William Tyler
Wokeism and its Consequences

William Tyler - Wokeism and its Consequences

- Shall we start then, William?

• We will, Joe?

• Yeah?

• Would you like me to start off-

• Let me just introduce- I’ll just introduce you and then I’ll mute myself. I just wanted to thank William for agreeing to do this incredibly difficult presentation, particularly difficult as he has COVID, and a very, very bad cough. So with total forbearance, he is going ahead to lecture to us. And let me just tell you the format. He’ll be presenting for about half an hour and then we’re going to open up for questions. I’m going to chair the questions ‘cause I want to be as easy as possible on his health. So over to you William.

• Thank you Trudy, and welcome to everyone who’s joined us. Yes, this is a difficult topic to talk about, but a very interesting one to have been asked to prepare. So let me just start by saying, my football team or in American English, my soccer team, play in the second tier of English football. It’s Bristol City because I was born in Bristol. For quite a time now, before every game begins, the players take the knee. Like much else in Britain, and indeed across Europe culture, right across British culture, this gesture derives from American culture. In this case the action’s first taken by Colin Kaepernick, an American football player on the 1st of September, 2016, when he took the knee as a symbol against racism. So it only dates from 2016. This then rapidly expanded after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, by the American police and the beginning of the Black Lives Movement, BLM, the Black Lives Movement, and that has spread from America to Britain and across the world. We can put alongside the Black Lives Movement, the parallel Me Too movement, and again, beginning in America and spreading elsewhere. Both these and other current social issues which are in the news, can be academically classified as the culture war. Today’s culture war. What is a culture war? Well, it’s a conflict between social groups and the struggle for the dominance of your values over other people’s values, or their beliefs or practises, but basically about values. Some of those questions that have focused around, as I’ve just said, Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements. But they also include attitudes and issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, pornography, multiculturalism, racism in general. And again, all of these seem to have started in America and spread outwards from America. But having said that, each country has its own issues today in culture wars, which are not necessarily derived from America, they can arise in an individual country.

Well, the whole concept of these modern culture wars has come from the States. In fact, you can trace it very definitely to the year 1991 when a sociologist at University of Virginia, James Davison Hunter, wrote a book about culture wars, and that introduced the whole idea of culture wars. So it takes us back to 1991. Now many of you are extremely well educated and you’ll know that that actually goes back further than that. And we can go back, right back, to the 19th century, to 19th-century Germany, where Bismarck, the chancellor of a newly unified Germany from 1871 was clashing with the Catholic Church, and the Germans created the phrase “the culture wars.” But as I say, recreated in our age by the sociologists at University of Virginia in 1991. And the culture wars can actually cover all sorts of things. Now I’m here in Britain, and so I’ve got some British examples, but you can get examples from whichever country you live in. You can think of similar examples. Now, this was an article in “The Guardian” newspaper in Britain, published in June of last year by the journalist Andrew Anthony, and Anthony wrote this, “Last week, produced an eventful but not untypical weather front of news stories about culturally contentious issues.” Culturally contentious issues, the culture wars. “There was a micro storm about the queen’s photograph being taken down in the common room at Magdalen College Oxford, the tiny tempest of test cricketer, Ollie Robinson, being dropped for racist tweets dating from when he was a teenager. The squall over England’s football team,” soccer, “football team’s commitment to taking the knee, and the Suttonshire Oxford academics boycotting Oriel College over its decision to retain its Cecil Rhodes statue.” Cecil Rhodes has been at the centre of a lot of British cultural war fights because of his links with racism in South Africa.

And it’s caused problems because Rhodes left a lot of money in Oxford, and as Americans know, with Rhodes scholars and so on. Interestingly, Rhodes was born to an Anglican clergyman in the town of Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire. And he left a great deal of money and they set up a museum. And then they revamped the museum and the Rhodes Centre and they made a big thing of it, and it was a centenary of his birth. And they asked Clinton, who was a Rhodes scholar, to come and open it, and the reply from his staff was that he would have nothing to do with Rhodes. They then approached Rhodes House in Oxford where all the American Rhodes scholars stay and asked the principal of the Rhodes House to come and open it, he even refused. In the end, they couldn’t find anyone with a connection that would open it. So these are the issues that are been swirling around. Anthony continues in this article in “The Guardian” from June last year. “These, along with deckless headline, 'Law Student Cleared After Saying Women Have Vaginas’ were examples of what might be called skirmishes in a larger and ongoing series of battles, the culture wars. The British historian, Dominic Sandbrook, agrees that a culture war is underway across Western societies, but says, ‘We must be a bit careful about overstating it.’ He’s written, ‘I think one of the mistakes people make when they talk about cultural wars, is they think it is something that necessarily sweeps up the whole of society, and everyone’s invested in.’ He thinks, actually, it’s sometimes merely a debate between an educated elite.” Now, I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that the culture wars are an educated elite, because I think the people that go on the streets over these issues are not necessarily part of an educated debate.

