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E
Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Look, there's a lot going on here, but one of the issues that keeps coming back again and again, and I don't mean just this year, I mean over the last several decades, is the question of free expression, the First Amendment, and how deep our support is for those values. And I think one of the things that we've learned over the last few months is that like so many other values that we had taken for granted that we'd grown complacent about that support for them was perhaps more paper thin than we would have thought about. So that's what we're gonna talk about with our guest today, Sarah McLaughlin, who is out with a new book, Authoritarians in the Academy. And there's an interesting twist to this, how the internationalization of higher education and borderless censorship threatens free speech. And Sarah is you have a cool title, Senior Scholar Global Expression at the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is fire. So welcome to the podcast, Sarah.
- [03:12]
C
Thank you so much for having me.
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E
Okay. Now, as somebody, I have to tell you, as somebody who's written about higher education and free speech issues for many, many years, I have to say that I felt that as I was reading your book that it was worse than I thought. And I actually felt naive about some of the developments that you're talking about. And it's very, very timely because obvious. And you're writing about the borderless censorship, the efforts of China and others to influence and censor speech. But as you point out in a recent article, the call is coming from within the House as well. But can we talk about something just before we get into the book? I know you wanna talk about the book, but you had also written, you've written extensively on the issue of bans on flag burning. And that came back up in the news earlier this week when President Trump issued an executive order that at least purported to ban flag burning, which it didn't because it's constitutionally protected. So let me just talk about that, because I thought you wrote something very, very interesting a year ago about flag burning because people have emotional reaction. You said flag burning may be deeply unpopular, but it is nevertheless protected. That's actually a sign of the wisdom of our First Amendment, not its stupidity. It suggests a confidence that critics of the United States and symbols in can be moved to change their minds through persuasion, a hallmark of a free and healthy society, rather than by force. So, you know, you and I were talking about this before. Flag burning feels like this iconic issue because, I mean, I have a visceral reaction. I think it's stupid, it's offensive. I think it's almost classically obnoxious. But the court has been pretty definitive in saying that it's protected free speech.
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C
Yeah, it's pretty clear. And the reason why is that the government doesn't get to decide how, how offensively or how inoffensively we're allowed to express our criticisms of the people who rule over us and who have power over us. And, you know, a lot of US might not like the visuals of flag burning or what it represents, but, you know, that's what the whole point of free expression is, the idea that, you know, individual sensitivities don't get to decide everyone else's rights. And the reason why I said that I think that, you know, it's a sign of our strength is because if you look at some of the authoritarian nations I write about in my book, there are people or those are nations that do censor that kind of expression, that do have strict limits on insults and desecration of national symbols. And so that to me is a sign of weakness. Those are leaders who believe that they have to silence people because they can't convince them of the merits of those governments on their own. And so I think that the stronger a country is, the more confidence it has in its merits and that the symbols are self evident and can stand for those values without needing the government to throw someone in jail for a year, as Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to do to flag burners. So, yeah, I think if anything, it's a sign of weakness to say we need to punish this.
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E
Well, that's a perfect segue into your book because people listening to this going, well, of course that's over there. We're a free country, we have the First Amendment. But what you document in great detail is the way in which foreign authoritarians are using their clout and their swag way to impose those kinds of values in this country, particularly in the United States. And I think you have a line something like, you may not care about the authoritarians, but they care about you, or something like that. So let's talk about this because a lot of in the book you talk about China, you talk about some of the Arab countries, but let's just focus on this idea of borderless censorship. What do you mean by that? Because this seems like the heart of your critique.
