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In this episode of Heterodox Out Loud, John Tomasi speaks with Eric Kaufmann. Eric is a Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham. He is the author of several books, including Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. His research interests include political demography, nationalism, and ethnicity.

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Eric Kaufmann, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Eric Kaufmann: Thanks, John. It's a delight to be here.

John Tomasi: And so you came into the city, into New York, what did you say, just this week, a few days ago?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, a few days ago. Yeah. And, you know, I've been fairly busy, but I really enjoyed the Heterodox Academy event last night. And here we are.

John Tomasi: Thank you. And just for our listeners, last night, we had the opening of the Center for Academic Pluralism. I'm here at HXA, and Eric joined us, among others. It was a really lovely evening. So let's get into our conversation.

Eric Kaufmann: Sounds good.

John Tomasi: And we're going to be talking about university reform, of which you're obviously a leading expert. And I just want to start with something you wrote in the Wall Street Journal piece a couple of years ago. And I'll just read, I'll read your line. Quote, Unless reforms come from outside the academy, universities will continue to be monocultures in which conservative ideas are not given a fair hearing. Close quote. Tell us more about that view.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, I mean, that sort of came on the tail end of a sort of larger set of survey-based research that I did. And that was part of a CSPI report on academic freedom.

John Tomasi: That's what CSPI is.

Eric Kaufmann: So that's the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. It's a small kind of California-based think tank. And it was sort of a, it was 150-page report looking at trends in the US, UK, and Canada based on surveys of faculty and graduate students using various different methods, some of which had, you know, very complete sample sizes, some of which were more opt-in surveys. But they all sort of told the same story, which is that the level of self-censorship is very high, especially amongst those who are conservatives. So it was in the range of 70% of academics in the United States who lean right said that they self-censored in some, at least some aspect of teaching, research, or discussion.

John Tomasi: 70% who lean right.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah.

John Tomasi: But that's a small percentage, isn't it?

Eric Kaufmann: It's a small percentage. And this was mainly a social scientist survey. So we, I mean, it would be something on the order of 5%. In the UK, it would be pushing 10%, let's say.

John Tomasi: So it's a small minority, but it's just interesting that consistently that- But let me, I'm sorry, let me, I captured that point. So in the UK, there are substantial, maybe twice as many conservative people who identify as conservative, as we now say, as in the US.

Eric Kaufmann: I'm not sure whether it's twice as large. I think it would be maybe 50% higher. But there's a certain amount of noise in the data. We can't be 100% sure on that.

John Tomasi: Okay, thank you.

Eric Kaufmann: I mean, there isn't big, there's not a huge difference between the US, UK, and Canada in these numbers.

John Tomasi: Right.

Eric Kaufmann: Maybe slightly higher in Britain's, yeah.

John Tomasi: Right. Okay, but I'm sorry.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah. No, and actually some surveys would suggest in continental Europe, it's even slightly higher. There's slightly more conservatives in the social sciences, but- Are they royalists? Monarchists, yeah.

John Tomasi: Run that out.

Eric Kaufmann: Oh, yeah, exactly. They want to get rid of democracy. No, but yeah, so in that context, right, and the other thing really was, you know, there were questions around willingness to hire. So, for example, a third of British academics we polled would not hire a known supporter of the Brexit side in the- Wow. Which is the side that won the referendum in 2016.

John Tomasi: Regardless of the quality of the research, regardless of the person's prestige, regardless of what they would bring to the graduate program.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, this was not, I mean, the question was more simply, would you hire a known Brexit supporter for a job?

John Tomasi: Right.

Eric Kaufmann: And in the US case, say, a known Trump supporter, about 40% wouldn't hire a known Trump supporter for a job. Interestingly, in Canada, that number's 45%. So, in Canada, I mean, the US politics is obviously, is all over the news in Canada, and 45% of Canadian academics wouldn't hire a known Trump supporter for a job.

John Tomasi: But it's still striking because when they answer that question, no, I wouldn't, they're saying that that political consideration would override, in fact, all these professional obligations that they have, solemn obligations, perhaps legal obligations imposed on them by their university to be arbiters of excellence in academic things. And they know that, faculty positions are not theirs to give out, they're entrusted by their universities, professors are, to make these decisions based on excellence. And yet they report on a quiet, in the quiet of a survey, I wouldn't, I would abandon all that if the person supported Donald Trump.

Eric Kaufmann: Right, no, I should, I should, I should, yeah, I should qualify this as saying the, the, the actual, there were two, there was a sort of technique I used there called a list experiment. So, in the straight up question, it was maybe 27, roughly, in the US case, about 25, 27% who said they wouldn't, who openly said they wouldn't hire. But on this list experiment technique, which I don't have time to go into, it allows you to get it revealed discrimination. And so, it was more, it was 40% on the revealed test. And then in Britain, only 10% would openly admit that they'd discriminate. But in a sort of revealed on the list experiment, it was 30, 33 or 30. So, yeah, I think that, so there is, some people are sheepish about it, but they would essentially discriminate. Now, there have been a whole series of other papers that have been done. Jonathan Haidt, of course, has done work on this as well, in terms of not being willing to, you know, accept a right-leaning paper, promotion application. So, since 2012, we've had a number of studies.

John Tomasi: So, the bottom line, then, is how do you then get at that kind of a culture, right, that is leading to viewpoint discrimination and leading to chilling effects and self-censorship? And we've had a kind of history in Donald Downs' book. I mean, he talks about that, you know, at Wisconsin, they had a few golden years where they got a consensus around this idea of free speech being important as an important value. But then it breaks away. And Donald Downs, I just want to mention, and I'm sure our listeners know, is a real champion of free speech. Donald and I served together on the Princeton Principles Commission just a couple months ago. And he's a really remarkable person. So, he described there having been a brief golden age at Wisconsin, and then it went away.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, yeah, I think that's – it seems like when the stars align and you can sometimes get consensus between, you know, the leadership and a certain group of unusually active academics, then you can maybe get some free speech for a while to take root. But then it ultimately can't last. And I guess that's kind of maybe been the lesson even on the free speech code front, that you can get sporadic successes, but systematically you're going to lose. And that's maybe why I don't believe the universities can reform themselves from within. I think it's got, therefore, to come from government from without. And that's kind of, I guess, the debate, right? I think it's very important to have, you know, AFA and Heterodox Academy others pushing, you know, for reform, trying to persuade. You need persuasion because ultimately you can get the best legislation in the world, but if you lose the culture, then it's not going to matter anyway. So, you need both.

