B (8:54)

How much time do I have?

A (8:56)

There's a clock there.

B (8:58)

So, Yehuda, first of all, thank you for that great introduction, and I just want to thank you for inviting me here. This is a very special place, and this is a very special event, and I'm just so delighted to be here, especially to honor our friend Dan Rubin, who unfortunately was not a Harvard graduate. And I want to give credit to his undergraduate institution. It was Pomona. He was a very loyal alumnus to Pomona. So I just have to say that he was just a fabulous guy. But to your question to me, let me start out by saying we've all heard it's lonely at the top, and I have friends here who will relate to what I have to say. Shira, whoever said it's lonely at the top never had a board. And there's something I want you to all understand about academic leadership, which is that being the president of a university, and you almost said this, you were getting close to Yehuda, is a lot more like being the mayor of a small city than like being a CEO or a king, elected or otherwise. It is a very, very different kind of leadership role, and the modern research university in particular. But it's true, I think, of all academic institutions has a very large and diverse constituency, often with conflicting interests and conflicting goals. And at a time of division, I think the most important task is to find what unites us, what can bind us together. And I would say at this moment, in our country, as I talk to people around the country and hear from people, I think there's a real hunger for finding points of connection so that we can bridge divisions. So I would say that's a predicate to carry out the rest of our mission. And Harvard has an ambitious but fairly simple mission, which is really about excellence in teaching, learning, and research. In order to be excellent at that, we have to be capable of speaking with one another freely, hearing one another, risking being rejected or saying something offensive, if that's necessary, to be able to have effective communication. And as president, I'm focused on different issues than my predecessors were because the time is different. And it's not that we ignore our traditional goals and our traditional approaches. It's that we made assumptions about university culture that turned out to be out of step with reality, and we have to get back to where we thought we would be. So for my presidency, that has been a focus. And I would also say that that cannot be a unique focus going forward.

A (12:08)

Can you unpack a little bit? I'm all in for teaching, learning and research. It seems to me that so much of the challenges that face the universities are around larger societal expectations, around cultural leadership, how to responding to the zeitgeist, political leadership, taking positions very publicly about the dynamism of our polarized society, expectations that in some ways the universities are civic institutions and almost serve quasi governmental functions. And even teaching and learning has a lot to say or potentially has a lot of power in not just the kind of dispassionate study, but preparing people to actually play very significant roles in society. And I'm wondering whether those public perceptions of what the university are about are at odds with that mission.

B (13:05)

There is a critique of many of our universities, ones that are prominent and in the public eye, that we set culture, that is, that we generate culture in some way, and that we are the trainers or the educators of the elite. We have tremendous influence. And in good times that's a compliment. And in times when people are unhappy, that's a criticism. And we heard a lot of voices saying, you name what it is that people are unhappy about, Wokeness DEI gone wild, the whole series of issues, and even antisemitism. They put the blame at the feet of visible universities. Now, when we have been attacked, people have said that we are attacked in part because they think if we fall into line and fix things, other universities will fall into line. So this is partly about Harvard, but it's partly about what we represent. And let me add that although I like to think that we have an influence on the general culture, students come to us with different backgrounds, different depending on where they were educated, and a whole lot of other factors, but also in ways that have changed over the years. Take, for example, what I have often said is the underlying problem that has given rise to increasing intolerance, and the antisemitism fits into that category. I've generally attributed that to growing illiberalism on campuses. What do I mean by illiberalism? What I mean is a tendency to reject views that are not consistent with our own and to conflate very often views expressed with identity in a way that means an attack on what I say is almost like an ad hominem attack. It's an attack on me. That is something that simply wasn't true when I was a student, and I suspect other people in the room would Agree that that was their experience. And it changed over time. Students came to us that way with a set of expectations that they would not hear language or thoughts that would be offensive to them. And there was this notion of safety and so on. And I think got carried to an extreme where it was really inimical to the exercise of free speech. But part of what that meant was there's an increasing tendency that we observe in social settings and elsewhere to sort of self segregate among people who would be safe in the sense that they would have similar views and similar identities. That directly contradicts the goal to be excellent in teaching, learning and research, because you have to be open to a wide range of views to be able to test even your own beliefs. So that's the problem we confronted, is students were not ready for that. I have long been a believer in pretty much unfettered free speech. What I had failed to appreciate before is that it's not simply a matter of having policies that permit free speech. What's changed is that we need to enable our students to have the skills to exercise free speech effectively. That means being better able to express your ideas that might be offensive in ways that people can hear them and listen and respond and react in a constructive way. It also means having the skills to listen to ideas that may be very different from your own and that you might find offensive and to have a charitable view of what the speaker is trying to say. And in fact, that's part of what we've tried to do, to actually introduce into various classes and orientation and so on some of the skills that it takes to do that. So I just want to emphasize we were attacked because we hadn't solved the problem. Nobody had. They like to use Harvard as the example of higher ed. Kind of like for facial tissues, you say Kleenex. For education, it's Harvard. And how many of you remember the Varsity Blues scandal? This is the admissions scandal. I noticed that almost every story had a picture of Harvard when they wrote about the Varsity Blues scandal, even though Harvard was not implicated in any way. So I kind of understand that there's something that attracts attention.

