April 29, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
25:40
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The head of high school suggested an alternative, which was that I should only share white conservative views on race. | ||
| So I should only have conservatives who, you know, had white skin. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| since that would not confuse or inflame the students. | ||
|
unidentified
|
(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a teacher and educator at Grace Church School in New York City | ||
| who recently wrote a piece on Barry Weiss's sub stack titled "I Refuse to Stand By | ||
| "While My Students Are Indoctrinated." | ||
| And then you can guess what happened next. | ||
| Cancel culture came to his door. | ||
| Paul Rossi, welcome to the Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you, Dave. | ||
| It's a pleasure to be here. | ||
| All right, so I've wanted to chat with you since I read the piece, and we're gonna link to the piece below, and I hope everyone will read it. | ||
| But for people watching right now that have no idea about any of this, can you sort of sum up the piece first, and then we'll kind of get into everything that's happened since then? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Basically, for the last, I'd say, four to five years, Um, there's been an increasing, uh, change in the culture of the school as it started to implement what it calls and it's anti-racist programming. | ||
| Um, in the grades that I, you know, in the high school that I teach. | ||
| So grades nine through 12 there. | ||
| And I've noticed, um, like a series of very concerning things were happening there. | ||
| And, uh, basically a stifling of expression. | ||
| You know, to the point where kids were afraid to be silent. | ||
| They were expected to say things, say the right things. | ||
| If they didn't say the right things, they were flagged as problematic in emails. | ||
| And a lot of this was designed to sort of create a certain culture, a culture that's based on critical race theory, essentially. | ||
| You know, I started to hear complaints from some of my own, some students in the school, some of my own students, some who weren't my students that this, you know, this was becoming extremely uncomfortable and difficult and really poisoning the atmosphere in the school. | ||
| And I watched, I witnessed some things myself in, you know, meetings that were segregated by race. | ||
| So we would frequently have whites only meetings and, you know, BIPOC meetings, Black Indigenous People of Color meetings. | ||
| And so as there was also a proliferation of, you know, opt-in affinity groups, you know, so basically this notion that, you know, individual opinions and ideas had to conform to your sort of racial group and gender group. | ||
| And, you know, when things differed from that, It was seen as anomalous or not representative of what you should think. | ||
| And I had some experiences in classes that I teach. | ||
| I'm a math teacher primarily, but I also teach a persuasion class where some of the students in that class complained of having sort of a bubble mentality and they weren't getting any of the other types of opinions. | ||
| So I suggested to my head of high school that You know, maybe we could talk about, we could bring in some of the ideas of Professor Glenn Lowry at Brown, a Brown economist. | ||
| I'm sure you're familiar with his ideas because the students, well, a lot of our discussion focused around the protests and riots over the summer. | ||
| So they wanted to maybe hear an alternative opinion. | ||
| But I was told by my head of high school that it would be extremely problematic and disruptive if, to students of color and other students if I shared a conservative views of a black man. | ||
| Right, to be clear, he happens to be a black conservative. | ||
| Yes, he happens to be a black. | ||
| That was not even in my initial proposal. | ||
| It was simply that he has certain views on race. | ||
| in the racial issues that, you know, may differ slightly from what Grace Church School is pushing, sort of a center-right, but still, you know, very mainstream, you know, if you look at the opinions throughout the country. | ||
| And the head of high school suggested an alternative, which was that I should only share white conservative views on race. | ||
| So I should only have conservatives who, you know, had white skin, since that would not confuse or inflame the students. | ||
| Uh, so this, you know, I didn't even respond to that email. | ||
| I wound up not even teaching that unit at all. | ||
| And I just, I was so disgusted by, by that response, which I just see as self evidently racist. | ||
| The notion that ideas should be filtered, the dissemination nation of ideas should be filtered based on the color of the skin of the person who's speaking them. | ||
| And I, it's just completely anti-intellectual and regressive in my opinion. | ||
| Um, subsequent to that, there was a, Self-care meeting during the pandemic, which was ostensibly designed to help students cope with the struggles and problems with being at home stuck. | ||
