Reclaiming Free Speech in Academia

As The War on Science continues to circulate and reach readers around the world, I had the privilege of closing our Origins mini series, The War on Science Interviews, with my colleague and book contributor Gad Saad. It felt fitting to end the series with a candid and provocative conversation that reflects the spirit of the project itself.

The essays and interviews collected around this book address a wide range of concerns: the ideological corruption of science, the erosion of free speech in academia, the replacement of scholarship with activism in many disciplines, and the disruptions now spreading from mathematics to medicine. We explore how cancel culture and DEI bureaucracies weaken excellence, how biology is distorted for political ends, and how false premises about gender and sex compromise both science and medicine. The conversations are blunt and challenging, but they also aim to outline principles that can help universities recover integrity, trust, and the courage to return to embracing free inquiry.

Gad and I discussed many of these themes directly. He confronts the absurdities of modern campus culture, and his voice joins those the other contributors who have argued that ignoring these trends will not make them disappear. Many academics have hoped the problems would fade on their own. They have not. The internal culture war in academia must be confronted openly if scholarship and science are to thrive in the West.

I am hopeful the book will spark debate in universities and among the wider public. If you would like the full context for this episode, you can watch the complete War on Science Interviews mini series at this link here. In the meantime enjoy this episode now.

With this finale, Origins now returns to its regular biweekly release schedule. We have some fascinating new conversations, educational content, and science news in store that I am excited to share.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube.