A sequel! Dr. Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, was publicly blasted by a student - first in an article on The College Fix, and then to millions of viewers tuning into Fox News with Tucker Carlson - because of a paragraph he wrote in the 2019 Spring semester syllabus for a Political Science course. That's right... there was a segment on Fox News about... a syllabus. NAY. A single paragraph in a syllabus. Unbelievable. Later we talk about how, while both Dr. Ponce from WTW34 and Dr. Mayer had tenure; what happens when you don't? We'll hear about Dr. Michael Phillips and his fight after his contract was not renewed with Texas's Collin College. Dr. Mayer's report to the Court for the current Wisconsin redistricting efforts! Be sure to check out SIO episodes 405 and 418 with expert Joe Magestro for more information on what's been happening there. Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode... And I'm Thomas.
That over there is the brains of the operation.
How's it going, Lydia?
Pretty good, but I also couldn't tell you what episode it is.
Yeah, who cares?
It doesn't matter.
No, it does very much matter.
Make sure you haven't missed any.
I want, next time I have more time for lawsuits, I want to sue Apple Podcasts.
I know I say it all the time, but I, now that I switched to iPhone, it just doesn't, it just, it just marks episodes that's played that I never played.
Just decides like if I- You don't need a lawyer.
Yeah.
It's like some weird glitch where if it was next in the queue, but I decide to do a different one, it's like, oh, okay.
So then you want to make sure you never hear about this again.
It's like a really passive aggressive, like, oh, I'd line this one up for you and, uh, you, oh, you're not going to listen.
Oh, guess what?
You'll never see it again.
Say goodbye!
I'll just say my Android phone does not do that, so... I know.
No, Podcast Addict is... It's great.
I don't know why there isn't just, like, an Apple version of that app.
Why is that such a... Anyway.
This episode, sponsored by... We're talking about podcasts!
That's so fucking irrelevant to this audience.
Let's talk about something relatable.
Okay, here we go.
So we're going to do another look into campus craziness, but again, looking at the lens of when the conservative block of folks or alt-right or whatever is going after professors that they deem to be too liberal for the classroom.
Yeah.
Campus craziness.
I can't wait to be more bummed out by some completely reasonable professor.
I don't know, talking about their kid having an illness and then Tucker Carlson being like, this is a Marxist who's going to take the guns and then be super bummed out about it.
So here we go.
I love it.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
I know.
So we're actually going to talk about another political science professor.
So our last episode, we talked about Dr. Albert Ponce, a political science professor out of Diablo Valley Community College in California.
Today, we're going to talk about Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who is a political science professor out of University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And he got his bachelor's in political science from UC San Diego.
And then his master's and PhD in political science from Yale University.
My dumb brain was like, he got his master's in PhD?
Wow, that's amazing.
I don't know why you would do that, but yeah.
He's like, I don't know everything about PhDs.
I'm not a PhD in PhD, but I am a master's in PhD.
I am a master's in PhD.
And.
No, I was admitting that I'm an idiot for a second.
My brain heard that.
His research interests include campaign finance, election administration, elections, political institutions, the presidency, unilateral powers, and also Australia.
I don't know why, but that's an interest.
Is there like a wild card component to the, like, credential?
You know, and I've read this out of order because they do it alphabetically, you know, for the zing, but yeah, Australia is listed there.
That's good.
I do like the idea that whatever institution that was determined at, they're like, okay, weird rule we have here.
You gotta spin a big wheel for your last thing.
Pick a country, any country.
Yeah, he is actually an expert witness often on matters of campaign finance and redistricting, voter ID litigation issues at the state level, but also the federal court level.
He was the expert in Gil v. Whitford in Wisconsin regarding their partisan gerrymandering.
This was several years ago.
I think that one was like 2016, but he also has written an expert report for the 2020 24, what we're in the middle of with Joe over on SIO for Wisconsin gerrymandering.
He issued a report regarding the redistricting proposal that the Democrats put together.
And I'll link that in the show notes, too, because that's pretty interesting if anyone wants to check that out.
Kind of a little crossover bit.
Speaking of dates, are we in modern era?
No, we're going to go back to 2019.
Well, spoilers!
Now I know he survived.
You know he survived to write reports, but you don't know what else is going to happen.
It'll be an interesting journey.
He is alive.
Yes.
So we're going to go back to the beginning of the spring semester in 2019.
So January 2019, classes were just getting started for the semester, and my personal favorite part of the semester, the syllabus was distributed.
Literally my favorite part.
You know why?
Because I wanted to pull out my calendar.
I wanted to put in like all the dates for everything.
Yeah.
Wow.
I wanted to be really organized.
You know, I think we did the opposite to track SIO, didn't we?
Didn't I do that with somebody?
Yeah.
Worked for us somehow in some ways, but not in a million other ways.
The syllabus for me as an ADHD is irrelevant.
I mean, you're telling me things we're doing at a time that's not this minute.
Why would I?
I mean, I still procrastinated plenty, but I really liked calendars.
Oh, no, it's sure.
But like for my brain, it's like, you don't need any of this.
I would just hear like a tone for the whole time.
Oh, man.
It was the best.
I just know that it will be gone from my mind long before it mattered that I knew it, you know?
And then it'll just happen.
So it's like, cool.
Just let me know when that happens.
So interesting.
Oh, I clearly suck.
It's not a good way to go through life.
No, but I don't know.
Not that this is an episode about teaching, but I think it is interesting because I'm sure you're not the only person who's like that, and maybe that's something that a college professor should be listening to.
Oh, I remember.
Yeah, we'll get back to the real talk, which is podcast-adic, but... Yeah.
I remember I always thought, okay, I'll tell you what, never mind.
Syllabus day was actually my favorite day as well because I knew it was a free day.
I knew it was like, ah, nice.
