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- [00:00]
A
The pressure is mounting, especially from Washington, on how long Israel has to fight its war on Hamas. America's National Security advisor speaks exclusively to Yonit. And we'll have a conversation with one of the keenest observers of America's public campus and intellectual life, telling us what on earth is going on in America's universities. It's unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland of the Guardian in London.
- [00:28]
B
And I'm Yanit levy of Channel 12 in Tel Aviv. Unholy to Jews on the news. It's been yet another somber week here in Israel. Many soldiers dying this week in the Gaza Strip in the war that it's. That is continuing between Israel and Hamas. And we will talk about that later in the show about what it means for the Israeli society when this death toll rises.
- [01:02]
A
But the focus now has been really on the US and the message is it's sending Israel remarks from the President Joe Biden, in which he seemed to say his patience was running out. He used a word that hadn't been used before by anyone in the White House saying Israel was engaged in indiscriminate fire against Palestinians in Gaza. That seemed a real upping of the ante, a very strong message. And therefore there was huge focus on this visit on Thursday of the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Everyone was going to pay very close attention to what he was saying. He only gave one interview in his visit and of course he chose to give that interview to you, Jonit. So you've got to tell us, what did he say?
- [01:48]
B
Well, I thought it was a very interesting interview. And firstly what he talked about, what I asked about was the time frame. How long are you going to give Israel? Because Israelis in general are very concerned that at some point the United States is to going, going to push the brakes or pull out the stop sign and say enough. And he made a very clear distinction between the first stage of the war, the sort of high intensity stage that we are in right now, and what he thinks is the shifting into a different phase. Israel thinks that phase should be having security presence in the Gaza Strip, but not that kind of amount of soldiers inside. He said, you know, we're having a discussion, I will say a disagreement about how long the first phase starts, still needs to last. Let's see what he says in his answer to that question. You know, firstly, if I can ask, in the last couple of weeks there have been conflicting reports about the timeframe for this war from the American perspective. Can you help us? Can you clarify for us, is there a certain timeframe that you are setting for Israel?
- [02:53]
C
Well, first, Israel is going to continue to conduct its military efforts to get after Hamas for some time because, for example, they are going to continue to hunt the top leaders of Hamas, Sinwar and Daef and Issa. And we don't know exactly how long that will take. So the issue really is when does Israel shift from the high intensity military operations that are underway today to a different phase of this conflict, one that's more precise, more targeted, more driven towards things like those high value individuals? That's the conversation that I had with the prime minister and the war cabinet today. And of course, I'm not going to share the details of that because we certainly don't want to telegraph for the enemy either the Israeli thinking on that subject or what I had to say to them. But I would just say we had a very constructive conversation about these phases and how to think about the shift from high intensity to a different phase of the war. And I felt that the conversation really landed in a good place.
- [03:52]
A
So a very interesting exchange there. And he's avoiding getting into specifics. I've got to ask, do you think that's because he's not getting into specifics Even when he meets Israeli officials privately, he's not talking the language of weeks, months, days, calendars, or was that because he was on TV and didn't want to be seen to be, you know, being too specific, too directional and instructive on Israeli television?
- [04:18]
B
I think there's a very, there's a difference between the way they always, between Israelis and Americans, how you speak publicly and how you speak privately. I think that the reason. And he says it, I'm not going to say if it's days or weeks or months for this first stage because our enemy is listening and we don't want to give it fodder, he calls it in the interview. So I'm not going to say that. And that makes sense, by the way, that these disagreements are not said in front of the camera. If we're on the topic of disagreements, I think another issue that is very clear, that there is some sort of daylight between the United States and Israel is the day after. And for the Biden administration, for Jake Sullivan himself, he says that the solution the day after is going to be a revitalized Palestinian Authority. By the way, I asked him what that means. He says that's a good question. We're talking about that. But a Palestinian Authority that will sit in Gaza and in the West Bank. Now, Netanyahu, of course, is saying no way. But he's saying it publicly. And I thought it was interesting to note that Sullivan was making the point to say that they are talking about this with Israelis about these topics of the day after. Let's listen to a bit of that. It does seem like there is a disagreement. Maybe you can correct me and say there isn't, about the future of Gaza. The president of the United States is saying that the future is a revitalized Palestinian Authority. And Benjamin Netanyahu is saying, I won't repeat this mistake and return Palestinian Authority to Gaza. That doesn't add up together. That does sound like a disagreement.
