's

just another the bias found elsewhere. But finding that Trump is in as good a position with those who've already voted as those were prospective voters is obviously tells a lot. And what I think it does at this early juncture when we don't means we're as we're speaking, there's just

the very first little results trickling in. It tells us that what has been apparently happening on the ground, what has been measured on the ground today in America, across America, with those you know, those who are the forty one percent who were voting in person, that the comparatively strong Republican turn out, the comparatively lower Democratic turnout might actually be the case, you know, might be the case through that through the.

I would think. But what stood out to you?

one in two Hispanic votes. And that you know, when you when you drill down a bit, what that means you've got more Hispanic men than women choosing Trump rather than the traditional Democrat vote. However, it's not there's not a lot in it. You know, Trump is quite popular with Hispanic women, whereas on the black side, you're looking at over thirty percent thirty thirty five percent of Black men voting for Trump. But the last holdout for the Democrats,

particularly with Kamala Harris as the candidate, are black women's. Basically, I'm talking about middle aged and old, older black women. And so you you put that high that high compared to be high figure among men that can party of low figure among black women together, and you end up

with sort of a little over one in five. So those two numbers alone, you know, if you ask me, okay, you know, pick pick one or two of these demographic subgroups, and you know, and make your your wager on who wins, those are the ones I'd pick because it's just historically and arithmetically, it's just really hard borrowing on impossible for the Democrats to win a contemporary American national election with only in inverted commerce, seventy eight percent of the Black

vote or half of the Hispanic vote. They just can't make it up with white voters. There are only so many white liberal women to go around. You know, whether some people might view that editorially is a good thing, but in terms of the arithmetic, lectural arithmetic, for the Democrats, it's unfortunate. And that's why they count on, you know, such your uniform almost you know, universal within those electorates court and so we don't when you don't get that.

The other two that jump out at me, they often mirror each other, although they aren't. They aren't the same people's This overlap is the independence who are we The exit poll has Trump up eight points. Independents don't always reflect the winner, but they usually do. And the other one is the Catholic vote. And the reason we've highlighted that is the evangelical vote is very important. It's overwhelmingly for Trump. You have atheists is much smaller, overwhelmingly for Harris.

And then your sort of traditional Protestant, various Protestant denominations that tend to skew Republican. But Catholics are a swing are these swing maybe the only swing religious group block in America? They tend to go with the winner. Doesn't tend to be a big difference between the two sides,

and it's very much like the independent vote. We've got an eight point lead for Trump, and that also again, you know, if you're looking at this in terms of what a history tells us, it tells us that the Independents and Catholics are going for going for one candidate, and the other candidates lost a good chunk of their minority vote which they had count on. You know, that suggests the wind is blowing in this particular direction.

last time. On the Democratic side, it hasn't been disastrous, but there's been a little bit of blea kitch compared to Trump's voters a few, you know, it's been sort of high single digits who voted for him last time was saying they wouldn't versus low single digits on the Trump side. And you know, in a close race, that

makes a difference. And of course it depends how the volume of votes are for these these these two groups, and it tells you how solid Trump's vote has been all along, you know, and therefore that it was always going to be there's also are going to be a close race. I mean, he was never going to do poorly.

It's a question of did he almost get over the line like he officially did last time, or didn't do last time, or with new voters and enough switchers from the Democrats, either past voters or people who maybe didn't vote last time, would he would he make it? And what's been interesting is that what they call the sort of the flippers, those who voted one way last time and then voted nipway this up. He's been winning those

two to one pretty consistently. And it's not doesn't change everything those kinds of numbers because we're they're at the margin, But in a in a close race nationally or in swing states, you know, that can be everything.

shifted if you should have averaged it all out across the country, they haven't shifted that much. You say, Okay, well that doesn't that isn't much of a help. Well, actually it is, because you know, we had all this male in voting because of COVID and so many people

foind it convenient to do it that way. So for the Republicans to sort of maintain roughly that level is quite good, particularly when you consider that in most states, basically the swing states, the Democrat mail in vote has dropped off considerably, and so there's both the difference between the who they're voting for is condensed, and also just

the volume. You know, that lead like Harris has this eight point lead upon among those who voted by mail, but there are much fewer of them, so that eight points doesn't count as much as it did for Biden when the lead was far more eight points as well. And you look at the early in person that Trump has edged them out fifty one for those they have chosen Trump fifty one over forty seven for Harris. And again that's that's a big improvement in all these different

ways for the Republicans visa v. The Democrats. And so when you when you put those two together, those who mailed in their ballots and those who voted in person but early, you put it in the in the synthesize it, you know, number data wise, and you end up with going into election day Harris with a small advantage sort of two three points. And then it becomes election day becomes about who gets their people, those that are remaining

roughly half to actually physically go and vote. And it's traditionally been the day when Republicans either caught up and overtook the Democrats or you know, failed to do so. So both sides had everything riding, have everything riding on the in person election day vote.

