The Assault on American Academics

tone that you receive. I wanted to have a different conversation today on the show than Jonathan did, but we went with Jonathan's thoughts because I thought that they were

incredibly important. You know, we talked to him on a regular basis because he is one of the foremost thinkers on white privilege, white anxiety, white you know, rage and the like, and its connection to guns and gun culture in America, and as we continue to see the rise in domestic terrorism at the hands of white Americans, it's

incredibly important to continue having those conversations. But today Jonathan wanted to talk about his role as a professor and how universities and colleges across this country are under attack by the right wing fascist Republican Party that is seeking to control the minds of the youth so that they can control the future. And it is something that is

always front of mind for me. But given Jonathan's you know, personal connection as a professor, as somebody who does the work, you know, to speak at different conferences and to travel and speak on different campuses, he shares stories today about how he's seeing a shift in conversation and culture that is coming from both inside of universities and faculty and the pressure outside that is coming in. And it's a

really important conversation. And I continue to say this that whether or not you have you know, children inside of the universities and colleges or K through twelve, does not matter, because education is the foundation of our democracy, and once educators and those students start receiving hate and pushback, it is a threat to our ability to function as a democracy.

And so this matters to everyone. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation that Jonathan and I get into, and as always, we appreciate the shout outs and critiques that you give us on social media. So I'm really looking forward to hearing what you all think about this conversation. If you're a patron. You know, get at me in

the comments below this video. If you are listening in another place on iHeart Apple, Spotify, you know, hit me up on social at D two cents D E two c E N T S. Conversation with doctor Jonathan Metzel is coming up next. Folks. You know that whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our friend in house, doctor doctor Jonathan metsl we are always thrilled. And I had an idea of what I wanted to talk about today and Jonathan said, yeah, I don't want to talk

about that, which is totally fine. And so you know, Jonathan, you bring up the fact that you wanted to connect on something more personal, which is the fact that you are an esteemed professor at Vanderbilt University, which is in Tennessee, a red state, and talking about your experience right now of working under I'm assuming really at times difficult conditions. So take it away.

it's amazing that people are so engaged. And one comment was I wouldn't say a critique of me, but it was basically like, I'm not being strident enough in a way, I'm not being in your face enough, I'm not critiquing enough, and I don't take it personally like I think it's partially true, like I'm sure I'm more measured than other people who are in the media or social media, people like I feel like I have a responsibility as an academic sometimes that I can't say stuff that I can't

support in a certain kind of way. But the person said, why wasn't I being more And it was partially, you know, last week, you and I talked about burn it down, and I was pushing back and saying I can't. I just can't say burn it down. And it's partially who

I am as a person. But it's also like I still feel like as a as an academic and as a researcher, I want to take positions that I can support, and maybe that's you know, I just feel sometimes I wouldn't say jealous of people who like Jua Jali or other people like that, who are you know, friends of mine or you or other people like that, But I feel like for me, I'm kind of living in these two worlds, and one of the worlds is like, where's

your evidence for all that stuff? And the other world, like when I'm on Twitter, for example, is more like the more strident stuff I would say, the more I would get rewarded on social media for saying things like that. And so data point number one was just that piece of feedback that we got a couple of weeks ago about why wasn't I being more vocal? Which I take and I thought about that comment a lot. The number two is the state of academia. Right now, I teach

at a private school. I feel relatively protected, but I have colleagues all over the country who are in trouble for stuff they've said, and even at Vanderbilt. So at Vanderbilt we had professors who I've won colleague who gave grand rounds in the medical school, a big lecture in twenty sixteen, and usually they record grand rounds. They put

them up online. They you know, they're archived. And what happened was Matt Wallash and all the right wing crowd found this twenty sixteen thing, doctored it a little bit, cut it, put it up online, and it was a swarm of stuff where this person who probably wasn't thinking it was about transsexuality and the importance of paying attention to trans health in medical clinics. But all of a sudden,

like my colleague was under attack. They were meant writing the thing, you know, the chancellor, the provost, my colleague actually to go into live in another place for a month. And so in a way, there's something about like what's happening to professors, which I think just puts I don't think we're being silenced, but I do think the stakes are very real right now being an academic in a.

