I met USC Chemistry Professor Anna Krylov in May 2023 during my journey of understanding following my cancellation in 2022. A year later, she emailed me to help sponsor this conference. I was only too delighted to oblige! The forest fires were raging to the north, but LAX and downtown L.A. were not affected. Some speakers and guests attended via Zoom, but otherwise the conference went off without a hitch. Three days of in-depth presentations and discussions.
For those of you who do not spend any time around universities, you will likely be surprised to learn how deeply social justice/critical theory/DEI/Wokeism have infected our institutions. When I first learned about “microaggressions”, “trigger warnings”, and “safe spaces” (from NU then-President Morton O. Schapiro in 2015 at a board meeting), my STEM faculty friends assured me the craziness would never escape the Humanities. Boy, where they wrong!
“The Narrative” (Woke Mind Virus) has infected every area of scientific hiring, research, grant making, and publication. It has been going on long enough that most scientific researchers “go with the flow” and self-censor. Not unlike the USSR: Lysenko took over the Institute for Genetics in 1940 and punished researchers who did not accept his world view (anti-Mendel).
I have read three of Jonathan Rauch‘s books, so I was delighted to hear his keynote address. Steven Koonin‘s 2021 book Unsettled is a masterpiece, and he gave a short talk about the CO2 + Climate grift. Stephen Ceci explored the many myths about women in science (they are doing better than men in most cases). Wilfred Reilly gave a rousing talk about Taboos (ten facts you cannot talk about). Carole Hooven (I read her 2021 book T: The Story of Testosterone) described how Harvard graduate students refused to TA for her courses and her 20-year Harvard colleagues did not support her for writing about biological truths. Greg Lukianoff (President of FIRE) wrapped up the conference exploring how “cancel culture” has destroyed trust in expertise.
[See conference website and detailed agenda with speakers.]
Click on a highlighted time link below to go straight to that section of video.
Day 1: Friday 1/10/2025: 0:09 Introduction: Lee Jussim • 3:47 Welcome Remarks: Anna Krylov • 8:51 Introduction: John Tomasi • 12:00 Jonathan Rausch – The War on Truth • 01:06:15 Mechanisms of Censorship • 01:18:54 Musa al-Gharbi • 01:37:00 William von Hippel • 01:45:45 Nicholas Wolfinger • 01:54:53 Q&A Session • 02:04:10 Ivan Oransky Your Paper Was retracted? • 02:28:31 Q&A Session • 02:44:29 Lawrence Krauss – Living in Fear • 03:12:35 Scott Turner – Burning it All Down • 03:23:39 Elizabeth Weiss Back to Stick Figures • 03:34:10 John Landrum – When Editorial and Reviewer Ideologies Collide with Objectivity • 03:47:40 Q&A Session • 03:57:39 J.P. Messina – Censorship and Self-Imposed Ethical Constraints in Research • 04:24:30 Q&A Session • 04:28:08 Indirect Censorship and Impacts on Research Freedom • 04:33:50 Marcia McNutt – Permitting: Can it be a form of censorship? • 04:39:43 Evan Morris • 04:50:47 Hugh Desmon – Planned Science • 05:00:42 Lee Jussim – Case Study • 05:11:56 Q&A Session • 05:27:47 April Bleske-Rechek – Censor and Self-Censorship • 05:38:22 Nate Honeycutt – Self-Censorship among University Faculty • 05:50:28 Wayne Stargardt – Silencing Science at MIT • 06:02:08 Q&A Session • 06:15:49 Steven Koonin – Truth, Lies, and Climate Change • 06:39:53 Q&A Session
