Gide, humans.

Welcome to the first installment of the collaboration between the University of Technology, Sydney,

and Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Zeps.

We're calling this permission to think.

And today's guest, the inaugural guest of this series, is Peter Bogosian.

He's an American philosopher.

He teaches about teaching. He teaches about cultural

studies and philosophy. He was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University

for 10 years, and he taught about atheism, critical thinking, scientific skepticism, and most

importantly, the Socratic method, the means of interrogating how we know what's true.

And he's become increasingly concerned about that, about how we interrogate what's true, and how we get persecuted if we ask questions about what's true that run afoul of a new moral orthodoxy.

So he quit.

He quit his job.

He has written a piece called My University's sacrificed ideas for ideology.

So today I quit.

He had been talking out against illiberalism that he felt had

swallowed Portland State University. And the more he spoke out, the more retaliation he faced.

It's an incredible story that has ramifications for free thought, not just in the United States,

not just on university campuses. but for all of us,

if we care about the free exchange of ideas and if we care about liberal democracy.

Please enjoy this conversation with the one and only Peter Bogosian. Peter, thanks so much for being here.

I never thought I would start a conversation by saying,

...