KOL254 | Interviewing Tom Woods About Getting Into Harvard

the Tom would show episode 1304 prepared a set fire to the index card of

allowable opinion your daily dose of Liberty education starts here the Tom

woods show hail you homeschooling parents out there you may be thinking to

yourselves well it’s too far into the school year for me to change homeschooling programs now so we’ll just

have to slog through it if that’s how you feel go ahead and Chuck that labor-intensive

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everybody Tom was here with Stephan Kinsella you know Stephan as the author

of against intellectual property which is an extremely challenging book it’s

the kind of book whose thesis you almost don’t want to accept when you first start reading it and then by the end of

it you want to take that book and bash people over the head who don’t accept it so it’s very very well done interesting

he’s also the author of the forthcoming as in early 2009 international

investment political risk and dispute resolution a practitioners guide published by Oxford and you can find him

I pretty sure at Stephan Kinsella comm am i right Stefan that’s all correct

okay all right well I’m gonna blame you for this episode if it turns out badly and maybe take the credit if it turns

out well but it was Stefan’s idea the other day we were on facebook Messenger it’s but we have decent we’ll go like a

week no conversation to three weeks and then it’ll be this incredible flurry of back and forth messages on all kinds of

things we’re having one of those the other day and you have a son who you tell me is in the I know you have a son

of course but I didn’t know what grade he was in the tenth grade and so it’s in fact I have a daughter who’s in the tenth grade and so you think about

college and I know we got people who say you shouldn’t go to college I get that but it’s it’s you know it’s for some

people it’s the wise thing to do and you got to do it on a case-by-case basis but you’re in that mode you’re thinking once

again just as you were when you were kid about college and college application

in the process and so you thought it would be interesting to talk to me about my own experience and I insisted this

would not be interesting in any way and then you persuaded me more or less that

there may be people who would find this interesting and so I mean look if I’ve

done episodes on my stupid musical tastes then probably we can do an episode on this so I thought in this

episode I might kind of in a way turn the hosts mic over to you in a way yeah

to let you kind of guide the conversation and ask me things that you think I might be able to help with yeah

and I’m a lot of Tom woods completest so I wasn’t sure if you’d talk about this before that’s why I was sort of asking you but yeah I’m in that mode where you

know tenth grader everyone’s all my friends were thinking about college and yeah most people I know their kids are

going to college and you know I haven’t let my son know that not going to college is an option okay so he’s going to go right he’s one of these thanks but

only for also for my own interest I’ve always been you know I went to a big state school and so a lot of us you

might not know it we have Ivy League Envy right you know we kind of are we’re mystified by the the people to get to go

to those kind of schools right and especially now that my kids getting to

this point you know we want better things for our kids and to go to LSU or something like that not to bash LSU but

and these days given the phd glut yeah almost any school is gonna have a really

top-flight faculty well and I’m sure you’re noticing to the college process now is apparently totally different than

we were when we were young or at least southerners when we were young I mean it was you’re raised near a big state

school you apply there and you go it’s really simple and it was pretty cheap and you did fine so you didn’t have the

the issue of like oh maybe I’ll go cross-country or maybe I’ll go here or what scholarship process like and how do

I maximize my AC T scores or SAT scores and by the way has it ever annoyed you

that people say in especially some Yankees say SATs with a plural like I

took my SATs instead oh yeah I think I probably say that but I I get why that’s

annoying yeah I mean it’s it’s it’s not quite as bad as ATM machine no she makes

me want to commit an atrocity yeah I’m standing on line instead of in line but okay your thing – yeah I know I know

I don’t know why they say that and anyway so you know it just so you went

to Harvard and the whole process just I’m always impressed by someone who was able to somehow do that especially and

so I was just curious how the hell did you do it because you know if you have a kid like all my friends kids we’re all

we assume that Gale and Harvard these things are sort of how to reach or that it’s really political now it’s extremely

competitive you know you hear stories about some of the better schools even if you make a perfect SAT you’re not

guaranteed to get it right so you know I don’t know what it was like or and just

what the whole experience was like and by the way you and I both spoke at Yale in the last year so which was right for

me it was a pleasure because I can’t turn down a chance to speak at a place that wouldn’t have allowed me and as an undergrad all right let’s dive it now

first of all I did notice it’s not the same topic but it’s a related topic that all the way back in episode 239 I have

an episode called how Tom navigated academia right and and so that was more once I got in right how did I fit in and

stuff like that that’s kind of a different thing but I’ll link to that on this show notes page as a related thing so how did I do well the thing is I’m

I’m not entirely sure so let’s just walk through we’ll talk about what I did and apparently it turned out to be enough I

will say that I went for a campus interview you have to do at least one

interview you have to have at least the alumni interview and if you happen to live within reasonable distance of

