The Karol Markowicz ShowKarol Markowicz Show: The Beat of Wokeness and Institutional Capture with Aaron Sibarium
In this episode, Karol interviews Aaron Sibarium, a staff writer at the Washington Free Beacon. They discuss Aaron's journey into writing, his experiences at Yale, and his reporting on wokeness and institutional capture. Aaron shares impactful stories from his career, reflects on the current state of free speech on campuses, and offers advice to his younger self. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
Read Aaron's Work HERE
Follow Aaron on X HERE
#writing #journalism #wokeness #highereducation #freespeech #activism #Yale #politicalidentity #advice
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. In today's mailbag, I got a familiar note, Hi, Carol. Your episode from a few months ago about the teenage daughter who has friends but doesn't know how to make plans with them stuck in my mind. My daughter was always very social and had a lot of friends. She graduated college in May and lives in a new city, and I'm noticing that she doesn't have the kind of social life she had before. She's not dating anyone, and while she has a few friends, most weekends she does not go out. I'm not sure what suggests to her. What do you think I'd always read about young people being homebodies now, but it had not happened in our family before. Well, this is a question I've gotten again and again. I think it's the most common question I've gotten on the show. Real life life is getting harder and harder to come by, especially for young people. But because these questions are anonymous, I can't ask follow ups like how did she choose this city, what's her job, what are her interests? And that kind of thing. So I'll try to speak more generally about this. It's the phones. We all know it. I've talked about it, and I've written about it, but we can't even say it's social media anymore. We're all just watching TV basically all the time. If we were actually watching our actual televisions for eight hours a day, eight plus hours a day, we'd know it's a giant problem. But because we watch it in one or three or five minute clips, it seems fine. And look again, I admit that I am just as addicted as anyone to my phone. I'm not giving this advice from my high perch over here, but I'm so aware of it, and I try every single day to change it. I've given some of my tips on here before. Don't use your apps when you're on vacation. For me, it's x that really I spend most of my time on that site, so I don't use it when I'm on vacation. I remove it from my phone altogether, read a book before bed instead of just scrolling for hours. Leave the phone in your bag when you're out with friends or with your kids. I would also say, really minimize how much your kids are using their phones when they're interacting with others. I get it, kids are just as susceptible as the rest of us to screen time. But when they're out with their friends, they should not be staring at their phones. And I don't do any of this perfectly, but I think recognizing the problem is really the first step. If you're the person who wrote this in to me, you have to tell your daughter to start with trying to change her phone habits. It's entirely too easy to lose yourself in hours and hours of scrolling. And from there you can suggest that she make the first move with new friends, invite them to dinner or in activity, but it has to start with living life outside her apartment. The main thing is to stress to your child that the way her life is right now is easily the way her life could stay. It's very hard to change things. Would she be happy with that or is she imagining that she will make friends at some point along the way, Because if it's that second, one, encourage her to get started right now. It's so much harder to make friends as she gets older. And I know right now it seems to her like she's in a tough spot, tougher than it's ever been for her before. That time after college when everyone seems to be going their own way, but really it only gets harder from there. Soon people will pair off, get married, have children, and really settle into their ways. It's actually a moment right now where all the post college kids are still scrambling around for how their lives are going to go. She can lean into it and find her people best right now, but it will require putting down the phone and leaving the house. Thanks for listening. Coming up my interview with Aaron Sibariam. But first, after more than a year of war, terror and pain in Israel, the need for security essentials and support for first responders is still critical. Even in times of ceasefire. Israel must be prepared for the next attack, wherever it may come from. As Israel is surrounded by enemies on all sides. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported and will continue to support the people of Israel with life saving security essentials. Your gift today will help save lives by providing bomb shelters, armored security vehicles and ambulances, firefighting equipment, flack jackets and bulletproof vests, and so much more. Your generous donation today will help ensure that people of Israel are safe and secure in the days to come. Give a gift to bless Israel and her people by visiting SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. That's one word SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. Or call eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ. That's eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five. Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Aaron Sibarium. Aaron is a staff writer at the Washington Free Weekend. Hi erin so nice to have you on.
