Hello, and Welcome to My TED Talk

This episode explores the controversy surrounding Bari Weiss's invitation to speak at TED and discusses broader themes of freedom of speech and ideological diversity.

1. Ideological Diversity is Challenged: Weiss’s experience at TED illustrates the resistance against ideological diversity within institutions that traditionally advocate for open inquiry.
2. Courage to Speak Up: The episode underscores the need for courage to express unpopular or controversial opinions in public forums.
3. Impact of Social Media: Social media plays a significant role in amplifying controversies and influencing public and institutional responses to ideological disputes.
4. Freedom of Speech Under Threat: Weiss argues that the backlash she faced is indicative of a broader societal shift towards limiting free speech in favor of ideological conformity.
5. Importance of Open Dialogue: The conversation with Chris Anderson highlights the critical need for open dialogue and the challenges of maintaining it in a polarized environment.

1: Introduction to Controversy

Weiss describes the backlash from her TED Talk announcement, emphasizing the conflict between public perception and the organization's ideals.
Bari Weiss: "I was announced as a 2024 Ted speaker, and Twitter erupted with calls for my disinvitation."

2: The Decision to Speak

Weiss deliberates whether to participate amidst the controversy, ultimately deciding to contribute her voice to foster change.
Bari Weiss: "I felt like the people who invited me were genuinely trying to right the ship and shouldn't I support that effort?"

3: The Substance of the Talk

Weiss shares the focus of her TED Talk, discussing how major issues are often overshadowed by less significant but more controversial topics.
Bari Weiss: "It's about how a few small voices end up adjudicating which voices are morally righteous and which ones are not."

4: Impromptu Conversation

Post-speech discussion with Chris Anderson on the challenges of ensuring diverse ideological representation in public discourse.
Chris Anderson: "In the quest for common ground here, is it possible that, as well as lack of courage, there's something else big going on in the hearts of many of the silent majority?"

1. Embrace Ideological Diversity: Encourage and participate in platforms that support a range of viewpoints.
2. Stand Firm in Beliefs: Maintain personal convictions even under social or professional pressure.
3. Educate on Free Speech: Promote understanding of the importance of free speech through educational initiatives.
4. Support Open Dialogue: Engage in and support efforts that foster open and respectful conversations.
5. Recognize the Role of Social Media: Be mindful of the influence of social media on public opinion and discourse.

In January, I was announced as a 2024 TED speaker in Vancouver. Predictably, a small group of very loud people were angry—mostly on Twitter. Then, five TED fellows resigned. They wrote a letter to the head of TED, Chris Anderson, titled: “TED Fellows Refuse to Be Associated with Genocide Apologists.” They pleaded to disinvite me, plus a few others who had been asked to speak, and take us off the program.

A strange thing considering that TED is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder, and the pursuit of knowledge, without an agenda: “We welcome all who seek a deeper understanding of the world and connection with others, and we invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community.” In the end, TED didn’t disinvite me. But I wondered if I should actually go.

For some people, being invited to TED probably is the most exciting thing in the world. And at one point I would have felt that way too. But I knew they were inviting me to be their token dissident voice, to prove that they are not a monolith. And on the one hand, I appreciated that effort. On the other hand, if I’m your representation for ideological diversity, if I’m your most radical speaker, then you’ve already lost.

In the end, I decided to speak. I felt like they were genuinely trying to right the ship, and shouldn’t I support that effort?

When I arrived, I was sequestered in a group with people like Bill Ackman, Avi Loeb, Andrew Yang, and Scott Galloway, and TED called our portion of the conference “The Provocateurs.” But as I looked around at my little group of five, something felt very obvious: none of us are all that provocative. Or at least we shouldn’t be. The biggest irony of all is that that was the very topic of my speech I came to Vancouver to give.

The talk is about how normal ideas and issues are often crowded out and overshadowed by boutique issues such as whether Bari Weiss should be allowed to speak at TED. It’s about how a few small voices end up adjudicating which voices are morally righteous and which ones are not. It’s about how common-sense positions became transgressive and polarizing overnight; how our ability to disagree is our freedom, and, most critically, why it’s so important to stand with conviction in our beliefs even when it means standing out in the cold.

Today, you’ll hear my talk, titled “Courage, the Most Important Virtue.” Afterward, you’ll hear a conversation I had with the head of TED, Chris Anderson, about victimhood, about how words are misinterpreted as violence, and about the paper-thin line between civilization and barbarism.