Cambridge you can also do an on-campus interview that was the way they did it in my day anyway so I lived 45 minutes

away from campus so I did both interviews even they what they wouldn’t let you do an on-campus interview if you

didn’t live close oh you could they just didn’t want to disadvantage you like well if you don’t do one here than

Bennet I just I figured I might as well I thought I made a pretty good impression of people so I might as well do it twice so I went in for that

interview but what I remember about it is we had somebody in my high school who was a year before me who had just

everything could ask for scholar athlete he had every credential you could ask for and he was rich ejected from Harvard and so I brought

that up and I just to say I had a little apprehension because I couldn’t understand how this guy right would not

have gotten in and they asked the the woman Niner that maybe this was the alumni owner but I don’t report it was

in Cambridge in fact I bet my life on it actually nothing about and it was the answer that came back was we basically

frankly said that he was a white man and she said we I’m not kidding you we probably already had enough of those

right when I was right right well just flat out well let me back up a second though so you came from sort of like

blue-collar family or lower family and so you didn’t have any legacies or or so

so we were oh did you go to leave high school or just a regular high school or how does the public public high school

okay and so I assume you had good grade yeah I was the valedictorian okay so we

had okay so that’s one explanation I guess between Don elector Ian straight A’s helps but like so you knew you

wanted to go to college when you were in high school yeah definitely and did you think I can go anywhere in the country

is it was money concern for you was distance a concern what what were you thinking in terms of what kinds of

colleges yeah I figured I’d apply and then cross the money bridge when I came to it because a lot of the places I was

applying to were fairly generous with financial aid right and I remember my dad saying look I’ll make this happen

one way or the other for you because I want you to to flourish and it okay you you know you should go to the best place

you can go so that was my thinking so I applied to a bunch of places I don’t remember all of them and I don’t

remember what my safety school was but I applied for so called early action right Harvey right so by December I already

knew I’d been accepted I didn’t have to wait till April like everybody else I already got the letter in the mail and it was I when I got the envelope out of

the mailbox it was a slightly thick envelope so I knew I’d been accepted because what are they gonna send me a

multiple letter telling multiple page letter telling me all the reasons I’m terrible I assumed that meant I got in

which a day that I had but when I look back on it I did have some there

certainly is a major gap in my application from the point of view of the standard applicant and that is I

know this is gonna come as a a shock to listeners but I wasn’t really an athlete in school and I think people

thought that you have to be so-called well-rounded if you’re going to be accepted and I didn’t have that aspect

of it I didn’t know wrestling Tom yeah exactly no no that’s a microphallus

joke sorry yeah or or an Andy Kaufman joke and no wrestling women either so

what I did have was a lot was strong academics very strong extracurriculars

and then I did unusual thing yeah I wasn’t on the football team but I worked really hard on a state Senate campaign

yeah I know I know I feel silly about that now but but he was a good guy and the the incumbent was a bomb and and so

in other words I did things that you know showed some initiative and that were unusual for somebody my age to do

and I think that kind of substituted for the athlete thing they thought well you know this guy’s a little bit different

they were willing to do that I did have the high test scores I had great I had recommendations from

my teachers that were like right just out of this world in fact one of my

teachers what they like is this is also by the way advice people have to write reference letters if you just have

generic glowing remarks that’s actually not that helpful what they really want to know is give us specifics so we can

get a real feel for this person and I remember my chemistry teacher I had taken ap chemistry with him and he

recalled a time when he and I and a couple other students went to UMass for a weekend conference that’s what geeks

we were went to a conference with our teacher and in the middle of the night I get up because there was some who’s a

math but I was preparing for a big I was on the math team and I was preparing for some big thing and there was a problem

that it was driving me crazy in the middle of the night I figured out how to solve it so I got up and I to get over

to like a part of the room where there’s some light coming through the window I don’t want to disturb anybody and I sat there and I solved it and my teacher

the next day said did you wake up in the night and I explained to him what was going on and he included that little story in the liner yeah and so that made

it seem like all right this is a guy who doesn’t just get good grades and then forgets about it like he’s really

invested in the stuff that he’s studying well so let me into this um was Harvard

your goal College had they just always been assume like this is the best country so if I could get in there that’s obvious or was it because of a a

major or was Yale or in Cambridge and Oxford also like goals of yours or what

were you thinking about selecting or trying to get into Harvard right I mean there certainly is obviously a certain

luster to the Harvard name there’s no question about that but then you combine that with the fact that it was drivable

to my house not that I was gonna live at home but that I I just liked the idea that I was far enough away that I was

doing my own laundry but not so far away that in a pinch I couldn’t go home for the weekend now as it turns out I think

