[laughter] see you know what that means, ive received the walkout, the storm the stage strategy, and at Claremont Mckenna in southern california, the blockade that prevented anyone from actually attending my talk. Socalled students of color at nearby Pomona College announced i w i was ignoring systems of domination that produce lethal conditions under which oppressed people are forced to live. So to actually have an audience still in its seats and apparently willing to listen is an unusual experience that may take me a while to get accustomed to. Now, weve been hearing a lot of late about the crisis of free speech on College Campuses, but not much about its root cause. The narcissistic victimology that is rapidly spreading from academia to the rest of culture. In a word, the American University is in the grips of a mass hysteria. Students actually believe that they are victims of oppression at risk of their lives from racism and sexism. The degree of caterwailing is hard to overstate. At brown students occupy the office and having to go to class when they were so focused at staying alive at brown. At yale, a mob of minority students surrounded a highly respected socialologist and cursed and screamed at him for three hours because his wife sent an email suggesting that students could choose their own halloween costumes, free from the mintrations. And among the shouts of shut the f up, im censoring that, that were directed at the mild mannered left wing professor was the cry of, were dying, from one of the ranters, referring to the allegedly endangered status of yales minority students. But my favorite moment in this parade of narcissism came from princeton. In 2015 princetons black students chanted, were sick and tired of being sick and tired. Now, this phrase was first used by fannie lou hammer, a civil rights activist who was beaten in the 1950s for trying to vote. Fannie lou hammer had grounds aplenty for being sick and tired of being sick and tired. But any princeton student, i dont care if hes green, purple or orange, who thinks of himself as oppressed is in the grip of a terrible dilution that will encumber him for the rest of his life. Well, perhaps youre thinking, at least the adults on campus are trying to give students a firmer grip on reality. To the contrary, the adults actively encourage the hysteria. A massive bureaucracy is cultivating in students ever arcane species of selfinvolvement and preposterous forms of selfpity. You want to know the reason for the astronomical tuition, look no further than the bloat. Students act out of cycles of oppression over deanlets, vice provosts of Equity Inclusion who use this to expand their dominion. Many campuses have bias Response Teams modeled presumably on active shooter Response Teams on the assumption that discrimination is so rampant and lethal that a Rapid Defense force is needed. Freshmen orientations and dorm sessions invariably feature seminars in toxic masculinity and white privilege. Students are taught theyre oppressed or not the opressors. The only way that you can escape being an oppressor is by becoming a quote, ally. Allies are something usually associated with war. And indeed, the reigning thinking are female students and students of color are literally in a war zone on College Campuses and need allies from the Opposing Side to survive. Am i exaggerating . I am not. Uc berkeleys division of equity and inclusion hung banners throughout campus reminding students of the universitys paramount mission, assigning guilt and innocence in the ruthlessly competitive totem pole of victim hood. One banner featured a female black students and ahill male student allegedly pleading, allow people other than yourself to exist. A message directed to berkeleys white students and faculty. This is not hyperbole, they mean it literally. College president s are the worst offenders in encouraging this dilutional victimology. After the threeother expletive tirade against the yale socialologist, actually thanked the borist thugs for making him proud of his student body. Yale subsequently conifered a Racial Justice prize on two of the most aggressive participants. The dean of the Harvard Medical School recently removed the portraits of its greatest physician scientists from the Entrance Hall to the school. You can guess the reason. They were all male. And thus, looking on them would make harvards wilting medical students feel uncomfortable and unsafe. We can only wish these budding doctors luck in the operating room. Narcissistic identity politics has destroyed the serious pursuit of knowledge throughout the humanities and most of the social sdaciences. Students are being given a license for ignorance. All they need to be told about a book is the mel anyone content and gonads of the author to determine whether its repugnant and not worth leading. Shakespeare, plato, and others, students have not the slightest clue about athens, the renaissance or the enlightenment. A columbia undergraduate groused with columbias beleaguered core curriculum, who is this mozart . This heiden . These superior white men . The core, she said, quotes, upholds the premises of White Supremacy and racism. No professor has ever defended our intellectual patrimony without some puling qualification about respecting diversity. Academic identity politics are now rapidly spreading throughout the culture at large. Every nonacademic institution not matter how previously meritocratic, the stem fields. Exhibit a, the cultures descent is the firing of james demore from google in august of 2017. Demore had written a carefully reasoned factbased memo suggesting the average career preferences of males and females may explain why theres not 50 50 gender parity at google and other firms. The language that google used in firing mr. Demore was a direct import from academic