Thanks to the TED Talks Daily podcast for letting us share this episode of their show with Honestly listeners today. And if you want to hear more talks like mine, check out TED Talks Daily. Each day, the show brings you a new idea that will spark your curiosity and just might change the future, all in under 15 minutes. You can find TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

People

Bari Weiss, Chris Anderson, Bill Ackman, Avi Loeb, Andrew Yang, Scott Galloway

Content Warnings:

None

Bari Weiss
From the free press. This is honestly and I'm Barry Weiss. In January, I was announced as a 2024 Ted speaker in Vancouver, and people on Twitter, they were overjoyed. I would rather pour molten lead in my ears than listen to Barry Weiss give a TED talk about courage was one of my favorite tweets. Don't worry, Nelli feels exactly the same way.

But in all seriousness, a small group of very loud people were really angry. After the Twitter storm, five Ted fellows resigned. They wrote a letter to the head of Ted, a guy called Chris Anderson, titled Ted Fellows refused to be associated with genocide apologists. They pleaded with Ted to disinvite me and also a few others who had been asked to speak as well. This was strange, considering that the entire purpose of Ted, according to Ted, is to be devoted to, and this is a quote of curiosity, reason, wonder and the pursuit of knowledge without an agenda.

We welcome all who seek a deeper understanding of the world and connection with others. We invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community. So obviously there is a chasm between the way Ted conceives of itself and at least the way these five people conceived of Tedin. In the end, Ted didnt listen to those people. It didnt disinvite me, which, and I realize this is a low bar, is progress compared to other similar organizations.

But while this brouhaha was going on, I wondered if I should actually go. Now. For some people, being invited to Ted is probably a career highlight. At one point, I probably would have felt that way too. Not just probably, I know I would have felt that way.

But these days, like a lot of institutions I once admired, including ones I used to work for, Ted sort of lost its sheen for me. I knew they were inviting me to be, if not their single dissident voice, then one of a handful, in order to prove to themselves perhaps, that they're not a political monolith. And so on the one hand, I appreciated that effort, but on the other hand, I thought, if I'm a your representation for ideological diversity, if I'm at the outermost edge of what you consider acceptable, if I'm the most radical, and that is in scare quotes speaker out there, well, then you've sort of already lost. In the end, I decided to go. I felt like the people who invited me were genuinely trying to right the ship and shouldn't I support that effort?

When the appointed day came, I was sequestered in a group along with the likes of Bill Ackman, Avi Loeb, Andrew Yang and Scott Galloway. Ted called our portion of the conference the provocateurs. Now, there's a few ways to think about it. One of them is that Ted was sort of trying to get ahead of the controversy by naming us as controversial. In other words, they were doing a sort of preemptive damage control.

But the other thing I was thinking about as I looked around at that little group was something that to me, felt really obvious. None of us are all that provocative at all, or at least we're not in the real world. Perhaps in precincts like Ted, we are. This whole lead up that I've been giving to you, in a way, was about the substance of my TED talk itself. The talk is about how important ideas and issues, urgent ideas and issues, are often crowded out and overshadowed by very bespoken boutique ones like whether me, Barry Weiss, should be allowed to speak at TED.

When people are talking about that, what issues are they actually ignoring? Issues that are actually important. It's about how a few small voices end up adjudicating which voices are morally righteous and which ones are not. It's about how common sense became transgressive and polarizing over the past few years and how our ability to disagree is our freedom. And perhaps most critically, why it's so important to stand with conviction in our beliefs, even when it means being out in the cold.

I wanted to share that talk with you today, which is titled the most important virtue. I hope you like it. And at the end of the talk, you'll hear a conversation, an impromptu one that I had afterward with the head of Ted, Chris Anderson. I wanted to thank Chris for inviting me, and also to thank the team at the TED Talks Daily podcast for letting us share this episode of their show with honestly listeners today. If you want to hear more talks like mine, check out Ted talks daily.

Each day, the show brings you a new idea that they say will spark your curiosity, all in under 15 minutes. You can find TEd talks daily wherever you get your podcasts. Now onto the talk. Brace yourself. Get your popcorn.

It might get provocative.

Josh Hammer
Hey, guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the first podcast network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the hill, to this, to that. There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on trial with Josh hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcast.

It's America on trial with Josh Hammer. This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Do you tend to compare your life to other people on social media? Do you ever wish that you were in the south of France right now instead of in Los Angeles? Maybe it's their vacation, or their clothes, or their family, or their house, or their in ground pool, or their skincare routine, or their jewelry, or their free time, or their fitness regimen.