I went home for the weekend once in the four years I was there and I was just burned out I just needed to rest away

from you but otherwise of course I didn’t want to leave this is a paradise where would I want to go it was great so

so that was the thinking that was top-notch and it was within and I sort of familiar with it I mean I didn’t

hadn’t lived that far away from it it wasn’t particularly because of a major because I wasn’t super super convinced

of what my major would be but I figured unless I’m going into engineering and at that time the Harvard engineering

program was not really very good there’s almost no way I can go wrong right

so they don’t make you declare a major in the beginning and at the end of the

first year you have to declare your concentration okay and that was all I needed was one year to really sort out

that I wanted to go into history which I would never have guessed in a million years and did you did you – did you

consider the other kind of premiere schools on MIT or Oxford or Cambridge or anything overseas or Yale or never

overseas I’m such a homebody I always feel like a fish out of water when I’m overseas I mean I can stay for a week

and do sightseeing and enjoy myself but after that I need my bed and my surroundings and people who speak

English in the accent I’m accustomed to things like that I just need that so definitely on overseas MIT I wouldn’t

have because I wasn’t committed to anything in math and science I mean even though MIT actually really has great

historians – right right but I didn’t you know what did I know at that point now I I really felt like you know as you

say I just wanted to go to the place that I you know I was led to believe was

the best place I could go to plus it would be a challenge to see could I really with the credentials I had impress them enough to let me in

given how rigorous the admission process is and so did you get other acceptances

or was the other one too early for you even bother well once I got accepted at Harvard I withdrew my applications from

everywhere else yeah yeah I mean I suppose I could have kept them go but yeah I think it was wrong wrong to make

them spend effort on that when there’s no real need so yeah I withdrew everywhere else and I officially I wrote

back and said yep I’ll be there and your parents freaked out when they

found oh absolutely insane absolutely insane that my father who’s since deceased worked as a forklift operator

in a food warehouse and my mother called him up and at work and because he worked

nights and she called and said you know it’s really urgent that he’d come for the phones he races to the phone and she

says do you think we’ll be able to get tickets to the harvard-yale game he said you got to be well he ain’t say kidding

me I’ll say then he went around telling everybody and it was very exciting and the whole time I was there because we

were close by you know he would come over we’d go to like a hockey game against Harvard actually had a decent

hockey team and we’d go to games together and there was one time we saw Senator John Kerry he was the senator US

Senator at that time and I mean he was just blown away and my father at that too he got his GED when he was in his

40s but he hadn’t finished high school he had taken a course of Harvard in bartending and he always used to joke

about that and I was kind of a legacy because after all he’d gone to Harvard before me well did you have brothers and

sisters or only time for what no it’s just me yeah all the lung can be showered on the one kid ok so you don’t

know if you would have had a bunch of smart by me so I assume your father was pretty smart too so you probably got some of your smartness I mean even

though he didn’t have the formal credentials right he absorbed material so quickly and mastered it to the point

where nobody really wanted to argue with him well partly because he never shut up but also because he was really good at

it now so I assume is my impression correct that it’s harder to get into like a Harvard for an undergrad than

they’d like you went into Columbia for a grad school right which is another elite school yeah

I assume grad school is a little bit different that once you once you’ve got your credentials under your belt it’s probably easier to get into a grad

school knowing what you want to do right I actually did not find that I had more difficulty getting into grad school and

it was partly because what I wanted to do it was hard to find quite the right

match with the the faculty that I wanted like for his right at Harvard at that time was going through turmoil they

really did not have very many if any tenured twentieth-century professors and I was gonna work in the

20th century and my my dissertation director was Alan Brinkley the son of the newsman David Brinkley and they had

passed Alan Brinkley over for tenure now Brinkley is credentialed like you wouldn’t believe there’s no reason

Brinkley shouldn’t have gotten tenure at Harvard they immediately tenured in Columbia like of course we’re gonna what

is wrong with these people so I ended up working with him because he was the most

versatile 20th century person I could find but the thing is you would when you

apply for graduate school they really want to know about your research interests right I mean partly there’s probably a very slight ideological

filter that’s going on there but it really is mainly a question of do we have people whose specialty matches up

with your expectations and if we don’t it doesn’t matter how smart you are you’re just not a good fit for this

department so that was the issue whereas there’s an undergrad they don’t really have to delve into your particular

interests because you’re not really going to be pursuing them here you need to get a much broader education yet I

think you may also be thinking a little bit from the perspective of the liberal arts kind of academia perspective like

what you’re going to get a PhD the person that you study under matters whereas you’re like from my perspective

it’s more engineering and practical stuff like sorry and people that are going to have an MBA or something or an

engineering degree I think they just want to go to a competent quality school like there’s not a name that’s there

that it really matters by absolutely I are not getting a PhD and so by that time you want to give you a teacher but

but I’m curious about your Harvard so you get accepted to Harvard and you know because you probably know this a lot of

parents like that where I’m from especially when you have multiple children and especially when you or the

