Episode #410 from 1:49:01
Wokeism
Well, recently in the news, the Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT failed to fully denounce calls for genocide, and that rose questions about the influence of DEI programs at universities. And so maybe either looking at this or zooming out more broadly at identity politics at universities or identity politics, wokeism in our culture, how big of a threat is it to our culture to Western civilization, Ben? So obviously I'm going to say it's a huge threat. The reason that I think this is a huge threat... I want to give a definition of wokeism because people are very often accused of not using wokeism properly or believing that it's sort of a catchall phrase. I don't think it's a catchall term. I think that wokeism has its roots in postmodernism, which essentially suggests that every principle is a reflection of underlying structures of power, and that therefore any inequality that emerges under such a system is a reflection, again, of that structure of power.
Why this moment matters
Well, recently in the news, the Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT failed to fully denounce calls for genocide, and that rose questions about the influence of DEI programs at universities. And so maybe either looking at this or zooming out more broadly at identity politics at universities or identity politics, wokeism in our culture, how big of a threat is it to our culture to Western civilization, Ben? So obviously I'm going to say it's a huge threat. The reason that I think this is a huge threat... I want to give a definition of wokeism because people are very often accused of not using wokeism properly or believing that it's sort of a catchall phrase. I don't think it's a catchall term. I think that wokeism has its roots in postmodernism, which essentially suggests that every principle is a reflection of underlying structures of power, and that therefore any inequality that emerges under such a system is a reflection, again, of that structure of power.