Not For The Woke of Heart - Free Speech with Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, PhD

Alexander McCaig (00:07):

Everyone, welcome back to another fantastic episode of TARTLE cast, streaming across the globe to 222 countries. You like listening to us on these microphones, you respect the fact of our right to free speech, and you listen to it regardless of border, nation, or creed. And, to reinforce that point, we've brought on one of the world's top advocates, professors, and authors on free speech itself, and why it's so important that we should be protecting this one thing that allows us to really evolve as human beings and find better understanding amongst ourselves. His name's Jonathan Zimmerman. And, Jonathan, welcome to the podcast, very excited to have you on here today.

Jonathan Zimmerman (00:57):

Thank you, it's good to be here.

Alexander McCaig (00:57):

Listen, good to be here is better than not good to be here. And, like I was making a joke before, we could sit on here and lambaste you, and you'd probably enjoy it because you have to respect what we're doing.

Jonathan Zimmerman (01:06):

Yeah, [inaudible 00:01:07] a free speech in its own right.

Alexander McCaig (01:09):

Yes. The question is, how much of it can you take before you snap?

Jonathan Zimmerman (01:14):

Right, let's get to it.

Alexander McCaig (01:16):

I want to kick off and say that you're talking about something that emotionally charges a lot of people. And, it's funny, that when we come emotionally charged logic seems to fly out the door and we forget the reason for why the certain fundamentals were in place that I guess, in a sense, allow us to be emotionally outspoken. And, whether it be the United States, which we can use as a pertinent example, because you live here, and there's much history around here in the US that we can speak to, it does not mean that the ebb and flow of time and the effects of free speech and how much of it can be stretched in or even lifted up, It's not shared by many other nations, around the world where they have lived in, I guess, governments or dictatorships that have prevented them altogether, from having any sort of free speech.

Alexander McCaig (02:15):

I think the way you round out our history here in this book and then carry it forward to say that what we might see as a problem or something that may agitate us or seem wrong, we fundamentally need to respect it. And, we need to respect that because it's the right of a human being. We don't necessarily have to agree with it, but we have to respect it. And, I think it's a difficult learning curve for very many people to learn to accept. But, logic shows that if you want that respect for yourself, you want other people to appreciate what you have to say, whether it be good or bad, you'd have to do the same for others. Wouldn't that be just the most obvious point?

Jonathan Zimmerman (03:00):

Well, I'm not sure it is obvious. And, it's interesting that you use the term logic because one of the quotes that I include from Oliver Wendell Holmes in our book, is, he says, "Look, let's concede the censor. Let's concede that there is a kind of logic to censorship." And, it goes like this, you see something that's really awful.

Alexander McCaig (03:21):

Yeah.

Jonathan Zimmerman (03:22):

And, that violates something that's intimate to you, that's deeply offensive, it makes a lot of sense to try to get rid of it.

Alexander McCaig (03:28):

Sure.

Jonathan Zimmerman (03:30):

I think that's precisely why we have to resist it. [crosstalk 00:03:35] kind of, intuitive logic.

Alexander McCaig (03:38):

Isn't it like pain, though? Because if you think about us, as human beings in an evolutionary sense, people don't want to push themselves towards pain. They actually avoid any sort of learning and an educational process of the experience of life because they don't want to be a part of that pain. They choose a life of conformity, orthodoxness, stagnation, that allows them to decrease what they see as something that is harmful to them. But, at the same time, it inhibits learning and inhibits a perspective of growth. What are your thoughts on that?

Jonathan Zimmerman (04:11):

Well, it's not good for you in the long run, and it's not good for democracy. All right? It does have a kind of, self-interest in basis in the sense that look, nobody wants to be canceled, nobody wants to be called bad names. I know that I don't. And, especially if you're young, let's face it, you're even more loath and even more worried about getting that negative reaction because you're very pure-oriented, right? I don't know about you, but when I was 17, I really cared about what other 17-year-old human beings thought about me.

Jonathan Zimmerman (04:48):

So, I take your point, I think there are important in common sensical inhibitors on raising our voice. But, in the long run, they're very bad for us and they're bad for us in many ways. But, one of them, you alluded to, just education inhibits our learning.

Alexander McCaig (05:05):

Correct.

Jonathan Zimmerman (05:06):

Because, in order to learn, we have to expose ourselves to a wide variety of ideas and facts. Inhibitions and free speech, ultimately, what they are is, they're a cramp on education. That's really what they are.

Alexander McCaig (05:20):

So, what is cramp education? What are we supposed to do, then? If we're not educating, are we learning, are we going backwards?

Jonathan Zimmerman (05:28):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (05:28):

I think it's easy to look at certain aspects of certain fundamental rights that we even talk about and say, oh, that there's a line, right? Well, if there's a line, then it's not free speech, it's line to speech, right? Or choice, or freedom of movement, or freedom of thought, or freedom to vote. But, you start to put these lines on it, that means you've now limited the possibilities, even of good, that can come from it. And, I think it's very difficult for people to look at this. Free speech is albeit a tool. And, much like a sword, you can either choose to defend with it, or you can choose to create harm, right, or you can cut down a forest so that you can open up space for more to live, or you can cut down people in armies.