| You know, maybe they're not able to come to school more than twice a week. | ||
| And, you know, in this in this meeting up came the white supremacy slide. | ||
| Um, saying that some of the characteristics of white supremacy culture included things like objectivity and individualism and, uh, most interestingly enough, a right to comfort. | ||
| So in the meeting, which is supposed to be, uh, sorry, the segregated whites only meeting that was supposed to be teaching students how to feel, um, you know, more comfortable. | ||
| With the events that were surrounding them, they were told that if they were white, they should question their right to comfort, which I found the height of irony. | ||
| So then the facilitator, who was actually very nice, we got along quite well, I thought, asked the group of 200 students and maybe 30 of my colleagues whether they might be feeling a white feeling around these topics. | ||
| And at that point, Decided to question what that actually meant, a white feeling. | ||
| What makes a feeling white? | ||
| I was a little miffed and concerned because I thought that this was blatantly racist, but I was going to try to present my questions in a way that wasn't antagonistic. | ||
| And later she did speak to me and tell me that she didn't feel that my questions were You know, offered in bad faith or anything. | ||
| So what I was, what I wanted to do by asking the question was to open up the discourse a little bit so that students may see me as an example and maybe model for them that it's okay to question ideas. | ||
| It's okay to have different viewpoints. | ||
| And that's exactly what happened. | ||
| So students in the chat window of the Zoom meeting started to ask, you know, a broader range of questions. | ||
| Even faculty joined in with some questions of their own. | ||
| The facilitator allowed it. | ||
| There were a lot of questions against capitalism, so I put my own idea about capitalism in there, which was that capitalism is extremely anti-racist since it's done more to lift people out of poverty, lift non-white people out of poverty, than any other, you know, of its competitors. | ||
| Some of the questions that I put in I also questioned the nature of racial identification at all. | ||
| Like, why should I identify as white? | ||
| Why should I interject an identity based on how other people see me? | ||
| Why is that necessary? | ||
| And so that comment and some others made their way out of the meeting, sort of violating the norm of confidentiality, to some folks that were not in the whites-only meeting, and caused some concern and agitation, and then they had to have meetings about the meetings, and then it was sort of a week and a half of upheaval Processing people felt harmed. | ||
| I was brought in to speak to my head of school and the assistant head of school, and I was asked how I felt about what I had done. | ||
| And I actually felt great. | ||
| So I said, I'm not contrite. | ||
| Apparently people are claiming that I've caused harm, but no one has come to me to express this harm, and they couldn't even explain the causality of how my questions could have caused the harm in the first place. | ||
| And they kept raising the stakes when they noticed that I wasn't contrite, and they said, well, you know, you've caused grievous harm. | ||
| You've disturbed the students' peace of mind. | ||
| And at the end, when I wasn't contrite, they said, you know, it's raised to the level of harassment. | ||
| At that point, I just ended the meeting. | ||
| I had a subsequent meeting with the head of the whole school. | ||
| And, you know, he reiterated his disappointment. | ||
| He had some pretextual reasons for Being upset, but clearly what was causing the problems in the school were the nature of my questions, not necessarily some of the pretextual things that surrounded it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, okay, so there's a lot there and I know that for my main audience that maybe hasn't heard about this yet, everything you're saying is probably not that shocking to them because I think so many people have now seen this sort of woke thing infect so many schools and, you know, high schools and colleges and now virtually every institution and everything else. | ||
| So, all this is happening and Was there a moment where you, like, what was it in you that was like, I have to say something now? | ||
| Because I think a lot of people, the question of the day is sort of, what makes people stand up? | ||
| Because I think we're watching a lot of people fold, and I'm glad to see that not only did you write the piece and got in touch with Barry, and I'm curious how that happened as well, but then are willing to do press after and really keep walking through the fire on this thing. | ||
| Well, once it started to cascade, I began to feel So that carried me through up until the present day. | ||
| I wasn't sure when I started to ask what a white feeling was or ask these things in the chat how it would play out. | ||