First day of all my college courses, I don't mind hearing a little bit about what the thing's going to be.
Maybe get to know some people, maybe whatever.
I'm not going to have to do any freaking work.
It's going to be, I know I can just tune out because I don't care about the information.
And then there'd be the occasional class that was like, all right, here's a syllabus.
Look it over.
Yep.
And maybe one note or two.
All right, first lesson, here we go.
And it's like, what the?
Come on, man.
This is supposed to be a mandated holiday.
I didn't know.
I didn't bring anything to write with.
Really?
I'm barely dressed.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Like what?
We're going to have the first lecture on the first day?
Oh my God.
Are you out of your mind?
When I get a job, we'll have to work on the first day?
What are you guys talking about?
College.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Okay.
Back to the real stuff.
We're going to head on over to Tucker Carlson and let him introduce us to what happened at UW-Madison.
What kind of nonsense.
Just the facts.
Well, it's no secret that political indoctrination is replacing teaching in many college classrooms.
But sometimes it's useful to see just how bad the rot is and just how unimpressive the people involved are.
Deeply unimpressive.
Professor at the University of Wisconsin has been caught diverting a course on the presidency into the most banal possible script.
Sorry.
Deeply unimpressive.
I just read you all his background.
He has a master's and PhD.
I don't think Tucker has that.
Yeah.
If you want to know something about PhD, he could tell you, well, not everything because again, he doesn't have his doctorate in it, but he could tell you most stuff.
All right, continue.
He can tell you what he's going to know when he gets his doctorate in PhD.
Okay.
...agreed against the Trump administration.
His name is Kenneth Mayer.
He's a professor there and his syllabus for the American presidency spends an entire paragraph ranting about Russian collusion and testimony from Michael Cohen and promising that other shoes are almost certain to drop and lots of other cliches that college professors would probably be above in an ideal world but are not at all in 2019 America.
McKenna Collins knows as well.
She was a student in that class and has publicized the syllabus and she joins us tonight.
McKenna, thanks very much for coming on.
Are we overstating this syllabus in its ludicrousness and just sort of doctrinaire Democratic talking points, or is that really what it was?
Well, it's good to be with you, Tucker.
I got to tell you, I took one glance at the syllabus and had to double check and make sure that I was in an actual academic course and not in a course called Trump Derangement Syndrome 101.
I mean, it was, it was unbelievable the amount of overt bias that... So like, if you took a class named Trump Derangement Syndrome 101, would they, that professor wouldn't have Trump Derangement Syndrome?
I don't know.
Then that would be really self-aware of them.
This professor explained in what was supposed to be a course description.
But I mean it's not even interesting.
I mean this is like midday Sunday afternoon third string MSNBC guest talking point stuff.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, the part that rubbed me the wrong way, I mean, there were numerous things.
First of all, it's an oversimplification and misrepresentation of what Trump supporters... Sorry, what is?
I don't know.
They haven't told me... Yeah, it's literally the course description.
Yeah, but like...
You can't just be like, so it had a pair, by the way, the syllabus, we're talking breaking news.
A college courses syllabus is about the fucking weakest news item I could possibly imagine to put on your national top cable network show.
Let's read.
I didn't read my syllabi for the courses I was in and you're going to try to anyway.
And not only that, they're like, there was a paragraph in it.
And they never share the visual of it.
What was in it?
Oh, and this is just... I love the idea, too.
This is a university of which, you know, there are not infinite in the country, but there are a lot.
I just love the comparison, too, of a third-rate MSNBC.
Well, that's someone who's on TV.
Like, if your course had, that's someone who's like the third host of an MSNBC show, you'd be like, wow, that's awesome.
Are you kidding me?
I'd love to learn from that.
Yeah, Jesus.
You've mixed up your numbers in terms of like, what's more rare, you know?
A college professor out of all of them?
Or the third string, MSNBC, whatever.
Yeah.
Idiots.
Sorry.
Actually stand for and what they appreciate about the president.
The complete lack of discussion about all of the policy accomplishments and achievements of the president serves to sway students to kind of form this certain perspective of the president.
So what if you dissent But what if you say, look, I came to this class to learn about the history of the American presidency.
I dissent, professor!
You're giving me this CNN crap instead.
Why don't you stop and just teach me what happened.
What would happen to you if you said that?
You'd be killed.
I'm sure that I would be penalized for that.
It's not the course that I signed up for.
The course I signed up for was to take a critical, objective look at the history of the presidency of the United States.
And that's what it was.
Now, if this professor is going to spew unfounded claims, claims that have turned out to be largely false, I mean, this is something that needs to be addressed not only by the Dean of Students, acknowledged by the professor, but I hope that this, you know, shows students who are uncomfortable with this kind of bias infiltrating the classroom that they need to stand up and use their voices.
It's not even smart.
They're not even smart.
All the smart people, I guess, went into finance or something.
They're getting rich in private equity.
You're not even smart.
You're just, like, not smart.
The political proselytizing is unbelievable, and it's not just me.
Democrats and Republicans alike have reached out to me and said that this is unacceptable behavior, that the professor needs to acknowledge that he's wrong.
Students have messaged me and said that they have had to, you know, change their opinions just to get an A in a class, so I'm certainly not the first person that this is happening to.
Was your opinion something unfactual?
I, uh, trying to be a doctor, I had to change my opinion on whether or not humors are still the relevant way to look at, like, the human body.
I have to... Right, yep.
Fucking, they made me change my opinion, fascists!
I love this.
I already love this.
10 out of 10.
My favorite thing is that, you know, sometimes you get their presentation of it and you're like, okay, well I better hear the debunk because yeah, it sounds a little bad.
This is, we're not going to tell you what it is, but there was an alleged paragraph in a syllabus.
And again, we're going to tell you almost nothing about what was in it, but rest assured, it is so terrible that we are already writing this guy's obituary.
