#146 Amy Binder / Left & Right on Campus / Trump / Libertarians / Organizational Influence on Campus

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together and we're live Amy. Welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us on the episode. I'm so excited to be talking to you. Well, thank you for the invitation and I'm very happy to be here. Yes, I am. So I am excited to talk to you because I hope that this will be a fun, informative and thoughtful approach to politics and understanding of some of the political temperament I guess in, in our world today. And, and I came across the research and I thought, you know what, I, we could really use some cool heads and you seem like a cool headed person and we would like for you to prevail. So I'd love to, I'd love to maybe you could just introduce what you, what you do and what you study and we can go from there.

0:57 Sure. I am a sociologist and I am at Johns Hopkins University, have been here for a couple of years. Prior to that, I was at the University of California, San Diego for most of my career. And I moved to Hopkins because there is an interdisciplinary institute called the SNF Agora Institute. And we are committed to studying democracy and democratic backsliding around the world. And we also are interested in doing not just academic research, but also working with community partners and having more of our work be public facing than just purely scholarly oriented. That's really cool.

1:43 So what kind of outreach is programming does this organization do? So we do a lot of programming for students to help them think about how to have difficult conversations across ideological differences. And then and and we do that as well internally with other faculty. We think about whether there's room for greater viewpoint diversity within the university, both our own and others as a more programmatic idea. And then we also do a lot of this public facing work. So a lot of, you know, writing for publications, sub stacks, New York Times, The Atlantic, a lot of us are quoted very frequently about our research and also thinking about how to turn research into things that practitioners can use, whether that's folks who are staffing The Hill or or journalists themselves or dissidents in other countries or artists and a whole variety of other folks like that.

2:50 Wow, that's so, it's so interesting. It's so cool. I have two questions. I guess the first easier follow up would just be what other countries, can you give me an example that you guys impact or go to or try to impact? Yeah, so I have one colleague who's studying democratic backsliding protest in Venezuela. I have another colleague who's not a professor. She's one of our fellows, Anne Applebaum, who writes for The Atlantic, very prominent public intellectual, writes a lot about Eastern Europe, has an incredible podcast called Autocracy in America, comparing modalities in the US to that which has happened in Turkey and Hungary and other places around the world.

3:43 And so we have, I have another colleague who studies corruption predominantly in China. So there really is an international core of folks. Most of us study American politics in some way or another, but we do have that global reach as well. Sure, sure. Well, I mean, I think that in order to understand American politics, and I think I've come to realize this over the last probably year and a half to maybe 2 years of my life, in order to understand American politics, you got to have a little of a bit of an understanding as to what's going on in the rest of the world. Because, you know, our decisions, as much as I think a lot of people would like, our decisions are typically not made in a vacuum. You know, and the kind of decisions that are made in the legislature that's passed and, you know, whether you're left or right and whether the president is left to right, No, decisions are just made in a vacuum of, hey, you know, we're here in this country and I'm a Democrat and we're here in this country and I'm a Republican. And therefore we're just going to do this. And I mean, it seems more clear to me now than ever that that other countries definitely have a say or influence in or not. I don't want to say influence, but perhaps influence, I don't know.

4:50 But at least the it's the the other countries are taken into consideration. Right. Well, there's geopolitical influence, and then there's also kind of looking to other countries as models for, you know, how to do things. And I think that it's inescapable that the Trump administration, for example, has looked prominently at Turkey and at Hungary even more so to think about how it should approach universities or how it should approach protest or how it should approach. Interesting. Have they? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'm sorry. What what are the relationships or what can you or what are the you know what, what what have you correlation that you've established potentially?

5:35 Well, so this I, I will say that this is outside my research area, so I'm just dipping my toe in for the moment. But certainly in Hungary, Viktor Orban's approach to shutting down universities or constraining speech is very much a model for the Trump administration especially. And Orban has been a favored head of state in the US He's spoken at traditionally national conservative conferences.

6:15 So he's really looked to as, as, you know, a person to emulate and a government to emulate. Cool, really interesting. That's that's I didn't I didn't I didn't know that and I should look a little more into that. So, Turkey, and I'm sorry, where was and? Hungary in particular. Yeah, of course. Cool. OK, Well then let's dip our toes into a little bit more about what you do, which is studying college campuses, which is probably one of the most important and lively and really constantly changing environments, I would imagine. It's so cool. How so tell me about, I mean, I know that you, so your first book was about becoming right and how campus campuses shaped conservatives, which I'm really curious to hear a little bit about the premise and a little bit about that because I was curious.

7:07 My experience and from what I've heard from my peers is that campuses predominantly lean left on a general basis. So I am curious about, and I, and I, and you know, for example, I do know, and I, I mentioned I were on the phone that or, you know, before recording that, that I'd, I've been a creative writing literature major, which was a largely left-leaning, you know, field of education. And, but, but I know that a lot of my friends in the accounting school were not necessarily surrounded by liberal professors. Or I know that some of my friends and perhaps you know, data or in engineering schools, we're not necessarily surrounded by liberal teachers And I, I wonder if there's a correlation between what students study and, and, and the political impacts as of of their, you know, their outlooks. Yeah, I mean, this is a huge question and thank you for it. I just one tiny clarification.

8:04 This is the kind of thing that professors will make much of A muchness about. But it wasn't my first book. Becoming Right wasn't my first book. It was my second book, but it was the first book about higher education. So more or less correct. So I, there are many, many things to say about this. So I became interested in higher education and conservative college students around 2005, 2006. So I've been writing about these things for a couple of decades now, and it was around that time that there was a conversation that was being held. I mean, it, it sounds so obvious now, but there is a conversation that arose again in those times about universities as indoctrination mills.

8:59 And there were politicians and there were pundits and there were, you know, folks in the media who are very concerned not only about conservative college students, but about all students being swayed by their liberal professors into not only, like, personally being mistreated or disrespected. But I think there was also a concern that universities were creating a cadre of people who would vote for Democrats in the future. So there were political concerns or personal concerns. And this was bubbling up in a whole bunch of ways and and nobody had really studied what students themselves thought about this.

9:50 And so I thought I as a qualitative interviewer, much like what you're doing with me today on this podcast where you conduct lengthy interviews to get long form stories about how people come to have their views and do what they do. I thought it would be really useful to actually talk with students and see what their experiences were. So some of the research questions were, you know, what does it feel like to be a conservative at your university? I took out questions of, you know, it's a great retaliation if you write something conservative or is or is there not? When does it happen?