parents are well off right there they have good jobs so kind of have the impression that you

know my kids probably not going to get financial aid and he’s probably not going to be the valedictorian and get a scholarship right so a lot of kids are

told look you can go to LSU or at Texas A&M you have to go to a state school get in-state tuition or this is how much we

can afford and nowadays of course if that’s all you can afford then your

other options to take student loans out I mean by and large it’s not worth breaking $200,000 for the student loans

to get no no no humanity yes so let me let me tell how I did it first of all Harvard does not have

academic scholarships period it does not have them the the money they give you is need-based only and so they basically

look at your family’s income and they come up with a package that works for you and it did involve some loans but

not an oppressive amount didn’t take long to pay them off right so my parents were pleasantly surprised I mean they

basically thought they were gonna be you know eating dirt for the next five years you know whoever their lives and never

going on vacation again or whatever but also I it’s true I did work a bit while I was there a freshman year I had a

couple of jobs in one semester I worked in a gosh I clean the bathrooms because

almost all the dorms almost all of them have in room bathrooms ensuite they’re

not these hideous hallway bathrooms like you’re on the football team or something it’s you have your own bathroom but what

that also means is they got to make sure you’re being sanitary and you’re not becoming your own health hazard so they

have people come in and clean the bathrooms well you’re talking to one of them right now I had to do that and I took that because it paid better than

working in the dining hall well I learned pretty quickly why it paid better working in the dining hall why

did you so did you do that just have spending money or to make ends meet or what why did you do that yeah I guess I

really did that yeah I could yeah I’m trying to think about exactly what the plan was my parents sent me money every

week they sent me money and that more or less supported me so I think the job may

have been going toward the actual schooling I honestly I don’t remember

the exact arrangement I do remember that my senior year I had a job as a desk man in an apartment building which was great

because all you had to do is sit there all day so you were I mean were you like the poor kid at

Harvard you know what I mean like a lot of your friends have parents and some of them did but honest-to-goodness you in

almost no case did you really know that I mean I mean it is not the stereotype but people were not going around saying

well on my dad’s yacht the other day they just did people did not talk like that but I’m just saying there’s got to

be a strong percentage of the people that you were in school with who just didn’t need to work and they didn’t have part-time jobs yeah that’s true but

that’s true and I only had it for the one year so it couldn’t have been central to the financial aid package but I was mentioning the desk job at the end

only because the reason I wound up getting that job senior year was that I wanted to go to the John Randolph Club

meeting out in California and for me you know the the registration fee the area

hotel there’s to be a lot of money so I actually got a job so that I could earn the money for that that I could go out

and hang out with Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell so that was mainly mainly that so the nice thing was that they just came up with a good package for us

that that really worked but let me tell one other quick little story that people who read my emails may remember this one

there was a time when I was sitting reading a book I was reading 1984 actually and I came across the word

coercion now I had heard the word coercion but I’d never seen it before and it as far as I know is the only cion

word in the English language I mean Spanish obviously has a ton of words a tendency ioann but not English

we have tion and si Owen I’ve never seen a cion word and the reason this alarmed

me was an on my Harvard application in one of the essays I spelled it with an S and I looked at it and I said oh you’ve

got a kid and I thought well you know they’re not gonna let some idiot who can’t spell in so I went into the

guidance Department I will never forget the chairman of the department dr. de flummery I’ll never forget this I told

him the story I said I know for a fact I have a typo that’s it won’t even look like a typo to look it’s clearly a

spelling mistake on my Harvard application and he paused and I’m not joking he did not say this jokingly he

said well you you applied to other schools right

I got in anyway in fact uh in fact it was at one of the interviews I said listen listen I know you guys have me

dead to rights I know I misspelled coercion but have mercy on me there’s no other word in English that’s spelled

that way it’s just you know it’s just one of these flukes that is over the course of my life I’d never encountered

the word I mean have mercy on me and they did folks we’re talking about education today so let me take a quick

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share calm slash woods to start your two months now that’s skill share calm slash woods so when you show up to Harvard did

you feel like you’re at Disneyland and when you’re like amazed or did you pretty soon get kind of comfortable and used to the the environment that would

intimidate a lot of people stepping onto that for the first time right that comes yeah well first of all the thrill of it

right never I mean really never wore off I mean it was it was an amazing place to

be even though there were plenty of people who disagreed with me and stuff things weren’t nearly as intense as they

are now I mean what you know we had our differences and stuff but it wasn’t like you’re our mortal enemy and we can’t

even be friends with you because you hold the following seven views it was not really like that and I just met such

people and and you know everybody comes to speak there one time or another so so many great opportunities and stuff but

yeah it was intimidating because everybody not quite everybody but a lot of people who set foot there think to

themselves I’m the fluke I’m the guy who got in by mistake so you concentrated in history

though is that right yeah and so these friends you’re saying you make a lot of friends you still have I do yeah I did that’s right and do you go

to the reunions and all that I do I do I have my next year I have 2019 I have my 25-year reunion okay and so when you go

now cuz you’re getting you be kind of a minor celebrity outside of libertarian I mean you’re a major celebrity in our circles but you know are you getting

starting to go people even recognize it and they oh I know about your podcast and all this kind of stuff is not really

they are in a whole different world but I did see I didn’t say hi to him this

time but the guy who when when Rand Paul was running for Senate originally in 2010 he ran in the primary against the

