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Mike Pesca
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Matt Welch
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Mike Pesca
It's Saturday. It's the Saturday show. I gotta stop saying that we bring you one from the vault and one from the week. But I cause I think it's like about a 40% level that I'm bringing you an outside interview. And I did a great one with the Reason Roundtable. I secretly have always wanted to be invited to the Reason Roundtable because I listened to the Reason Roundtable. Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie Kennedy, Catherine Mango Ward, the editor of Reason magazine. Suderman's there, but he wasn't there this week. Pesca was there this week. Welch hosted and we talked about Harvard, then we talked about pennies, and then we talked and gave endorsements. And Nicolas be talked about Jay Hoberman. It was just, you know, classic insight, kindness, discernment. It's everything you turn to reason for. And now with me, Mike Pasco. Enjoy.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Foreign.
Mike Pesca
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Matt Welch
Welcome to the Reason Roundtable, your weekly libertarian podcast from the magazine of free minds and free markets. I am Matt Welch, subbing in for the absent P Peter Suderman and joined by Nick Gillespie. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. Katherine Mangue Ward and special guest star podcaster extraordinaire from the gist, Mike Pesca. Hello everybody, and welcome. Pesca.
Mike Pesca
Hello. Thanks.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Howdy.
Matt Welch
Hey, Mike. For those of the listeners and viewers keeping score at home, do you want to describe your politics in ten words or less? Go.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Dang.
Mike Pesca
I believe we should do the most good for the most people while taking special attention to give a little something extra for the people who need it the most.
Matt Welch
23 words.
Nick Gillespie
You're a communist. You're like to the left of Stalin.
Mike Pesca
You don't think we should do the most good for the most people? Who do you think we should do the most good for?
Katherine Mangu-Ward
We're not wearing guys. Our thing does the good most good for the most people. That's our okay.
Mike Pesca
I will point out that if the answer is libertarian, that's fine.
Nick Gillespie
He's got a bunch of Howard the Duck comics on his wall, so that's good. Although you'll agree that the movie really was the best part of that whole franchise.
Mike Pesca
It was, in a way, in keeping with the weirdness of the franchise, the sexualization of said duck.
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Matt Welch
Already want to die. We're going to get into the great IVY wars of 2025 here in a moment, but first, a word from our sponsor.
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Matt Welch
President Donald Trump's forever war on Harvard continued this fine Tuesday morning with a letter sent by the General Services Administration to all federal agencies, instructing them to cancel any and all remaining contracts with the prestigious Univers University, which would total up to around $100 million. Apparently the move comes after the federal government froze $3.2 billion worth of grants to the Cambridge based finishing school and also attempted to ban all the foreigners, which is about 25% of their customers, from attending the school. That was late last week put off by a judge until a further hearing scheduled for this week. The administration contends that Harvard is unlike unlawfully evading a 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning racial considerations in college admissions says that it lacks faculty viewpoint diversity, which does that it shows, quote, a lack of commitment to our national values and priorities, end quote. And that it fosters anti Semitism Many free speech advocates who had previously been really hard on Harvard's lousy First Amendment record. People like the foundation for Individual Rights and Education hair model Steven Pinker of Harvard are now sounding the alarm against the Trump administration's activities against Harvard in the name of free speech. Catherine, let's imagine for a second that you're talking to someone who would rather pound his anatomy with a ball peen hammer than hear another word about the Ivy League for the rest of his life. Why should we care about what's going on in this conflict?
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Because this is a classic example of what happens when you use every single weapon available at your disposal to go after sort of unfairly chosen villain and anyone could become the unfairly chosen villain at any time. I guess in Australia, New Zealand, they call it Tall Poppy syndrome. So somebody's head pokes up and they sort of are a little better than everyone else by some measure and whack, it gets cut off. Fun facts for you guys today. Lots of other cultures have different words for this thing and they're all very revealing. So Japan calls it the nail that sticks up. And in the Netherlands they say don't put your head above ground. So just a little bit of multicultural learning for you today.
Mike Pesca
That's what you're head above the parapet. What about parapets?
