Conservative Conversation + Podcasts

Hosted by Beverly Hallberg

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins the podcast to talk about why she thinks America is in a crisis. She discusses her new book “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture” and shares the backlash she’s received by speaking against the belief that human beings should be defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preferences.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, among others and her newest book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018).

Ricochet Podcast #469

The Policy, Not the Mouth

October 18, 2019

89 COMMENTS

Hosted by Peter Robinson, Rob Long

With guest Heather Mac Donald

On this episode of The Big Show® we take you back to last night’s 74th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner where Rob offers a first hand report. The guest of honor was former Defense Secretary (and Marine Corps legend) James Mattis and, of course, the main topic in the hall was the current situation in Syria with Turkey and the Kurds. (The General’s full remarks can be watched on the Fox News Facebook page.)

Then it’s off to the City by the Bay with Heather Mac Donald, where she recounts buying fentanyl on the streets and how a great American city has fallen hostage to its homeless population.

San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis

October 9, 2019

Hosted by Seth Barron

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins Seth Barron to discuss homelessness on the streets of San Francisco and the city’s wrongheaded attempts to solve the problem.

“San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior,” writes Mac Donald in City Journal. For nearly three decades, the Bay Area has been a magnet for the homeless. Now the situation is growing dire, as residents and visitors experience near-daily contact with mentally disturbed persons.

Power Line #143

Heather Mac Donald’s Greatest Hits

September 6, 2019

9 COMMENTS

Hosted by Steve Hayward

With guest Heather Mac Donald

This special double-length episode features a wide-ranging conversation with best-selling author and iconoclast Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, with special focus on her new book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. I hosted Heather this week at . . . UC Berkeley (!!), and we decided that rather than going with a set-piece speech, I’d interview her about the full range of topics she’s written about.

So we talk about her own intellectual odyssey, the decline of literature in universities, crime and punishment, the drug war, why we’d actually cheer the return of old-fashioned Marxism, as well as the hot button issues of her new book: preferential college admissions and the entire “diversity industrial complex.” We even get to the “T-question” (Trump), where Heather remains skeptical and conflicted.

First Things

The Diversity Delusion – Conversations with Mark Bauerlein

February 1, 2019

Hosted by Mark Bauerlein

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins senior editor Mark Bauerlein to discuss her latest book, “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.”

“The Diversity Delusion,” with Heather Mac Donald

December 26, 2018

Hosted by Brian C. Anderson

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald discusses the decline of the university and the rise of campus intellectual intolerance, the subjects of her important new book, The Diversity Delusion How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. She spoke at a Manhattan Institute event in autumn 2018.

Toxic ideas that originated in academia have now spread beyond the university setting, widening America’s cultural divisions. Too many college students enter the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics defines the American experience. In The Diversity Delusion, Mac Donald argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America’s endemic racism and sexism, a belief that has spawned a massive diversity bureaucracy, especially in higher education.

Ricochet Podcast #422

Caravan

October 26, 2018

16 COMMENTS

Hosted by James Lileks, Peter Robinson, Rob Long

With guests Heather Mac Donald & Patrick Ruffini

This week, the bomber is apprehended and Rob Long is not surprised, there’s a caravan headed our way, professional prognosticator Patrick Ruffini opines on his epic Tweet storm and makes some mid-term predictions, and the great Heather Mac Donald stops by to chat about her new book The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. Finally, some thoughts about Megyn Kelly, free speech, and…Halloween?

Music from this week’s podcast: Caravan by Van Morrison

Behind the Blue Wall

Regular Guys Talk About Kavanaugh, Sex and High School (While We Still Can)

September 23, 2018

Hosted by Michael Graham

With guest Heather Mac Donald

One guy grew up in redneckville, South Carolina. The other an affluent community in the suburbs of Boston. And both are having conversations with their male friends about the Kavanaugh story, sex and power. And what guys are saying in private about the Kavanaugh accusation is very different from the image of men, sex and brute force that’s being portrayed by the anti-Kavanaugh activists and their media allies.

And Heather Mac Donald talks about the data behind America’s alleged “sex assault crisis,” which she writes about in her new book, The Diversity Delusion.

Behind the Blue Wall

When Did The Right Get So Wrong On Free Speech?

August 7, 2018

Hosted by Michael Graham

With guest Heather Mac Donald

A new poll finds that 43 percent of Republicans believe President Trump “should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,” while a similar percentage of Democrats would support a law mandating legal consequences for people who refuse to use someone’s preferred pronouns.

Whiskey Politics #133

Heather MacDonald and Judge Jeanine Pirro

July 30, 2018

Hosted by Dave Sussman

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather MacDonald and Judge Jeanine Pirro.

First Heather MacDonald, (the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Contributing Editor at City Journal), discusses why America is in crisis, from the universities to the workplace. From her new book The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture Heather discusses how toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton? Oppressive. American history? Tyranny. Professors correcting grammar and spelling, or employers hiring by merit? Racist and sexist. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics is the American experience. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is silenced with brute force. Not only is this impacting our culture, but also our competitiveness as countries such as China and India who don’t assign such priorities will hire the best scientists and doctors, and are making gains in curing diseases and societal ills. Follow Heather on Twitter @HMDatMI.

