Podcast #226: Eric Kaufmann’s New ‘Centre for Heterodox Social Science’

NB: This transcript was created using AI and there may be some discrepancies between the text and the actual words of Jonathan Kay and Eric Kaufmann.

This week, my guest is Eric Kaufmann, a fellow Canadian who, for the last two decades, has built an impressive academic career in England, specifically at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he's become a well-known specialist on how societies respond to the ethnic and religious diversity that results from high-volume immigration. Kaufmann himself represents a sort of microcosm of the sweeping demographic changes that Western societies have undergone over the last century. He was born in Hong Kong, raised in Vancouver and Japan, and counts his ancestry as half-Jewish, a quarter-Chinese, and a quarter-Costa Rican.

In terms of his politics, Kaufmann is one of those politically homeless, classically liberal figures that often appear on this podcast. Like me, he's perfectly comfortable with the welfare state, the environmental movement, and most other traditional progressive policies, but he's also spoken out against the illiberal tendencies of modern wokeness—if we're still allowed to use that term. Spoiler alert: that's something we discuss. And because his research deals head-on with some of the negative political effects that result from rapid ethnic and religious changes, he's come under fire from some academic colleagues who would prefer that this kind of research be treated as a no-go zone, on the grounds that it's, if not racist, then racist-adjacent.

Earlier this year, Kaufmann decided that he'd had enough of navigating this kind of criticism. In early October, he announced that he'd be leaving the University of London to start up a new research institute called the Center for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham.

Earlier this week, I spoke to Eric Kaufmann over Zoom about his new career move and many other things besides. Here's a recording of our conversation.

Jonathan Kay:
Am I remembering this right, that I took you out to breakfast on College Street in Toronto a couple years ago?

Eric Kaufmann:
That's right. I think your daughter had a hockey practice in Maple Leaf Gardens or something of that nature.

Jonathan Kay:
It was right by the Gardens, yeah. What used to be Maple Leaf Gardens is now the hockey rink for what used to be called Ryerson University. But now it’s called Toronto Metropolitan University, because it turns out that... what was his name? Egerton Ryerson?

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, I was going to say Egbert, but it's not Egbert. It's Egerton Ryerson.

Jonathan Kay:
There was this ginned-up historical case against him, and he got canceled. So, I took you to some 24-hour pancake restaurant. I think that's the only time I've ever met you.

Eric Kaufmann:
I think you're right. And that was... it feels like five or six years ago, which might as well have been like 50 years ago in terms of journalistic time.

Jonathan Kay:
Could you talk a little bit about your political vector since that fateful meeting? My sense is your politics have always been fairly steady, fairly stable.

Eric Kaufmann:
Broadly, I'm a kind of liberal conservative. A classical procedural liberal mixed with some strands of conservatism, although not the religious version. Even on some issues, I might be somewhat on the left—perhaps on the environment or welfare state. So yeah, I'm a mix. But on issues around civil culture and the social justice movement, I've always been fairly opposed to what I see as excesses. And I guess I’ve seen those excesses not just from the mid-2010s onward, but going back to the politically correct period of debates in the late 80s, early 90s, when I came of age politically. I think I was already pretty opposed to that.

Jonathan Kay:
We’re having this conversation in mid-October, and I’m looking at an article that appeared in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper, on October 2nd. The headline says, "Canadian Professor Starts Common-Sense Course on Wokeness After Being Cancelled in the UK." That’s not quite right, is it? To my understanding, you weren’t cancelled—you just kind of got sick of things.

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, I think that’s right. There’s cancel pressure, and then there’s being cancelled. We can have a debate over what counts as being "cancelled." Was I forced out by my university? No. My university, particularly the upper leadership and management layers, was reasonable. I don’t have a real issue there.

However, there were numerous attempts by radical students and staff, and some of their allies on Twitter, to get me removed. They had a number of Twitter campaigns, an open letter, and people were calling into the department, complaining about me. There were several internal investigations prompted by these complaints. They managed to keep up a sort of climate of pressure and keep you on edge. The thing about the punishment process is, you get that email in the morning saying, “Be here at this time, you've been accused of breaching such-and-such a policy, penalty unspecified." It definitely induces anxiety because you don't know where it's going to go. Being fired is always somewhere in the back of your mind, even though legally, that’s very difficult. But still, you don't necessarily know that. So yeah, it was a very effective technique for silencing people radicals may not like.