10:32 When doesn't it happen? I also wanted to know, like, what kinds of politics they were interested in, whether they wanted to kind of go big and be provocative or be more kind of establishment and refined and quieter. And so I chose a, tell me if this is getting too deep in the weeds, but I chose two, OK. I chose 2 universities. 1 was a private elite university on the East Coast, let's call it an Ivy League university, and the other was a public university in the interior WI. Don't.

11:13 I don't know what Football League gets in, I'm sorry it's a big sports school. But basically I wanted to look at 2 very different kinds of settings, both 4 year colleges, both kind of flagship within their own sector, and see if there were differences in being at a big state school versus being at a small private elite university that has very selective admissions. And just to cut to the chase, what I found is that conservatives on each campus more or less shared the same ideological tenets at that time. They were both for low taxes, small government, strong national security, generally for cultural, the same cultural issues, anti abortion, anti-gay rights, things of that sort.

12:06 But what was really, really notable is that the way they chose to express themselves were very different. So at the public university where people were more or less anonymous to one another because it's such a big campus and a lot of students don't live on campus and they don't know each other by name, they chose to engage in very confrontational, provocative actions. They didn't care if they upset other people, and they thought that that would be a better kind of political flex for getting the kinds of jobs that they expected in politics later on, in state government and so on.

12:50 Whereas the students at the private elite university were much warier about doing provocative actions. They knew about provocative actions. They knew that it would be really fun to do that, but they thought of themselves as being elites and that they were going to be working across the aisle eventually. And they chose to do much less provocative actions because I didn't want to anger their faculty, their fellow students. And they were basically setting themselves up for, you know, like world historical positions later on, right?

13:37 So I could really see what the effects were of going to a different college. And I think this is this is kind of The upshot is that we tend to think of people as, you know, learning about their politics at the kitchen table with their parents. But my research showed that it really matters which college and university you go to because of particular style is kind of a legacy style at each of these two places. Wow. Hey everyone real quick if you're enjoying the show, click subscribe and rate the show. 5 stars helps a ton. Thanks so much. Sorry about that.

14:17 We're back. So first of all, the reason why I was laughing halfway through is please, I really could not help but think about the movie Animal House while you were describing the difference between the public and private universities and, and the type of frat traditions that they've had. You know, and one guy, one group is just driving a motorcycle up a frat house. The other one is, you know, even though they're also engaging in similar behavior, you know, it's much more organized and having that organized, you know, the proper events and everything like that. And there's still just, as you know, in a different sense, mean spirited or mean hearted. It just manifested, I guess, in a different way. But that was funny, Paladol, that popped up in my head while you were describing that. How many, how many students did you interview? How long did you run this, run this, run this for this, study for it?

14:59 So we interviewed I'm, I'm having a hard time remembering precisely it was somewhere between 70 and 90. I've done a number of additional studies since then, but it, it was something like that. But, and, and I also wanted to add, I'm sorry to preempt your next question, but you had, you had said that in one academic discipline, you experienced professors in one way, but some of your peers had experienced their professors differently in engineering and so forth. And we did see some evidence of that. So students knew which classes they wanted to avoid because they were kind of hopelessly leftist.

15:48 The word woke wasn't around at the time, so they didn't use the word woke. But so we did see that there. They felt like there was some variation between classes and especially at the private elite university students said, look, I just learned not to take a critical gender studies class. Like why would I do that to myself? I'm so much more conservative than the professor in there. I'm not going to do that. So there was some evidence that conservative students were selecting away from, from certain areas of, of learning. I'd also say, though, that at the private elite university, students generally thought of their professors as being like experts in their field and like up on pedestals. And they would never would have been hired here if they weren't like incredible professors were very respectful of incredible students like me.

16:44 So they didn't complain as much about their professors as a students at the public university did who thought that there was just unbridled leftism in some of their classes. So that was a really interesting difference as well. I and I the way that I explain it is that the greater the anonymity on classes, the more you don't know your classmates, the more you don't know your professors, the more mistrust can arise both ways, and the more basically the more polarization can occur because you don't know and trust other people on campus. So I'm curious, just in response to that, perhaps I would think that if I didn't know what my professor was thinking, then I would be afraid to say anything.

17:41 I don't know that I would get necessarily get more polarized. I would be more likely to keep my opinions to myself and I actually have a story. So I, I, I in 2016, I voted for the first time I did happen that year. I did vote for Trump. I was more conservative minded back then. And, and my professor, who I was very close with from the previous year. He's my, the creative writing and literature teacher that I give him a ton of credit for getting me involved in the, in the literary world and teach me incredible things. But he abhorred Trump, absolutely hated him. And and at a certain point, I was actually TA ING for him and he was going and his classes would turn into almost 45 minute monologues about, you know, about Trump and the issues that it, that, that, that the country has and why, you know, we've become the country that we are. And at this point I'm, I'm conflicted because I'm very close with him.

18:33 I like him a lot. I'm A and I and, and I know, and I, I and I completely disagree. And quite frankly, I'm more interested in the creative, creative writing aspect of, you know, what the class is supposed to be anyway. And so I went to him out after class one time and only I only felt comfortable because I knew him and I was ready to hang for him. And it was a real, you know, we're relatively close. I said, professor, I was like, I'm just, you know, Joe, I I love you, man. I I just letting you know, like between the two of us, I did vote for Trump. And I totally get why you don't like him. I totally understand. But like, it's killing me that like, you're just going on about this nonstop. And he said, and like, you could see he was very, very conflicted for a brief second. And they said, you're absolutely correct. And then from then on, it's actually very funny. During his monologues, he would take great care to say, and This is why the system's in the gutter.

19:17 And This is why we had people like Trump and they'd look at me and go and Hillary and Bernie, and he's like, they're all a bunch of Kirks. And and he really did go out of his way to, you know, try, I guess, to not be as isolating perhaps. But I think and you know, and, and on a similar note, I've heard people make this argument. I don't know whether I quite buy it or not. But also with the with gun use, particularly in Florida where I live, people say it's always safe to assume that the I always add that the person you're dealing with has a gun. Just to be extra safe, you know, just to just to not try to provide, you know, provoke anything more intense than it could ever possibly get, God forbid to that point. And I would imagine that. Sometimes that might happen.

20:02 That might you know that I, I think that the used to be kind of a, a bridge between what people's political opinions were and what they would do in the public eye, right. Well, you know, I'm thinking a lot about this example of your professor, a trusted faculty member, mentor. And, you know, I, I don't know the situation better, but I really that concerns me that he was politicizing the classroom in that way. And I think it's incumbent on professional scholars teaching young people not to bring their politics into the classroom. You know, one of the things that I heard at public was the public university was that.