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson he was in my graduating class class of 94 and I did see him at the last reunion

but I had been such a you know Rand partisan I got on my way to say hello we

were not unfriendly in the past but okay so obviously you don’t regret having

gone to Harvard right in that job no no it was great it was now or going to college right because I know we talked

about some but in my case given that I’m pushing ideas that I think are hundred

percent correct but they’re highly unorthodox the academic credentials have helped me correct to fight back against

people who say I must just be some crank all right well I’m a crank with these degrees and that you know in such a such book and whatever which by the way that

does not make you not a crank but for the sense of people using that language against me that’s the currency they

trade in and so the fact that I haven’t gives them a little pause because my so

my impression and I want to see if you kind of agree is is that by and large in today and by the way I’m thinking from a

practical like law school or engineering kind of perspective mostly because that’s my field but my impression is

that most universities in the US are very good now because you can recruit the teachers because everyone wants to be a

professor because it’s a Chris job and those teaching materials are great and the facilities are great

so in substance the difference between these schools is probably small a decent-size state school or an elite

school they all have great programs great learning it may differ a little bit for liking you want to get a PhD in

a specialty like you did but also nowadays that might be changing in the sense that Yale’s and the Harvard’s are

becoming so politically correct and so that it’s actually in a way worse for

the liberal arts of the humanities types in some of these some of these so-called better schools that are kind of resting

upon their reputation or laurels I mean what do you think about the relative merits of trying to go to one

of these elite schools now as opposed to twenty twenty thirty that’s a good that’s a good question I mean first of

all if you are planning to go to graduate school I do think it’s the case that the graduate school you go to tends

to be what whoever is going to employ you looks at more closely where did you

get the more specialized training so I think it’s not bad to go to a decent school for undergrad and then really

really set your sights on the best graduate school you can get into so if you can save yourself the Ivy League

tuition now as I say I can’t speak for the other IDs but I know that Harvard had need-based assistance so you should

be okay even there but I don’t think it’s an absolute necessity for your success for you to do it now in terms of

your question about PC is it worse at the higher tier schools because after all they can just rest on their

reputations even if they’re terrorizing the kids with the craziness the thing is what I hear the horror stories about PC

they’re almost always at podunk schools you know so that’s going on I think on all levels the thing about the Ivy’s is

that despite the PC there’s still I mean I know this might sound naive but

there’s still a point at which they say to themselves what matters here still is excellence right and now yes it’s true

that Murray Rothbard was not going to get a job at Harvard no matter what so it’s that’s not perfect but there is

still this sense that we want people who are going to do the best work period right and they have they feel like

they’re their brand is invested in that we have to have the top people doing the test work whereas podunk you because

it’s kind of considered to be interchangeable with other schools well you know they’re just gonna have the typical faculty doing the typical stuff

but where is it Harvard they and the Ivy’s they really feel like we have to be at the cutting edge of everything to

justify what we charge so I mean that’s that’s my thinking that you’re still gonna find decent people doing decent

where I mean how else did I get a PhD at Columbia right I mean I I couldn’t have written on a less fashionable topic from

a less fashionable point of view and not only did I get it approved by the department I got to publish by Columbia

University Press as a book now that’s not because they love me or my point of view it’s because I did good work well

what is this thing where you will typically see a scholar you know or a professor like someone like yourself

right with advanced PhDs and in humanities or liberal arts and they have their resume is scattered like they’ll

have one college for undergrad another for grad school like rarely do you see someone go Harvard Harvard Harvard and

is that do they do that on purpose like they’re trying to have some in other words or you disadvantage if you just

went to Harvard straight out or just you know one school for all of your degrees instead of I don’t think you’re yeah no

I don’t think I don’t think it even matters I’m one of my good friends from school went to Harvard for everything

got his PhD in history at Harvard he teaches at bu now I don’t think it I don’t think it really makes a difference

okay be nice to have different experiences but yeah and I’m glad I went

to Columbia because I had a chance to get to know New York and I write I really like New York despite all the

obvious problems I want to tell a little story if I may about her when I was on the other side of things I volunteered

to be an alumni interviewer myself so I would interview people in my area who

were applying and then I would write up a report and send it in to the admissions committee and this is when I

lived on Long Island and I had an off an academic office and everything and so you know I had some really bright

students come in and it was very interesting for me to be on the other side I think I’m the one they’re scared

of now I’m not the one who is scared I’m the scary one and of course the idea of me being scary is a little silly but but

you could tell they were a little nervous and everything I tried to put them at ease but there was one particular incident where I interviewed

a young man whose strength was obviously athletics and there is a degree to which