Yeah.
And I'm like, what do I do with this information?
Even if I want it to be a piece of shit, oh man, nothing that I know now is bad.
Yeah, so if you're just a regular Fox News viewer, this was posted to her Facebook, and then College Fix picked it up, and so it lives on the internet in that capacity.
When you say this, you mean like she did a- The syllabus itself.
Okay, okay.
Yep, so I have it in front of me, and want me to read to you- Did you add it to your planner?
Yeah, I know.
I went back to my 2019 planner and I asked for these things.
Lydia's version of fantasy football is like, man, if I was in this class, oh, God, I'm going to draft some classes.
That's true.
Like, we'll do a draft.
That's actually true.
And get with my friends, and then we'll all write what our schedules would be if we... Keep going.
I've just invented a new eSport or something or whatever, yeah.
It's the best.
All right, so this is a 10-page syllabus.
And the core, I will not read the whole thing to you.
That's a lot.
Yeah, I was going to say.
The title of the class is the American presidency or what do we know and how do we know it?
The course description says there is no such thing as a bad time to study the American presidency, but sometimes now, for instance, are better than others.
Yeah.
We are two years into the most, how shall we put it, unconventional presidency in American history with a president who gleefully flouts the norms of governing and presidential behavior that have structured the office since George Washington.
He would say that himself.
His supporters would brag about that.
Completely accurate information.
This is not a bug, but a feature.
And they rejoice in his contempt for what they insist is a corrupt D.C. establishment.
If elites are against it, Trump supporters are for it.
Completely accurate information.
They would agree with that.
Yep.
To others, he is a spectacularly unqualified and catastrophically unfit egomaniac who poses an overt threat to the republic.
And this was before U.S.
intelligence agencies concluded that Russian operatives, with the approval of Putin himself, hacked DNC computers and carefully leaked embarrassing emails as a way of damaging Clinton, all with the goal of helping Trump.
Before multiple campaign officials pled guilty to lying to the FBI or to other crimes, before federal prosecutors said in a court filing that Michael Cohen was acting at Trump's direction to violate campaign finance laws by making payoffs to multiple women who said they had affairs with Trump and ordered by their silence during the campaign, or that Cohen lied about ongoing efforts during before federal prosecutors said in a court filing that Michael Cohen was acting at Trump's direction to violate campaign Or that Cohen lied about ongoing efforts during the campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Other shoes are almost certain to drop and evidence continues to emerge of ongoing contacts and engagement between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence assets and government officials.
We will leave space in the schedule in case the report from the special counsel is released sometime in the semester.
This is a course about a peculiar American political institution, the presidency.
Throughout the course, we'll focus on four fundamental questions about their role as formal head of the executive branch of government and head of state, but also as the focal point of public attention.
And then it gets into things that are not about Trump, basically.
I mean, there are questions in there about, like, can Trump pardon himself?
You know, questions that people legitimately had when someone, as Dr. Mayer put it, someone unconventional entered the office.
I imagine this is not the first time he taught this course.
And this was an opportunity to add in things that we've never really thought about before.
And to his point, what an interesting time to be taking that class.
If I'm being honest, yeah, there's some embellishment there.
Like, obviously, he did one sentence on supporters would say.
This.
Others would say, and then a whole bunch of stuff, and it's like, yeah, no, I'm with... Here's the thing, it's accurate, so whatever.
And also, it's funny how little they give a shit about the hypocrisy, because the other thing they cover on Campus Craziness is that a teacher wanted to use the N-word or something, a student complained, and they're like, isn't there such a thing as academic freedom?
Yeah.
I don't understand.
Aren't the Orwellian thing?
And it's like, it'll be on the same fucking episode that they'll be talking.
It's absurd that they don't ever understand.
Do we, do you want academic freedom or not?
Because if you don't, then well, fuck off.
I, that's stupid.
If you do, well then this is something that comes with it.
Like sometimes you're going to have a professor that is making like pretty much accurate points, but you know, maybe, maybe he's embellishing a little bit, whatever.
That's well within the realm of academic freedom.
That, that would be silly to call that anything else.
And this was like peak.
Things were kind of tumbling out.
Peak Trump derangement syndrome.
Yeah, peak Trump derangement syndrome.
And it was overwhelming.
I mean, for everybody who was experiencing it, you're like, oh my God, like it's just constant.
And I guess we're living a little bit of that now, too.
But like, especially then, it's the things that No one had ever heard of.
And now you have a political science professor who is an expert in elections and an expert in campaign finance.
And now there's all these instances in which those things have been violated.
So the additional pages go on to like the materials that they'll cover, class policies, everything like that.
But really, that's where the crux of the issue was, that paragraph.
They did do a whole segment on the show later of like, and his homework do-over policy was kind of mean.
Didn't love it.
Yeah.
And when she posted this to Facebook, McKenna Collins, just very quick note about her.
She was finishing up her college degree.
At that point, she had taken a year off.
She's dressed like a 1700s child bride.
Sorry, I had to say it.
She took a year off to compete in Miss America.
Miss Child.
No.
She actually won Miss Wisconsin.
She competed in that and then went on to compete in the Miss America pageant.
Wow.
Don't let anyone in that fucking thing.
And it's interesting because her platform, according to the Miss America website, was about being civil to one another and ensuring that discourse is fair.
Okay, whatever.
She had said that she wanted to go on to potentially, like, work in Washington, D.C., maybe, like, in the legislature, you know, an aide or a staffer or something of that degree.
And she had interned with Paul Ryan previously, you know, pretty active in terms of the college Republican presence that she had, very clearly, like, a Trumper.
I think I read an article where she had Trump stickers on her laptop and said that, you know, she could tell people were, like, rolling their eyes and looking at her when she opened her laptop.