20:48 So this was the year that these were the years leading up to Obama. And I can't remember who he's running. It wasn't Romney in 2008. Oh, McCain, McCain. And and there were protests against the war in Iraq. And the students said that their professors actually left them out of class to join the protest. And I thought that that was terrible. You know, like they can go to protest to the protest on their own time, but as a faculty member, you are condoning certain political activity and thought and not other political activity and thought.

21:35 And I don't think that is a professional stance to take. And interestingly so, there are a lot more people in the public university among the conservatives who said that there faculty members were less professional than what we heard at the private elite university. I don't know, you know, I don't know what that's about. If there's, you know, not only is there a legacy style for students at the university, but there's also a legacy style for faculty at these different institutions. That's probably true, but I thought that, you know, in general, what was happening at the elite private sounded better than what was happening at the public. And so, you know, one of my takeaways from that book was that faculty have an obligation to be very careful about portraying their own politics in class and that they to the best of their abilities, they should not do that. You said that you voted for Trump in 2016. I did not.

22:47 I grew up in a liberal family. You know, I'm, I'm like many of the faculty at my university and, and left of center, But you know, I would be extremely upset if I heard that conservative students or libertarian students or students further to the left then I am felt uncomfortable in my class because of my political stances. So I try with the best of my ability not to bring politics into the classroom. That's really awesome. I really can do that. That's really great. I the other thing I was thinking while you were just responding about the public universities is I was also wondering, and you know what?

23:28 I so when I was in high school, I, I started off in a small private, all boys school and I switched to a much larger, it's also a private school, but a Co Ed school about halfway through high school. And one thing my mom had warned me about, because she was very hesitant to send me there, probably rightfully so. My mom typically has known best throughout my life. So I trust her. I trust her for almost everything. But one thing that that she had said was there's going to be a lot more shenanigans going on in this bigger school. And she's like, even if hypothetically it's the same percentage, just the fact that you're surrounded by so many more people, just the fact that the population is so much larger will probably mean that you're going to just be exposed to more of it. And it's, it might be a little bit more regular. I'm curious if that's the case.

24:14 I mean, if you're, if you're a university that has 10,000 undergrads or 15,000 undergrads, and then you're a public university with 100,000 students or whatever, whatever number it may be, you're going to, you're going to have to hire a lot more people. And you know, and especially with that kind of sense of exclusivity that that these private schools or Ivy League's have had for so many years, you know, it almost seems, it almost seems inevitable that something like that would. Happen. Yeah, I think that's right. I, I, I do think that the smaller the community, the, you know, in many ways the easier it is to have high quality conversations. The analog to that is like social media versus like people you actually talk with, right? Like the more anonymous it gets, the fewer guardrails there are for talking.

25:05 So I think that's right. I think the other thing that happens when you're on a big more anonymous campus is that you try to you, you gravitate to people who are within your community, right? And so then you get that whole dynamic of an echo chamber. So it's like US against the world. And I think that that probably also exacerbates a sense of like, we need to fight back and we need to fight that card. So yeah, those things happen as well. I in my in my my personal experience, I've found that a remedy to that type of thinking is to actually try to engage in a lot of different types of communities. So for example, I jog, I love craft beer, I do jiu jitsu, I write, you know, I teach it, I teach high school English, I do this podcast, I do business and I do sales. And so I find myself in a lot of different worlds and I find myself having to relate to people on, you know, very fundamentally different ways.

26:15 But really seeing that like people are so good for like I can so many different ways too. And like, you know what, like dude, as the dude at the brewery that tends to be a little bit more left-leaning says something that I don't agree with about foreign policy. OK, you know what? We're still having a beer and hanging out and it's a Sunday afternoon and watching a sports game. It's a good time. And the same thing on the jujitsu mat. If someone tends to be a more conservative minded and says something I don't agree about, about the current war that we're, you know, that we're in, then then OK, you know what? We're here to roll. We're here to have a good time. And you know, I totally get where you're coming from and like, let's, let's keep like we still, we still have this relationship and establish connection despite the disagreement. And I think that with social media also like what you say, what you're saying and maybe what you're even implying is that this cut the social media bubbles of echo chambers actually started earlier in the early 2000s with college campuses. Is that something that you that you think would be accurate? Yeah, I, I mean, I don't know the deep history of this. We know that Facebook started at Harvard so that Mark Zuckerberg and like, right, how cute women were or girls were. So some of that was beginning.

27:22 I think that you see this in social life all the time as people find like minded people and the more they feel at odds with the larger society, then they'll cluster together. I I just think that's what we do. I mean, that's what ethnic tribes are. That's what race tribes. That's why they're women's organizations. You know, like we do that kind of thing, but the question is how bad do we think the other people are on the other side of that boundary are right? If you haven't read Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, I would recommend that you read that. This is an older book, but it's really about how the kinds of community organizations and associations that you were talking about, you know, breweries, jujitsu gyms, you know, golf clubs, whatever, you know, places, people where people associate the the frequency with which people do this has absolutely plummeted, absolutely plummeted.

28:29 And the beauty of a thing like a bowling league was that it wasn't just working class people by themselves. Like these associations were more, you know, cross class places. And so people were seeing each other more. They were like, it creates more interdependence, It creates more trust. Is it more social capital? And the more we kind of hive off into these like minded little pods, you know, I think the worse it is for for society. Right, right, right. I totally agree. I completely agree. And I think that I think that there are things that we could do to kind of get ourselves out of it.

29:13 And I, I, you know, and I, I think at events, I think in person events, and I've been saying this, my podcast for a while. Every time I, I have a psychology series and I, you know, every single time I talk to someone that know that understands people, they all say the same thing. They all say isolation is one of the worst things that we can do and we're effectively self imposing it on ourselves almost since 2020, you know, since COVID has pretty much been, you know, and I, and I was, and I'd spoken to, you know, and unfortunately, you know, after the horrible, you know, variety of school shootings or mass or, you know, murders or whatever that's happened to, you know, throughout the year. I, I, one thing that I can't help thinking about is how long that student, you know, this 19/20/21 year old, they were 1718 when COVID happened.

30:05 They're locked in their house away. They're locked away in their house. Rather they get out of, you know, they're, they're trying to find a job that they, maybe they're in school remote, maybe they're working remote. I mean, we don't even know how often do these people even have any kind of relationships or friends and to be blasted. And you know, I, I just deleted my Twitter again, again 2 days ago, you know, because I was, really, was really weighing me down. And two days later, I feel incredible and, but I can't imagine just the isolation and the, and, and the stress and just being bombed from all sides by, you know, by, by, by, by horrible, you know, divisive news. You know what living in that living that guy girl's head would be like, you know, and, and so I'm immediately overwhelmed with just sadness of the scenario that took place that even allowed this to, to, to fester for so long and the end and accumulate and something so terrible.

