Franklin Foer on the Famine in Gaza

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Al Franken Podcast – Franklin Foer on the Famine in Gaza

Episode Information:

• Title: Franklin Foer on the Famine in Gaza
• Host/Author: The Al Franken Podcast
• Release Date: August 10, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Al Franken Podcast, host Frank Ford engages in a profound discussion with guest Dax Shepard, delving into the pressing issue of the famine in Gaza and its broader implications on anti-Semitism within elite American universities. The conversation intertwines public policy, political activism, and the current geopolitical landscape, offering listeners a comprehensive analysis of complex and sensitive topics.

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Famine in Gaza: Causes and Consequences

Timing: [00:00 – 07:25]

Frank Ford opens the discussion by highlighting the critical situation in Gaza, explaining how Israel's policies have led to severe starvation among Gazans. Dax Shepard elaborates on the root causes:

• Blockade and Food Aid Suspension:

  • [04:19] Dax Shepard: "Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation... it's the consequence of a series of policies that the Netanyahu government has pursued."
  • Shepard details how Israel imposed a six-week blockade in March, halting all food imports, and subsequent chaotic efforts to restore aid led to widespread suffering and loss of life.

• Failures of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation:

  • [05:15] Dax Shepard: "Israel turned to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was a disaster."
  • Shepard criticizes the improvised aid system, contrasting it with the UN's established infrastructure, and underscores the inefficacy and dangers introduced by relying on hastily assembled private entities.

• Humanitarian Atrocities:

  • [07:25] Dax Shepard: "There are hundreds of Palestinians that the Israeli military killed in the course of poor, hungry people merely trying to get something to eat."
  • The discussion highlights the tragic loss of life and the ethical implications of imposed deprivation policies, emphasizing the need for international cooperation to alleviate the crisis.

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Anti-Semitism on University Campuses

Timing: [03:12 – 25:08]

The conversation shifts to the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in elite universities, examining how these sentiments have been exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

• Distinguishing Criticism from Anti-Semitism:

  • [08:26] Dax Shepard: "There is critique of Israel itself, and the Netanyahu government... there's nothing remotely anti-Semitic about that."
  • Shepard asserts the importance of differentiating between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitic actions that target Jewish individuals and communities.

• Campus Incidents:

  • [10:44] Frank Ford: Discusses statements from October 7th where student groups at Harvard and Columbia blamed Israel for massacres, which Shepard condemns as anti-Semitic.
  • [24:24] Frank Ford: Highlights incidents involving Professor Avi Shaleem at Columbia, who faced accusations of complicity in genocide due to his balanced approach in teaching about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  • [23:38] Dax Shepard: "It's hard to describe the attack on him as anything other than anti-Semitic."
    • Shepard emphasizes the hostility and misrepresentation faced by educators striving for balanced discourse.

• Institutional Responses and Leadership Challenges:

  • [11:57] Dax Shepard: Criticizes Harvard's initial silence on hostile campus statements, highlighting the distress among Jewish students and alumni.
  • [25:07] Frank Ford: References Claudine Gay, former Harvard president, who faced backlash for her ambiguous stance on harassment related to genocide language, leading to her resignation.

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Impact of the Trump Administration on Academia

Timing: [25:21 – 47:40]

Frank Ford and Dax Shepard explore the Trump administration's strategies to undermine liberal academia, using examples from Harvard and Columbia.

• Economic Pressures:

  • [42:36] Frank Ford: "The administration threatened to take away $9 billion."
  • Shepard explains how the administration leverages financial threats to coerce universities into compliance, effectively extorting substantial funds and hindering critical research.

• Legal and Institutional Battles:

  • [46:54] Dax Shepard: Discusses Harvard's legal victories against attempts to restrict foreign students, though uncertainty remains for prospective international attendees.
  • [50:22] Frank Ford: Notes that while Harvard fights back legal assaults, the administration’s persistent efforts aim to diminish academic freedoms and impose governmental oversight.

• Academic Freedom and Institutional Integrity:

  • [43:28] Dax Shepard: "University research is the engine of our prosperity."
    • Emphasizes the long-term detrimental effects of disrupting academic research, which is vital for societal advancement and innovation.
  • [48:00] Dax Shepard: Warns against the erosion of academic autonomy, highlighting the dangerous precedent set by governmental interference in university governance.

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Harvard's Leadership and Reform Efforts

Timing: [27:01 – 50:35]

The discussion delves into the leadership changes at Harvard, focusing on President Alan Garber's strategies to address campus illiberalism.

• Transition to Alan Garber:

  • [27:07] Frank Ford: Introduces Alan Garber, formerly Harvard's provost, who steps in as president amid institutional crises.
  • [28:09] Dax Shepard: Describes Garber as "a very academically rigorous guy" with a "clinical physician's demeanor," highlighting his capability to handle contentious situations with empathy and openness.

