Permission to Think is a public event speaker series of online conversations featuring thought leaders curated by Professor Alan Davison, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), and interviewed by broadcaster Josh Szeps.
Permission To Think
What is Permission to Think?
The overarching theme that connects the Permission to Think series is the role of intellectuals and institutions during this age of outrage in public debate of complex issues, especially in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) disciplines. Topics covered will include "hot button" issues such as race relations, sex, gender, politics and more general concerns such as misinformation, sense-making and trust in institutions.
In each episode Josh will interview someone with a unique story to tell. The common factor they share is direct experience of the political and ideological echo-chamber of many of our media institutions or current academic communities, and the coercive aspects of cancel culture and self-censoring in public discourse and within the academy.
Listen to the full podcast of Professor Alan Davison's interview with Josh Szeps on why he set up this new series via Apple or Spotify.
Interviewer: Josh Szeps
Josh Szeps is a broadcaster, journalist and a Professional Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He is also a UTS alumnus. With an extensive media career which includes a decade in New York as a founding host and producer of HuffPost Live, Josh is currently a presenter on ABC Radio Sydney. His podcast is Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps.
Dr. Peter Boghossian is a philosopher and author, and his main focus is bringing the tools of professional philosophers to people in a wide variety of contexts. Peter has a teaching pedigree spanning more than 25 years and 30 thousand students - in prisons, hospitals, public and private schools, seminaries, universities, Fortune 100 companies, and small businesses. His fundamental objective is to teach people how to think through what often seem to be intractable problems.
Peter's primary research areas are critical thinking and moral reasoning. His doctoral research studies, funded by the State of Oregon and supported by the Oregon Department of Corrections, consisted of using the Socratic method to help prison inmates to increase their critical thinking and moral reasoning abilities and to increase their desistance to criminal behavior.
Peter is co-author of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide (2019) and you can check out his website and follow him on Twitter - @peterboghossian.
Within this first episode, Peter and Josh discuss topics including "The Grievance Studies Affair", "The Problem with ‘Critical Studies’: Ideology vs Truth", "Dominant Narratives, Moral Orthodoxy and Reality", "The Abuse of Language and New Meanings of Words", "Equity, Ideology and Education" amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify
Watch the full video or individual clips of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
Dr Elham Manea is a Yemeni Swiss writer, activist and political science professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Her research focuses upon comparative politics of the Arabian peninsula (especially Yemen & Saudi Arabia), Legal pluralism and Islamic law (Women under Muslim Laws), gender and politics in MENA Context, and political Islam. She consults for government agencies and international organisations and was appointed to the Federal Commission for Women Affairs (EKF) in 2010 and to the Federal Commission for Migration (EKM) in 2021 by the Swiss Federal Council. She is the Vice President of the EKM.
Elham is also the author of several books. Her latest book, published in 2021 by Telos Press, is entitled The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism.
You can check out her website and follow her on Twitter - @ElhamManea.
Within this second episode, Elham and Josh discuss topics including "Islam and the West, Women and Shari‘a Law", "Opposition to Sectarianism and Religious Courts", "Research in the UK on Shari‘a Law and how it’s different in Tunisia", "The Problem of Unregistered Marriages", and "The Growth of Islamism" amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify
Watch the full video or individual clips of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
Dr. Dina McMillan is a social psychologist originally from California where she earned both an M.A. degree and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She specializes in interpersonal relationships, social stratification (bias and racism), improved cognitive understanding, and changing cultural norms. Her work also includes issues such as domestic and family violence prevention and response, sexual assault risks and recovery, and addressing problematic sexual behaviour in children and youth (PSB-CY). Her interpersonal focus includes varied topics such as assessing and addressing relationship imbalance, building solid protection from toxic relationships, and the effects of working from home and via videoconference.
Dina developed a ground-breaking program to educate the public on the earliest signs of domestic abuse called, Unmasking the Abuser. It includes a book entitled, But He Says He Loves Me: How to Avoid Being Trapped in a Manipulative Relationship. The book offers practical, specific insights to identify abusive relationships from the earliest phases. Dina McMillan also created an international anti-bias program in 2020 called Healing the Rift to educate on both the causes and effects of persistent racial and other types of bias. It offers realistic steps to address these problems that are both inclusive and unifying.