Bari Weiss
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Again, that's betterhelp. Betterhelp.com honestly. Let me begin with some confessions. I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, and I voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, which is shocking. I know I'm pro choice and I think the european laws are sensible ones.

I'm a very proud supporter of Israel, even though I am a critic of its current government. I think terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah are evil, and there is a bright line between groups that aim to kill innocents and those that try to avoid doing so at all costs. I think that girls in Afghanistan shouldn't be sold into child marriages, and that women in Iran should be free to show their hair in public without fear of imprisonment or worse, and that women in Somalia should not endure genital mutilation. I believe that all people are created equal and created in the image of God, but that all cultures are not equal. I believe in gay marriage, so much so that I'm actually in one myself.

I believe that adults should make pretty much any decision they want about their bodies, but that children should not. I think the SAT is an imperfect but useful tool. I think defunding the police is a very bad idea, and that living in a safe neighborhood is among the truest forms of privilege. I think Covid probably came from a lab, and that, in retrospect, locking kids out of school for two years was a big mistake. I think we should hire people based on their merit, but cast as wide a net as possible.

I don't want to eat bugs, nor do I want to drink water full of microplastics. And I don't think there's anything coded right or left, about either of those things. I believe that equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome is the true measure of fairness. I am repelled by ideologies that insist that our immutable characteristics are more important than our character. I don't like riots.

I don't like mobs, and I hate lies. And I love America for all of its flaws. I believe in part because Americans are free to debate those flaws and to strive for a more perfect union, that it really is the last, best hope on earth.

The point in all of this is that I am really boring. Or at least I thought I was. I am. Or at least until a few seconds ago, in historical time, I used to be considered a standard issue liberal. And yet somehow, in our most intellectual and prestigious spaces, many of the ideas I just outlined and others like them, have become provocative or controversial.

Which is really a polite way of saying unwelcome, beyond the pale, even bigoted or racist. How? How did these relatively boring views come to be seen as off limits? And how did that happen? At least it seems to me, in the span of under a few years now.

The convenient answer, of course, is the power of extreme activists. People who burn down businesses and police stations, people who shut down bridges and highways, people who harass their fellow students and shout down their professors, people who vandalize, who desecrate or tear down monuments of national heroes. But do a handful of extreme activists really have the power to dismantle the moral guardrails of a whole society? To radically shift the Overton window of what is politically and socially acceptable? I don't think so.

There has always been and always will be a fringe. The difference right now is that the fringe seems to be calling the shots. If you want to know why things have been turned upside down, why so many people are asking themselves if they've gone crazy, or if the world has. As they hear feminist groups justify rape as a tool of resistance, as groups that call themselves anti racist, advocate for a new kind of segregation, as young, highly educated people chant the slogans of jihadi terrorist groups. Well, I ultimately don't think that's because of a few maniacs that are throwing paint on masterpieces in our museums.

It's because they have been allowed to do so. And the question is why? Perhaps to give the most generous read. It's because the people shutting things down claim to be doing so in the name of justice, not in the name of nihilism. Because we believe them.

Or perhaps it's because we told ourselves, it's just a few nuts. I don't need to get involved. Or maybe it's because people looked at their portfolio and decided that they were doing great by the numbers. And those torch stores, eh, they probably had insurance anyway. Or because it was a headache.

Or because they're just kids. Or because why die on that hill? Or maybe it was because we thought they had a point, that America and the west really were guilty of all of the terrible things that they said, or at least of some of them. And though we wouldn't have torn down statues or shouted down speakers, we lacked the conviction or the ideas to stop the people doing it. Or because maybe in the end, we prized comfort over complexity.

I was going to say prized comfort over truth. But the thing is, truth isn't something you pull out of the ground like gold or diamonds. It is a process sustained by a culture of questioning, including self questioning. Which is why right now, it can look like the absolutists are winning.

My theory is that the reason we have a culture in crisis is because of the cowardice of people that know better. It is because the weakness of the silent, or rather, the self silencing majority. So why have we been silent? Simple. Because it's easier.

Because speaking up is hard. It is embarrassing, it makes you vulnerable. It exposes you. As someone who is not chill, as someone who cares a lot, as someone who makes judgments, as someone who discerns between right and wrong, between better and worse. The reason Aristotle called courage the first virtue is because it is the one that makes all of the other virtues possible.

Do you want to live in a world that values justice, wisdom, compassion, curiosity, rationality, equality, and the pursuit of truth? I do. But fighting to make sure we live in such a world is going to take courage, that first virtue. I think one of the lessons of the past decade is that cowardice is perhaps more contagious than Covid, but so is courage. And a singular example can serve as a powerful means of transmission.

So who are those examples? Each one of you, when I say the word courage, will have the ones that come to mind for you. But for me. For me, they are people like Salman Rushdie, sentenced to death by the iranian ayatollahs in 1989 for the sin of writing a novel. He lived under the shadow of a fatwa until two years ago, on a stage like this one, he was viciously stabbed.

But he survived and undaunted. This week, of course, he published a book about it. Courage for me is someone like Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, who insists that there is nothing contradictory about his progressive values and his belief that Hamast is a band of murderers that must be defeated. Now, suffice it to say, this has not made him popular, but he doesn't seem to care. While a lot of other people have moved on out of political expediency, his office in DC is the one that remains papered with photos of all of the hostages.

Courage, to me looks like Stanford medical professor doctor Jay Bhattacharya. Jay studies the health and well being of vulnerable populations for a living, and he foresaw the social and mental health crisis that would follow the COVID lockdowns, he said so he explained it calmly. But for doing so, Twitter blacklisted him. YouTube censored him. The medical establishment ostracized and slandered him.

He wrote, I could not believe this was happening in a country that I so love. And yet he did not tremble. He said, the healing of the world starts by one person saying loudly, so the whole world can hear an important, true thing that he knows he's not supposed to say and that he knows will get him in trouble for saying it. I think about Roland Fryer, the economist, who did just that. His colleagues at Harvard warned him against publishing research that he did into police violence.

You'll ruin your career, they told him. And that's because his research found that while there was racial bias in low level police force, there wasn't when it came to police shootings. Now, Roland himself was shocked by these findings. He knew it went against his own assumptions. He knew it would outrage people.

But he published the research anyway. And it wasn't simply that his reputation suffered. He had to hire an armed guard in Cambridge. His baby was seven days old and he had to go to buy diapers with an armed guard. Where did he get the courage to do it?

Simple, he told me. I don't covet what they covet, he said. Every day I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, what are you here for? Masia Leenajad knows what she is put on earth for. With moxie and courage, she is leading the campaign for women's rights in Iran.

Her sister was forced to denounce her on state television, her brother was thrown in jail for her dissent. And now Masi lives in exile in America, but remains a hunted woman, moving from safehouse to safe house. And yet she does not stop shouting for freedom. Nor does Jimmy Lai, the media mogul whose pro democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, was shut down as China took over Hong Kong. Jimmy had more than the means to flee his country.

He is a billionaire with a british passport, but he stayed. Now is not the time for safety, he said. This is a time for sacrifice. Today is his 1204th day in prison. His son Sebastian said this of his father, dad staying in Hong Kong is really proof that this intangible thing we call liberty is a thing people yearn for.

You can call it western values, but it's not really in the sense that it's not something that only people in the west want or deserve. Alexei Navalny was not born in the west, but he yearned for that kind of liberty. The opposition leader had refuge in Germany, but he flew back into Putin's Russia, sacrificing his freedom and ultimately his life to oppose tyranny. He knew that his death would expose the truth about a totalitarian regime built on lies, which it can, so long as we keep his memory alive. Navalny lived and died beneath the shadow of a tyranny that we are fighting to prevent in our still young but ever darkening century.

Ask yourself right now, should it take courage in the west to denounce the hateful ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which pronounces death on individual writers and on entire countries, large and small? Should it take courage to oppose those chanting death to America? Should it take courage to say, no, that's wrong? Should it take courage to say that those who praise the pristine subways of Russia are not journalists but propagandists?

Should it take courage to just say in public, I disagree? Right now it does. My friend Colman Hughes, who spoke on this stage last year and who advocates for the colorblind ideal championed by Martin Luther King junior, rather than give in to the race essentialism that's become chic these days? He'll debate anyone. He'll disagree with anyone.

But why is it that his angriest opponents prefer to call him hateful names and to lobby for his exclusion? The question, I think, is whether or not the people I've mentioned and those like them, whether their photos and their names and most importantly, their ideas will show up at conferences like this one. And that's up to you. I've had enough people confess to me after lectures or in newsrooms or on college campuses or in corporations or cafes, really, everywhere I go, that they wish they could say what they believe. They tell me with some measure of shame that they're closeted in our liberal democracies.

