Ellen Shrecker, Is Today's Anti-intellectualism Worse than McCarthyism?

In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Yeshiva University professor emerita Ellen Schrecker about the history leading up to today's anti-intellectualism.

Ellen has been involved with the politics of higher education and academic freedom for decades. According to Ellen, the current right-wing campaign against teaching critical race theory and other so-called “divisive concepts” is by far the most serious threat to academic freedom (as well as K-12 education) the United States has ever experienced. 

Schrecker’s research and experience enable her to speak about the impact of these issues, as well as explain why today’s anti-intellectualism is more dangerous than that of the McCarthy era. She believes that if the repressive measures now coursing through state legislatures and other political bodies are to be repulsed, the academic community and engaged citizens must offer a stronger response than they have until now. 

Resources

Wikipedia: Ellen Schrecker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Schrecker

Books by Ellen Schrecker:
No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities
Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization
Assault on Academic Freedom
End of the American University
The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s

PEN America: https://pen.org
Historians for Peace and Democracy: https://www.historiansforpeace.org
AAUP: American Association of University Professors: https://www.aaup.org
AAPF: The African American Policy Forum: https://www.aapf.org

Support Armchair Historians:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/armchairhistorians
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/belgiumrabbitproductions

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:00

Hello, my name is Anne Marie cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life. YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place, or person from our distant or not so distant past. The jumping off point is the place where they became curious, then entered the rabbit hole into discovery, fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. I'm Chair historians is a Belgian rabid production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. I'm Chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello fellow armchair historians. In this episode, I talk to Yeshiva University professor America. Allen schreker about the history leading up to today's anti intellectualism, Elon has been involved with the politics of higher education and academic freedom for decades. According to her, the current right wing campaign against teaching critical race theory, and other so called divisive concepts is by far the most serious threat to academic freedom, as well as K through 12 education the United States have ever experienced trekkers research and experience enable her to speak about the impact of these issues, as well as explain why today's anti intellectualism is more dangerous than that of the McCarthy era. She believes that if the repressive measures now coursing through state legislatures, and other political bodies are to be repulsed, the academic community and engaged citizens must offer a stronger response than they have until now. Ellen schreker Welcome to armchair historians.

Ellen Shrecker: 2:24

Hi, it's good to be here and Marie. So we just get right into it. And the stick is what's your favorite history? Now I've interviewed people who talk about the Holocaust. And that's a difficult thing. And the topic you're going to talk about is not so easy, but stressful.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:44

But I'm gonna ask the question, What is your favorite history we're going to be talking about today?