Nick Gillespie
That's true. I want to point out the Rush song the Trees, which is about how the maples can kind of create a union to keep down the mighty oak from growing too fast. Widely interpreted as a Randian parable from the great Canadian band which now, if they wanted to go to Harvard, wouldn't be allowed to.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
For some reason in Chile they call it pulling the jacket. I don't know what that's about. Anyway, this is why people should care. Even if you think Harvard is a nightmare place populated with monsters about whom we should not care. This will eventually matter for other people and entities.
Matt Welch
Why though? Like what, what is the aspect of this that is, that is bad and care worthy?
Mike Pesca
Right.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
So Trump decided that Harvard is bad. And then he looked around and he saw the entire palette of options available to him as the head of the executive branch and the bully pulpit wielder to punish an institution that has interactions with the U.S. government. And they are so many, I think we'll probably talk about them. But we have federal grants, we have the loans that go to students who attend. We have permissions to do business with foreign customers that you mentioned. We have tax status which is being meddled with in a variety of ways. We have federal government as a customer. And that's just like the specific list of things that he has messed with this week that doesn't include stuff like, you know, letters from the Department of Education, accreditation with, for which there is some federal component, etc. Etc. So this is just an example of why it is bad to have the federal government touch everything, to have its grubby little paws on every institution in so many different ways because it gives them so many angles of attack.
Nick Gillespie
I will add to that, Matt, that one of the reasons, and obviously I think I'm on the record a million times, I don't give a shit about Harvard, but I do care about the way that the Trump administration is. This is part of a full court press on all sorts of parts of civil society or of just the economy that Trump is trying to control. We're looking at a guy who's pushing his FCC to go after various kinds of content creators and networks and things like that. The FTC is getting into the mix and trying to strangle the ability of social media platforms to do what they want, which is part of free speech. He's gone after law firms in almost every instance. Trump is now openly trying to push the world into his image. And I think that should be concerning to people, even as we can say, you know what, Harvard is a terrible institution in many respects that Harvard maybe should not have a tax exempt status because nobody should have tax exempt status, including Reason foundation and things like that. But this is. It's a problem. Trump is working every angle, working every ref, to try to shut down anybody who disagrees with him about anything. That's not good.
Matt Welch
Nick, very quickly, if you can, what do you say to the response that, okay, you just said right there, Nick Gillespie, that Harvard is really lousy and all these things that Harvard wouldn't fix Itself in the absence of this kind of heavy handed activity by the.
Nick Gillespie
There's some truth to that. And I would actually point to the lawsuit that was brought by people on behalf of students and groups that were being kicked out or not, not admitted to Harvard, that was settled a couple of years ago as preferable action than going through the federal government or using the government. The fact is that Harvard did adopt institutional neutrality. They supposedly stopped forcing people applying for jobs there to do DEI letters and the ways in which their pedagogy would help bring new perspectives into things, stuff like that. It was too slow, too late. I interviewed Steven Pinker who has fascinating long essay in the New York Times recently about all of this, what he calls Harvard derangement syndrome. He would be the first person to say that Harvard was not moving quickly enough in order to get back to what makes it a top institution of higher education. Academic freedom there was sorely lacking. It was doing some of that. But it is true that they could have moved a lot faster. But the point is also that wouldn't have forestalled what's going on because Trump, Trump is not about, oh, you're doing what I wanted, so I'll leave you alone. I mean, Colombia capitulated and he immediately went back, you know, for a second take.
Matt Welch
Mike, I'm familiar enough with your work to know that you're not a big fan of antisemitism.
Nick Gillespie
There is a centrist, moderate, there is.
Matt Welch
A critique, perhaps even growing critique, that universities, and particularly elite, so called elite universities are incubators of antisemitism and that there is an appropriate role of the federal government to do something about it. What do you say to that critique?
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I would say if it was limited to that, that would be proper. And Colombia, which is 22% Jewish, the highest in the Ivy League, did reform. And I would say because of what Trump threatened, the reforms weren't satisfactory because Trump didn't really, or the administration didn't really want reform. And Nick's point is the biggest one, which is that Trump is using the power of the state to punish his enemies. And even if many of the enemies, some of the enemies, some of the enemies here and there, are doing things that warrant punishment, we should not, we should not support using the power of the state to punish one's enemies. And the other part is that, you know, someone once described Donald Trump as this brilliant political figure who's excellent at diagnosing a problem or describing a problem or putting his finger on a problem and then wading in and Making the problem three or four times worse. So if you want to go down the litany of Harvard sins, yeah, they were very bad on anti Semitism. Columbia was probably worse. And they, they didn't punish the grad, the Harvard law student, other graduate student who just pushed and bullied a Jewish Israeli stud the quad. By the way, that Israeli student is now not able to attend Harvard or would not be able to attend Harvard given the administration shutdown of foreign students. And just to kind of now I'm inside a clause within a clause, but they're actually the number of foreign students on these Ivy League campuses. That is something to look at. That is a problem. The Columbia School of Journalism would collapse were it not funded by Chinese nationals who want a degree from an Ivy League school. And since there are a essentially no admission standards for the Columbia School of Journalism, which by the way, would that be a bad thing if the Columbia School of Journalism would collapse? But you add it all up and it's this unbelievably excess of over over use of state power. And I'll just leave it with two things. One is that how many years of multiple sclerosis cure do you think is worth this? Because for everything else Harvard does, their medical schools, their research has breakthroughs. And the idea of the government funding the top research institutes to have breakthroughs that make the companies who fund the breakthroughs richer, but also make suffering alleviated and make life better is bonafide. It goes on. It goes on at Harvard. They do have some of the best and smartest researchers and multiple sclerosis. And I could have named 10 other things are right there on the precipice of being cured. But maybe now It'll be delayed 2, 3, 4 years, add together all the human suffering.
Matt Welch
So Katherine, I ask you, I'll invite you to not follow up on Mike Pesca's xenophobic immigration restrictionism and instead look a little bit about what, What, Nic Gillespie opened up Pandora's box over there? No, no. Nonprofit status for Reason Foundation. That's great. So I'm interested in your feelings on that, but also specifically the Congress has passed this year, House of Representatives passed a tax on endowments at universities. Do you think that's a good idea?
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Yeah. So it's actually, I think this is a perfect illustration of why a simple tax code is the best tax code. And that's because this complicated tax code immediately becomes an opportunity for the subtlest and most complicated bullying imaginable. And that's what's essentially happening with these college Endowments. So first of all, college endowments were already taxed. There was just a 1.5% excise tax on investment income of private colleges that preexisted from the first Trump administration. He just did that because, like, he hates colleges. Okay, so that already is there.
Matt Welch
Not the Wharton School.
Nick Gillespie
He likes the Wharton School, which he loves to point out.
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And he never mentions. Where did he first go? Was Fordham. No, no love for Fordham. Had to transfer into word.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Fordham is probably perfectly fine with beefed out of this, if I had to guess.
Nick Gillespie
But.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
But then we have the new, the new proposal which creates this like, complicated progressive formula that ends up taxing the richer schools at 21%. So functionally eliminating tax exempt status for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, those type of guys, they would be taxed the way that private corporations would be taxed. Now there's like a long standing joke that, you know, Harvard and other institutions are private wealth management firms that happen to run schools, and that's not entirely wrong. Or hedge funds that happen to run schools. So you could argue that that's fair. But then you start getting the carve outs. You've got the carve outs for religious institutions which are still to be litigated. So, like, is Notre Dame not going to be part of this progressive taxation scheme? Maybe. And like the language is in there in theory to protect religious freedom, but in practice is going to cause all kinds of wacky incentives because you end up having to debate whether or not you are a theological institution with the irs. And like Harvard was founded by some, you know, ministers or something. Probably. I don't know what a can tab is. I'm pretty sure that's. Yeah. So like they could, like you better believe some very, very, very highly paid lawyers are right now exploring whether Harvard is a religious institution all of a sudden because so, so, so much money is at stake. So you have this super complicated system. Yeah.
Nick Gillespie
Oh, I was just going to say is the UT system, University of Texas, because they have one of the biggest endowments because they're funded by the Permian Basin oil reserves. Are they exempted or are they part of the problem?
