The Collapse of Open Inquiry: Sacred Victims and Forbidden Questions

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Natural Sciences, Science

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Open inquiry depends on the ability to ask uncomfortable questions and follow evidence wherever it leads. Eric Kaufmann argues that this norm is now under strain.

Drawing on history, survey data, and political theory, Kaufmann outlines how certain identity categories came to be treated as morally sacred—and how that shift has reshaped debates about equality, free speech, and academic inquiry. The conversation examines the long roots of today's culture conflicts, the move from equal opportunity to equal outcomes, and why disagreement is increasingly interpreted as moral transgression rather than intellectual difference.

At stake is what happens to liberal societies when some questions can no longer be asked, nd whether open inquiry can still be defended without abandoning concern for fairness and dignity

Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham. He has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Newsweek, National Review, New Statesman, Financial Times, and other outlets. His new book is The Third Awokening.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I need to define what I mean by woke, which is actually something quite discreet, which is the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups. That's woke. I don't think making a group sacred is a good idea. What we are facing now is a problem of political discrimination. People in filter bubbles who don't ever encounter the other opinion. Now, where are those filter bubbles
0:21.6	most extreme now? I think I would argue that highly educated liberals live in some of the most
0:27.3	politically homogenous environments. Here in Burton, we've had, you know, there was a woman who was a
0:31.9	mother, a young mother who got, has been thrown in jail for 31 months for a tweet, which she later
0:36.8	deleted and apologized for.
0:38.5	Am I a denier? Am I a genocide denier? I mean, Canada is the place that's lost its mind the most on this.
0:44.9	There was this claim, oh, there's 215 indigenous children buried in the graveyard in this school,
0:52.1	this mass grave. Somebody claimed through some ground penetrating radar to have seen these disturbances or whatever. The long and the short of it is, there are no bodies there. There were no parents looking for missing kids at the school, which you might have expected if they kind of went missing. This thing's basically like a Pizza Gate-level hoax, but this is a hoax that has been endorsed by all the major
1:11.1	political parties, all the mainstream media, except for the right wing paper called The National
1:16.7	Post.
1:21.6	All right, everybody, it's Michael Shermer, and it's time for another episode of the Michael
1:25.5	Shermer show. My guest today is Eric Kaufman.
1:28.9	He's a professor of politics and director of the Center for Heterodox Social Science, as opposed to what?
1:36.3	Well, we'll find out at the University of Buckingham in England.
1:39.9	He's also adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City.
1:44.4	He's written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Newsweek, National Review, News Statesman, Financial Times, and other outlets.
1:51.8	He's the author of many books including White Shift, Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities in 2018.
2:01.0	Shall the religious inherit the earth in 2010?
2:04.2	I'm going to say no.
2:06.2	I haven't read that book, so we'll see.
2:08.6	The Orange Order in 2007, I have no idea what that's about.
2:11.9	Maybe we'll find out.
	...

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