They’re cannon fodder used by others. But Tom Holland, another British historian, looking at the fact that culture wars, in a modern sense, began in America and then moved here to Britain, has a very interesting historical view. He has written, “The Puritans took the culture wars with them to America. Now America has re-exported the arguments back to us.” And we all remember the 17th-century Puritans in both England and the colonies that were America at the time, were a very narrow group of people. And he says, “Well, this is deep in American DNA, and it’s merely burst out again. And it’s deep in English DNA and thus the English rush to accept these new culture wars once exported by America.” It’s an interesting idea, I’m not sure how much I agree with the idea, but it’s interesting to think about that. Now, some commentators today think that these culture wars mark the decline of traditional Western liberal democracy. Ideas of tolerance and free speech. Now that is an interesting question and an interesting point. There is much comment about the decline of the West and with the Putin-Ukrainian standoff, much comment about the poor quality of Western leadership. From Biden to Macron, from Macron to the German chancellor, and from the German chancellor to Johnson. There is a lack, it’s said, of leadership. There’s also a concern about attacks on traditional liberal democracy in Britain and in America, let alone in Germany and in France where we see the rise of the neofascist right. And in France, maybe even in a presidential race. And then we come to this new word. New word because it only appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017 and in other dictionaries around the same date. And that is the word woke, w-o-k-e, or wokeism. And wokeism is really at the centre of these cultural wars, it’s a very fierce debate. What is woke? Some people use woke as a sign of awareness to social issues. “Well, he’s very woke because he’s concerned about the plight of poor people.” Or others say, “Oh, you are just wokeist, you are just going on and on about things that are not important, such as taking down of statues.

You think of America and the statues in the South of Confederate generals, this is ridiculous!” say people. There’s a cultural difference. There’s wars, people take sides over wokeism. If you want a definition, this is a definition from the “Oxford Dictionary”, “Wokeism: alert to injustice in society, especially racism.” And it gives an example, “We need to stay angry and stay woke.” So racism, Black Lives Matter, taking the knee, is something that is again, core to what set all these cultural wars going. And no one, none of us would disagree. And to “alert to injustice in society” of course, it’s like voting for motherhood and apple pie, like, except of course you can’t say motherhood in a woke situation, you have to talk about the parent who bears children has been an issue in a training course in the British House of Lords. The House of Lords have rejected the training course because it was saying that you couldn’t use the word mother, you had to say “the parent who bears children.” I mean at that point we think, “We’re losing all touch with reality,” except this was not some odd university, or strange peripheral part of society. This was a training course for the House of Lords. Another definition says this, “A state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality. Wokeness encompasses the need to search for more knowledge, understanding, and truth in order to challenge injustice.” And again, we’d all vote for that. How can you vote in favour of injustice? None of us will do that. The term originated, of course, in America. Now I want to read you this sort of approach to wokeism that’s different from the political left to the political right. And it doesn’t matter that it’s America, the same is acted out, Canada, South Africa, Britain, wherever, Australia. The term woke, has gained popularity among the American left.

This has partly been a reaction to the right wing politics of President Donald Trump, but also to a growing awareness regarding the extent of historical discrimination faced by African-Americans. Then that introduces Trump. So it introduces a Western government into creating. I think whether you are American and listening and you support Trump, or you don’t, I think most people would say that Trump is quite an exception in American political life since the 18th century. I go on, the second, “Among American conservatives, woke has come to be used primarily as an insult. In this pejorative sense, woke means following an intolerant, immoralizing ideology.” “How dare you tell me how to behave?” “The right, in Britain, and America and elsewhere, use woke to attack what some have called over-righteous liberalism, wearing your heart on your , on your sleeve. And outrageous liberalism, woke, political correctness gone mad.” Now these are difficult questions. Now I want, one of the things I am, by academic training, is a gerontologist. And I wanted to make a gerontological point, just because, and I guess most of you are a little younger than me, even maybe even a little older than me. But we are in the older generations. Just because we are old does not mean our opinions are right and the young are wrong. Just because we’re old does not mean that our opinions are wrong. We all probably have different opinions about wokeism. Some of us may be more woke than others. Just because we’re old, does not mean we cannot have an opinion. This is our world. 2022 is the world we live in. We’ve not been dug up from the grave, we are of this world as much as your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren or your children are of this world. So are we of this world. We have a right to express a view.

Now we should only express a view, whatever age we are, with knowledge, with understanding. And I also think, and I may lose some of you, at this point, my own personal belief is, that in the liberal democracies of the West, we need to remain liberal. Small L, no, no political connotations. We need to remain liberal and tolerant. That is what has underpinned our societies. We should not seek extreme views. We should seek moderate views. We should seek to reconcile views in the centre ground. Unfortunately with wokeism, we are dealing with extremes. Now the extreme wokeists provoke a counterargument, against them, which is equally extreme. I’m arguing for a middle way. That’s not easy. What do I mean by extremism? Well, this is a British example. And then I’m going to give an American. This was published in the “Times” quite recently, “The idea put forward by Aberdeen University in Scotland that students need to be warned that Stevenson’s novel, ‘Kidnapped’ includes descriptions of kidnapping, is a bungee jump into the abyss of absurdity.” What? Telling 18, 19, 20 year old students, “Look, this is a book, ‘Kidnapped’, it includes kidnap, if you’re worried” come on, that is mad! Am I right? Is that really mad? Is a university really telling people and instructing its staff that if they lecture on the book, on the novel, “Kidnapped”, they have to tell people it includes kidnapping? I find that extraordinary. And then there’s this story from America, and this was an American newspaper report. “The teenage Daughtrys, age 14 and 16, are sitting in the back of Firefly Bookstore, a gem of new and used literature in the small town of Kutztown, central Pennsylvania, huddled together on foldout chairs facing down a table laden with muffins, pretzels, and a stuffed toy pig.

