Reason is worth fighting for. Don't expect that the road will be easy. In the road ahead,

the path won't be sinewy and it won't be dark and it won't be cold. We need to re-center

our commitment to what's true and how to figure out what's true and how to talk to each other

across and divide. And when we get slapped around or when we stumble, we need to pick ourselves

up and keep going because that's the only way forward. There's nothing else at the end of history.

Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill show with me, Brendan O'Neill and my special guest this week,

Peter Bogosian. Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you for welcoming me. I appreciate it.

It's great to have you on. I've wanted you on for a long time. I feel like there's a lot of stuff

we will agree on. There's a lot of issues that you and I share in common, I think.

And I want to dig down into a lot of those things with you. The kind of things you're known for

talking about, the state of the academy, the infiltration of wokeness, the problem of wokeness,

the importance of free civil open discussions in terms of not only stating one's own views,

but possibly trying to change other people's minds. All those kinds of things I want to ask you about

in this podcast, but I guess I'll kick off with a broad question just to get things rolling,

which is about the state of universities. This is something you've written about

and commented on quite a lot. You've experienced some of the sharp edge, I think,

of modern day intolerance on campus. You were a professor of philosopher at Portland State

for a number of years and you resigned citing just a general climate of authoritarianism

or intolerance or not being particularly welcome to critical thinking.

So you have some of that experience, you have some of that knowledge. I just wanted to ask you

how you think things are going now. Do you see any reasons for optimism in the academy?

Is there push back against these problems of shutting down debate

...