The link at the end of this text takes you to an interview with professor of international relations, Alexander Wendt, done by Sean Illing for Vox. The article was updated on July 24, 2020, due to the New York Times (NYT) article about the Pentagon´s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force (there is a link to the NYT article in Illing´s article).
My main point with this text is to highlight the fact that most people who study credible data on the UFO phenomenon will end up with the conclusion that there is a real phenomenon worthy of a scientific investigation. Most people reaching that conclusion can separate the issue of UFOs being real from the issue of what they are. Unfortunately, unsound sceptics like Seth Shostak and Neil deGrasse Tyson tries to make it the case that everyone interested in, or all believers of the reality of, the UFO phenomenon cannot differentiate between those two issues.
For sure, some UFO believers have a hard time understanding the difference between saying that UFOs are real and what/who is behind UFOs. But Sean Illing and Alexander Wendt do not fit into that category. I think both Illing´s and Wendt´s approach to the UFO phenomenon, and their conversation in the interview, can serve as a model of how to be and stay, both open-minded and sceptical.
Sean Illing writes about himself at the beginning of the article:
I’m not what you would call a UFO enthusiast, but the videos are the most compelling I’ve ever seen. They seem to confirm, at the very least, that UFOs are real — not that aliens exist, but that there are unidentified objects buzzing around the sky.
Illing is with "the videos" referring to the three UFO/UAP videos officially released by and acknowledged as genuinely "unidentified" by the U.S. Department of Defense. About the reason, he reached out to prof. Wendt for an interview, Illing writes:
So in an attempt to force a UFO conversation into the public discourse, I contacted Alexander Wendt, a professor of international relations at Ohio State University. Wendt is a giant in his field of IR theory, but in the past 15 years or so, he’s become an amateur ufologist. He wrote an academic article about the political implications of UFOs in 2008, and, more recently, he gave a TEDx talk calling out the “taboo” against studying UFOs.
If you are new to the UFO phenomenon, or UFO subject, I recommend you to watch prof. Wendt´s TEDx Talk, and to read his and Raymond Duvall´s 2008 academic article.
In the Vox article, Illing asks relevant questions and Wendt gives interesting and levelheaded answers. I disagree with some of Wendt´s answers, for example, the one about too little physical evidence. I would say we have enough physical evidence and credible eyewitnesses for a congressional hearing.
In my mind, the most interesting parts of the interview/conversation are the ones about a government cover-up or not (and why or why not), and about why "They" are here. Enjoy:
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