But she ended up getting married shortly after this, actually, and she and her husband have a huge real estate business out in Wisconsin, and they're called Patriot Properties.
Now they have like a building arm also.
I looked around and I think... Did she come from wealth or marry into wealth?
She's 10 years old in this.
I don't understand.
Yeah.
So I don't know about her family.
Collins is just like too vague of a name.
I haven't been able to piece her ancestry together.
But I found a little bit about her husband and his family.
I think that they are decently well off.
It's something like, you know, a family business, though not in Wisconsin.
So he had experience with real estate to some degree.
And then they leveraged a lot of like borrowing.
I think they bought like a hundred million dollar apartment property at one point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They have a lot of money.
How would you do that without a bajillion dollars?
Well, because they bought their first house and then renovated it and then they flipped it, essentially, and then they turned it into an Airbnb.
Oh, so that got them like, you know, $20,000.
Okay, so how did they get the other $100,000?
Well, in Wisconsin.
I don't know.
A hundred million?
They worked closely with, I mean, eventually, no, eventually they got to that amount, but they worked closely with a bank within Wisconsin and they just kind of pitched them their ideas for business.
I haven't been working close enough with my bank.
I guess not.
Let's call Chase and be like, can we get closer or somehow?
I haven't been working closely enough.
A hundred million.
Okay.
Yeah, so they are a huge presence in Wisconsin.
I looked into, because my initial reaction with Patriot Properties, I was like, all right.
And it's like an American flag in the shape of a house or something, I don't know, for their logo.
But what it seems to be is that they actually just really support the troops kind of thing.
And so they do a lot of connecting with veteran communities and trying to get folks into housing.
And so I don't think it's necessarily tied to MAGA or anything like that.
Really?
Yeah, from what I can tell, unless they're hiding it really, really well, but nothing super explicit that I've seen.
And maybe our Wisconsin listeners will chime in and say, no, actually, they are, and happy to be corrected about that.
But from my research, that's what I'm seeing.
As I mentioned, she had posted this on her Facebook.
College Fix picked it up from there, and their headline was, American Presidency Class on Trump, and then in quotes from the course description, Catastrophically Unfit Egomaniac Poses Threat to Republic.
Boy, you left out a few crucial words there that provide some context, you know?
And some of the things that they mention in this article from College Fix is mayor motions, more is coming, writing that other shoes are almost certain to drop.
Sorry, I think I had a stroke.
Mayor motions, more is coming?
What was that?
Mayor, the professor, mayor motions, more is coming.
So I get, I don't, that's an insane sentence.
I don't understand, but they're just saying he's suggesting more is coming.
Well, maybe that's because we knew a hundred percent more was coming because the more he's coming, he's talking about had to do with like proceedings.
Yeah.
It's like there is a schedule on it.
Definitionally.
Yeah.
It's definitely coming.
It did in fact come.
And the more is coming could also be that more is coming.
Now, now it's resolved.
Right.
And more is coming is that there is nothing more.
Maybe that's what it was, but you know.
We know that's not true.
That's an unnecessary defense.
All right, you're right.
I'm trying to be too kind.
So she gave an email interview to The College Fix and said, His one-sided, lengthy articulation of the anti-Trump position in the syllabus stands in stark contrast to the feeble, effortless explanation he offers for the pro-Trump position.
His choice of language serves only to set a negative, partisan tone about the subject matter before students even set foot in the classroom.
So was that present?
Because that's at least acknowledging the context somewhat.
Was that present from the beginning or just in a follow up thing?
It's not present in the headline.
They do talk about some other quotes around it.
So she posted about it on Facebook.
It got sent over to College Fix or she reached out to them proactively.
I don't know.
There's no information about that.
But then they asked to interview her via email.
And so these quotes are not coming from her.
She provided the syllabus to them as well.
And like I said, it was publicly on her Facebook.
She also says, the professor's implicit bias against Trump supporters has robbed students of the opportunity to think objectively about the subject matter and formulate their own opinions.
This is day one.
This is day one from a paragraph.
That's weird.
How is she doing that allegedly then?
Yeah.
Weird.
I, for one, escaped the mind control device by not looking directly into it, but other students will be unable to think for themselves.
Yeah.
Really?
From reading some sentences?
Okay.
So they reached out to University of Wisconsin, Madison.
They wanted to speak to him.
He declined an interview, but they ended up speaking to the spokesperson.
And she said, Ken Mayer is a popular instructor and award-winning presidential scholar who leaves his political opinions at the classroom door and asks his students to do the same.
Then it talks about the assigned readings that they're going to be doing and everything.
And it's like really just sort of basic, right?
I would have loved to take this class.
This sounds super interesting.
I'm just learning about the presidency and the history of the presidency and not just scandals related to Trump.
Like, he's not the only person.
Bill Clinton is talked about in here, too.
Like, how you navigate the presidency for that, how you navigate the presidency for Nixon.
You know, it's not all about just anti-Trump.
So after it was picked up on College Fix, we have a state legislator getting involved.
Representative Dave Murphy saw the article, I guess, in College Fix?
Probably.
Why are you surprised about this?
This is Republicanism now.
I'm sorry, it's depressing.
Oh, I know, yeah, sure.
Oh, by all means, yeah, let's be actively depressed about it.
It just bothers me, like, he's wasting his time.
Again, this was literally a paragraph in a syllabus for a college course.
But this is someone who, from what I understand, has his staff scour course catalogs for the different Wisconsin colleges, identifying courses that he might have a problem with so then he can get mad about it.
And he's very honest about that because there was a previous course that he got really incensed about called, I think it was like, The Problem with Whiteness.
And insisted that the professor be let go.
I think it was like an adjunct sort of position and insisted that the class not be held.
So when he caught wind of this and, you know, clearly this professor's anti-Trump, he took it upon himself to write a letter to the professor and he cc'd the board of regents for University of Wisconsin, the president.