That is, you know, like if I if we've done this poll and our recalled vote was, you know, ten points Trump ahead ten points from twenty twenty, we had ten percent more Trump voters than were in the actual electorate, then what we would have to do, if we didn't want to chuck the whole thing out, is we would have to then weight everything for that basis to take away Trump votes and Republican volume throughout the poll. So just give you one quick example. On the weekend, your

listeners might have heard about it. One or two state poles that came out that surprised everybody with how well Harris was doing. And of course it turns out in both cases the recalled vote was massively pro Biden from twenty twenty, way beyond just you know, double digits difference from how that state actually voted, And so you adjust that and suddenly Harris doesn't have this surprising lead. She's

actually still behind. And so when we saw our recall vote is actually the charts, the slides don't allow for you know, decimal points. So our recall vote was actually forty nine point five for Biden to forty six, which is a little less than the official popular vote margin he won by, but not much. So that told hold us whatever else might not be, you know, kosher with

this poll. Perhaps we'll find out. Then over the next couple of days, we do have a group that does those who voted last time are an accurate reflection of twenty twenty. And then of course, you know you've talked to all the new voters and see what they're thinking and put that all together.

sign for Trump. But what it tells us, or reminds us, is of Trump's appeal beyond the traditional Republican conservative voter, of whom there are simply no longer a sufficient number

to win a national election. And Trump has for the third time running, perhaps most expertly this time, will see he has been able to his campaigns have been able to identify, reach, persuade, motivate Americans who stopped voting ten twenty years ago, who never voted, or, counterintuitively to many this time in twenty four are only just approaching their

first opportunity to vote. And he is doing. You know, his support among eighteen to twenty nine year olds, sort of your zoomers, is in the forties now, whereas last time that age group he was in the high teens. Right, So that's all going very well. And of course that a lot of those folks, some of them have voted before,

but a lot of them haven't. And so these those the new voters and the occasional voters are what in the polling business you call low propensity voters, and when so many elections pliculing in America are about turnout rather than persuasion, certainly in the latter stages, and with the partisan divide so strong and so set so sort of in the cement, whichever side can identify and reach and motivate low propensity voters is almost certainly going to win.

And it was part of the secret source of a lot of a secret source of all those unexpected mail in ballots the Democrats of twenty twenty. Many of the people whose names at least were on those ballots had never voted before, or hadn't voted for a long time, and even some of them, many of them didn't even

know they voted in twenty twenty. But this time the Trump campaign recognized from the get go that this was how they could potentially turn an absolute squeaker They might win, they might not to have a coin toss election into one that gave them a greater chance of victory likelihood

of victory. And so most of their outreach they're knocking on doors and text messages and all that kind of thing, has been to identify people who they think, for one reason or another, would be inclined to support them, many of them former Democrats, many of them independents, and get enough of them out to make a difference. And whether he wins the election or not, they've certainly made a substantial out of progress in that direction.

twenty sixteen, right. And one of the ways we were able to do that and then identify mostly successfully the Trump vote in America ever since is getting our arms around the shy Brexit voter, the shy Trump voter h and one of the ways we figured out you could do that was when you had these sort of disproportionate number of undecided voters who clearly, based on their answers to other questions, were sympathetic to Brexit or tremble whoever, whatever the cause or person may be, but wouldn't but

put said and maintain they were undecided if you ask, It turns out if you ask them questions not about themselves but about others, they are far more likely to to indirectly indicate to you what they plan on doing. So, yeah, so you ask them about their neighbor, you ask them about their friends, their relatives, their wife, the people they work with, or you asked them and or you ask them so you know you're undecided. No one knows what's gonna happen. Who do you think is going to win?