30:54 Yeah. And I, I think, you know, we're talking about universities in higher education, college campuses and university campuses are great labs for trying to get people off their devices and involved with other people. And ideally with people who aren't just thinking about politics or thinking about social issues or thinking about masculinity or femininity or war or peace or whatever. Like get them talking to one another. And it's not easy, you know, once we go down the route of being more isolated from one another, what other, you know, whether that's like individually isolated or within our own like minded communities, it is hard to bring people back into the fold. So you really have to design activities and design class work and design events so that you're trying to overcome the hurdle that that we've placed on society. But but I think universities are really good places for that. They cannot be the only places for that because only about 30% of the population goes to universities and most of them are, you know, between the ages of 18 and 26 or so. So we have to be that creative and think about how universities aren't the only places for this,

32:27 but they can be good test cases, right? Like, try things there and then think about transporting those models that you developed on campus out into other parts of society. Totally, totally. And I think that for what it's worth, the most valuable part of university for me was the fact that I'm living in a town, a complete city, literally a city full of just people my age. Like there was No Fear of like, you know, like, you know, walking through the street, you know, walking through campus AT2O clock in the morning. There was no like, like everyone around me is like my peer. Everyone around me is someone that's in a similar position to me, that's around my age, that's just trying to do the same thing, which is me, which is trying to figure themselves out and how they're going to support themselves in this world. And like, and into how the entire world where you grow up with people around that were you're in a, you're kind of in a huge, so it's, it's a huge social playground and it's a huge opportunity to branch out and experience and, and so many people try so many wonderful new things. Even, you know, and I want to even just take away the education aspect for just a second, even though it's hard to, you know, it's hard to do.

33:38 It's college, you know, just, you know, I, I tell students, if they say, what's the, you know, what's the point of going to college? I said, honestly, it depends on what you want to do. I was like, but there is so much value in spending three or four years on a campus in a city with a bunch of people your age and just discovering yourself, having fun and getting to meet you got to know people. Like just that end of itself is worth it, is worth spending a couple of years of your life on. I agree. When I went off to college a long time ago in 1982, I really thought of it as, OK, this is a great opportunity to break out of whatever shells I was. Yeah, I've been pretty high in high school. And I was like, I can, I can put that aside. I can be a completely different person. Nobody knows me here.

34:25 All right? You know, if there are a couple people from my high school here, fine. I'll just avoid that. Like, I get to become a new person. I mean, this is one of the reasons why I called that book Becoming Right was because I didn't think that people were already set in stone when they step foot on campus. I figured that they were becoming certain kinds of people. That's what college is, right? Like, I mean, that's what all parts of our lives are. It's just really concentrated in the college years, if you let it be. And I mean, you know, to your point as well, seeking out people who are more different from you is very rewarding, right? Like there's a way to approach college and do it in a, in a safer way, right?

35:17 Like you gravitate toward people who are more like you, whether that's in sororities and fraternities or on sports teams or whatever. But, and and I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but also do the thing that is less comfortable is less obvious. Meet those other people, meet the weirdos, meet the jocks, you know, like meet the people who don't agree with you politically, who don't go to the same church or synagogue or temple or mosque or whatever, you know, or none at all, you know, like talk to those people, learn from them. Also learn what they're learning in class. That was a real benefit for me because like, I enjoyed my classes, but I learned a lot about what but other people were learning in their classes and that was just thrilling you. Know, I didn't know anything about college when I got started and I was very quickly so excited about how many cool titles of classes there were.

36:17 And so my favorite question to ask people when I was on campus was what class do you take in this semester as towards the end of the semester, what do you signed up for next semester? What are you excited to, you know, what class did you try to get into that you got locked out of because everyone's flocking to that teacher, whatever it is because, you know, I mean it's, it's it's incredible how much you know, I mean, you know, the word has obviously a stigma to it now, but diversity there is in in the approaches of ways of of of studying, of studying anything. I mean, it's really incredible. I'm doing a podcast in a couple of weeks with a professor, with a professor that's a Bob Dylan scholar, you know, and as I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. And so this is, this is great. But I would, I, I, I, I would, if I knew in high school that I could be a professor teaching Springsteen and Bob Dylan literature, you know, lyrics as literature and like describing the American dream or politics through the, you know, through the zeitgeist of, of, of, of lyrics and, and literary works like that. I'd be like, this is the best freaking thing in the entire universe.

37:15 I can't believe how wonderful this is. So I think that we have to give ourselves shots too. Right. And as a student, I was an anthropology major. I became a sociologist later for my PhD. But the best class I took was a American art since 1945. You know, it gave me a whole new lens for understanding visual art. It gave me a language. And, you know, it gave me a good cocktail conversation. Like, do you prefer Pollock to the Cooney? You know, like there's all of the stuff and, you know, it was was visually inspiring and the professor was incredible. And and so I remember more from that class than I remember from any other class that I took in my major or in a more, you know, social science adjacent.

38:07 So yeah, if we're trying to get the word out there about how to approach college, it's to be very open minded and to experiment a lot and and experiment widely, I would say. Yeah, and nothing is set in stone for anything. That's the other thing. And you know, I mean, you can try something and say it's not for me. And you could say, you know what? I, you know, I wanted it. I, I, I checked this out, this class or this teacher and even the fact you could drop classes and pick one up again for like a month, a month and 1/2 at the beginning of this semester is such a blessing. It's so cool. You know what? I took this professor for two weeks. I thought it was going to be cool. Wasn't my speed. He was way too filling the the blanks, you know, you know, better or for worse. And I'm going to do something else and you can't Don, you know, like it literally like, you know, I think that I think that that's the other thing. I'm not going to like it.

38:56 Well, if you don't, you could switch in a week or a class or two classes, whatever you want. But I digress on one. Yeah. Yeah, I would just add to this conversation that some of the research that I've been seeing about people being fearful about what they say in class is more related to their concerns about their peers than it is about their concerns with their professors. So I, you know, I'm, I'm worried about saying the wrong thing politically, for example, because I feel like I won't be respected or I don't belong here. And I think as we move forward, that's something that all of us should take seriously. It's not nearly to the extent that some would have us believe. I've, I've seen surveys of students, including one here at Johns Hopkins where about, you know, like 5% or 7% or 10% of students talk about this, not 90% even. So, you know, 10% is too many to be worried about being kind of castigated.