- [07:09]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So I think we live in a deeply, deeply interconnected world in ways that we don't fully consider or think about. Sometimes with the amount of travel, immigration, global industries, corporations, we're all really connected and it's a good thing for the most part. But what it's done is created new opportunities, especially with the rise of technology, for people in authoritarian governments to say, you know what, I'm not just going to try to silence the people within my borders who I have access to, who I can put through the nightmare of our courts and prisons. I'm going to see who I can get outside of my country too. And so it's enabled this rise of what I call borderless censorship of authoritarians thinking that they can dictate on a global scale what everyone else can see and read and hear. And there's, I think, a perfect example that just occurred this August of Chinese officials visiting a Bangkok gallery and forcing that gallery to take down an exhibit about authoritarianism that criticized the Chinese government. And so that's what we're seeing. You know, authoritarians thinking that not only do they get to silence their own citizens, but they get to rule over everyone else, too, and determine what they're allowed to read.
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E
So what I found sort of resonant in the book, though, is that, of course, this is what authoritarians do. You understand how they act, what they want to do. What's surprising, continually surprising, are the number of institutions that theoretically ought to resist them, that actually roll over and cave in. And that's the most troubling thing. So you have these deals, these relationships between American universities and the Chinese that create incentives for the universities to let the Chinese bully them. Give me an example. Give me a story of where that's happened.
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C
So, you know, this is looking back a little bit, but I think a perfect example is if you look at NC State University about 15 years ago, they had invited the Dalai Lama to speak and the Confucius Institute on the campus. They complained. The person working there said, you know, this isn't appropriate, this invitation. And so the university reversed. They disinvited him. And they said, you know, we need to protect our relationship as a university with China, but we also need to protect the state of North Carolina's relationship with China. And so these are the kind of things that we have to worry about. There's nothing inherently wrong with universities having these global partnerships and ties, but when they start influencing how a university is going to act, that's when it's something that we really need to worry about. And I think we're seeing it more and more across campuses. And it's not just affecting the universities themselves, but also the students who attend, who I think in many cases have been biggest victim of this kind of authoritarian censorship.
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E
Well, you also write about sensitivity, exploitation. This is something that, again, we're familiar with. If you've been following universities for some time, people saying, well, I feel unsafe. You're hurting my feelings. And therefore that's used as a pretense to shut something down. I thought one of your most interesting anecdotes involved George Washington University a couple of years ago. I remember this at the time. This was right about the time of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. And, of course, Beijing was very anxious to have everybody ignore the fact that it was engaging in repression, that it was engaging in genocide against the Uyghurs and at George. Well, you tell the story. You tell the story better than I would. But I remember this. I thought this was a perfect example of the kinds of things you describe in the book.
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C
Yeah. And it's not funny, but that happened shortly after I sat down to start writing this book. But so what happened? George Washington University. There were some students who anonymously posted artwork by a Chinese Australian dissident artist. It was meant to criticize these games and draw attention to, you know, the morality and ethics of hosting Olympic Games in a country like China that, you know, has severe human rights violations taking place. And some student groups complained, one of which is the Chinese Students and Scholars association, which I write about a lot in the book. They went to the university and they said, you need to do something about this. This is offensive, hurtful, and it's not fair that students have to see this on campus. And to my shock, and the university said, you're right. The president at the time, he said that he was personally offended by the posters, and he chose not only to take them down. Yeah, personally offended. And he not only took them down, but he said, we're going to launch an investigation to see who posted this artwork, which is really an incredible thing. You know, even if it hadn't been international students from China. But it turned out, in part it was. And it's something I warned about at the time when this was first breaking, that should these be international students from China or Hong Kong, and the university created disciplinary records of them posting this artwork, they could be placing these students in severe peril when they return home. You know, jail sentences would be likely. So the carelessness on the part of George Washington really disturbed me. And to the university's credit, they reversed course after a number of people asked, what on earth are you thinking? Yes, but, you know, imagine the fear that this put those students through to know that their university was going to conduct an investigation to unmask them, just because they posted artwork that criticized the Chinese government. It's. It's just shockingly inappropriate for university resources to be used that way.
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E
And yet you can see how it all plays out. So in that particular story, and again, going back to this exploitation of sense sensitivity here, they don't overtly say, we want you to censor speech or images that are critical of the Chinese government. What they say is that it's hurtful to the Chinese students. Now, in your research, what actually is the role of the Chinese government or the Chinese consulates? I mean, are these spontaneous? Are these, are these actually students whose feelings are hurt? Or is there a concerted effort by the Chinese government to do this sort of thing?
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C
It's hard to know or to be able to predict in all of these cases to what level of consular involvement is taking place. I don't know about the 2022 incident, but the local consulate in D.C. has been active before in this issue. And there have been statements issued by Chinese consul after threats of violence have been made against student protesters who have criticized China, where these consulates have seemed to, to a certain extent, be openly happy about, you know, the fact that students who have dared to criticize the Chinese government have been threatened with violence just for doing that. So, you know, there, there have been documented instances of relationships between Chinese consulates and the CSSA chapters. And there have also, especially in the early 2000s, been a number of incidents of Chinese consulates directly speaking to university leadership and saying, I don't like that you invited this Tibetan speaker, this Taiwanese speaker. Are you sure you want to have this terrible speaker at your campus? And, you know, it's usually not, you know, written as a direct threat or order a demand for censorship, but there's an implication that universities should really think through what they're doing and who they're allowing to speak on their campus.
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E
And I think sometimes, yeah, what is the lever of that? So, you know, it's like, hey, nice university you have there. It'd be a shame if you invited the Dalai Lama. What is the explicit or implicit threat?
- [15:29]
C
I think the, you know, the implicit threat is that there will be some degree of financial harm for universities that don't comply. And, you know, there have been plenty of universities that have hosted these speakers and have suffered no punishment. Punishment, but there occasionally has been punishment. There was a Canadian university that was de. Recognized by the Chinese government after an invitation to guess who? The Dalai Lama. And at UC San Diego, the Chinese government cut off a scholarship fund over the exact kind of invitation. So, you know, there, there isn't always some kind of threat. But in the case of the Canadian university, the big fear there is that you will lose access to international students from abro, specifically China, who tend to be a pretty significant tuition paying cohort of the university. And so, you know, I don't think it's any secret that universities have had funding issues over the past couple of decades and so that's. That's a fear. They need to retain these funding sources. Yeah. The past six months have been especially.
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E
Well, and I want. And I want to tie it back, because with the timing of all this is truly extraordinary. But also, we have a lot of Chinese students. Not all of them are obviously supporters of the Chinese regime. Is there any indication that China is monitoring and punishing students in this country? Going to our universities, in theory, they protected by academic freedom, punishing them if in fact, they are engaged in any sort of dissent or dissident activity.
- [17:08]
C
Yes, we have documented incidents of students who have come here, have engaged in what I think many of us would call pretty basic political expression. There was a student at the University of Minnesota who just reposted some tweets about Xi Jinping and China's government. When he returned home, he was sentenced to six months in prison. And there was a student at Georgetown Law who. He was active in the D.C. protest scene about the Chinese government and human rights issues in China. And his family received phone calls and threats and interviews from state security because of what their son was doing here. And so they had to pass along messages from the Chinese government telling him he needed to shut up or there was going to be trouble for him and for his family. And that's a really powerful lever of control over these students. That student at Georgetown Law was far from the only one to have this happen. But no one wants their family to suffer because they've held a sign at a protest. And, you know, for many people, they would reasonably ask themselves, is it really worth it? Is saying what I think online really worth putting my family through this? So it's, you know, an effective way. And I think, you know, there are even people here in the United States who would think in that situation, I would absolutely just shut my mouth and.
- [18:33]
E
Go back to, oh, no, this seems very, very relevant. So you talk about some of the. The entanglements between the universities and foreign governments. And again, most of this is about China. But you mentioned Cornell's medical school also has a campus in Qatar and a dual degree program in China. So how extensive are these and how much clout does that have? So talk to me about Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, because they also have major influence campaigns programs in American universities, don't they?
