Ross Douthat

in spite of having the base of your party mad at you, why did you leave?

And and was it great to leave politics for a world of

And it was... Well, but I assume their departmental rival was getting the extra foot of glass.

Tell me just a little bit about the part of your job at Florida that was sort of

connected to this larger effort by conservatives to kind of perform some kind of transformation of more liberal academic institutions.

You know, University of Florida started the Hamilton Center, right, which is one of these sort of institutes of civic thought, but that sort of double as places where people with moderate and right of center views can get hired.

Just tell me how you think or what you think about that project.

Right, which is, and just...

We'll talk about the left in a sec, but there is a conservative temptation, I think, that you as a politician and academic, I'm sure, have seen to look at that story and say, oh, we should just accelerate the process, right?

The liberal arts are all just sort of socialist identity politics, you know, deconstructionist rot, and let's just cut their budgets and just encourage people onto pure pre-professional vocational studies.

I feel like you see that from a lot from a certain kind of Republican politician.

Right.

Is the impulse of a lot.

Right.

And just leave the business school standing.

Correct.

Right.

So how do you...

How do you persuade conservatives that they need to be invested in these institutions?

Do you think you can get...