40:07 If they say the wrong thing, but I think there are ways that we can kind of construct conversations or create opportunities for people to feel more comfortable about expressing themselves. And, and I think at a place like Johns Hopkins, part of it is that they're just afraid of saying not the politically sensitive thing, but just like the wrong answer we have such like. Yeah. These are students who, like, have thought of themselves as overachievers their entire lives, and so they just don't want to get the wrong answer. But, you know, in many of these conversations that we have about politics or social issues, there isn't a wrong answer, right?

40:50 So we just have to get people feeling more comfortable about expressing themselves, and that opens up a conversation that can be more fruitful. That's awesome. It's awesome. I wanted to lead into and I think just because it would be an absolute sin to not acknowledge this for the sake of our podcast, but what does among campus from the left and the right and the libertarians, I suppose because you know, it's interesting that your research started at a particularly intensive time. And I was young. I was born in 95, so I was only 1012 years old when you were when you were doing this research. But I've since become aware of the fact that, like you said, Obama was starting to run for president. And we were in Iraq and it looked, you know, and we were just starting off and we weren't sure what we thought about the wars.

41:42 And, you know, and I know that the public was split, was split. And I know that Bush's presidency, I, I don't know what his popularity was like by 2006 or 5 or 6, but I know that right after 911 it shot up. And then Trump kind of comes and literally, it feels like shakes up campus. And this is actually when I'd, you know, when I've been there, he shook up college campuses. And, you know, there's a huge difference between Trump one and Trump two. I would say that, you know, as far as the presidencies, I would say that when he was running initially, I think a lot more people were a lot more hesitant to express their opinions and perspective. I know that I certainly was.

42:23 I was terrified to tell anyone that I that I'd supported or voted for Trump. And I know that a lot of my friends felt either like their grades or social standings would be at jeopardy if they if they'd made that known. And then it kind of became like an act of, and then the club kind of became an act of defiance, I think around COVID time. And, you know, the transition to the Biden presidency, once Trump had lost, had, you know, students had kind of been much more comfortable expressing themselves, perhaps because they now saw themselves as the underdog and as as opposed to, you know, this just blatantly obnoxious presence. But there was, I mean, there, there was a huge shift, I'm sure culturally and on campus between Trump one and Trump 2 over the last 10 years.

43:13 And so I'm curious what your thoughts on that in general are. And then what do you think is the next thing? Because I mean, I think he's running. I, you know, he's especially if the if the midterms turn out the way that it looks like they will, it doesn't look like he has much time to do much else. So what do you think, you know, is something that's going to affect college students in the future now that Trump's time is kind of up? Yeah, I. Love. It by the way, the only thing I would like if possible is just to get an update on the is just left and right perspectives and and then what's next? And you can take it from there however you want. OK, it sounds good. So when I was conducting research for my last book, this is called the Channels of Student Activism, How the left and right are Winning and Losing on Campus politics in Campus politics today or some like terribly long title.

44:10 Trump had just been elected. This was in 2017 and this was the first administration, obviously. And as you know, he really was shaking up students on the left and the right and really the student clubs on the on the right especially. So there are a lot of students that we talked with who were definitely Trump advocates and they thought of the College Republicans as being hopelessly behind the times and really boring. And they were kind of going headlong into into this new president. And they, they actually use the words that you use, which is that the Republican Party needed shaking up, right? And so, and this is especially, I've always been very attentive not only to what students are doing on campus, but also what outside organizations are doing to mobilize students on campus. And this is right at the time that Turning Point USA was, you know, getting founded and and getting on campus. Yes, this was so we were on campus in 2017 and 2018. OK, gotcha.

45:30 I just went to that reference. OK, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And and students were kind of the conservative students were self segregating somewhere gravitating to our college Republicans and some are going to Turning Point USA. And they had quite a bit of they did not respect one another very much. They saw themselves as very different people. We did, we did. Well, I won't go into the weeds on that. So the yeah. And the students who are left of center, either leftist or liberal, who I I think it's very important to differentiate between as well. Yeah.

46:20 So when we asked students to identify themselves, like, you know, how how do you you know what? What? What do you call yourself? Students who called themselves Democrats were very likely to call themselves liberal. Students to the left of liberal eschewed the democratic label. They did not call themselves liberals. They did not call themselves Democrats. Maybe they were, you know, democratic socialists. Maybe they were more anarchic, but they really, you know, many of them said that they really didn't even see a difference between Republicans and Democrats. And among the Liberal Democrats, that was complete anathema, right?

47:07 Like a horse there differences Republicans, but but but it's very important to see these cleavages on both sides of of the political spectrum. And then libertarians, you asked about libertarians. I mean, it was really in this project when I realized you really can't clump libertarians on the right in the way that most people do because they are orthogonal to conservatism in a bunch of ways. But they also don't agree with the left in a bunch of ways. So like really as, as some of them would say, we don't fit in at all. So so we were looking at how they were mobilizing as well. So in terms of now, I mean, it's interesting. I see maybe students on the right being and my, my, I haven't done research on this.

48:10 So my experiences more on one campus alone, but students on the right here at Hopkins are I've met very few who say that they are unbridled Trump supporters. It's. Hard to be now if you were voting for him last year. Right, right. And yeah, not I mean that like meaning the fine. I don't know if I don't know if that's too politically partial to say, but it did not see it. It does not seem as though at the moment that the agenda that he found that a lot of people were excited about were is getting carried out yet necessarily is what I meant to say rightly.

48:53 Yeah, yeah, I think there are some Trump supporters on campus. I know that a few students have started a Turning Point USA Camp club on campus and so they see themselves more mega than Republican. So there are there are a few, but the more politically active folks I think maybe are seeing life after mega. And in the same way that those Eastern elite students were worried about their future, they didn't want to, they don't want to cast their lot with the Trump administration. You know, I'm not exactly sure, but I, I think that's going on. I'd also say that there's kind of less conversation about the troubles that students have on campus now. And it's more just like full bore anti university rhetoric when it comes to higher education. So in a sense, like students have maybe gotten less important to the whole left, right discourse. You know, basically, you know, folks like Chris Ruffo or Max Eden or JD Vance seeing universities as the enemy and wish to see higher education

50:24 completely kind of obliterated in its current form. And so there's less kind of talk about about what the role of students is and what's happening to students. That's I'm curious. Oh, man, that's really interesting because I'm, I'm just curious, do you think that it that's the case because students are always interested or because the students are just not interested in the two in the in either party at the moment? Meaning I think that right now they just feels like there's like I think more people are politically homeless as I would probably consider myself at the moment that like, hey, I'm not listen, you know, I'm not marrying myself to either side of them.

