C (4:58)

Great question. You know, Judith Butler said that Hamas was a progressive force. How she makes that mental gymnastics is completely beyond me, but they will and they do. And I think a lot of that stems from the anti Western animus that animates these movements. And you can look at decolonial theory, you can look at critical theory, and these are academic disciplines that kind of build on criticizing everything that we really love in America, whether that is the fact that you can, you know, make a wonderful life for yourself if you work hard to, you know, our. The family unit, our belief that, you know, you can practice whatever faith you want to have. And so these academic institutions have become these hotbeds for these radical ideas that they mainline and give legitimacy to. I remember some of the posters that I was seeing within date, like days after October 7th were glamorizing the bulldozer going through the gate. And that was the rallying call for students to go protest. So really making and like, the commentary about the hang gliders. Another thing that you would see on posters for student groups, and that letter from the Harvard students where they signed off and spoke highly of resistance, I really think was a straw that broke the camel's back in a really unique way where we realized, oh, wow, if they're saying this at Harvard University, you know, there is something completely rotten in academia. And I think a lot of. And think. I think that alone opened up a whole lot of people's eyes regarding what was wrong in higher ed.

A (6:53)

Yeah, well, I think that absolutely opened people's eyes. I mean, the other thing that I remember, really just not necessarily opening my eyes. Right. I mean, I'm in this space. We've kind of known that the colleges and the universities have been sick for a really long time, but it still shocked me just how it played out was the congressional hearing involving the presidents of UPenn and Harvard and I think MIT and there was one other school. Was it Cornell? I can't remember. But it was incredible to watch these university presidents in the Ivy League sit there and squirm around very simple questions. I mean, these are universities that have penalized all kinds of hate speech, that have policed the things that student groups have said and done. Right. I mean, there was an incident, I remember, where some law school kid, I think it was at Yale, got in trouble for a poster advertising a party at the Trap house party, for those of you who don't remember, and you can Google it, it was a big thing. And there was swift discipline brought to bear. Right. The student was made to apologize and grovel. And yet here you had people literally calling for intifada and chant for the destruction of Israel and cheering on Hamas, which is a, you know, a genocidal terrorist organization. And these university presidents couldn't bring themselves to express the moral clarity that. Niti, you mentioned. Adam, I mean, I wonder what your sense is just, you know, of the role of that hearing in just sort of shifting the mind of the American public and bringing it on board to this realization that something is very, very wrong in the state of Denmark.

D (8:33)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, just as a side note, I was actually a student at Columbia when all of these protests flared up. So I was there. There was a lot of disruption. But one of the things I observed is that it was driven by a very small share of the students that had a very disproportionate impact that were driving these. These disruptive activities that were doing all of the organizing. And you actually saw that when they had the encampments At Columbia, after they expelled or disciplined a couple of the students, they died down very quickly after that. So I think what. What the hearings highlighted is that the administration had. The. These university administrations hadn't done enough to combat this type of extreme behavior that has disproportionate impacts on other students. And it's one thing to be in favor of free speech and protest and discussion, but it needs to happen. I think what those hearings highlighted is that it needs to happen in a forum that enables other students to learn as well, and it does need to take the concerns of Jewish students seriously. So I think that's. That's when you really saw that highlighted and when that. A lot of attention fell on this topic. And then at least my sense is that Colombia did start taking this a lot more seriously, including this past year where you had another disruption, and in three hours, the NYPD had been called in and the library was reopened the next day.

A (10:06)

Yeah, I mean, tell me a little bit more about your experience at Columbia, because you're exactly right. You were in the middle of this when all of it kicked off. I mean, what was that like? What was the tenor on campus? What were your Jewish colleagues experiencing? What were they feeling? What were they telling you?

D (10:26)

Yeah, there was a lot. There was a lot of disruption. I remember sitting in the classroom and you couldn't hear the lecturer talking because of protests and chanting outside. After a couple of weeks, they closed the school gates. And what we realized is that a lot of the people who'd been on campus protesting weren't even students or weren't even enrolled at Columbia. And so you still did have those radical students on campus driving some of the activism, but most of it had moved outside the school gates and was being driven by external organizations. I think there was a sense that, especially amongst my Jewish friends, that the university wasn't taking some of the more extreme rhetoric and chants seriously. And a lot of them did feel was neglected by the university for this. As I said, I think after the hearings, the university started taking this a little bit more seriously, especially as they realized that they could have federal enforcement if. If they didn't start to do so.