Harvard will look at athletics because they they do want at least some heft

to their athletic program so you there are some advantages to be had so okay so we talked and he couldn’t have been less

intellectually curious about anything I got one-word answers to almost everything he was the most unimpressive

applicant I had ever seen then around the same time a young lady came into the

office and she was by far the most qualified high school student I’ve ever

seen before or since by far and her academics off the charts but then also

sports off the charts extracurriculars off the charts the things she did it was like she was a Rothbart it was like she

was four people I could not understand how she could have a record like this and I thought to herself this is clearly

the most qualified student I’ve ever seen so I wrote up the best report I could possibly write and I submitted

that the athlete got admitted and she got put on the waitlist and so I resigned I said I’m not forget it I’m

not now I know obviously there could be many factors I’m not aware of but in this case BS in this case I cannot

imagine what possessed them to think so she and I actually I wrote to her family and said what happened to you is an

absolute outrage you know I’ve had students get rejected you know something that I thought should get in okay you

never know but this was so outrageous I wrote to them and said in protest I have

refused to do any more alumni interviews over this injustice now I’m sure she’s prospering she went

to Cornell and she did probably did fine but I don’t even know what the point of that story is other than to say you

can’t even totally sometimes get what’s going on at these elite schools in their admission decisions it does not mean

you’re no good if you got put on the wait list or something well I think if I’m not I think I heard an interview

recently and was about that lawsuit I think it’s against Harvard right by the Asians yes right and from the facts that

are coming out and it might not have been about Harvard the stats I heard but I thought there’s something like if you’re an athlete your odds of getting

in or like 10 times higher than even a top-notch academic person just because because it helps their minority

recruiting – because you know by and large these are probably sore minorities you know so it’s just a disparity and I

think part of the negotiating they’re trying to do is trying to lower this

Asian cap basically right and not hurt the minorities too badly but tone down

legacy and athletic preferences that are given now so they’re trying to adjust all you know someone’s going to hurt

right you’re going to take away from one and give to the other but I don’t know what you if you have any thoughts about

the way that is now or the way it used to be in terms of the like you said something if you we have enough white

male already or something like that like is it even harder now if you’re not a minority do you think to get in to these

kind of places yeah I don’t know how much things have changed on that particular front I mean the the

statistics were pretty I mean these schools keep these things under lock and

key for the most part but occasionally statistics drip out like in the late 80s

or early 90s over at Dartmouth it came out that minority students who had been admitted under an Express affirmative

action program dropped out on a two to one level on sober students who’d just been accepted on the regular basis and

so obviously that’s not good for them and it’s not good for the people who didn’t get to go and all that so that’s

definitely there on the faculty level I remember my own I’m Alan Brinkley as a

left liberal in the Hillary Clinton tradition all the way and I remember talking to him about going on the job

market and applying for jobs and and we were speaking frankly about affirmative action and white men getting jobs in

academia and he said well look I’ll just be frank with you generally when I sit

on faculty search committees we almost never see minority candidates applying to be professors at Columbia and when we

ooh that they’ve generally been very unimpressive so he said I think this is an exaggeration I don’t think you have

as much to worry about as you think there just aren’t that many who go into academia we’re gonna have terminal degrees period so there’s that aspect

but on the student level I just don’t know what it’s like but on the other hand on that so think it’s on the boxes

where you check off your race I think there’s usually a box where you you know you don’t want to indicate your race but

everybody knows that means white right you’d be an idiot if you’re black why would you not take advantage of

everything you have coming to you because it’s right put an X in the black box why not but you’re not gonna say I’m not going to tell you right well so so

you’re you’re little younger than me when I when I took the a seat ESET I just took it one time and that was it I figured I took whatever I got I got yeah

and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as prep courses and all that because it didn’t really matter who I

was going for but so back when you were applying were you taking it many times trying to maximize your SAT score and

all that kind of stuff or did you just do well enough and that got you in yeah that was basically in and then in my day

you also had to take what were called the achievement test I don’t know if you did that but in Massachusetts you have

to take and they were in different subject matter so the SAT had math and verbal but the achievement tests were

like chemistry Spanish all these sort of academic topics and they were also great

in on an 800 scale and I did really well on those and so it I never either retook

anything or did any training course but also it was because the particular things that the SAT tested happened to

be where I was already pretty strong there was no reason for me to take an SAT math prep course when I was the