And it's amazing how many of these people have a really strong opinion about it's going to win. And so it's another part that have signed for Trump fifty three forty six. It's a greater margin then you find in this exit poll, or we always find there's a greater margin a few points. You know, if we find a we do a poll with most of our polls have

been recently nationally Trump up by two or three. You ask the question about who you think's going to win, or who your neighbors voting for, and you get Trump up by four or six or eight. Uh, it always goes in that direction. And what I think when we think from our polls, we've been able to demonstrate that,

you know, that does tell you something. But if you simply think about Trump's performance, this will be his third election, whether it's primaries, caucuses, or general elections, whether he wins, loses, whatever he does, he nearly always out votes his polling, whether it's a point five points, you know, he just the poll Most posters underestimate Trump. I mean, it's just a fact. And obviously one of the key ess this time is is that going to happen again? And I

have suspected it would. I didn't know, you know, you don't know to how to what degree, But it's, uh, that's what I've always said. And again, over the next number of hours and days, I maybe be proven completely wrong. But I've been saying all year to people that the narrow lead that we've been finding consistently for Trump, we

obviously we could be wrong. But if we are wrong and you ask you put a gun to my head, I'd say we are underestimating his vote rather than overestimating his vote, you know, to be you know, I don't know whether I'll be proven right or not, but this kind of a result on the exit poll suggests there might be something to my guess.

arms around all of that. And as a consequence of that, all year my brain has told me this is Trump's election to lose. Could he lose it? Yes? Will you lose it. I don't think so. I think probably not. Okay, that's where my brain has been. But for since the summer, my intuition, my gut has been on a sort of of its own. Now, therefore, I sort of when they're the same, you know how other people are and how you are latent, When you're braking your intuition are in sync,

you sort of feel confident whatever that is. Even if it's bad views do you think at least you can face it. But when when they're not quite in sync, you start questioning both. But what my intuition has been telling me for a couple of months, and I've mentioned this to anyone you know unwise enough to ask, is that although you can't expect it these days, I've just had this nagging feeling that this thing could get blown wide open and it could end up being trumped quite by quite a big margin.

you might be late. And I'm not sure the nineteen eighty Carter Reagan race, where all of the kind of basic metrics were favored Reagan, but in terms of the conventional wisdom and the much faded polls of where they were much far fewer then, they never really had him in a great position. It was competitive, but Carter was up a lot, and then he be up and this kind of thing, and then it all broke for Reagan

at the end. And I think it's less that there were specific I mean, Bragan had a great debate and things like that, but I think it was less that and more that it was always going that way, but it was hidden, you know, it was sort of under the radar stuff. And Reagan wins up winning by nine points in a race that the experts said would be one or two points either way, right, And it just

it feels like that, it has felt like that. But you know, every other every day there's another media pole saying Kamala is up by two, or this swing state is you know, within a decimal point, and all the rest of it, and the crazy posters like me, we have our results that suggest, you know, it's advantage Trump, which i've you know, maintained it is up to this, up to this brain minute, and the exit pole, I think, you know, gives me more more reason to do that.

But I'm looking at this exit pole and there's nothing in it that screams landslide except for the question. We've just been discussing the expected winner, which I found, you know, one of the more useful over the years in different contexts. So again, you know, if she wins big, I'll have missed both both my brain and my intuition will have missed.

But that's my quasi personal take on the evening. And what that means, of course, is that I wouldn't be at all surprise surprised, will be shocked, I should say, be pleasantly surprised, you know, if he wins these blue states like Virginia and New Mexico and Minnesota and New Hampshire. And that's why, well it is in the American context,

if it's an absolute blowout. If my intuition is right, then we'll know quite early because the Virginia's New Hampshire's are on these coast and Virginia's one of the for actually Virginia's closing just around now. They'll start doing the start doing the early vote counts. But you know, but if they go as they tould, as they have gone in recent elections, then we'll be waiting for others. But yeah,

there's just it just feels it feels that way. I mean, there's a number of people commenting today, some famous, some not famous, who've all been i mean, on the on the not the Trump campaign, but they're on the Trump side,

Trump's side pretty much wishing to win. And they've all made the same point, which is, whether they're thirty years old or sixty years old, they can't quite remember the last time that everything seemed to be lined up for the Republican to win, except for the fact half the pole say you might lose, you know, So it's I think it's on one side of the aisle at least.

It's a fairly common theme that what one's seeing and reading and hearing is from you know, you might say official sources doesn't quite gel with the how how it all smells? You know?