A (11:36)

Yeah, no, I think a lot of people have that sense. Right. That some of these universities and colleges have. Have, you know, starting to smarten up at least a little bit in, in the wake of the, you know, publicity that. The negative publicity that these universities and colleges got. But, you know, let's. Let's not dismiss the possibility that, you know, the Trump administration's cracking down on These universities may have played a role in changing the incentive structure. Anita, you know, I wonder what you make of that. I mean, you have been, you know, a critic of higher education and a scholar in that space for a long time. You know, we've kind of operated under this idea that the universities and colleges should be left untouched. Right. That, you know, they should be off the table for any kind of intervention, you know, from a presidential administration or from Congress. But it does seem to be the case that at least some of the pushback seems to have had the desired result.

B (12:32)

Yeah. So I think those who say that accountability is not good for universities, you know, they don't realize that universities are so valuable, that we should care about accountability, that they are held to the highest standards, that they value rigor. One thing I will say is, I think when we talk about the debate of how the administration is handling the universities and holding them accountable, it goes beyond this framing of aggressive reform, and the universities are untouchable. I think a big part of this is just how the administration is holding universities accountable and the methods that they're using. I think the administration shines best when they have targeted reforms. You know, if they're going after universities where they've, for example, given discriminatory scholarships on the basis of race, it's a very specific action. Meanwhile, I think the administration is on much shakier ground when they start trying to enforce changes, especially on viewpoint diversity, for example, requiring Harvard to admit students or to hire faculty based on ideology. And actually, I had the opportunity to talk to Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeyer, who's been making some incredible reforms. And that interview is on the City Journal website. And I think something that was really important that I took away from that conversation is that it's really important for universities to build a culture that allows free inquiry. And so some of the ways Vanderbilt has been doing that, you know, when they have students that are disrupting campus activities, making sure to discipline them immediately so that the environment is open for all students and all faculty to share their views respectfully. They have courses on campus where they're discussing very controversial issues. And they also try to make sure that students and faculty groups can bring external speakers without much hurdle. And so I think this is, of course, there's place for state and federal intervention, but there also needs to be initiative from university leadership from the campus community to ensure that there is free inquiry on campus.

A (15:14)

No, I think that's right. I mean, what you're getting at is an important idea, which is that part of what Happens on university campuses is a function of top down leadership. I mean, people are taking their cues from those who are in positions of respect within these institutions. And when Adam mentioned that was really a small group of people who were driving a lot of the disruptions on the Columbia campus. That doesn't surprise me for a couple of reasons. I mean, one is that this behavior, for anyone who's seen the videos, is obviously antisocial in nature. Right. And thankfully, we live in a society where only a small segment of the population is antisocial to that degree. But antisocial people also respond to incentives and to signals. And one of the things that I worry about is that, you know, there was this instinct at the outset to dismiss some of this stuff as, you know, it's just a tiny group of crazy people. We don't need to pay attention to them much. In the same way that, you know, antifa was described in the early days of, you know, the sort of BLM protest era. But the reality is that a lot of these students were not getting these ideas from nowhere. Right. I mean, a good bit of this was coming from the faculty. And Stu, I mean, I just want to come back to you on this because you have just done such a great job of documenting the insane riot radicalism that runs rampant throughout the faculty lounges of these universities and colleges where you have professors who have tenure and are openly calling for armed revolution, who are openly celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, for example, and calling for the silencing of oppositional speech, of hate speech, of fascist speech. These are terms that they throw around to justify their behavior. But I mean, I don't think these students are ever really getting it just out of the blue. Right. They're not coming up with this on their own, at least not entirely. I think a good part of this has to do with the fact that we have allowed these faculty members to embed themselves in these places where they, you know, have the respect of the students and can influence them in a terrible way.

C (17:26)

Absolutely. I mean, you have so many professors who are very open that they are hostile to the universities where they teach. And that is not something that is disciplined. That is not something that is seen as a breach of contract. It's kind of glossed over as their freedom to do so. So you will have professors on video say, you know, I'm here to use the power of the university to push my political agenda, even if it harms or dismantles the university. So a lot of the academic theory, for people not familiar with this when they want to dismantle the university, they see the Western university as a colonial, capitalist superstructure. So they're hostile to that. So their goal is to embed themselves within and change it, revolutionize it, whatever they need to do to use it to fit their agenda. So you will have professors say, well, we think the university should be helping everyone in the public outside of the university and no longer focusing on their mission of students, academic excellence, innovation, and it's a massive problem. And looking at some recent news from this week, you had the Trump proposal go out to a few universities about some things that they thought would be helpful to the university. You know, one of the things that I liked was a tuition freeze, which I think is something that appeals to, you know, everyone. You know, tuition is way too high. But, you know, sitting in on these faculty senates that I go to, you can just see just how hostile the faculty are to even the idea of, you know, some of these ideas and what I would call malicious compliance. So if the Trump administration suggests we want to do these changes because we want to make things be less hostile, they interpret things in the most out of whack idea so they can have, you know, issues with it. Now, I will say universities should be reaching these conclusions on their own and doing good work. I think Dartmouth has done a good job in that space. But it's just, you know, I think administrators and college presidents really need to have some courage. And if they have faculty saying I'm here to dismantle or other things along those lines, they need to kick those people to the curb.