Thank you for having me, Carol Aarin.
I think of you as super young, am I right?
I'm twenty nine and when I hit twenty nine, I felt the crushing weight of being just one year away from thirty suddenly hit me. So I don't feel as young as I used to, but I suppose objectively we're still relatively young.
I started reading you several years ago now, so you were like in your earlier mid twenties. So I guess my take is pretty correct. And I got to tell you, the thirties were a phenomenal decade. I highly recommend going into it without any fears.
Good. Good to know.
So, how did you get into this world? How did you become a writer?
Sure?
So, I wrote opinion pieces for my high school newspaper and enjoyed stirring the pot a little bit. Even as a high schooler. I liked it so much that I decided to do the same thing when I got to Yale University. I joined the school newspaper as an opinion columnist, and then served as the opinion editor of a school paper for a year, and by the end of college I basically just yeah, I like writing. I like writing for a public audience. That's what I want to do in some capacity. Graduated, went to a small now defunct magazine called The American Interest as an editor. To the extent I did writing there, it was mostly about kind of the what were then very ourcurant debates about liberalism and postliberalism, things that I think are still in the ether but have lost some of their novelty. This was all kind of debates that have been stirred up on the right by by Trump's twenty sixteen election, and now you know, the shock of that is born off and debate. The debate isn't a bit of a different place, but that's kind of what I was interested in. And then yeah, in twenty twenty, you know, I heard the Free Beacon was hiring and decided it's probably time for a change. I'll try this and went over as an editor. But within a few months me and my boss decided I'd be more of an asset as a reporter. So I, having never done any reporting before, tried doing reporting. And I mean, I wouldn't actually say I'm particularly gifted at it, but no, I see.
You as a natural reporter. I'm surprised that that was your first reporting job.
No, I don't think I'm actually like, I don't think I have any kind of special talent, like I'm not, but but I worked hard, and I guess i'd sort of just a lucky kind of combination of connections and early hits and curiosity about topics that we were very hot, and so it kind of just turned into but kind of by chance, I just ended up becoming, I mean, relatively successful, I guess as a center right reporter. What do you consider your beat, wokeness and institutional capture very broadly, I mean, I wouldn't say that that's the only thing I've ever done reporting on, but that's what most of it ultimately comes down to. I've done a lot on universities and higher education, but I've also done things on medicine and law. My interests are definitely broader than just higher ed, but probably the most famous, slash impactful stories I've done have ultimately had something to do with education.
What's been your biggest story so far or among.
The in terms of raw impact.
I guess Claudine Gay exposing a lot of cases of plagiarism and former Harvard President Claudine Gay's work, because that was kind of the strong break of the camels and led to a resignation from Harvard. So I guess I probably have to say that one, you know, in terms of stories I'm actually most maybe proud of, because they required the most work and were most interesting.
I don't know. I did one on.
UCLA Medical School appears to have implemented a kind of covert unofficial system of racial preferences and violation.
That was a really good uh.
Yeah, California and federal law that I think was pretty important.
I did some stuff.
This might be the one that I actually think is objectively the most important. I did some stuff on the uh, the racial rationing of COVID drugs if you call, and actually, I think you might have been the one who got me on this beat, because you had to.
I think it was you.
Carol tweeted something about New York that's this race based policy for allocating monoclonic antibodies in late twenty twenty one, and I remember I saw that tweet and thought, huh, I wonder if other states were doing it, And just in like two hours of googling, was able to find two other, I think even more brazen examples.
And then I read the fine print.
It was like, oh, they're citing the Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization guidance to justify this completely insane trioch justs okay, and basically just wrote that up. And then you know, within like two weeks, Tucker Carlson had tooked about it on his then Fox show, and the programs have been canceled in Utah and Minnesota. Those were states that were doing this. So that I think was pretty impactful to just show that, like we actually could get to the point where life saving medical care was being rationed based on race.