| I hadn't planned it. | ||
| It started something. | ||
| My impulse to do those things initially was simply to provide You know, those questions were genuine, but I asked them because I felt that students needed to see a teacher, an authority figure, model for them how free discourse is conducted. | ||
| And I hadn't seen anyone do that before. | ||
| And I felt that this was something that I could do. | ||
| And as it started to cause all of this chaos around me, I realized, well, this is actually pretty important. | ||
| And the more chaos was going on, the more I actually I felt that it was important to pursue it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's so extraordinary because obviously you know the story of Brett Weinstein at Evergreen and so much of my audience knows that story, of course, and we've heard so many versions of this. | ||
| So then, how did you get in touch with Barry and how did this whole article get written and the whole piece there? | ||
| The public part of this, you know, not just fighting back internally. | ||
| Right, well, my contract, they offer a contract year to year. | ||
| And so my contract, my current contract expires the end of August, so I had to sign the contract for the next year by April 15th. | ||
| And part of the contingencies of that contract were that I attend restorative practices designed by the Office of Community Engagement to address the harm that I caused students of color and other students in the school. | ||
| But they would not specify what those practices would be until after I signed. | ||
| So I was in a bind there, so I found some legal representation through FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. | ||
| I spoke with Barry, who's on the Board of Advisors, and she suggested that I write a piece about my experiences, and I wrote 5,000 words at first. | ||
| I had a lot to say, and then we edited it down to something that was more digestible, and then I did another draft, and then she had some tweaks, so the editing was very helpful. | ||
| But those were all my words, and I'm really pleased with the effect it's had. | ||
| Right, so okay, so you put the piece out, and then the hate starts coming. | ||
| You get support from some quarters, of course, but then the hate starts rolling in, and then what's the next thing that the school did? | ||
| Because this is where it really starts kind of going off the rails. | ||
| Well, it is interesting. | ||
| I mean, I got overwhelming support, predictably, through Barry's subscribers and through an email that I had placed there. | ||
| I was curious how the school was reacting. | ||
| The article came out on the 13th. | ||
| My contract, I had to sign by the 15th. | ||
| I hadn't gotten back to them yet. | ||
| And then on the 14th, I believe I received a threat from someone within the school community. | ||
| It was not a physical threat, but it was a threat to my livelihood, my well-being, and it was basically everything but. | ||
| So I reported the threat to the administration. | ||
| I reported it to the head of school. | ||
| And then they tried to use that as a pretext to keep me out of the school, to keep me from teaching in the school, saying that, you know, well, maybe you feel unsafe because of this. | ||
| And I said, no, actually, I don't feel unsafe. | ||
| I'm merely bringing this to your attention, something on your radar you should take care of. | ||
| And then they said they tried to reframe this threat as an opinion. | ||
| And they said they would pull the opinions of the other students and faculty to see if they felt safe with me in the building. | ||
| And so when they came back to me and said, no, actually your students don't want to be in your classes. | ||
| So we need to keep you home. | ||
| And in fact, we're going to take away all your classes. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| They were indifferent to my claim that actually if someone makes a threat, aren't they the ones that should be staying home? | ||
| Why is a teacher punished for what another person did? | ||
| Yeah, unfortunately, my lack of shock is just, well, not only because I know your story, but I mean, we know this story over and over again, sort of false allegations, then gaslighting and reversing accusations and all of these things. | ||
| Okay, so we're gonna play this audio clip now. | ||
| Can you just set up what happened between you and the head of the school to give a little context and then we'll play it and then come back? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So the head of school, George Davison, sent a letter to the whole community saying that I had, you know, in my article, I had misrepresented, you know, the conditions at the school, that I had substantial omissions in there. | ||
| And they reiterated their commitment to anti-racism and they, you know, they offered me, they They relayed to the school that they had offered me this chance to participate in a subcommittee of a committee that would be heavily supervised as to sort of try to co-opt what I was saying. | ||