A (20:00)

Yeah, I mean, I think that that idea sounds, you know, completely reasonable to the median American. Right. Who, by the way, would never be allowed in most of these universities. But, you know, but, but when I think about some of these, I mean, like, take Columbia, for example, right? I mean, this is an institution that I, you know, remember hiring Kathy Boudin, who was convicted of a terrible crime, and not just hiring this woman, but honoring her after her death, you know, putting up this big, you know, little memorial page on their website. I mean, this is, you know, this was not, you know, someone who I would have wanted influencing my kids. I mean. And Adam, I'm just curious about, you know, your experience with the professoriate there at Columbia. I mean, you know, I would never, as someone with my sensibilities, right. I would never have felt in a place like Columbia, like I was able to express myself freely in class assumptions, but also, you know, to say what I wanted to say as part of an Assignment. You know, I would never feel secure in knowing that that wouldn't be held against, given the bent of the faculty. I mean, was that your experience, or is that just off the mark?

D (21:17)

Maybe I was very lucky. I do think most of my professors didn't have that extreme ideological bent. But what Stu was describing sounds like a form of neo Marxism. This idea that society is broken down into oppressed and oppressor class, capitalist bourgeois and proletariat. It sounds like the same ideas just transplanted into new groups, new logic. So, like, it's actually. It isn't a new thing. It's like we have had this for going back, like, several hundred years at the same time, like I said, I do think a lot of the faculty at Columbia aren't pushing these extreme ideas, but there are. I think it's concentrated in a couple of departments. I know this came up in the hearings, the congressional hearings. And so it's really in a couple of departments where you see this concentrated.

A (22:21)

Yeah, I mean, Niti, you're probably familiar with this research more than anyone else. But I mean, the last I remember taking a look at some of this, I mean, some departments, it's like 36 to one registered, you know, Democrats or liberals compared to conservatives. And even in the departments where the ratio is slightly closer to parity, you're still talking about 2, 3, 4 to 1.

B (22:44)

Yeah. And I mean, this is particularly an issue in the social sciences and humanities departments. And one thing that I like to say is that we should want more viewpoint diversity in the fields where there is much more debate, and it's not so much based on a scientific method or, you know, maybe when it comes to 2 plus 2 is 4, it shouldn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, but when it comes to the positions we take on history or the value we impose through English, there needs to be a lot more back and forth. And that's just not what we're getting right now at the universities. And I think that's why so many students, so many faculty are left in the dark and they're not aware of the breadth of different viewpoints that exist. And I think that's why when you have college presidents that are grilled by Congress and they're stumbling over their words, they don't know how to defend what has happened on campus, it's because no one's ever really questioned them.

A (23:50)

No, I think that. I think it's also because what's happening on their campuses is definitionally indefensible. But I just Think about my own experience, especially in law school. I mean, getting to law school in my first year and listening to my professors talk about the cases that we were learning. It was very clear to me within the first week that I was an outlier in that space. But it really wasn't until through organizations like the Federalist Society that I was able to get exposed again outside of my classrooms, you know, to the writings of people like Antonin Scalia and you know, to other thinkers who more closely represented, you know, what I viewed to be a sanior view of the law. You mentioned kind of more ideological balance the two. There's when I was going to law school in Chicago at the University of Chicago, which is not where I went, I went to DePaul University. But at the University of Chicago at the time, there was a course on a originalism that was co taught by Richard Posner, who was a, you know, left of center judge known, you know, as a major critic of originalism, and Will Bode, who was a proponent of originalism. And they co taught the course where they were both kind of giving and taking so that the students could get fair representations of both sides. And I remember thinking, sounds great.

C (25:10)

Yeah.