Alexander McCaig (06:19):

I think we found this problem as human beings, collectively, throughout our history, with new technologies, in many philosophical ideas that we have. And, with that, we found that some choose to take it one direction, and some choose to go in the other. And then, if it goes against whatever it might be at the time, say, for instance, a communist group, just because of the political regimes that are happening on a global scale, that defines that the tool is bad? I think it doesn't seem to make much sense to me that politics should drive a human right, it should be the human right that drives politics. I think that's the point I'm getting at.

Jonathan Zimmerman (07:02):

Well, I wish that were so, right? I think it's interesting, you've referenced other countries, because that's been a big influence on me. I spent a good part of my early life in other countries. My parents were from the Peace Corps, and then I was myself in my [inaudible 00:07:18] in Carnation. When my parents were in the Peace Corps, when I was a kid, I lived in Iran during the era of the Shah. It was not a democracy. Phones were tapped, and I remember my parents even joking about it, like, oh, maybe we shouldn't be talking about this on the phone. Obviously, they weren't targets of the Shah, but lots of other people were. The regime to replace the Shah was no great friend of free speech, either. But at the same time, we shouldn't [inaudible 00:07:45] what the Shah was.

Jonathan Zimmerman (07:47):

Then, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, where it was still the era of the monarchy, and it was illegal to criticize the king, just like it is, say, today in Thailand. And, I think that those experiences were hugely formative for me. I think a lot of people in America, I hope, or I imagine, become much more vigilant about free speech if they were forced to live in a place where free speech wasn't respected, right, where there weren't constitutional guarantees of it, like there are in the United States.

Jonathan Zimmerman (08:22):

The other thing you mentioned were lines, and you say, it becomes a problem when we draw lines. Actually, I think we need to in the following sense. No, right is absolute. Look, I have a free speech absolutist, quote, unquote, [crosstalk 00:08:38], I cannot call the White House and say I'm going to murder the president. I cannot say to one of my students, gee, I really like that sweater you're wearing and if you wear it again on Tuesday, I'll give you an A. Right? Are those limits on my free speech? They are. And by the way, they're ones I gladly accommodate. And, the sexual harassment one, I think that's really relevant here, because most forms of sexual harassment are verbal, right? And we have laws, by the way, barring them, that I'm very happy to recede to. And, look, we can debate those laws. And obviously, they're always gray areas. And, nothing is simple. But, I think most reasonable people in the world would agree that the scenario is described, right, should not be okay. Right?

Alexander McCaig (09:26):

Right.

Jonathan Zimmerman (09:27):

You can't be allowed to say that to my students. So, there's always lines to be drawn. But, I would emphasize that in any situation, if the state is going to limit speak, there has to be an absolutely clear rationale for it.

Alexander McCaig (09:46):

Right. That's my point.

Jonathan Zimmerman (09:46):

This is the story of student rights that we tell in the book. So, Mary Beth Tinker when she's 13 years old, she wears this black armband to school in Des Moines, Iowa, and she's sent home and eventually lawyers up and that becomes the Tinker v. Des Moines case in 1969 when the Supreme Court said that students and teachers have first amendment rights. But, the Supreme Court did not say that any student or teacher can say anything at school at any time. You can't stand up in the middle of algebra class and say, Mr. and Miss whatever is, N-word or F-word or whatever. You can't do that, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (10:21):

But, here's the thing if the school were to censor you, the school has to show that what you're saying, and this is what Tinker says, creates an absolute and immediate threat to learning in the school, just like the example I described. And of course, her armband did no such thing. It didn't [inaudible 00:10:42] running or order in any way.

Alexander McCaig (10:45):

So, now this draws up an interesting point then, and no pun intended, the individual drawing the line, if you talk about threat, well, what is the threat actually geared towards? Is it geared towards the government? Is it geared towards the university? Is it geared towards the target of the free speech? And then, you ask the question, then, well, how do we consider it a threat, and to what extent? Because then you get into things like the Patriot Act, which you talked about before. So, I could just say everything under the sun's a threat, I could say everybody in the United States is a threat to the government of the United States, essentially, right? And, that could go for any other country in the world. So how do you then define that line, when if it can't be self-governed in a moral sense of the individual? Because then, [inaudible 00:11:38] government or central authority?

Jonathan Zimmerman (11:41):

Yeah, look, I'm glad you raising this question. And, this is the question. I wish more of our educational institutions discussed it, right, precisely the question that you're raising, right? Instead of canceling each other, right, and making essentially implicit assumptions about this question, really facing it head-on, right, who's creating the disorder? How do we define disorder? Obviously, the answer is going to be contextual, and school's a good example, right? What's going to interfere with learning in school is very different than what might threaten disorder in another context, right? You do need a certain sort of pedagogical order in schools, right? You can't have people just shouting shit at anytime, right? Yeah.

Jonathan Zimmerman (12:26):

So you've got to determine, okay, what's really going to be a threat to order. By the way, the armband was not. I've become friends with Mary Beth Tinker. She's not much older than I am. And, she told me, she went to the supreme court hearing of her case. By that time, she's in high school. And, Thurgood Marshall asked the school district, hey, there were 18,000 people in the Des Moines School District, how many more black armbands that day, the day that you say there was this tremendous threat? And the board [inaudible 00:12:55], says seven. And then, Mary Beth said Thurgood proceeded to knock it off which he did a lot in his later years. And, that's why [inaudible 00:13:03] won because he's like, okay, this is bullshit, right? This is not a threat.