Ellen Shrecker: 2:49

Well, I think my main theme as a historian has always been political repression in a modern democratic society. What does political repression look like in the United States? Now, clearly, the most egregious example of political repression is slavery, you know, actually the owning of human beings and taking away their ability to control their own lives, millions and millions of people. And that has had repercussions through our American history. But what I've been looking at is a somewhat less horrifying, but still quite extensive form of political repression, one that silences the voices of dissent. And so this is something that we've seen in other societies, certainly, throwing people into the Gulag under Stalin was pretty bad. And that never happened here. American political repression does not include the assassination of political dissidents, yet, we're not there yet. But an awful lot of political repression has occurred in this society, depriving so many people of their political rights, their right to speak out their right to speak out and be heard their right to vote, their right to keep a job, if they are a dissident, then I had a lifetime of research working on it. And so anyhow, the main topic of research, let's narrow down a little bit more than I've been engaged in has been in the study of McCarthyism. So probably I should begin just by defining what I'm talking about. Okay, that sounds like a good place to start. Okay, because McCarthyism is much more than just the political career of one way out somewhat alcoholicsenator from Wisconsin. McCarthyism, as I see, it was a moment in the late 19, beginning in the late 1940s. To get with the beginning of the Cold War in about 1947, we begin to see things that we could call McCarthyism, even though Joe McCarthy isn't on the scene yet. And it lasts all the way through really till the middle of the 1960s. So what are we looking at, we're looking at a form of political repression, directly directed specifically to the suppression of quote unquote, communism. And we can think of McCarthyism in a, in a way, as the home front of the Cold War. If you're fighting the Cold War, and you see as your enemy communism writ large, then what we're seeing is something that I call McCarthyism. And it certainly is much more than just the political career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He in fact, came late to his own party. Because what had happened before was the use of anti communist political loyalty tests for employment began in the federal government, its main proponent. And if we knew then what we know now about what had happened, we would have called it Hoover ism. Because the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had really invented not just the mechanisms for political repression, most of which were economic sanctions. What McCarthyism did was, destroy careers get people fired, it didn't throw many people into prison. The number of victims of McCarthyism is probably maximum 12 to 15,000. People actually going to prison is much less, it's in the hundreds, not very many at all. But it was very effective. You know, if you know you're going to lose your job, because you join a political group that is on say, the Attorney General's lists, the Attorney General had a list of organizations that if you belong to them, indicated that you are a member of this of the Communist Party, and there was a Communist Party. I mean, we're talking about a witch hunt. But it's a witch hunt that had witches, they weren't that dangerous. There weren't very many of them, and they were sufficiently under control. By the time McCarthyism writ large, becomes one of the main domestic political issues in the United States. By that point, those witches were really no problem at all they had there had been purchased within the federal government of people who have been identified as communists, they will all go on. And what was happening was this massive expansion of the notion of what the threat of communism was. And it wasn't a bunch of people who in 1938, had sent money to an organization that was supporting the side of the legal government of the Spanish of Spain. It just wasn't people who had marched for civil rights in the 19, late 1940s. It wasn't people who had joined a communist group, or communist led group in Hollywood during World War Two that was saying Let us help the Russian government because the Soviet Union is the only army at the moment on the ground fighting Hitler. So if we want to get rid of Nazism, we are going to join this particular group. These people were threatened in American security, they actually thought they were helping and to some extent they were because we needed to bolster anybody who was going to fight. So anyhow, that's what I'd been looking at, for much of my career, was to look at the various ways in political repression gets played out in the United States.

Anne Marie Cannon: 9:46

Okay, so that is a really good lesson for my listeners and for myself. As far as the background of what we want to talk about what you're thinking about today, you had done a blog Post in September 2021, in the title of the blog post was yes, these bills are the new McCarthyism. Now, you say regarding states or education officials who have enacted laws or taking other steps to ban teaching CRT critical race theory, which I want you to explain that you say these measures are succeeding, in part, because the institutions under attack have been so starved and that they are unable to mountain attack. There's a lot in that, and I just like there's a lot to unpack in this whole idea. But maybe you could start with what CRT is critical race theory, which is, I mean, it's something that I really hadn't heard of, until like the past year or two. So it might have been referred to as something else. Maybe you can start with that, and then talk a little bit more about what's going on. Yeah,

Ellen Shrecker: 11:08

this is a rather technical term, it's about at least 20 years old. It was developed within mainly law schools, a number of very eminent scholars, were thinking about, why is it we had the civil rights movement in the 1960s? We have the civil rights law, we have the Voting Rights Law. Why are African Americans still from, you know, police encounters? Why? Why has mass incarceration of African Americans, especially young men increased so much? Why are things so much better now that the civil rights movement has occurred, and won its victories? And so they began to broaden their lens, and to look at what's really underneath this? What is quote, unquote, they called it systemic racism, what causes these things? And they're seeing the burden of past discrimination, still weighing upon the African American community.

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:21

Now, would you say they you're talking about the legal?

