Peter Boghossian: Hiding People From Truth Does Not Protect Them—Academic Institutions, DEI Bureaucracies, and Ideological Capture
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2023
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“It’s a tremendous danger when we have people who run institutions and who have jobs for life in the academies, they’re completely convinced they found the truth, they publish in their own journals, they teach those ‘truths’ to their students, and then they’ve indoctrinated generations of students.”
Peter Boghossian is a former professor of philosophy and co-author of the Sokal Squared hoax papers. These were intentionally false and absurd intellectual papers that were accepted as legitimate in ostensibly prestigious academic journals. In 2021, Boghossian resigned from Portland State University.
“In DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] bureaucracies, we have extraordinarily intolerant people. We have ideologues. They have a set, or a suite of propositions that they forward to the expense of all else,” says Boghossian. “You can either have free speech at a university or you can have DEI bureaucracies. It is literally impossible to have both.”
Today, Boghossian, a champion of the Socratic method, goes around the world, teaching people how to speak across divides and to harness their humility and ability to ask the right questions.
“We know where this problem comes from. It’s the academic institutions,” says Boghossian. “The places from which you graduated are not the same places today.”
We speak about what he calls a “large-scale ideological capture” of institutions, and debate what the best path is moving forward toward genuine diversity of thought and expression.
“To what extent should society tolerate illiberal, radical, intolerant people in the orthodoxies in which they bring to that society? That’s the paradox of tolerance in a nutshell,” says Boghossian.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | is a tremendous danger when we have people who run institutions and who have jobs for life |
| 0:06.9 | in the academies. They're completely convinced they found the truth. They publish in their own |
| 0:12.2 | journals, they teach those quote-unquote truths to their students, and then they've indoctrinated |
| 0:17.2 | generations of students now. Peter Begocian is a former professor of philosophy and co-author |
| 0:23.2 | of the Sokol squared hoax papers. These were intentionally false and absurd intellectual papers |
| 0:29.8 | that were accepted as legitimate and ostensibly prestigious academic journals. In 2021, Begocian |
| 0:36.4 | resigned from Portland State University. You can either have free speech at a university or you |
| 0:41.2 | can have DEI bureaucracies. It is literally impossible to have both. Today, Begocian, a champion |
| 0:47.3 | of the Socratic method, goes around the world, teaching people how to speak across divides, |
| 0:52.3 | and to harness their humility and ability to ask the right questions. We know where this problem |
| 0:58.4 | comes from. It's the academic institutions. The places from which you graduated are not the same |
| 1:03.1 | places today. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kellek. Peter Begocian, such a |
| 1:10.8 | pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. It's good to see you in real life, finally. |
| 1:15.2 | Absolutely. When we spoke last time, it's almost to the day two years ago, and frankly so much has |
| 1:22.9 | happened in the last two years since April 2021. One of the things that you told me was that |
| 1:30.0 | you believed that the educational system has been entirely captured and needs to be rebuilt |
| 1:39.2 | from the ground up. Correct. I'm very curious at this point, there's people out there |
| 1:44.7 | trying to rebuild, trying to facilitate change. There's some significant action in Florida, |
| 1:49.4 | for example. Chris Rufo and DeSantis. Absolutely, and I'm kind of curious if you've rethought |
| 1:54.0 | your position on this at all. Well now we have more evidence for that two years on than we did |
| 2:00.4 | before. So we know that there's large scale ideological capture of the institutions, |
| 2:05.6 | so what one of the things Chris Rufo is doing, and I sincerely hope he's successful, |
... |
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