Stuffed toy pig represents Napoleon from George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm.’ They’re members of Kutztown’s Banned Book Club, which meets every two weeks to read and discuss literature, that conservatives across America are working to ban from school libraries. The book club members all age between 13 and 16.” So, age, nothing to do with it, “All age between”- And we think they’re young are not with it enough. Oh yes, they are. “All aged between 13 and 16 are gathered at a time of crisis. In the past year, the book banning movement has already seen works that mostly address race or LGBTQ issues removed from libraries in Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania.” So banning books in libraries and telling students that a book called “Kidnapped” includes kidnap, are we not in some very dangerous territory indeed? Now my final point is about freedom of speech. A concept which we thought was set solid in Anglo-American culture. After all, the 17th-century Puritan scholar John Milton wrote, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience. Above all liberties give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience. Above all liberties.” Well, we all vote for that I hope, except there are limits to free speech even in free societies. Some of those are legal. You cannot advocate, in Britain, terrorism. You cannot advocate or display racism or sexism. And of course there is the issue of Holocaust denial. There are limits to free speech. Free speech isn’t anarchic speech.

Can I give you an example of good wokeism? Because I said I try to sit in the middle, and again, in my hometown of Bristol, there was a prominent statue of a 18th-century Bristolian called Edward Colston. He was a great benefactor of Bristol, but he was also a man who made his money from the slave trade. And last year, his statue was torn down and thrown into Bristol Harbour by a group of young people, white and Black Bristolians. In my opinion, they were right to do so, why? Because the Council had not taken action over a period of years. And why? Because to living Bristolians, many of them Black African-Americans, it was an insult to have that statue in the middle of their city. So this wasn’t an issue about a historical statue, it was that a historical statue had contemporary meaning. And finally, in today’s “Times”, I cut out four things that struck my attention. One, “A law firm has appointed a fertility officer in an attempt to dispel the idea that becoming a mother is career suicide.” A fertility officer. “The city of Wolverhampton in central England used to make chains. They supplied shackles during the age of Transatlantic Slavery. This could have led to a fascinating conversation on this radio programme about the statue of Prince Albert in the middle of the city. It is a reminder of the fact that Prince Albert was a staunch supporter of abolition of slavery and how the Molineux family in Wolverhampton were once given a Sierra Leonian child slave, whom they named George John Scipio Africanus, and proceeded to educate. Which in turn is a point that always gets omitted, whenever wars rage over whether people like me,” and the journalists in the “Times” is Black, “whether journalists like me should write books exploring Imperial history, warts and all. The unvarnished truth is just more interesting.”

And then the Shadow Foreign Secretary, “The Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary in Britain, has asked the government to pardon 70 abolitionists, convicted for their role in the 1823 Demerara Rebellion in the Caribbean.” And then this, which I find, as an educator, deeply disturbing, “Officials at a primary school warn the parents of a six-year-old that he will be deemed transphobic if he expressed confusion when a pupil he knew as a boy was now wearing a dress. Sally and Nigel Rowe have released a letter they received from a Church of England school on the Isle of Wight after they raised concerns. The letter from the Head Teacher and the Chairwoman of the Governors warned that pupils will be viewed as transphobic if they demonstrated an inability to believe a transgender person is actually a real female or male. Children should be regarded as transphobic if they exhibited discomfort, inability to trust, based on a child’s transgender status or refusal to use gender-appropriate pronouns.” What? I’m speechless! So Trudy will open the floor to everyone.

• I can’t believe you’re speechless, William.

• No, not very often.

• Thank you so much for that superb, superb rendition. I think one of the problems is that you are a militant liberal. You are a liberal, but you’re going to have to become a militant one if that is what you believe in. And that’s, I think that’s one of our impossibilities. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: This is a very interesting one from Ron Bick, “Are wokeism, political correctness, and perhaps also the concept of cultural appropriation or manifestations of the same, impulses to control speech, and as a result, to control thought? This seems more than irritating. This seems potentially, very dangerous.”

A: - I think that’s a good question and I think it’s answered itself, I think the word in there is “potentially”. It has potential to what I call to go to this extreme end of the spectrum. And that is why it’s potentially dangerous and it’s potentially dangerous in the sense that if politicians get hold of it, where that leads, and that is a direct threat to liberal democracies in the West. That’s what I would say, Trudy, to that.

• I would, I would totally agree with you. You have a factual question here from Claudia. “You mentioned the historian Dominic Selwood. Could you point me to the text-

• No, no, no, no. Dominic Sandbrook.

• Dominic Sandbrook, Claudia.

• Yeah, it was an article that was quoted. Hang on, is this your Claudia?

• Yes .

• I thought it might be, well let me, Claudia-

• It was Sandbrook.