A (18:12)

Yeah, but your campus is also quite scenic.

B (18:16)

I would not say that Stanford and USC are ugly.

A (18:23)

So I appreciate that you're zooming us out to a larger crisis of liberalism in our society and pointing to the ways that the university could play a larger role in remedying that. But there also is a dimension of that story in which the universities are not merely the recipients of students who have been encountering a More illiberal framework, a hesitancy or a reluctance to engage in dialogue across difference, not to mention a larger society that is polarized around difference. There are also ways that seem clear to me where the universities are serving as an accelerant to that illiberalism. One of the ways that I think that shows up is noticing, and this was different on a lot of different campuses over the last number of years, where faculty were serving to depolarize conflict and where faculty were actually accelerating that conflict on campuses. There's no question that there's a rise of illiberal thinking in a lot of different humanities disciplines around who can speak about what issue, which ideas can be aired, what permission is there. And I was even thinking about my own alma mater, which has a core curriculum. And it's almost unimaginable for me that they would be able to get the faculty to add onto that core curriculum a required semester on how to talk. I don't think the faculty would allow it, and I think they would be the wrong people to teach it. So to what extent is some of this about challenges that are in some ways endemic to the university to be able to participate in pushing back against this larger crisis of a liberalism?

B (20:01)

Yeah. So, Yehuda, one thing you're pointing out is that the universities may not have created the problem, but sometimes they've exacerbated it. Just as universities can be sources of the solutions, they can be causes of the problems. And there's no question that there are examples of that probably at every university. And here I just want to point out something that everybody knows. There has been a generational shift in views about a number of issues, including free speech and. And if you were to speak to older faculty, like around my generation, the idea that some views should not be expressed or that certain speakers should get priority because of historical grievances of some kind, that's anathema. At very least, it's an unfamiliar concept. But that changed with younger generations of faculty, mainly very young generations, where they said some voices that have not been traditionally heard need to be elevated. Furthermore, there had been a change, and I'm not giving you statistics. This is impressions. So just to be clear, this is a set of impressions. Older faculty would say that your own views should not really influence the discussion of a topic, particularly of social or political relevance, that you should present alternative points of view fairly and fairly, comprehensively, critically, but also not necessarily elevating what your own beliefs are about these issues. That was considered to be one of the characteristics of Excellent teaching. But there was a change, and I wouldn't disagree with you, that it was more in some fields than others, where people would sometimes say, I will bring my identity to these issues and it's going to affect how I teach my own research. And you touched on this. Used to be in economics and health care and health policy. I ran two centers at Stanford. One was called the center for Health Policy. Almost all of our work was directly relevant to policy, and we had an understanding that the work we did should inform the development of policy. We would never take a policy position for a variety of reasons. One of them, and maybe most importantly, is it would call into question the objectivity of our work. And we had a rule that the faculty could support different, on their own time, basically different political views. But in their teaching, they had to be completely objective. That's what had shifted. And that's where I think we went wrong. Because think about it. If a professor in a classroom says, this is what I believe about this issue, how many students, some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn't. How many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who's expressed a firm view about a controversial issue? So some of that happened, and I'm pleased to say that I think there's real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.

A (23:31)

So if there's a move back to both an orientation of teaching towards a kind of neutrality and. And also, I would say more generally, it feels like after the last decade, there's a shifting back to real, clear institutional neutrality. Like universities got themselves in a lot of trouble by issuing this statement about this political issue, which made it impossible for them to stay silent on that political issue. And then on some of these issues, there's almost no way to win with whatever kind of statements you put out. So it does feel like we're moving back towards that kind of institutional neutrality. At the same time, you described yourself as something of a free speech absolutist, especially when it comes to campus. You want a proliferation of ideas. In other words, neutrality is not there to tamp down difference. It's actually in some ways for the adults to somehow get out of the way to allow for the proliferation of ideas. We have seen, however, a lot of confusion, in some cases violence around the expression of, of student voices in the context of protest over the last couple of years. This is, I think, a cause of deep concern to many in the Jewish community who are watching what happened on campuses after October 7th. I wonder how you square that. What's the culture that the university should be creating? Not just on the side of don't have the faculty weigh in on the issues and don't have the university take particular stands. But how do you cultivate the good, good version of a free exchange of ideas and even the space for student protest to take place in a way that won't pull the university apart?