But so what's interesting about that is I think that that shows what a natural reporter, you are, because I heard that story and I was like, wow, New York is crazy, and that's you know, that's where I left it. You were like, wait, is this happening elsewhere? Like how do I get to the bottom of this. I'm not a reporter. I've never been a reporter. So I could see the difference in our approach to it. Like, to me, it was a I tweeted it and I was done, and you went much deeper.
You know.
I'm just saying maybe you are a natural reporter and you're you just don't know it. So was there ever a plan B? Was there ever, like if you don't become a writer, you're going to be a.
I don't know. I mean I thought that being.
Like working at a think tank or doing some kind of policy where it could be interesting, you know, which would still involve writing, but in a bit of a different context. You know. I think there was a period where I thought, oh, like I like philosophy, I like going to school, I could be an academic. But then the problem is that at the time I was actually an undergraduate at Yale, that those were the years when Yale was kind of rocked by what you might call a kind of embryonic version of what happened in twenty twenty. Right, there was this rather silly scandal over cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes that's somehow spiraled into months of protests and recriminations and mo behings and name changes and all sorts of other things that really prefigured what I think the country saw following George Floyd in twenty twenty. It happened at year kind of first in twenty fifteen, being on campus during that time and being maybe a kind of semi public figure on campus because I was the head of the opinion page at the Yale Daily News, so I was fielding all the op eds related to this controversy. I am writing some of my own stuff. I this experience certainly pushed me somewhat to the right. I come into college a pretty moderate democrat. It was like, a Holy crap, these people are insane and they're going to rule us in five years. I don't like them to fifteen years. These are the next those of the EPA and the Justice Department.
Holy crap.
And you know, but also you know, these are this is the future of academia. These are the people who are going to be making hiring decisions. And these are the sorts of people students I would have to teach, and potentially the sorts of colleagues I would have to deal with. If I wanted to just you know, write about abstract problems and metaphysics or moral philosophy. Right, it was like, you know, forget it, Like that's that. If I could just write my stuff in peace and have fun philosophy debates with students every day, that'd be great. But if I actually were to have try to have fun philosophy debates with students, I'd get canceled for a politically incorrect thought experiment within two weeks.
So that's right.
I can't do that, right.
My my teenage daughter likes to quote this comedian who had a joke like, oh, you're getting a philosophy degree? Is that to go work at the new philosophy factory that opened in town? You know, so you had you had you had a vision for how it would go, and maybe outside the philosophy factory, but still it's interesting that you saw that coming and then you ended up being somebody that writes about it. And you know, I think about those early days that before times of when insanity was really just on campuses and we didn't think it was going to jump off campus, but then it did. And I think that that's, you know, a tough spot that we ended up in. Would you like if you had to do it over again, like, would you send your kids to Yale? Would you go to Yale again? It was it?
Yeah, I experience anyway.
No, I would definitely go to Yale again because it helped shape me into who I am. And the being kind of constantly embattled for four years was I think ultimately a good experience.
Money even though you started as a moderate Democrat, you feel like you were in battled for four years. Like, that's that's tough. Imagine being a conservative from the start, you know.
Yeah, And I honestly still I don't really like labels. I don't mean functionally on the center right and spot. So if people call me a conservative, that's fine, But I don't really have strong views on some people who become kind of partisans of these debates about what the true essence of conservatism is because they feel very invested in being a conservative. I don't really feel that way. I tend to look at things more on a case by case basis and just say I have certain commitments and principles that, as a contingent sociological matter put me on the center right in twenty twenty five.
But that could change.
But yes, that could easily change, right, I think, if you know, I could easily have been like a Bill Clinton Democrat.
But that's just interesting.
I do feel kind of committed to my conservative You're right, but I like, I don't feel committed to the Republican Party.
For example.
I feel yeah to my conservative principles, and I realized that that could be anything, you know, that that can move me anywhere in the future.