• But I’ve got to find the piece of paper in which I printed off. It’s Dominic Sandbrook, the historian, and it, I think it was, it was in an interview and this is from "The Guardian” article, which is called “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Culture Wars but Were Afraid to Ask” “Everything You Want to Know About the Culture Wars but Were Afraid to Ask” “The Guardian”. And that’s where the reference comes from.

Q: - Lovely, thank you William. Now this is from Tommy. “To what extent did the Internet reignite and intensify the current culture war? This is, again, the Internet, probably as important as the printing press.”

A: - Yes, you are absolutely right. That’s what spreads it so quickly. Anyone putting something on the Internet in the States, now, is read instantaneously by somebody here. You can follow people in different countries. And of course if the language isn’t a issue, which of course it isn’t, then it transfers very quickly. There was an extraordinary story today in the paper of a woman in Canada who had a burglar in the house and she desperately phoned the police, and her local police were regional police in Durham, in Canada, but in her haste, she managed to phone Durham in Britain. But the person at the other end realised she was in Canada and kept her talking whilst other colleagues contacted the Durham police in Canada who managed to get there. We live in this instant society. I mean they were 3000 miles apart. So I think the Internet is a major issue and monitoring the internet raises the question about freedom of speech.

• Mm.

Q: - Where do you put the limits on the Internet? Where do governments put it? What are the responsibilities of the platforms over the Internet? And these are really difficult modern questions, but they’ve got to be answered.

A: - And it’s really the double-edged sword, isn’t it, William? On one level it gives huge benefit. For example, what you are doing tonight, lecturing to 1500 machines, maybe one person or two people, three years ago this would not have been thought about. So there is the positive and the negative. Now there’s a question about-

• Well that’s the same with, that was the same with the printing press.

• Exactly.

• To begin with people were printing religious text, but what took off in 17th-century England was pornography. There was far more pornography than religious texts, and however much the government tried to stop them.

• I’m not commenting on that. Now this is from-

• It’s true. But that’s true about the Internet as well, of course.

Q: - Oh, of course, “Some say that wokeism and Black Lives Matter is all part of a Marxist inspired long-term strategy to demolish Western democracy. They say these attacks are especially aimed at our young people in higher education, social media and racial issues.” Have you any thoughts on this, William?

A: - Just conspiracy theory, nonsense.

• Right, me too.

• Sorry, you want a quick answer that’s done.

• I’m sorry, I hate conspiracy theories, you know, particularly, particularly those concerning Jews.

• One thing we know about Marxists is they’re incompetent.

Q: - Yeah, don’t go there. “How does intersectionality tie into wokeism?” asks Joel Glazer.

• How does intersect-

• Intersectionality.

A: - I’m not sure I understand the question, Joel.

Q: - Joel, could you come back at us on that? Now this is from Alison. “Why do the woke minority have such apparent sway? Do we nonwokes need to address the balance? If so, how?”

A: - Yes, that’s a very, very important question. And that’s about the silent majority. And that’s, that is a very worrying aspect, not just of wokeism as a broad brush, but also in terms of democracy. It’s the centre, it’s our tolerance, which, well, it’s what Trudy said just now, we have to be illiberal liberals. We have to stand up for what we believe in. And whether that’s writing letters to papers, standing up in political meetings, it’s incumbent on all of us. And it’s a question that many of us are trying to, trying to grapple with. I don’t know if you want to add to that, Trudy.

• Yes, I, 15, 20 years ago, Robert Wistrich headed up the Centre of the Study of Antisemitism. That was his analysis, basically, if liberal- he died in 2014. He said that “If li liberalism doesn’t become more militant, we’re going to lose, it’s the centre ground. It’s the silent majority. The people who believe in that terribly old-fashioned phrase, common sense.”

• Absolutely.

• We know, instinctively, where the line is. Racism has got to be evil. And then, by the way, on that subject, something I want to bring into the argument, William, is that one of the problems we have as Jews is that the majority of other victim groups do not see Antisemitism as a form of racism, and this is coming out more and more. And that I think adds to Jewish alienation from all of this, which is quite problematic. I dunno if anyone on the Q&A wants to come in on this. So let me go on to Thalia.

Q: “Do you perhaps agree that free speech should be limited when it’s being used in order to ‘injure’ another person? That’s what I believe.” and then thanking us for what we do. She’s put injured in inverted commas.

• I can’t find that question, is it further, quite a long way down?

• I can’t find that.

• Oh, I think it, oh, all right, let me read it again. “Do you perhaps agree that free speech should be limited when it’s being used in order to ‘injure’ another person?”

• Yes, I, well, let me put it-

• Does injured, what does injured mean, William?

A: - Yes, I mean, I think you… I think if I disagree with you profoundly on something, I should not be, I shouldn’t not say, I should speak out, but that is not the same as injuring you by being rude or aggressive in any way. It’s just having a conversation which says, “Well, you think that, I don’t think that, this is what I think,” that is what in fact how our political representatives should behave in parliaments and congresses and all the rest of it. But on occasions they do not. And that’s another worry about our democracy of how aggressive politicians are towards each other. You’ve got to respect the other person’s point of view. But that does not mean that you should hold back on your point of view.