B (25:04)

Well, actually this is an age old problem and frankly, I don't think it's that difficult in most respects. And first of all, an institutional neutrality policy, ours is called institutional voice, is actually meant to, to create the conditions for free speech to thrive. Because just as I said about the classroom, if the university takes an official position on a controversial issue, maybe it's about foreign policy, maybe it's about racism. Well, racism's a little different, but let's say it's about a specific law, like a law that might inhibit abortion rights. If the university takes an official position, it means that members of the community who express a view run the risk of either endorsing or contradicting official policy. That adds an element of inhibition to speech when it comes to protest. I will just say that Harvard's policies concerning protest came out of the late 6th. We have a statement called the University Statement on Rights and Responsibilities that was I think implemented in 1971, which very clearly outlines that protests can occur, but there are limits. This really corresponds to First Amendment law in so many respects. And basically the idea is that the right to protest will be preserved, but it has to balance the rights of people to be able to carry out their daily activities without disruption to those activities by protest. It's not that hard. I mean, we had problems because there were claims that our policies were not clear. So we clarified them about the limits to protests. The thing to remember is if you have clear rules about, for example, time, place and manner, where and when protests can occur, it actually makes it easier to have protests for people who care about complying with the rules. The lack of ambiguity helps people to be able to protest as long as the rules aren't accessibly restrictive. So that's a problem that I think was relatively straightforward to address. I could go on and on about that issue, but at universities it is so important to be able to preserve the right to protest. It is also important to preserve the right of students to attend classes, faculty to teach, research to be conducted, and so on.

A (27:40)

So then the next layer, and I do want to get to talking about Jews. This is a podcast mostly for Jews by Jews, and we're in a synagogue. And I figure that's why people kind of want to hear you talk about some of these issues. I want to bridge from the environment that facilitates both protests and the ability of students to go about doing their business, where we do actually want healthy, vibrant debate taking place on these campuses, even on issues of momentous significance. But I guess the layer that complicates this is what happens when there is some sort of underlying prevailing malice against a particular group, such that a free debate between ideas is not something that can be described as kind of taking place in a vacuum, as though there aren't necessarily going to be consequences for the members of that group. And you can imagine all sorts of situations where in much earlier periods of American history, free debate about the enslavement of black Americans would have felt like laughable when there were Americans being enslaved in those institutions. And partly raises the question of is there a problem at today's universities with some latent underlying antisemitism that would help to explain why some of the concern that Jews have about protest is not just when those protests overreach, but whether they're litigating what appear to be issues that you could have multiple positions on in ways that are making the Jewish Jewish community vulnerable?

B (29:18)

I actually think, at least as I've seen what's happened at Harvard with protests, and as I've heard the claims of antisemitism, it's only secondarily about protests, and it's not primarily a speech issue. And yes, there are some real questions about where do you set the boundaries? And again, First Amendment basically says it has to be threatening and it may not be a direct threat. And the problem in adjudicating these cases is who defines what's actually threatening. So there is a set of issues of that kind. I just don't think that university policies can solve the underlying problem through regulation of protest. And let me add, I very much believe in the regulation of protest. I've. I bear some wounds for pushing on, having clear policies, and I think that's really important. But I do want to say that your question is very fair, but the kinds of problems of antisemitism that we've confronted on campus in the last two years have much more to do with social shunning, social isolation. It's basically a form of being voted off the island where the solution to that problem is not going to be discipline, because it's hard enough to define when it occurs and people may not report. You can imagine there's a host of practical reasons. And so, yes, there is a problem of threats and we need to act on them. Regulating language is a going to be extremely difficult because people have different views about what's threatening and what's permissible. But we should all agree that it is unfair and not worthy of any of us to discriminate. And I can tell you that the most heartbreaking stories that I heard at the height of the turmoil came from Israeli students. And I would hear some stories like I sat down at the dinner table with a group of students I didn't know. We were having a wonderful conversation, very friendly. And then somebody asked where I was from and I said Israel. And then they would freeze up and stop talking to them and not ever say hello them if they came across them. That is so devastating and so damaging. And so we asked from the beginning, how do you overcome that? How do you overcome that problem? And that's why we, I personally and I think my colleagues felt the same way, felt very strongly. What we need to do is build empathy. You're just not going to solve this problem by saying, well, we'll identify when this behavior occurs, curse and punish these people. It's practically nearly impossible to do that. And that gets back to the speech issues. It's about learning how to listen and how to speak in an empathetic way. And the truth is, we talk about speech. Almost everything that has to do with improving communication is based on building empathy. And that's what a lot of our educational programs strive to do.