I mean, I think I have certain philosophical commitments that probably are more traditionally conservative. I probably have others that are more traditionally liberal or just or or just would better be characterized as some kind of other tradition that's totally orthogonal to liberal first conservative. But I would definitely say ditto on not being a committed member of the Republican Party. You know, there's plenty of things they do that I think are crazy and stupid. So I'm not you know, I'm not someone who's gonna make it my professional job to defend everything that.
Bear does.
Yeah. Absolutely, We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markcoid Show. What do you worry about?
Well, you ask about you're asking me about my politics, and I just said, I'm not a committed Republican. One of the reasons I'm not maybe a committed partisan Republican is that I think there is the potential for the current crapdown on campuses in the name of protecting Jewish students to really backfire and end up just kind of reinforcing the worst parts of the civil rights apparatus that helped lead to campus censorship and CI in the first place. So I part ways with some of my conservative friends and colleagues in that I obviously think that the you know, Prohamas kids are crazy and most of what's happened at Columbia is disgraceful, and I'm all for cutting the federal funding of a lot of these institutions that just repeatedly show that they were unwilling to maintain order on campus. But the more important thing is that they've just completely strayed from the purposes for which they were given tax exempts to us in the first place. Right, and clearly no longer respect academic freedom or anti discrimination law or any number of other important values intellectual diversity, et cetera. And that, to me is the main reason why they can't be trusted to reform themselves. In some kind of external government interventioned is necessary. So, you know, I'm kind of supportive of the broader adversarial posture that the Republican Party has taken towards the universities. But what I'm not supportive of is a that they've justified that posture almost not entirely, but almost exclusively in terms of protecting Jewish students. And b I'm not supportive of this idea that Jewish students are at imminent risk of physical harm and say therefore therefore students who organize the encampment should not merely be expelled, but actually if their green card revoked without due process and deported.
You know, I think maybe there is a case for doing it.
But but I but I'm I'm a bit concerned that it's being done in a very haphazard way, that that that could set some bad precedents. And moreover, right, I don't love this phenomenon of say Jewish students creating lists of people, or Jewish activist groups creating lists of activists who they would.
Like to be deported. I just think that is sent that is.
Creating a kind of culture, a snitch like culture, that is not good for free speech, whatever the merits, you know, in a particular case. And moreover, I don't think it's ultimately good for Jewish students themselves to live in this state of constant fear and to see themselves as obligated to, you know, kind of go to war with woke activists who they don't like over the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I just think that's fundamentally not why you go to college, sure, you know, to be an activist. And I and I really strongly reject the notion that people are made unsafe by deeply offensive speech.
Well, so it's interesting because I disagree with you on a few things there, but I like that you have, you know, a perspective of this, even though you're, like, you know, pretty deeply into covering them and not in a positive light obviously, But like, I think that there are boundaries of free speech that these activists are way overstepping.
Oh, I agree with that, to be clear, well.
And there is violence violence against Jews in New York is New York is number one for violence against Jews. Brooklyn specifically is top of the list. But you know, I almost feel like the thing here is that these leftist activists have made us play by these ridiculous rules, and now they're being caught up in their own rules, and I kind of want to see where it goes. I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Also, one one more thing about the Green cards is when you're here on a Green card, you have to live up to certain rules of the Green card. And they, as far as I understand, they're literally saying you, you you spurred violence. For example, it wasn't just about your speech, it was you You did not allow Jewish kids to go to class, you did not allow them to go to the library. You had just altercations on campus that went beyond speech. And they're saying that that violates the rules of the Green card. But again, I get what you're saying. I don't think that Jews should live in a perpetual, fearful state. Of course, it's a lot harder for them to have to live in that state when they're incapable of protecting themselves. They don't have Second Amendment rights in New York City largely, and the school won't do anything to step in and help them.
