(crowd yelling) Take him down.
In may of 2017,
I became public enemy number one
at a college where I had been
a very popular professor for 14 years.
The bearded man
with his hands on his head is Bret Weinstein,
a biology professor at the college.
He criticized an effort to have white students
and staff stay away from campus for a day.
For that,
he says he was labeled a racist.
There was a long standing tradition
at Evergreen called Day of Absence in which faculty,
staff and students of color did not come
to campus for one day to emphasize
the importance of the role
that they were playing there.
In 2017,
white people were asked not to come to campus.
This did not sit well with me.
I wrote a letter saying that this was
an unacceptable policy
and that I intended to show up on campus.
Despite having been a liberal for my whole life,
I was told that I was a racist.
On May 23rd,
50 students that I had never met,
showed up,
disrupted my class,
accused me of racism and demanded
that I either resign or be fired.
The protesters filmed our interaction
and it went viral.
(people chanting)
As news of the protest spread across the country,
counter-demonstrations came to campus
and police arrested a New Jersey man
after they say he phoned in a threat to kill people
on campus. On the second day
of the protest,
the chief of police called me.
He told me not to come
to campus because the police could not protect me there.
The administrators sided with the protestors,
even though they knew full well
there was no evidence of racism.
The administration couldn't fire me
because I was tenured
and because it was a public college
and I had the right to free speech.
My wife was literally
the college's most popular professor
and I was very well liked.
But ultimately we were forced to leave.
There was just simply no way to continue
in that environment.
This example of cancel culture has been widely circulated.
The fact is this turned our lives upside down.
This phenomenon is spreading.
Sooner or later,
it comes for everyone.
And when it does,
you'll find yourself in a hall of mirrors.
You won't know what's what.
I am not a racist.
Everything about the life I have led would tell you that.
But the fact is it didn't matter.
It was not enough to save my job.
The story that was being told about me
in the end won even though it wasn't true.
Well, please welcome virtually from Oregon,
Dr. Brett Weinstein.
Doctor, thank you for joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
This is a sad
and tragic example of what Piers describes in his book,
"Wake Up."
And the thing I guess that bothers me the most
about it is people weren't really interested
in what you truly believed
or what you truly stood for,
but instead finding an example
that they could use to springboard
into a cause.
Were you used in that way?
Yes and I think that's maybe
the most important thing
about the event that took place is
that there was,
they needed a villain
and they didn't think very carefully about
who they targeted and how well that story was going to play.
They just needed someone
to play the part of a racist.
And by choosing me,
it created an ability
to see essentially behind the curtain.
My students knew that I wasn't a racist,
most of my faculty colleagues did as well.
And so the fact that I was pursued
as if I had said something egregious allowed the world
in some sense to see
that this isn't about guilt at all.
It's about power.
But Piers,
this is the mob mentality
that you're describing in
the cancel culture, right?
It's an absolutely classic,
and if I may say so,
utterly disgraceful example of cancel culture.
We need to cancel this insidious cancel culture.