- [05:50]
C
Well, look, I can't obviously speak for the prime minister. What I can do is, on behalf of President Biden, lay out how we look at this issue. The way we look at it is that ultimately, governance of the west bank and Gaza needs to be connected, and it needs to be connected under a revamped and revitalized Palestinian Authority.
- [06:08]
B
What does that mean exactly?
- [06:08]
C
Well, that's a good question. And that's something that requires intensive consultations with the Palestinians first as well as with the Israeli government. But it will require reform. It will require an updating of how the Palestinian Authority approaches governance. It will require the participation of other countries in the region to contribute financial resources and other forms of support. All of that has to be an inclusive conversation, and one in which I think we can actually build towards a consensus if all of us approach it in good faith. At the end of the day, the goal should be to have a West bank and Gaza connected under common leadership that does not represent any form of terrorist threat to Israel, and we are determined to arrive at that day.
- [06:51]
B
So you're saying that the Israeli government essentially is willing to discuss that future with your administration?
- [06:57]
C
Well, like I said, I'm not going to speak on behalf of Prime Minister Netanyahu, obviously has spoken on this issue himself. What I am going to say is that they are prepared to talk to us very much. And we had some of these conversations today about what the question of governance and civil administration looks like, the question of security and the question of reconstruction. And in each of those areas, there's work to do to get to clear answers going forward. And ultimately, at the heart of those answers has to be the aspirations of the Palestinian people themselves. But it also has to take into account Israel's security needs. And we're determined to do both of those things.
- [07:35]
A
And this, of course, is a real fault line that is opening up between Washington and Israel in the sense that it seems obvious to everyone in Washington that there has to be some kind of involvement of the Palestinian Authority. Otherwise we're talking about effectively reoccupation and Israel running it. And Netanyahu just cannot say yes to that, even though it seems a common sense position in capitals all around the world, because that's his electoral political position, which is to say if you vote for Benny Gantz, he's going to allow Mahmoud Abbas back in, into power in Gaza. I'm the only guy who's going to keep him out. It's just another example of how, and you hear this from American officials, they feel that Netanyahu is thinking like a politician, that he's thinking of his own political interests rather than what is actually now, in their view, the national interest. And I have to say I did pick that up myself, talking to lots of Israelis when I was there a couple of weeks back, that they too were worried that he can't be a kind of war leader if he's already thinking politically of the coming capital campaign. So that exchange you had there, I think sort of just sheds light on that really sore point of disagreement between the two sides.
- [08:47]
B
Yes, although I do think it's still interesting that he says it's not that maybe Netanyahu publicly is saying, oh, we're not going to talk about it, no way, Palestinian Authority. But obviously behind the scenes, there are conversations between the Biden administration and Israel about the day after. And so it should be another interesting point, Jonathan, that we, you know, you mentioned this right at the top about the indiscriminate. That word that Joe Biden used for the first time, raised a lot of eyebrows in Israel. He said it to donors in a, in a conversation. I thought it was very interesting that Jake Sullivan made a, a point not to say that word again. And he explained what was in the background and why and how the President said this and how it's important to, to make this, this difference between Palestinians and Hamas. But he wouldn't say, and I asked him twice if that is the word they're still using. Indiscriminate. Obviously they're not. So they're walking it back a little. Maybe we should hear a little bit about that as well. The president said in that reception, talked about the support, Israel's security can rest in the United States. It has the European Union and most of the world supporting it. But they're starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place. Does the United States think that Israel is bombing indiscriminately? In Gaza.
- [10:02]
C
Well, actually, the President spoke to this issue again later that same day in his press conference with President Zelensky of Ukraine. And what he said was, look at what Israel is up against. Here is a country that was attacked viciously, ruthlessly, savagely by terrorists, 1200 people slaughtered. And then those terrorists turned around and went and hid behind a civilian population. They used hospitals and schools and other protected sites to continue to commit terrorist attacks against Israel. Their spokespeople went out and said they would do October 7th. Again and again and again, their entire credo is about destroying Israel as a Jewish state. That's what Israel's up against. And so they need to operate in a way against a foe that is entrenched among a civilian population, using citizens as human shields. And somehow Israel has to navigate that to destroy that terrorist threat. That is an unbelievable burden. The President was saying that Israel's intent is to conduct that campaign in a way that distinguishes between innocent Palestinians and Hamas.