• Reform Initiatives:

  • [35:21] Dax Shepard: Outlines Garber's policies to maintain institutional neutrality on extrinsic events, fostering an environment where open dialogue can thrive.
  • [36:33] Frank Ford: Mentions the encampment at Harvard's yard, comparing potential outcomes to the violent confrontations at Columbia, which Garber successfully averted through strategic communication.

• Donor and Institutional Support:

  • [38:55] Frank Ford: Narrates how Garber secured support from Harvard's board and major donors by demonstrating strong leadership, ultimately being confirmed as the full president despite faculty dissent.

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Future Implications and Closing Thoughts

Timing: [50:36 – 51:42]

As the episode concludes, Frank Ford and Dax Shepard reflect on the broader implications of the issues discussed.

• Preserving Academic Freedom:

  • [49:56] Dax Shepard: Expresses hope that Harvard's resistance to governmental overreach will set a precedent for other institutions to follow, safeguarding academic integrity.

• Uncertain Future for International Students:

  • [50:27] Dax Shepard: Raises concerns about the continued safety and acceptance of foreign students amidst escalating tensions and restrictive policies.

• Final Remarks:

  • [51:16] Frank Ford: Highlights the personal impact of these policies on individuals and the importance of upholding American values of freedom and inclusion.
  • [51:35] Closing: The episode wraps up with acknowledgments and a brief note on the impactful nature of the discussions, underscored by a musical homage to Leo Kottke.

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Notable Quotes

1. Dax Shepard on Gaza’s Famine:

   • [04:19] "Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation... it's the consequence of a series of policies that the Netanyahu government has pursued."

2. Condemnation of Anti-Semitic Actions:

   • [10:44] "There is criticism of Israel itself, and the Netanyahu government... there's nothing remotely anti-Semitic about that."

3. On Academic Freedom:

   • [43:28] "University research is the engine of our prosperity."

4. Leadership Qualities of Alan Garber:

   • [39:24] "I would call him a very academically rigorous guy who... is somebody who is capable of listening attentively and empathetically to people who disagree with him."

5. Warnings Against Government Overreach:

   • [49:54] "But I think by fighting, Harvard can reshape whatever that template is. And it's my hope that Harvard resists the imposition of a government monitor."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Al Franken Podcast provides a compelling exploration of the intertwined crises in Gaza and the rising tide of anti-Semitism in American academia. Through insightful dialogue, Dax Shepard and Frank Ford shed light on the ethical, societal, and political ramifications of these issues, urging listeners to consider the profound impact of governmental policies on both international humanitarian efforts and the sanctity of academic freedom.

Transcript

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Frank Ford]

Hey everybody, we've got a great one for you today. You know, for a change, Franklin Ford of the Atlantic is back. Over the last several months, Frank has written a number of terrific articles about anti Semitism at Columbia and Harvard and how the Trump administration is using these claims as an excuse to go after the elite left wing colleges, which it hates. I originally planned for this to be the focus of our discussion, but with the famine in Gaza, I had to make sure that we discuss that as well. So the serious subject of anti Semitism at our elite colleges turned into a tragic discussion of Israel's culpability for starvation in Gaza. In March, Israel froze all food aid to Gaza for six weeks. They then restored some, but only a little, and did it so chaotically that Israeli soldiers shot and killed over a thousand Gazans who were desperately trying to get food. I have been a Zionist since I can remember, and these images made me sick. As Frank argues, Israel needs to work with the US and the UN to flood Gaza with food. But now Netanyahu is doubling down in saying that Israel is starting a new offensive against Hamas. His security cabinet has announced its plans to take control of Gaza City. While this isn't as terrible as Netanyahu's intention to control the entirety of the Gaza Strip, it is still explicitly going against the Israeli military's own recommendations. This expansion of the war is only going to add to the atrocities we're already witnessing. We'll be right back with Frank Ford. Frank, thanks for joining me.

[Dax Shepard]

Great to be here here.

[Frank Ford]

Now, in the last few months, you've written three articles for the Atlantic about anti Semitism at Columbia and Harvard and the loss of civil discourse at, at both institutions and the cynical use of that by the Trump administration to punish left wing academy. Now, there was anti Semitism on these, these campuses, but a lot of what people were calling anti Semitism was actually they would say anti Zionism and attacking Israel for its actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. And equating the war in Gaza with genocide and the starvation of Gazans has given credibility to that claim. So let's start by discussing that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Frank Ford]

You just dropped a new piece today in the Atlantic, piece called Israel's Last Chance about them addressing this famine that's going on in Gaza right now.

[Dax Shepard]

Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation. And what's so troubling about this is that it's not a consequence of war, not a consequence of the brutalities that come with that war. It's the consequence of a series of policies that the Netanyahu government has pursued. The first of those policies was that in the beginning of March, it imposed a blockade on all goods coming in to Gaza.

[Frank Ford]

For about six weeks, there was no food coming in at all, right?

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. And then when that blockade was lifted under international pressure, instead of returning to the system where the UN was primarily responsible for coordinating a network of nos and had its own infrastructure for bringing in aid, it turned to something called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

[Frank Ford]

Israel turned to that?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Israel turned to it, which is this hastily designed improvised system that they, that they built in conjunction with the, the United States that relied on a plan that was designed by management consultants, private security contractors, presided over by an evangelical chair.