Boy, this sucks.
Chancellor for University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as members of the legislature in the state Senate and the state assembly and their joint committee on finance, basically threatening pulling funding if this wasn't addressed.
So in his letter...
Soterios Johnson: Boy, that sucks.
Yeah.
In his letter, he says that he was "appalled by your, Professor Mayer, politically polarized characterization of the Trump presidency." I am a fierce advocate for academic freedom, and it is your right— Oh, really?
Really?
Are you?
That's weird, because I just—my wife just read me a bunch of stuff, and it was all the exact fucking opposite of that.
Yep, yep.
I'm a fierce advocate for academic freedom, and it is your right to include such statements in your course syllabi.
However, your choice to include such a statement cannot go without criticism, and including it is a disservice to your students and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He calls these hyper-partisan value judgments on contemporary actions of the president, that it has a chilling effect on any future class discourse.
Any students who identify as Trump supporters will be encouraged to, quote, parrot liberal views that you clearly sympathize with or remain silent in an attempt to mask their conservative opinions.
Yeah, that's just every day.
But did you say he threatened to withdraw funding though?
Or are you saying he normally does that?
He normally does.
And he CC'd the Joint Finance Committee for the, for Wisconsin legislature on this.
So it's a little bit of a power play.
Well, it's just talking out of both sides of your mouth.
I value academic freedom.
That's why I'm only criticizing this and taking away your funding.
That's why I'm telling your mom and dad kind of thing.
Yeah.
So he calls this a lack of perspective, that it's a slap in the face to the sort of academic rigor that should be a central focus at an institution such as UW-Madison.
And at the end, as a good faith effort to promote a healthy academic exchange of views on campus, I encourage you to invite a member of the Trump administration to speak with your students.
Yeah.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Yeah.
So that was really shocking to me is that like watching a member of the legislature, state legislature, engaging in this sort of thing.
But, you know, as I'm researching this, I'm seeing like all these links and stuff.
And one of them is from Heterodox Academy.
Right.
And I had that exact same reaction.
I was like, oh, God, what are they going to say?
And so I pulled it up and It's actually, it's amazing because it's in defense of Dr. Mayer.
So at the very least, yeah, Heterodox Academy may be the kind of people who just take the one side of the argument and don't try to do both.
Maybe back in 2019.
I don't know if that's necessarily true now.
Yeah, I don't know if it's true now, but they're at least, so my impression is that that's A lot of the assholes that are the more like came sort of from the left, allegedly kind of campus craziness people.
It's still campus craziness, but I think it's more from the side of, can you believe what these students are pressuring us teachers into doing?
And so I think they're more consistently on that side.
And so for that reason, this makes more sense.
Yeah, they're pro-professor.
Fox News and other Republican fucking members of state Congress are shameless.
They don't care about doing both ends of the argument.
Even though that guy, like, acknowledges it, he still just acknowledges it and then does it.
It's weird to be like, no, I definitely respect whatever, but I'm cutting your funding.
That's stupid.
You're doing the thing that you say you're not doing.
But Heterodox Academy, I'm sure they're just Fine with taking that one part of the argument.
They're like, no, teachers should be able to do whatever because we want to later be really mad at students for getting offended when someone says the N word or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and so this was written specifically by someone who has worked with Dr. Mayer in a variety of different instances, but Heterodox published it on their site.
But what he said here, His name's Donald Moynihan.
He teaches at Georgetown University, and it looks like in public policy.
What he wrote here was that he's a regular co-author of his, a friend of his.
Additionally, they worked together for 13 years before he moved on to his other school.
And so he wanted to provide some context to what Fox News may not have gotten from that clip that we just watched.
And so he says he has a long record of working with a loosely affiliated group of UW-Madison faculty members called the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, fought for free speech on campus since the 1990s, FIRE loves them, so that should appeal to those folks.
Yeah, I think some of the people involved in there, I'm not big fans of them because they're Super Catholic and they have one of the little, what the Witherspoon Institute is for Princeton, right?
They have like a little center that they've developed of classical thought on UW-Madison campus and the person who's like the head of that worked closely with Dr. Mayer on this faculty member committee for free speech.
And UW-Madison tried to adopt a campus speech code, and Dr. Mayer actually argued against it and said that there's constitutional question about what a campus speech code actually could be, encouraging students to understand that offensive speech is a part of the price of free speech, which, you know, is up for debate, I think.
Well, it really all depends on the context.
Like, what speech are we talking about?
When did it take place?
How was it?
When?
Why?
But, also, none of these are, I mean, it's kind of interesting.
To me, these are all kind of beside the point.
It's like, no, you don't understand, he's a great guy, and he does support, it's like, that has nothing to do with the syllabus.
It's interesting that it's not more defensive, like, yeah, here's the class, here's what it was.
I think what he's trying to defend here, so like the next piece that he says is, one of the last times I saw Ken, he reported on bringing a group of students to see a Charles Murray event on campus.
Oh, fuck this guy.
So, no, because it was an invited speaker, and I don't know, it wasn't required.
It was more like... You're saying this professor brought people to a Charles Murray?
I think it's from this idea of engaging with speech that you don't, well, I'm not trying to excuse Charles Murray here at all.
The school brought him on campus, and I think the professor was, I don't want to speak to his intentions here, but students, I guess, wanted to attend, and I don't know if it was something where they attended A libtard.
analyzed in class afterwards.
My point, and I guess the point that I'm trying to get from what Dr. Moynihan shared here, is that Dr. Mayer is not a super hyper-partisan, well, and it's like he's engaging across because free speech is important to him as well, and for himself and as well and it's like he's engaging across because free speech is important to him as well, and And for himself and as well for his students and his colleagues.
