Dennis Prager - No Safe Spaces

Copyright 2019 by Dennis M. Prager and Mark Joseph

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ebook ISBN 978-1-62157-982-3

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BY A DAM C AROLLA

I grew up in North Hollywood, California. Sounds glamourous, right? Well, if the Hollywood youre picturing is celebrities at a white-tablecloth five-star restaurant with seven different forks, North Hollywood is a diner where the waitresses blow smoke rings while pouring your coffee.

Growing up on food stamps and welfare, I (barely) graduated high school and went right to work in construction. Let me be clear: this was not the construction you see in TV ads with well-groomed white guys in hardhats looking at blueprints. I did manual labordigging ditches, cleaning up garbage, and other work fit for a donkey. I worked hard, paid attention and listened to the guys with experience, and learned the trade of carpenter. (Just like Jesus!)

Construction is lonely work, and often my only company was a radio, tuned toyou guessed it The Dennis Prager Show . It never occurred to me that someday I would be on Denniss show, where he would be interviewing... me . But it happened in 2011, and it became immediately clear that despite very different paths in life, we shared important values. Ive often said that the thing Dennis and I have in common is common sense.

We believe in individualism: that by taking responsibility for our fates, we make our own success. For Dennis, that meant going off the beaten path in high school and college. For me, it meant launching my own radio show without a radio station.

We both spend hours each week interviewing interesting people, and, like any good talk junkie, we crave open, interesting discussion. We both need that hit every day. That authenticity is critical if you want to engage with and understand the world. My parents were checked-out messes who played victim like Eric Clapton plays guitar. So I respect anyone with the intellectual honesty to assert and also challenge his own beliefs. Since way back in 2011, at the time of my first interview on his show, Dennis and I havent seen nearly enough of that type of ego-checking happening in America. In fact, even then the concept of free thought was under attack in the very place it should have been thriving: academia. (Wow, Academiapretty big word for a guy who barely graduated high school.)

So it seemed only natural that Dennis and I would go into the belly of the beast and start speaking on college campuses, warning parents, students, and faculty about the dangers of shutting down free speech that was deemed politically incorrect or provocative.

Ironically (as youre about to read) they promptly proved us right.

The good news is, there are other ways to reach a large audience with an important message. Thats why we teamed up with producer Mark Joseph to create a movie called No Safe Spaces . And thats why the two of them decided to publish this book by the same name.

What follows is a sometimes funny, often disturbing, but always insightful look at a real problem facing America today. Mark and Dennis do a superb job recounting (and expounding on) the horror stories we encountered on campuses across the nation. Along the way, youll meet some of Americas top experts on free speech. And you may even glean some insights and observations from the Ace Man.

If youre interested in defending the liberal tradition of free speechor even if youre just curious about why a Jewish intellectual (Dennis), the son of missionaries (Mark), and an atheist from Hollywood (moithats Mexican for me) would team up to take on Big Academiathen read on!

P rofessor Bret Weinstein couldnt believe his own eyes.

Were people spying on him?

As Weinstein, an Evergreen State College biology professor who considers himself deeply progressive, biked into town from his house that early spring morning in 2017, he could have sworn he saw students from the school eyeing him suspiciously as he pedaled by. What were they doing in his neighborhood?

The professor had good reason to be on edge. He had found himself at the center of a heatedand very one-sideddiscussion about race at this very progressive liberal arts college, located in Olympia, Washington.

It hadnt gone well.

What started as a public meeting chaired by the college president soon devolved into a protest in which Weinstein was shouted at and shouted down.

That morning, for the second day in a row, the campus police had told him it would be better if he didnt show up on campus. If he wasnt around, maybe things would cool off a bit.

But Weinstein had a biology class to teach, so he arranged to meet his students at a park downtown, off school property. That Thursday morning, May 2017, he tucked his crop of unruly black hair into a bike helmet and pedaled his way into town, looking every bit the stereotypical liberal college professor straight out of central casting. He could not have looked more the part if he had been wearing a beret.

But through the rural, tree-lined roads near his house he noticed something weird.

I saw people that I recognized from the protest the day before, Weinstein said. As he biked past them, Weinstein thought he saw them taking out their phones, as if they were sending messages.

Was he really being tailed by student protesters? It sure seemed like it. Unsettled, Weinstein went to Evergreen after allright to the campus police department. He told them what he had seenthough he realized how kooky he must sound.

I must be imagining it, Weinstein concluded.

The police disagreed. They told Weinstein the protesters had been looking for him. Worse still, the police told Professor Bret Weinstein that they couldnt protect him.

What crime had this monster, Bret Weinstein, committed to enrage a group of Evergreen State College students?

He showed up to work.

When you think of people needing protection, you may think of a former mafioso going into a witness protection program. But Evergreens Vito Corleone was a Birkenstock-clad interdisciplinary studies major who is convinced the only reason we all arent wearing hemp shirts is the aftereffects of nineteenth-century British mercantilism.

Before 2017, Evergreen State College might have been best known as the alma mater of rapper Macklemore and Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons . The schools motto (and were not making this up) is Omnia Extares, which translates to Let it all hang out. Its mission statement reads like an academic buzzword bingo card, boasting a local and global commitment to social justice, diversity, environmental stewardship and service in the public interest. Bernie Sanders couldnt have said it better.

One expression of Evergreens commitment to diversity was an annual tradition called the National Day of Absence. This event entails minority faculty and students leaving campus for a day to make a statement, followed by a day of reunification when everyone appreciates everyone else a bit more or sings Kumbaya. Its probably not the most effective use of two days of higher learning, but it sounds pretty harmless, right?