John Tomasi: That's what I – But let me separate a couple different things. So, I asked you, reading your own quotation, you say that universities need to – reforms need to come from the outside.

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: But I sort of see a variety of different buckets or, if you like, agents from the outside who seek to bring reform or we might – or we might say different agencies we might – whose help we might seek. So, there is the one you mentioned, there's government. There are also groups that present legal – external legal pressures on universities. I think of FIRE being that – the AFA also is that – AFA describes itself – I'm a member of all these groups.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: But AFA describes itself as NATO for professors. One professor is attacked. All the professors see that attack on them and they bind together to protect. But again, it's from the outside protecting the attack. There are investigative outsiders. There are groups like the College Fix. I think increasingly, the National Association for Scholars, which I'm also a member, doing this investigative reports, is kind of taking an outsider approach, revealing the things going on. There's also, from the outside, I suppose, donors, alums who can cut their giving, for example. So, that's a whole range of – I listed four. Legislative, let's call it. Legal, let's call it. Investigative and perhaps financial. Those are all outside forces. Do you see – how do you – when you survey that range of external agents, which ones do you think are – can help with this cultural problem?

Eric Kaufmann: Well, I think they're all important.

John Tomasi: Am I missing one? Are there others?

Eric Kaufmann: Well, there are others in other countries like the Free Speech Union in Britain is doing a fantastic job. It's not just dealing with academics, but it deals with a lot of academics under pressure.

John Tomasi: Tell us more about that.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, it was set up a number of years ago by Toby Young. They provide legal advice, advice on how to crowdfund for legal cases.

John Tomasi: Interesting.

Eric Kaufmann: They work with the press. They work with legislators. So, there's – they're now – they just recently have worked on the – oh, God, the online – there basically was an online harms bill, which threatened to be relatively draconian in terms of penalties for online speech. And so, they'll be involved in those fights to water down some of the nebulous provisions around hate speech and misinformation that are sometimes sort of drafted into these laws.

John Tomasi: And are they focused on universities specifically? They're sort of like the ACLU of old in the U.S., I suppose.

Eric Kaufmann: Kind of, yeah. I think they're kind of fulfilling a FIRE-like function within Britain. But they're very new. They don't have the sort of history that FIRE does. But, yeah, so these are all very important. You know, you might say, well, why do you need government if you've got, you know, good backup and people know about that? And I agree that Free Speech Union and FIRE and Heterodox Academy – I mean, they're all absolutely critical and more and more academics know about them. But – and there's always a but, right? There is this phrase, the process is the punishment, which means that – The process is the punishment. Yeah. And that means that even if ultimately you get off the hook, the uncertainty – you might be suspended, that you don't know what's going to happen. For sure, it's very unsettling psychologically. Now, I do think FIRE and FSU make a huge difference psychologically. So, they are also making a big difference. But you can make the argument, I think, that because of the cost involved, the time involved in going the legal route, that in a way, if we want to deal with the chilling effects, we need something more proactive than just a reactive, oh, I got sued, I'm going to contact FIRE or FSU. You know, it's – I just think that if you have a – you know, something like in the UK case where there's a dedicated office to protecting and promoting freedom of speech, then it's a real-time process where, you know, universities can't try it on. Because they can play a whack-a-mole game where they sort of throw it out, you know, get you investigated, haul you through a bunch of tribunals and then back off. And that sets an example and it chills other behavior. So, part of the reason I don't think it's sufficient just to have the legal remedies is – or sort of union-style defense reactive mechanisms is that it doesn't actually address proactively this issue of the process being the punishment.

John Tomasi: Good, good. So, I want to talk about the UK situation, which is just fascinating, but let's hold that off for a couple more minutes. Still just thinking about the groups, the approaches I just mentioned. You know, I think of HXA as playing a different role than the groups I mentioned. I think HXA is perhaps uniquely positioned to play an insider role. But let's – we'll save that until a little bit later, too. Still, again, thinking about outside agents coming in. There's a – I think you know John Ellis, who is an emeritus professor of German literature at UC Santa Cruz. And I think the – I think the California chapter president of the National Association of Scholars. Anyway, he's a person whose work I find really interesting. He's, you know, kind of like the skeptical – I'll gently call him the skeptical conservative.

Eric Kaufmann: Right. He's actually a little more than – he's a little more prickly than skeptical.

John Tomasi: But John Ellis writes that – I'll paraphrase. He says that the university cannot be saved, cannot be saved, period, because the problem is with personnel. Or at least it can't be saved in any foreseeable timeline without a dramatic change of personnel. What do you make of that idea that – you know, we mentioned before that the percentages of professors who see the world from a set of, say, let's call them conservative premises, as opposed to the people who see the world from a set of, let's call them progressive premises, is minuscule. So the personnel differential is huge. And John Ellis does a really nice job of, among other people, sketching that out. So he thinks the problem is personnel. If the problem is personnel, how can an external agent affect that? Or is there a problem with personnel?

Eric Kaufmann: I think he's right. I mean, Ellis' book, The Breakdown of Higher Education, is a fantastic book. And I actually think there's a lot of truth in what he says. Now, what I would – I've learned so much from him. What I think is that, you know, you've got two processes. One is institutional punishment, top-down institutional sanctions. The other thing you have is this peer-to-peer, you know, what we might call a horizontal peer pressure, ostracism and so on, which extends to, you know, not publishing you, not promoting you and so on. Both of these mechanisms are going on. I think that something like the Higher Education Freedom Bill in Britain can address that more vertical punishment-based system where it can prevent your university from censoring you, from punishing you. And that's very important. I think the University of Chicago-style trifecta, I think Dorian Abbot calls it, where you also have the Kalven Report, which I think is important and isn't part of the UK legislation, which I think it should have been.

John Tomasi: And for our listeners, the Kalven Report is the classic statement of institutional neutrality, the idea that the university, as the report says, is the home and sponsor of critics, but is not itself the critic. That means universities should refrain from making statements on behalf of the faculty and rather allow the individual faculty members to speak. And the trifecta is the Chicago principles or free speech principles, the Kalven Report, which I just mentioned, and the Shils Report, which is a remarkable document about the idea of merit.

Eric Kaufmann: So this is all very important, and that goes beyond the UK legislation because it includes those last two, which I think are important. And I think really institutional neutrality should extend down to anyone with an official administrative position, down to department heads.