Jonathan Zimmerman (13:06):

But again, we can all imagine things that would be, right? It is contextual. But again, I think that the courts have given us some good instruction on this. What the courts have said, is that, outside of school, if you're just talking about general context, if the state in America wants to prevent somebody from speaking on the grounds that there's a threat, they have to show that there is an immediate and obvious threat. You just can't say, well, this might cause some problem down the road. The key case in this is the Brandenburg case, which involved actually a Ku Klux Klan wizard.

Alexander McCaig (13:52):

Correct.

Jonathan Zimmerman (13:52):

[crosstalk 00:13:52] saying, oh, the people that we don't like, they're going to have to pay for this. Or, something like that. Obviously, it was racist because he was talking about black and Jewish people, but he wasn't saying, okay, it's time for us to go to this particular Jewish or black person's house, all of us, and burn it down. He was making a racist comment, but it was an abstract one and there was no immediate threat of any kind of danger. I'll give you a much more relevant example that's a concern to me and just to be totally transparent.

Jonathan Zimmerman (14:26):

Let's think about the January 6 riot. I want to be totally transparent. I think Donald Trump should have been impeached and removed all, all right, the second time around, but not because of what he said at the Washington Monument, I think he should have been impeached because after the riots started, he didn't do anything to stop it. And, I also think he should have been impeached for putting the heed on that Georgia Secretary of State, which to my mind was clearly illegal. But, the speech at the Washington Monument, I'm very ambivalent about that. That was the first article of impeachment, and what the democrats and the Congress said... Remember, I'm a democrat... Is, well, that speech provoked the riot? Did it?

Alexander McCaig (15:10):

Listen, I bring this up all the time, and you're right.

Jonathan Zimmerman (15:15):

As reprehensible as I find the speech and Trump, I don't know that we know that. I do know that after the riots started, he did nothing. And, I do know that he put, clearly to my mind, illegal pressure on the Georgia Secretary of State basically to lie about the election. And, both of those things seem fully impeachable to me.

Alexander McCaig (15:40):

Now that you're saying that, on page 22, or in the earlier part of the book, they were talking about condemning mob violence up in Boston.

Jonathan Zimmerman (15:52):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (15:53):

And, there was a quote that said, to argue that there are subjects which ought not to be discussed, is, in reality, to argue that people are not capable of self-government. And, when I think of the words of self-government, I think of responsibility. So just because a president of the United States is saying something that could incite some sort of action, he is not physically doing the action that has been created by those people. He is doing the action of the speech itself, which he is then responsible for. But, that's like saying, okay, is the gun manufacturer responsible for the people that are killed by the gun, just as responsible as the person who pulled the trigger to kill that person? You see what I'm saying?

Alexander McCaig (16:40):

It's really strange. And, when I read the quote that you have in here about self-government, I think about that sort of responsibility, that air of responsibility that all of us as human beings should have.

Jonathan Zimmerman (16:49):

Definitely. And, censors don't trust us to govern ourselves. I think that's the point of the quote, right? Censors are afraid of democracy. And, they're afraid of people, they're afraid of citizens. They're like, God, we don't want you hearing that because then who knows what you're going to do. But, look, back to your point about lines, even though I don't agree that Trump's speed quote incited the riot, or that he should be playing for the riot, I think we can imagine speed, he might have said, that could fall into that category. If he said, okay, everyone here, I want you to stand in two lines, march directly to the Capitol, break all the windows and go in and defecate in the halls of Congress, okay, and try to kill as many legislators as you can. I think that would be a different category. I do.

Alexander McCaig (17:45):

Yeah, because then it's explicit. This is a command of explicitness.

Jonathan Zimmerman (17:49):

Right. Trump is this like, oh, express your rights, show them who really won. Again, it was all lies in my own view, but it was also extremely abstract. There was nothing direct and immediate that links his speech and his action, not to my mind.

Jason Rigby (18:11):

I think also, Jonathan, on page 10... I want to get back to Mary Beth Tinker, because I think this is really important, and it's very relevant now. We have a lot of young listeners on our podcast. And, I know you teach young people. You said in the book, if you're going to prohibit speech that hurts people, you have to censor Mary Beth Tinker's protest. I want to get into this because this is where we're at right now. I think with society, we have a lot of good people that aren't understanding censorship, because they're looking at it like this may hurt a race or this may hurt LGBTQ+ community so can you get into how people view this as hurting someone?

Jonathan Zimmerman (18:49):

Yes. And, this is really why I wrote the book in an effort, however, quixotic to persuade both my students and my two young adult daughters, that free speech is actually a radical value. It's not a conservative one. It's been at the heart of every movement for social justice in this country. It's only in very recent history that we've imagined these two things in intention. They are not. The Mary Beth Tinker story, that is the story for coming to my class, was really just... it was my aha moment on this. So, she comes in, and she tells her story, and she actually has her armband and puts it on the students which is sort of, cute. Of course, as a historian of preservation, it made me a little nervous, right? It's like, shouldn't that be in the National Archives? Do you also have an original copy of the Declaration of Independence in your purse?