It's a really strange phenomenon. The freest people in the history of the world seem to have lost the hunger for liberty, or maybe it's really the will to defend it. And when they tell me this, it puts me in mind of my hero, Natan Sharansky, who spent a decade in the soviet gulag before getting his freedom. He is the single bravest person that I have ever met in my life. And a few years ago, one afternoon in Jerusalem, I asked him a simple Natan.

I asked him, is it possible to teach courage? And he smiled in his impish way and said, no. All you can do is show people how good it feels to be free. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll be right back with my Q and a with Chris Anderson. Stay with us. The session's going to run long.

Chris Anderson
I'm sorry, but it matters. Thank you. That was a great talk. Saw people stand and cheer. Other people didn't stand.

You're in the middle of. I was expecting Heckler, so I'm really happy. But these issues are so important, and this is such an important conversation, I think. I want to ask you something. In the quest for common ground here, is it possible that, as well as lack of courage, there's something else big going on in the hearts of many of the silent majority, which, for want of a better word, is love?

It's like that. These are often debates between identity groups, and many of us don't like the way that the battle is going. But we also feel deeply the pain that a lot of these groups have gone through, the injustices that they have suffered. And if you get involved, it can so easily be seen as you are against that group? And I guess I'm just wondering whether there's common ground to be found in us all saying identity really matters.

And, I mean, you care about the past injustices of people in America and all the different groups you've talked about, but that there are some things that are upstream of identity that matter even more. You mentioned truth, the pursuit of truth. We have common ground on that. I believe that passionately. I believe that about ideas.

Some people want to say that ideas are a property of one group, but no, no, our whole, Ted is all based on the notion that ideas can spread from any human to any human. But the whole question is, sorry to interrupt. How do you get to truth? Right. And the west has given us the most radical tools in human history.

Bari Weiss
I think Sam Harris is probably in this room, and I'm stealing his line. But the radical departure is that here in rooms like this one, in cultures like the ones that we are lucky enough to live in, we don't solve our conflicts with blows and with violence. We solve them with words. And that is why it is so absolutely crucial, no matter how people who are really advocating to burn it all down or tear it all down know, by tearing it all down, by tearing down the rule of law, by disallowing us to be able to have this kind of debate and discussion, you're preventing the whole project itself. And that has nothing to do with identity, with claims of victimhood, with actual victimhood.

The entire way that progress has been achieved is by victim groups using the tools that liberal democracies have provided them with. Without freedom, without freedom of speech, freedom of religion, without the rule of law, none of the progress that I know so many people in this room celebrate would be possible at all. And so it's really about clinging to the tools rather than repudiating them. I agree with that. I agree with that.

Chris Anderson
The tools of words in our current culture, which is. Soundbite fast stuff. It's so often heard as an assault. It's heard not as words and exploration of truth. It's heard as hatred or criticism.

And I just wonder whether there could be a coalition of the willingness to all double down exactly on what you said. Let's pursue the truth. Let's pursue the best ideas. Let's not be fearful of sharing things that are difficult with each other but do so in a spirit of love and respect and so that everyone can know that at heart they are respected. We're all trying to make things better, I think.

Bari Weiss
I don't see anything to disagree with there, only that, you know, like love and compassion and all of that. Again, it's only possible if we agree to a certain set of rules that I think many of us took for granted in the way we take oxygen or gravity for granted. And one of the things that has driven me and my choices over the past years of my life is a profound sense that the line between civilization and barbarism, a word that maybe will provoke some people but I believe is an accurate description, is paper thin. The things that allow for us to do this are so exceptional, and they have to be fought for. And the people that claim that words are violence are taking away the most fundamental tool we have for all of the virtues that I was trying to talk about on stage here this morning.

Chris Anderson
Barry, thank you. Thank you so much. You've ignited an incredibly important conversation here. Thank you for doing that. Please stay.

Please continue this conversation and thank you for what you said. Thanks for having me.

Bari Weiss
Thanks for listening. I realize this TED talk is not about the empathy of the octopus or the brilliance of the New Yorker cartoons or the future of AI or climate change. There's much smarter people that gave those talks at TeD. But I think that this is something that all of us can relate to, and I hope that you could. If you liked this speech, if it made you think about the moment that we're living through, or it made you think about the importance of being courageous, even in small ways, share this with your friends and family and use it to have an honest conversation of your own.

Last but not least, please support honestly, really do it. It only costs $8 a month, and you can only do it one way. It's becoming a subscriber to the free Press. Go to thefp.com. and for $8 a month, support the fearless, dogged and independent journalism that we try and deliver to you every single episode on this show.

Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.