51:09 I don't think that either one of them are right. I think that you have, whether you have Obama, whether you have Bush or whether you have Trump, whether you have Biden, it's still hard to buy a house. It's still hard to, you know, it's still hard to get a job. I still have a lot of student debt. I still have a lot of credit card debt. So I think a lot of people were told that a system was supposed to help them succeed in a certain way. And that if you, if you take these steps, then perhaps there will be an outcome that is more, that's more favorable to you. And I think that after X amount of years of hearing that doesn't happen, whether that's five years or 10 years or 15, I don't really know how long that's been going on for. I know that I've been saying that for probably a decade now where I say, unless you, unless you're studying something specifically like engineering or you're willing to, or you, I, I don't think you should go to debt. If you're going to study the arts or the humanities personally, I think that you should, if you could find a way to pay, you pay your way through it and it's something you want to do because you want to pursue it. And I don't, but, but I the opportunities are so small out of out of college.

52:08 And I tried every trick in the book when as an English major, I would take a business. I think I used to take the business school's portfolio case and put my resume in it and go to the business fair and give my resume out to different companies. And they'd look at it and they'd look at my resume and they'd see I was an English major and walk me out, even though I had, even though I had real estate experience or I, you know, I was on the project management side or I was a broker. And they just said, listen, we, you know, it's, we're just not, you know, we're not interested and it's not the way we're going to hire. So I, I, I, so I think that, and I think that a lot of times political, you know, politicians would where are, you know, the youth vote is obviously extremely important and the college vote has been important throughout American history.

52:52 You know, whether it's protests, whether it's rallies, whether it, you know, whatever it may be, the students make themselves heard. You know, they always have. So I know that they're valuable for politicians. I wonder if this is more of an indictment on the system than it might be on the students, that the students are just saying, hey, we just don't want to be part of your game anymore. Yeah, I I definitely see some evidence of that. At the same time, you know, if you look at how college students vote, I mean, you still see more people voting for Democrats, but that doesn't mean that they're deeply invested in the Democratic way, right? Like, that could just be a vote against the other person. And a lot of, you know, a lot of what polarization means these days is it's not so much that I like my party, it's that I hate the other party, right?

53:48 That that is affective polarization that you're very negative about the other side. So I think there's probably some of that. I think there is some holding your nose and voting, but maybe not being as invested on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, it could be that. I mean, there are lots of reasons why a lot of students have decided to major in STEM. That's where they think the jobs are. That's where they think higher pay is, you know, all of that kind of stuff. But it also might be true that STEM is a deep politicized.

54:29 I mean, in some ways it's not really. I mean, it's very political. And so far as you know, this administration has made funding for medical research or alternative energy or whatever it is they, you know, that's become very politicized too. But it could be that students decide to major in engineering or, you know, do a pre Med major because those are seen as less politically salient. I don't know. I, I, I think it's more about the job market than anything else.

55:11 But you know, when I was talking with students way back in 2000 and six, 2007, the conservative ones, they said that their science classes were less politicized than than certainly, I don't know. There's there's probably some combination. Yeah, and I, and I, and I get that by the way, especially because, for example, you know, and as a, I'm an English teacher now it, you know, I'm teaching high school English and a lot of the, a lot of the material is interpretation. A lot of the material. You're reading Brave New World, you're reading, you know, 1984, you're reading Great Gatsby and you're saying to yourself, and you say to yourself, how am I going to, how am I going to pass the message? You know, how am I going to relate this information over to the kids in a way that makes the most it's most relatable to them that I think is the most effective and the most valuable. You know, a lot of times, and, and this is also interesting because I think politics is almost it has pervaded every aspect of life.

56:13 You could talk about sports and you can end up talking about politics and you can end up talking about, you know, you got to talk about business, end up talking about regulation and politics end up talking about medication and oh, you know what? I have AI have a rash into my armpit. Oh, well, it's politics. You know, they're like, OK, well, talk. About verbal halftime show and you're talking about politics, right? Right. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And and so, so it's almost become, you know, I did a podcast at someone the other week and they had a great line that politics was Hollywood would for less attractive people. And I thought that was very funny. But if it almost feels, you know, I think that a lot of this is show, it is a lot of shows. And who's willing to speak to the youth? I think that Momdani winning in New York, for example, and his brilliant method of just going to the communities had flipped to Trump and saying, Hey, what are the most important aspects that caused you guys to change your minds and vote for Trump? Because I want to, I want to help acknowledge that that's all he had to do.

57:10 And like, all you had to do is acknowledge the fact that the youth and you know, and Trump and Biden, I think both did this or both, you know, Trump's doing this now. They say the economy is great when you know, when, when, when every other indication says otherwise. And some people are. So at least there's a shred of, of honesty and of the, you know, I think that people like breaking the 4th wall if you are in Hollywood. And I think that if you are in a play, there's something fun to someone looking at the camera and waking at you and saying, Hey, I got you covered over here. And you know, and I think that that's kind of, and it's easy to kind of pop up in college. I but it also, I think it's just become part of everyday life for a lot of people.

57:53 Yeah. And it used to be if you knew that somebody liked NASCAR, for example, you wouldn't necessarily know what their politics were. It used to be that if somebody liked, you know, name any of a million other cultural things that we engage in or eat or whatever, you wouldn't necessarily know what their politics are. But now we have so many stacked identities on top of 1. You like Taylor Swift, you're a Democrat, you know, you like, you know, like all of it. It's just so it is. It really has infused everything. And, you know, talk about a way to keep separate people separate from one another.

58:39 When you know the things you wear, the things you eat, the things you listen to, the car you drive, the sports you watch, you know all of it is coated with left, right and jeez, that's hard. Much better if we went and bowled together. Definitely. I, I mean, you know, it's interesting because I stopped. I used to be a huge NBA fan and it did, NBA got too political for me. And I'm like, you know, I just, I just, I just want to watch the people play the game that I love the most at the highest level. Like that's, that's, that's what I'm here for. You know, I want to do that. UFC became the same way UFC, you know, I mean, obviously you can kind of guess that a martial martial combat sport, martial arts combat sport like that will probably attract more of a right leaning audience and a left-leaning audience.

59:29 But Trump became the face of the UFC while he was while he was running essentially. And so, you know, and Obama, you know, used to pop up to basketball games all the time and he was personally very invested in basketball. And so like you and what I think it's interesting because I'm sure Obama's not saying, hey, maybe he is, maybe isn't. I'm sure I would be charitable and say the man loves basketball. You know, like the man just wants to go to a basketball game and like, you know, in the league wants to if the league wants to be in the president of United States is good graces, then you're going to adopt his mentality or his perspective on things. And same thing with Trump. Now you know with the UFC Where? But, but what I give UFC a lot of credit for is that they're really great about free speech and, and people say anything they want on there. And Dana, Dana White, who will get on an interview and be like, that guy's a moron.