- [11:06]
B
And.
- [11:07]
C
And what he would like to see as this campaign unfolds is that the results of the bombing campaign and the ground campaign match that intent. That's what we will continue to encourage the Israeli government to do.
- [11:18]
B
But the word indiscriminate, I mean, that is the one thing that Israel has been very adamant about saying. We are not doing that indiscriminately. I mean, so that is why I'm asking about that specific word that he used originally.
- [11:30]
C
And again, as the President said in this press conference with President Zelensky, the point he was making was simply that matching results and intent is something he will continue to encourage the Israeli government to do. And look, he's now had well more than a dozen conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and they've talked at length about this question of civilian protection.
- [11:53]
B
So that was the conversation with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Obviously, there are differences between the way the Biden administration sees this and the way Israel does, and particularly in the way that the world and Israel see what is the rising death toll of Palestinians in Gaza.
- [12:11]
A
Yeah, I mean, Joe Biden himself may be closer to how Israel sees it, because he is. You know, people refer to him as the last Zionist in the White House and so on. But he's aware he's got a big constituency, younger Democrats, Democrat, progressives, who really do not see it that way at all.
- [12:27]
B
Yeah, you know, it is very interesting. I think this is one of the issues that really looks like we're looking in a mirror when we look at this topic, the issue of death Toll in Gaza. We should mention that the numbers, numbers coming out from Hamas and Israel says that something between 7,000, 8,000 of the dead are Hamas terrorists. It's still a lot of civilians. I'm not trying to claim otherwise or to be callous about it, but it is something that Israel keeps trying to say and saying to its most important ally, what would you do? What would you do if this was perpetrated against you? What would you do if your enemy really has built the most fortified underground city in Gaza, hiding amongst its civilians? What would you do if you actually wanted to eradicate this terror organization, which is what the United States is telling you to do in any case? So this is a very, a very difficult question. I'm not even talking about the people who say that. You know, anyone in the US under 30 who says that the Israel is perpetrating genocide. We're not in that conversation, I think, because at least, you know, not on this podcast. Just in the sense that we know this is not what is happening. But as you said, Israel's most important ally is saying be careful. And as we are talking, it does look like the January, end of January might be the end of the first stage of this high volume war. And after that we will see something different. Israel will continue to have these raids into Gaza, but not this very large number of soldiers inside the Gaza Strip.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah, and that stage is in a way the answer that I hear when I do ask in conversations I have to, I have put to Americans the what would you do? Question. And you know, because I've told you about it and it was, I referred to it in the, in the column I wrote for the Guardian last week, I did have a conversation with a very senior, now, you know, retired American military figure with some experience in this area about the, the what would you do? Question that advising Israel. And he did say that it would be possible to do this with much less firepower. Not the sort of 2,000 pound bombs dropping down, but instead more mobile, smaller units of infantry going street to street, house to house. He got into the fine detail of literally the, the sort of caliber of artillery you would use, not the 155 millimeter. He was really giving me chapter and verse in the conversation. But the interesting thing he said is, of course, if you did that, there would be a much higher rate of casualties on the Israeli side. You know, he said, I understand why that's either really difficult or impossible in Israel, but that was the, you know, in other words, there is an answer to the what would you do question to keep the numbers down, but it means the consequence is an increase in casualties on the Israeli side. And for all kinds of reasons, which are different in Israel from the United States or other places where for all kinds of deep cultural reasons, the country takes military casualties harder than even in some ways, civilian casualties. And that is different. And the American ex general I spoke to acknowledged that in the United States you can sustain military casualties politically, the public will accept them in a way that in Israel is much, much harder.