A (25:10)

I just remember thinking like, man, I wish I could be in a class in which, you know, my con law professor would get challenged on a regular basis or on a daily basis, even by someone who was similarly positioned. So maybe that's a model for these colleges and universities to think about. But as much as we on this show could agree that something needed to be done with colleges and universities, there are people who disagree. There is a significant cohort of public intellectuals who think that the Trump administration's being too heavy handed, that putting university funding at risk to get these kinds of concessions is, if not unconstitutional, at the very least wrong. And that what we're risking here is destroying the legacy of institutions that produce a lot of great things for all their faults. And I wonder how much that argument moves you all. I mean, I can see, I could see why someone would make that argument. But as someone who's kind of followed these debates for a long time, it's very hard for me to see many of these institutions as redeemable. I can't think of very many colleges or universities that I would be proud to send my kids to in 10, 15 years. But again, maybe I'm missing something. Stu, what do you think?

C (26:37)

Yeah, this is a common critique I see in comments on my articles on City Journal. You know, if we got rid of, you know, certain departments like let's say the ethnic studies department at, you know, one of the universities in California. I do not think that's going to harm the UC system's ability to do scientific innovation. You know, I mean, it's, it's a lot of, a lot of the time I think it's a bad faith argument. You know, we're talking about what are things that make everyone's life better. You know, if a department is, you know, putting out just noxious ideas into the environment, I don't see that redeem as redeemable. And often, you know, like, let's take a Professor Dylan Rodriguez, and he teaches in, at UC Riverside, I believe. And you know, this was someone who was the mentor to the young man who did the firebombing on the UC Berkeley police vehicle. This, you know, what does he teach? So he is in the ethnic studies department at UC Riverside and, you know, has been there for a very long time and has these ideas about, you know, mass movements and insurgency and fighting back against the colonial capitalist system by any means necessary. And it's all on his bio on the, on the school website. And, you know, this is someone who has been a mentor to someone who has done domestic terrorism. And I think that's worth investigating at least. You know, I find something like that concerning.

A (28:23)

And yeah, I think everyone finds it concerning. Look, here's, here's, here's where I kind of come at it, right? Like a lot of these colleges and universities, which, by the way, many of them are extremely wealthy institutions, right? These are basically hedge funds, you know, that have occasional study halls. They receive a great deal of taxpayer money in the form of different subsidies and grants. And I, as a taxpayer feel like it's not crazy for me to want to have a say in how my money gets spent and what causes my money goes toward advancing. And so when I hear, hear people levying these critiques of what the Trump administration's trying to do, I mean, I understand that on the one hand, right. I mean, these universities have a storied history. They have produced great ideas, great books, scientific innovation, right? All of that is worth considering. But at the end of the day, if they need my money to do it, I should have some representation with respect to how those universities are behaving and using my money. And by my, I mean the taxpayer, which, you know, of course is individually, it's dropping the bucket. But in the aggregate, right? I mean, these universities clearly rely on a great deal of this support. And so to the extent that they're going to do that. I mean, they can always take the Hillsdale college route. Right. And for the listeners who don't know, Hillsdale is a college in Michigan that does not take any government money specifically so that it can never be told what to do by the government. Right. That is an option that is open to a lot of these colleges and universities, but it doesn't, you know, it's not one that they've taken and yet they seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. And Adam, I wonder what you need to sort of make of that.

D (30:14)

Yeah, yeah, no, I was going to make a very similar point, actually. I think we do need to be like, I think there is credibility to the claim that, that these institutions have been very important in the post war era. They have produced a lot of research. They are very, very important to the formation of ideas and to scientific innovation, but they don't have an absolute right to receive taxpayer funds. And so insofar as they are receiving taxpayer funds, is that there must be some kind of public benefit. That is that. And so I think now is the time to examine what that public benefit is. And if we find that money could be used in a more sensible way or in a way that would produce greater public benefits, then we should reconsider where the grants are going. At the same time, I would just add very quickly that as someone who has had like a pretty good experience at Colombia, I think there is still a lot of a great intellectual life there. And I do think this is the case across not only other Ivy League schools, but other universities as well. You do need to make sure that there is some balance between completely removing federal funding, banning international students, as they briefly did to Harvard, and ensuring that these institutions are still able to produce great research.

A (31:40)

Yeah, I mean, Nita, I just, I wonder what you think about just not simply just sort of relying on this case that like, hey, you're getting federal funds, therefore you should be beholden in some respect to our demands. But to use these federal funds and the power of the federal government over things like student visas to explicitly twist the arm of universities to get very specific policies put in place or taken down. I have grown more comfortable with that, especially over the last five years. But I wonder if there is a strong case to be made that that just takes things a step too far.