Jonathan Zimmerman (19:46):

It was great. She does her spiel, and then the questions start. As soon as they're, Miss Tinker, you were fighting the good fight, right? You were fighting the war in Vietnam. This [inaudible 00:19:56] Minneapolis clown and this Ann Coulter joker, this Ben Shapiro hoaxer, to Jonathan's point, they just harm people. They just hurt people. And, Mary Beth wasn't having it. And, here's what she said. She said, "Look, at Warren G. Harding Middle School," which is what's her school in Iowa, there were kids who had dads and brothers and uncles that were fighting and dying in Southeast Asia." I don't think they were hurt or offended by the snot-nosed kid wearing this symbol saying their loved one might die for lie. Of course, they were. Of course, they were.

Jonathan Zimmerman (20:38):

Speech does offend, it does harm. I'm not a sticks and stones will break your bones, a name won't hurt me, guy. Not at all, right? It harms, it offends. We have to admit that, right? But, and this is the point of the Tinker story, once that becomes your barometer, once that becomes your measure of whether you're going to allow free speech, forget about Mary the Tinker, right, and forget about free speech, because speech that's meaningful is going to offend and if you harm somebody.

Jason Rigby (21:10):

[inaudible 00:21:10] slow because we're looking at it now when we go to art. You talk about this in the book, a lot of art, that is powerful, offends. So, whether it's movies or whatever, it may be, paintings or sculptures, whatever, then it falls into this slippery slope. Can you share a little bit about the situation that happened? Because, even now, we put PG 13, rated R. We have censorship on movies and music even now.

Jonathan Zimmerman (21:39):

Yes, although, that system is something that studios develop because they were afraid of more draconian regulation about the state. That's really the story, movie censorship in this country. It's essentially self-censorship. Because, I don't want to go too deep in the weeds, but the very short story is that, censorship in the 19th century is of the written word and the spoken word, right? But then, we get electronic entertainment, the early 20th century, and the censors go nuts. Because, anyone can go to a Nickelodeon. You don't even have to be literate, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (22:15):

And also, [inaudible 00:22:16], they weren't wrong about that. Again, you have to give censors their due. When the censors say, holy shit, [inaudible 00:22:27] are incredibly-

Alexander McCaig (22:27):

Wait, Jonathan, you're so amped up, you're actually covering your microphone.

Jonathan Zimmerman (22:31):

Oh, I'm sorry.

Alexander McCaig (22:32):

Yeah. I'm, oh, he's censoring himself. I'm, oh, no, it's got to be bad.

Jonathan Zimmerman (22:39):

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to harm, you guys. [crosstalk 00:22:44]. Anyway, there's a big freakout around electronic entertainment. First, obviously, sound movies, and then talkies. And, the cities in the States, they create these censorship boards, and they just start to censor everything. The Maryland law, it was two pages long. And, the things they said, you couldn't show on the screen. It's like, people making suggestive comments, people moving their bodies in sexual ways, people living in adulterous circumstances, crime. People committed crimes. Basically, anything that's interesting, right, like sex, crime, and politics, it was all banned.

Jonathan Zimmerman (23:25):

And then, what the studio's do is, they freak out, too. And, they're like, oh, my God, all right, we're not going to be able to produce anything, what we need to do is get ahead of the censors and create our own system, right? That's essentially where the, quote, ratings come from. And, look, to the point of lines, I think we can all imagine some images that you and I can see that we wouldn't want a six-year old-looking at. It's just, I don't want the state making those determinations, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (24:06):

I think that internet pornography is a huge problem in this country. I think a lot of people, especially young men, get their sexual education from pornography. And, I think it's mostly a poor sexual education. I'm really glad it didn't exist when I was an adolescent. Because, I think it would have fucked me up. But, what do you do about that?

Jonathan Zimmerman (24:33):

Do you create some board that's going to decide what's too racy or sexual or violent to be on the internet? I don't think so. I think what you do is you create better forms of sexual education. We do have some of them. What you do is, you try to use the same tools, especially the internet, to try to show different kinds of images, right, to try to give people a different set of ideas about what sex is, or sex should be. I don't want the government doing that, I think you and I should be doing that.

Alexander McCaig (25:11):

So, this ticks an obvious bridge to what we're doing here at TARTLE, the internet is a tool, and we come in with this other tool that allows individuals to share truthful information about themselves, with other people that are looking to learn from them. And, when I think of freedom of speech, I think of freedom of thought. When I think of freedom of thought, I think of freedom of action, and freedom of action allows you to create your data. So that sort of freedom of that data, that freedom of that movement, that organic nature to it, it's not that we can get rid of all the bad things that are out there.

Alexander McCaig (25:49):

We can't prevent the liars, we can prevent the people that create the harm, but what we can do is open up an option for individuals to share something in the most positive, humane, moral and ethical light so that we can all begin to evolve. And so that what, from our distorted perspective looks like the majority as being negative is actually truly such an infinitesimally small minority. And, that's where I hope the future would end up. And, that's how I hope data educates all of us and helps us understand better amongst ourselves, so that we're not so hurt when something happens. Or, we can help educate those other people that may, in a moment, be blind to understanding who we are.