- [15:47]
B
I want to get to that later in our conversation, but I also want to make the point that the American general never fights with a stopwatch over their head. So with this mega, complicated war that again, you have to fight against group that has been preparing for this for 16 years with Iranian weapons and with Qatari money and again, fortified under Gaza and inside civilian areas, but also having to do all this with the world saying you got three weeks to do it. So all of that is a very, very complicated thing to do. Again, with I think Israel trying to make sure there are less civilian casualties than there are. I think Israel is still making that effort.
- [16:31]
A
Small point. Just your reference to three weeks makes me realize in a way, how long relatively the world and we mean really the Biden administration has given Israel. We are now into, what is it? We're approaching week 10 now. The talk is, as you said of January, that's even, you know, Israel is not just getting three weeks. It may get something like 12, 13 weeks.
- [16:53]
B
So just to note, I mean, I understand that three months, even if it eventually is three months, and that seems terribly long, and it is long, but it's a very difficult thing to say. Eradicate Hamas, get rid of those guys. Do it carefully. Do it in a sophisticated way where your enemy has been preparing for this for 16 years. Do it quickly, but do it slowly. But do it. I mean, it's just listen to how many things Israel is supposed to be doing and as carefully as possible. And in this timeframe, again, I don't want to go into the comparisons of Mosul and isis, et cetera. It was much longer then. And now you have to urgently deal with this, but under some sort of time frame.
- [17:29]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely right. Because the battle of Mosul, I think, was nine months and there was time to do it. So.
- [17:36]
B
And not next door and not next door. So the decisions you make when it's, you know, 3,000 miles away and next door is a different kind of decision.
- [17:44]
A
Very, very different. And there was a good piece, actually, that appeared in the American papers this week pointing out that a lot of the Democratic senators offer this sentence in which they say we absolutely support Israel's right to self defense. But is there a way you could do it where you don't really kill anyone? I mean, I'm obviously oversimplifying what they're saying, but it was a good piece on these lines that appeared former speechwriter and now MSNBC analyst on the MSNBC website in which he, Michael Cohen, not Trump's lawyer, different Michael Cohen. He took to task those Democratic senators who are, as it were, ostensibly supportive of Israel, Elizabeth Warren and others who say we support Israel's right to self defense. But there has to be a way to do this without killing any more people in Gaza. And his point was it's sort of like saying please put out the fire, but just don't use any water. It's an impossible set of demise. And it is, I think you're implying that it's putting a set of constraints on Israel that the United States does not put on itself when it fought against, for example, Islamic State. But yeah, that's the difference. That's the luxury of being a superpower, which America is, and Israel is not in that position and therefore it does have to comply with those constraints.
- [19:03]
B
I have to tell you, Jonathan, this week in Israel, the mood is still very dark. And the reason for that is that there have been really Israel's military death toll is rising. So there are 444 soldiers killed since October 7, including October 7 and 115 all in all soldiers killed in Gaza since the beginning of the incursion there. Now just to give you sort of the comparison in numbers, Galani, which is the infantry Brigade, lost since 10-7-82 of its, its soldiers. In the Yom Kippur War, Golani lost 124 soldiers that whole 19 days of those wars. So this is a lot. And this death toll is climbing. This week, sadly, we saw an ambush in Sujaiya, which is a terrorist stronghold in the eastern part of Gaza City, minutes away from Kibbutz Nachal Oz, by the way, which explains a lot of the casualties there on October 7th. It was that day this week of this ambush was the bloodiest day for Israeli military since the incursion began. There were 10 dead in one day, including two senior commanders. One of them is Colonel Yitzhak bin Basat and the other is Lieutenant Colonel Tomer Greenberg, who's the commander of the Golani's 13th Battalion. Now we have to pause on that for a moment to say two important things. One is that there are, I think, a lot of officers and senior officers being killed in this operation in Gaza. Israel always prides itself in the fact that officers lead from the front. It's a source of pride, but it is also a source of sadness and concern because you're losing your very experienced, talented officers. You don't become a battalion commander in Golani unless you're very talented and marked for higher things. So that is one thing. The other thing that is important to understand if you're coming from outside Israel, this is not a far away professional art army. It's a conscript army. Usually there are more volunteers for elite units and combat units than they have room for. It's very much a people's army. So if someone is killed in this war, it's the kid next door. It's the kid who went to school with your kid. It's the kid, you know. And that is why, in the deepest sense, Israelis mourn this week. And maybe the example for that is the fact that the son of the former Chief of Staff of the Israeli military, the son of Gadi Eisenkot Gal, was killed in Gaza on Thursday, by the way, tragically, a day after his nephew, Gadi Eisenhower's nephew Mao, was also killed in Gaza. This is not a military in which either the sons of the elite don't serve or they serve in, you know, in a safe part of the military. This is very much military whose sons of top generals are also serving these combat units. And the day he died, the day Gal Eisenkot died, was a day that I think Israelis felt like a family. They lost a family member of theirs. So this is very much the mood in this country right now.