right wing going after academics right now. And on one hand, you want to say, you know, to hell with that and burn it all down and all that kind of stuff. And certainly that's obviously I wrote a book Dying of Whiteness. My next book's even going to be more controversial, so it's not like I'm backing down from that fight. But I do think that partially in the back of my mind there is this thing, which is, man, do I want this to be doctored and show up on right

wing media or something? And it's very real, right, I'm giving a talk in a month at a major DEI conference. I'm the keynote speaker at a big DEI conference, and I'm already getting like bombarded with a right wing email and right wing you know, this concerned student activist group. So even saying that I'm speaking at a DEI conference

right now brings this response. And so that number two is just that there are stakes for people who are public intellectuals right now that are professional but political, social, all that kind of stuff. And then I guess the third thing is colleges are there is this kind of cancel culture blowback, and I mean, colleges are getting more conservative honestly, you know places are colleges are basically saying

conservative voices aren't being heard enough. You can see what's happening in the universities in Florida, but it's happening in Tennessee. So there is a pushback about just college.

a place in academia. And the fact that there is no there there is no distinction that can be made between what is the right wing fascist Republican movement and hatred that there is, like, there is no there is no place for it in academia. And so when they go off and they say, oh, well, the liberal media or the liberal this, that and the other thing, it's like there is no two guides to transphobia, to racism

and to bigotry. And so because they have set up this false dichotomy between those that believe in equity and inclusion of all people and voices and their denial of that fact and using religion as their shield so that they can continue to proselytize their bullshit, is where the

problem is. And the fact that folks don't push back in very serious ways, and it is left to students to either not show up or to protest on their campuses for their rights to be educated in the way that they want is where we are and where the Republican Party has wanted to bring this country because education allows there to be an expansion of thought and a creation of empathy that they don't want, because empathy then would find us in a place where we're questioning policies

that adversely affect those that are most marginalized.

Conference in Seattle. I've lined my year with conferences where I'm going to be supporting the importance of diversity, and so I'm very public about that. But I and and and you know, I'm it comes at a price, right, which is but the stuff I get, the crazy stuff I get in my email or on Twitter that I

kind of it's kind of predicted. You know, there's a there's a professor's watch list, and I'm on it, and it's put out by I think turning point one of these big you know, the one Trump speaks at all time. So there's a lot of people on these a lot of liberal professors. We're all on this professor watch list right now, And it means every time you give a talk, conservatives are coming and taping you and blah blah blah

blah blah. So it's just an interesting time enough for me, that is overt, right, that is clear, and I totally support exactly what you just said, which is this is this is the battle for the minds of our nation going forward, right, I mean, are we going to step back from the progress we've made about equity? I mean, when I wrote my book Protest Psychosis, I studied medical journals in the fifties where race wasn't even a category of analysis. Nobody even took race data because they didn't

they only did research on white people. So for me, that's the overt part, and that's the battle, that's the battle line. I see that. But then there's more subtle stuff of being on a college campus, like I've had a series of examples of like, you know, we were at a faculty meeting for another department and somebody did a land statement at the beginning of the faculty meeting, and as we were leaving, somebody in the pack, where as we were walking out, said, thankfully, we're not going

to have to hear that woke stuff anymore. A professor said, woke staff, And I thought, how do you get off saying woke staff? You know what I mean? Like, it's obviously white professor. And so I guess people felt like, oh, the liberals had gone too far with these land statements and blah blah blah pronouns and all that, and so it's kind of that it's the subtle, everyday policing that's

going to happen on college campuses. For me, that's the bigger concern is what happens in the everyday world where people are, where these kind of conservative policing views become the norm, especially in places where they're like look at Florida pushing out a lot of our West Virginia pushing out humanity's faculty, literature faculty, language faculty and replacing them with more more conservative faculty. So it's more that subtle.

Remember that book Hitler's Willing Executioners about the Holocaust. It's kind of the everyday stuff that I feel like, And I guess again, This was all brought on for me because of the review, the comment for our conversation where somebody said I was holding back and I said, man, am I holding back now because of because of this climate? And what does that mean?

and so my rage comes from that place. I think that for you, as a professor, as you know, a researcher and an analyst, it is really providing the data points and providing the information to back up what it is that some of us you know, yell about, right, And I think that it is important for people to realize that not everyone expresses their emotion of this moment

in the same way. But I think to your point, with regard to what we're seeing happen at college campuses, and you know, you can look at I think it is a new school in Florida. I think that that may be the name of it. I'm not one hundred percent.

senior year, and they're leaving and they're transferring. And there's a school in Massachusetts that has opened up their doors particularly to those not only the faculty that have fled because they've lost forty percent of their faculty because of the board of trustees that Ron De Santis has put in place that are about essentially what I will refer to as the dumbing down and indoctrination of America's youth.