Day 2: Saturday 1/11/2025: 0:12 Introduction by April Bleske-Rechek – Socially Responsible Science • 0:46 Stavroula Kousta – Science, Social Responsibility, and Research Ethics • 23:44 Q&A with Stavroula Kousta • 34:21 Introduction by Alex Arnold – Harms: Justified Censorship • 39:56 William Costello – The Use and Misuse of Scientific Findings • 53:09 Diana Fleischman – Evolutionary Psychology • 1:04:13 Hrishikesh Joshi – Censorship and Knowledge • 1:15:56 Q&A • 1:47:09 Introduction by Tania Gutsche – Organizational and Institutional Responses to Censorship • 1:48:48 Barry Honig – American Academy of Sciences and Letters • 1:59:52 Lee Jussim – Society for Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science • 2:07:06 Anna Krylov – Yes, We Can! Academic Freedom Alliance • 2:18:29 Sean Stevens – Breaking the Spell of Ostrich Syndrome • 2:27:45 Abigail Thompson – Association of Mathematical Research • 2:35:08 Scott Turner – National Association of Scholars • 2:44:31 Ilya Reviakine – On Samizdat • 2:55:11 Jake Mackey & Michael Bowen – In Defense of Free Black Thought • 3:08:13 Introduction by Misha Teplitskiy – Consequences of Censorship for Public and Society • 3:09:20 Stephen J. Ceci – The Science and Politics of Doing Research on Women in Science • 3:39:16 Q&A • 3:41:24 Introduction by Bob Maranto – Is Compelled Speech a Form of Censorship? • 3:42:18 Michael Shermer • 3:54:01 Abigail Thompson • 4:06:08 John Wilson • 4:17:43 Q&A • 4:40:38 Introduction by Jennifer Richmond – Pseudo-Defenses of Free Speech on Campus and How They Undermine Open Inquiry • 4:41:15 Mike Veber – Pseudo-Defenses of Free Speech on Campus and How They Undermine Open Inquiry • 5:06:20 Q&A • 5:13:24 Introduction by Meghan Daum • 5:14:21 Cory Clark – From Worriers to Warriors: The Rise of Women in Science and Society • 5:37:01 Q&A • 5:48:06 Introduction by Abhishek Saha • 5:51:41 Jacob Mchangama – The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It: Five Lessons from History • 6:25:14 Q&A
Day 3: Sunday 1/12/2025: 0:07 Introduction by Jacob Mackey • 0:49 Speaker: Wilfred Reilly – My Taboos, and How They Operate in Practice • 34:46 Q&A with Wilfred Reilly • 47:29 Introduction by Sally Satel – Censorship Around Gender Research and Medicine • 52:24 Michael Bailey – Transgender Censorship • 1:03:11 Diana Blum • 1:12:20 Carole Hooven – “Stay Away from Sex at Harvard” • 1:29:49 Q&A Panel • 1:48:47 Introduction by Tom Chang – Harms of Censorship: COVID Examples • 1:55:23 Natalya Murakhver – Open School Advocacy • 2:09:40 Azadeh Khatibi • 2:26:54 John Ioannidis • 2:35:19 Q&A Panel • 2:57:46 Introduction by Anna Krylov – Sponsor Presentation • 2:59:09 Howard Muncy – Academic Freedom Alliance • 3:04:04 Carl Neuss – Cornell Free Speech Alliance • 3:12:26 Alex Arnold – Heterodox Academy • 3:16:42 Greg Forster – American Academy of Sciences and Letters • 3:21:10 Jennifer Richmond – Institute for Liberal Values • 3:26:11 Nate Honeycutt – Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression • 3:27:19 Introduction by Cory Clark • 3:28:27 Jesse Singal – How “Soft” Censorship in Media and Academia Helped Make the U.S. a Youth-Gender-Medicine Outlier • 3:48:25 Q&A with Jesse Singal • 3:56:37 Introduction of Matthew Burgess by Paul Schmidt • 3:57:49 Matthew Burgess – Your Speech Is Freer Than You Think: The Irrational Risk Aversion of (Most) Academic Self-Censorship • 4:24:04 Q&A with Matthew Burgess • 4:29:34 Panel Discussion – Censorship and Pseudoscience in the Life Sciences: Julia Schaletzky, Jerry Coyne, and Luana Maroja • 5:31:38 Introduction of Greg Lukianoff by John Matsusaka • 5:37:55 Greg Lukianoff (FIRE)– How Cancel Culture Destroys Trust in Expertise • 6:09:20 Q&A with Greg Lukianoff • 6:29:55 Closing Remarks by Anna Krylov
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Ben Slivka 