1:00:18 He reserves the right to be a moron. I don't agree with anything he says, but he reserves the right. He won the fight. The microphones in his face, he can say whatever he wants. And they've been very good about that. As opposed to college campuses, which I have been a little bit let down by as far as free speech violations. Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we were saying about change over time. I do think that universities are playing catch up and in the speech area, I think a lot of them have looked at what their practices have been, what speech codes have been, what their positions on institutional statements, department statements have been, and it's tardy. You know, it would have been better if some of these issues have been treated more seriously sooner. I don't think it's just lip service. I think universities realize that they have to do some things differently.

1:01:22 But also within universities, there are many different stakeholders and some people are not in support of change at this time. And they see universities as being political actors and they should be left coded political actors. So there's tension within universities too. But, and, and these are very, very, very large bureaucratic structures. And large bureaucratic structures don't move very fast. And so it's going to take some time for universities to correct course in some areas. I mean, in some areas they're absolutely magnificent institutions, right?

1:02:08 You've had a great experience. I had a great experience. I hope I teach my students well. We produce the best research in the world of all kinds, from humanities to, to to Cancer Research. So I hope that people are patient with the universities. I hope universities can regain the trust of the of the population. I mean the the amount that universities have lost trust from among them. Yeah, I think that they're going to have to show that they they're going to have to earn it back. I think. I mean, I don't think this is something that you just apologized for in general. I think the feeling is the Yeah, I think the feeling amongst the youth is you guys, you guys, you know, we're we're in a ton of debt.

1:02:58 We have a very, you know, we have very little job market, you know, very little job opportunities rather. I'm sorry and, and every, you know, and, and, and also I just and, and I don't know what happened around COVID time. I mean, I do know what happened, but around COVID time, institutional faith collapsed, you know, and, and in general, anytime that anyone, I mean, from now, and it's a shame, but I hear Harvard now and I think, you know, like, I think, you know, like I think I, I, you know, I hear, I hear big prestigious places and I'm like, yeah, but come on. How full, how full of crap could they be, You know, after, you know, after X amount of years of doing X amount and targeting students so much money and getting so much federal funding on, you know, and you know, and like you say, these are enormous bureaucracies that their tentacles do really go in so many different places. It's really, you know, it's really. They have many, many, many different constituencies to please as well.

1:03:50 Parents, students, trustees, faculty, administrators, funders, donors, the government, other nations, you know, you're you just I, I don't know why anybody would ever take the position of university president. That just seems horrible and. Tough. Yeah, tough. Extremely tough. I want to ask you, I want to, I want to kind of end on 2 questions. I want to talk about libertarians a little bit because I do. And I think that the, IT looks like to me at the moment that the future of the right at the moment is a combination of libertarian MAGA as opposed to neoconservatives.

1:04:33 Just based on, I think that reading, you know, reading social media, the room and I appears the last X amount of years, last three or four years, I would say. And folks like Thomas Massie and the Paul's and they're getting a, they're making a lot of noise, getting a lot of traction for talking about things that feel very relevant to everyday people. For example, Thomas Massie, first of all, an absolute hero with the Epsom stuff. Him and Khan are absolute heroes, you know, putting themselves on the line. And it's one of the most dangerous positions that they could possibly put themselves into some of the most dangerous people in the world. So they deserve all the credit in the world's real Khanna and Thomas Massie. But even the Paul's talking about, hey, what's the spend? How as Massey as he ever sees his invention that he has that just constantly keeps track of the national deficit in real time.

1:05:21 And and he walks around every time he goes to Washington, he wears this pin that keeps track of the national deficit and says this is how much money we're spending. This is how hard of a time we are going to have paying things back. And what the future of our student, of our students and people's economic possibilities are, is going down into the gutter with every number that this goes up again. I didn't realize that he was libertarian leaning. I know him more as an anti Trump Republican. I don't know what his voting record is. I mean, he's certainly been out on the front lines on the Epstein case and some of the other, you know, tariffs and things of that sort. Yeah. So I think he would call himself part of the libertarian right. I understand that there was a libertarian left and right, which is kind of, I mean, it's almost like moderates is what I, it's like my, I think that a lot of people that call themselves libertarian left or right or really just some of the people that we say that we said kind of fell out between the political camps and don't know what to call themselves now. But what I'm curious about is you think that there's any chance of a third party.

1:06:25 You think the parties will just morph from being, you know, 1, you know, two parties, one of them being primarily neoconservative and, you know, liberal the way that, you know, we used to in the early 2000s, to being whatever it is today. And do you think or do you think it's going to change or you think that there's room for a third party? Well, I mean, if you take the historical view, it seems like the US is very allergic to 3rd party. So that's tough. And currently the Libertarian Party is a mass, you know, we, I did research with Libertarian scholars, so not folks in the Libertarian Party. I actually know somebody who's very good who studied the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire and Los Angeles.

1:07:09 If you want to, yeah. I would love to. I would. Love to he's a postdoc at USC, University of Southern California. Sure, but so I know less about the party. Certainly the scholars I talked with by and large just want to keep as much distance between themselves and the Libertarian Party, which actually varying oddly and counter intuitively made a big maggot kind of turn right with what is called the Mises Institute or not the Mises Institute, the Mises caucus within the party. And they just became even less attractive, I think to most people.

1:07:53 So if a third party emerges, it's probably not going to be from the foundations of the Libertarian Party per SE. But you know, some of these some of the issues that libertarians support open borders, very not mega right, but also not not Democratic either, you know, gun rights, not democratic, more conservative. No doubt you've heard the phrase like I am economically conservative and socially liberal. And that's where a lot of the libertarian students we talked with.

1:08:37 So if somebody can find that lane, there probably are a lot of people out there who would support candidates like that. And it really depends how much the party, the party bosses or the party leaders are able to tamp down. But it would seem to me like there's been talk, especially among Democrats, to, to like, widen the tent more and to not have the social issues that so many people in the party have been kind of obsessed with OK, for the last number of years.

1:09:22 You saw that. I think it's a lot of clip on that. Right, right. And I think there's a lot, I think that I think that there was also a very visceral reaction to because I mean, this, it was kind of building since probably the late 2002 thousand, 2010 to 12 I imagine is really when what people would call woke kind of started, you know, gaining power or getting traction, right? 10 years of a lifespan, I think. And it still exists, but I think in a much more docile way than maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's some of the contentiousness within universities as well as, you know, folks really did have a foothold in universities and that's dissipating some, but there's some people who are still very, very, very committed to it. So you get a lot of tensions within these structures, whether it's a political party or a university, about which direction to move in the future.