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Nigel Bigar CBE is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology the University of Oxford, is Chairman of the Board of the Free Speech Union, one of Prospects magazines twenty five Top Thinkers of twenty twenty four, and author of the best selling Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning. Out of those four lines, I could drive this interview with multiple feed off questions. Nigel, great to have you in New Zealand. I've been looking

forward to your arrival. You are an impressive man, a very impressive thinker, and even if one doesn't agree with you, you have very persuasive powers. Welcome to the lesiond Welcome to the country.

to draft, only for academics to rightly reject it. Damning results at the aut Law Society staff survey and a professor's equally damning response Massi University's staff survey results more evidence of self censorship at university and finally, for the moment at least, back in May, Victoria University three speech panel discussion was postponed due to backlash. So there's just one, two, three, four, five things that have happened at universities in the very

recent well in the immediate past. Nigel, simple question. I think you grew up in a democracy. I was born in a democracy. We've both grown up and we know what democracy is all about. What has happened that what I've just quoted you is in play at the moment in this country, Australia, Britain, America, Canada, all the Anglo speaking world. What's happened? How did it get here?

what's happened a number of different things. You certainly have the emergence of, I think a minority of very zealous progressive folk who have dogmatic views on gender, dogmatic views on the extent to which we're racist, and dogmatic views on how bad, how relentlessly colonial government was, so you

have the zealous. Then, as I've discovered, you have a majority of people in universities, both students and professors, who don't know much about the issues, just want to get on with their careers and their lives conflict averse and have failed, I think, have failed to understand how much

is at stake here. And then, most presently of all, you've got university administrations run by apparently grown ups who twenty years ago would have been quite firm in telling let's say, agree to students, we feel your pain, but I'm afraid you don't get to evade points of view you don't like. And that's changed. And I think it's the behavior of institutions and authorities at the top that

is most decisive and most troubling. Why have they changed their behavior, Well, some of them have absorbed and critically notions like the only virtue is compassion, the only virtue is kindness, and we must do all we can to avoid upsetting young people, especially members of supposedly marginalized or victimized groups. Historically, so that's that's certain ideas have got into the bloodstream of culture, and those who lead us

have absorbed those ideas. But there's also the fact that universities are businesses and highly competitive businesses, and they are desperate to retain market share and attract students and to keep donors on side. And if they perceive that certain views are going to disturb potential customers or disturb potential donors, they will quickly clamp down on those ideas. So I think it's a number of different factors that have brought

us here. So there's there are They questioned later was a simple one, but the answer is a bit more complicated.

But then around before the end of the twentieth century, governments, certainly in Britain and elsewhere, decided to expand university sector enormously, so that now in Britain it's some between forty and fifty percent of every generation goes to university. Well, the state couldn't afford to fundel that directly, so they developed a business model which partly involves partly involved students paying fees. It also involves New Zealand and Australia numbers very well.

It involves attracting overseas students, not least from China, to come to our universities. But the unity depends on overseas students heavily, and they certainly depend on student fees. So in international rankings of universities, one of the categories is now student experience. Now that didn't appear twenty thirty years ago.

And you know, I'm all for students being aware of excuse me, of universities being aware of how students are experiencing their university because frankly, during my undergraduate career fifty years ago, I wasn't taught very well. Frankly, So universities have good reasons as it were, You want to know how students are fairing, what the experience is. However, the danger is, and I think it's the danger that is

really has been realized. The danger is you treat students like customers and if they're not unhappy, it doesn't matter why they're unhappy. They're not happy. That should determine policy. That I think is a major distortion, because students, of course, can be happy for all sorts of bad reasons. Maybe they're lazy, they don't like working. So universites can't take that serious, but they do. They do.

They there to survive, but they're there to educate, and university leaders should also remember that although not all wisdom lies with adults, the fact of the matter is that professors and older people usually know a lot more than younger people, and therefore they should have the as it were, the kind of self confidence, and they should have a right conception of what their businesses, which is education, to be able to say to students again, we feel your pain,

we understand you're aggrieved, but actually no, we think you require this for your education. You don't get to determine things. But I think it's a combination of what I was saying before in terms of universities being excessively business like and how they can see what they're up to, so they are very sensitive, as it were, to market indicators

of student student dissatisfaction. But there's also I think I wonder if there isn't also a kind of cultural change here that we're now ruled by those who grew up in the nineties sixties, and these are people who are afraid of exercising authority. I do remember I held a conference in twenty nineteen under the title Academic Freedom under Threat what is to be done in Oxford, And the observation was made that the people of my generation, who grew up or slightly younger than me, we were told

that authority is a bad thing. So I would not be surprised if a lot of those olimans you shoulds actually are very uncomfortable about saying no.