Jonathan Zimmerman (26:31):

Right. I'm glad you're using these metaphors of education because I really do think that's what this issue is. I think, often we talk too much about the legal environment, and not enough about the educational one. So I endorse everything you just said, the only thing I would add is, we also have to start that education early and we have to start it in our schools because, you our schools are the place where we educate citizens. Obviously, there are many other things that educate people, including the internet, but the schools are still our central public institution, right, where we deliberate and decide what we want our kids to know and to be.

Jonathan Zimmerman (27:06):

And, we have made a hash of it. We have not educated people well, about how to converse, especially politically. Think about the [inaudible 00:27:19] environment that people are growing up in. And, what they see is the sort of, snark that you just described, right? On cable television on the internet, they just see people hating on each other, they see mutual vilification. So that's what they're going to think politics is. Politics is me telling you to eff off, and then you telling me the same thing. Politics is, you were a terrible human being, you don't deserve to live. That's what politics is.

Jonathan Zimmerman (27:52):

So, in that environment, we shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people are afraid to raise their voice, right? I get it, man. I totally get it. But, I think the only answer to that is to be very thoughtful from the earliest eras about modeling a different and a better kind of exchange in our schools. You talk to students, and you ask them in your schools, how often do you talk about controversial political matters? The answer is, not very often. And indeed, in the Trump era, it went down even more, because, again, everyone was so afraid, everybody was so brittle. And, although I get that, we cannot concede to that. We cannot, we must not, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (28:34):

The only legitimate response to that is to model a better way of being. And, that's what we're not doing. Obviously, some people are, they're trying, but we have not done it. That's why you-

Jason Rigby (28:51):

Yeah, Jonathan, you were on Joe Rogan and I watched that interview. And, you talked about something that you do in your school where you get people together and have many meaningful conversations. Can you go into that a little bit? Because I think, we're in 220 countries, and if you were talking to teachers right now, or educators, this process that you do, I thought was just so important, and something that teachers can facilitate in this conversation.

Jonathan Zimmerman (29:16):

Well, it actually began after the 2016 election. And, I was really despondent, not just because Trump won, I wasn't happy about that. But, as an educator, what I was really despondent about is that we weren't really talking about it. And, my handful of Trumps supporting students would come out to me in the office with the door shut. And, I'd be like, couldn't you talk about that in class? I think we'd all learn a lot from it. And they're like, dude, are you kidding? Do you know how I would be canceled?

Jonathan Zimmerman (29:48):

So, what I did was, I contacted people at Cairn University, formerly Philadelphia Bible College, which is about 10 miles away from Penn. As you might guess, from the name and the history, a very different political profile than Penn's. What we did was, we brought a busload of Penn students up there one evening, and then a few weeks later, we brought a busload of Cairn students down to Penn. And, here's how we structured it, we call it the wedding tables model. So as when you go to a wedding, you go into a big hall and there are a bunch of circular tables, and you get a table number, right, as in a wedding and stagger the tables obviously, right, like Penn and Cairn. And then, we have a dais, right, where the couple sits.

Jonathan Zimmerman (30:37):

And, up at the dais, we have a couple of carefully selected students from each institution. Because we've discovered without that, if you just say, talk amongst yourselves, they don't because they're afraid, they've never done it. So, the way we do it is, we ask the people the dais first, okay, tell me who you voted for in 2016 and why? And, they start talking. And then, once the people at the circular tables have seen this, they're like, oh, I can do that, that's not really that hard.

Jason Rigby (31:06):

[crosstalk 00:31:06] the monkeys with the sticks, they seen one with the pole, and they lick it, and they get the ants out of it. And then, oh, I can do that, too, you know?

Jonathan Zimmerman (31:15):

Look, we shared some DNA with monkeys, right? We're social creatures, right? It all makes sense. And, we interview people afterwards. The Penn students, a lot of them said things like, God, I sat with this dude from Cairn, we didn't agree about much, but he didn't have horns and fangs. He wasn't a terrible person. And, mostly we talked about the Eagles, right, which is our local and not very good football team. So, that's what we need to do. We need to create venues, where people experience each other's humanity. Because, the political environment we've created is just fundamentally dehumanizing. There's no other way to describe it, right?

Alexander McCaig (32:01):

I think you and Carl Jung would have been really good friends-

Jonathan Zimmerman (32:05):

Less than human.

Alexander McCaig (32:07):

Yeah, no, I think you and Jung would have been really good friends with that statistical flattening of what it means to be human being, because of the way states come in and manage that. And, when you talk about creating an environment for us to all learn from one another, I love the micro sense of what Penn is doing with that with the other Bible College. The way we look at it here with our marketplace is, we have 220 countries participating in something that affords individuals outside of government restriction to come in, in a safe, encrypted manner, and to anonymously share data truthfully about themselves and what's going on so that we can all find better understanding, because what may be a commonality of the Eagles, between two political ideologies of individuals just over here at this event you speak of, we can find that commonality of what it means to be human being amongst all of us, across all these countries on this planet.

Alexander McCaig (33:06):

I think these are those conversations, those understandings, through the data, through the speech that allows us to actually build that more resilient world, a less fragile world, one that is not built on fear, one that affords us the opportunity to find peace amongst ourselves.