Ellen Shrecker: 12:24

It's a group of scholars, places like Harvard at places like Columbia, it's rather esoteric stuff. I've read some of it, I am not an expert in the field at all. And you know, it's hard to follow up all this vocabulary. But nonetheless, what we're really looking at is, what is it in American society that is still blocking African Americans from having an equal experience from having the opportunity to fulfill their human potential in the United States? Why aren't they getting ahead the way other other citizens have. And we're seeing what is called systemic racism. Which means that it's not me saying you can't, I'm not going to hire you for a job because you're black. It's because us that person has spent a lifetime going to inferior schools, which have been caused by years of housing discrimination, forcing people into ghettos, inferior, they haven't been able to buy homes, they haven't been able to build up wealth from buying homes in the suburbs. In other words, what we're looking at is how the past history of American racism of slavery and discrimination has caused the life chances of African Americans in our society from being the equal to those of other citizens. And it's it's a difficult question to answer, you need a lot of work on it. And so the critical race theorists are working on trying to figure out how this operates and what we can do as a society to eliminate it. You know, and it's hard. It's very hard. And why has critical race theory become a such a boogeyman? today? And that is because there is a luckily say, very widespread campaign, well funded campaign that has created a number of institutions on the right, that are looking for ways to preserve the status quo that are looking for ways to roll back efforts to create greater equality with in American society, they have ties to big business, they have ties to the oil industry that Koch brothers, people may have heard of the Koch brothers who are major funders of conservative right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Society or the Manhattan Institute. I mean, we don't need to know all these names I can give them to you. But what has been happening is that there are groups and individuals who are intervening in the American political discourse, and over simplifying a lot of what's going on and creating these boogeyman, that people who haven't figured out who don't know this scholarship at all, or they're just being told, Oh, critical race theory is going to make your children unhappy in school. Well,

Anne Marie Cannon: 15:57

and, and that, wait a minute, and the conservatives call the Liberals snowflakes, I was listening to literally listening to a podcast about this subject. And they were playing the audio from one of these town meetings, and the mother was basically literally saying that it's, you know, gonna upset our children. And it just, Oh, my goodness. So I'm sorry, just had to interject.

Ellen Shrecker: 16:24

Yes, no, that's exactly the issue. And you know, the response to that is, suppose you were the only black child in a in an all white class, or they are the child was single mother, what they're doing is creating, and demonizing a whole strand of professional scholarship that is looking into how can we solve the racial problems of this country? And the the people who are talking about how dreadful it is, if a child feels that because she's white, she's guilty of something. You know, no teacher even says that teachers in K through 12, do not teach critical race theory, they don't even know what it is. Well, that's

Anne Marie Cannon: 17:13

my question, because they're going after schools and colleges. And they don't teach critical race theory that's not in the curriculum. So it seems like they're picking off, there is a book and I can't remember the name of it. It's a children's book, it was written by black author who kind of wrote about this character that was sort of autobiographical, going to school in a mostly white community and what that was like for him. And so that was one of the things that they were trying to take out of the curriculum is letting the children read that book, they were trying to take it out of the library. And so what what I really have a problem with about this, and maybe you can talk more of this, how do how does one even identify that this is critical race theory? And is it subjective?

Ellen Shrecker: 18:08

Yeah. What it is, is they're trying to eliminate discussions of racism, eliminate the teaching of about slavery, teaching about discrimination, they want to get a sanitized picture of the American pass back into the schools when I was in school, probably when you were in school, but you're young, probably younger than me. You know, people didn't know very much African American history, African American history was not even taught anywhere. Right, right, historically black institutions. So they come back with this very sanitized and untrue portrayal of American history, which takes away the tools that students need that future citizens need for coping with the very difficult problems within a multiracial society. The what these people who are attacking CRT, or attacking quote, unquote, divisive issues in, say, the teaching of American history are doing are making our children ignorant, depriving them have the intellectual tools they need to go to college, among other things, you know, they're all going to flunk American history. If they rely on what they learn in debt. These people want high schools to be teaching. I mean, I just heard about a story of some liberal parents in one of these states where this kind of legislation is going through. Who's you know, maybe nine year old child comes home and says, Guess what I learned today in School about the Civil War. And the parents say what is that? And she says, Oh, it's not about slavery. And the parents. Yeah, the parents go what? And she says, yeah, it's about states rights. Okay. This is like being in a southern segregated school in 1942, or something. Yeah. This is very scary. We are aiding a nation of ignoramuses if this legislation continues to pass. And if this wave of suppression of the truth is going to affect our schools, hours, children's minds, and our democracy, you can't have a democracy, if it's based on false.

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:56

So this is this legislation is passed in states. I mean, it's not just in theory that people are talking about it, it's, it's actually been codified into law in some states, right?

Ellen Shrecker: 21:12

Yes, in K through 12, it is very definitely being passed in a number of the red states. And you hear a lot of talk, like there's this fact that you're not supposed to raise controversial issues, or you're supposed to give two sides of controversial issues, you like that one. And I forget what state it was, I don't want to give the name of the state because I don't remember it. But anyhow, one of the states where it's passed, a school district explained they would have to give two sides of every issue and teacher said, the whole class.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:52

You know, there's another side to that that is credibly worth teaching.

