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The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Yascha Mounk: Avoiding The Identity Trap

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

News, Politics

4.6713 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Johns Hopkins professor Yascha Mounk, the founder of the online magazine Persuasion and the author of…

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the reason interview with Nicholaspe. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is sponsored by Better Help Online Therapy. That's Better Help, H-E-L-P. More on them later in the show.

0:15.6

My guest today is Johns Hopkins Professor Yasha Monk, the founder of the online magazine Persuasion,

0:22.8

and the author of the important new book, The Identity Trap, a story of ideas and power in our time.

0:30.1

The Identity Trap explains how identity politics and social justice discourse have come to

0:36.0

dominate contemporary discussions of just about everything.

0:40.3

It also analyzes their negative influence on society and suggests how to confront and defeat them in the name of liberal values like free expression and open inquiry.

0:51.3

Yahshua was the prime mover behind the 2020 open letter on justice and open debate

0:56.8

in Harper's magazine, and he's one of the best defenders of free speech and the marketplace of

1:01.9

ideas at work today. This interview took place at the reason speakeasy, a live, unscripted

1:08.3

conversation with outspoken defenders of free speech and heterodox thinking.

1:13.2

The speakeasy takes place monthly in New York City, so if you're in the area and you're

1:18.1

interested, go to reason.com slash events for information on coming events. Here is the reason

1:25.5

interview with Yasha Monk. Yesha Monk, thanks for coming out, and let's start.

1:31.3

Give me the elevator pitch of the identity trap.

1:35.3

Well, the elevator pitch is that, you know, there's a new set of ideas about race, gender, and sexual orientation

1:43.3

that has become really influential over the last

1:46.7

decade.

1:48.2

And in the public debate about it, I think there's this weird tension where on the right

1:54.7

they're sometimes attacked as destroying everything that's good and holy.

2:00.0

And sometimes people invoke terms like vocal critical race theory to talk about sensible things,

2:05.4

like recognizing that there's still discrimination and sexism and racism in our society

2:09.7

or wanting to teach kids about the history of injustices in the United States like slavery.

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