Q: - “There have been some”, this is Ralph, “There have been some recent concerns about whether freedom of thought and speech are adequately protected at our universities. Does university tenure protect these values or not?” It’s a very interesting question, William.

A: - Very, you’d have to ask some university lecturers, but I think the answer will be no, it doesn’t protect them anymore. And that’s where some of them, if you cannot say in a university what you believe and justify it, then what is the purpose of a university? Now that does not say, let’s take the extremist example. That does not say that a university lecturer should announce that the Holocaust didn’t exist. But then he or she would be dismissed on the grounds that that is absolutely non-factual. That is simply wrong. But it’s different if you say something like, one of the things I am academically, also, is a criminologist, I’m sorry, I’ve had very various backgrounds. If you say most crime is committed by Black, young people, then if you support that with evidence, there will be people to say “Yes, but you are asking the wrong question, therefore you’re getting the wrong answer.” On the other hand, that is a perfectly valid position to take up and it has to be answered with alternative facts. So there is a limit-

• Mm-hmm.

• and there’s a difference, and as Trudy said before, to find the difference sometimes isn’t as easy as it might appear.

• And I think the other issue, I do have friends who are still working professors, and some of the stories I’m being told now about what they can and can’t teach. They’re even looking at some of Shakespeare’s plays. And surely there comes a time where you just talk context with students. That would be my view on that. I do find what’s happening in the university is very, very troubling in many ways. In many ways. The history syllabus, the literature syllabus, and the thing I also find very troubling, William, is platforming. When certain universities are not giving platform to people, look, you already said very clearly, racism, incitement to racial hatred, terrorism, these are actually covered by law.

• Yes.

• And also there is that line, later on in the year, Rex Bloomstein, who is very, he’s made some very interesting films on freedom of speech. He once gave voice to David Irving in one of his documentaries. And he had so many problems over this, but he said, “If you believe in freedom of speech, you have to allow him to speak. My job is to show how stupid his arguments are.” And I think the other thing that this debate has done, William, it’s closing off a lot of areas of freedom of speech, which I believe is absolutely essential to a vibrant democracy.

• Yes, you and I agree.

• Yeah, that’s our problem, isn’t it?

• Yes it is.

Q: - Now this is, this is from Thelma. “What do you think about destroying history and historic statues that are maybe a reminder of history, good and bad, and could lead to knowledge and discussion and education?” And Thelma’s also added, “Also destroying the grammar of language,” which I love . I don’t love the destruction, I’ve just, that point is so important.

A: - Let me answer the question about statues. If the thing is very historical, then it remains as a historical statue with a modern explanation, if you like. Where I part company with that is when people in that community today feel, feel in some way insulted, oppressed by, or whatever, the statue, like in Bristol, the Colston statue, I understand, it should have been put in a museum a long time ago. And that to me is absolutely clear. On the other hand, to get rid of a statue of Boudica, Boadicea, in London, because she killed lots of Romans, it’s just nonsense. It’s a question of, is the statue of relevance today and upsetting a community, and dividing a community? Then I think it does have to go. But there may be Americans who want to answer that question in terms of the statues of the Confederacy. But there’s also issues, there’s issues now at Princeton. I think I’m right in saying it, Princeton, they’ve actually changing the name of a building because it, it had Woodrow Wilson’s name on it. And I find that’s, I can’t get my head around that.

• Hmm. I was very angry when they defaced Winston Churchill’s statue. Yes, he had flaws. But isn’t it more interesting just to discuss those flaws? And frankly, as a Jewish historian, I have to look at some of these arguments with kind of cynicism and scepticism. Because if you think of all those stained glass windows in all those churches all over Europe, that depict a negative stereotype of the Jew. And one of the main statues in Parliament is that of Richard I, and the worst pogrom in English history was in his reign. Are we going to now scream that that statue has to become, has to come down? Of course we are not, it’s… More in, I agree with you, William. I think the Bristol case was different, but far more useful would be actually to put these people in their historic context to teach students. That would be my, yeah.

• Yes, I agree completely.

• Oh goodness. We are agreeing too much. Well, we’re a certain age.

• I know, I know. We’re the same age group. That’s the problem.

Q: - Anyway, Marshall is asking, “Was Orwell antiwoke?” That’s an interesting question.

A: - Oh, I saw that question. No, I don’t, that’s an interesting question. But I think in truth, Orwell was simply against the, Orwell was writing against Marxism and against the lies of Marxism and the dangers of Marxism. And don’t think I’d want to bring wokeism into that argument. I think I would just stick with, sorry, Trudy.

• I think it’s different. No, I, sorry, there was an overlap. No, I think that’s a different argument altogether. I mean, don’t forget Orwell’s list, where he prepared for the British government lists of people who they should consider worrying. And some of those people were actually very great writers and non-political, so, but that’s another argument, now-

• And he’s, he was an Old Etonian, don’t forget.

Q: - Should we do we have prejudice against Old Etonians?

A: - Yes, totally , so that’s a very-

• At least I taught-

• That’s a very British joke because of Boris Johnson’s government. So just, if you’re not British, just ignore that. That’s, that’s just British humour.

• But you know, I taught there for two years and if I could-

• I know. I know.