Jonathan Kay:
But it wasn’t enough to push you out?

Eric Kaufmann:
No. It wasn't like Kathleen Stock got 10 out of 10 in terms of being cancelled; I might have gotten six out of 10. It wasn’t the same level. My colleagues were generally pretty good, so I didn’t have the problem with my immediate colleagues that Kathleen had. Kathleen was at the University of Sussex; I was at Birkbeck, University of London. There was pressure, but it wasn’t enough to push me out.

What happened was, I was already looking to leave because I was starting to feel like I had to watch what I say, what I teach, and what I research. I was particularly worried about the research ethics process because if you have opponents on the Research Ethics Committee, they can censor your research or delay it. That was a major risk. So, I was already considering moving, and then the university had some financial troubles, and a redundancy program was introduced. That was the last straw and led me to say, “Okay, I think I’m going to go now.”

Jonathan Kay:
Because of this career move on your part, there have been articles that filled in some of the blanks in my knowledge about your background. Your dad spoke 20 languages, is that right?

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, he’s a sort of language-learning entrepreneur. He’s got a language-learning website, lingq.com. He speaks 20 languages. He loves learning languages. When I was growing up, he spoke about nine, but I think he’s up to 20 now. He’s learning all kinds—Turkish, Persian, all kinds of languages.

Jonathan Kay:
Did any of those stick with you? Should we switch to Urdu or something?

Eric Kaufmann:
No, no, I really haven’t picked up those skills. I’ve got some French, of course, and maybe a very small amount of Japanese, which is largely atrophied. But I think that gene must have skipped a generation.

Jonathan Kay:
You grew up in Vancouver. What drew you to England?

Eric Kaufmann:
England was very accidental. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I had just been to UBC, studying forestry.

Jonathan Kay:
That’s the University of British Columbia, for non-Canadian listeners. And just so people know, much of British Columbia is one giant, beautiful forest, which is great to extract logs from. So, you’re saying you were going to be a lumberjack?

Eric Kaufmann:
Not quite, although my dad was in the forest industry—more on the processing side, exporting to Japan. So yeah, I’m very familiar with the forest industry in British Columbia. That was kind of the context, and also Northern Alberta. I actually lived in a town probably a stone’s throw from where Jordan Peterson is from. Then I went to London to do a master’s degree. My dad had heard about the London School of Economics; I’d never heard of it. I just thought I’d take a year, study something different in Europe, and then a year turned into over 25.

Jonathan Kay:
Your area of study relates to demographics and the various political tribulations that can follow from large-scale demographic shifts brought about by immigration. This is a subject that, even before cancel culture, has been controversial for decades because people’s antennae are up. They say, “Well, if you’re talking about that, maybe you’re someone who wants to limit immigration. Maybe you want to go back to the laws we used to have, including in Canada, that limited immigration from non-white countries.” Did you face pushback earlier in your career when you were studying this kind of thing?

Eric Kaufmann:
There were a set of taboos that already existed prior to the rise of the Great Awokening. I actually think those taboos are continuous to some degree with the ones we’ve got now. I would be more critical of the earlier phase than perhaps some other people would.

For example, talking about ethnocultural change in a country, in my view, is not xenophobic or racist. For example, in the United States during the 20th century, when it had immigration restrictions on Southern and Eastern Europeans, that was essentially focused on reducing the flow of migration from those areas. I wrote about it not from a normative point of view, but as a question about what the politics were that led to that.

But I do think that, particularly when we’re talking about the rise of national populism, the conversation is about cultural anxieties around immigration and ethnic change. My view is that this is a legitimate subject for debate. It’s not the same as wanting an ethnostate, racial purity, or excluding entire groups from your country, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, for example.