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Who knows? Who knows? Because the law is so complicated. And I think that there is this sort of feeling of there's a big pile of money, let's go get it. And so I think that's happening here too. But I think, you know, what I want in terms of tax status and in terms of tax exempt is simplified first. If we can't have that, I want stable because we need institutions to be able to plan. And so when we think about stuff like raisin status, when we think about stuff like university status, maybe it is suboptimal, but it is also a very, very, very stable equilibrium that Trump decided to mess up for the purposes of kind of making a rhetorical point about how he hates elites and I guess loves Israel, and that's, that's not a good enough reason to do what he did.
Mike Pesca
And we'll be back in a minute with more, but not all of the Reason podcast. You can listen to the whole thing by going to wherever you get your podcasts, but Reason.com/podcast is a good way. And Spotify and itunes and so forth do check out not just the Pesca episodes, but all of them. Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta.
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Nick Gillespie
Truth Socialist, by the way, a UPenn graduate. I said you should know that the.
Matt Welch
Following I am considering taking $3 billion of grant money away from a very anti Semitic Harvard and giving it to trade schools all across our land. End quote. You like micro, Nick? Is that a good idea?
Nick Gillespie
Micro is the best.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
We are still waiting for the wedding invitation for you in micro.
Matt Welch
What do you think about that as an approach, as a solution, as a notion?
Nick Gillespie
You know, part of the, part of what is becoming, you know, visibly clear about Trump is that it's all about going to the great man or going to the king and, you know, bending your knee and asking him for this or that special favorite. This kind of stuff is bad. I think everybody on this podcast, with the exception of Mike Pesca, wants to live in a, you know, by rule of law, not rule of death. Unlike Mike Pesco, we want like a stable operating system.
Mike Pesca
I'd succumb to a less bureaucracy. I did sign up for that.
Nick Gillespie
No, I don't think you would like.
Mike Pesca
That very much, Mike.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
I would not sign up for that.
Nick Gillespie
But this is, you know, this is the point. Like, we don't want this. And it's like if you want to get rid of nonprofit status, get rid of nonprofit status for churches, you know, and there are, there are edge cases where the Church of Scientology had to prove that it was a church, you know, it was a religion, so that it gets tax exempt status back in. Was it Obama? Now I can't even remember. Remember when the IRS started going after nonprofits that had freedom and liberty in the names people, you know, brought? Many, many people, even people on the left were outraged by that. Like, you don't want to have to litigate everything every day because of who's in the government. That's why you want as small a government as possible, with as basic rules as possible, as clear and transparent and so that we can get on with our life building these institutions. Very few people give to Harvard because it is tax ex exempt. You know, in the end, their big donors are not doing it because, oh, I get a tax break, you know, and people at Reason ultimately are not giving to us because of a tax break. Let's, you know, if you want to do that, that's one thing, but the way it's working now, it's just gangsterism.
Matt Welch
Pesca does this. You know, the fallen world that we live in is one in which increasingly whoever holds power on the federal level is going to go and punish some enemies and reward constituencies that it wants to flatter or to reward. Given that, does that make you, oh, centrist, more kind of sympathetic to the Katherine Mengu Ward libertarian critique of like, just too much federal government in everything because it's going to be used. If you involve the federal government in a thing, that thing will therefore be politicized and subject to political whimsical.