- [22:05]
A
Yeah, I did watch on your channel, actually, the pictures of the funeral of Gal Eisenkot, and very, you know, powerful it was too. And I think you make crucial points, and they are so important to understand a big cultural difference between Israel and other countries around the world. I think the heart of the matter is that it is, as you've said, a conscript army. It just strikes me that there are places in Britain or the United States where military losses are felt very keenly. There are towns, there are communities where a lot of people go into the army, but they are geographically concentrated and they're often about class in America, often about race. It's often black Americans who volunteer. In Britain, it's working class Britain who go into the army. So those communities are affected, but not the whole country. In Israel, it absolutely crosses class. Boundaries. It crosses ethnic boundaries. It's Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, It's Ethiopian soldiers who are losing their lives. But I think the class point is right, which is what a long time it will have been in British life where somebody who is sitting in the cabinet, it's the war cabinet that Gaddy Eisencott is in in. It would have been many, many decades, I would think, before someone senior in the political echelon of the country will have had a son in combat. It does happen, but it's occasional. Joe Biden himself had a son who served in Iraq, but it is rare. And in Israel it's not rare. And that does make a very, very big difference. And it is, you know, it is something that people outside note, which is in other countries, Western countries, it's civilian losses that really strike very deeply and get kind of covered on the news in a very int. In Israel, huge attention on the profiles of the life of every Israeli soldier who gets killed. And it's because of that contract where the state says to families, give us your children to fight for three years at the minimum, and in return we will protect you in that sort of covenant. Almost has a sacred place in the national culture, I think.
- [24:14]
B
So all that is happening inside Israel, most of it. But we still want to talk about what happened last week in Congress and the fact that three presidents of three very prestigious institutions could not answer a very simple question, whether or not calling for the genocide of Jews is in any way harassment. One of those presidents, the president of Penn since resigned. But still, this is a topic that we want to focus on this podcast. What is happening in college campuses and what can be done about that. And I think we have the perfect guest to talk to about that.
- [24:57]
A
Jascher Munch is a German American political scientist. He's professor of practice in international affairs at Johns Hopkins University and one of our foremost public intellectuals. Host of a fellow rather than rival podcast the Good Fight, and it runs a online forum called Persuasion. Author of a book called the Identity Trap. Many, many other affiliations, but crucially for our purpose, intervened early in the current situation with a piece whose headline was Identity Crisis. Why doesn't the West Know who to Back in the Hamas war? YesHamunk. Welcome to Unholy.
- [25:38]
D
Thank you very much.
- [25:40]
A
We are very delighted to have you with us because the question you raised there in that piece is one that people have been asking. But in a way it came with extra force last week with the congressional hearing of those three heads of universities, one now an ex head of a university at the University of Pennsylvania. That clip that went viral where the three universities, the heads were grilled by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of the Republican Party, essentially asked, you know, does the old university ban calls for genocide against Jewish people? And instead of just going obviously yes, they came up with various sort of tortured legal answers. It's a context dependent decision, said one. And I think people around the world were thinking or ask themselves, what are they thinking? So you have spent a lot of time answering exactly that question. So, Yashimung, what exactly were they thinking? Explain the mindset that led them to give those answers.