There’s a legitimate conversation to be had about the pace of change—slower versus faster. But I think the way this has been framed for a long time is, you’re either an “open” person or a “closed” person, and if you want slower change, you’re a closed person, and therefore you’re a bigot and a racist. Philosophically, I don’t think that makes sense. Partly because of the nature of psychological research, which shows that attachment to one’s own group and hatred of another group are not similar dispositions. Attachment to the status quo and hatred of a group are not similar dispositions—except in very specific circumstances, like violent conflict.

There’s a tendency to conflate these two things: wanting slower cultural change and wanting no change, or wanting to turn the clock back. These are all squashed together under one label. My view is, we need to be able to have those conversations, or we’re only going to let the populists take that issue. I think that’s the wrong way to proceed.

Jonathan Kay:
One of the interesting things about Canada, where I grew up, but unlike you, I stayed here because I love my country... One of the interesting things about Canada is, because our immigration laws favor wealthy people, entrepreneurs, and well-educated people, Canada’s kind of hypocritical. We have this reputation for being kind and gentle, a pushover when it comes to international issues. But our immigration criteria are ruthlessly meritocratic along economic lines. We tend to get a lot of high-value immigrants.

So, the debate in Canada is very different from the United States. In the U.S., you have conservative populists who sometimes engage in demagoguery, presenting immigrants in terms that nativists from a hundred years ago would recognize—criminals, or “unwashed,” that sort of thing. Here in Toronto, the main complaint is that many immigrants, especially those coming from China, are very wealthy. They’re buying up properties, raising home prices, and especially the rental market around the University of Toronto is full of $2,500-a-month apartments. The only people who seem able to afford them are people with family money, or immigrants who are self-selected because they have a lot of money. I’m not even sure this is a race-based issue—it seems to be about supply and demand, taking into account that many of the people raising demand happen to be from East Asia. Is that something you’ve studied?

Jonathan Kay:
Let’s talk a little bit about your career path now. You’re going to the University of Buckingham. My understanding is that it’s not a brand-new university—it’s been around for a while—but it's still fairly small. How does it compare to, say, the University of Austin, where people are starting everything from scratch, from accreditation to building a student body?

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, Buckingham has been around since the late 70s. It’s small, with about 3,000 students. So it’s definitely established. It’s not like the University of Austin, where everything is brand new and has to be built from the ground up.

Jonathan Kay:
Is it like the Hillsdale College of England? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Eric Kaufmann:
No, no, not quite. It was founded during the Thatcher era as one of the only private universities in the UK. Over time, it’s evolved into a private university with about 50% international students. Its staff and student body tend to lean left, like most universities, so it’s not distinct in that way. However, it’s somewhat more ideologically diverse, and it had the highest score for freedom of expression on the National Student Survey, which I think is indicative of its commitment to free inquiry and viewpoint diversity.

Jonathan Kay:
So, what is your role there now?

Eric Kaufmann:
I’m going to be leading something called the Center for Heterodox Social Science. It’s a research center that’s meant to explore controversial issues that other universities shy away from. My goal is to chart a middle course between what’s extremely controversial and the progressive orthodoxy that dominates most academic institutions.

For example, I’m not going to be doing research on extremely polarizing topics like race and IQ, but I also don’t want to be limited by the red lines that are drawn by the progressive monoculture. The aim is to open up space for heterodox views on sensitive topics—things that are under-studied because they’re seen as too hot to handle in mainstream academia. We want to inject those discussions back into the conversation so that we can get closer to the truth.

Jonathan Kay:
It sounds like a noble goal, but how do you prevent this center from attracting people with extreme or unsavory views? When you open a space for “free speech,” there’s always a risk that people with extreme opinions will flood in, like Holocaust deniers or conspiracy theorists. How do you maintain a level of intellectual rigor while avoiding that?

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, great question. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, this is a research center within a university, so there are barriers to entry. You can’t just walk in off the street and join—you have to pay tuition or be part of the academic community. Secondly, it’s a research center, not a free-for-all platform for any and all views. I’ll have discretion over what research gets pursued, and we’ll focus on areas where there’s a legitimate need for more open inquiry. It’s not about giving a platform to every fringe theory or unsubstantiated claim.

There’s a huge gap between the extreme fringe and the constrained, progressive mainstream. We want to occupy that space in between—exploring issues that need to be studied but aren’t because they challenge the orthodoxy. And yes, we’ll have boundaries. Buckingham isn’t a place where anything goes, and we’ve had examples of people who crossed the line and had to leave. We’ll keep that balance.

Jonathan Kay:
It sounds like you're walking a fine line—similar to what Quillette has had to navigate. We became known as a place for free thought, but even we had to set guardrails during the pandemic, for instance, when people started pushing baseless theories about vaccines. We had to say, “We’re open to debate, but we’re not going to platform conspiracy theories.” You’ll face a similar challenge as a gatekeeper for the Center for Heterodox Social Science.

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, absolutely. I see this as similar to what Quillette does, but in an academic context. We’re not going to entertain every fringe idea. The mission is to create a space for serious, evidence-based research that challenges the prevailing orthodoxy, not to indulge in conspiracy theories or unfounded claims.

Jonathan Kay:
You’ve also launched a course on “wokeness” at Buckingham. That’s a term that has evolved from being positive to a term of abuse. Did you think long and hard about using “woke” in the title of your course?

Eric Kaufmann:
Yeah, I did. But I think “woke” is the term that has emerged as the best shorthand for what we’re talking about. It encapsulates the cultural shift that’s happened over the past decade. You can use other terms—Yascha Mounk uses “identity synthesis,” for example—but I think those terms are too academic and don’t resonate with the public as much as “woke” does. It’s a term people understand, even if it has negative connotations now.

Jonathan Kay:
Wokeness definitely means different things to different people. How do you define it in your course?

Eric Kaufmann:
I define wokeness as the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups. From that follows a set of behaviors: if you offend someone from one of these groups, you’re committing blasphemy, and you can be canceled. If you criticize those who speak on behalf of these groups, you’re also committing blasphemy. It’s a kind of secular religion with its own rules and rituals.

Jonathan Kay:
Wokeness as a kind of secular religion? That’s an interesting way to frame it.

Eric Kaufmann:
Yes. Another way I describe it is "cultural socialism." It’s not about economic redistribution like traditional socialism, but it’s about redistributing status and moral worth across identity groups. Wokeness demands not just equal rights for marginalized groups but also emotional protection from harm. So, if someone from one of these groups feels offended, the woke response is to punish the person who caused the offense, even if the offense was unintentional.

Jonathan Kay:
Let me ask you about your departure from Birkbeck. Did they throw you a party when you left? Was there cake?

Eric Kaufmann:
[Laughs] No, there wasn’t a big party. I’d been through several years of controversy by that point, and it created some awkwardness. I had been there for over 20 years, and I had good relationships with my colleagues, but the cancellation attempts poisoned some of those relationships. It wasn’t as though I was forced out, but when you go through that kind of controversy, it changes things.

What happened was smaller groups of colleagues took me out for dinner, but there wasn’t a full-on farewell event. There were also several people leaving due to the redundancy program, so it wasn’t just me. But yeah, it would have been a bit awkward to have a big official send-off.

Jonathan Kay:
No cake, huh? I guess the greasy spoon dinners will have to do. Speaking of which, I think you’ll be joining us at the Quillette Social in London this November.

Eric Kaufmann:
Yes, I’ll be there.

Jonathan Kay:
What an amazing segue to promote this event! For those listening, we’re hosting a Quillette Social in London on November 3rd at the UnHerd Club. It’s sold out, but if you’re interested, you can join the waitlist by emailing us at [email protected]. It’s basically a party, with a few speeches, including one by me, but don’t worry, I’ll keep it short.

Eric Kaufmann:
I’m looking forward to it! It’ll be nice to meet again after all these years.

Jonathan Kay:
By the way, Eric, you do so much online. If people want to follow your work, where’s the best place for them to go?

Eric Kaufmann:
They can visit my website, sneps.net. That’s where all the info about my research and work is.

Jonathan Kay:
Great! Thanks so much for being on the Quillette podcast, and good luck with your new venture at Buckingham.

Eric Kaufmann:
Thanks a lot, Jonathan. It was great talking to you again.