[Frank Ford]

A disaster.

[Dax Shepard]

It was a disaster. It was a disaster. It was a disaster for two reasons. The first is, is that the UN has so much expertise about how to deal with humanitarian crises caused by conflict. They rush into almost every humanitarian conflict in the world. They don't just tend to the problem of hunger. They deal with hunger in the context of every other need, whether it's water, sanitation, whether it's providing fuel to be able to cook food, and it deals with nutrition because people who have gone hungry for an extended period of time.

[Frank Ford]

Can eat certain stuff. They can and have to eat other.

[Dax Shepard]

Kind of stuff, and they become highly susceptible to disease. That, that's, that's their greatest vulnerability. And then the second reason that this was disastrous is because the UN had 400 outposts that it was using to.

[Frank Ford]

To distribute aid all over Gaza and northern Gaza. And the US Thing was in just four locations in southern Gaza.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, exactly. In areas that the Israeli military controlled, which meant that people in the north obviously were not being served by this. But it also meant that people, even in the more densely concentrated population centers in the south, were forced to come across distances into a complex that was controlled by Israeli soldiers. And they were extremely hungry. And it meant that you had mobs often coming through this, this, these, these outposts, and you had terrified soldiers. And it was, it was a recipe for catastrophe, for combustion. And there are hundreds of Palestinians that the Israeli military killed in the course of poor, hungry people merely trying to get something to eat.

[Frank Ford]

That is an atrocity.

[Dax Shepard]

It is. And you know, throughout this war, you know, there are a lot of things that one could go back and forth about the ethics of. And it is a truism that any war that's fought in dense urban conditions is going to be extremely brutal. But, you know, I think that there needs to be a bright line drawn where a policy of imposed deprivation that goes beyond it passes every ethical red line and deserves universal condemnation.

[Frank Ford]

Now, the anti Semitism on these campuses and maybe calling it, you know, anti Israel or anti Zionism does, you know, the starvation of, of Gazans given credibility to their claim?

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, I think we need to be clear on certain terms here. So there is, there's criticism of Israel itself, criticism of the Netanyahu government. And I would argue that there's nothing remotely anti Semitic about that. And it's not even necessarily anti Zionistic. Right. That there are people, and I would put myself in this camp. I support, I believe in the state of Israel's right to exist. And I find the policies of the Netanyahu government in the course of prosecuting this war to be something that totally imminently, not just worthy of protest, but in many instances demands protest. But there are places where I think that the protest of the war crosses the line into not just anti Zionism, which I think is a position that again, I don't agree with, but I don't think that it's necessarily anti Semitic.

[Frank Ford]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But I do think that there are, there are places that they've gone that do venture into the realm of antisemitism. So for instance, I think that if protest against the war is. Ends up calling hillel centers on campus arms of genocide and worthy of getting removed from campus, I would argue that that begins to extend into anti Semitism because you're basically saying they need that Jewish centers of worship should be removed from. From campus. And we never asked that of other religious groups on campus. I would say that the social shunning of Israelis extends into antisemitism because if you are, if you're born in Israel, that's just an accident of birth. There's nothing that you can, there's nothing you could do to shape where you were born. And so to say that a person who comes from Israel is inherently bad and deserves to be cut out of a community, that, to me, ventures into anti Semitism. For groups on campus to adopt a position where you need to take a litmus test in order to join, say, the gardening club or the mariachi band that you subscribe to a certain political point of view on Israel, that to me, ventures into anti Semitism because these are not tests that we impose on other groups.

[Frank Ford]

How about, you know, on October 7th, when even while the Hamas slaughter was going on in Israel and they were killing 1200 Israelis and raping and kidnapping babies, and that on both campuses, on Harvard and Columbia, there were demonstrations saying that Israel was responsible for this, Right.

[Dax Shepard]

There were statements that student groups put out both places that said that Israel was responsible for the massacres that happened on October 7th. That, to me, is. It's a reprehensible position and I think probably could fairly be because it was barbarous, because it's essentially saying that people deserve to be slaughtered because of their nationality, that there's a justification for their slaughter. And we don't argue that in other contexts.

[Frank Ford]

And was that condemned? I guess Claudine Gay, who was the president of Harvard at the time, did not immediately condemn that demonstration.

[Dax Shepard]

It was a statement and she didn't. And there was another accusation that was lobbed against Harvard, which was that Harvard tends to comment on or had commented in the past on Russia's invasion of Ukraine or the death of George Floyd. But it was kind of silent. It was silent about the atrocities of October 7th. And to me, this isn't the biggest deal in the world. And I don't think university should be commenting on every event that happens in the world. But there was this expectation that Harvard would comment on every event happening in the world. And so a lot of Jewish students and Jewish alumni felt aggrieved by Harvard silence.

[Frank Ford]

Let's talk about again what's going on in Gaza. How can this be addressed?

