Harvey is a political philosopher. He’s been on the faculty at Harvard since 1962, and he’s currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government. His 13 books include Taming the Prince, Manliness, and Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth. His new book is The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy. Harvey was my tutor as a graduate student at Harvard, an overseer of my dissertation, and I was a teaching fellow for the course in modern political thought that his latest book reprises brilliantly. To be honest, my reverence for him made me nervous for this podcast. But his brilliance and dry humor and joie de vivre all came through, and he put me at ease.
An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of the episode — on the shift from virtue to freedom during the Enlightenment, and how Nietzsche reframed the West — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: raised by New Deal liberals in New Haven and DC; his dad a Yale professor and mom a musician; Leo Strauss an academic mentor; thymos and masculinity; Plato’s Apology of Socrates; Aristotle; Aquinas; why democracy leads to tyranny; the humor of Machiavelli; Spinoza and dissent; Locke’s Two Treatises; the incest prohibition; Hegel; Hobbes; common sense; Nietzsche and nihilism; deconstructing Christianity; science as a product of “white supremacy”; the sex binary; de Beauvoir’s Second Sex; the postmodern view of science; Rawls; AI and human obsolescence; grade inflation; Judith Shklar and her love of Montaigne; Oakeshott; anti-semitism on campus after 10/7; and how moderns set aside the deepest questions.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. We have some real stars coming up: Ben Rhodes on Iran and speech-writing, HW Brands on the life of George Washington, John Gray on Trump’s new world, Bob Wright on the evolutionary force of AI, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Daniel McCarthy on conservatism, Stephen Grosz on the struggles of love, and Robby George on all our disagreements. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
From a fan of last week’s pod with Jerusalem Demsas:
I took a break from the Dishcast this spring: your anti-trans rhetoric just seemed too strident, too allergic to genuine engagement with the lived realities of many trans folx. But I found that I missed your voice, your probing questions, your sense of humor, and your rapport with guests. So I tuned in tonight to the free version of the chat with Jerusalem Demsas. What an excellent convo. I re-subscribed because I still respect what you’re doing, and because I want to support your clear-eyed critique of Israel’s policy choices over the last year.
Too allergic to genuinely engage with trans realities? You might want to check out the Dishcast episodes with Dana Beyer, Mara Keisling, Buck Angel and Helena Kerschner, Brianna Wu, and Shannon Minter. Which other general podcaster has engaged with more actual trans people from a variety of positions? Name one. But still not good enough. And you wonder why I despair like I did in today’s column.
The trans issue is so like the Israel issue. I’ve bent over backwards to talk to anyone who would come on, including Israel Firsters like Eli Lake and Douglas Murray, alongside more thoughtful Israel supporters like Adam Kirsch and Yossi Klein Halevi; I run dissents all the time; I decry antisemitism. And yet I am still no different than Nick Fuentes to my critics. Equally, I defend the dignity and civil rights of transgender people, and air every argument. But if I don’t agree with transing children, the abolition of homosexuality, and ending the sex binary for everyone, I’m “allergic to genuine engagement with the lived realities of many trans folx.” Learning helplessness I guess. But thanks for re-subscribing! It helps balance out the legions of canceled subscriptions from Israel supporters.
Here’s a doctor on the Demsas pod:
The Hippocratic Oath really isn’t a thing anymore. There are several alternatives, but most medical schools in the US have custom oaths. Given that the new oaths are the product of academic culture and a whole lot of administrators, they tend to be rather social justice-y. For example: “We recognize inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression.”
So you can imagine that for many newer doctors, unlimited trans surgeries doesn’t seem like an ethical problem at all, because they weren’t taught “do no harm” to begin with.
I conclude with the point I think everyone in this area needs to understand: medical training takes a long time. The same generation of people that ruined the New York Times or the ACLU or whatever are still residents or early career physicians. That is to say, woke medicine hasn’t really happened yet.
Yep, I’m afraid you’re right. In my view, the woke revolution has yet to really happen. Which is why, without a sea change, I cannot see myself voting for another woke-backing Democrat in my lifetime. The Kulturkampf once Gen Z comes to power is going to be brutal and unrelenting.
Another writes, “I got around to listening to your interview with Greg Lukianoff, and I must say I really enjoyed it.”
On another pod, here’s a “faithful subscriber”:
Your conversation with Adrian Wooldridge was one of the best this year! Keep it coming. It would be great to have you, Adrian Wooldridge, Ezra Klein, and Tom Holland on a weekly podcast. That would be riotously informative and entertaining.
Adrian is awesome. Holland is a genius. Ezra is now a bear. Here’s a recommendation for a guest:
I’d love you to talk with Bob Ostertag, who wrote an amazing book almost a decade ago, Sex, Science, Self — a cultural history of sex hormones. He also has a memoir called Encounters with Men. He spoke out very early about medically transitioning kids, and is a brilliant and interesting guy. I’d love to listen to the two of you on the Dishcast.
Thanks! Hormones fascinate me. Another rec:
THANK YOU for highlighting Maeve Halligan’s barnstormer of a speech at the Cambridge Union [starting at the 1:19:48 mark in the video below]. I was literally about to email you to bring it to your attention. She gives me so much hope.