B (32:24)

Yeah. So again, I think I don't have any problem with placing stipulations with receiving any sort of public money for universities. And to a certain degree, we already have that in the law. But we can Always go and revisit it and figure out what needs to be stronger, what doesn't, et cetera. But I think it's important for the administration to ensure that they are following the procedures and the laws that are in place. That's the only way that they will be effective. At the same time, I think university leadership needs to recognize that the fringe departments, the activist departments, are making a bad name for all the other departments. Math, physics, biology, the ones that are doing really good work. They are making it so much harder for them to operate because they are doing good work. But when you have so many of the public that has their pitchforks at the universities and they want to see them burned down, you know, they need to address how activist departments are making it harder for the good work being done. In other words.

A (33:38)

No, I think that's a good point. Right. I mean, because what you have is a situation in which the bad behavior is imposing costs that are borne at least in part, by the people who are not behaving badly. And that's not an ideal outcome. The question is, it's like, can we save those good parts while at the same time excising the. The cancers at these universities?

D (34:07)

Which, yeah, I would add to that as well. I think a big part of this comes from a lack of thinking over the last few years of what we want the university to be. What is the purpose of the university? And so you have a conflict between people who follow the traditional mission of trying to advance knowledge and people who now come in and see it as a means of attaining social justice or their view of the world. And that's like, sidelined this traditional academic mission. And so if, especially the universities that have faced these congressional hearings and have faced a lot of disruption if they come together, if the administration, the professors, the students come together and think, what is the purpose of our university? That, in my view, could be one way in which we move past this and work to restore these institutions.

A (34:57)

I think that's right. And I'm tempted to channel our colleague Heather McDonald, because one of the things that she has said so many times and much more beautifully than I can say it, which is that universities exist to teach. Right? Yet we've adopted this idea that you should go to universities to become an activist. Right. Universities are clearly sending these signals. Or if you look at college admission essay prompts, for example, what they want you to do is tell a story about how you fought for some cause. Or, you know, it's like, how about we just acknowledge that these are 18 year old kids who don't know anything, and we shouldn't want them fighting for causes because they don't know anything, and that they're coming here to learn from people who do know things and that they should be quiet and listen and absorb as opposed to, you know, show up, you know, with this sort of entitlement to being heard. I think what she says is, you know, students should be seen and not heard. And I think, you know, there's a sense in which she's right. I mean, when I walked into, you know, classrooms as a university student, as a law student, I assumed generally that the professor knew more than me. And even in the cases in which I disagreed with the professor, I listened very closely so I could understand the argument. And then I would go consult sources that, you know, might disagree and see if I could come to something on my own. But the idea was not, I'm here to, you know, go out in the world and tell you how it should be, even though I don't really know anything. Thing.

C (36:27)

One thing I want to say about. One thing I want to say about that is, you know, if you are in a classroom that works on a Paulo Ferrari model, he was a Brazilian Marxist educator. It's a. It's a classroom that is structured so it's not oppressive. So they see the teacher lecturing at the front of the class as oppressive. So I. I was in one of these classes, and we. We sat in a giant circle and the students taught the class and the professor sat there. So, I mean, so that. That is a reality on some of these college campuses. Sure. That is playing out as crazy about.

B (37:05)

In my opinion, it's in the Education Department.

D (37:09)

Yeah, no, it's just a fundamentally different type of thing. There effectively is no professor there. And so, like, you have to see, which one do I learn more in?

A (37:19)

Right. I mean, well, if I'm a parent, too, I'm just. I'm looking at that and saying, what am I paying for? Do your job.

D (37:23)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (37:25)

This is. It's crazy. So, look, I want to be respectful of everyone's time. And I know, you know, we're coming up on. On our time here, but I'm just curious that, you know, given that tomorrow's October 7th, which has, you know, again, kicked off a ton of debates here. Did any of you catch the debate between Dave Smith and Coleman Hughes on his podcast last week? It was like a Megapod. Three and a half hours. If you haven't seen it. I highly, highly recommend it. I thought it was Great. I was gonna ask you all what you all made of it very quickly before we go to see if you had any sense of who won. I thought Coleman really just added a lot of clarity to the conversation, which I thought was helpful. It was significantly more productive than a lot of the debates I've seen. So, you know, if none of you have anything to add on that, I will say to our audience, I think you should go check it out. Which is actually kind of fitting because today's a day where the free press has some cool announcements also, so. All right, well, I appreciate the great conversation as always, you guys. I wish we could do this for another hour. Unfortunately, we can't. For all of you who are listening and watching, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the City Journal podcast. I want to thank you all, my panelists. I want to thank our producer, Isabella Rajai. For those of you listening and watching, watching again, like, comment, subscribe, hit the bell, do all the things, Boost the algorithm, Ask us questions. We've gotten a few questions. We will get to them at some point, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon.