I listened to his Yale speech, and a lot of what he said was true, but he kinda harms his own credibility when he glosses over the USSR and DPRK.

He just kinda says “US intervention bad” and implies that there was nothing wrong with those nations to begin with and that everything would be fine if it weren’t for US meddling. A Korean student literally asked him if he wanted to revise that position and he basically says “I don’t care how other nations govern themselves.” Like, dude.

He even insinuated that the current situation in Russia is the US’s fault for defeating the Soviet Union. And he acts like the fall of the USSR was this tragic thing, when people throughout former Soviet states literally celebrated when it happened. He said it resulted in mass deaths, but never mentioned the mass deaths the Soviet Union itself caused.

Most of what he said was okay though. One of the guys who asked a question said he agreed with 90% of it. I’m more like 85% I think, but that other 15% are pretty important. For one thing, he kinda skirted around any mention of Ukraine, even when someone asked about it.

Overall, he seems like he’s done a lot of research, but outside of an academic context and without any serious rigor or pedagogy. Like, he belongs on internet forums where he can debate people and share his knowledge and ideas, but speaking at universities should be for people with higher degrees.

I don’t like when the right-wing sends influencers/streamers to colleges to speak, and since I value logical consistency, I don’t think the left should be doing it either.