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, the simplest way for it to be addressed, in my opinion, is to flood Gaza with as much aid and food as possible.

[Frank Ford]

Does that mean bringing the UN back in.

[Dax Shepard]

It absolutely means bringing the UN back in. Israelis have a lot of distaste for the United nations. And it's not without reason that the United nations, in addition to the hostile resolutions which have passed through the General assembly, you know, since the Zionism is racism debates of the 1970s, the United nations played a role in helping to govern Gaza ever since the 1950s, I believe. And in the course of co governing Gaza, especially during this period where Hamas was in charge of the Gaza Strip, in the schools that it ran, it had textbooks that glorified violent resistance to Israel, on October 7, there were 12 employees reportedly from the UN agency in Gaza who were involved in the attack. So I understand why Israelis feel animosity towards the U.N. but on the other hand, the network that the U.N. has of bakeries, community kitchens, the warehouses that they have, the aid distribution networks that they have, and the trust that they have within the Gaza Strip means that they are the indispensable purveyor of aid. And so just to rely on this Gaza humanitarian foundation while blithely cutting out the UN to me, is just to doom Gaza to, to mass hunger.

[Frank Ford]

Let's back up just a little bit, just into how we got this in March, which was completely withholding food for a month. What possessed Netanyahu? And is this the influence of Ben GVIR and Smotrich, his right wing partners in his coalition?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it is the influence of those two guys. It was kind of insane for Israel to go to war with a cabinet that featured Smotrick and Ben GVIR because they are Jewish supremacists. They are people who have authoritarian points of view. They are people who, if, if you were to just take their statements and have them represent the entirety of Israel, you would, you would have no question making the case that Israel was engaged in, in genocide, that these two guys really are evil in their view of Palestinians. And my view is wicked and reprehensible. And Netanyahu keeps them in his cabinet in order to prevent his coalition from falling. And his selfishness in doing so really does put Israel in a position where it's pursuing terrible policies. There were legitimate arguments that they were making about food, not in my opinion, that should have justified a policy of deprivation, but they were arguing that Hamas was leveraging food in order to enhance itself.

[Frank Ford]

There's been controversy about how to what extent that was happening. Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I don't believe that it was happening at scale. Based on everything I've read and people that I talk to, there was this argument that Hamas was looting warehouses and trucks in order to resell food itself on a black market. I mean, I think it's more indisputable to say that Hamas would collect taxes on food that was sold at markets in Gaza because Hamas is the de facto government government. But, but this is the, the ludicrous thing is that Israel was trying to separate food going to civilians from food going to Hamas. But you can't separate Hamas from the rest of society in Gaza. That's just. That's. That's implausible. And that type of thinking has the disastrous consequences that we've seen.

[Frank Ford]

How many Gazans have died thus far in this war is about 60,000. Is that.

[Dax Shepard]

That's about right. Yeah.

[Frank Ford]

And about a third are children. Is that right? Or a little less?

[Dax Shepard]

I believe that's right.

[Frank Ford]

Yeah. And if you think of those numbers, that's just atrocious.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's staggering. Yeah, it's staggering.

[Frank Ford]

And does that make you look at some of the anti Semitism on these campuses differently at all?

[Dax Shepard]

No, I, I think that I understand and I sympathize with the passion of protesters. And I. And again, I do not think that most kids who are protesting are on campus against these policies against this war, are anti Semitic.

[Frank Ford]

In fact, some are Jewish, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. And I believe that they're sincerely howling about something that they wish they had some power to stop. I mean, I think that there are probably better ways for them to protest. Like, I don't know if protesting Harvard and Columbia themselves as institutions is going to. Would do anything necessarily to stop this war there. You know, pro. Those are protests, in my view, that would be better. Better targeted at the US Government or against Israel. But, you know, the nature of the way that our society functions and the nature of the modern American university is that it's just this tendency that people have to protest the thing closest at hand, even if there's nothing that Harvard or Columbia could do in the world to stop this war.

[Frank Ford]

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[Peter Ogburn]

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[Frank Ford]

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[Frank Ford]

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[Frank Ford]

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[Frank Ford]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Frank Ford]

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[Dax Shepard]

I just want to. I think you're pushing on something important. I just want to dwell on it a little bit longer, which is it's possible that two things could be true simultaneously even if there is tension between them. I mean it's possible that it's possible that Israel's war can be criticized and it's possible that it could be criticized in extreme ways. And it's possible that people who are morally justified in their criticisms can, can, can veer into behavior that takes them into places that's not morally justified. And that there are two things that people in the world, you know that. That. That we need to be concerned about. One is about the prosecution of the war itself, and then the second is we exist within communities and in a polity and within. Within a culture. And, you know, just because there is. There's something we don't like or we might consider evil over there, it doesn't. It doesn't mean that we should stop worrying about how we talk about it and how we treat each other over here.