A (32:48)

So let me sharpen my question a little bit more, which is some of what you're describing around social shunning and other types of these behaviors are visible in many other sectors of the population or industries, but they are emerging in the public light around the universities with a particular salience for people. And again, it may be for some of the reasons we described earlier. What happens at the universities is a predictor for the society at large. I wonder whether there's some conditions of the modern university that are making it specifically susceptible to this type of antisemitism that's emerging there. And maybe I'm just asking this because it feels like universities should be, for all the reasons you described, teaching, learning, research, empathy should actually be overperforming the general public in its allergy to antisemitism. And, and my sense is that they're underperforming the society's allergy to antisemitism. Do you buy that? And do you think that there are any specific dynamics taking place in the modern university that are making this seem so acute as a university challenge?

B (33:53)

Well, I would recommend that everybody here, if you get the chance, take a look at the report of our Presidential Task Force on Antisemitism, which has two chapters about this history of antisemitism at Harvard. And I think that the major change occurred around the time of the second intifada.

A (34:16)

Yes, it did, because I was there.

B (34:19)

So you know what I mean.

A (34:20)

I do know what you're talking about.

B (34:21)

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should have let you explain it. There was historic anti Semitism in the US as I think we all know, mainly came from the right. But it was in the post Six Day war period where there was the emergence really of anti Semitism or at least growth in anti Israel sentiment. And it's interesting if you read this report, that roughly before the second Intifada, the pro Palestinian groups actually had very cordial relations and common interests with the people pro Israel groups. And that changed dramatically apparently with the second intifada. And since then, and this is true everywhere, I think, not just university campuses, rising antisemitism has been associated with anti Israel beliefs. And this has been a secular trend basically of increasing antisemitism. And I would say say that's where university campuses may be different from the rest of the population. It has not really been right wing antisemitism. It's been hugely conflated with anti Israel beliefs. And I think it is probably true that because our universities have a much more left wing distribution of political beliefs than in the public at large, it's not surprising that you would see more of this anti Israel belief on our campuses. And this gets back to what I was talking about, about speech, because it did happen in classrooms that professors would push this. And I know in your institution there's a large segment of the faculty that was particularly passionate about these issues and there are versions of that in many places. So yes, in that sense the universities may have been worse. But I would also add that the universities have taken very strong efforts to overcome that in the past two years. And I'm not sure that you will be able to say that about universities going forward.

A (36:37)

I think many of us hope that is the case. I mean, am I recollection of that time was it was palpable that there was something changing, but it was a little bit hard for me as a graduate student to understand the magnitude of it. But just as one kind of example, not of antisemitism, but of Something that felt possible 20 plus years ago when I was a graduate student at Harvard at Versus now was we actually did an Israel trip through the Divinity School of. I'll just pause there for a second for effect. It was an Israel trip through the Divinity School for all of the ancient Judaism and early Christianity PhDs. So it was both those two of us who were in Jewish Studies in the Faculty of Arts and sciences, and about 13 folks from the Div. School who were doing New Testament. There was professors from both departments. And we did this incredible Israel trip with where we really studied ancient sites in Israel. I don't remember a single conversation on that trip about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I mean, people were focused on 2000 years ago and the conflicts of that time, which are very interesting, by the way. It's completely impossible for you to imagine that a trip like that could take place as an academic research trip under the prevailing conditions. So something so deep has kind of seeped in. And I guess when you want folks to watch your institution in the midst of these processes of trying to counter what are actually much larger cultural norms that are taking root in the institution and watching your efforts to push back against them, what are the benchmarks or signposts to observe? Because I think one of the nature of how the Jewish community watches these stories is we look for kind of retail moments, that professor got hired or that program took place at a university, and that suddenly leads to people to very pronounced conclusions. Whereas you're actually deeply at work trying to remedy what you saw in that report. And it sounds like you feel like you've made progress already, even in the span of the past two years, right?