John Tomasi: Good.

Eric Kaufmann: Now, as academics, absolutely, they can say whatever opinions they want. But if they are going to speak in an official capacity, I don't think they should be putting forth opinions on any political matter. And the Kalven Report, again, the Kalven Report is very clear that, in fact, it's not only the university as a whole, but it's also the subunits which should not speak. The proper unit of critic is the individual faculty member, the individual mind. So anyway, just as you said. I think that would go a certain distance towards, you know, cutting back on the hostile environment that, and again, that conservative, let's say if we take right-of-center academics in Britain, Canada, in the US, about seven in 10 would say their departments are hostile climates for their beliefs, right? As opposed to only about 20, 22% or something of those on the left. So it's this hostile climate effect for people's political beliefs that is also shaping the conditions within the institutions. But why is Ellis right? I think because even if you were to address these problems with institutional punishment and even institutions taking positions on political issues, it's – you haven't actually been – you can't really deal with the peer pressure stuff. The social ostracism and even, to some extent, the political discrimination in terms of networks and publishing and promotion and all that stuff. And, unfortunately, you know, you look at the FIRE student surveys. I did a little chart using the 2022 data. And you can – if you plot the proportion of, you know, liberal and conservative in the student body along the sort of horizontal axis, and then you look at the proportions saying that they don't – you know, they self-censor in discussions on the vertical axis. What you see is that essentially conservative students in any kind of left-leaning environment are self-censoring, you know, generally at 40 points more than those on the left. Except when you get to the small handful of conservative-dominated student bodies like Hillsdale is off the charts. And at Hillsdale, the left-leaning students are self-censoring at not quite but almost the rate of conservative students in, let's say, liberal arts colleges. And so I think that sort of tells you a lot. And also some other surveys have said, you know, to students, what are you afraid of in terms of not expressing yourself, your peers, social media, or your professors? And most of these surveys tend to find that it's the peers that they're more afraid of than their professors or than the university. So I would say that even the best legislation, the best policies, the University of Chicago policies will only get you maybe 30%, 40% of the way or perhaps even less. And that if it's down to peer pressure effects and ostracism, then that is a compositional effect. Now, we could imagine a situation in which the character of progressivism changes to become more liberal and tolerant again, in which case this problem would be addressed. And that is perhaps the longer-running battle that maybe Heterodox Academy and others are trying to fight is to sort of liberalize progressivism.

John Tomasi: Yeah, I think that's right about HXA. Let me ask you a more general question about this. Again, I'm still thinking about this personnel, the problem is with personnel claim from John Ellis and many others, of course. So in the context of the U.S., there's a classic statement of the ideal of academic self-governance. It comes from the 1915 declaration by the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, which John Dewey, as we always intone, was one of the founding members, which gives out a certain cachet in many quarters, not all, but in many quarters. But that document says that to have academic freedom, to have open inquiry, you have to have control. You have to have academic self-governance because only the professors, they're the only people who are experts on these topics. Only they can know and can judge who the best professors are. So you can't have the trustees. You cannot have the legislators. You can't have other people deciding essential things like personnel selection, nor can you have them doing basic questions about how a classroom should be organized, what should be taught, what department should exist or should not exist, and so on. So that was, you know, more than 100 years ago now. It was the first, it was the beginnings in the U.S., the beginnings of the idea of this modern research university that would be a place for open inquiry, defended by and structured on an ideal of academic self-governance. Now, through time, and we can sort of trace the path dependencies and explain why it went this way, the universities have become increasingly monocultures, as you say, and others say, too. What do you make of that? What do you make of this idea of academic self-governance? And this is going to lead to the conversation about the U.K., so that's coming. But still, just, what do you think about academic self-governance as an ideal?

Eric Kaufmann: I think it's an excellent ideal, and I'm, you know, when I was, you know, as a professor, I've been very much in favor of that because, yes, it is the case that departments know best what they want and what, you know, the kinds of person that they, the kinds of academic programs they wish to offer. However, could John Dewey and others have foreseen that the threats to academic freedom would come from the faculty itself?

John Tomasi: Go ahead.

Eric Kaufmann: I don't think so. You know, there are different kinds of challenges to freedom. The classic challenge to freedom comes from an autocrat or from the government, and so in that sense, that's the First Amendment in the United States. But I think people forget an older tradition of concern over private violence. So private actors and other kinds of intermediate institutions that actually can pose a threat to your liberty. And it can be the case that actually the government is more liberal than these intermediate institutions or private actors. And in that situation, so if you look at Thomas Hobbes and you go back to some of John Locke, I mean, this idea of the government protecting your natural rights against those who might threaten them. And we're actually, I think, more in a situation like that. You can see some precursors. So if the University of Mississippi doesn't want to allow black students to come to it, to take courses or to have the same rights as other students, there was a role for the government.

John Tomasi: And let me just add, and let's imagine, as was, I think, the case, that the academic self-governance at that university said, we choose to maintain these policies of excluding people of color, for example.

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: So now it's gone awry, right?

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: This is kind of a vivid example of academic self-governance, I think, gone awry.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah. And so, and even, you know, there was a poll of Harvard professors in the 40s. You know, should a communist be permitted to teach two to one against?

John Tomasi: Right.

Eric Kaufmann: And now, so should they then be dismissing somebody who's a communist from the faculty? So there are definitely situations where you can get illiberalism coming from the faculty and possibly a situation where the government actually takes a more liberal approach that defends rights. So I think in this three-tier model, that's when government actually has a role in preventing censorship. So do universities have the right to censor because they have academic freedom? No. I'd say academic freedom in here is in the academic staff and students, and therefore university autonomy, it's nice to have. We want to maximize it, but if it is becoming, you know, authoritarian, tyrannical, whatever, then it needs to be limited in a restricted way.

John Tomasi: Let me be sure I understand. So we have this idea of a liberal democratic government, of there being a superstructure of government that has the ability and the obligation to protect individual rights. And then between that governmental structure and those individuals with rights that need to be defended by that government in some cases, we have intermediate institutions, for example, universities. And these institutions have various functions and they play their roles in different ways. Universities have this interesting claim of special sovereignty because of this idea of academic self-governance being the key, the way to protect academic freedom. So now let me see what you're saying here. If the government has a role to protect individual rights, we think there's going to be some space for academic sovereignty, self-governance. Wouldn't it be a very limited range of cases and instances in which the government should intervene on the institution to protect those rights? They can't be getting in there, I don't think. Maybe it will tell me what you think.