Mike Pesca
Yes, I'm, I always at least strongly consider the libertarian critique. It's to me something to always contend with and then, you know, brush aside. No, actually to actually adhere to the, the trade school argument. That's a great one. Right. Here's how the New York Times, for its, I guess, non Harvard educated readers, puts, puts this in context. Much of the money for Harvard that the administration has frozen Includes research funding for scientific diseases. Tuberculos, multiple sclerosis. The. The unit hit hardest at Harvard is the TH School of Public Health. And they list all these diseases and then note, and this was the helpful part, that type of research is not typically conducted at trade schools. No, it is not. No trade school has ever cured tuberculosis. And even the ones where you get to keep your own tools like Apex Tech does not involve the cure to tuberculosis. So exactly. All the vagaries of the individual. Call it gangsterism. Call it. Sometime during Democratic administrations, it was this fear of rebutting the. That the sentiment at the time, like with diversity statements and this kind of compelled lockstep thinking. It's all really bad. And the correctives are often worse than the actual situation. I mean, if we started society from scratch and had better rules in place, I think we would trend to a situation where some of the smartest minds would be gathered in the same place so they can share ideas and more and more great ideas would result. Now, because we have the laws that we do and because those smart minds would be able to get more funding and get more money, there'd probably be in 100 societies something like a Harvard, the elite institution that makes us all pissed off, but also possibly solves multiple sclerosis. What I'd like to have is a pullback from the radical anti American and anti Semitic sentiment on the campus, but I don't think Donald Trump's totally overboard. Gangsterism is the way to get there, though I don't know what is. Maybe nothing is.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
This is also the case for just disaggregating the functions of higher education. And this is. Brian Kaplan and many others have argued this like we should probably have different institutions that figure out multiple sclerosis and let a bunch of idiot 19 year olds form their political opinions in real, real time while screaming in the middle of an attractive lawn.
Mike Pesca
Yes, and also play lacrosse.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
And also play lacrosse. Like those two functions are not intrinsically related. And separating them would solve many of these problems. I think.
Mike Pesca
I mean, you're right.
Nick Gillespie
I mean, it's just the government is probably funding it too much. But there's 4400, you know, colleges and universities, most of which have faculty who don't read, much less publish anything or do serious research.
Mike Pesca
Most, most higher mechanism, most higher education is just a signaling function.
Katherine Mangu-Ward
I think that's the nice researchy stuff, which again, we could be just guilty.
Matt Welch
All right, Pesca referenced making more money, so let's shift gears and talk about that aspect of it. Last Thursday night, President Donald J. Trump hosted an exclusive VIP black tie dinner at his own resort in Virginia, at which the price of entry was having purchased the $Trump meme. Coin, according to the Washington Post, said Trump Coin has earned well over $300 million since launching in January, which incidentally, is when the second Trump administration also launched. The names of the 220 guests, who between them had reportedly spent nearly $400 million on the coin remains a secret. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt explained the president is attending it in his personal time. Catherine, I'm just a simple country lawyer. This seems kind of corrupt to me. Is this corrupt?
Katherine Mangu-Ward
It seems pretty corrupt, yep. I mean, I would say this is in some ways just a quiet part, loud corruption, right? Like, we already have many, many mechanisms whereby people give money or ostensibly buy things in exchange, access to the powerful. This one's just a little grosser and a little more visible in some ways. I think the reaction. A lot more. It's a lot more. I was being rhetorical. I was using understatement as a form of emphasis. So, yeah, I think just the straight up, give me money for a thing with my name on it so that we can sit together in a secret room and talk a lot of money. Like, the numbers also matter here. I've long said, like, actually buying politicians is surprisingly cheap. Like, it seems like that market is inefficient because you can give relatively little money and get an hour with your representative or your senator and even with the president. People do this, for example, when they fund the inauguration. The inauguration is funded largely through private, private donations, and that is just the same economy that's here. But the numbers are quite small always. And perhaps the responsiveness of those in power is commensurately small. I don't know. But now the numbers are big, so I guess we'll see how that hits.
Matt Welch
Pesca, you are a assiduously centristy, fair, journalistically kind of guy, and you do a lot of content. So constantly you are asked to kind of weigh things compared to other presidencies, compared to previous whatever. So weigh this for me. How does this, what seems to me like corruption, how does that compare to what we have seen before?
Mike Pesca
Well, you can make the case that George Washington Building, Washington, D.C. right near Mount Vernon, certainly enriched him. He was one of the richest guys.
Nick Gillespie
Check the biography on that, Mike.
Mike Pesca
Well, ceding the lands or drawing the lands around the triangle, that was Washington, D.C. there was no forms of. There were no rules for George Washington. I like George Washington a lot I think it's unbelievably corrupt. I saw, I don't know, some. Some administration factotum on one of the Sunday shows making the case that he's not corrupt because it's all out in the open. That's audacious. Compare it. Just compare it to Trump. Yeah, it seems like the most corrupt thing that we've ever had to contemplate. An Eisenhower adviser took a. It was a chinchilla. I don't know the type of fur, but took a. Had to resign at one point. But just compare it to Trump administration one corruption and all the emoluments investigations, which only stop because Trump left office and there were benefits. The emoluments clause is, you know, about foreign grandees and princes giving you money. So it's only from foreigners. There were Congressional Budget Office reports about how much Trump made on the Trump Hotel. And if you remember that this was a constant source. There were many scandals, a constant source of scandal boiling up. And the answer is he made up to $750,000 from people staying at the Trump Hotel. People are going to stay at the hotel anyway. Foreigners. This meme coin, I mean, the market cap, or the equivalent for the meme coin, it doesn't all go to Trump is over $2 billion. So it blows his previous levels of corruption out of the water. And the whole idea of him being out in the open, that's the main point of it. Anyone can give any amount and we don't know who they are and we don't know how much, but he knows how much. It' a formula for blatant bribery.
Matt Welch
Nick Reason, and you have been longtime enthusiasts of blockchain technology and crypto as a currency. And as an idea, how does this sit with that with you? Like, is it like, has this subculture just turned kind of rancid and kind of gross, or this is just freedom happening and people are going to do lots of different things and this is just one that is particularly attracting attention.
Nick Gillespie
It's, you know, Trump is redefining shitcoin down, Matt. And, you know, just the Trump coin peaked right around his inauguration at $44. It's now trading at $13. So, you know, do with that what you will. Whereas bitcoin, which is the actual, only real true cryptocurrency, is at a record high of $109,000 per coin. So the market will sort this out. But to pick up on what Mike was saying, this, you know, it is everything that Trump does across the board. There's a continuity with past administrations, you know, and, but he has jacked it up, you know, to a new level at this point. And I think this dinner is unseemly. And I would just, just to the people who were rich enough and dumb enough to go there to have the food and to have the meeting with him, ask how Tim Apple is doing, right? Tim Cook, the head of Apple, he paid a million bucks or whatever to get to hang out with Trump in the inaugural room and everything. And it doesn't seem to be working out so well. America has shown itself, certainly over the past 25 years to be one of the worst allies. Allies when it comes to, you know, first going into countries that don't want us there, then refusing to leave, and then doing whatever we can do to make all of the calamities worse. We're a terrible ally. Trump is a terrible ally. You, you, if you're doing business with him, it is going to cost you so much more than if you just kind of make a principled stand against him and try and disentangle from it. I think that's going to be the lesson of this big meme coin dinner.
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show that just was produced by Corey Wara. The CBSO is Michelle Pesca. The CO CBSO is Ashley Khan. Astrid Green runs our socials. Leo Baum does our interning improve. G Peru du Peru. Thanks for listening.
Podcast Summary: The Gist – "Mike Stops by The Reason Roundtable"
Episode Information:
Introduction to the Episode
In this episode of The Gist, Mike Pesca joins The Reason Roundtable, a libertarian-focused discussion panel hosted by Matt Welch. The episode delves into contentious topics surrounding the Trump administration's policies on higher education, specifically targeting Harvard University, and examines broader themes of governmental overreach, antisemitism in academia, and the implications of politicizing federal institutions.
Main Discussion: Trump's Actions Against Harvard
The conversation kicks off with Matt Welch highlighting recent actions by President Donald Trump against Harvard University. Welch details how the General Services Administration instructed federal agencies to cancel contracts worth approximately $100 million with Harvard. This move follows the freezing of $3.2 billion in grants and attempts to restrict foreign students, who constitute about 25% of Harvard's clientele.