Harvard Lunch Club #179

The Korean Condo Podcast

June 14, 2018

28 COMMENTS

Hosted by Michael Stopa, Todd Feinburg

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast number 179 (!!) for June 14, 2018, it’s the Korean Condo edition of the podcast with your hosts, radio guy Todd Feinburg and artificially intelligent (but naturally blue-eyed!) Mike Stopa over here on the left coast. We get together with you every week to peel back the onion skin of excruciatingly complex events and happenings in the public square. We are, you might have already figured out, the embodiment of the marketplace of ideas, yessirrreeee.

And speaking of the marketplace of ideas, we have our good friend Heather MacDonald on the show who knows a thing or two about ideas (both good and bad ideas, for that matter). Heather will give us her perspective on the North Korean Deal (Condos, beach and all) and will spout off about The Donald in the process and then we get into the meat and bones of #NeverTrump and question where we might find the synthesis between sycophants like ourselves at HLC and lunatics like, oh, Jennifer Rubin – just to throw out a name that pops to mind. Heather is, as you mostly all know by now, the Stephen Curry of conservative political punditry – moves like liquid light and scores from *way* downtown.

Identity Politics in the Sciences

June 13, 2018

Hosted by Brian C. Anderson

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins Brian Anderson to discuss how universities and the scientific community are being pressured to alter the gender and racial balance in STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and math—and the implications for America’s future.

For decades, multiculturalism, quotas, and identity politics have been pervasive in humanities departments at most major universities—but not in scientific fields. Now that’s changing, as the identity-politics obsession has penetrated STEM programs, and administrators, professors, and other officials attempt to increase the number of women and minorities in the field, by almost any means necessary. As Mac Donald writes, this pressure is “changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness.”

What’s Happened to the University?

March 7, 2018

Hosted by Brian C. Anderson

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald and Frank Furedi discuss the hostility to free speech that has provoked disturbing incidents on campuses across the country and the ideology behind safe spaces, micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings. Their discussion, from a Manhattan Institute event held in June 2017, was moderated by City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock.

American universities are experiencing a profound cultural transformation. Student protests designed to shut downalternative opinions have become frequent and sometimes violent. Frank Furedi‘s What’s Happened To The University? A Sociological Exploration of Its Infantilisation explores the origins of the anti-free speech climate at U.S. and U.K. universities.

The “Science” Behind Implicit Bias

October 18, 2017

Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger #126

Hosted by Seth Barron

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the dubious scientific and statistical bases of the trendy academic theory known as “implicit bias.” The implicit association test (IAT), first introduced in 1998, uses a computerized response-time test to measure an individual’s bias, particularly regarding race.

Despite scientific challenges to the test’s validity, the implicit-bias idea has taken firm root in popular culture and in the media. Police forces and corporate HR departments are spending millions every year reeducating employees on how to recognize their presumptive hidden prejudices.

Harvard Lunch Club #135

The Double Standard Edition

August 15, 2017

13 COMMENTS

Hosted by Michael Stopa, Todd Feinburg

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast for August 15, 2017 it’s the Double Standard edition of the show with your hosts, radio talk show host Todd Feinburg and nanophysicist Mike Stopa. This week our guest is our friend Heather Mac Donald who joins us from the arid environs of Southern Cal and comforts us by confiding that she is no longer piloting an automated vehicle on the suicidal freeways of the south-left coast. Stay safe, Heather!

We discuss the situation in Charlottesville and the resulting debris spreading outward across the country – not least of all to the White House and the President. Here is, I would say, the kind of cognitive dissonance that the left lives with every day when an internal contradiction in their worldview rears its ugly head. A hopefully psychopathic cretin associated with the White Supremacist movement takes his car and – tearing a book from the ISIS playbook – rams it into a crowd of peaceful protesters killing one and injuring many others. Save me, for a moment, the equivocations. This murderer is, or thinks he is, one of us. Consequently, he besmirches all of us.

A Society, If You Can Keep It

August 1, 2017

3 COMMENTS

Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Back in April, Heather Mac Donald went to Claremont McKenna College to give a talk. Some 170 students blocked the entrance to the hall, preventing people from hearing Mac Donald. Now, seven students have been disciplined in the case.

Mac Donald is a scholar at the Manhattan Institute and the author, most recently, of The War on Cops. She talks with Jay about her experience at Claremont and about higher ed in general – particularly the victim mentality that is ruining so many young people. Then they talk about policing, with President Trump’s recent remarks in mind. (He encouraged rough treatment of arrestees.)

Policing Under Trump, the “Ferguson Effect,” and More

May 31, 2017

Hosted by Brian C. Anderson

With guest Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald joins Brian Anderson to discuss the state of policing today, the “Ferguson Effect,” former FBI director James Comey’s defense of proactive policing, and the recent protests against conservative speakers on college campuses.

Since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, public discussion about police and the criminal justice system has reached a fever pitch: activists claim that policing is inherently racist and discriminatory, while supporters say that public pressure has caused officers to disengage from proactive policing.

Trump and Law and Order

December 1, 2016