Ellen Shrecker: 21:57

Exactly. So I mean, what you're getting is really scary stuff. And moving. what students are learning away from a realistic attempt to think about? Well, if there is another side? What is it if just simply asking, say the people who want to ban CRT, if they've ever read any, it's the level of American political discourse is being dumbed down before. You know, people are looking at evidence. I mean, that's what I do is write books in which that are much too big. My most recent book is over 600 pages. But at least 100 of those pages is just footnotes. I just want to show that this is really true. This is happening. Here it is in the archives, written by the people who do these bad things. This is very dangerous. Yeah. It's affecting us now. And we have to go and do stuff about it. And that's what I'm working on at the moment is trying to figure out how can we mobilize all the people who really don't want their children to be deprived as the truth, who really want to know what happened in their country in their world? How we can provide them with the tools to fight back against this well funded campaign to make America stupid.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:32

So maybe you could talk a little bit more about that, what you're finding out and how we can make a difference, perhaps?

Ellen Shrecker: 23:42

Yeah, I think the first thing to do is to get information. And you can go on the website of certain organizations like Penn P E. N. I think it stands for poets, editors, and novelists, like just go pan America, they have a very good website. I have a group that I'm working with called H, capital H, dash pa D, and we have a website, historians for peace and democracy. We have a website that's beginning to add more information. There's an organization called the American Association of University Professors a up that has a website, but it's kind of hard to follow up. Another organization is called the African American policy forum. This is a group that is composed of a number of scholars who have been leaders in the scholarship on critical race theory. This is where you go to learn about what critical race theory really is. So There are some groups beginning to push back, but not enough. This has to be really a massive campaign of going testifying at state legislatures where this activity is taking place. If you're a teacher, saying no, no, I'm not going to do this, asking for support, especially from administration's on dealing with academic freedom issues. And one of the groups, one of the campaign's I'm working with is to get faculties to take collective action saying no state legislators who don't know anything about anything, cannot decide what gets taught in my place. This is not something that is allowed. This is a major violation of academic freedom. And get us faculty groups, especially the official faculty senates to pass resolutions saying, these laws are violations of academic freedom are in politicians should not decide what students are taught. Teachers should decide professorship decide, not politicians, they don't know what they're talking about. And so we want them to pass these measures to show the nation I think that the people who are being affected by this, especially teachers and professors are unanimous in opposition. And that's the case usually, then there really is strong opposition. A lot of people say, Well, yeah, I'm against these what are called education gag rules. But it's not on my campus. It's not my state, I live in New York's data and nothing bad is happening. Well, there are measures coming up before the New York State Assembly that do call for this, they'll probably be defeated, but maybe something will pass. And also, it's going to tell the people in other states, this is a national issue. This is an issue that affects all of our free speech. Because if things I can talk about textbooks, often states adopt textbooks at a state level, this was happening in Texas, Texas has some of the worst laws and some of the most frightening proposals out there. Publishers pay attention to what Texas Texas adopts. Maybe more and more other states and systems will adopt those textbooks that will say, well, the civil war wasn't exactly caused by slavery, it was really more a matter of space rights. I mean, you know, in other words, history isn't going forward, it isn't becoming more progressive, it can regress. And it's very scary. Yeah, what we need to do is take collective action within whatever groups we're in, whether it's the local PTA, and say to the local PTA, go to the school board and tell, tell the school board don't implement these terrible laws, we can't put up with him. What's scary, is that this campaign against the truth has been going on for so long, that there are judges who now would say, the legal system, the judicial system, there have been enough right wing appointees all the way up to the Supreme Court, who are not supporting freedom of speech, are not supporting academic freedom. So these are battles, we really have to fight and we really have to fight them now. And we really have to explain why it is so important that our children, students at every level, learn the truth about American history.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:00

Now, what about the states where it's already been enacted? Has that ship sailed? or can people in those states do something to counteract what has already been enacted?

