Half Hour of Heterodoxy

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Episode 19: Frank Lechner, Symmetric Polarization or Republican Radicalism? Feb 08, 2018

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Show Notes Frank Lechner is a professor of sociology at Emory University. He did his undergraduate work in sociology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and then moved to the U.S. for his PhD. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes—his most recent book is The American Exception, a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including religion, law, sports, and media. I invited him to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I published about asymmetric polarization. We also discussed a first-year seminar on conservatism that Frank taught in 2016. To my knowledge, that’s the first seminar of its kind at Emory. Selected Quote I appreciate your comment about my “nonpartisan” teaching because in my day to day life, I try to depoliticize the work that I do. I don’t put my own views forward in a very strong manner. I prefer to create a space in which students can analyze arguments and evidence as honestly and as seriously as possible and to provide them with the tools and if necessary play the Devil’s advocate for whatever side needs my support and my articulation. And I think in my actual teaching I don’t take a strong political posture. More generally, I occasionally I speak up on political issues, issues on campus so people are aware I have perhaps a slightly deviant point of view, a point of view that deviates from the orthodoxy that reigns on most college campuses. But at the same time, I don’t fight any Quixotic battles against the dominant culture. Transcript This is a professional transcript but it contains some errors. Please do not quote it without verification. Chris Martin: I’m Chris Martin and this is Half Hour of Heterodoxy. This show is produced by Heterodox Academy. You can find out more about us at heterodoxacademy.org. You can also find us on Facebook under Heterodox Academy and on Twitter @hdxacademy. My guest today is Frank Lechner. Frank is a professor of sociology at Emory University, which is where I recently finished my PhD. I took a theory course with Frank during my second year and I was very impressed with his mastery of classical, sociological theories. And Frank is known more broadly within the sociology community for his work on globalization. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes. His most recent book is The American Exception. It’s a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including politics, religion, law, sports and the media. I invited Frank to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I published about asymmetric polarization in America. We also discussed the first year seminar on conservatism that Frank taught in 2016. To my knowledge that’s the first seminar of its kind at Emory. The essay about asymmetric polarization that we discuss is one that I published in late 2016. Frank disagreed with many points in the essay, which is why I invited him to the show. The essay is entitled To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election. I was teaching a class on the sociology of happiness at the time and I wrote this essay to expand on what I said to my class. I published this essay on Medium and Lee Jussim published a copy of it on his blog so you may have read it on one of those places. If you haven’t read it, you can find it online by searching for “To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election.” Now, the essay doesn’t exactly represent what I said to my class.

Episode 18: Jennifer Earl, Internet Activism and Fake News Jan 21, 2018

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Show Notes Jennifer Earl is professor of sociology and a professor of government and public policy at the university of Arizona. Her research focuses on Internet and social movements, social movement repression, and the sociology of law. She is the 2017 winner of the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award, awarded by the communication, information technologies, and media sociology section of the American Sociological Association. I invited her to the podcast to talk about the use of the internet by political activists. When I say Internet, I don’t just mean social media. Social media gets a lot of attention, especially when people talk about polarization, but the internet is more than just Twitter and Facebook, and I think people sometime misunderstand how the internet is being used by political activists. I also wanted to talk to her about how the internet can be used to deceive people, and how people can become discerning consumers of web content. Selected Quotes One should treat information on the Web with more criticism than we often treat it. So I think a practice that I try to use is that if I read something that I’m surprised about, many people will then try to Google a confirmation of that. So they’ll read “X happened,” and then they’ll google “Did X Happen?” Or they’ll just google “X” and see what comes up. But I would recommend that you try you consider falsification too, just like in social science so that you also try to search for negative evidence like this didn’t happen. So you might Google “X isn’t true” or “X is a myth.” Now certainly sometimes that’s going to get you to places where… Well, probably X was true. So, one of the things about holocaust denial is that holocaust denial plays on that kind of format of question (”X is a myth”) to bring people into holocaust denial websites. So I’m not saying that you should trust falsification on the web 100 percent of the time either, but I think you should have a healthy skepticism about what you read even if it’s sent to you by someone you trust because you don’t know their vetting procedure. Transcript This transcription was done by a professional but it may contain a few errors. Please listen to the podcast episode before quoting this transcript. Transcript Chris Martin: My guess today is Jennifer Earl and she’s a professor of sociology and a professor of government and public policy at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on internet and social movements, social movement repression and the sociology of law. And she’s the 2017 winner of the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award, which is awarded by Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. I invited her to the podcast to talk about the use of the internet by political activists. And when I say internet, I don’t just mean social media. Social media gets a lot of attention especially when people are talking about polarization, but the internet is much broader than that. And I think sometimes people misunderstand based on the writings of some popular authors how the internet is actually being used. I also wanted to talk to her about how the internet can be used to deceive people and how people can become more discerning users of web content. So here is Jennifer Earl. Welcome to the show. Jennifer Earl: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Chris Martin: I wanted to start by talking about your 2011 book, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. You co-authored that with Katrina Kimport. Can you tell us a little bit about that book? Jennifer Earl: Certainly.