Eric Kaufmann: If someone's killing someone, of course, the government needs to get involved. If someone's maybe violating a First Amendment, what the U.S. called it the First Amendment, or maybe due process rights are being violated. People brought up in front of kangaroo courts and, you know, terrible things that have happened in so many universities. But that's still a pretty limited range of things in which the government should be involved.

John Tomasi: In the case where the professor says, I wouldn't vote for a Trump supporter, that's not a violation of a basic right, I don't think. Maybe there is some issue with employment law that we could – but I'm not – can you help me here a little bit? On that model, isn't it a very limited thing the government can do?

Eric Kaufmann: It is, but that's all that we're really talking about is only when, you know, faculties step over particularly egregious red lines.

John Tomasi: Okay, good. Would any of this come into play? Okay, good.

Eric Kaufmann: So if they want to – you know, if a university wants to censor somebody who is expressing perfectly legal opinions or doing research that happens to offend some people but is perfectly legal one.

John Tomasi: Or everyone.

Eric Kaufmann: Possibly everyone.

John Tomasi: Yeah, or everyone.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, yeah. Then the government has a role to prevent that university from censoring. That's all this is. And it's in practice only a very small number of instances of this. For the most part, faculty will have their autonomy to do the hiring, to pursue the directions they think pedagogically make sense for them. So this is not like an attack on faculty self-governance, but it is, in certain specific instances, a limit on that. And that's sort of the way I would see the higher education bill in Britain.

John Tomasi: Okay, good. So we're finally moving to the topic that we both want to talk about. And I should mention also to our listeners that we, in the Center of Academic Pluralism, we have a workshop every Friday afternoon. And we have either visiting – we have either resident fellows presenting work or a curriculum that we have on open inquiry that we read classic documents like the Shils Report or the Kalven Committee Report and discuss together. And occasionally, when we have a guest in the podcast studio, we ask that person to join the seminar, and we do the seminar on his work. And today, after this podcast, Eric's going to be joining the seminar to talk about the UK reform bill. So now here we are at last. So you played a key role, as I understand it, in the recently passed higher education freedom of speech bill in the UK. Maybe you won't say you played a key role, but I am aware that – I understand you did a lot of – that you were very involved in some of the thinking that led to that bill. Can you tell us about what the act is? Just what are the basics? What's going on?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, yeah. And let me just – a little bit of what we were just saying.

John Tomasi: Tell us what happened.

Eric Kaufmann: Okay. Well, I mean, really, this is an idea that was sort of hatched in what political scientists call a policy network, a series of academics, people in think tanks, perhaps some journalists and politicians who are in a network. Who are concerned about academic freedom and, you know, essentially there's a think tank called Policy Exchange, which – Of course. Where we had somebody who became a special advisor to the education minister. And so we had a sort of, you know, favorable conditions perhaps for influencing the thinking of certain politicians. We issued a couple of reports, one in 2019 and one in 2020 on academic freedom in Britain. I did a lot of the survey side. Other colleagues, Tom Simpson at Oxford, for example, did more on the legal philosophical. And what that did was it just brought a bit of attention to the lay of the land as regards self-censorship and political discrimination and whatnot and what the problem was. And then perhaps some suggested legal remedies. And then through a bit of back and forth with special advisors and with the government, eventually they – we got a commitment to put it on the Conservative Manifesto 2019, which was key. Because once it's on the manifesto, they have to address it.

John Tomasi: It's amazing.

Eric Kaufmann: They can't just let it drop.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating.

Eric Kaufmann: This is what can happen is even though they'll say yes, it can get subsumed under, you know, other priorities rise above. And yeah, and so it took a – it took a long time. I mean, it took, you know, I guess it was three years, four years for this legislation to get across the line with amendments. It came – you know, it was voted through entirely on party lines.

John Tomasi: That's right.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah.

John Tomasi: And so – I watched that.

Eric Kaufmann: Which tends to be, you know, it can sometimes be the case on these issues because the universities and academics are strong constituencies in the – particularly Labour Party.

John Tomasi: Right, right.

Eric Kaufmann: In Labour Party activism. And so strong opposition from the Labour Party on all of these – on the bill.

John Tomasi: And by the way, it's interesting, isn't it, that this bill would be passed along party lines.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah.

John Tomasi: Because you would think that – at least we like to imagine here in the U.S. – that most people think that shouting people down or using violence against a speaker is beyond the pale. And it's only the fringe who think that. But it's interesting and maybe worrying – maybe there's other reason. Maybe there are strictly political reasons for signaling. But it's interesting that in the U.K. that bill would be passed along party lines only. Were there no – there were some people crossing over, presumably?

Eric Kaufmann: No, there were none. It was strictly party lines.

John Tomasi: It was very party line. And I wasn't aware of that. And because – I'm sorry, when was that vote, roughly?

Eric Kaufmann: I'm trying to think when the actual – God, was it 2020 maybe? That the actual vote took – may have been 2021.

John Tomasi: But the bill was signed in – just this spring, I think May or something.

Eric Kaufmann: Right, because it then had to go – you have a law that's passed in the House of Commons. There's a first reading.

John Tomasi: Right, right, right.

Eric Kaufmann: There's multiple readings. And then it goes into the House of Lords, which is the upper chamber for scrutiny. And you have multiple readings. And you go back and forth. And so this whole process is a very much – there are amendments that are tabled. Some of them make it through. Some don't. So one of the amendments that we were kind of pushing for was this right of action, if your academic freedom is violated, to actually be able to action that in court.

John Tomasi: That's a statutory tort.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, statutory tort. So there was a sort of – that was kind of the last battle. And some were saying, look, we should just give up on this because it threatens to derail the whole bill. And there were all these tactical considerations.

John Tomasi: But ultimately – Let me go back and be sure for myself and also for our listeners, I understand what that piece of it would be. So as I understand it, it would mean that if an individual were, let's say, invited to give a talk at a university and students or faculty at the university shouted that person down, maybe denigrated their character, maybe put posters around campus calling them a racist or whatever it might be. And so the person was deplatformed and his character was impugned, let's say, maybe falsehoods were said about him, who knows what, that that person would have a legal recourse to sue, had standing to sue the university. Is that what it would be?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, that's right. It might have also to do with you suffer a detriment for things that you say, so you don't get research funds, you don't get to teach a – Yeah, so it's not just deplatforming in a formal sense. It's not just deplatforming, yeah.

