Overview

This is the last interview with Prof. James Flynn, hosted by Dr Samuele Lilliu for Bullaki Science Podcast. In his book, the famous intelligence researcher James R. Flynn, presents the underlying factors that have circumscribed the range of ideas now tolerated in our institutions of learning.

Traditionally, our society has broadly agreed that the good university should teach the intellectual skills students need to become citizens who are intelligently critical of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented politicians, society, the media, and, indeed, universities themselves. The freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is increasingly restricted for fear of causing offense.

Flynn studiously examines how universities effectively censor teaching, how social and political activism effectively censors its opponents, and how academics censor themselves and each other. A Book Too Risky To Publish concludes that few universities are now living up to their original mission to promote free inquiry and unfettered critical thought. In an age marred by fake news and ever increasing social and political polarization, this book makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought in our institutions of higher education.

Production

I got in touch with Prof. James Flynn in Spring 2020 and we managed to arrange this remote podcast with him also thanks to Emily Flynn. Prof. Flynn is known for his work about the continued year-after-year increase of IQ scores throughout the world, which is now referred to as the Flynn effect. To prepare for the interview I thoroughly read his major works including: Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, Does your Family Make You Smarter?: Nature, Nurture, and Human Autonomy, What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect, and, A Book Too Risky to Publish: Free Speech and Universities.

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