- [26:44]
D
Yeah, so I have a slightly complicated position on this because having become an American after going to university in the United Kingdom, I've become a good follower of the First Amendment. And I actually do think that universities should have a very important expansive understanding and definition of free speech. But the problem is that American universities have been hypocritical for a very long time, that they've allowed themselves to become partisan political actors that enshrine a certain kind of progressive orthodoxy on their campus and then suddenly don't stand up against hate speech against Jews. So when you look at those three universities that were represented in front of Congress, Congress, Harvard, MIT and UPenn, each of them have done two things in the last 10 years. First, they started to take partisan political positions about all kinds of issues, Commenting on Supreme Court rulings they didn't like, taking positions that I personally strongly agreed with about Russia's attack on Ukraine, just sending out an email from on high, giving their opinion about the world once every two or three months. Months. Secondly, they started to re restrict the space for free speech on campus. Harvard University ousted a lecturer because she stated on television that she believes there are two biological sexes, male and female. MIT disinvited a visiting speaker because he had in the pages of Newsweek argued against affirmative action. At the University of Pennsylvania, there's a faculty member who takes views that I strongly disagree with about immigration, but that certainly fall short of calling for genocide. They are going through a complicated long term process to revoke her tenure, to be able to fire her over those remarks. And so suddenly he aware of the presence of those three universities in front of Congress saying we are neutral political institutions. After failing to condemn Hamas's attack on the south of Israel for a week until there was a huge public outcry. And we are great believers in free speech who unfortunately can't tell people that it's wrong to call for the genocide of Jews because we have such a great commitment to free speech when we've actually just canceled all of those different people for statements far less offensive than calling for genocide. And so I actually think that what we need is not more restrictions on political speech, not more tools for university leaders, who will often be cowardly and who will often be politically partisan to be able to punish students. What we need is a recommitment to the university as a neutral forum for political speech in which the institution itself does not take an institutional position. And secondly, what we need is a real protection of free speech that is consistent and doesn't just apply to those who say terrible things about Jews.
- [29:47]
B
I think what a lot of people were wondering when they were watching these heads of universities was, why is it, when it comes to Jews, is it much more complicated for them to just say the right answer?
- [30:00]
D
Yeah, and I think that there's a, you know, clear but slightly complex answer to that, which has less to do, perhaps, with the beliefs of each of these university presidents, but that has a lot to do with views that have become very common on university campuses, both among a section of highly vocal student activists, but also among a growing number of the faculty. And that's really rooted in the ideology, in the ideas that I explain in my new book in the Identity Trap. Trap, which chronicles the rise in triumph and the tribulations of a new ideology, a new set of ideas about identity, particularly focused on race and gender and sexual orientation. So what I argue in the Identity Trap, among other things, is that there are four concepts that are particularly relevant in this context, which help to explain the response to Hamas's terror attack on big parts of the left, which helped to explain why the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter called for a solidarity rally in the days immediately after October 7th, before any kind of Israeli response, in an invite picturing a Hamas paraglider glorifying the people who murdered over 250 people at that music festival. Why the faculty at Columbia University called Hamas's terror attack a military action. And that really has to do with four basic ways of seeing the world. Number one, a kind of Manichaean world that splits the world into whites on the one side and people of color on the other side the second, which uses a set of concepts that are separate but that is claimed to be overlapping, that says we can really understand the world by splitting it into colonizers, settler, colonialists, and those who are colonized and those who are marginalized. And by the way, in context where those two concepts don't overlap, they're simply discarded so that the imperialist attack of Russia on Ukraine is not seen through a colonial frame because most of its victims happen to be white. Thirdly, a very changed understanding of racism. The traditional notion of racism has to do with individual attributes. You are a racist if you hold certain kinds of bigoted beliefs about an outside group. Social scientists rightly recognize that that is incomplete, that sometimes people can suffer structural discrimination, even though the person discriminating against them may not hold bad views about them himself. For example, if a cab driver doesn't pick up an African American passenger because he thinks he might be more likely to go to a poorer neighborhood, might not have any hateful views about African Americans, but this potential black passenger would then experience structural discrimination. The problem comes when you discard the notion of individual based racism, when you start to say that it is literally impossible, as Vice magazine has argued, to be racist against white people, because that starts to justify forms of terrible behavior as long as they come from a supposedly marginalized group. And then the fourth point is the idea of intersectionality. That because our identities intersect, because we might be discriminated against on multiple grounds, the fight against injustice has to be a fight against all forms of oppression. And that means that to be an activist in good standing, to be an environmentalist, for example, you also have to be for a certain conception of trans rights. And you also have to take a particular kind of position on the conflict in the. And so those four frames are then applied to what is going on in the Middle East. And according to the global left, Jews are white and Israelis are white. Palestinians are oppressed people of color who have been colonized. That means that any form of resistance against the colonial oppressor is justified, even if it involves the murder of babies or grandmothers. And if you are an environmentalist like Greta Thunberg, or if you're just a writer or artist or professor who wants to be in good standing with a just milieu, you better sign on to a solidarity rally. You better get on board with a particular conception of the Palestinian course. And as you all know better than I do, that is of course a parody, a huge oversimplification of what the reality on the ground is, in part because, just to name one example, plurality of Jews in Israel at this point are Mizrahi. Their roots are in the Middle East. They've been expelled from those countries. They had nowhere to turn other than Israel. And in ethnic terms, their skin color is rather similar to that of Palestinians. So to say that these are the white colonial oppressors is Simply a parody of an understanding of the situation.