John Tomasi: Oh, it's broader.

Eric Kaufmann: If you suffer a detriment for your research or speech and then so – and also – so that is also part of what this is about is you can have a course of action against your university.

John Tomasi: I'm sorry. Let me just talk – let me understand how wide that is then. So, for example, one of our star visiting fellows this year is Elizabeth Weiss, the anthropologist. You heard her give a talk last night at the opening. Yeah, excellent. Fabulous, right? She's amazing. But as you heard last night, Elizabeth is an anthropologist who has views. There's a big debate going on in anthropology about who gets to decide which human remains should be allowed to be studied by science, including Paleolithic ones, and which human remains should be returned to the earth or to the tribes, whoever it might be. And it's a sort of deplatforming of anyone who advocates the scientific access to the bones. And so, Elizabeth, now, bringing back to your example of the tort, Elizabeth was denied access to her university's collection of skeletal remains, a collection to which she'd been allowed access, and other anthropologists were continuing to be allowed access for a decade. So, she was denied access now to the key research things. Is that the kind of thing, for example, that that tort would be – would allow action upon, that tort reform?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, exactly. So, you're not – So, that's a perfect example of where you've suffered a detriment of some kind, right? It doesn't mean you're – it doesn't have to be you're being fired. It could just mean that you aren't promoted, you aren't given access to certain things. So, that's the kind of thing that this is about. Now, of course, the argument was really on the other side, well – and, of course, if, you know, if this censorship and if these things aren't hitting your tribe, it can seem like a very minor deal. And I think that is really the sort of sentiment. It was like, well, there's very few of these incidents, and therefore, it's a tempest in a teapot, and it's a moral panic, and all this is sort of the way it's talked about. And really what we were saying was actually this is something that is affecting tens of thousands of staff and students because if you look at that self-censorship, you know, yes, we can talk about the number of people who lose their jobs or are no platform as a small number of the total denominator of students and staff. But if you actually look at the proportion of particularly political minorities on campus, gender-critical feminists, conservatives who are self-censoring in the faculty and the student body, now you're talking about tens, hundreds of thousands. And so, this is actually a massive issue, and this is not just about the small number of high-profile cases that make it into the press.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating, and you and I both know as university professors that there are all these so many smaller things within our profession that can be decided by the popularity of one's political views. So, for example, if a person aspires to be a department chair, I'm not sure anyone would aspire to be a department chair, but if someone aspires to be a department chair and that person has, you know, one of these unorthodox views, that's the kind of thing, I think, where the person, we all know, that person either should be quiet in the view or should just give up their ambition to be whatever it is, department chair. Or, say, or to be the director of a center or something like that. Are those the kind of things that might also fall within the purview of the statutory tort?

Eric Kaufmann: Well, not necessarily. If it is sort of peer-driven and it is not within the gift of, say, the university, then I don't think that you could, you know, just being ostracized by your colleagues, you can't really, you know, that doesn't fall within. And this is part of the issue that I was mentioning is this horizontal dynamic. And Cass Sunstein writes about this in his book Conformity. You know, whenever you have an organization where it's all about social ties, then even something like not being willing to have lunch with somebody can have a powerful effect, right? So I just think this is not going to deal with the arguably more powerful issue of even political discrimination. I would say, you know, and we've had debates with some of the people who've been involved in the bill, but I'm not sure it would protect you from political discrimination. I don't, I'm not sure that it would do that. And so I think there are, it's a sort of, it's a small part of the problem that it will address. I don't think it will address, yeah.

John Tomasi: So let's, that's very helpful. Let's zero in now on and get really clear on what exactly does the bill address? So what, there's a creation of a free speech champion?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah.

John Tomasi: So what's that all about?

Eric Kaufmann: So what it does is the bill, it creates a, an office of, of essentially a director of academic freedom, which would be a free speech czar with an office of 10 individuals.

John Tomasi: A free speech czar.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, yeah.

John Tomasi: We have so, we have so many czars in the U S we do not have, we do not have a free speech czar. That would be fabulous.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, yeah. Well, academic.

John Tomasi: That's one czar. That's the one czar I could get behind.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, academic freedom director, right?

John Tomasi: Yeah.

Eric Kaufmann: So.

John Tomasi: So. But it's an ombudsperson or something like that.

Eric Kaufmann: No, no. So there's separate. So, so the academic freedom director will have the power to issue with his staff. I know it's a, he, I happen to know who it is, but we'll have, have the power to actually issue, for example, guidance on what university policies should look like. Universities are obligated, not just to protect, but to promote. So at least once a year, they have to inform students of their free academic freedoms and inform them about those free speech rights. So they have to show that they are not just protecting, but promoting freedom of speech. So he can.

John Tomasi: Not just protecting, but promoting.

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: Amazing.

Eric Kaufmann: Right. And so he will have the power to, you know, the issue, this kind of guides as to what your policies should look like. And then at the, at a later stage, you know, to go through university policies and say, you know, your policy on that, that claims that you can't offend anybody, you know, that's actually not compliant. So you have to rewrite that. And so part of this is going to be about how proactive is he going to be. And secondly, there's the power to fine universities that are in violation as well. So you've got finding powers as well.

John Tomasi: That's a big, so fining is an, tell us more about that. That's a really interesting feature.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, so exactly. So if a university is repeatedly violating academic freedom of staff and students, then yeah, it can be fined for breach. And so that is another disincentive. So it's as a, you know, you have.

John Tomasi: What would a fine look like? I'm just curious. What range are we, is the force of the fine going to be in the ignominium that you face because now you've been fined for that? Or is there a real financial, like what size might a fine be and who decides? Do we know yet?

Eric Kaufmann: I'm not exactly enough of a legal expert to know what the legal wording means and the range of money. I mean, it is a substantial, could be a substantial amount. I think probably the bigger issue would be leaking to the press. So part of this will also be about it leaks into the press, then the university gets embarrassed in the press, which might be the bigger hit rather than the fine. But I'm not, I can't be, I'm not enough of an expert to know. We won't know until this starts to happen how substantial this will be. I don't think it's going to be, if I had to guess, I don't think that the director is necessarily, he's not going to go crazy. I think he will do what's needed.

John Tomasi: What does crazy need? I'm thinking about some of the endowment sizes in some American university, I'm like, we're going crazy.