captain of the math to the mat right ICT math was a joke yeah so there’s no no reason to worry about that but with my

own kids I may actually encourage them to do that yeah because they don’t have the same facility with math and mathis

of the SAT math is not that bad it’s more a question of have they forgotten it by then if you just refresh your

memory on it you could easily probably see if at least a 50 100 point boost yeah but it’s become like an industry

now where you you almost have to do this because if you don’t you’re too competitive disadvantage all the parents

who are so everyone’s using tutors and taking sample tests and you know getting feedback and taking you multiple times

and trying to optimize and it’s a thing now yeah it is a different ballgame but on the other hand even a kid who just

goes to the local library and checks out a book on SAT prep is way ahead right of

the game I mean all you need is that is just a library card you don’t even need the fancy classes and you’ll still have

an advantage so in fact I remember being on a panel and when I was first a

professor and there were people talking about exactly what you said it’s saying that this gives white folks a special

advantage and my answer was almost nobody takes those prep courses I mean when you’re compared to the student

population it’s basically zero but secondly is there anything stopping you from getting a library card going to a

library and checking on a book on SAT prep no one had an answer to that yes that is the obvious answer well on that

achievement test we in Louisiana we did have it but it was like things like how to boil crawfish and how a skeet shoot

taught how to lay traps for gear things like that I wouldn’t even have done that

you know you mentioned to you I always think that that’s a great kid should have a summer job in an auto you know

mechanic stop and also at a sort order cook learn a little cooking and learn a little fix an automobile that’s probably

two really good skills to have in life not only that good skills but it’s also good to learn to appreciate the people

who do them yeah because I mean somebody who can fix something saves your life in

so many cases and I and I don’t want to forget that or have my kids forget it

and then when it comes to cooking there have been times I mean I’ll confess I have a secret pleasure I do it I do go

to Waffle House now and again and there have been times when you go into Waffle House there’s nobody there and other

times that it is hoppin so much that that woman who’s at the register and who’s also waiting tables is losing her

mind yeah and I remember there was a night where I felt so sorry for her I went up to the register as we were leaving and

after I paid my bill I just like threw some money at her this is yeah but I mean the fact that

she I mean I get to work in this climate-controlled splendor talking to

interesting people all day and you know men she’s gonna really really work hard

hard hard to make her income and I I wanna I think it’s good to appreciate

that and and to be in that position sometimes well I ask you about the jobs and whether suspending money because I

kind of had a feeling it was for spending money and it was but you were spending it to go to an academic conference and Turkey well when I had

these part-time jobs in college I was trying to save up money to buy big speakers for my car so I could win like

a crank it up contest it you know down the street so that’s money that’s money by some Rush CDs it wasn’t quite as a

lofty of goals another key thing I went to Liberty fund which publishes a lot of

great Liberty books in inexpensive editions they also put on scholarly colloquia and you go there for a weekend

and in the old days they paid you they pay a little more now but they paid you seven hundred dollars and you would sit

around with about fifteen scholars and you would all discuss some reading that you had all done and then there would be

outings and fancy dinners and a fancy hotel and it was just amazing experience

and as a grad student the idea that I’d be gone a couple of days and earned 700 bucks was just gonna be kid of course

I’ll do that so I one of the times I did that I got the 700 bucks and when I got back I saw

that Union Theological Seminary down the street from Columbia was having intensive they were offering a course in

German for reading knowledge so to this day I have no idea how to hold a conversation in German it’s just how to

attack a German sentence and understand it right I thought that might be useful might be good to have reading knowledge

of German so and it cost $700 so I took the money from the thing and I spent and

everybody else there was a Lutheran theologian that’s why they wanted to read German and there was just me this

American historian who just thought it’d be neat Dorsey didn’t have a lot of girlfriends in college that’s what

you’re saying in well I will say what

was interesting about that chemistry a grad school I really didn’t but as an undergrad what was interesting was that

a lot of us in school had had the same experience you know we were the nerdy kid who got made fun of by the time I

get to high school I’d kind of gotten around that but still yeah you know maybe the popular kids thought you were

okay right you know you’re not coming over whatever but but even that by the end I was kind of fixing that up but

still we’d all kind of been that kid and now we could all start fresh not only could we start fresh we could start

fresh with other kids who had been that kid and so all of a sudden everything was alright you know everything was okay

all your insecurities and stuff you’re okay you know you’re all cuz everything because no matter who you are there’s

somebody nerdier here no matter who you are there’s always somebody nerdier and even if you’re the nerdiest one well

wait a next year gonna be another nerdy nerdy or one than you and so I did have a girlfriend for a couple of years there

then I just feel like if we’d been back in high school would have been completely out of my league that would

