Bloggingheads.tv: The Glenn Show

A quick announcement ... What led Yascha to write about identity ... An intellectual history of “identity synthesis” ... What’s so bad about “strategic essentialism”? ... From postmodernism to post-civil rights ... The three key claims of identity synthesis ... What led up to the summer of 2020? ... The hermetically sealed ideology of Kendi and DiAngelo ... Yascha’s defense of universalism ...

Persia at the turn of the twentieth century ... Woodrow Wilson’s contradictions ... Did Howard Baskerville escape the prejudices of his time? ... How Baskerville got involved in Persia’s democratic revolution ... How Tsar Nicholas II aided the counter-revolution ... The erasure of Baskerville in post-1979 Iran ... The theological origin of the Islamic Republic of Iran ... Reza: Ordinary Iranians actually love American culture ... The internal and external pressures on Iran ... The amorality of foreign policy ...

Why John thinks pro-Hamas sentiment on the American left is racist ... Distinguishing between anti-colonialism and antisemitism ... There are great crimes in America’s past. But we shouldn’t let them define us. ... Glenn: We’re standing on the precipice of something catastrophic ... John’s proposal for the US’s role in Israel’s domestic conflict ... Is it right for people to lose their jobs over opposing Israel? ... Why are pro-Hamas leftists supporting an anti-liberal regime? ... Glenn and John’s responsibilities as teachers ... What’s next on TGS ...

Why John thinks Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was rational ... How small states deal with world powers ... If Russia’s action were rational, were the US’s? ... John: The Ukraine invasion violates international law, but Russia has reason to see it as just ... The risk of escalation ... Zelensky’s expert manipulation of the West ... Is it a coincidence that so many recent presidential scandals involve Ukraine? ... Can tolerant liberals tolerate illiberal societies? ... American Russophobia didn’t cause the war, but it’s not helping ... John: If Putin is overthrown, his replacement will probably be even more brutal ... The foreign policy establishment’s grip on both Democrats and Republicans ...

Introduction by Greg Burnep ... What does affirmative action mean in 2023? ... Randy’s distinction between “disadvantage” and “discrimination” ... Diversity’s double-talk ... Did the Supreme Court say discrimination is allowed at military academies? ... Glenn: Affirmative action distracts us from bigger problems ... Affirmative action is an elite problem ... Affirmative action as an insurance policy ... The stigmatization of affirmative action beneficiaries ... Glenn: Affirmative action has been a net positive, but it’s time to stop ... Q&A: Does historical injustice alone justify affirmative action? ... Q&A: Can and should colleges use loopholes to get around Students for Fair Admissions? ... Q&A: Does the “need” for affirmative action say something race or education? ... Q&A: What is the impact of SFFA beyond the university? ... Q&A: What about class-based affirmative action? ...

What’s wrong with critical race theory, anyway? ... Why “black Columbia” pretends that John doesn’t exist ... CRT’s racial power-grab ... Does the Jewish American example apply to African Americans? ... Disguising failure as victimology ... Why Dan thinks the CRT tide is ebbing ... The schadenfreude of the Ibram X. Kendi scandal ... John: “I’m embarrassed for Boston University” ... Glenn: Kendi is just a cog in the fraudulent antiracist machine ... The shame of the Kendi scandal ...

How Sabby got her start on YouTube ... What happened to the Justice Democrats’ “hostile takeover”? ... Is the US sliding into fascism? ... The tension between race and class on the left ... Donald Trump’s rising popularity among black men ... The military-industrial complex and climate change ... Sabby’s argument for worker co-ops ... Finding (somewhat) common ground on immigration ... Demilitarizing the police is one thing, defunding the police is another ... Sabby: “We should not be giving money to Ukraine” ... How Sabby deals with disrespectful guests ...

Tyler’s concept of “racial gamification” ... Affirmative action in spirit and practice ... Why can’t we just determine admissions based on academic merit alone? ... The fading popularity of “traditional” affirmative action ... Re-weighting and funding the admissions process ... How can we get white “allies” to act normal around black people? ... Can we have interpersonal colorblindness without political colorblindness? ... Tyler’s scholarly work about the end of humanity ... Glenn prepares for his conversation with Sabrina Salvati ...

Biden’s new DEI initiatives ... The disparate uses of disparate impact ... Shep’s new book, The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality ... The problem with claims that education is resegregating ... Are we heading back to the bussing debates of the 1970s? ... Shep’s book, The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education ... Glenn’s “uncle” objects to analogies between trans people and African Americans ... Shep: Banning Critical Race Theory is the wrong strategy ...