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C
Yes, they do. The satellite campus draw from Qatar and the UAE and China as well has been pretty significant for universities because in some cases, it can be a major financial boon. So not just funding, but also there's a lot of prestige to being A global university, you know, to saying, we're represented at countries all around the world, we can offer degrees, you know, we can reach students in totally different nations. There's a lot of value to. So it's a pretty big draw to universities. But the problem is there has been what I think is a very significant lack of honesty and transparency on the part of universities about what it means to open an institution that has very clear and stated commitments to academic freedom and free expression in countries where you can go to prison for blasphemy, for example. So I think there needs to be some accounting on the part of universities for what they have actually accomplished in those institutions and whether it's worth the risks and threats to their values. There have been some disturbing incidents at Northwestern and Georgetown's campuses in Qatar. And I think there needs to be more accounting about whether universities are really living up to the promises they made when they set out these campuses. And especially when we look at campuses that have opened in China, a lot of these started 10, 15 years ago when there was a different political situation on the ground. So you might have thought certain things were possible then and maybe you need to do some self assessment now.
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E
So given at the moment, the international students seem to be kind of a negotiating chip in the trade wars or back and forth where the Trump administration on one day says, we're going to cut off international students or we're going to make it more difficult international students. So give me your thoughts on how that all plays in, because as you mentioned, your book focuses on these international authoritarians. But as you point out, over the last six months, the Trump administration has undertaken efforts ranging from illiberal to blatantly unconstitutional, to exact punishment on students, academics, and the universities there attend. So how does this play into the constant threat that, I mean, to be an international student right now? It seems that you're caught in a vice here between your home country, which may want to suppress your speech, but also a regime here in the United States which is extremely hostile now to academic freedom.
- [21:58]
C
Yeah, I honestly, I think it's a tragedy what's happening to international students today because, you know, part of the motivating reason why I wrote this book was because I believe that international students have a lot to offer to higher education and that higher education in the US Has a lot to offer them. I think, you know, if we can protect our campuses as spaces for true openness and free expression and dissent, we can offer an incredible thing to the world. If, you know, young people from around the world can Come here and speak freely for the first time and bring their perspectives and, you know, perhaps return home with, you know, renewed interest and passion for their rights. And so, you know, to be cutting off that on the American side, too, is really a shame, because there's really no one left at this point who's advocating for these students rights. If their home government wants to silence them, if the United States wants to either use them as a chip or in some very real cases, truly silence them or punish them for their speech, deport them for what they've said here, you know, they have no one to turn to. There is no open, free space. There is no shining city on the hill for them to come and speak their minds. And I think at its best, that's what American higher education can be. And we're really cutting off a lot of those opportunities, both for international students and for our students here. It's. It's wrong and needs to change.
- [23:25]
E
And this is not just international students. I mean, your organization fire has been talking about free speech on campus as well. I mean, since its founding and rather controversially rates universities. Which universities have the best environment for free speech, which ones have the worst environment for free speech. And many of them involve just the collapse of support for academic freedom. So talk to me about that, because again, this is something that I think has been coming for a very, very long time. One would think at the heart of a university is free expression is protecting academic freedom. And yet in the last few decades, we've seen an erosion in the name of sensitivity, in the name of a variety of different things. Give me your perspective on why more universities have not taken the bright line like, this is a university. If you don't want to hear offensive speech, you should probably go into a trappist monastery. You should not come here to this university, because we have a free exchange of views, and we are not going to censor speech. We're not going to have speech codes. I mean, I remember back in the 1980s, to date myself, when universities started having speech codes, things you couldn't say. I remember having an interview, I think, with somebody from Time magazine, and I was describing the speech codes, and he said, that can't possibly be true. That cannot possibly. A university would not have a speech code. And yet they became ubiquitous. So what happened there?