been impossible but because we were on an even level every anything’s possible

dreams can come true under these circumstances yeah and I had one thing

like that and that that I went to a Catholic High School in Baton Rouge and and one thing they did that I was always

impressed by is they give Letterman’s jacket out to the guys that are on Honor Roll too so it’s not just the jocks so

it’s like a little way of servo trying to trying to say this be smart it’s cool you know it doesn’t always help but it’s

neat to be in an environment where everyone is like pushing education and smarts it’s got to be liberating and

refreshing if you’ve sort of kind of had to suffer the shame of it almost right under certain environment right right

right that we didn’t have to pretend that we weren’t interested in the stuff we were studying and pretend that we’d

rather do X or Y you could say hey I really like this this is great and look

I had lunch with my professor and blah blah blah you know that that was fine yeah well I think you satisfied my

curiosity oh good I’m glad I’m glad well I I actually I hope other people

listening enjoyed hearing us talk about this because it was actually fun to reminisce about it a little bit

especially ahead of the 25 year in reunion coming up my kids did come with me to the 20-year

reunion and we walked around campus and when they saw just the majesty of some of the buildings I remember one of them

saying I want to live there yeah I did too when I was there they didn’t let me I had to live over here but yeah yeah

yeah it was Lowell house for anybody who’s ever been on the campus they looked at that and they said yep that’s where I want to live so they have a

really neat experience for the older kids where they get like a what a day in the life of a student here is like and I

think my Regina would enjoy that that’s got to be cool and I remember you when

you got invited to the Yale thing you and I were talking about it because we were both did at the same year and you were like yeah it’s best for me to go to

Yale because that’s sort of I guess the arrival for for Harvard right so you know if you let me do and I we could be

it was funny when I’d go to a Harvard athletic contest I mean whatever the

game what mean hockey we had a fighting chance but a lot of the time it was pretty pitiful and so the best we could

do was try to humiliate the other team that was all we had so the chance that we would chant would we would chant

safety school to the other the other team really not nice or if we would play

against Brown Brown University the chant was always what’s the color of you know

and the answer was Brown you know we

were nerds but we could be we could really really cut you to the quick how’s

the Harvard’s how the Harvard campus compared to yield because I’ve never seen Harvard but at the Yale I mean the

buildings are pretty but the campus to me is not that great it’s just a bunch of city blocks sort of you know what I

mean the thing is that I’ve really only seen Yale at night and so I can’t really

say but I will say that when I’ve gone to Princeton Princeton just blows Harvard out of the water okay and I

think Harvard blows Columbia out of the water got it no I you know it’s a beautiful campus it’s not it’s not super

big because the undergraduate population is about 6400 it’s not gigantic but the

graduate schools nearby the Business School actually has I think even a nicer campus than the undergrad but oh I is so

picturesque I mean every time I would walk through to go from where I live to

the library it was just an absolute pleasure I just soaked it in it was a beautiful

Oasis and it doesn’t I think carpet has the biggest like endowment in the world or something for a university right it’s

like yeah they suffered a bit during the financial crisis yeah but that’s why um

I’d once did an episode with a guy named Ron unns and he was doing what he called

his free Harvard fair Harvard campaign so alright Harvard had a with admissions and free Harvard was look your ad outlet

generates so much income you don’t even need the tuition money you don’t need it it’s it’s unless you’re just trying to

prove a point about how much money you can bring in you could actually let people go for free and you wouldn’t even

feel it so why not do it that was interesting what do they spend the money

on it did it yeah I don’t know I never bothered to look I don’t know yeah all

right okay well I’ll link to these couple of episodes that I mentioned that one and my what I did once I got there

episode at Tom woods calm such 1304 well thanks for being my sort of guest and

and I think it turned out really well thanks for suggesting it well actually you didn’t really suggest that you were demanding that I answer these questions

I didn’t think I had anything to say that I said let’s make an episode out of it and it turns out as usual I can talk

forever I enjoyed it a lot alright thanks a lot alright folks that’s gonna do it for today I want to

remind you about the other podcast I host I host it with Bob Murphy called contra krugman and we refute Paul

Krugman every week and we have a ton of fun doing it well bob has a brand new book out and it’s called contra Krugman

just like the podcast subtitle smashing the errors of America’s most famous keynesian this book is unbelievable it’s

great and I read the audiobook version I’m the narrator of the audiobook version I had no idea what I was signing

up for when I told Bob I would do this I didn’t realize how much stuff there was in this book but you can get the book

for free on audiobook if you’ve never signed up for audible before you can do that through Tom woods audio calm and

just pick contra Krugman as your free book and you’ll get it for nothing but if you like the paper version your old

fashioned like me or even the Kindle version check out the details at contra krugman

book.com i’ll see you tomorrow become a smarter libertarian in just 30

minutes a day visit Tom woods calm to subscribe to the show for free and we’ll see you next time

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