don't you don't help them always by being kind. Sometimes you have to be firm, and they won't experience that, they will not experience that as kindness. But but you need to serve their welfare, not just their feelings. Because sometimes, as I have long said, and as I'm sure lots of younger folks here would find incomprehensible, I often say, sometimes feelings lie. You can't take them for you can't take them as indicators of the truth. And so they were grown up, grown ups for the sake of the

welfare of younger, younger people. Sometimes they say, I know, I know how you feel strongly about this, but I'm totally sorry. I'm not going to yield.

but took his place bravely on the intellectual barricades. He will be well known to readers of the Telegraph for his accounts of the erosion of academic freedom and failures to grasp it. Charged with thought crimes, he did not commit bigger stood up to the mob, and has provided an inspiration for many of us who wished to do the same. Like I say, I'm bringing this forward, we'll have to take a step back in a moment. You you got into this position because of colonialism, the book.

be courageous. And so when I think about, you know, what makes me or what makes other people courageous or to take risks in doing or saying things, I think really late is simply if you care about something enough, if you care about enough, if you love it enough, then there comes a point where you just can't stand by anymore and see it crushed or damaged or defamed, and you have to speak up. But I think it's a compulsion out of love for something that makes you say,

bugger it, I don't care what people think. I'm going to take this risk. So it's not that you aim to be courageous. It knows you aim to be courageous. I think it's a matter of saying to yourself, well do I care enough to stand by and see this precious thing crushed? And some people need to get up and stand up. I think also, Frankly Lateten, it's also partly personality. I'm Scot's I'm more inclined to be directed and blunt than most of my nice, gentle, polite English

friends and colleagues. I'm more impatient. And also I'm older, so I'm sixty nine. At the end of my career, I was relatively safe. Other colleagues have suffered much more grievous than I. And you know, one thing about older age is that it's produced as two things which are a dangerous combination. First of all, you finally think that what you think, and secondly, you cease to carry what other people think so much so you inclined to say

what you think. And I, although you know I've attracted aggression, it wouldn't be anywhere else. So I'm very glad to be saying, well, I think, because I think what There's some things that are important, and there's some truth that are important that I'm glad to say them.

for an article that appeared on October twenty eighth. Don't speak up in class and have become disengaged, claiming that they have anxiety issues. They might have missed the boat. Sorry, the letter might have missed the boat. Could it be that the Could it be that the fault of all this lies with the universities themselves and not entirely were the students. Many years ago, universities were the bastions of free thought, opened discourse and debate from professors to first

grade to first year undergraduates. However, could the reasons for student disengagement outlined by Gilbert be emblematic of the decline in our university's commitment to a willingness to protect the viewpoints of all engaged in debate even though there is disagreement. One example of this was the backlash over the letter published by several University of Auckland academics in the Listener back in twenty twenty one. You may have heard of this, by the way, arguing that Matt oranger Mary is not

science in the traditional sense. There was a call for these academics to be censured. Surely, if academics are going to run the risk of being censured at their own university, then what hope will ordinary students have in delivering their own views on whatever topic they might feel passionate about, not because of anxiety, but for the fear of being censured.

about them, to wonder whether actually this strange idea, the threatening idea, might be right, or how far it's right.

But they have a universes have a duty to support an environment where all sorts of ideas, some of them are no doubt challenging, come into play, and with students are trained in the virtues necessary for us to have a liberal society, because if universities failed to do that, our public life and a political life is going to suffer in the way it now is, where people tend to shout and scream and and appeal to emotion, and they don't know how to deal with perfectly reasonable ideas.