victimology. Googles were employees, quote, hurting, he said because demore had dared to challenge the reigning feminine orthodoxy. What followed his firing was scarier. A Regional Branch of the National LaborRelations Board upheld googles action on the same grounds. Mr. Demores memo had made googles employees feel, quote, unsafe at work, according to the nlrb associate general counsel. The memo thus constituted, quote, discrimination and sexual harassment. Consider for a moment what this nlrb ruling means for science. Any evolutionary biologist, psychologist or economist who studies the different risk preferences, and appetite for Competition Among males and females is now at risk of his job. These branches of science could shut down completely, no matter that their findings are true. The thinking that got mr. Demore fired is now the dominant characteristic of our time. It holds that the absence of exact proportional representation of various racial, ethic and sexual groups in any institution is by definition a result of discrimination. To suggest the different groups have different capacities, cultures, skills, and behaviors that explain the lack of proportional representation is not just taboo, it will get you fired. Fired. That was author Heather Mcdonald from to 18. Next as we continue our look at books with racism in america. She exams will it working in entertainment, academia and corporate america. What im not optimistic about is White Americas ability to see past the fiction of africanamericans, of latinx people, of the centuries old demeaning images of people and how that has as much to do with the lack of diversity. Absolutely. Our education system, whats on museum walls, whats in our litter tour. Were in a toxic culture where people of color are concerned, and so, in a lot of ways these diversity initiatives, its like putting lipstick on a pig. Its like youre trying to address something without really addressing the cancer of the culture. You know, were putting, as you say, its a bandaid on a gunshot wound, on a cancer, that you know, we have not even begun to really, really deal with because i know ive been on the faculty at nyu for going on 26 years. I have not seen curricular changes, the way that one would expect. In the 1960s, thats what all of those, you know, College Protests were about, you know, the fax difficult of color, the lack of so that White America could understand its complicity and the continuing inequality and the continuing racial injustice, and until that happens, thats why im not im optimistic that it can be done. Im less optimistic whether theres a will to do it. And the other amazing part of this book that is a little bit separate from the industry is really about these three fields. Academia, journalism and entertainment and what came across to me so strongly that i emailed her at like 11 00, a few nights ago, these are the fields that are representing the world and i thought about the Metoo Movement where what we saw in the last couple of years, the men who were being accused, some of the men, a lot of the men, were in journalism, they were political journalists, telling the story of Hillary Clinton in 2016, charlie rose, and matt lauer and mark halprin, you know, Harvey Weinstein actually gave money to Hillary Clinton so it doesnt follow, but these men are telling us our stories. Right. And the same is true and much worse for people of color because academia, journalism and entertainment have just pushed this. Narrative. Narrative. Its a narrative, right. You know, much of my, would, as you know, because you know me, is concerned with portrayals. Right. Because i think that portrayals, you can draw a Straight Line from these demeani demeaning portrayals to a Trayvon Martin being killed, to the Police Pulling over someone and they end up dead, you know, just innocent people. Last week someone in their home, you know. People in their homes, yeah. People in their homes. So these people think of it oh, its just a show, its just a movie, its just a book. Its like, no, it has real life consequences for a whole race of people, and so, all of my work somehow kind of confronts the implications of media portrayals, portrayals of literature, because they take they have real life devastating consequences of people of color. Right, and theyre lasting. I mean, you know, weve paid attention in the last few years, but i think we should pay more attention to how the slave trade built major universities, especially the ivy league, but not just the ivy league and theres starting to be more attention paid and thats great, but when you think about it, its just like, i dont mean to sound like a naive white person, but you know, the more i think about it, its like that is part of whats going on and you also have all of these academics going back into the 19th and 20th, early 20th not just early, charles murray, you know, almost to the present, but these people embedded in academia who were just about the peddling of white scholarship. Theyll look at a book and look at scholars of color who want to look at that past and connect the dots to where we are and its like move on. What does that have to do with anything. Its like, are you kidding me . Right. It has everything to do with it. It does. When have we disrupted, even the narratives . When have University President s gone before their student faculty body and said, we have been complicit for centuries, the way weve told the story of america, the way weve told the stories of africanamericans. The way weve told the stories of native americans. Who is doing that . Almost no one. I mean, so like it has to start, you know, Everyone Wants this simple solution to this problem. Theres no quick fix. Its what cyrus murray says, they all want driveby diversity, right . They want Something Like really quick. I did