Eric Kaufmann: No, no, British universities have no money anyway, so they can't do anything. But it's not so much about that, but it is simply about sending a signal, I think.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, so I think, what else is, there's the ombudsman, which means that you can go around your university when you feel that your free speech is violated. You have to exhaust these avenues before probably you can move to the tort. You can't just jump to the legal. So you have to exhaust these other avenues, but it's not so onerous that the university can drag out all of these proceedings and therefore avoid court.

John Tomasi: So let's, tell us a bit more about the ombudsperson, as we say in the U.S. these days. You say ombudsman, so I'll go with that with you. I don't know what the word is now. But what is that? So that's a place, that's a person you can go to, to make it, to plead your case.

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: For what range of things? For free speech violations?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, and your academic freedom under the law has been abridged and therefore you take a case. Now you are supposed to sort of first lodge a, you know, lodge a complaint with your university, but then, you know, if you don't get satisfaction, you go to the ombudsman and then there's a decision there as to whether you decide to take a case. So the ombudsman is like the, is the first person you go to.

John Tomasi: Adjudicator, yeah. So you find, you're, you're, you're Elizabeth Weiss or you're some person who's been denied access to some research materials or you've been fired or you've been told don't wear your Trump T-shirt to department meetings, whatever it might be. You go to the ombuds person.

Eric Kaufmann: Right.

John Tomasi: And this person will do what?

Eric Kaufmann: Well, they will, if they find in your favor, then they instruct the university to desist or whatever they, whatever the university.

John Tomasi: So they have the power to investigate?

Eric Kaufmann: Yep.

John Tomasi: Fascinating.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah. And, and this is all, by the way, located on the sector regulator called the Office for Students.

John Tomasi: Yes. Which is, is it maybe like the Department of Education perhaps as, as it regards to, as regards to higher education, something like that. May I put on just a little, a little aside about the Office for Students? So I was asked to get the keynote for the, an event last December put on by the Office of Students. And I said, yes. One of my friends from Oxford was one of the people running it. And so I didn't, I didn't actually know much about it at the time. So I had to look it up in Google. Anyway, I agreed to give this keynote and it turned out that the keynote was at, well, I think maybe the first lecture of the day at 10 a.m. English time. So I had to get up at what time would that have been? Five, four, four 30. I think, I think that's up at four, reviewing my notes to go online to get my, to get my keynote address. So anyway, so I have, I have ill feelings towards the Office for Students.

Eric Kaufmann: But, but, so go on with the, well, no, I was going to say it's, it's much easier to come this way because actually our natural inclination is to get up quite early because of the time zone. So it's very easy to make morning events. But yeah, so the, so, so this Office for Students is, is the regulator for all aspects of higher education in the country. And so this, this body of, this Office of 10 people is, is within the OFS. Now, of course, that's not the whole battle. I mean, the battle, you need to get somebody as the academic freedom director who believes in the mission. And Arif Ahmed of Cambridge, philosopher, very strong on academic freedom, has been appointed to the role. So that's going to make a difference. If you appointed somebody who didn't really have their heart and was just going to do the university's bidding, then that could defang much of the process. So this is a process that does require, you know, the personnel is the policy. I think it's another of these phrases. You do have to get the right people in to these positions to actually make them function effectively. But it's going to be interesting to watch how he, how he carries out his duties. There is, I think, a four-year renewal. So politically, perhaps, Labour looks like they're going to be in government next. And they may decide after, I think it is four years, to, you know, hire somebody else or try and defang this institution if he's moving beyond what they want. So there is a certain political dimension to which they can maybe exert some pressure to sort of prevent him from reforming at the speed he wants to reform. So we'll see how that works out.

John Tomasi: So that's, so the, I guess we shouldn't look too far ahead to how it might, what the demise of this institution might be. But rather, for now, we should be thinking, how might it work? And how might it be a positive step forward? Because it's such a remarkable, it's such a remarkable thing that's going on in England. And it reminds me of something, and I'm not sure how closely you're following, UATX, the University of Austin in Texas, which is a university, of course, as you know, that is trying to disrupt higher education by a new model. And one of the features that I find most interesting about UATX is they have this, last I heard, they have a summit every year for the last two years where they bring a bunch of us in to talk, give advice, and to learn what they're doing. And when I was here last spring, the big topic we were all so excited about was their new idea to have this external judicial body outside the university but associated with it that would serve a role such that any person could bring a claim to that court to protect their basic freedoms, including academic freedom at that university, against the president, against the administration, against their department, against whoever it might be. So their idea, as I understand it, is to think, well, let's think about early America. Part of the American ideal of the revolution was not to rely on the virtue of the governor, which most universities rely upon the virtuous administrator. We keep waiting for this virtuous president to arrive and stay virtuous for the entire time. That often seems to go away. I think the early founders of America would have said, don't trust in virtue, trust in institutional separation of powers. And what Austin is doing, as I read it, is they said, look, we're not going to trust in a virtuous president. We hope to get one, but we're not going to trust in that. We're going to have some written rules, including academic freedom. And we're going to have this external judicial body, which can enforce the claims of individuals against the university itself. That's a fascinating thing. I'm actually having Pano Kanelos on this podcast soon as we're the president to talk about that very topic. But this is back to this thing that's happened in the UK. I see what's happening in the UK as being similar to that. That idea of the ombuds person sounds like a judicial body that says, as you were saying from a little while ago in this conversation, the government plays a role as a check on the miscarriages of institutional autonomy within these intermediate institutions. It says there are people who have certain rights. And you can't call them in front of a kangaroo court. You can't deny them access to materials for research. You cannot, you know, fire them or stop them from speaking when they say something you don't particularly want to hear. So it sounds like it's that kind of, it sounds like it's actually a judicial, is it a judicial mechanism?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a very clever design that UATX and I am affiliated there as well. But I think that's a very clever idea.

John Tomasi: Exactly. So it's like your idea. I'm sorry. It's like your idea.

Eric Kaufmann: No, it is. I can't claim this is entirely or even largely my idea, but the UK bill.

John Tomasi: Well, you plural them.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, but, but, but I would say, yeah, it's, it's something, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm sort of a, you know, Canadian pseudo Brit, but no, but it is something similar in, in its intent.

John Tomasi: You're right.

Eric Kaufmann: As a sort of, you're protecting the liberty of the citizen against the, the, in a way, the autonomy of the institution. And that happens, you know, we're used to that if corrupt police departments are taken into special measures, schools, which become corrupt. All of this is not controversial and even universities, you know, the, the, the East German universities after the fall of the Berlin wall, you know, essentially were taken into special measures. And a lot of academics were let go who were more or less parroting Marxist-Leninist dogma as their, you know, so, so, I mean, this is not something that's dramatically new, but.

