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In a sweeping conversation sparked by his new book The War on Science, Lawrence Krauss charts how well-intentioned campus DEI bureaucracies, politicized funding mandates, and “language-as-violence” taboos are eroding the core scientific virtues of open inquiry and empirical scepticism, while drawing historical parallels from Lysenkoism to today’s hiring rubrics and challenging listeners to defend freedom of thought with the same passion they reserve for social justice. He then pivots from diagnosis to remedy, outlining a five-point rescue plan—slashing ideological litmus tests, restoring merit-based evaluation, insulating grant agencies from mission creep, teaching students to steel-man opposing views, and benchmarking success against China’s unencumbered research surge—arguing that only by re-centering evidence over ideology can science remain humanity’s most reliable truth-seeking enterprise.
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Key Takeaways:
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:04 The most dangerous idea threatening science today
- 02:35 The role of universities and academic freedom
- 10:26 Tenure and indirect costs in academia
- 14:58 Sanctions against free speech
- 17:39 The problem with tuition
- 18:42 Decolonializing STEM
- 23:57 What Trump is doing to address these issues
- 28:03 Free market education?
- 36:46 Judging a book by its cover
- 38:44 The distortion of science during COVID
- 44:12 Inequality in science
- 48:43 If Lawrence were president of the US
- 52:33 Audience questions
- 55:28 Outro
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Additional resources:
📚 The War On Science by Lawrence Krauss: https://a.co/d/6ntEbll
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