Sure, I mean I should clarify, you know, it may well turn out that the sky did violate the terms of his screen card, and in that case, sure, if you should be deported. My concern is that I don't know if it this is being done in a procedurally valid way. I also will freely admit that I don't know the law on this very well. This is just based on things I've read. And then the other thing I would say, though, is like, yeah, so I agree there's a distinction between speech and violence, and you should obviously have been expelled for taking over Hamilton Hall, right Like, all of that is totally that's not free speech.
You know. My other concern about how.
They're going about it is you want to be careful not to make martyrs out of people when you don't have to.
Your backlash point is a very good one.
And I worry that this particular guy might not be the best target for various reasons. You know, I would also say too that that although there obviously is violent hate crime against Jews in New York City. That's not coming mainly from Columbia students. That's coming from, in many cases, just kind of deranged psychopaths that the city's sort of jailbreak liberalist regime has allowed to run free. Really, I mean, there's an easy solution there, which is just if you have lots of criminal convictions and prior arrest, you just shouldn't be allowed on.
It's like, it's like a really good idea that one.
Right, Like, like deporting all the foreign kids at Columbia who protested or broke the rules will not materially make most the average Jew on the streets of New York saper. What would make them safer is if you just put a lot more cops out there and say, yeah, yeah, if you're a crazy psychopath, you don't get to walk around on the street.
Forcing the rules overall, I think would be a step in the right direction. Yeah, what advice would you give your sixteen year old self?
Two pieces of advice.
One would be I was like a really awkward kid in high school who frankly didn't even have very much interest in dating as a high schooler. I'd probably go back in time and say, you know, just like go on a few dates to just like get the hang of it, because it's college is not a good time for that to be your first experience dating, nor for that matter, really is after college. It's it's better if you have a little experience with this in high school. So that's probably what I would say.
My third writer is on his like sixth girlfriends.
So well, he's he's getting started early. That's that's good to hear.
And then I think the other piece of advice is I was always a really serious student who wanted to get straight a's and worried about every little you know, any point off of an assignment risk, No, no, you know, nothing less than one hundred percent. It's an okay attitude to have in high school. If you're trying to get into a good college, I would say, once you get to college, gratitude, Yeah, that attitude is important to maintain if you think you might want a job that requires you to get into a really good law school or get really good grades. It's frankly not very important to maintain if you're going to go into the field that I ended up going into. It doesn't mean it doesn't help, Like I think if you take classes seriously and learn, you.
Know you will.
Nobody's ever asked us for our transcript.
You'll be in a better place if you were a somewhat serious student. But if you like take tough classes that are curved in STEM and you get like a C or B, I mean, no one in journalism will care about that. And if you take you know, even if you kind of goof off in one semester and you don't do as well on your papers and like, yeah, it's just not going to matter as long as you have good clippings and show that you're a decent writer who can work relatively hard, and you know, to be honest, right, you don't need to be a serious philosopher to be a journalist, like right, I mean it can it can maybe help indirectly, but it's not it's really not a requirement of the job.
So I there are.
Very few requirements of this job.
Yes, yes, yes, And so I would probably tell my sixteen to maybe twenty two year old self, you know, just you don't need to you don't need to be as hung up about GPA. It's really not going to matter for you in the light.
Probably true for a lot of kids. Well, I've loved this conversation. This has been really interesting. End us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
I mean I kind of hesitate to offer any advice on this because I'm like a single twenty nine year old guy.
I don't really time to get married.
Let's go, Aaron, Well.
I don't.
Yeah, I don't know if I have any great advice. I guess I would say build in space to your schedule to read. I think it can be very easy to let the demands of work and the day to day overtake you, and then you get home and you just want to veg in front of the TV. I mean, I do this, but it's it's important that you kind of force yourself to carve out space to read and have some kind of I think quasi kind of intellectual pursuit, or at least I have found that I feel like my life is more meaningful and better when I do, even though it's hard, and I've been trying to do it more regularly.
Reading is as a popular one. You might be surprised, but it is a popular answer to that question.
Thank you so much for.
Coming on Aaron He is Aaron Sabariam. Check him out at Washington Free Weekend. Thanks again, thank you, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marko Witz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