“The administration contends that Harvard is unlawfully evading a 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning racial considerations in college admissions... it fosters anti Semitism.” [08:11]
Federal Government's Overreach
Katherine Mangu-Ward underscores the dangers of using extensive governmental power to target specific institutions:
“This is a classic example of what happens when you use every single weapon available at your disposal to go after sort of unfairly chosen villain... Japan calls it the nail that sticks up.” [09:56]
Nick Gillespie adds to this by critiquing the Trump administration's broader strategy to penalize dissent:
“Trump is using the power of the state to punish his enemies... He’s trying to shut down anybody who disagrees with him about anything. That's not good.” [12:28]
Mike Pesca reflects on the implications of such policies on academic freedom and institutional integrity:
“...the administration didn't really want reform. Trump is not about, oh, you're doing what I wanted, so I'll leave you alone.” [14:07]
Antisemitism in Universities
The panel addresses the surge of antisemitic sentiments within elite institutions, discussing whether federal intervention is appropriate:
“...there is a critique that universities are incubators of antisemitism and that there is an appropriate role of the federal government to do something about it.” [15:31]
Mike Pesca argues against using state power to address such issues, emphasizing the unintended consequences:
“We should not support using the power of the state to punish one's enemies... it’s an overuse of state power.” [16:00]
Taxation on College Endowments
The discussion shifts to the newly passed tax on university endowments by the House of Representatives, exploring its fairness and practicality:
“College endowments were already taxed with a 1.5% excise tax... Now, with the new proposal, it creates a complicated progressive formula taxing richer schools at 21%.” [19:24]
Nick Gillespie questions the selective application of these taxes:
“Are universities like the UT system exempted or part of the problem?” [21:38]
Katherine emphasizes the instability and complexity introduced by such taxation:
“We need simplified and stable tax status... Trump decided to mess up the stable equilibrium for a rhetorical point.” [21:52]
Trump Coin and Allegations of Corruption
The conversation takes a sharp turn towards the ethics of President Trump’s recent financial maneuvers, specifically the introduction of Trump Coin:
“President Donald J. Trump hosted an exclusive VIP black-tie dinner at his Virginia resort, where entry was purchasing the $Trump meme coin...” [30:04]
Katherine Mangu-Ward labels the event as corrupt:
“It seems pretty corrupt, yep... giving money for a thing with my name on it so that we can sit together in a secret room.” [31:26]
Nick Gillespie critiques the concept of using cryptocurrency for political favors:
“Trump is redefining shitcoin... Bitcoin is at a record high, but this Trump Coin dinner is unseemly.” [35:37]
Mike Pesca compares the current administration’s corruption to historical figures, highlighting its unprecedented nature:
“Trump Coin's market cap is over $2 billion. It blows his previous levels of corruption out of the water... it's a formula for blatant bribery.” [33:07]
Federal Government's Overreach and Libertarian Critique
The panel discusses the broader implications of federal overreach and aligns their perspectives with libertarian critiques:
“Whoever holds power federally is going to punish enemies and reward constituencies, making federal involvement susceptible to political whims.” [26:37]
Mike Pesca acknowledges the validity of libertarian concerns but struggles with the practical realities:
“I always at least strongly consider the libertarian critique... the correctives are often worse than the actual situation.” [27:16]
Katherine Mangu-Ward emphasizes the need for simplified and stable tax codes to prevent such overreach:
“We need institutions to be able to plan... the way it's working now, it's just gangsterism.” [22:41]
Concluding Thoughts
The episode concludes with reflections on the state of American politics and the dangers of concentrated federal power. The panelists express concerns over the Trump administration's strategies to undermine institutions and the long-term repercussions of such actions on civil society and higher education.
Mike Pesca finalizes:
“The overuse of state power leads to significant human suffering and delays in critical research... gangsterism is the way to get there, though I don't know what is.” [30:04]
Katherine Mangu-Ward adds:
“Simplifying tax codes and reducing federal interference are essential to maintaining stable and effective institutions.” [22:41]
Notable Quotes:
Final Thoughts
This episode of The Gist offers a critical examination of the Trump administration's interventions in higher education and financial markets, highlighting concerns about excessive federal control and corruption. Through insightful dialogue, the panel underscores the importance of maintaining institutional independence and the perils of politicizing academic and economic systems.
For listeners interested in the full discussion, the complete episode is available at Reason.com/podcast and on platforms like Spotify and iTunes.