What I'm identifying here is I sort of resent that what this feels like to me is someone, and I don't know exactly who the Moynihan guy is, someone who's a part of the bullshit project of scaring people about kids on campus.
A part of it.
A little bit, probably less right-wing than, you know, Tucker and like those assholes.
Sounds to me like this professor is more to that heterodox side than, I'm not saying he's a right wing or something, but more to that side than maybe we would have thought.
And it sounds like the defense is, no, you understand, this is one of ours.
That's what it feels more like to me.
Like, oh, I know this guy.
Look at all these things that he's done that signal that He's not one of these frickin' campus crazy lefties.
I see what you're saying, yeah.
That's nothing to do with the matter at hand, you know?
That's just like, come on, this is one of the good ones.
And it's interesting because it's sort of like the old, I never thought leopards would eat my face says leopards eating face part, whatever.
Is like Trump is so horrible and a lot of people adjacent to that like Tucker Carlson are so horrible that those things barely matter.
Like friendly fire usually, historically Republicans would probably be like oh yeah you're a shit friendly fire whoopsie but because we've reached a level of fascism that's like I don't remember if you've seen the movie Brazil But it's so darkly funny, and one of the jokes is that, I think it's Michael Palin's character, the whatever leader guy, calls his wife by the wrong name every time, and Michael Palin just says like, okay, that's your name now?
And it's like that level of thing, you don't understand, her name is this.
It's like, it doesn't even matter now, if it's friendly fire, it's like, it doesn't matter, it's Trump, so whatever he says, I don't care.
I'm not going to defend whoever the guy is.
I feel like that's the day and age we live in now.
But anyway, that's what I take from this.
It feels more like a personal defense of like, no, he's one of the good ones.
I know this one.
Versus like what happened and the principles of it.
So it is a long piece.
And so this is kind of the beginning where he's talking about how he knows Mayer as a person.
He also cites that when this story went out and Collins, McKenna Collins, kind of made her rounds and stuff.
The UW-Madison College Republicans actually issued a press release saying that- Dorks.
No, saying Dr. Mayer is an intellect- No, they're dorks.
Okay.
I know what you're about to say from the context.
Yeah.
They're still dorks!
Press release.
They said he is an intellectually honest professor that treats conservatives fairly.
Pretty much the ideal among moderate conservative intellectuals of what a poli-sci professor should be.
Red flag!
Yikes.
Hate that.
I think when you're talking about, like in our previous episode, we talked a lot about how a professor, when they're engaging with students, they probably don't want their politics to be known.
It's not relevant in the spirit of learning necessarily.
And so if he's able to engage students regardless of their political beliefs, I don't think that's a bad thing.
No, yeah.
I'm mostly kidding.
But yeah, no, it is interesting because it does sound like that.
Maybe that's a genuine character trait of this guy, because it like had you just read me the beginning, it did seem like he was going out of his way a little bit on bashing Trump in that syllabus.
Not in an improper way, but just, you know, taking taking a little extra time on that that part of the syllabus.
Maybe he is genuinely one of those people who is who's wanting to keep things heterodox, as they say, or wanting to, you know.
And that's interesting.
The other thing that this article calls out is that Collins, in her kind of tirade a little bit, never mentioned, but other students chimed in on Twitter, that not just going over the course requirements as part of the first day of class with the syllabus, he gave his Stump speech that he usually does on the opening day of class, where he asks them to set aside their partisan identities to be open to new ideas.
All opinions are welcome in the classroom debate.
Ideas should be expressed freely.
Right?
Encouraging viewpoint diversity and understanding that not everyone is going to agree on every single thing, but we're coming here to have those open conversations and all learn from each other.
And actually, after she attended a couple lectures, McKenna Collins herself ended up saying, I'm not concerned with the course itself being biased.
Asshole.
Yeah.
I just wanted to be on TV, so I seized on the first thing that I could.
Yeah.
Never went back to Fox, obviously.
They weren't going to call her.
And that was the only thing, only time that she was quoted as saying that, really, in like one article.
But by that point, it had just spread.
Wow.
I've made a horrendous mistake.
I'm going to fix it by doing absolutely nothing.
Yep, and I mean just talk about like our experience on this show when misinformation spreads or the narrative spreads in a particular way, backtracking and correcting that record is incredibly hard if not absolutely impossible.
Oh yeah, it does almost nothing.
Yeah.
It's the bare minimum you should do, but it, yeah, it's...
Once that's out of the bag, yeah, it's hard.
So, you know, Breitbart had covered it.
College Fix had covered it, obviously.
Fox News had covered it.
And, you know, we have a state representative issuing a memo that ended up — the total number of people it went to was 58, by the way.
Like, a lot of people got that letter, which is kind of ridiculous.
Did we get a full apology and retraction from that gentleman?
Nope.
And so, Moynihan's point in this piece is, literally millions saw Mayer falsely portrayed.
Relatively few heard the full story.
Local news media in Wisconsin followed the case, but that was pretty much it.
That if he were under the real threat of losing his job, that would be really, really intense.
What you're creating there, that sort of situation for professors is just incredibly unfair.
Incredibly unfair.
They had to take down his contact information from the website.
He deleted his Facebook account for a while.
You know, there's no reports here that I've seen of the specific messages that he received during this time or anything like that.
But yeah, it is pretty incredible.
Well, did he die, though?
No.
Oh, man, I already knew that.
You already knew.
Sorry, I spoiled it.
Damn it.
I know.
But I thought it would be kind of fun to share what the syllabus looked like the following year.
Oh, okay.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
So the following semester, so the next time he taught the class, it was semester one of 2019, August or September.
And at the beginning, before the course description, he wrote a blurb.
It says, before we start, I want to make a few things clear.
First, no one in this class or any other that I teach will be penalized, rewarded, or otherwise evaluated based on ideology, partisanship, political views, vote preferences, or anything other than the requirements set out below and in course assignments.