Jonathan Zimmerman (33:25):

Yeah, look, I think that was the original sort of internet utopians, right, including the guy who started Wikipedia. I think that was their vision. And unfortunately, it's taken some really awful turns. I think there are a number of reasons for that. But obviously, the biggest one is that in a lot of countries in the world, they're monitoring the internet. China's the most obvious example, it is the largest country in the world, but if you think about how many people there are in that country, the ways they've discovered to monitor the internet and behavior on the internet is... if it wasn't so awful, it would be impressive. It's quite an incredible organizational operation. But, it's very hard to satisfy that utopian vision when you have state agents that are essentially a parent over your shoulder. Looking at what you're saying, monitoring it, right, penalizing you for a Winnie the Pooh drawing or whatever it may be.

Jonathan Zimmerman (34:35):

The other thing is, we can't blame the state too much. Because in places like the United States, the state has a very small regulatory footprint on the internet. And, yet we've made a hash of it ourselves. Again, by, I think, engaging in all this dehumanizing behavior and by failing to educate people in a better way to be, I can't put it any other way, right? I don't think that's on the government, I think that's on us.

Alexander McCaig (35:12):

That is something I can fundamentally agree with. We always talk about personal responsibility here. And, we think that is a huge learning curve for a lot of people around the globe, and saying, this was my action, and I'm responsible for it. I'm responsible for my future. And if every one of us collectively comes together with that mindset, a lot of good can come from it. So I would like to ask, are there any collectives that you've seen through your travels, research and study that are doing this well, even in a micro sense, or a very macro sense?

Jonathan Zimmerman (35:45):

Oh, there are a lot of people in the US, they're doing this really well. There are organizations devoted to exactly this process. They have names like Bridge USA, Table for Two; a better conversation. It's bubbling up. Here's what's so interesting, the poll literature suggests that we're radically polarized and that we're dehumanizing each other, okay? And, that we don't feel good about it. Isn't that interesting? Right?

Alexander McCaig (36:16):

What a paradox.

Jonathan Zimmerman (36:17):

Right, both those things. We know we're doing it, but we kind of can't help ourselves, but we don't like it. So the very same people who are interviewed and they say, oh, yeah, the people in the other party, I hate them, I would never dated anybody in the other party, I don't want my kids doing that, right? When you ask them, are you satisfied with the quality of political discussion and the tenor of politics and stuff? They say no. So, that's good, right? That's the good stuff, insofar as it's clear that there is massive dissatisfaction with the status quo. And so, that does create an opening for these groups. And they're there, right? This little project that I described in Penn and Cairn, it's being repeated in lots of different places.

Jonathan Zimmerman (37:04):

I've read recently that in Baltimore, there's this person, just this woman that has created what she calls these purple dinners. What's a purple dinner? You invite a bunch of red-state people and a bunch of blue-state people. Most good ideas are not complicated.

Alexander McCaig (37:24):

[crosstalk 00:37:24] for another 45 minutes, that'd be great.

Jonathan Zimmerman (37:28):

It is not hard, they're just hard to execute. They're not complicated. I often say this to my students, a really good idea isn't complicated, it's often very simple. What's complicated is the politics around it. What's complicated is executing it, getting it right. Education is full of examples like that. We have really good knowledge about how kids learn and what will help them learn better, we just don't have the political will to execute on that knowledge. Ow. That's actually more complicated.

Alexander McCaig (38:01):

So what would be one of those things that helps children or just people, for instance, actually learn better?

Jonathan Zimmerman (38:08):

Well, there are a couple things. I think that one of the things that we've learned over 100 years is that the best education is activity and inquiry-based. So the best education engages people in their learning. It doesn't say, hey, here's some learning, all right, and there'll be a test on Friday, right? What it does is, it requires you to take action, to explore, all right, to produce, to create things with that learning, that's the best way to do it. But you know what, that's harder to do, right? It's a lot easier for me to stand up and jaw in front of 100 people, right, than it is to do what I just described.

Alexander McCaig (38:56):

Yeah.

Jonathan Zimmerman (38:56):

So, that really forces us to decide what we value. Whenever anybody says something's too expensive, I think the only right answer is, well, that's like when you said to your parents, I don't have time and they said make time, right? Things of value have costs. And, if you're not willing to pay the cost, you don't value, right? Is that sort of pedagogy that I described more expensive in the back end? Absolutely.

Alexander McCaig (39:31):

Oh, man.

Jonathan Zimmerman (39:33):

[crosstalk 00:39:33] groups, you need a different kind of training for teachers. It's costly. And thus far, we have not been willing to sustain that cost.

Alexander McCaig (39:42):

Is that because people are cheap, and it's just easier to censor things and to just essentially eliminate it or remove its possibility because they don't want to put the investment of their own time and their own risk into it?

Jonathan Zimmerman (39:54):

Well, I think there are a lot of different reasons for it. I think one of them, it really starts with the massive inequalities in this country, right? Here's the other thing that I forgot to mention, the kind of pedagogy I just described, it is unevenly distributed, duh, right? It's a scarce resource. And, the higher you up on the food chain, on the social status chain, the more likely you are to receive it. I received some of it, not all of it, but some of it, and that's why I'm here today, right? But, that was just an accident of birth. And, that's unjust, right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (40:36):

If you believe that's good pedagogy, I think you have to believe that everybody should be exposed to it. And, what we've done is, we've created a society that's so radically unequal, right, that the higher up you are, the more likely you are to receive it. It's just not defensible. But, it's like so many other kinds of inequality, right? How do you make a case against it? Right? That is a political case. I think the moral case is simpler than the political one. The political one is much more complicated, right? How do you persuade people who are getting good teaching that it's in their interest to pay for other people to receive it? That's hard.