John Tomasi: That's right. But this is the application of a similar principle that yes, the, the rot and corruption of liberalism can happen in the intermediate layer.

Eric Kaufmann: And, and yeah, I love that formulation.

John Tomasi: That's really, it's really, I, I just want to say, I really appreciate how you take these problems of university life and university reform and you situate them within this broader political context, right? That's how, I mean, I think a lot of people in the U S who care about these issues, we zero in on the universities themselves. We kind of accept the premise of academic self-governance, maybe with gritted teeth, but we're kind of, that's how a lot of people see it. And they try to work within that system to reform it. But you really take that and you sort of see the bigger picture that there was just, these are institutions existing within liberal democratic societies with a government empowered in certain ways with individuals with certain legally recognized rights. And that's going to be permeating the institution. That's how you see it.

Eric Kaufmann: I think. Yeah, I think that's right. Now, of course, there are differences between public government funded universities and those that are private, which can have their own ethos.

John Tomasi: Say more about that because you and I were talking over breakfast about this, but say a bit more about how is, in England, I asked you this question. I was a little embarrassed to admit this on air now, but I asked you, I went, I went to Oxford and I said, well, isn't Oxford a private university? It has rich, it has silver plates from the 1500.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah.

John Tomasi: Is it private? Tell me how, what's the system?

Eric Kaufmann: Well, no, no, I mean, in a way they are, you know, they are public universities in the sense that they get government student, you know, their students are on government student loans, or at least the domestic students are. And prior to that, the government would have paid them a sum per student.

John Tomasi: But in the U.S., our private universities receive enormous funding from the government through student loans and other, and there are some exceptions, of course, but they're rare. There's some exceptions in England, too, I'm aware. But does this act, this government act that we're talking about, apply to all the universities in England except for a few very fully private ones?

Eric Kaufmann: There's almost no private university, one of the few ones, by the way, is the University of Buckingham, where I'm going to start, be starting in October, and it sees itself as the only real sort of free speech university in Britain.

John Tomasi: Sorry, and does Buckingham take no federal funds of her students?

Eric Kaufmann: In terms of somebody, I think somebody can come in with a student, no, they do, I think, accept student loan. I don't think they are the Hillsdale, they're not following that. But I think that, for the most part, you know, they're trying to carve out a niche a bit like UATX, but perhaps, you know, they have more of a conventional faculty and student body, perhaps, than UATX does. But in the large, in the main, looking across the English, the university landscape, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, all the different places, these are quasi-public entities. They're all directly under the authority of the Office for Students, for example.

John Tomasi: Right.

Eric Kaufmann: And they're only allowed to charge a maximum of roughly £9,250 per domestic student. So there's definitely a limit also to what they're allowed to charge, which has meant a big drop in their income with inflation over a number of years.

John Tomasi: One other piece of the UK bill that we haven't discussed concerns the student unions. So help me understand that they were quasi-independent structures within the institution. Tell us about that.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, they claimed that they were, you know, private associational bodies that were not, shouldn't be considered part of the university. However, of course, they are, you know, woven into, you know, they get money from the university, these university facilities. And for all intents and purposes, they are part of the university. And the bill essentially makes it clear that they are part of the university, and therefore they cannot do things like no-platform people. And if they do that, they are under the same regime as the university in terms of having abridged the law, being eligible to be fined, and all of these other disincentives. And so I think this is – and already – I should say, by the way, even before the law was passed, it was already having an effect on behavior. So there was – you know, the University of Essex was going after a couple of gender-critical feminists and backed off. Now, that was partly the media, but the media in combination with the new legislation and the interpretation of the law got them to back off. The University of Oxford recently was going to no-platform Kathleen Stock.

John Tomasi: Yes, of course.

Eric Kaufmann: And they backed off as well.

John Tomasi: Infamously.

Eric Kaufmann: Well, the university essentially told this organization to essentially not de-platform. And that was because of the law. So already that's having an impact.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating, isn't it?

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: So you see those as clear instances where the existence of the law – or maybe the law was a law already – had already – In the first case, it hadn't. Had King Charles signed it yet?

Eric Kaufmann: No, it hadn't. But it was coming. In the Essex case, it was. And in the Oxford case, I believe it had already gone across the line.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating.

Eric Kaufmann: But, yeah.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating.

Eric Kaufmann: But none of the direct – you know, the director hadn't been appointed.

John Tomasi: Right.

Eric Kaufmann: No guidance had been issued yet. But still, the spirit of the law was enough, I think, to sort of discipline that Oxford sort of body that they couldn't simply – It's fascinating.

John Tomasi: And as you know, part of the reason we're so interested in what you're doing in the UK in this way is because there have been a number of states, North Carolina and Florida, who have been trying similar kinds of things. One way to think of it is that there's been – there's such disillusionment with a contemporary university. You and I both know the Gallup polls showing the crashing – the crash of confidence in universities was always – it was low 20 years ago, but it's abysmally low now. Across the political spectrum, though, even more on the political right. But we – one way to read what's happening in places like Florida and in North Carolina is that people are now denying the premise of that 1915 report that I mentioned a little while ago. They're saying, look, to protect academic freedom, you cannot respect academic self-governance. At least you can't respect it too completely. Instead, you need to have academic freedom. You need to have some external – some exogenous shock, some external agent coming in and making that change. And so that's why we're so interested to hear you talk about your experience in England.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, and I think that's right, and I think I would agree with that. Now, of course, the thrust of legislation is a little bit different in the two countries in the sense that you could say the British law is very much about cancel culture and progressive – not just progressive, but generally illiberalism. In the U.S. case, a lot of the debates kind of come out of what I would say a concern over critical race theory or another aspect of what I would call progressive deculturation or attempt to attack certain groups. It might be white people, it might be United States or whatever.

John Tomasi: And so – Issues of sex and gender are very much part of this in the U.S. too, for example.

Eric Kaufmann: Sex and gender is – In the Florida case.

John Tomasi: Yeah, but so the legislation is about – it may be, say, banning the teaching of certain materials.