[Frank Ford]

Well, your articles are about sort of the illiberalism on college campuses.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Frank Ford]

Two of them on Columbia and one on Harvard. And there are instances that kind of illustrate what you're talking about. Can we go into a couple of them or.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Frank Ford]

There is this professor who was born in Israel. His name was Avi Shaleem, and he had a class on modern Israel. Right, right.

[Dax Shepard]

He was teaching a class at Columbia on the foundations of modern Israel. And his goal was to try to view the origins of this conflict that we're now experiencing from both sides, to understand it critically from both sides, to engage with both sides of the argument in the most empathetic and sincere sort of way. And he's somebody who comes from the left himself. He's a believer in peace processes, et cetera.

[Frank Ford]

Now, this is after October 7th. This is like.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, after. It's more than a year after. He's trying to explain the expectations for the seminar, and he's in the middle of doing this, and protesters enter his class and accuse him of being an accessory to genocide and say that his class is an example of how Colombia is apologizing for genocide. It's complicit in genocide. And, you know, just to spell it out, the idea that a teacher who's trying to. Who, just because he comes from Israel and just because he's trying to explain the conflict in this balanced sort of way, it's ludicrous to accuse him of.

[Frank Ford]

The structure of the whole course is presenting both sides.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly, exactly. It's ludicrous to explain that process of trying to. Of mutual understanding, to equate that with genocide.

[Frank Ford]

And he invites them. He invites them to sit down and listen to the class.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And they've refused to do that. And they record themselves and they distribute all sorts of images of kids dying in Gaza. It's hard to describe the attack on him as anything other than anti Semitic because it's making all sorts of assumptions about what he believes and what he's teaching based on where he comes from.

[Frank Ford]

There's a whole bunch of instances like this that you document in both Harvard And Columbia. The Trump administration loves this, right?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not sure they love my articles per se, but I think that the Trump administration has seized on these examples of antisemitism, and they have inflated them and they've used them as a pretext for mounting really the most dangerous assault on American higher education in its recent history.

[Frank Ford]

And they go after both institutions. They go after. Now, the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, had a bad run of this, right?

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. So even long before the Trump administration came around, she was pushed out of her job at Harvard. She resigned January 2024, in part because she testified before Congress and was asked a question by Elise Stefanik, the Trump supporting congresswoman from New York, about whether calls for genocide of Jews constituted harassment. And Claudine Gay said, it depends what the context is. And that phrase became instantly infamous. And it wasn't even so much the substance of her answer as it was kind of the inertness and lack of emotional intelligence or emotional response that she supplied.

[Frank Ford]

She was testifying with the president of MIT and the president of Pennsylvania. None of them did particularly well. But this was. This stood out.

[Dax Shepard]

It stood out. It stood out.

[Frank Ford]

Not long after she had to leave, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. By the end of December, she was basically pushed out.

[Frank Ford]

And Alan Garber becomes the president. He is the provost. Can you talk about him a little bit?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Alan Garber had been the provost, which is the chief academic officer of Harvard for 12 years. And he was in some ways an anonymous academic bureaucrat to much of the outside world. When Claudine Gay testified before Congress, he was sitting in back of her. He was kind of this accidental president of Harvard that when Gay was appointed to that job, he told Harvard that he was on his way out, that he was going to retire, that he would help smooth the transition to the next administration. And then Gay gets pushed out, and Harvard turns to Alan Garber at this stage and says, you need to be the interim president of this school because we're in crisis right now and we need some sort of steady, stabilizing hand at the helm.

[Frank Ford]

He's a pretty remarkable guy. He's a doctor, right? He got his doctor's degree where? At Stanford.

[Dax Shepard]

At Stanford, yes.

[Frank Ford]

But he's also a scientist.

[Dax Shepard]

He's also. He's an economist.

[Frank Ford]

An economist, okay. He got his PhD at Harvard.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. And then he melded those two and became one of the leading healthcare economists in the nation.

[Frank Ford]

And he did that at Stanford and then came back to Harvard. At a certain point.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. That's to be the provost. That's right.

[Frank Ford]

And so now suddenly he's thrust into this job of being president. Turns out he does a pretty fantastic job.

[Dax Shepard]

He does. And what he does is that he takes this moment of crisis and he uses it as an opportunity to begin to push forward some reforms that he thought that were badly needed in the institution. And primarily he's address a bucket of problems that he describes as illiberalism on campus. And some of this ends up tracing back to anti Semitism. But more fundamentally, what he's delving into is that when he went to Harvard, he was an undergraduate there. He felt as if, and this may be totally nostalgic and invented history, but. But he felt as if it was possible to have really difficult conversations across political difference.

[Frank Ford]

Well, we talked about this a little bit and I don't usually like to raise it. I went to Harvard. It sounds, well, self serving or something, but we were, yeah, we were. The school was mainly men and mainly white men and white women. We did have arguments over the war because There were some SDs who were more militant and then there were some of us who thought, you know, we went on strike when they invaded Cambodia and that sort of thing. But I didn't think that on campus there were a tremendous amount of disagreement.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Well, as he remembers it, which is.

[Frank Ford]

Maybe different, and he's all, he, he's younger than me, he's four years younger. May have changed, you know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, well, those were tumultuous times when things were changing. The political climate kept shifting probably with every, every year. And so he remembers that it was possible to have these conversations. And as he's provost, he has this sense that Harvard is asleep at the wheel. It's letting itself down.

[Frank Ford]

People shy away from controversial discussions is basically what's happening on campus.

[Dax Shepard]

It's becoming a political monoculture in his view. And that it means that the school is hiring people who think alike. And so he commissions a couple of task forces to look at this. And they survey the students and they survey the faculty. And it turns out that both students and faculty largely agree with them. That there's a, there's a huge portion of the student body that believes that it can't have difficult subjects and that kids are self censoring themselves. And faculty who are being caricatured as being these radical leftists actually agree with Garber, that there's this silent majority on the faculty that believes that they wish that they were being challenged more by their students and they feel that students are performing for them when they Debate in class, or when they hand in papers that they're writing with an eye to conforming what they expect the views of their professors are in order to get the highest grade.

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[Frank Ford]

Let's tell about this professor. Just this. I found this interesting. This professor, Joseph Massad, yes, was a great scholar, right? But bullied Jewish students.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know if I would describe him necessarily as a great scholar, but we're at Columbia right now and he's somebody who's teaching Middle east studies. And at Columbia there's this legacy of one of the greatest professors in the history of the school is a literary critic named Edward Said, who was.

[Frank Ford]

Oh, that's who. I'm confusing him, right.

[Dax Shepard]

Who was born in Jerusalem and wrote the landmark book Orientalism, which was a critique of the way that Middle Eastern studies had been practiced in American and British universities. And inherent in this critique was that these departments tended to hire white guys who either romanticized the Arab or demonized the Arab, and that it was incumbent on Middle Eastern studies to reform itself by hiring people who came from the region, which is a fair enough critique. But he left this legacy because he was an activist and who was very passionate about the Palestinian cause and ended up hiring proteges who kind of lacked his savoir faire and lacked some of his nuance and who were passionate activists. And the problem when you bring passionate activism into the class is that there's this real possibility, and especially on the subject of something like the Middle east, that not everybody in the classroom is going to agree. And so it's incumbent upon professors to try to, to not demonize students who disagree with them because that is a flexing of their power. That is, that's really, that that's deeply imbalanced in the classroom and it's antithetical to the whole enterprise of, of academic pedagogy where you're not supposed to bully your students into agreeing with you, you're supposed to provide them with tools to be able to think for themselves. And there are, there are lots of allegations about Mossad, that he was somebody who, who treated students who disagreed with him with deep, deep hostility and made them feel as if there was no place for them in his class.

[Frank Ford]

And how did he characterize October 7th?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm paraphrasing here, but he described it as kind of this awesome event that had happened. Actually, I'm not paraphrasing. I think he did use the character.

[Frank Ford]

Yes, that's the word. Yeah, yeah.

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[Frank Ford]

So, okay, so Garber is now becomes the president after Claudine Gay sort of flames out. And how does he approach it?

[Dax Shepard]

So he begins to embark on a series of reforms in order to combat the problem that he diagnosed. So one of the reforms is that rather than being in this position that Claudine Gay was in where she was forced to comment on public events even when there was no consensus, he passes a new policy that says that essentially Harvard is going to remain institutionally neutral when it comes to events that have nothing to do with the school itself. And that that's a way of creating space in these debates. Because when the, the school itself says we're on Russia's side, Ukraine's side of the Russian war, it becomes an institutional position. And, and it, and it seems to suggest that there's no disagreeing with that position. And that's part of trying to change the culture of the institution. He starts these task forces to look into the problems of illiberalism in the classroom. But mostly he's stuck dealing with the fact that the protests are still engulfing the school, that they're driving away some of Harvard's biggest donors. And it's making it very difficult for the school to go about doing the essential thing.

[Frank Ford]

That there's an encampment in the yard.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. Which began in April of 2024 and became an issue for, for Harvard because.

[Frank Ford]

The commencement was going to be. Is in the yard and they were taking over, off over that territory.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. And he gets to a point where he's about to send in the police to clear out the encampment. Which would have been something that would have. We saw what happened at Columbia when the police were brought in. It produced these terrible battles. It resulted in arrest. It ended up just driving the school further apart. It undermined the president of the school, Manou Shafiq, who was then ousted after that. And I think there's a high likelihood that Garber would have at the very least faced a vote of no confidence if. If he'd brought in the police. But I think it would have likely endangered his presidency. And at that stage, he was just the interim president of Harvard. And he sends a last ditch message to the protesters in the encampment and says that he would expedite justice for them, that they would have disciplinary proceedings that would happen extremely quickly. They wouldn't have this hovering over them, which I think they interpreted as some gesture towards possibly receiving amnesty, which he says he never promised them. But his message to them comes at a moment when they were basically ready to depart, and he gave them a way in which they could honorably depart the scene. And so Harvard ends up averting the scenes that Columbia experienced, and it ends up being this moment that basically allows the corporation, which is the equivalent of Harvard's board, to decide that he's their guy. So they lift the interim tag from him and make him the full president.

[Frank Ford]

But at the commencement, the 13 of them are not allowed to pick up their diplomas.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And he gets roundly booed. And the faculty is indeed upset with him, which in a way reinforced his credibility, which was that he looked to the eyes of the corporation, in the eyes of a lot of donors, and maybe to the broader eyes of society, as if he'd taken a firm stand against chaos and disorder on campus and the big donors.

[Frank Ford]

And you describe a big meeting of big donors and important people there and how he handled himself. And they just went, oh, we don't have to have another president. He's our guy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, more or less.

[Frank Ford]

Tell me about his manner. I mean, it seems like this is a pretty cool guy. Well, you got to meet with him, right? You got to meet with him in his house.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I met with him a couple times. I don't know if I would call him a cool guy.

[Frank Ford]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I would call him a very academically rigorous guy who.

[Frank Ford]

Okay, yes, I mean, I meant cool temperamentally.

[Dax Shepard]

Your definition of cool, Al, may be different than cool temperamentally in that he's. He's kind of got a clinical physician's demeanor, that he's somebody who is capable of listening attentively and empathetically to people he's, who disagree with him. And he was involved in hiring intent, the tenure process at the school where he sat on the committees that were, that were formed to review tenure. So he played a role in hiring a lot of the faculty at Harvard, which meant that he had this reservoir of goodwill that allowed him to do difficult things and to stake out tough.

[Frank Ford]

Positions and tell about his background. I mean, he's Jewish.

[Dax Shepard]

He's Jewish. He comes from Rock Island, Illinois, part of the Quad Cities. He grew up, his dad was a liquor store owner who didn't go to college. But his dad was culturally aspirational. He played violin in the local orchestra. And when he grew up, maestros who would come to town would come to his house for dinner and for parties. And so he was able to meet them. And he had this reverence for genius.

[Frank Ford]

Yitzhak Perlman came to his house.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, the likes of Yitzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazi. And when he comes to Harvard, he has kind of the same sense of awe and reverence for genius. And that's part of the reason why he falls under the spell of the Economics department because Harvard's economics department was stacked with all sorts of future Nobel Prize winners. But I mean, the interesting thing about him is that there's so many people who preach open mindedness who are actually very close minded people and that their temperaments are didactic and their styles are bombastic. And he's not like that. I mean, he really is a genuinely open minded guy.

[Frank Ford]

So he's a perfect leader at this time. Now, of course, Trump and his administration come after him and Columbia and they're looking at this opportunity. They hate liberal colleges and think that this is a big problem in America and they're going to punish them.

[Dax Shepard]

They're going to punish them. And Colombia gets hit first. And its response is rather than taking the administration to court or going to war with the administration, their instinct is to say, okay, you've presented us with these demands, here's what we're reasonably doing to meet these demands, and let's call this whole thing off. And so what Columbia did was more in line with the law firms who get rushed to cut a deal with Trump.

[Frank Ford]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Harvard takes a different approach. I mean, they were interested in negotiating with the Trump administration, but when they get walloped with the list of demands that the Trump administration, what was, was.

[Frank Ford]

The first one, how much in research were they going to take away from them?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, so the administration threatened to take away $9 billion.

[Frank Ford]

$9 billion, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Which is a little bit of an inflated figure, but it would have had taken away probably about 10 to 15% of Harvard's budget annually and would have just had the effect of. And it did have the effect, and it is having the effect of crushing a lot of the most important projects that Harvard is engaged in, whether it's dealing with pediatric AIDS or.

[Frank Ford]

Yeah, pediatric aids. That has a lot to do with antisemitism.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, exactly. Or various nuclear physics projects that they're doing that would be very helpful to the Defense Department.

[Frank Ford]

And all of this research, this university research is the engine of our prosperity.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, it is. And one of the things is, is that you can't just turn it off and turn it on. That when you're engaged in a study where you're collecting data, you can't just say, all right, we're going to shut this down for two weeks and then pick it up. Because whatever happens in that two weeks when you're not allowed to do that is substantively important for you to be able to interpret your results. And so the mere fact of cutting this off in the short term ends up having a devastating impact on a lot of these studies.

[Frank Ford]

And the administration is relishing this. Now, we're recording this on Monday because you're about to leave town. So we got you in today. And by the time this drops on a Sunday, maybe Harvard will have settled.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think so, but it's a possibility. So the Harvard Crimson quoted Alan Garber as having told Harvard faculty that they're not going to pay $500 million to the administration and that they're not close to a settlement with the administration.

[Frank Ford]

Okay, that's good, I guess. But the administration relishes this. And Secretary of Education. This is all about attacking kind of liberal academia.

[Dax Shepard]

It's about attacking liberal academia, but I think if we step back, they're attacking other things as well. I mean, last week, on Friday, they fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[Frank Ford]

That was hilarious, I thought.

[Dax Shepard]

Hilarious.