I also listened to your interview with Jerusalem Demsas, who is clearly another impressive young woman: articulate, passionate, and seemingly open to wrestling with ideas. Unless, of course, the topic is trans.
As an important aside, you may already be aware that Australian women now have no legal protection as a sex class. Sall Grover lost her case in the Australian courts. This means that any man, for any reason, can identify into any space designated for women. Australian lesbians have no legal entitlement to single-sex spaces. Australia has been made to look like a laughing stock on the world stage because Julia Gillard quietly inserted “gender identity” next to “sex” in the Australian Sex Discrimination Act without public debate or proper scrutiny. So when anyone says this is a side issue, or one that doesn’t affect many people, I beg to differ.
Contrast Jerusalem Demsas — who fudged around the whole issue of trans ideology and gender identity — with 22-year-old Maeve Halligan’s fearless and iconic speech about the reality of sex. She stood, Boudicca-like, steadfast in her beliefs, armoured with truth and reason, slashing through trans ideology to its hollow core and exposing the misogyny and homophobia within it. She humbled me with her bravery.
Like other members of the Cambridge Society for Women, Maeve has been bullied, ostracised, and marginalised by peers, lecturers, and academia as a whole. (I also think you would find Serena Worley’s account of her time at the University of Oregon deeply enlightening. Serena, another member of the same society, endured something truly obscene at the altar of gender ideology.) Young women are being frozen into silence by this ideology. They cannot — dare not — speak the truth because the social costs are simply too high.
So please, invite Maeve Halligan onto the Dishcast. She is young, navigating a deeply hostile educational system, and has a great deal to say. The clip of her speech has already gone viral, with over a million views. Platform her, Andrew. Let us hear from the front lines — from brave, intelligent young women.
Another fan of Maeve writes, “Thanks for posting her speech”:
I think the tide is turning, albeit slowly. One vanguard of change is when the comedians feel comfortable ridiculing the extremes of TQ+ ideology. Dave Chappelle did so from the start, and now I’m noticing more people criticizing it, particularly from within the community. Take this short clip of comedian Robby Hoffman — “no take-backsies” regarding the they/them crew:
Yes, but. Here I am in Provincetown, which every year becomes wealthier and woker. Everything is now “queer”. The streets are full of flags denoting various oppressions invented by critical gender and queer theory, and new alphabet letters are added all the time. Every bookstore, apart from the used one, is extreme-left only. The climate is one of intense orthodoxy in every public space.
In a sign of wokeness’ continued grip, a new hookup app for gay men just started, “MeetMarket”. Except, of course, it is, like Grindr, for women, straights, queers, trans, and anyone who wants to borrow a vowel or consonant and join the transqueerness. An X user dared to ask:
Will it be exclusively for biological men? That’s part of the issue with grindr. Most of us are sick of women, bots, trans, and ridiculous prices. We need a mens only space.
This is how the owner responded:
Keyboard warrior bots trying to make a rift in our community with hate fuelled mind virus blaming the failures of capitalism on the most oppressed people.
Another X user followed up:
Dude, you claimed you were building a ‘gay sex app’ for the ‘gay community’, and now you’ve revealed that women and heterosexuals are welcome on your app, which means it’s nothing of the sort. You’re calling gay men ‘keyboard warrior bots’ for asserting their homosexuality.
The owner again:
Gay people don’t say dude you just proved that you’re not gay.
Think of the classic bigotry that asserts no gay man uses the term “dude”. The queers really have internalized all the hideous stereotypes of the past and now repeat them loudly to alienate the world some more. The queers view gay men the way the religious right always did: as girly undesirables.
Grindr is another “queer” app for trans women, trans men, straight men looking for trans trysts, and straight women into gay men and queers. Gay men? They pay for almost all of it and get this contempt back. And I’m told by every single queer in public that I should embrace fucking vaginas as my identity or get out of the community.
On last week’s column, a reader writes:
Your piece on Kristof and Israel reminded us long-time readers of your virtually unique penchant for admitting then examining past errors of judgment, but it also reminded me of how historically successful movements end up self-destructing. Zionism and the LGB movement are only the most current, painful examples.
One can only weep, as I did reading your latest, when Israelis repeat and extend the most horrific abuses committed against them on October 7; and the same goes for sexual minorities repeating and extending body- and soul-destroying abuses long suffered by their predecessors. When will we learn that when we live in fear and hatred, we only end up propagating the very things we fear and hate? Never, it seems. Please continue to expose this self-defeating dynamic.
I know. Auden put it best:
I and the public know. What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done. Do evil in return.
True of both the Israel and the queer lobbies. Another reader on that column:
While I certainly appreciate your lengthy historical references to point out how seemingly absurd claims were later proven legit, I think you might consider this piece by Jeff Maurer. It’s a pretty damning critique of Kristof’s two sources for the “dog rape” allegations (spoiler alert: both sketchy AF), as well as of the Times in general, and how their “oopsies” on Gaza have become a pattern that’s too biased to ignore.
(BTW, Maurer is not only an excellent communicator, but an engaging and funny one as well. The Ronan Farrow joke is reason alone to read it.)
Here’s a parting dissent from a subscriber:
When Kristof’s laundered, Hamas-propaganda hit the press last week and caused an uproar, it seemed like an issue that would land on your radar and possibly be the subject of a column. And I was right.