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C
Yeah, so we had a rise of speech codes in universities across the United States, and some of these are private universities that nevertheless say we are committed to academic freedom, but would still have policies that limited what students and professors could say in the quad, online in the classroom. And we also saw this at public universities which are bound by the First Amendment and, you know, legally couldn't have some of these policies that they were attempting to enforce on their community members. And so, you know, FIRE has been pushing back against that for 25, 26 years at this point. And we've been making wins. You know, we have actually gotten universities to change a lot of these policies. But, you know, unfortunately, what we've seen in the past six months, which I know, you know, you've been discussing a lot as well, is that, you know, there are alleged reforms being enforced upon universities that are also not constitutional or also not legal or even, you know, actually conducive to free expression. So, you know, it's not solving the problem. You know, and there are a lot of things that need to change in higher education, but the way that it's being conducted now is, you know, it's not going to fix the problems and it's only going to create a lot of new ones, as we're seeing.
- [26:10]
E
Well, and I think that's one of the reasons why the universities have turned out to be so vulnerable is because they had eroded their support. They were so inconsistent. And I think when that took fire during the controversy over the pro Palestinian protests, you saw, I think, some of the weakness. So let's put this in the context of the exploitation of sensitivity, the pressure on universities. And how does the handling of pro Palestinian protests play into all of this? Because again, a lot of the pushback has been that these make Jewish students feel unsafe. Does that play into this? I mean, because we do see a lot of, I would say, ambiguous policies involving free speech when it comes to that particular issue on campus today.
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C
Yeah, so I think there was, you know, a lot of frustration at universities because people rightfully felt that there was inconsistent enforcement of speech roles for a long time, that, you know, some offensive political views might be given protection that some aren't. But, you know, unfortunately, again, what we've seen is that, you know, efforts to fix this are not to, you know, create viewpoint neutral policies that universities have to enforce, but are instead creating, you know, new censorship rules. You know, especially, you know, there's been pressure on universities to adopt the IHR definition, IHRA definition of antisemitism. And, you know, that's one thing, you know, using that to understand antisemitism, to track it, you know, to analyze it. That's one thing, you know, I'll leave to others, you know, what the most appropriate methods are to understand antisemitism. But to use that, you know, as perhaps a new kind of speech code does create problems. And, you know, that's something that's being. That universities are being pressured to do right now, especially because, you know, there is a real concern that speech that is critical of Israel and that is, you know, essentially political speech, is going to be wrapped up into this and treated as, you know, harassment of Jewish students. So, you know, this is, as I write about in the book, what you need are viewpoint neutral speech policies that are not open to abuse, that are not, you know, what some students can use to censor their political opponents. But they also protect universities because, you know, that could keep universities out of positions where perhaps they're being pressured to silence critics of China or critics of Israel. And so if universities have these policies, it would actually save them a lot of trouble because they wouldn't be picking and choosing who gets to speak and who gets silenced. They could say, you know, these are the rules. This is who can speak. And, you know, we're not going to say that some people have more rights to speak than others.
- [29:16]
E
Well, and this is about to get a lot worse. I'm sure you've seen that they're unveiling these new visa surveillance policies, not just involving students. They were. The government is going to be scraping through everybody's social media accounts. They're going to be looking at, you know, taking all of this data. And so if you're an international student and you take a position that is, I don't know, critical of China, critical of Israel, critical of Russia at some point, who knows, critical of the Trump administration, you face the immediate end of your academic career. I mean, so the hammer is there in many ways. The, and I don't want to downplay this, the, the attacks on free speech have been sort of, I don't know, I mean, I mean, what turned. I don't want, I don't want to say velvet glove, but I mean, now the, the actual hammer is coming down. I mean, this is the, the unsheathed mace that's coming down on these universes. So they better get there. They, they better get their policies in order very, very quickly because the, the winter is coming.
