Political Correctness | Munk Debates

Michael Eric Dyson

"You’re telling me I’m being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that they’re being hypersensitive. If you’re white, this country is one giant safe space."

Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, a New York Times contributing opinion writer and a contributing editor of The New Republic.  

Dyson came from humble roots in Detroit, where he was a welfare father, a church pastor and a factory worker. He started college at 21 and eventually completed his doctorate in religion at Princeton University, studying Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

He has authored 21 books, taught at elite universities, and won prestigious honors that include an American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards. Ebony magazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential African Americans, and as one of the 150 most powerful Blacks in the nation.  

Dyson’s 1994 book Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, was named one of the most important African American books of the 20th century and his New York Times bestseller The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, has been described as “an interpretive miracle” and was a finalist for the 2016 Kirkus Prize. 

Dyson has appeared on every major television and radio show in the United States, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Real Time with Bill Maher and NPR’s All Things Considered.

Michelle Goldberg

"The focus must be on protecting the groups of people who are targets precisely because of their identities. To sideline their interests is to accede to a backlash that has just begun."

Michelle Goldberg has been an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times since 2017 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She is the author of three books: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, and The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West. Her first book was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, and her second won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award. She is an on-air contributor to MSNBC, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Guardian and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children. 

Jordan Peterson

"Without free speech there is no true thought."

Jordan Peterson grew up in Fairview, Alta., northwest of Edmonton, and received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from McGill University. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
 
Peterson has worked as a dishwasher, bartender, beekeeper, plywood mill labourer and railway line worker, among others. He has also consulted for the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Sustainable Development, advised senior partners of major law firms, lectured extensively and helped clinical clients manage conditions including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. The Spectator has called him “one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years.”
 
Peterson’s online self-help program, The Self Authoring Suite, has been featured in O: The Oprah Magazine and on CBC radio, and his online lectures have been viewed more than 35 million times on YouTube. One of his newest projects is a series of live theatre lectures called “The psychological significance of the Biblical stories.”
 
Peterson lives in Toronto with his wife, and recently became a grandfather.

Stephen Fry

"The advances of the Enlightenment are being systematically and deliberately pushed back."

Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet and film director. He was born in London and studied English literature at the University of Cambridge. It was there that he became involved with the Footlights, a theatre club that has spawned many of Britain’s most prominent comic actors, and met his long-time collaborator and friend, Hugh Laurie.
 
Fry is best-known for playing Lord Melchett and other characters in the television comedy series “Blackadder,” the Irish writer Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film “Wilde” and the Master of Laketown in Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy.
 
Fry has also written and presented several documentary series, including the Emmy Award-winning “Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive” and “Stephen Fry: Out There,” a two-part documentary about the lives of lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people around the world.
 
Fry has been married to comedian Elliott Spencer since 2015 and has advocated for the rights of the LGBT community for 30 years.