B (38:43)

Well, there are many things we're doing and we're not unique in this. For example, including. Including in orientation sessions in virtually every school of the university units on speech, and also recognizing antisemitism and other forms of hate. There's just new courses, we're hiring new people and so on. But the thing that I would like people to look at, and this is not as easily measured as names of people who are hired, is are we true to our mission? And our mission is not to provide advocacy about an issue like the war in Gaza or what's going on in Israel, what's going on in Ukraine, for that matter. It's to provide scholarship. It's to provide an accurate view as objective a view as possible of the history, the sociology, the politics of what's going on. What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of Analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues. It is not about how to sling slogans or how to advance a particular political perspective. People will do that, and we want to make sure that the education that we give them will enable to do that with some real authority. But we're not about the activism. We're not about pushing particular points of view. Other than that, you should be logical, firmly grounded in the evidence, and rigorous in how you approach these issues.

A (40:30)

And how will we know when we're successful?

B (40:34)

You'll see it in the products of our education.

A (40:38)

So I'll ask you one last question, which is, you may not see yourself this way, but I'm going to call you a Jewish leader. You run a major secular institution. Jewish leader is usually a term that's reserved for folks who are working specifically inside the Jewish community. But I know that based on our conversations before, that, you are hopeful about the possibilities for Harvard. You're hopeful about the possibilities for higher education. This is a time where, in the Jewish community, I think there's a pronounced rise in pessimism about the future. Feels like, well, we had a kind of heyday in the late 20th century about the American Jewish story, and things are now trending in that direction. I'd love for you to channel a little bit both thinking of yourself as a Jewish leader, but also as the president of Harvard. What are the things that. That are actually making you hopeful about the possibilities for Harvard, for the Jewish people, for America?

B (41:34)

I actually think that when things go badly, they go badly for the Jews. And generally when things go well, they go well for the Jews. And I would suspect that when I look around the room, that most of the people here are descendants of people who left Eastern Europe, or Europe more generally, because conditions got bad for the Jews. In my case, some of my ancestors, it was the Kishine pogroms. And the thing that worries me a lot, as a Jew leader or not, but as a Jew, is that it is an old trope that the Jews are responsible for whatever. And we actually see recently a rise in. In this kind of language in the U.S. i'm worried about that, but I think that we're at a time when people have very bleak views of the future of the country, and that is bad for everyone. I think that can be turned around. And I am very pleased to see a rise of leaders who want to build bridges, bridge differences, encourage dialogue, and try to serve people as Americans. If you're a mayor, as the residents of your city, not caring what their politics are I think as that happens it will be better for the Jews. The fact is that there are a lot of critiques about the Jews that are masked. We've all seen this that are basically anti Semitic tropes. Like the use of the term globalism is one we're all very familiar with. If the country is not doing well, that kind of rhetoric will increase and I think there are real risks. I am optimistic that things will get better, but I'm not saying that they won't get a little bit worse first.

A (43:29)

Yeah, in that sense you are both a realist but also an educator. Right? Because any of us who are engaged in the work of education in any version of any of this industry know that our best chance for the future is actually leading towards it. Please join me in thanking Alan Garber.

C (43:58)

Here are some other things that are happening at the Shalom Hartman Institute this week. The Shalom Hartman Institute shapes the leaders who will take determine the future of Jewish life. At the Edward Fine Winter Student Seminar this past week In New Orleans, 109 college students learned together and imagined a more inclusive, democratic future for both Israel and North America. A future that protects all citizens, including Jews. This gathering of the newest generation of Jewish leaders could not be more timely if your high school age child or student is still looking for a gap year experience in Jerusalem that will propel them into lifelong engagement and with the most significant questions facing the Jewish people. Check out Chavruta. Watch the recording of our recent virtual open house with Chavruta directors Shira bin Simon Schonfeld and current Chavruta participants. Priority applications are due today, December 30th. The final application deadline is January 30th. Learn more and apply at the link in the show notes. Registration is open for a Rabbinic Torah Seminar or TS, at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem in July 2026. Our intellectually rigorous and spiritually renewing program enriches rabbis and cantors of all denominations and gives them the tools to return home and inspire their communities. Learn more and register at the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to our guest, Alan Garber. Identity Crisis is produced by me, Tessa Zitter, and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was produced with assistance from Annie Beyer Chaffetz, researched by Gabrielle Feinstone and edited by Josh Allen, with music provided by so called. We're grateful to the Charles H. Revson foundation for supporting the Shalom Hartman Institute's digital work, including Identity Crisis. Transcripts of our show are now available on our website. Typically, a week after an episode airs, we're always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes. So if you have a topic you'd like to hear about, or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us@identitycrisishalomhartman.org for more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what's unfolding right now. Sign up for our newsletter in the show Notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time and thanks for listening.