Because just like the Moms for Liberty, they did not make a misstep by quoting Hitler in their first newsletter that they put out saying that like, if you have the youth, you have the future. That was not a misstep. They were not. That was in an accident. It is the fact that education has always been the ground zero for any movement in this country, whether that movement is backwards or forwards. Because we know that education is power

and that's what the right knows. And so they're like, if we can ban critical thought, if we can erase people of color, people with disabilities, queer people from having any place right on our library shelves, then you can continue with the lie of white exceptionalism and no one will come for our privileges.

convincing speaker, right, I mean I don't. I don't think it's just like because I'm in academia, I got to be like repressed white guy in a box or something like that, you know, Like you know what I mean, Like, I think I think it's I think it's I think it's I think it's incredible, and I think it's important. I think it's needed. And and the other part, though,

is there's pressure on academics right now. I just want people to realize that, and I'm not asking for sympathy or anything like that, but like Trump, his main platform is if I win, I'm not just going after universities. I'm going after the crediting boards. And and then it's like, you know, you're going to see a lot of that,

But there's also a lot of subtle stuff happening. I mean, University Wisconsin just opened a gun study center that is funded by the gun industry, and so there's going to be a lot of gun research that is showing the benefits of carrying a weapon and stuff like that. Like universities are becoming you know, playing grounds, battlegrounds for what is an idea? What is a fact? What is it fact? We've had that played out in the media a lot, and I think that universities are going to be the

next place. On one hand, that kind of I mean that cancel culture stuff hopefully is dying down. But I just think this question of like what is academic knowledge, what certifies it, what it credits it, how do we validate it? It really will matter who wins the presidential election for the future of universities. And so if you hear academics like me kind of hedging our bets a

little bit. It's just that we're under a lot of you know, there's a lot of push and pull right now, I would say, and it makes the work of standing up for inequity even more important. Right, this is the time where the people who care step to the front of the line. And and and I hope that that's what I'm doing. But it's just again, this message made me think, like my holding back because of this moment.

control them. And so they're they're not doing this under the cloak of darkness. They are doing it in broad daylight. And for everyone you know, folks that listen to this show, they are one hundred percent woke. But I say to them, all the time, share the messages, share the episodes, push it out to those that are on the fence, to those that say to you and shrug, oh, this can't happen here, and tell them that it is happening right,

like we're watching this. The other day, I interviewed on my other show, The New Abnormal, I interviewed Ruth ben Guillott, right, the author of Strong Men, and I said, you know, Ruth, we follow each other on social media, and I, you know,

literally will retweet everything that you put out. You study, you know, Europe, You've studied European fascism and in Italy and Mussolini, and her book strong Men From Mussolini to the Present came out in twenty twenty as kind of a precursor to where we are, and she goes, there isn't a thing that is happening that doesn't mirror what happened in Europe. She's like, there is nothing that I can point to you to say, well, it may not happen. I'm like, I'm like, damn, Ruth's.

I'm back and down. But I would also say, I'm I'm just aware now of this in a way I haven't always been.

recommendation and I'll ask you, Jonathan as well. My recommendation to folks, whether or not you have you know, family members, kids that are in you know, the university and college systems, is that these are what the education is, what fundamentally

is the foundation of our democracy. So whether or not, like you need to be invested in what is happening, whether or not you have immediate you know, a relationship to said universities or K through twelve schools because you don't have kids like this is going to and is affecting us all in how we're able to speak, you know, openly.

And I just will remind folks that when I went to in twenty fifteen, when I traveled to Israel and Palestine and came back to the United States, I came back with PTSD because I was there and I recognized that all of a sudden, I wasn't able to sit down at dinners and have free conversation about like my thoughts on what was happening over you know, over a dinner because of who might be listening, right and how that may affect like the travel moving forward and where

we were going and what we were doing. And I became very aware and very scared of my movements. And so you know, when we and I came back to the United States and I said, oh my god, this can happen here, right And this was this was pre Trump and then the year following would be the escalator. So it is it is, it is wild, you know, where we are, and I think that it's important for folks to, you know, to to recognize that and recognize its importance to you. So last thoughts to you, Jonathan.

not just one thing. And so the liberties people take for granted on universities of being able to say whatever they want, they're They're not just in danger because of external things. They're in danger because universities follow markets, right, They follow the politics and the markets, and so people really need to speak up on campuses about the importance of free speech on campuses, and not just students but parents, supporters, alumnis.