How Academia Abandoned Evidence for Ideology | Melanie Philips — Transcript

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1. 0:00These people who were responsible for
2. 0:02producing apparently ostensibly
3. 0:05objective research were themselves
4. 0:08caught up in these family dramas. They
5. 0:10were themselves becoming divorced. They
6. 0:12were themselves having children who were
7. 0:14becoming divorced.
8. 0:16And they couldn't bear the disconnect
9. 0:20between the objective reality and their
10. 0:22own family situation. So they made the
11. 0:26objective reality fit their subjective
12. 0:29feelings. They twisted it. And I watched
13. 0:32this happen.
14. 0:34And I watched academics who were
15. 0:36committed to the truth get denied grant
16. 0:40funding because they said things which
17. 0:41were unsayable about family breakdown.
18. 0:44And I found that there was an almost
19. 0:47impossible task in
20. 0:50elaborating upon these objective facts,
21. 0:53this objective evidence, without
22. 0:55immediately being accused of being
23. 0:57horrible personally to people. I was set
24. 1:00upon by people who said,
25. 1:02"How dare you call into question what I
26. 1:05have done because I've done the best for
27. 1:07my family. I've tried my best with my
28. 1:09children." And I would say, "I didn't
29. 1:10even know you were divorced."
30. 1:12I'm not making any aspersions about
31. 1:14individuals. Individuals cope the best
32. 1:17they can with a variety of difficult
33. 1:19circumstances. Many people who are
34. 1:22divorced or who have are bringing up
35. 1:24children but on their own do an
36. 1:26absolutely magnificent job. They go to
37. 1:28enormous and heroic uh ends efforts to
38. 1:33protect their children. But
39. 1:34nevertheless, it seems to me that these
40. 1:37are situations of disadvantage. And
41. 1:41isn't it better to try to avoid
42. 1:44disadvantaging children uh wherever
43. 1:47possible? In other words,
44. 1:49we can't possibly entertain policy
45. 1:52making which deliberately exposes
46. 1:56children to disadvantage on the basis
47. 1:58that it makes their parents happy
48. 2:01because we should surely put our
49. 2:02children first. And when one's dealing
50. 2:04with public policy, one has to deal with
51. 2:07the reality as it affects the vast
52. 2:11majority of people. Uh that doesn't mean
53. 2:13that you're not sympathetic to
54. 2:14individuals going through these hard
55. 2:16things.
56. 2:17Well, those arguments went nowhere at
57. 2:19all. The subjective ruled. Uh my
58. 2:23personal feelings trumped the objective
59. 2:25evidence. And this was part and parcel
60. 2:29of something that Bioney realized after
61. 2:32many years that what was happening was
62. 2:35not
63. 2:37confined to this very emotional issue of
64. 2:40the family, which clearly had emotional
65. 2:43ramifications because people were
66. 2:45personally bound up with this issue.
67. 2:47What was happening was that the very
68. 2:51idea of objective evidence was being
69. 2:55cast aside because it was too
70. 2:57inconvenient when it got in the way what
71. 3:00people wanted, how they wanted to live
72. 3:02their own lives.
73. 3:04And
74. 3:05as the years went on, it seemed to me
75. 3:08that not only was evidence being cast
76. 3:10aside, not only was apparently objective
77. 3:14evidence by university researchers
78. 3:17becoming subjective and warped and wrong
79. 3:20and false, but the very idea of evidence
80. 3:25was being overturned. The very idea of
81. 3:28rationality and reason were being
82. 3:31dismissed.
83. 3:33And
84. 3:35this was all part and parcel of what
85. 3:38only appeared to me to be the case after
86. 3:40many years, that on issue after issue
87. 3:43after issue,
88. 3:45family lifestyle choice, um
89. 3:48multiculturalism,
90. 3:50um deep green environmentalism,
91. 3:53um moral relativism, moral and cultural
92. 3:56relativism, and all those isms, they
93. 3:59were all ideologies.
94. 4:01And the point about an ideology is that
95. 4:03the idea is sacrosanct. Nothing can get
96. 4:07in the way of the idea. That's the first
97. 4:09thing.
98. 4:10And the second thing is that all the
99. 4:12these ideologies were utopian. They were
100. 4:15all predicated on a belief basically in
101. 4:17the perfection of the world. So
102. 4:19multiculturalism would eradicate
103. 4:21prejudice from the human heart
104. 4:23completely. Um it would stop war. It
105. 4:26would stop conflict. Lifestyle choice
106. 4:29would eradicate bigotry and the bigotry
107. 4:33of a differences in people's lifestyles.
108. 4:35So no longer would people look down on
109. 4:37people who were divorced or
110. 4:39or single parents and and all that kind
111. 4:42of thing. They were all utopian. Deep
112. 4:44green environmentalism was about saving
113. 4:46the planet from frying and just being
114. 4:48destroyed completely. So anyone who
115. 4:51disagreed with these ideologies, anyone
116. 4:53who said, "Well, actually the evidence
117. 4:55shows this is wrong, factually wrong,"
118. 4:59that couldn't happen
119. 5:01because the ideology couldn't be
120. 5:03gainsaid. And because these ideologies
121. 5:06were all to do with the perfection of
122. 5:07the world, anyone who spoke against them
123. 5:10was not simply wrong, they were evil.
124. 5:14And it couldn't be said because it was
125. 5:16such an evil thing. And so you found
126. 5:19that evidence became politicized. It
127. 5:23became called right wing, ultra right
128. 5:25wing, and all the rest of those
129. 5:26epithets. And it became unsayable. And
130. 5:30the people who dared to say it found
131. 5:32themselves bullied and ostracized and
132. 5:35persecuted and removed from their social
133. 5:40uh all that they they they they lost
134. 5:41their friends. They lost their
135. 5:43professional advancement. They were
136. 5:45threatened with their jobs. Some of them
137. 5:46lost their jobs. And so you have the
138. 5:48situation we have today. And the reason
139. 5:50I wrote that book, um The Garden Angel,
140. 5:53was because
141. 5:55what had happened to me in my
142. 5:56professional life, uh when I started out
143. 5:59I worked for nearly 20 years for
144. 6:00Guardian Newspapers, the very heart of
145. 6:02this liberal universalist ideological
146. 6:05perspective. And what happened to me
147. 6:07over that period was as I
148. 6:11I I fell foul of that world
149. 6:15uh very badly. But what happened to me
150. 6:17seemed to me to to to illustrate what
151. 6:20had happened to the West, what happened
152. 6:22to Britain and to the West. And so
153. 6:24through the the story of what happened
154. 6:27to me issue by issue, I could actually
155. 6:30tell a bigger story of what happened to
156. 6:31us in the West.