John McWhorter on Politics and Protest Dec 14, 2017

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John McWhorter: Transcript of an interview

Cristine Legare on Teaching Techniques: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #16 Nov 13, 2017

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Show Notes Cristine Legare is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas-Austin and she’s on the executive board of Heterodox Academy. She is the winner of the APS Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. In this episode, I talk to her about two teaching issues: how to teach a politically and religiously diverse student body, and how to approach controversial issues. You can learn more about Cristine Legare at www.cristinelegare.com. Selected Quotes “There are a lot of different things I would recommend. One is to set the stage within a class to accommodate lots of different perspectives. A student should have exposure to a great variety of different perspectives. And often students aren’t aware that there are many, many different ways to view or reason about a particular topic. So I think the first step is educating students that there are, in fact, lots of different ways of approaching a topic—that there are a lot of different opinions about topics and different values concerning topics. I think setting that stage is very important.” Previous Episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy Music: "Ave Marimba" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Alice Dreger on How Branding Stifles Academic Freedom: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #15 Oct 30, 2017

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Half Hour of Heterodoxy is now an audio-only podcast. We suggest that you subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or any other app of your choice, or listen using the audio player in the blog post. Show Notes Alice Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a sex researcher, and an advocate of academic freedom. She is the author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. In this episode, I talk to her about why she blames university brand management, and the corporatization of academia more broadly, for the policing of research, which has now become common in academic life. We talk about how the increasing reliance on external research funding has spurred attention to university brand management, and Alice also presents her recommendations for what to do if you are caught up in an academic controversy. Alice Dreger's Webpage Alice Dreger on Twitter Alice Dreger's keynote address on academic freedom at FIRE's 2017 faculty conference Selected Quotes 1 "I went to my [Northwestern] university provost and said, 'Admit that this was censorship and say that you won’t do it again.' He would not do that. And It seemed that he was legitimately afraid at that point of the [university] hospital corporation, which I found deeply concerning. And that’s why I finally did just resign. You can’t have any integrity if you have a major book out on academic freedom telling people to stand up for their academic rights and you’re allowing your university dean to tell you what you can and can’t publish." 2 "One thing I recommend to people, the minute they start to get into trouble with academic freedom, is that they contact FIRE because it’s one of the few organizations out there that will defend you for free and will do so vigorously. And universities do care about their FIRE rating. They really do care about It. So it matters." Previous Episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy Music: "Ave Marimba" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Arthur Sakamoto on Paradigms in Sociology: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #14 Oct 10, 2017

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Half Hour of Heterodoxy is now an audio-only podcast. We'll still upload episodes to Youtube if you'd prefer to get them there, but we suggest that you subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or any other app of your choice,

Glenn Loury on Faculty and Administrators: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #13 Sep 27, 2017