[Frank Ford]

Yeah, terrifying as well. But basically, she gave a certain amount for the preliminary report on how many jobs were created, and it turned out that the real number was a lot less. And that happens all the time. And she put that out. And Trump didn't like the lower number and just fired her.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. And so the idea that there is such a thing as objective data is something that the administration doesn't like. They want to believe that anything that disagrees with their policy or their priors is rigged. Creating the sense, the whole process.

[Frank Ford]

This is the first time this has ever happened. Right. I mean, this is never. This is a new one.

[Dax Shepard]

So the idea that there is no objective knowledge, that it's all. It's all rigged by people who have bias, is. Is helps explain how they're destroying all of these bastions of knowledge and research within the government, but also why they're going after the universities which exist to produce knowledge that is. That is objective. And then secondly, there's. It's a form of class warfare that the administration is engaged in, where they're going after what they call the professional managerial class, which is their class enemy. And they're trying to beat into submissions it's knowledge workers of all sorts of. It's not just university professors, it's government bureaucrats, it's lawyers, it's teachers, it's Hollywood. These are people that they view as an enemy, part of the population that needs to be brought under submission.

[Frank Ford]

They want to put a hold on foreign students from Harvard, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And Harvard has battled them back in court. And whenever this question comes before a judge, they win.

[Frank Ford]

But is this just the fact that the administration can cause them more trouble and continue to cause them more trouble than they can possibly handle?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. I think that's the administration's theory of the case, is that they have so much power, they have so many tools at their disposal, that they can launch a percussive assault on Harvard, which they have done ever since Harvard began resisting. And at a certain point, they'll make the cost so high to Harvard that they'll have no choice but to agree to what the administration wants.

[Frank Ford]

And that's where the 500 million was.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Frank Ford]

So if Harvard has to do that.

[Dax Shepard]

Then it's even worse than that. It's worse than that. The 500 million, 200 million that Columbia, 220 million that Columbia ended up paying, that's extortion. But what the administration is trying to do is ultimately gain a toehold for quashing academic freedom and exerting control over the actual teaching that happens in institutions. And so at Columbia, they. They placed. I may not like Columbia's Middle East Studies department as some of the things that they teach, but I believe that they have the freedom to teach them and that the state should not be involved in setting the parameters for what gets taught in a Columbia department. But unfortunately, Colombia has volunteered, ceded this authority, voluntarily ceded that authority. So they agreed that there would be a provost who would be appointed to oversee these departments so that they are neutral in a way that would please a monitor who has been installed, agreed to, both by Colombia and the government to look over Colombia's shoulder to make sure that they're doing all the things that. That they told the government that they would do. And to me, this is very dangerous. This is the surrender, the beginning of the surrender of academic freedom.

[Frank Ford]

Oh, boy.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, boy.

[Frank Ford]

Well, your new article just hit the Atlantic. Israel's last chance. And I would recommend all of your recent articles on. On Harvard and Columbia. Where does this go?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, let's see what Harvard does, because I think that Harvard, when the government cut the deal with Columbia, I think its intention was to create a template that it could then apply to every other university in the country, that they would make some accusation. It might not be anti Semitism, it might be something else. And they'd say, okay, now let's settle. And they would ask for some version of the monitor that they imposed on Colombia and some version of the expense that they're extracting from Colombia.

[Frank Ford]

Where does that money go? Where does Columbia's money go?

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, it goes to the Treasury.

[Frank Ford]

Oh, it just goes to the Treasury?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Frank Ford]

Okay. It doesn't go to some pet project of Trump's.

[Dax Shepard]

No. In that regard, it's different than the law firms.

[Frank Ford]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think by fighting, Harvard can reshape whatever that template is. And it's my hope that Harvard resists the imposition of a government monitor, because I don't think we want what Columbia has becoming the basis for how universities are governed across the nation.

[Frank Ford]

Now, in the meantime, are the foreign students going to be able to go to Harvard this year?

[Dax Shepard]

Right now they can, but there's so much uncertainty clouding their future that I. I don't know if they'll come.

[Frank Ford]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know if they'll come. If I was advising a foreign student to come, a friend to come, about whether they should send their kid to the United States, I think I would say, as a matter of principle, you should do it. But there are all sorts of complexities, and we've seen kids get ripped off of these campuses. You know, I think that, you know, again, whatever my problems are with the demonstrators on campus, I don't think that, you know, ICE agents should not be picking up kids based on op EDS that they have written. That's. That, to me, is. Is fundamentally un American and scary as hell.

[Frank Ford]

But a foreign student has the right. There. They're on a visa or something like that. They're.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Frank Ford]

So they have the right to be there, but they're not going to be picked up. And yanked out and put in. Held in some prison down in Louisiana.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, unfortunately, we.

[Frank Ford]

We've seen that.

[Dax Shepard]

We've seen that happen. Yeah.

[Frank Ford]

Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks, Frank.

[Dax Shepard]

Thanks, Al.

[Frank Ford]

Yeah, well, I. I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.