You can follow her on Twitter - @drdina1
Within this third episode, Dina and Josh discuss topics including "Structure and Tactics of Abusive and Manipulative Relationships", "Developing Resilience in Abusive Relationships", "Racism and Language Codes", amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify
Watch the full video or individual clips of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
Episode Four: Interview with Dr Alice Dreger
Dr Alice Dreger is a writer, historian, journalist, and as founder and publisher of a successful local newspaper.
Her books have been published by Penguin Press, Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Amazon Kindle Singles. Dreger’s best known book is Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice, which argues that the pursuit of evidence is the most important ethical imperative of our time.
Alice earned her Ph.D. in 1995 in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University, where her work was supported by a Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Since then, she has often been called a public intellectual, in part because she has simultaneously published widely-cited major original work in scholarly journals and high-visibility essays in the mainstream press. Her bylines include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the Guardian, the Atlantic, WIRED, New Scientist, Pacific Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Aeon magazine, and more.
She is the recipient of an Outstanding Leadership Award in Comprehensive Sexuality Education from SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), and the Healthy Teen Network.
Alice frequently delivers keynotes and plenaries, and to date has given about 200 invited lectures. Her TEDx lecture, Is Anatomy Destiny, has been viewed over a million times, and she has appeared as a guest expert on hundreds of media programs over the years, including Oprah, Savage Love, Good Morning America, and NPR, and in many original documentaries, including for A&E, ABC, Discovery, PBS, and HBO.
You can check out her website and follow her on Twitter - @AliceDreger.
Within this fourth episode, Alice and Josh discuss topics including "Intersex and Gender Diversity", "Hormone-History Categories in Sport" amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify.
Watch the full video of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
Episode Five: Interview with Professor Lee Jussim
Professor Lee Jussim is a social psychologist and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers New Brunswick’s Psychology Department. He is a founding member of Heterodox Academy, the Academic Freedom Alliance, and the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences.
Lee's research is on stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination; political radicalization; and identification and reform of suboptimal scientific practices in social science. His 2012 book, Social Perception and Social Reality received an award from the American Association of Publishers as best book in psychology that year.
He also started his blog, Rabble Rouser, which addresses issues of scientific integrity, the credibility of psychological research, and the problem of political biases distorting research, conclusions, and claims in the social and, occasionally, the natural sciences.
During his sabbatical year at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 2013-14, Lee started Stanford’s Best Practices in Science group with Jon Krosnick and Simine Vazire. Among other things, that group created this website, which is something of a clearinghouse and curation of scholarship on scientific integrity, best practices, how science goes wrong, and how to get it back on track. The social sciences, and, sometimes, the natural sciences, can be distorted by by all sorts of non-scientific motivations on the part of scientists — fame, fortune, promotions, grants, and politics are all likely distorters of science – most of which are outlined in his publication page.
You can follow him on Twitter - @PsychRabble
Within this fifth episode, Lee and Josh discuss topics including "Free Speech", " Radicalisation in academia" amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify.
Watch the full video of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
Episode Six: Interview with Professor Jonathan Haidt
Professor Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and taught for 16 years in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia
Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of progressive, conservatives, and libertarians. His goal is to help people understand each other, live and work near each other, and even learn from each other despite their moral differences. Haidt has co-founded a variety of organizations and collaborations that apply moral and social psychology toward that end, including HeterodoxAcademy.org, OpenMindPlatform.org, and EthicalSystems.org.
Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). He has written more than 100 academic articles. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s “Top 50 Thinkers.” He has given four TED talks.
You can check out his website and follow him on Twitter - @jonhaidt
Within this sixth episode, Jonathan and Josh discuss topics including "Impact of social media on Mental Health" and his latest article "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid", amongst others.
Listen to the full podcast via Apple or Spotify.
Watch the full video of the interview via the Permission to Think playlist.
