I'm old enough to remember a time when you went to university expecting greater freedom of speech

and freedom of thought than anywhere else. But the exact opposite is now true. You will be able

to speak more freely in your local diner than on the

major campus nearest to you. In this decade we may experience a true crack-up in higher education.

There have been comparable crack-ups on American college campuses in the past.

In the 1960s, for example, or the political correctness movement in the 1980s and early 90s.

But our guest today, historian Neil Ferguson, believes what's happening now is on a whole other

level.

I tend to agree. But Neil is doing something about it. He's

starting a new university because Neil argues that parents who had enriching and

intellectually diverse experiences when they went to college don't fully appreciate the extent to which what their own children are about to experience is completely different.

We'll talk about all of this with Neil in part two of our call me back conversation with him.

Just to refresh from last week's episode, Neil has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and NYU.

He's authored 17 books. He's currently at the Hoover Institute at

Stanford University where he is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow and he's

founder and CEO of GreenMantle at a geopolitical risk and applied history advisory firm.

We'll pick right up where we left off with Neil last week, so the conversation will open

a little abruptly. Neil Ferguson and the Great American College Crackup.

Let's get to it.

This is Call me back.

I want to switch gears to the state of universities in the United States which is a

topic you have been quite not just prolific on but quite active on,

...