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John McWhorter – Glenn and John Live at Brown University

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0:00 Intro

00:31 Prefatory remarks

4:15 Glenn: The Trump administration’s defunding of the universities is mischievous in the extreme

9:06 Ground News ad

11:01 Doesn’t maintaining the preeminence of American universities require diversity of thought?

18:47 John McWhorter has entered the building

20:25 How did higher ed lose the general public’s support?

23:05 The university’s role in public discourse

26:26 Was affirmative action a success or a failure?

31:36 The partisan balance in education funding

42:21 The costs and benefits of tenure

50:09 Can education preserve democracy if students aren’t doing the reading?

1:01:59 Are we irrevocably polarized as a nation?

1:07:28 Q&A: You don’t seem as excited by Trump as you once were. What is disappointing you?

1:11:40 Q&A: If higher ed serves society, why do so many elite grads use their degrees to get rich?

1:16:01 Q&A: How do you teach diversity to students who’ve never spent time around people different from them?

1:19:15 Q&A: What’s the difference between contrarianism and provocation?

1:21:23 Q&A: Should fewer people go to college?

Recorded April 22, 2025

Links and Readings

Michael Sandel’s book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

John Stuart Mill’s book, On Liberty

John Milton’a Areopagitica

Alan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students

John’s new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

The Great Courses

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolsty’s novel, War and Peace

Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina

Plato’s dialogue, The Republic

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Host:
Glenn Loury