- [30:17]
C
Well, and what you said about, you know, this not just being about Israel is exactly right. There's no limiting principle to this kind of authority that the government is exerting. And, you know, that's actually why fire where I work. While we filed a lawsuit this month against Secretary of State Margot Rubio and his use of Two provisions of the Immigration Nationality act to target international students for constitutionally protected speech. It's a problem, and it's disturbing. If two students can both say the same thing on campus, but one of them gets, you know, dragged into an unmarked van because they happen to be on a visa, that should worry us. And it's, you know, it looks a lot more like, you know, the policing we might expect from a country like China, not one with, you know, a First Amendment and strong protections for free expression.
- [31:08]
E
Well, I agree. I just don't think people have really thought this through, what it's going to be. I thought it was. Speaking of one little detail. You are suing. Your organization is suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio for this draconian policy. And in the story that you tell in the book about George Washington University, when they were trying to crack down on those anti Chinese, the artwork that was critical of China, Rubio actually intervened when he was a senator. Right. I mean, so, you know, he has, among many people that he has more. See, what I think is interesting about all this, and we've seen this in the last six months, how vulnerable the universities are to federal government pressure, the threat that if you don't do what we tell you to do, we will withdraw the funding. And so we've kind of seen this shocking series of surrenders of major institutions to that kind of political pressure. But what your book makes clear is that you've had little surrenders from a lot of these universities based on similar threats from foreign governments. In many ways, that feels like kind of a rehearsal for what's happening here that you have, you know, I mean, you talk about all of these, these countries that have satellite campuses in the Middle east, you know, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Georgetown, Texas A and M, Virginia Commonwealth University, they all have created vulnerabilities to pressure to not say certain things or to take certain positions or to tow certain lines, haven't they?
- [32:39]
C
Yeah. And that's ultimately what this is about. Whether you're looking at the stories I discuss in my book or what's happening here in the US it's about governments trying to reshape higher education to their will and to, you know, either in some cases by offerings of financial boons or in the case of, you know, it's happened in six months, taking it away. It's attempting to remake higher ed as, you know, an institution that represents the government's political positions and is more favorable to them and, you know, is unwilling or afraid to welcome and host viewpoints that the government doesn't like and that should disturb us. It doesn't matter where the threats are coming from. You know, we need to find ways to, you know, harden universities against this kind of influence.
- [33:30]
E
How do we do that?
- [33:30]
C
Whether it's from China or whether it's us? Well, yeah. How do you do that? It's a good question. You know, it's significantly more complicated today than it was a year ago because, you know, what we need is universities to be able to say we're not going to take this funding if we think it creates a risk to us. But if you have universities that are facing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of cuts here in the US where do you think they're going to look? They're probably going to look to some funding sources that are going to perhaps have ties attached that we don't like.
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E
So this is, I think, an interesting point. And I remember that when I first started writing about higher education, it was just sort of beginning that the kinds of people who were becoming university presidents was rolling over. It used to be they were distinguished academics. They were people with deep, deep ties in scholarship. The modern university president is more likely, and you can disagree with me, more likely to be chosen for their ability to raise funds to bring money in the door. I was at a meeting earlier this year of university presidents and they were talking about how to deal with all the threats from the Trump administration. And it was interesting. About the only person in the room who was basically saying, hey, we're actual university presidents and we should stand up against this was Michael Roth from Wesleyan University and everybody else. And I was trying to think, why is everybody else here so willing to keep their head down? And the answer is that the kinds of people that are running universities are really risk averse when it comes to doing anything that will put their money at risk, which gives tremendous clout not just to the Trump administration, but to the Chinese and to the United Arab Emirates and the Qataris who are buying influence and willing to give away planes and everything. So that's really one of the big risk factors, right? It's not just that China wants to, to be aggressive, it's the United States. Universities, as we've all kind of seen, are incredibly vulnerable to that.