| However, their claim that I had misrepresented things or left omissions, I responded to that with my own letter saying that. | ||
| I actually had in conversations with George, he clearly acknowledged to me that he had grave doubts about the school's own policy and that he specifically had said that there was a problem with demonizing whites at the school. | ||
| So I released that letter publicly in response to his letter and then he released a letter back saying that this was In his words, "I misquoted him. | ||
| I attributed to him things he had never said nor would ever say in the press. | ||
| My actions were unprofessional." | ||
| So he was impugning my character and my veracity. | ||
| So at that point, I felt I had no choice but to release clips of the conversation, which | ||
| I had recorded because I was worried that it might come up in an employment dispute. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's actually quite incredible because you did this like an absolute pro in terms of the emails back and forth and then doing this recording. | ||
| And well, let's let, let's let the recording stand on its own. | ||
| So let, let's throw to that. | ||
| Let me ask you something, George, because I think those are, I think there's something very different. | ||
| About having a single experience where you make sense of it, right? | ||
| And having a teacher, an authority figure, talk to you endlessly, every year, telling you that because you have whiteness, you are associated with evils, all these different evils. | ||
| These are moral evils. | ||
| It's not the same as taking, like, a physical thing, because it doesn't affect your moral value. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
|
unidentified
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The fact is that I'm agreeing with you that there has been a demonization that we need to get our hands around in the way in which people are doing this understanding. | |
| So you agree that we're demonizing kids? | ||
|
unidentified
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We're demonizing white people for being born. | |
| And are some of our students white people? | ||
|
unidentified
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What? | |
| Are some of our students white people? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Okay, so we're demonizing white kids. | ||
| Why don't you just say it? | ||
|
unidentified
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We are using language that makes them feel less than for nothing that they are personally responsible for. | |
| Okay, so that clip is quite extraordinary because in essence, he's basically saying, yes, you're telling the truth. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you must have felt kind of good, I guess, at that point that you released it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if you back me up against a wall and you call me a liar, well, he left me no choice. | ||
| I have a reputation that I have to protect, especially since I'll probably be looking for another job soon. | ||
| Additionally, I want to make clear that the word demonization was his word. | ||
| I never suggested it to him. | ||
| That is, you know, that's why I was actually quite shocked that he felt that way. | ||
| And I was also shocked that he hadn't taken any action on it. | ||
| Because what does it mean if the head of school knows that students are being demonized for their race and does nothing except share it privately and saying publicly something completely different? | ||
| So this was just, you know, it was gratifying in a way, which is why I kind of said, thank you, thank you. | ||
| But it was also really disturbing. | ||
| Because nothing had been done or seemed would be planned to be done. He did make some mention | ||
| about you know, they were gonna have a meeting at the end of the year or something about it, but | ||
| that seemed totally inappropriate to the To how serious the problem was | ||
| Right. | ||
| So to bring this all to now, actually, so there was a little confusion, I think, at first, whether you had been let go or exactly what had happened. | ||
| So you are still employed by the school, but they're just not letting you teach. | ||
| Is that is that correct? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| As of now, I still have email access. | ||
| I don't receive all of the communications. | ||
| I'm not on all the distribution lists, as it turns out, but At this point, I still am. | ||
| I still am connected to the school in that way. | ||
| I have been asked to be on this task force, but I think I've said all I really need to say for them to work it out themselves. | ||
| Frankly, I don't think there's much I need to add to that. | ||
| Do you think there's any chance? | ||
| I mean, they've sort of just in essence doubled down, even now after having him be exposed. | ||
| I mean, do you sense that there's any chance that they will reverse any of this? | ||
| Is there any evidence? | ||
| I mean, this is one of the key points of the whole woke thing. | ||