• And you know, what I loved about it, they always called me mom, and I’m sorry, I liked that. Minor correction, BLM, Black Lives Matter. I thought you were saying that anyway. Anyway, this is from Gerald. “I’m uncertain what you said about the Kutztown teenagers. I have a relative who lives there and I want to be accurate when I tell him that the mention of his town reached the international audience, thanks.”

• That’s fantastic, no, it was an article in an American paper that I took off the net and it’s this group of young people, young teenagers who meet to read books and talk about books. It’s like a book club for these young people. But it’s books that have been banned in, not in, necessarily in Pennsylvania, but somewhere in the States, like George Orwell’s “1984”, which is the one they started with. That’s why they have the pig on the table, which is Napoleon, the pig in the story that takes over Animal Farm, if you remember. So they’re saying they should have the right to read what books they want to read. And there should not be a ban on books. Now of course, there should be a ban on some books. We’re back to freedom of speech again. But the books that are being banned at the moment in the States are, mostly, and Orwell doesn’t come into that category, are mostly race books that, I mean, things that have been banned, like… like “The Adventurers of Tom Sawyer” had been banned because it includes the N-word, for example. Well, you have to take, as Trudy said, those things in context. If I was teaching “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” to, and I did that at school in England, if I was teaching it to young people today, I would explain why, today, we don’t accept those words, but why, when they were used by Mark Twain, it was different, it was a different concept, because Black people also used that word about themselves along the Mississippi when Twain was writing. So it’s context always.

• I think also William, there’s no subtlety. It’s the subtlety of debate and understanding, that certainly by the time you get to university, you hope that the kids will understand, and it’s taking away any kind of subtlety. I teach the history of race literature and that’s quite complicated, because obviously, race literature is a load of bull. But in order to understand Naziism, you have to understand where it comes from. So do I use the words that they used? Or do I make up other words? Much better to use the words, but to say, “This is totally unacceptable.” And besides, I think any theory of pure race is absolutely balmy, but, so there’s so many problems. But again we’re polarising, we’re not using common sense. Anyway-

• And people making that sort of point, Trudy, if you were teaching in university, you could be brought down by students complaining about it.

• I know. I know.

• Complaining about you, saying that.

• I know.

• And so it means that you, one of the things I feel as a teacher, particularly of adults, is that I say what I, I’ll do the facts as well as I can. When it’s my opinion, it is pretty obvious it’s my opinion. And I don’t expect you all to agree. I expect you to engage with the question and come to your own conclusion. But the problem in universities is that you can’t do that because they will take your opinion as being thrust down their throat and therefore they will challenge that and refuse to allow you to teach. Can I give you an example? A long time ago now, in the 1980s, I became principal of the largest adult college in Britain, in Europe, in London. And my expertise was in older learners, and we ran training for tutors across London and the training unit was part of my college, and they asked me whether I would do a session on older learners, so I said, “Yes I would.” And I was new to the college and it was in my first month. I went to do the lecture and before I opened my mouth, the students, all of whom were female, said, “We object your presence.” So I said, “Why?” And they said, “Well, you are male, you are a principal, you have an Oxford degree, and we don’t want to listen to you.” So I said, “Well look, I can’t help that I’m male and I can’t help that I’m the principal, and my Oxford degree has nothing to do with it. It’s a degree I have, actually, from the University of Nottingham, which is in educational gerontology.” And I said, “My expertise here is as an educational gerontologist, older learners.” And they said, “Well, we’re going to have to discuss it.” So I said, “Well, I’m going to my office and if you’ll not ask me back in five minutes, then I’m getting on with other work.” But they did ask me back. But it was a really peculiar moment in the 1980s. Very odd indeed, today I think it could be worse.

• That’s probably when we should have started becoming more militant actually.

• Well, it was at the same time that we couldn’t ask in the local authority in London, if you were offered coffee, you couldn’t offer coffee and say white or black, you weren’t allowed to. You had to ask whether you wanted it with or without milk. And I’m, people were, took great, I mean you were in trouble. If you were a principal and you asked somebody in a meeting, “Would you like your coffee, white or black?” You would’ve been reported.

• And in the main, it was not Black people who were worried.

• Never, never in my experience was it Black people.

• I know. I know.

• Never, ever.

• I know. Me too.

• It was always white people.

Q: - Now this is- This is from James. “Should positive discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities be pursued to ensure diversity or to atone for past ill treatment?” It’s a very interesting question.

A: - I find the whole question of positive discrimination extremely difficult. I have to say, working in adult education all my life, all my Black colleagues, that I appointed, were appointed on merit. And I raised questions with all of them about this. And all of them said, “Why should we be judged any different than anybody else?”

• Yes.