Eric Kaufmann: And that's, of course, got a different thrust from this idea of banning censorship. Now, where there is a certain overlap is over this idea of freedom of conscience. So banning, for example, diversity statements is an attack on illiberalism. It's an attempt to check progressive illiberalism in universities. So in that sense, it's similar in thrust to the U.K. bill and would be some sort of – although I would say the U.K. bill did not – no one had even thought of that. And they probably should have thought of that, but diversity statements as a sort of form of compelled speech and violation of freedom of conscience. But, of course, on the critical race theory and critical gender theory side, of course, you can see where that actually probably is. You can argue the case, I think, that that's a threat to academic freedom if you're saying you cannot teach certain subjects. And so that, I think, is now actually classic, you know, government against individual violation of academic freedom. And I don't think that's probably going to pass muster in the courts. But, you know, there is a debate, and I think this is where, you know, even though I just disagree in some ways with Chris Rufo, but this question about what government is obligated to fund.

John Tomasi: Yes, good.

Eric Kaufmann: So I don't think that they should be banning anything, but I do think there is a question of are they obligated to fund something like teaching a course from a critical race theory perspective? I don't believe they are obligated to do so. And I think so maybe the way this goes is towards, OK, we're not going to ban this, but we're going to defund specific content because that's simply not something that we think is something that voters want to support. And, by the way, it kind of violates people's right to equal treatment and therefore. And I think that's maybe where this is going to head in the U.S. case. But it's worth saying that there's mutual lines of influence. And so I was talking to an education, a government, a member of parliament in Britain who was quite interested in what some of the U.S. legislation is doing in terms of setting up these centers of nonconformity. Yes, yes, yes. Sort of classical liberal centers and saying that actually – because nothing like that exists in the higher education landscape in Britain, even off campus. And so I think those ideas could come to influence British thinking the next time the conservatives really have a majority in government.

John Tomasi: It's fascinating to think about – in the case of, for example, Florida – well, I'll just generalize. I won't use Florida as a specific example. But, you know, we sort of see this drive towards academic freedom, a concern for imbalance, a concern that we're not really educating students. We're something like indoctrinating them. If everyone has the same political views and certain things are being taught, if people think there's an ideology being taught at universities rather than universities being places that liberate students and think in new ways, make them more sophisticated, allow them to become self-directing individuals, free citizens rather than cogs in someone else's political machine. And yet that drive for academic freedom can lead to banning certain kinds of content, you put it, because the legislators felt that those things – they didn't want to fund – they would not want to fund those kind of teachings. But that, again, goes right back to the academic self-governance point. There was some insight, I think, in that 1915 document, which has lots of flaws, but the idea that there's some special space, something special about the university space. We wouldn't want to have legislators coming in, changing the content of curriculums. Right. Every time their power changes, they change what gets taught. We want the university not to be part of the political domain, but to be something like a city on a hill, if you might say, or like the Plato's Academy, a place in a grove on a hill outside the city where people go to search for truth. And yet, as we've been talking, there may be a role you are suggesting for the government, for the polis, to set some rules to make sure that there is some separation, some genuine attention to the purposes of – the real purposes of those universities.

Eric Kaufmann: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's not that the polis should set a red line and ban things. That, I think, is a violation of academic freedom. But I certainly think when the polis is funding public higher education, they do have the right to decide what they're going to fund. And, you know, in various countries, Australia, they don't fund the humanities to the same extent as the sciences. I also think it's legitimate for them to say, well, we are not going to fund, you know, critical race and gender or what we would consider to be activist scholarship. We're not going to fund it. But we're not – I don't think we can – you know, you don't ban it. You can still teach it, but you're going to have to subsidize it, cross-subsidize it from somewhere else. I think that's legitimate.

John Tomasi: Nice.

Eric Kaufmann: Because, yeah, in a democracy, you decide if you're going to spend on hospital beds or universities and if you're going to spend on universities. It's perfectly fine, I think, in a democracy for the taxpayers to say this is what we want to get. But at the same time, you know, if the university really, really, really wants to teach critical race theory and gender theory, they can do that. If they value that, but they're going to have to find a way to subsidize that themselves.

John Tomasi: That's fascinating. I have to have one last question. I think you know Arif Ahmed, who's a philosopher at Cambridge, who we know in the U.S., most of us, because of his campaign he led a few years ago, to overturn a proposed speech code at Cambridge, a speech code that would have required that speech respect people's identities. And so he's sort of a hero of some of us here in the U.S. for that reason. Ahmed's welcomed the U.K. bill, but he adds a qualifier. And I want to ask you about this qualifier as my last question. He said, Ahmed says, quote, the top-down approach is never going to be a complete solution, close quote. By top-down approach, I think he means a governmental approach. So he applauds that approach, but he says it's not a complete solution. What do you think of that?

Eric Kaufmann: I think he's right, absolutely right, because most of the self-censorship is being driven by sort of peer-to-peer, that sort of horizontal social conformity pressure. And so even if you have the best Chicago principles in the world, that's not going to deal with most of the self-censorship distorting, which distorts the entire academic enterprise. And so I think he's right about that. I think Greg Lukianoff has this phrase that, you know, a free speech culture is more important than the First Amendment, that, you know, if you don't have a free speech culture, eventually they're going to vote in changes to the law and eventually, you know. So ultimately you have to work on the culture, that longer battle of ideas and that, you know, organizations like AFA and like the Heterodox Academy obviously have a key role to play in changing minds. Because the nicer way and the easier way to do this was if you could get partisans to be more tolerant. If you could get progressives to accept free speech, to accept viewpoint diversity, then that correlation between a department being heavily, you know, nine to one left to right shouldn't lead to the kind of illiberalism that we're seeing now if the left becomes more liberal. And so I think that battle to try and persuade the progressive who are dominant in many of these institutions to persuade them that free speech and toleration is actually a better way to go, you know, that is probably more important than anything else. The legislation, this is all about kind of equilibrating what's happening, you know, the air pressure inside the institutions with the air pressure outside in the general public. Like that is really what that is about, lifting the yoke of institutional censorship that exists now. But ultimately if you lose the culture, then you're going to have democratic pressure even from outside to censor speech. So I think, yeah, I mean this is a crucial battle and it's important to have both ends. It's not enough to say, oh, we just need to, you know, fight on culture grounds and we can ignore what's happening in the institutions. You need, I think, a legislative approach and you need the culture approach and it's wrong to reduce just to one.

John Tomasi: Eric Kaufmann, thank you so much for joining us.

Eric Kaufmann: Thanks, John. It's been a pleasure.

John Tomasi: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.