an interview early today on bloomberg and its like, maybe five minutes and its like quick, quick, quick, tell us. How do we do it, just write a down. Yeah, yeah. Its not that simple. I mean, now, the American Experience is multilayered, complicated, you know, and people want to look at someone like me and say, well, you made it. Whats your problem . Right. Right. My problem is that i know that many other people who look like me dont get the opportunity. People much brighter, people, you know, better writers, better scholars, better, who didnt get to have the kind of opportunity that ive had and so it hasnt ended. You know, people thought, oh, were postrace, remember . Remember . Oh, yeah. We were just postrace, like two and a half years ago, right . And we were everybody told the times that were postrace, cbs news, probably cnn. [laughter] we were postrace. And now, its like, ooh, ooh, were not post no one is saying that anymore. No, no, were not. Yeah, but we never were. No. And so, like so for every achievement, you know, we want to celebrate and we want to like stick the flag in the ground and say, victory. We won. We won the Civil Rights Movement, its over, you know . We elected barack obama, its over. Its like, no, you know . We had reconstruction, then we had the ku klux klan and we had the black coats and Civil Rights Movement and reagan and the backlash to that. And then we have been in these cycles, you know, forever. Is it two steps forward one step back. Or one step forward and two steps back. I go back and forth on by bad days, just one step. Right. How much do you feel like electing barack obama brought Us Donald Trump . Oh, i feel very strongly that were living in a backlash to barack obama just as we did the backlash to reconstruction. You know, seeing those black governors and senators and congressmen, like people werent having that and thats where you had, you know, the epidemic of mentions and black coats and now were living through something similar to that again and, you know, its america. And youre watching book tv on cspan2 with a look about race in america. Now, here is wall street journal columnist jason riley from our monthly Author Interview program in depth. In december 2019 with his views on the subject. I think there is a tendency to view black history rit large to Clean America as a history of what whites have done to blacks. And i and there are various reasons why various groups want to keep that narrative alive, but in the end i think that black history is about more than that. Yes, racism still exists, i dont know any reasonable person who would argue otherwise and nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in my lifetime. I do think that black history is more of that. To me the question, the more relevant question is, what can be done in the face of whatever racism still exists . What was done in the past by blacks in the face of racism . And i think that that is the relevant story to tell today and thats the message to give to young people today. And my fear is that by perpetuating this notion that its all about victimizization, that its all about racism. Youre sending the wrong message to the next generation. Why try in school if the tests are racist and you send a kid out the door with that sort of message, i dont think youre helping that child. Have you felt the sting of racism . Oh, certainly. Ive experienced racism. Ive been called names. Ive been followed around department stores. Ive been pulled over by police for no reason that i could understand. And you write about that in detail in washington d. C. What happened and where were you . Oh, i was doing an internship back in the early 90s in washington d. C. , and i was interning at usa today and staying with a relative in the area, and i was a i was on the sports desk. So we had to we didnt leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over so it was usually quite late at night back east by then, and i was driving to and from my uncles house where i was staying, and the usa today headquarters, and i had my car, which had new york plates because i was from new york although i was driving in d. C. And i was driving home one evening after work. It was probably early the next morning, probably sometimes after midnight and i heard these sirens blaring and the police pulled me over and ordered me out of the car at gun point and pushed me to the ground faced away from the car and all that and said i fit the description of someone they were after with out of state plates and my car model. What were you thinking . I was terrified. I remember getting back into the car after i left because they were just they seemed to be gone as quickly as they came after they realized that wasnt the right person and then just sitting at in my car shaking. I remember i had a standard and couldnt get it out of gear, my hand was shaking so vigorously, but it was terrifying. A story in washington d. C. Making national headlines, three black men, 16 years old at the time. 36 years ago, convicted of a murder they did not commit. They were just released from jail. What does that tell you about americas criminal Justice System . Thats not perfect. And i think you will find youd be hardpressed to find a black person of my age who hasnt experienced the things that ive experienced. I think the criminal Justice System is certainly an improvement today over what it used to be, over what my grandfather or father experienced in this country, its still not perfect. I would caution against taking these examples and saying they are typical versus exceptions or abberations, or saying that the reason so many blacks are involved with the criminal Justice System is because its a racist system per se. I dont see a lot of evidence for that and i think often times we have discussions abo about, say, the racia