| They don't seem to respond to truth and very, well, almost in every case they double down. | ||
| Yeah, they have put themselves in a very precarious position and this is, you know, you know the expression between a rock and a hard place? | ||
| Okay, this is like that, but instead of being crushed, they're being pulled into opposite directions. | ||
| So they're, you know, they've racialized the atmosphere so much and promised so much to different groups that now, you know, it's almost like I don't, I wonder if they would at this point be able to reverse course given how They've been into this divisive ideology. | ||
| I don't know if it's a problem that can be solved by changing course at this point. | ||
| Right. | ||
| In essence, they can't because they've gone so deep on teaching this stuff that it would basically point all of the light, shine all of the light on them. | ||
| So what do you want to happen at this point? | ||
| I mean, if you got an email right now saying, hey, you know, you can come teach again, is that enough? | ||
| No, I want them to change this. | ||
| I don't want the school to be destroyed. | ||
| I don't want to put vulnerable students on the street. | ||
| I want to simply allow for greater viewpoint diversity, to have all students feel free to express their points of view and have them discussed openly in a spirit of open inquiry. | ||
| Not to have their comments judged simply by the color of their skin, which is what happens, I think. | ||
| And with a lot of students, their points of view are labeled as one of a group of activist students labeled white opinions, simply because they're uttered by a white person. | ||
| I think they need to completely revamp the entire culture of the school to allow for open inquiry. | ||
| And that's what students have I've been asking for, to me personally, so I think that's really important. | ||
| I don't want the school to go bankrupt. | ||
| I want the school to be a good school, and that's how they could do it. | ||
| Are you shocked where you've gotten some support and dismayed where you haven't gotten some support? | ||
| I'm overwhelmed by how much support I've gotten, frankly. | ||
| I was expecting it to be like half, Half hate and half support. | ||
| I would be happy if that's what it was, but I think the people that have reached out to me have been overwhelmingly supportive. | ||
| Parents, alumni at the school, students have said, thank you so much for saying this. | ||
| We have been, you know, now that I'm in college, I look back on my high school and I feel like I remember feeling scared to say, to express myself in these classes. | ||
| I think there are students at the school now, I think there's a substantial percentage of students at the school now that are in support, if not with my views, with my right to speak up, and they have supported my right to speak up. | ||
| Now they can't do it publicly, they're students, but I have ways that people have communicated to me. | ||
| So that inspires me, that actually gives me a lot of hope, That may perhaps, the worm is turning, and we'll see some changes, if not at Grace, but maybe at some other schools. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Yeah, well as I said to you right before we started, everyone that has been on my show that I've seen step through this thing and walk through that fire, they're always stronger on the other side, whether it's Brett Weinstein, or Lindsey Shepard, or even James Damore, anyone that's done it from an academic angle, or James did it, obviously, at Google, whatever it is, if you can get through it, then you're pretty much okay. | ||
| If people wanna find out more about this, or help you, or reach out to you, as you said, you might be looking for a job soon, where can we direct them? | ||
| You can email me at the email teachingfortruth at gmail.com. | ||
| I am the only one that has access to that email. | ||
| No one else will see what you send me and I will keep everything confidential. | ||
| I also respond to every email that I get, so please reach me there. | ||
| I'm also volunteering currently for FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. | ||
| We're working to set up chapters nationwide with parents and students and other people to basically push back and create a common culture based on You know, fairness, understanding, and humanity, we have to get back to a sane approach to education. | ||
| And I think FAIR can help. | ||
| Yeah, and FAIR basically is stepping into the vacuum where the ACLU, which unfortunately has kind of crumbled under a lot of these ideas, has just left the range, so to speak. | ||
| Well, Paul, I really appreciate you doing this, and I wish you luck, and if there's anything I can do to help you along the ride, please let me know. | ||
| I think you already have, Dave. | ||
| This has been great. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| Great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about academia instead of nonstop yelling, check out our academia playlist. | ||
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