This episode features a conversation with Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of History of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.  A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school social studies teacher, he holds a Ph.D. in history from the Johns Hopkins University.

His scholarship has focused broadly on the ways that different peoples have imagined and debated education across time and space. He has authored books about sex and alcohol education, history and religion in the curriculum, Americans who taught overseas, and historical memory in public schooling. His most recent work examines campus politics in the United States, the teaching of controversial issues in public schools, and the history of college teaching.

He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic.

I came across Jon’s book after hearing him on the Joe Rogan podcast and binge read his book Free Speech and Why Should Give a Damn which was both outstanding and timely - and recently reviewed with these sentiments on the blog. In this podcast, we discussed his book, the importance of free speech, the climate of censorship and tribalism in our culture and academia, the role of Big Tech, and the ultimate problem of untested ideas.

Jon is incredibly intelligent and threads the needle nicely reminding us of the freedoms we enjoy, while calling attention the problem of censorship that is alive and well at the present time.

So please, enjoy the conversation between yours truly and Johnathan Zimmerman…

Note: In this podcast, I mentioned Brett Weinstein had a dialogue on critical race theory on the Bill Maher Show. It was actually Ben Shapiro.