Jason Rigby (41:16):

Yeah. I thought this was interesting in your book, you talked about the moral majority in the 80s, and some of us that are older can remember that. The young generation has no idea what that is, Ronald Reagan, conservatism and all that. I see the same thing happening with the woke culture. Why is it so dangerous for free speech whenever you get an ideology into politics?

Jonathan Zimmerman (41:40):

Well, I don't want to go too deep in the weeds. I would say, we all have an ideology and all politics is ideological, but I think what you're referring to is the ideology of censorship, right? That's its own ideology. The moral majority, obviously, was very interested in engaging it and so were certain people that called themselves woke. I think in some ways, it goes back to Holmes comment about how it makes perfect sense to try to get rid of something that you find evil. But, I do think it's interesting that you raise the analogy, because I do think that in faith-based systems, and if we're thinking about woke as a kind of religion, which arguably it is, it becomes ever more tantalizing, ever more alluring.

Jonathan Zimmerman (42:34):

Because, part of many faith systems is the idea that there's an absolute right and wrong. Some people have gotten the word with capital W. Other unfortunate people haven't, they become apostates, right? And so, it isn't just urgent, it's necessary to convert them. Otherwise, they're going to hell.

Alexander McCaig (43:01):

Yes.

Jonathan Zimmerman (43:03):

Look, all of us engage in versions of this, we really do. All of us, in a way, are prisoners of this. And, I'd like to just tell one other story that I think illustrates this.

Alexander McCaig (43:12):

Go for it.

Jonathan Zimmerman (43:13):

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, I taught in a part of Nepal that was a three-day walk from vehicular traffic. And, most people had never seen a white person there. When I first got there, kids thought I was a ghost and stuff like that. And, one day I'm teaching, I taught at the top of what they called a hill and we would call a mountain, about 6000 feet up, and we served all the valleys around it. Kid bounced in the classroom and says, Jon, Sir, your friend is in the valley. And, your friend needs another white guy. I go outside, I looked down to the river basin, and sure enough, I can see a white guy. We had high visibility in that part of the world. So we declare a veto which means a holiday and we all start marching down the mountain to see what's going on.

Jonathan Zimmerman (44:04):

And, as I get a little bit closer, this guy comes up to me holding this very crudely published pamphlet, and he says, Jon, Sir, your friend sold this to me, only five rupees, this book. I looked at it and I immediately knew what it was because it showed a guy who looked like Gregg Allman on a cross. By some international rule of iconography, right, Christ must always look like Gregg Allman. I spent some time in the part of the world where Christ lived and obviously nobody looks like Greg Allman, but anyway, right, okay. And then, I could read Nepali underneath, it says, [inaudible 00:44:38]. [inaudible 00:44:38] from God for your sins. Five rupees, hmm. Five rupees was what an adult got for chipping away all day on the thing that was going to become a tractor road but never did because the monsoon washed it out every year. Women got three rupees, kid got one rupee. It was a days wage.

Jonathan Zimmerman (44:58):

I got a little closer, the guy's standing on a rock. And, he is doing a great trade in these books here, this pamphlet. I go up to him, I say, "What are doing?" And he said, "You know, I'm bringing these people to God." And I said, "You know, dude, they already have a God, they have like 20,000 Gods." It's a Hindu country. And he said, "Well, Hindus are thieves and murderers." And then, it got completely ugly. I could tell from his accent that he was German, and I said, "Oh, they're thieves and murderers, how come the German church rolled over and played dead for Hitler?" And then, he says, "Well, you know, the Holocaust was a tragedy, but mostly because of the gypsies that perished. I'm, "Dude, there's a part of my family that perished in it, and they weren't gypsies, they were Jews." And he told me to fuck off. I told him the fuck off.

Jonathan Zimmerman (45:53):

And then, in a bluff, I say to the guy, "Look, it's illegal to missionary in this country," which it was, it is in many parts of the world. "And, if you get the fuck out of here, I'm going to call the cops." Now, the cops were three days away and drunk, all right. This was a complete Bluff, but he didn't know that. So, he tells me to fuck off again. He hoists his backpack, and he starts walking up the mountain. By this time, there's a great sea of people. And, my enduring memory of this part of my life, my Peace Corps life, is living in a televised golf tournament, where everything is narrated, like there's this sort of, voice. I had no idea what was going on behind me. Like, Jon, Sir, is putting medicine in his water. Why is he doing that? During this whole exchange, I'm just hearing, Jon, Sir's angry with his friend. Jon, Sir's angry with his friend.

Jonathan Zimmerman (46:45):

So, the guy's going up the hill, and somebody says, Jon, Sir, you don't like your friend, you were angry with your friend, what was with that? And I said, "That's a very bad man. Like, he doesn't like your dharma," which sort of, means your religion. And then, he got really interested. I hear this one guy say, "Hey, Jon, Sir told me if I believe in his dharma, like, I won't be reborn forever, I'll just go to heaven forever." I hear this other guy say, "Wow, that's an awesome dharma. Hey, could I buy your book off you, I'll give you six rupees? Hey, run after the guy, maybe he's got some more." And, it wasn't until I wrote a book actually about the subject about Americans who taught overseas, that I realized what made me so angry. When you really get angry with somebody, it's because you see a part of yourself in them that you don't like.