Can a white man tell Harriet Tubman’s story? ... What the fall semester has in store for Glenn and John ... How John makes the sausage at the New York Times ... John: We now memorize rap lyrics instead of poetry ... Is wokeness on the wane? ... What John just doesn’t get about Carol Swain ... A Democrat by any other name ... John makes a wild prediction about Trump ...

Why Carol joined Black Voices for Trump ... Why should black people support Trump? ... Carol: Democrats stole the 2020 election ... Does Trump face a credible assassination threat? ... The redefinition of white supremacy ... Deracializing the crime debate ... Carol’s new book, The Adversity of Diversity: How Real Training Can Promote Healing in a Post-Affirmative Action World ... Glenn: Affirmative action is one thing, DEI is another ... Clarence Thomas v. Ketanji Brown Jackson ... What affirmative action did right ...

A sixteen-year-long conversation ... Race and socioeconomics on the cusp of the Obama Era ... The myth of black poverty and deindustrialization ... Glenn pulls rank ... Why Glenn changed his mind about the Manhattan Institute ... Is the think tank world any more “objective” than academia? ...

Haim’s history with The Glenn Show ... How Haim ended up fighting in Ukraine ... The legionnaire’s lingua franca ... Haim’s riposte to Cornel West on Ukraine ... A pen in one hand and a gun in the other ... Haim: Ukraine’s sovereignty and national identity must be respected ... Is the two-state solution dead? ...

The protestant ethic and the spirit of wokeness ... Is comparing wokeness to religion a slander on religion? ... Ian: Wokeness is a distraction from real political problems ... How Ian experienced his own cancelation ... America’s exportation of wokeness ... Has wokeness aided and abetted Trump and Brexit? ... John: Enslaved people did find ways to improve their own lives ...

How Jay’s position on affirmative action changed ... Jay: I can’t see the virtue in affirmative action as it’s practiced ... Why did so many Asian students defend policies that discriminated against Asians? ... The hidden cultural argument in the California Mathematics Framework ... Is the “people of color coalition” coming apart? ... Why so little outrage over the SCOTUS affirmative action decision? ... When students internalize artificial trauma narratives ... America can’t economically decouple itself from China. Will anti-China rhetoric wane? ... What will and won’t change in the wake of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ... Isn’t there some value to diversity in education? ...

Peter’s role in the Supreme Court affirmative action case ... Are legacy admissions affirmative action by another name? ... Why Peter got interested in affirmative action ... Glenn was for affirmative action before he was against it ... Peter: Universities are not honest about admissions ... The brilliance of Roland Fryer ... Campus diversity after affirmative action ...

How Matt first encountered Christopher Hitchens ... Matt’s new book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment ... Why Matt thinks Cornel West’s Vietnam-Afghanistan analogy is flawed ... What’s worth preserving in the left-liberal tradition? ... Matt: Identity politics is a “toxin” ... Was affirmative action ever necessary? ... Matt: I wish the left would rediscover Hitchens’s universalism ... Hitchens’s “fearless liberalism” ...

John: Let’s be honest about what “taking race into account” means in affirmative action ... Glenn: How can anyone argue that race-based affirmative action doesn’t violate the 14th Amendment? ... Why are we so focused on elite institutions? ... John: The University of California works just fine without “racial preferences” ... “You’re pulling the ladder up behind you” is an invalid critique ... John: The fact that racism exists does not justify changing standards ... Why Roland Fryer thinks we should put our money where our mouth is on race and education ... Will the post-Students for Fair Admissions future turn into a Hardship Olympics? ...

The problem with scientific consensus ... Why Jay and his colleagues were branded “fringe epidemiologists” ... Jay: We need to engage with everyone—even those with mistaken beliefs ... Persuading science skeptics ... How do we stop COVID overreach from happening again? ... Jay: Gain-of-function research is impossible to do safely ... Are some ideas too dangerous to test? ... Jay: Fauci’s blunder was so catastrophic that only history can judge him ...

Why Cornel is running for president ... How Cornel links American militarism abroad and inequality at home ... Cornel’s pitch to skeptical right-of-center voters ... Is there tension between Cornel’s commitment to stopping climate change and his commitment to helping the working class? ... The moral potential and pitfalls of capitalism ... Might Cornel inadvertently hand the election to the Republicans? ... Cornel: Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas are wrong, but they’re sincere ... Why Cornel thinks the US is partially culpable for the Ukraine War ... Should Palestinians recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel? ... Cornel’s ideas about the US border ...