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Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He has taught previously at Boston, Harvard and Northwestern Universities, and the University of Michigan. He hosts the Glenn Show at Bloggingheads.tv, where he has talked to John McWhorter, Rob Montz, Amy Wax, and others about campus politics and the censorship of unorthodox views. 0:00 Intro; NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly at Brown, and the aftermath 9:36 Faculty appreciate the gravity of the problem 14:00 “Prof. Loury, don’t you know the word is out on you?” 20:06 Brown’s allocation of $100 mil for diversity/inclusion 25:20 Are initiatives evidence-based? 33:20 Must people of color be mentored by other people of color? Related Links The Glenn Show Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of “Political Correctness” and Related Phenomena, a 1994 article by Glenn Loury An Ivy League professor on what the campus conversation on race gets wrong Selected Quote "There is an awareness of the concerns that Heterodox Academy devotees would think foremost about, which is that we allow differences of opinion to be expressed. It’s vitally important that we do so. There is an appreciation of that point of view here in the administration. I think of my friend, the long time provost of the university.… I’ve gotten to know him very well, and I’ve had extended conversations with him about these matters because we’re friends, and I’ve expressed my concerns. He’s got a difficult problem in balancing the various equities that are concerned. I’m not talking splitting the difference on free speech issues. I’m talking about managing a large organization with a lot of different moving parts and varied interests. He has instituted very self-consciously a lecture series bringing controversial speakers to campus…. It’s not a one-dimensional thing like free speech is dying at Brown." Other Episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy

Jonathan Haidt on Heterodox Academy’s 2nd Anniversary: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #12 Sep 21, 2017

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Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) is a co-founder and executive director of Heterodox Academy. He is a professor of business ethics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and has written The Happiness Hypothesis: Findi...

Norm Ornstein on US Politics, Partisanship & Tribalism: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #11 Sep 15, 2017

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Norm Ornstein (@NormOrnstein), is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has written and co-written a number of books about gridlock and partisanship in the American political system including The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (1995), The Broken Branch (2006), and It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (2012). 0:00 What students should know about US politics 4:34 How the parties have realigned 13:00 And how they’re continuing to realign 15:05 We’ve moved from partisanship to tribalism…Newt Ginrich 18:44 Evaluating Democrat leadership in the 60s and 70s 20:55 Norm’s new book, “One Nation After Trump” 24:00 The Dunkirk analogy 28:10 Critiques of Norm from conservatives About Norm Ornstein Norm Ornstein’s American Enterprise Institute page: https://www.aei.org/scholar/norman-j-ornstein/ Articles by Norm Ornstein at The Atlantic It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism, with Thomas Mann One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported, with Thomas Mann and E. J. Dionne Selected Quotes “What I really wanted to emphasize, especially with It’s Even Worse Than It Looks was that we’ve moved from partisanship to tribalism. And there’s a real difference. You can be a strong partisan—view people on the other side of the aisle as worthy adversaries. And that’s partisanship. If you view people on the other side as evil and trying to destroy your way of life, and the enemy, that’s tribalism.” Other Episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy

Scott Lilienfeld on Microaggressions, and The Goldwater Rule: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #10 Sep 05, 2017

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Scott Lilienfeld is professor of psychology at Emory University. Here, he talks about his 2016 article evaluating the psychological literature on microaggressions and his 2017 article about revoking the Goldwater rule. Scott is an Association for Psychological Science fellow, and he has published numerous studies in personality psychology, social psychology, political psychology, and clinical psychology. He also has an interest in debunking popular myths. His popular books include Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience and 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Timeline: 1:06 The history behind Scott’s micro-aggressions critique 7:01 Two big weaknesses in research studies 15:23 Real-world implications 20:05 Reactions to the article 26:05 The Goldwater Rule, and revoking it in 2017 You can learn more Scott Lilienfeld at his website. A gated copy of his paper on micro-aggressions, entitled “Microaggressions: Strong claims, inadequate evidence” is here. And it is summarized in this blog post by Musa Al-Gharbi. His paper on the Goldwater is here. Selected Quote: “One big criticism concerns the nature of the construct of micro-aggressions itself. Do we understand what it is? And one of the points I raise is that even though there’s something there, it’s so vague and so nebulous, it could, in principle, include almost anything that could offend almost anyone. And I think that’s part of the problem. It lends itself to too much abuse, too much misunderstanding.“ Other episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy.

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