Ellen Shrecker: 29:13

Well, obviously, they have to become politically informed, and politically active. There are things known as elections. At this point, there are still a lot free elections in most states, you have to go out register voters, you have to go out, lobby, so political action is kind of the bottom line. And getting information out is also important. It's, you know, we're now living in a world of false news. You know, a lot of people are finding out everything they know about the world from Fox News. So we've got to get out there and talk and push and organize.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:54

How is this going to be presented maybe in a way that somebody who To say, you know, on the PTA or whatever, like, is it? Can it be presented in a veiled way where you don't really know that that's what this really is? And what would that look like?

Ellen Shrecker: 30:11

I mean, yeah, those people will say, well, we want to see even the people who are trying to pass this repressive legislation. Yes, you're set. Oh, you know what they talk about? Parents Rights. Parents have a right to decide what their children are being taught? Well, no, they don't have a right to decide that their children should be taught fake news or fake history, they have a right to be taught, accurate, accurate history, they have the right to be taught the truth about the past. But you know, I don't want to go to my I just saw my doctor today, I don't want to go to the guy down the street who says he's a doctor, thank you know, I'd rather have to be treated by somebody who's been through medical school and medical residency and certified by the state. And there are rules and regulations, showing that this person knows what he's doing. I don't want Joe Blow or Susie blow down the street, to fill my prescriptions. Thank you very much. You simply need in a modern, complicated technological society. You need expertise you can trust. And what these different groups are peddling is not expertise, but stupidity and partisan politics, they want to get elected, they want to keep their billions of dollars in oil, and natural gas, which is harming the environment, even as we speak.

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:50

It seems like the minds that need to be changed are the most resistant to change. And so is there a way to penetrate this kind of thinking?

Ellen Shrecker: 32:05

What can I say? The facts, the reality, and keep these people from deciding what our children are being taught, so we don't raise them? What a generation of people with closed minds, you know, yes, we have to listen to their fears. People are, especially with the COVID things are very scary now. And so the best we can do is, I guess really pride to find the people who agree with you like you. Yeah, it's great. We all know that what

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:45

we all know. Yeah, we all know,

Ellen Shrecker: 32:47

but it's sort of the people who sort of are confused. Maybe we need to talk to them, and find out what the sources of their confusion are. You know, not saying you're a bad person. Yeah. Why are these uninformed ideas so powerful?

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:08

Yeah, that's, that's a tough one. That's hard.

Ellen Shrecker: 33:12

It's very hard.

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:14

Where do we say this history and pop culture?

Ellen Shrecker: 33:17

You're talking to somebody who doesn't even know how to turn on her teeth? It's just much those remotes. I can't handle it, my partner.

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:31

Well, I guess I guess what I'm thinking about this. I mean, it's interesting, because I've asked all my guests this question, in the way that the way that we perceive pop culture, but I was thinking of that book. Oh, I can't think of the name of it. But the idea of it, the book about burning the books. Yeah. It's a science fiction book. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Is it Fahrenheit? Yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Because I think that is pop culture that it's not specifically telling this history, but it is. It's an analogy of this history. Right.

Ellen Shrecker: 34:15

Right. Yeah, that kind of thing. Well, I actually did see one movie recently, like called don't look up.

Anne Marie Cannon: 34:25

Oh, that was good. I just saw that.

Ellen Shrecker: 34:27

Yeah. Which is, of course about climate change. You know, what is going to destroy all life on Earth? Well, if you don't do something about you know, greenhouse gases, and it just goes exponentially which it is, then things are pretty bad. So that's that's a parable about climate change.

Anne Marie Cannon: 34:51

Right? That's a parable. parable. I think that's how we would see this in pop culture