Second, a key component of an education is developing the ability to distinguish between statements of fact and evidence and interpretations about what those facts mean.
Third, a statement, interpretation, or idea that goes against your priors, or even one that you find offensive, is not by definition a personal attack.
The ability to listen, engage, respond, and counter-argue in the situation is an essential element of becoming a critical thinker.
And then he quotes a University of Wisconsin kind of motto thing because of some major academic freedom issues that they faced in the past.
That is, whatever may be limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.
Yeah, and you know, to be serious for a second, ultimately, as much as I am, I guess I just am a little bit on alert for that rhetoric to go a little bit too far into the like heterodox academy.
There is a fine line, I think, between What this guy may be expressing, which is a good, healthy view about these kinds of things, especially in a university, and a lot of this language that's really just disguising they want professors to be able to say slurs without getting in trouble.
And it's a fine line, and so I'm probably a little too on alert for that.
Because, to be serious for a moment, you gotta remember, and I should remember most of all, these are very young people we're talking about.
I won't say children.
I think that's a little infantilizing.
They are college students, so they're young adults.
I mean, this is a 400 level course.
So theoretically, I guess that these would be fourth year students.
Sure.
They're young.
They're young adults.
And if they're anything like me, they may someday change a lot of these bullshit opinions and one day very much regret the opinions that they held at this time.
And it's actually good to have those people be comfortable expressing themselves Because that's likely the best way for them to, you know, kind of politely be shown that they're full of shit at that time, maybe.
Not that that's inevitable, but it might happen.
So, uh, yeah, maybe, you know, it sounds like maybe this guy is, uh, is a very solid professor on this topic and doing the right thing.
I just, I get a little worried with some of that talk, you know, like, oh, this isn't a personal attack.
Cause it's a lot of that same rhetoric is used to make people of color feel like they shouldn't complain when they feel offended kind of thing.
Yeah, that's fair.
It's a fine line.
It's hard to know.
And it's about how it's being used that usually tells you that.
Yeah, maybe I owe this man an apology.
Maybe he's a saint.
I don't know.
And with regard to your call-out, he did devote some significant words, and maybe it was a little embellished in terms of the vocabulary that he chose in that initial syllabus.
In this one, he pares it down quite a bit.
And instead of just listing things, he ends up kind of summarizing Yeah, don't get me wrong.
That's all very objective.
Like you could do a very objective syllabus that's four hours going off about how unprecedented Trump's presidency was.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
But it was more just that, like, you didn't really need to in the syllabus.
It's like, yeah, no, we get it.
This is a syllabus.
Yeah.
Okay.
You've made the point after a few of those sentences.
Anyway.
Yeah.
He posted, you know, later on with Twitter, I think this was, yeah, 2022.
He posted on Twitter that the end of the semester, he always asks his students in his introductory American government class, what they think his partisanship is.
And he gives different options.
It's like a multiple choice and they select what they think he is.
Which I thought was really cool, and so he shared the results of this from, you know, like mid-May, end of May 2022.
The question was, everyone will get credit for this.
I'm just curious.
What do you think my partisan affiliation is?
And the options are, A, you're quite discreet about it, but among other things, your self-proclaimed status as an institutionalist and rule follower, even when you don't like the rules, actually sounds pretty conservative.
You're a Republican of the John McCain-ish sort.
That's a long answer.
OK.
I know these are long answers.
B. Your obsession with individual autonomy and religious liberty and the way your eyes sparkle when you talk about marijuana legalization are the tells.
You're a libertarian even if you're not a particularly doctrinaire one.
Option C, you have enough disdain for both Democrats and Republicans that I bet you're one of those third-party spoilers.
Option D, seriously, you're a professor at the University of Wisconsin, in freaking Madison.
You're obviously a Democrat.
Hell, you're probably a communist when you get right down to it.
And option E, you pretty much treated all politicians like a Bernese Mountain dog treats lawns after eating.
For example, dumping on all of them.
I'm going to go with foul-mouthed golden retriever loving independent.
He's a big dog lover.
And the results were 250 responses from his students, 9% said Republican, 19% said libertarian, 5% said third party.
38% said Democrat and 28% said Independent.
So what that just kind of tells me is like, well, it's kind of, you know, spread out.
Like, yeah, a lot of people probably are seeing it right.
I imagine he's fairly Democratic.
It's not hard and fast.
It's not obvious across the board.
And so I just thought it was kind of like a cool exercise that he does, especially in like a political science sphere.
Yeah, I mean, it's probably something he prides himself on.
Yeah.
Trying to not like give it away.
Yeah.
But that's just kind of becomes a game at a certain point.
But yeah.
And so the last thing that I want to talk about is, you know, that kind of closes out Dr. Kenneth Mayer.
He did not lose his job.
He's still teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As I mentioned, he just issued an expert report regarding the Wisconsin redistricting efforts.
And I'll link that in the show notes for people.
Actually, I found this by being on his Twitter, and he linked to someone named Dr. Michael Phillips.
Michael Phillips is a history professor at, well, he was a history professor at Collin College.
He is also not dead.
He is alive.
Let me just get that out there now.
Yeah.
Collin College in Texas.
This is a really interesting college.
It is a small public community college that does not offer tenure to its professors.
So all of the professors are offered either one-year contracts or three-year contracts.
And as the contract expires, then there's negotiation for the next contract if there is a renewal or not.
And Michael Phillips, initially, when a new president came to the college, he kind of And he was critical about that new president because their credentials were from an unaccredited religious institution.
And like that's what their studies were in.
And he was appointed president of the community college.
And so he had things to say about that.
He didn't think that that was a good appointment.
And then he also called for removing Confederate monuments.
In a newspaper article, and they didn't like that.