And what you've just described these New Zealand academics as saying about the difference between certain traditional Maori stories and natural science, for example, that's a perfectly sensible point to make. They should be allowed to say that, and students should be required, frankly required to deal with these things in a rational manner, and that does require the self for strange of emotion. And too many universities, not all of them,

too many universities are completely oblivious to that duty. That they're behaving, as it were, simply as businesses. They've forgotten what their main purpose is. But so I agree, I think universities have a lot to do it. Also, I mean, I think it is said that mental health issues are a growing problem among students, and of course what I would what I would have called what I still call

distress or even mild depression is now now trauma. I regard distress and depression as a normal, normal feature of life, and I think it's not helping kids if they are

told that. But I'm also told that living life on social media does create lots of anxiety in Eurosis, and that may be a new phenomenon, in which case, when presented with kids who are really distressed at ideas that they find disturbing, universities need to treat this as a partial therapeutic problem, not allowing students to proceed without having different fund ideas they don't like, but helping students to

acquire resilience in coping with ideas they don't like. Whereas I think the tendency is to take the easy option of simply allowing students to shield themselves from find things they find distressing.

had he had three chances to submit answers to an exam. Yes, after it was over, he did. They all did. So there's no there was no pressure, there's no drive as far as that's concerned. What would you what would you add to that shortlist so far?

of human life. One needs to learn to fail and then to get them off the ground and try again. That's that's called resilience. But but I fear that's not what's happening, and students are being indulged in a way that is actually doing them harm and the adults are responsible for that.

masculine and feminine. I have heard and this is plausible, I don't know what the empirical substantiation of it is. Part of the problem in universities and elsewhere is the feminization institutions often run by women. I've not plain against that, but if it's true that women tend to focus on reconciliation and conflict with avoidance and kindness and compassion, if women are too feminine, not not masculine enough, then that is certainly contributed to our problem. Because what we need,

is particularly in university, is also in schools. We need our young people taught how to manage conflict responsibly because when they go into life, they're not going to be able to avoid conflict. So the question is how do you manage it responsibly? And if you avoid it, If you will kids to avoid it all the time and not to grow the virtues of patients and resilience and self restraint, then they're going to mismanaged conflict. And when they grew up to run institutions, we're all going to.

in changing what we put in position. But no sooner had the government been elected at the Secretary of State for Education Bridge At Phillipson, announced that she was going to suspend the operation of the Act and perhaps repeal it. Now,

why did you do that? Well, someone from within government, a reliable source, i'm told, reported that vice chancellors had lent on the then Shadow Secretary of State because the Act would have required universities to make transparent their dependents, their dependent on foreign that is Chinese funding, and the advice chancellors did not want to have to be transparent about that, which is why they lent on the Secretary of State. That's not why the Secretary of State stay

she wants to pause it or to repeal it. But we're told actually that is why the buds vice chances that have lent on her. So, yes, the Act is currently paused because we have a Free Speech Union in Britain now founded four years ago, now extremely healthy, twenty thousand members, an annual income from subscriptions alone of about a million pounds plus donations. Because we have an FSQ with a staff and a full time legal mind working on cases, the FSU has applied to take the government

to court by means of judicial review. So there's bad news that Laton. Yes, the government appears to want to who perhaps repeal the Act. The good news is we now have an institution in Britain sufficiently powerful and well resourced to challenge that and to embarrass the government. In the pages of the press.

free speech. That's what they say. I will point out that although I probably was the first the first person to hit the pages of the press in twenty seventeen because an attempted to be maze to constrain my academic freedom, and it was in the pressook for weeks and so all of my most people in Oxford and in the university university administration who are conscious will know who I am and what happened to me. Nobody in the administration oxyd University has ever asked me to come in and

talk to them of what's going on. Apart from that, you've got people like Kathleen Starkey, lesbian, a gender critical feminist philosopher. If you ever hear her speech, she's on YouTube. She is a model of reason, the model of reason. She was driven out of her job in her career at the University of Sussex a few years ago by campaign carried out by students are betted by fellow academics, and the university authorities allowed it to happen. She was

driven out of a job. So I get really quite angry when I had universities an others say this is not a problem, because it is to say that you simply have to willfully ignore ample evidence of their being a problem. And if anyone's in any doubt, go and look at the website of the Free Speech Union in the UK. There are plenty of cases of people, not just universities but in other walks of life whose free speech and academic and freedom of thought is being constrained, and lawfully in many.