Ellen Shrecker: 34:57

when I'm what I do is right about the past, which is supply, if they're all social scientists can't do lab experiments. This is the way I talk about history. If you're looking for vaccines, you can put them all in petri dishes and watch what happens. But you can't put human beings in petri dishes, you can't run an experiment on people to see how they respond to certain social cues or something. So what do you have as your base of information? Where's your data? And your data is in the past? Yeah. And so the data of history, you know, what happened? When, after the Civil War, there was Black Reconstruction, and the southern states began to pass laws like funding education, then they deprive African American former slaves have a vote, and they stopped funding education for blacks. Oh, okay. That's really bad. What you can do is look at certain moments in the past, when change occurred and see how that happened. What brought about the change? We know from the 1960s, that what brought about change was not President Kennedy, or President Johnson said, Oh, isn't that nice? Why don't we have a civil rights? I know what it was was students kids, yeah. And 1000s of kids sitting down in at restaurants and sitting down at cafeterias and things and disrupting ordinary life. non violent civil disobedience was their tool. There may be other tools today, making it seem as if this country is very ungovernable. We don't want to have it, or our restaurant shut down. I mean, COVID is doing a good job of that. But these mass movements were what force change?

Anne Marie Cannon: 37:06

Yeah. Is there anything that I didn't ask you about this history that you wanted to share?

Ellen Shrecker: 37:13

Well, you were asking me about a lot of things. I mean, I can talk for hours about, I can talk for even more, I just finished a book. It's not 600 pages of text, but it's it's quite a big book about the 1960s. And how the 1960s affected higher education.

Anne Marie Cannon: 37:33

So what's the name of that book?

Ellen Shrecker: 37:35

The book is called the Lost promise universities in the 1960s. And it's looking at everything that happened. I mean, we know about students taking over the dean's office and stuff like that. But there was a lot more going on as well, including the civil rights movement and an attempt American universities. I mean, there are all kinds of little facts that people don't know. Did you know that American universities were segregated in the north as well as the South?

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:07

I didn't know that. Yes, you. I didn't know that.

Ellen Shrecker: 38:12

You're not officially segregated. My class in college had two black students. And, you know, 350 whites. Wait a minute. And this was the case throughout the North, that there would be one or two black students and all the rest would be white. That's segregation.

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:32

Yeah, it is. You're right. You're preaching to the congregation? I know. I know, I don't I don't have any, like real conservative people that listen to my show. I don't think I think I've waited them out over the past two years.

Ellen Shrecker: 38:49

Maybe some of your listeners will, at the dinner table with their uncle. So we're gonna discuss these issues.

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:59

Right. Right. I know somebody who was very conservative at one point. And he basically started but he always read all the different points of view and all the different information. And he has come over to the light, as I like to call it. And it was all in here in his mind that he did that. And it was by looking at all the truth, all of the information. And he, like over a course of maybe three years. He saw the world completely differently.

Ellen Shrecker: 39:36

Yeah, that happens. One of the things I talk about in my book on the 60s, is because I'm looking at professors, specifically, is how small groups of professors started the anti war movement. In other words, the Vietnam War sort of have been around for a while, but more When the American government escalated in 1965, small groups of professors began to mount teachings on their campuses, to inform their colleagues and their students about what was going on in Vietnam because nobody, nobody, nobody in academia knew anything about Vietnam. It was not taught ever, Vietnam had been a French colony so that people who knew French could access information, but there was no information in English about it. And a group of academics started reading and taught themselves enough to teach other people. And within two years, pretty much the academic community turned against the war, even though in 1965, people were perfectly happy with getting rid of Vietnamese communists were perfectly happy with the war. And it was only in part, learning more about what was really happening in Vietnam was what began to push an anti war movement.

Anne Marie Cannon: 41:21

If there's one thing that my listeners can remember about this history that we talked about today, what would you want them to remember?

Ellen Shrecker: 41:32

That one has to be a eternally vigilant to look out to see what's actually happening. And then to work with others we need coalition's we need people to say, Yes, this attempt to impose an educational gag rule on American colleges, schools, K through 12. Through the media even is endangering everybody endangering all of humanity. This is really a crisis moment. It doesn't feel like it because, you know, we're all sort of becoming a little happier now that the COVID is receding or something, but we're really in a lot of trouble. And everybody has to be educate themselves first, and then join up with other

Anne Marie Cannon: 42:30

people. Okay. And I'll link out to those organizations that you mentioned. So that would be a good place to start. It's been a pleasure talking to you today, Alan.

Ellen Shrecker: 42:42

My pleasure in D.

Anne Marie Cannon: 42:45

There you have it, Elon trekker, anti intellectualism, and McCarthyism. For more resources, information about Elon and how you can support the show, please do check out our episode notes. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.