• And to give you a story, two stories, once when I was principal in the College of Adult Education in Manchester in the north of England, and once as principal of The City Lit in London. In the north of England, they had positive discrimination at the local authority level. And I was given, as a member of STAR, a young Black woman born in Britain with a degree in English literature from the University of Manchester. And she was meant to be teaching Black studies. And she came to me and she said, “William, do I have to teach this?” So I said, “No, why do you ask?” She said, “Well, I think it’s nonsense.” She said, “I’m an English literature graduate.” She said, “With adult students here in the daytime in their seventies and eighties, they don’t want me to talk about Caribbean poetry, they want me to talk about Jane Austin.” So I said, “Well that’s fine.” Within three terms, she had them eating out of her hand. She was extraordinarily good teacher and she had them learning Caribbean poetry, but that was the way to do it. In London, I was also given a colleague, an Asian colleague, and he was appointed again for Black and Asian studies. And he came to me and he said, “William, this is nonsense.” And I said, “Well, what do you think you should do?” This was in the eighties. And he said, “Well,” he said, “look, I’ve looked at the college programme curriculum and we’re doing nothing about teaching people about computing.” So I said, “No, we aren’t.” And I said, “We haven’t got any money.” So I said, “Look, if I can find you some money, can you run some courses, bring up a syllabus?” So we did, we agreed to do it. And from that we spawned a whole department of computer studies. Nothing to do with me, except he saw the nonsense of positive discrimination. So I am confused about it and I can only speak from my experience, which is a very limited experience.

• I was going to say, I also find this very, very confusing, because, you know, you made a joke about our Prime Minister, and it is true that there is disparity between very privileged kids who do go to the best private schools and kids who are in classes of 35 to 40 in state schools, and particularly in the inner city areas. So there isn’t enough levelling out. And I do think that’s a problem, but I also think on one level, positive discrimination is demeaning. And that’s what I’ve found from my Black and Asian colleagues, that they find it demeaning. But on the other hand, there’s a disadvantage. I think that, that there are- I think it’s also to do with whether you come from a strong cultural heritage, actually. And one of the problems we have with the various Black communities in England, many of them were robbed of their culture. So I can see there are issues in this, but I don’t know how we deal with it. And I think, unfortunately, people are scared of actually putting the issue on the table and saying this is an issue without them being accused of being racist or whatever.

Q: Anyway, and this is David, “How do we fight wokeism when as soon as we open our mouths we are labelled phobic?”

A: - Well, I think we have to stand up for what we believe in. And we have to just argue sensibly and with evidence. I can’t answer that any other way. There’s not an easy answer.

Q: - “Is the next battle in the West between the far right and the wokeists?” says Jennifer.

A: - I think it might be. I think that’s a very good point, I think it might be, because I think we are in grave danger in our democracies, even in Britain and the States of moving decidedly to a unpleasant Populist right. And that’s worrying.

Q: - Another one on the same sort of from David, David Brody. “Does fake news have anything to do with wokeism?”

• Does state news?

• Fake news.

A: - Fake news. Yes. Fake news seems to be a weapon in the cultural wars. And it’s a weapon used, it’s a weapon that seems to be being used at the moment by the Populist right. There’s been an argument here in Britain about a comment made by the Prime Minister about the leader of the opposition, which is factually incorrect, but he took it from a fake news of the extreme right off the Internet. Now, whether he did it deliberately or whether it simply was sort of floating around in the air, nobody knows. But it was worrying that this fake news of the extreme right on the Internet was actually used by a Populist Prime Minister against his political opposite number. It was entirely, is entirely, fake. But the leader of the opposition in Britain, who was, had this thrown at him by the Prime Minister, we now understand according to the police, has had death threats based upon the Prime Minister’s attack on him. And that’s worrying, that is worrying.

Q: - This is from Joseph, “In the US there’s an active, well-funded, and organised attempt to censor books in schools and libraries. To what extent has it impacted Britain and is there such an organised movement over there?”

A: - I think the answer is not yet, but almost certainly will be coming.

Q: - Susan asked, “Could you comment on the woke term being used to excuse white supremacists in America?”

• Can you repeat that? Sorry?

• “Could you comment on the woke term being used to excuse white supremacists in America, on America?”

A: - I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve got the question, the woke term.

• On the woke-

• Do you follow that question?

• I’m not quite sure of that, not quite, I mean, look, obviously, white supremacism, and I think both William and I would find that absolutely appalling. Maybe it’s because they’re saying they’re being attacked by wokeists with their fake news, I don’t know. But we know that-

• I’m not sure I- I’m sorry, with all the will in the world. I’m sorry, I just don’t understand quite the question. It’s a cultural difference between Britain and America. I think I’ve lost the, I’ve lost the implication of the question.

Q: - This is from Leah. “Would you consider wokeist behaviour when friends, families physically split, separate over opposing political views?” I don’t find that wokeist that’s just my family at Sader, or any other night actually. Isn’t it yours, William?

A: - Yes, I think that’s just typical family life. My God, I don’t think I’ve ever voted the same way as my daughter. And it’s my own fault because I told her that whatever she did as an adult, she had to vote. Even if she just put a, just a scribble on the paper, she had to vote. Well, I didn’t expect that she’d vote against everything that I’ve ever voted for- Don’t worry, your grandchildren will vote with you.

• Probably Trudy’s experience as well. No, that’s healthy.

• Your grand-

• That’s got to be healthy, but we must be able to talk, whether it’s families or friends or whoever, we must be able to disagree without storming out of the room or doing worse than that, taking them out of your will. Mind you I have thought of that. No, no, no.

Q: - Don’t be hideous. This is from Jennifer. “Would you agree that the fight for civil rights, for instance, translated into tangible opportunities for African Americans, whereas wokeism seems more a matter of language than a platform that will transcend in advancing concrete these, those they highlight as oppressed?” Yeah, that’s an interesting question from Jennifer.