literary of racism and oppression. Those orthodoxies need testing, they need challenging. I think every one of them is actually false, but they are. They are determining a government policy. They're determine determining curriculating schools. And they're false, and we need a society which is able to test them and to expose how far they're false and how far they're true. And universities have an enormously important civic duty to perform in helping to shape as I said before, so they're

capable of having liberal discussions. And governments have an enormously an enormous civic duty to make sure we have spaces where which are probably liberal. And all sorts of institutions and sometimes governments are failing, and the future of liberal society among us is therefore jeopardized. And it's really really important. So all those people who were trying to get on with their lives and hoping there's no problem that they had to deal with here and they can just keep

their heads under the parapet. If you want a liberal society, you need to stand up, because otherwise we're going to lose it.

what were polytechnics into universities. Polytechnics traditionally were about vocational education, which is very important, very important indeed, But that that meant that some some polytechnics decided to stop doing vocational education and to try and rival universities in academic research and teaching. And it also means that there are some of the weaker polytechnics who you know, as businesses, they want to attract students, but their admissions criteria pretty low.

And it does mean therefore that kids are being sent to university who twenty years ago would not have gone to university simply because they're not prepared for it. Actually they have no attitude for it. They're much better off going to learn a vocational skills, so they become plumbers and whatever, because we need you know, we will never cease to need people with manual skills or artisanal skills,

vacational skills. And I mean I've heard talks certainly in Britain in recent years that maybe was a mistake, particularly under the Blair government, to take an arbitrary figure of forty or fifty percent of the population to serve the knowledge economy, because actually that has led to a decline in the standards of some universities, because otherwise some kids simply couldn't cope if they were subjected to a more reduced standards. So there has been a decline in standards.

And then going back to an earlier point we made about concessions made to students stuff from various kinds of mental and health. It makes it easier for them. And then also there is the issue of grade inflation in earlier years. For four decades ago, the number of students getting first class degrees was small ten percent. Maybe it's now thirty percent, and that I think is partly because of as a market competition, because you know, you want

to attract good students to university. Well, if you're a university that gives first class de reason out generously, then that's one reason why student might choose to go with you. But of course it means that standards are being lowered for market reasons, and so you know, if there's are undermining their own credibility in this.

That was before Biden resigned, and it's now applicable to his replacement. Now I'm not saying that's what I believe, but that's what that's the quote, and I'm wondering what your response is.

I mean yes, of course. Donald Trump, in so many ways is this mainly crude and appears quite stupid. Sometimes. On the other hand, those who watch the effect of his policies when he was present say that with regard to deterring Russia and China, he was actually more robust than Obama and Biden. There is also the feature that whatever you think of Donald Trump himself, the fact there is a lot of Americans want to vote for him, and they are often Americans who feel left behind or

ignored by the progressive elite. And I've certainly seen in

my own country. I see it all the time. The progressive elites do not want to hear certain things, certainly not about immigration, and they just refuse to listen, and as a consequence of which people who are concerned about let's say illegal immigration or the rate of immigration, or that the impact of immigration on housing or parts of the country that are still languishing in post industrial ruin, the refusal of the left to pay attention to other

things just means that other people who are concerned about them become increasingly illustrated and move to the right, so that the deafness of the left causes an absurge in support for the right. And I think that's to some extent to it. In so far as you find Trump apport the fault, I think lies to a large extent on the side of the Democrats.

him from a from a different perspective. Obama was using one of them yesterday in the speech, and I can't understand why they get away with it. The only reason that I can provide is that things have standards have collapsed so much that nobody cares well.

suffer some kind of penalty. All one can do. And I just assisted doing this. I tell the truth as best I know it. I try and expose lies I find around me as best I can. My experience has been certainly through the success of my book. And I mentioned the editor of plum Scree, who commissioned it for blooms Free canceled it. He predicted sales up up to twenty thousand copies. It's now soul over sixty thousand copies. My experience in Oxford was putting on lectures to platform

more or less conservative thinking. There's a big appetite for it, and since I've been in Australia, a lot of people want to hear what I have to say. So I'm encouraged that. You know, the lopul out there who don't buy the lies, don't buy the orthodoxies about race and gender and colonial history. They don't know very much, but they know enough to know that doesn't make sense. But who are eager to be told the whole truth? So I don't want to unestimate the problem later. And you know,

most people like be talking to or not youngsters. But there's an appetet out there for the truth and whatever the difficult is, and however formidable task looks those of us well, we all have a responsibility to speak the truth as we know it, and I'm confident more people will listen than we might we might fear.