And then there was a mass shooting where, in Texas, where the individual who was the murderer went to Collin College and a newspaper had reached out to him and, like, he spoke about it, I guess, and asked them not to include the college that he was affiliated with or anything like that, and they still did, and so he got in trouble for that.
And then it all came to a head with COVID.
So this is tracking from like 2017 through now 2020.
And then during COVID, because of Greg Abbott's order, Phillips had shared a post on Twitter.
He took a picture basically of they had a presentation for the administration showing like faculty are not allowed to discuss face masks with students.
And he thought, like, this is freaking stupid.
That's not academic freedom.
Yeah.
And so he took a picture of it and he was like, look at what we're being told to do.
Like, this is so dumb.
And I guess, you know, Texas doesn't care if we die kind of thing.
So he posted that.
And then from his own admission, you know, he like kind of tried to imply, you know, like, make sure that you're doing things that make you feel safe and healthy.
Without saying the word mask to not get in trouble.
And that's when they said, OK, your teaching contract would not be removed.
So when his teaching contract would not be renewed, again, there's no tenure at Collin College.
And so he and two other professors who experienced being let go under similar circumstances also around COVID and the politicization of what was going on there in Texas at that time.
Wow.
They worked with fire and two of the professors ended up settling with the school in advance of anything.
One of the professors, part of their settlement agreement was that they got to go back to their job.
But he did not settle and he went to trial.
Wow.
All the way to trial.
All the way to trial.
And end of November, the decision was issued.
This was a jury trial in a different county, so not in the same county that the college is located in, but in still a pretty conservative county in Texas.
He lost, and the college won.
And their statement is a little ridiculous.
It's pretty short.
Collin College prevailed in the complaint for civil rights violations case Phillips v. Collin College.
Despite repeated attacks by the plaintiff, his supporters, and various advocacy groups with their own agendas, this case resulted in a legal victory, including affirmation that the college's policies— Advocacy groups with their own agendas?
Yeah, that's the point of an advocacy group, yeah.
We're one of those advocacy groups with no agenda, actually.
We just advocate.
Like how you advocate for your friends, you know, like just people need advocates.
So we're just, you know, what the fuck you doing?
Including affirmation that the college's policies are not unconstitutionally vague as alleged.
Basically saying towards the end, you know, under the contracts that Collin College issues, there is no right or reasonable expectation of continued employment beyond the term of the contract.
And as an employer, the college has every right to determine who it employs, particularly based on the recommendations of supervisors.
Wow.
So having covered Professor Asshole Face, I mean, I wouldn't have felt great about going to trial on something like this.
Employers do have a lot of protection in this country.
Now it is a public college, so it is a little surprising to me that there's no like First Amendment-y whatever argument, but yeah, I mean.
Yeah.
If their contract is written in such a way, you know, they're already not doing the whole tenure thing.
I know.
I mean, that's what, that's what a lot of conservatives want, right?
Is to break down things like that.
And Dr. Phillips is kind of experiencing what that situation could look like, you know, without having tenure, regardless of your scholarship, regardless of the good things that you're bringing to students.
Again, a community college environment.
It's hard to find teachers for community colleges, like good teachers too, and it's often a thankless job.
And from my understanding of who this guy is, like he's, you know, regarded as like a pretty significant expert with regard to racism in Texas and Texas history and things like that.
And that's kind of why he had positions on Confederate monuments as strong as he did.
But yeah, how dare you share the PowerPoint slide?
That we showed that basically said, like, you can't talk about it.
Actually, let me, I'm going to tell you what it says because it is stupid.
You know, FIRE, I know we, we rip on them a lot.
No, but listen, they're very organized on their website.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's all I want to say.
Like, I like that they include all the documents and stuff.
It's very easy to find what I'm looking for.
Well done.
So the PowerPoint slide, it says COVID guidelines.
Be sure to read the restart plan in COVID readiness.
The next bullet, we cannot have any written language, signs, syllabus, anywhere.
We also cannot encourage folks to wear them in person.
This is to comply with the governor's executive order.
Stick to the plan published of what sessions are online and on-site, no moving sessions online last minute.
If sick and scheduled to teach on-site, use sick leave rather than moving class online.
Wow.
Yeah.
What a stupid fucking thing.
So he posted that picture and all he wrote was, note what we were told about discussing masks and COVID with students at my college today.
That was it.
40 comments, 48 reactions, and he lost his job.
I thought you said he said something about make a choice that didn't he?
Oh, he implied those things without mentioning masks, without mentioning COVID specifically, but he implied those things verbally to his students according to the lawsuit.
Yeah.
Wow.
So I guess the lesson is settled.
Yeah.
And there was like an entire board meeting, like of people speaking on his behalf and stuff, and it just didn't matter.
Well, yeah.
And what I find weird about is, yeah, obviously this guy shouldn't have been fired a hundred percent, but I can't believe he tried to take it all the way.
Why did he think that would work, I guess?
Is it just maybe like the evidence that, no, objectively I'm a great professor, so I don't know.
I just, look, employment law in this country, I feel like we're real big fans of just stomping all over workers' rights.
Yeah, especially in Texas.
Yeah, in general, I'm just surprised.
I wonder who made that decision and why.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think they were feeling pretty confident.
I don't know what their plans are next.
I don't, I haven't seen anything regarding an appeal, but who knows?
Yeah.
Good luck.
Um, no, interesting.
Okay.
So very fascinating stories of, uh, once again, campus reform or college fix or all these essentially terrorism websites that, you know, send people after college professors.
Another interesting story on that.
And I'm really looking forward to, we're going to be speaking to someone on the show who has studied and tried to fight back and provide resources for teachers who are targeted in this way.
Yeah.
And I'm really excited for that.
Me too.
We've been sort of building to that with this little mini, mini series and looking forward to that.