• I can’t find that.

• No, I can’t.

• I’d like to read, I’d like to read that one again. Sorry, I’m being all-

• It’s gone problem. It’s gone. Basically, that’s it, she’s-

• Oh.

• No, once I read them, they disappear on screen.

• Oh dear.

• No, basically, I think what she was saying that, you know, fighting for civil rights was a huge cause and it was really worth fighting.

• Yes.

• And that’s different from what we’re talking about. “Many of us have been brought up pre-wokeism. Most of us have what we consider a balanced opinion. Many of the younger generation have an intolerance.

Q: How can we overcome this?” Aha, Rosalyn, who’s a friend of mine, by the way, if your grandchildren are being intolerant-

A: - Look, when we were young, we had strong views about things which our parents would’ve not agreed with. My generation, men in my generation were always told by fathers and grandfathers, “Well, you’ve never fought for your country. You don’t know.” No, I think we’ve got to be careful not just to dismiss the young, I think the young, like the example from America of those young people in setting up this book club. I think there’s a lot of, it doesn’t matter whether you are young or old. It is to try and take a view that is a balanced view. If their view is different than our view, that’s fair enough, and you may say, “Well, their view is wrong. I’ve lived longer.” Well, fine, they will amend their views. But I, it’s the extremity, it’s the extreme views that I’m worried about, I’m not worried that the views of my daughter in bringing up my grandchildren are different than my views. Her views about the use of the Internet for my three-year-old who’s four this week, my God, he knows exactly how to get through things on the Internet. Do I worry about that? No. She’s got to come to her own conclusions with her nine-year-old, they’re already beginning to stop him being able to access things on the Internet in his own room. And so they, they’re living in a different world than I am. I can have a view, but it’s not that my view is better, it’s just different.

Q: - This is from Tom. “Do some decisions that have been taken, for example, the Olympic committee’s decision to allow trans women to compete in the category of women’s sport, erode progress that has been made in women’s sport? Does this trend erode victories of feminism over recent decades?” It’s an interesting question.

• This is a man who’s asked the question.

• Yes, a man is asking the question.

• I’m a man of a certain age and a certain background.

• Okay.

A: - So I find those questions about transgender difficult. I’ve known transgender people who are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met and who clearly had been born with a problem, and they’ve had to come to some sort of terms with that. And I have every possible sympathy with that, but of course I do, but there’s people who choose, there’s people who are using it in different ways. And I think in sport there’s a problem about that. I don’t like the idea that six-year-olds, like the example from the time, say, that six-year-olds can decide whether they’re male or female. I mean, I think that’s just silly. I have no easy answer for that at all. Absolutely none.

• There’s lots of questions, but I think I better just take one more, William, I don’t-

• Yeah.

Q: - And this is from Ellie, “Unfortunately, today, liberal is not liberal. It’s turned domineering and intolerant. It’s pushed me towards common sense, conservative views. The problem in America and elsewhere is that the progressives really own every facet of our culture. What I find frightening is that university professors who expressed out or questioned the woke religion are excommunicated. Can you comment? Am I being intolerant?”

A: - Each society has its own issues with wokeism. And I think they’re particularly stark in the United States, and they’ve been made stark through Trump’s presidency. And I don’t think that’s been helped by Biden’s… This is an outside view, it’ll annoy many of you Americans, but I don’t think it’s helped by Biden’s mental state in his presidency, there isn’t a clear view. We just have, as Trudy said earlier, we have to hold the middle ground. And sometimes it’s quite difficult to hold the middle ground. Trudy, if we’re ending on that, I have one minute to say something with a quotation from an American president.

• Mm-hmm.

• Should I go ahead?

• Yes, please.

• I’ve written, this is just me, “In a divided society, as many of us believe we are increasingly living in,” as that last question said, “it is difficult to stand in the middle for the old values of liberalism and tolerance. But we must stand, Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Be sure you put your feet in the right place and then stand firm.’ And each of us, on these issues, has to decide for ourselves, which is the right place.” Not for me or Trudy to tell you. You’ve got to decide “This is the right place.” If that’s the right place for you, that is where you make your stand. And I’m just arguing, it’s tolerance and liberal approach, which is desperately important in democracies.

• And I’d like to thank you, William, particularly as you’ve got COVID. And also I’m going to add my thoughts to William because it is so important that if you believe in freedom and liberalism, we do hold the middle ground and we do somehow become more militant, because otherwise, it’s extremism from both sides. And we know what- but we’re both historians and we know what extremism can lead to. So on that note, William, thank you so much. And what can I say? I wish you goodnight. Lauren, could you stay online please? I need to ask you something. Anyway, William, lots of love and take care.

• Thank you, I-

• We’ll all see you next week, won’t we? And thanks for-

• You will, next Monday back with the Habsburgs, thanks everyone for coming and listening and joining in, and thanks for some really good questions. And if they weren’t answered, it’s because they were so good, they can’t be answered. And that’s the truth-

• We’re lucky we’ve got a brilliant audience, haven’t we?

• We have. Okay. Bye everyone, bye-bye.

• God bless.