can get badly wrong, that's for sure. But the alternatives democracy are even worse. And what we have to do is, first of all, when the people give an answer we don't want to hear, we need to listen very carefully. Just in the case that people are saying something we needed to hear. What we shouldn't do, and this is what the eleite to do is to dismiss the people

as ignorant, uncivilized, wicked. So those are voted for Brexit, we're all stupid white xenophobes with a salader for empire wanted to take Britain back to nineteen hundred, just as the left too often does. Instead of engaging and engaging with the reasons, the real reasons. The left too often reaches for dismissal, just just wipe it off the table

and to dismiss the people. So although the people sometimes do get it wrong, elites need to listen because if they don't listen, they are going to be responsible for a violent reaction. But I'm afraid too many elites just talk to themselves and they're not honest, and they stay in their comfort zone, and they need to come out and and listen carefully and look carefully, and not just dismiss some popular view views they don't like as racist or as anaphobic or whatever.

because they all left was more liberal. You know that they all left would have an argument with you and give reasons this plot the repressive left, they don't want an argument. They want to use power. They want to use a timidation to shut things down. So it's a combination of a certain dogmatic point of view plus authoritarian politics.

your sin. I want to encourage the reading of how conservatives can win the culture Wars that you wrote and published only what less than a week ago in in Quadrant magazine and the current Quadrant magazine. It's the lead story. I think from memory, how conservatives can win the culture wardshould why should we read it?

Western the face of threats from China and Russia. So conservatives need to get in there and win the argument because important truths are at stake here, and we can win it, I think, because, as I've said, most people in our societies don't know enough about race and gender and colonial history. They're not entirely convinced by the progressive story being hoisted upon them. So if we can simply mobilize the unsure, slightly intimidated majority, I think the landscape,

the political landscape, would change quickly. But some of us need to have the courage or the recklessness to stand up and say things that other people object to in the hope that we can really the troops and just encourage more people to voice their doubts because their doubts actually are reasonable and they ensure some of the stuff they're being told is false, and it is false. So we need together the troops to start exposing the falsehoods.

recent examples. But lawyers, no disrespect, aren't economists, and as wordsmiths, they can often pull on emotions to win their case. And Eileen says, God bless America and God defend New.

be big trouble either way. We watched January sixth, carry on when Trump requested police protection as there was talk of trouble. Nanci Pelosi did not grant his request the extra for the extra protection, and the officers did not arrive. But there was a Democrat man who was identified by the media as being a Democrat. He was wearing a Trump hat. He was stirring up the crowd big time. No mention of that occurring. I can't think of his name, but he did get he got nailed in the end.

I think he had a connection with the FBI, But I'm not totally sure. Are you able to mention any of this on your podcast?

address at our last domicide in the US. We need a social Security number, we need to fill in a voter registration and absentee ballot request, sign it and email it back. Due to time zone differences, weekends, etc. This took me about four days. Only then will they send you your ballot with strict instructions on mailing it back. That's right, mailing it back. Four years ago I voted online, but maybe because of fraud, that option was not available this year. The ballot must be placed into a plain

envelope with voted ballot written on it. This envelope is then placed into another plane envelope, also with instructions on that envelope as to the mailing address and where your return address and signature goes. I wanted to track my ballot, but New Zealand post only allows those blue places to envelopes for tracking. My ballot would have been disallowed for

not being mailed in a plain envelope. Crazy, my state is read my ballot wouldn't be necessarily so, but I wanted to vote for Trump so he can take out the garbage. Is to that, Thank you clear Layton.

so I don't online. One may look up the long letter that Dennis Prager wrote to Candace, a one time friend of his, trying to point out her errors in his gracious way. But would it be too much to say that there is no correcting Candace. When an arrogant person knows everything, what is one to do but boycott her? Her speech is so filled with deep rooted bitterness, anti Semitism, false presuppositions, and lack of knowledge of the subject that we actually have been praying that she not be accepted

in Australia. Our first prayer has been answered, and also that New Zealand reject her application, waiting for our second prayer to be heard. Bless you and Carolyn Layton, and again thank you for all the hard work that you do in bringing us a superb podcast every week. And I appreciate that letter comment Allison.

of pressure, but nevertheless we got there. I think. So if you would like to write to us Layton and New U Talks av dot co dot nz or Carolyn at newstalksb dot co dot nz. I would expect and hope there'll be plenty of commentary on the on the election outcome, part of which we have covered. I wish there was more. So it remains to be said that we shall be back for two seventy four in a few days. Until then, thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.