Jonathan Zimmerman (47:35):

I had way more in common with my German interlocutor than I was willing to see at the time. Here's what we had in common. We both knew what was right and good for Nepalis, right? Okay. His prejudice was much more out in the open, right, they're thieves and murderers. Mine was all wrapped up in this sort of pluralist multicultural mumbo jumbo. But, at the end of the day, I was every bit as certain as what was right for them as he was, and this is not right for you. Now, of course, there have been Christians in the subcontinent since 400 AD, but I didn't know that. And, that's one of the great things about prejudice, by getting on your high horse, you don't have to know shit, right? [inaudible 00:48:16], right?

Jonathan Zimmerman (48:18):

So I'm like, hey, that's not for you, that is not good. And, I know what's good for you, because I'm such a great defender of you, right? I know everything. So there's interesting religious stuff here going back and forth, right? I'm not a devout person, religiously, but I would argue that my reaction reflected a sort of intolerant faith position, right? My intolerance was, I know what your faith should be, don't be that faith. All right?

Alexander McCaig (48:49):

That's an interesting level of self-awareness, you found within yourself to say, wow, he is but a metaphor for me and I am a metaphor for him. It's just that [crosstalk 00:49:00]. A much more refined metaphor. How long did it take you to realize something like that?

Jonathan Zimmerman (49:10):

Four years. I wrote a book called Innocence Abroad, which is about Americans who went around the world as teachers, including myself. And, it wasn't until I did that research and really started thinking about it, that I reflected on this in that way. The other thing to remember is, in situations of anger, we don't think very well. Often we're not thinking at all, right? It's all about instinct, and often about aggression and self-protection, right, and fear. And, none of those things are qualities that promote clear thinking. Quite to the contrary, they're often instinctual, right, they're reflexes, right? You don't think at all, you just fight or defend.

Alexander McCaig (49:53):

I think I'll reinforce the point of if you want to do something valuable, like educate, and do it with simplicity, there's a cost involved. You really need to invest in it. Your investment was 40 years of educating yourself to find that self-awareness. I know, everybody wants things to change overnight, in their own countries, in their own personal lives, but you need to invest first in your own self-awareness responsibilities, so that you can start to see that value in others. And, that is an evolutive of process that will truly take time, but we need to make sure that it continues to stay at the forefront of our minds. And, when you write things like this, Jonathan, and you come on our podcast and you share your story with the world, it helps put that human right, that level of logic and self-awareness and respect morality at the forefront that we need to continue to pay attention to, rather than censor it within our own selves.

Jonathan Zimmerman (50:56):

I hope so. And, it is an evolutive process, as you put it, I think, very eloquently, but it's also a process of exchange that is with other human beings. I don't think anybody does that alone, right? The [inaudible 00:51:08] told us a story about exchange. And, as you correctly noted, I reflected on it in different ways as time went on, right? But, I wouldn't have even done that reflection if I hadn't had the exchange.

Alexander McCaig (51:20):

Correct. Yeah. And, if somebody wants to make a good exchange, I don't care if you're paying 5 rupees, or 20 US dollars, make the exchange for this book, test your own self-awareness, see what emotionally triggers you, find that resilience, try to find an understanding amongst ourselves, and have those dinner parties.

Jason Rigby (51:45):

Yeah, I'm just so appreciative of your work. Super excited about this. Every free speech component would say this, but I think now more than ever, especially as we look at our own country, in the United States, this is needed. And, I appreciate you having the courage to take this on and have that sometimes unpopular voice.

Jonathan Zimmerman (52:06):

Yes, thank you. Not everyone's been happy, but that's kind of, again, part of the process as you would put it, right? And also, if everyone was happy, would I be saying anything meaningful?

Alexander McCaig (52:17):

No.

Jason Rigby (52:17):

Hmm.

Jonathan Zimmerman (52:18):

Right? Again, speech offends, right? It challenges, it provokes, it angers. It's what it does. To be clear, I never seek to do that. Never. But, I also have to acknowledge that I do, do that. It comes with the territory.

Alexander McCaig (52:34):

Right. And so, if somebody wants to find out more about you, Jonathan, or more about free speech, where would they go as resources to do so?

Jonathan Zimmerman (52:45):

Well, they can obviously buy the Free Speech book at any number of places. Jeff Bezos can send a drone to bring it to your house. And, if they go to the University of Pennsylvania website, they'll find my page and they can also see the other things that I've written, including the book I referenced, Innocence Abroad, which is about American teachers that went overseas.

Alexander McCaig (53:14):

That's wonderful. And listen, hopefully, we can bring you on again, if you want [crosstalk 00:53:19] free speech and the rights of artificial intelligence.

Jonathan Zimmerman (53:23):

Exactly.

Alexander McCaig (53:23):

To be fair, it will be blast. Well, listen, thank you again, Jonathan. Really appreciate the time.

Jonathan Zimmerman (53:29):

Oh, it was my pleasure. It was fun. Thanks a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:39):

Thank you for listening to TARTLEcast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future, and the source data defines what's the path. What's your data worth?