- [35:34]
C
Oh yeah, I fully agree. And I think, you know, there has been, you know, a corporatization of higher education that's been taking place in the US And a shift of universities as values driven institutions, as, you know, ones that are more like, you know, conglomerates and megacorps and you know, the more corporate your university becomes, the more it's going to care about corporate concerns, its brand, its imaging, its financial opportunities. And so a lot of those things are going to be directly opposed to some basic values that we expect universities to have. And you know, you can look at any industry. You know, one example I discuss in the book is what happened with the NBA a few years ago over a tweet about Hong Kong and the financial and cultural punishments that befell the NBA over, you know, a seven word tweet. You know, you can look at other corporations and institutions that operate on a global scale and you can see these things happening there, whether it's fashion, tech, there are a lot of industries that, you know, considered a high priority, that they do not offend or do not upset the Chinese market or, you know, the global market more generally. And so the more that a university is acting like corporation, the more we're going to see it have those same incentives. And you know, that's where a lot of the problems here originate from, I think. And the quieter academic freedom voices are like from academics and professors, the louder we're going to hear from the more bureaucratic concerns.
- [37:11]
E
Well, and that's why, and I would put in a pitch for your organization, the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression offers advocacy resources for academics experiencing these problems and has been willing to step up. And I think that that is absolutely crucial. So I guess the question is, and the solutions are always the hardest part of all those things are the solutions. Some are the hardwired solutions. Is there legislation or is this really a crisis of values in higher education? Obviously the answer is both. But is there, you know, what do.
- [37:43]
C
You think it is? Both. And to some extent there needs to be, you know, universities need to be complying with foreign funding, transparency requirements, things like that. But yeah, to a certain extent this does need to be, you know, the values based change within higher education. And I think the difficult thing that we're going to see is what it's going to require is universities making difficult and sometimes costly decisions to fix their values. Exactly. And I think as we've seen in recent months, and you know, not just within universities, there have been law firms, there have been, you know, media institutions that have chosen the easy way out. They've chosen compliance rather than fighting back. And you know, saying this is going to cost me, but it's worth it. And you know, I think it's just our values, you know, the commitments to academic freedom and free expression have been so devalued that you know, we don't think they're worth the cost of choosing them over funding or choosing them over political expediency. And that's. We're not going to see a change to this problem, either with the issues in the US or the issues originating from China or the UAE until we fix that problem. Because I think there's a cowardice crisis that's taking place.
- [39:10]
E
There is a cowardice crisis. There is. I think you were at the same conference I was at where somebody was talking about the law firms deciding whether to cave in. And I think there's an analogy here that the partners in the law firm have to decide whether they're willing to go through life, live with a 40 foot yacht rather than a 60 foot yacht. And some of the universities may have to decide whether or not they just want to have a $2 billion endowment instead of a $4 billion endowment. Okay, so, I mean, these are sacrifices, but there are values okay, so let's end on a positive note. Any real profiles and courage that you found in your book?
- [39:45]
C
Some of the students I spoke to were truly inspiring to me, especially the students who have come here to the United States and understand very seriously the risks that they're undertaking by speaking their minds. Some of them have even spoken out under their real names. And to be able to not only speak your mind, but to speak your mind after facing threats of severe repression, that's kind of the antidote to the cowardice crisis that I think we're seeing here. And I think people need to listen more to those students rather than a law firm that might decide it's picking the easy way out.
- [40:23]
E
Well, I mean, and also the fact that students are showing courage puts to shame the university presidents and others who are not. The book. By the way, I'm holding this up for people watching on video. The Authoritarians in the how the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threatened Free speech by Sarah McLaughlin from Fire. It's an extraordinary piece of research. Congratulations on doing this. It is Johns Hopkins Press, and I've been writing about higher education for a very long time. I found it deeply disturbing and eye opening. So congratulations, Sarah, on the book.
- [41:00]
C
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
- [41:02]
E
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Do I need to remind you why we do this, why we continue to do this? Because now more than ever, however, it's important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [41:28]
C
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