1:10:25 Probably very interesting to see how young people get involved in this. And I'm also very curious as to how college educated and people without a college education work together and if there can be a generational cohort rather than just like a college educated cohort and a non college educated cohort. And if those issues can in some way be coordinated. I think that's a very strong and very strong contingency. Well, I think that there are a lot of issues that both I think that and this, that was a great way to describe it. Because one thing that I did notice was that I felt growing up at least that a lot of PA lot of political divide was based on having the same premise and different approaches to how to solve it.

1:11:16 And I think that that changed for a little while throughout 10 years that changed 1012 years. We couldn't even agree on what the same problems in the country were. You know, like the same things are trying to resolve and the same things are trying to fix. I think now we know that whole, you know, housing is an enormous issue that the left and the right are trying to work together. We see mom Donnie working with Trump on that, you know, meeting with him a bunch of times, even though he's a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and calls Trump a fascist, you know, pretty much his face. He's like, you know what? We still need to live somewhere like, you know, it's, it's a luxury to be able to call each other these terms, you know, and, and then obviously I got what I mentioned with Thomas Massie, the economic feasibility in the workforce.

1:11:56 So I think that I hope that what you're saying is correct in the sense that people will kind of say, hey, you know, that's why I think that libertarian, I think that the right will probably be a little bit more libertarian leaning and the left will probably look a little bit more democratic socialist within the next 5-10 years. Just because that kind of gets us back still to the same kind of questions where we can all agree the issue exists in the same way. And then the answer on how to deal with it is going to just be a matter of opinion. It's such a nice vision to think about people working on something in meaningful ways. I I sure hope you're right. Me too, me too. Last quick question for you. I'm sorry.

1:12:37 And then I'll let you go. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. You mentioned Turning Point as an outside influence for conservatives on campus. Can you mention a couple of on either end of the on either end of the aisle of big institutions that do have an impact on college students just for people to know about, because I do. I do know about Turning Point, but I don't know about a lot of other in general, I think that companies are these, these organizations tend to be pretty in the background and subtle about their influence. So maybe a couple of a couple of different ones on either side. Yeah, absolutely. It's a wonderful question. So on the right, there are many more organizations and they differentiate among themselves.

1:13:23 So Turning Point is not the first organization that really occupied that niche. There are other organizations like, you know, Young America's Foundation, the Leadership Institute, which we're doing some similar kind of training in the activist mentality, training people to enter into politics in various ways. And then Turning Point arrived on the scene and Charlie Kirk was able to amass so many resources and Turning Point just 8. These other organizations launch basically. So in terms of more like culture issues, anti left, those are the organizations I'd named Turning Point Leadership Institute, Young America's foundation. I don't know how much they're around these days. Prager you is around making videos in this in this area. Hire some of the same people, have some conferences and then there's kind of establishment, right, not mega. And there's some organizations like the American Enterprise Institute, for example, that hosts summer programs, conferences, week long programs for students who want to learn about conservatism, more intellectual conservatism. And they also have student clubs

1:14:56 on campus. I can't remember exactly what they're called, but they that people can look that up. And then on the left, one of the things that I and my co-author Jeff Kidder discovered is that students left of center are left much more to their own devices on campus. So they look to their colleges and universities for mobilization opportunities, multicultural centers, even academic disciplines, but there aren't things outside organizations that really mobilize them, not nearly to the same tune in terms of money or summer programs or conferences or whatnot. And so one of the things that we found as a result of that is that students on the left really don't have the same kind of conveyor belt from their college activism into the world of politics as the right leaning students do. Interesting.

1:15:57 They're much less supported, they're more insular, it's more inward looking. And I would love to see some progressive organizations take a lesson out of the rights playbook just to try to create some more opportunities for students to get involved in politics, because those could be really good potential leaders in the future. And, and it would be absolutely wonderful if this could happen, you know, in the moderate area and or independent area and in the libertarian space as well. I think students really do need those kind of stepping stones from their political commitments in college to out into the labor force.

1:16:43 Right. Do you think is a part? I don't know, I'm just asking, is it possible that there's not as many, I guess, external organizations the way you're putting it for left-leaning students? Because a lot of the universities offer programs that tend to, you know, have professors or faculty offer programs. It's already kind of, you know, in that, in that world for them. And so they, they, they don't feel necessary. So if I was an organization that wants to go to University of Miami and influence students to become lefties, I wouldn't, I wouldn't need to spend, you know, too much time and money doing that. I imagine that a lot of a big percentage of the student population or the OR the faculty is already there.

1:17:25 So I wouldn't necessarily even get my money there, right? Yeah. So we thought about that quite a bit. That was a hypothesis that we were working with as well. I think that's true. I think progressive organizations have felt complacent about it. Like the kids are doing all right in college, so why should we spend any of our hard earned treasure on them? The problem that I see is that it means that students, when they're looking to graduate and enter political or social jobs, they don't have that leg up that students on the right do. They don't have that immediate connection between their college activism and, you know, in the world of actual politics. And I would also say that this means that their politics themselves when they're on campus can be very campus oriented and.

1:18:29 Good point. Does it testing against? Yeah. The people that they're protesting against are actually often times university leaders and that, that just seems like insular, right and. Really good point. And it doesn't get them, you know, off their trajectory of being in the college Malia. And I think the more we can get people kind of focusing on whatever social issue or social problem they think needs addressing, but to get that outside the walls, university is really important. It's like teaching my, it's like, it's, it's like teaching a kid to ride a bike on training wheels as opposed to teaching them how to wiggle and waggle on two wheels 1st. And like you'll eventually get there and when you do, you're good to go.

1:19:16 But if you're learning on training wheels, you're going to have to adjust to taking those wheels off and then having to deal with that eventually anyway. Really just go down a couple times. That's right. That's it. By the way, Scrapes, not breaks, is what I've read. There's a policy, you know, you got to bruise yourself up a little bit. As long as you don't break anything, it's OK. That's right. You have to give people real experiences out in the world so that you know, so that people on the left are not just looking at university leaders to fix problems that aren't university leaders problems to fix. Right, that too. That's that's also a wonderful point.

1:19:56 Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Amy, this has been so much fun. I loved picking at your brain for all this stuff and, and your insight has been really, really. A lot of fun, very educational and really thought provoking. You give me a lot to think about, definitely. So thank you so much for the time and I hope to be in touch and this is really, really wonderful. Thank you. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. You asked fabulous questions and pushed me to think harder about some of the things I thought I knew, so I hope we can stay in touch. Yes, thank you so much. All right, bye everyone. Take. Care.