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The Michael Shermer Show

129. Mona Sue Weissmark — The Science of Diversity

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4921 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2020

⏱️ 118 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Science of Diversity uses a multidisciplinary approach to excavate the theories, principles, and paradigms that illuminate our understanding of the issues surrounding human diversity, social equality, and justice. The book brings these to the surface holistically, examining diversity at the individual, interpersonal, and international levels. Shedding light on why diversity programs fail, the book provides tools to understand how biases develop and influence our relationships and interactions with others. Shermer and Weissmark also discuss:

  • What is diversity and how do we understand it?
  • How is diversity related to people’s perceptions of fairness and justice?
  • Does respect for diversity promote peace and positive change?
  • psychology and neuroscience of classification/stereotyping,
  • Freudianism to behaviorism to cognitive science to post-cognitive science,
  • the self, consciousness, ai, and free will in the context of a science of diversity,
  • revenge and justice,
  • Israel and Palestine,
  • nationalism: ethnic and civic,
  • just-world theory of inequality,
  • intergenerational justice and reparations,
  • BLM and reparations, and
  • the future after 2020.

Mona Sue Weissmark is an American clinical psychologist and social psychologist, researcher, and author whose work on diversity and justice has received global recognition. She is best known for her groundbreaking social experiment of bringing children of Holocaust survivors face-to-face with children of Nazis, and later, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of African American slaves with descendants of slave owners. She is also a professor of psychology and author of numerous journal articles and the books: Doing Psychotherapy Effectively (University of Chicago Press); Justice Matters: Legacies of the Holocaust and World War II (Oxford University Press); The Science of Diversity (Oxford University Press).

Transcript

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0:00.0

Before I introduce today's guest I want to tell you about our sponsor of our podcast

0:04.4

The Great Courses Plus this is the teaching companies the great courses which I've been listening to for

0:10.0

Decades they have thousands of professionally produced college

0:13.2

college professors the best in the country and they've introduced a

0:19.6

app for your phone it's the Great Courses Plus.com and so you just touch the

0:26.1

app and you open up the course you want to listen to the one I just started this

0:29.4

week is on understanding the Old Testament by Professor Robert D. Miller the second.

0:37.0

So just to give you an idea of how it works, you just touch on the lecture you want to listen to.

0:42.3

Number one is the Old Testament is literature.

0:44.2

Number two is the Genesis creation story.

0:46.9

I'm right now on chapter three,

0:49.3

what God intended for Adam and Eve.

0:52.1

Oh boy, this should be interesting. In any case, this is great because you can skip around if I find one of the lectures boring. I just skip to the next one. You can do it on audio or video and all from your phone. It's a terrific way to consume content,

1:06.2

particularly during social isolation. During the pandemic, it's a great way to become an auto-dideact.

1:12.3

So if you want to know more you can if you sign up through my

1:16.0

podcast then you get a free trial so go to the Great Courses Plus.com slash salon.

1:24.9

That's the Great Courses Plus.com slash salon.

1:28.6

And you get a free trial with free access

1:31.1

to the entire library of all these hundreds and hundreds of courses and thousands of lectures.

1:36.1

So with that, I'll introduce my next guest.

1:40.0

My guest this week is Mona Sue Weismarck and to discuss her new book, The Science of Diversity.

1:48.0

Mona is an American clinical psychologist and social psychologist researcher and author whose work on diversity and justice has received

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