- [34:57]
A
Yascha, you've set out there the thesis rather brilliantly. Let's just accept the premise there that many students on Western campuses are in thrall to the ideology as you've set it out. I think what surprises people is the notion that faculty, too, are enthralled to this. In other words, it's not just a sort of fashion among students. How has this gripped even some of the greatest, most educated minds in the world? That are the people who were represented in that congressional hearing, who are the people meant to be teaching the next generation of young people?
- [35:34]
D
Well, I mean, I chronicle the origin of these ideas in my new book in the Identity Trap, and they come very much out of the academy. They are not, as some right wing polemicists claim, a form of cultural Marxism that is wrong on substantive grounds and wrong in terms of the intellectual history. But they do flow from three intellectual traditions, postmodernism, post colonialism, and critical race theory. And those ideas now dominate the humanities in big parts of the Western world. If you go to an English department, a comparative literature department, to significant parts of American law schools, of sociology departments, those are ideas that are very strongly represented among the faculty and in some universities and some departments are absolutely dominant within. So there is a strong constituency within the faculty that holds a sometimes more sophisticated, sometimes not that much more sophisticated version of these ideas. I don't know about any of the three university presidents who were in front of Congress, whether they personally believe in these ideas. I have reason to believe from the work of Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, that she's somewhat sympathetic to certain aspects of it, but certainly not an ideological believer or fanatical. Fanatical believer in these core theses. But then you have a second phenomenon, which is that these American university administrators are often people with a thin scholarly record who have gotten to where they are as administrators. And their core skill as administrators was flowing with political winds and being good at asking for donations from big donors. Their incentive for the last 10 or 20 years has been not to upset the campus activists. I'll give you a somewhat silly example. In the United States, it is now very fashionable to refer to Latino students as Latinx students. We know from opinion polls that 98% of Latinos in the United States dislike that appellation. And yet every university practically I get from official institution, including the University of Wichita, speech seems to say Latinx. Why is that? Is that because university presidents are fanatics? Is that because they're stupid? No, it's because they've rightly understood that if they use the term, most people are going to roll their eyes, but nobody's going to call for their heads. If they don't use the term, 50 people are going to stage a protest outside of the university president's office and call for the resignation. And so the incentive seems to have been at every step to give in to the loudest voices of the campus activists. And this is why so many university presidents miscalculated for the last couple of months. Because for the first time, it turned out that by going with a progressive orthodoxy, you suddenly had a lot of other people who are very angry at them and who are calling for their resignation. So I don't think it's a good thing to fire people and to cancel people. I do think there is this one positive development in that. Suddenly university presidents and administrators have started to realize that there's pitfalls on both sides and that perhaps what that should actually do is to stand by principle and by what's supposed to be their mission. Because that has not been the incentive for the last 10 years.
- [39:00]
B
That's really interesting. You also said it in your answer to Jonathan's first question about saying that they have become accustomed to giving their opinion about everything thing which just became very striking when they suddenly grew very conspicuously silent when it came to the Israeli issues. And what happened to us after October 7th. So, so what I'm actually trying to ask, Yasha, is what should be done? Acknowledging the problem is obviously an important part of it. But does some of this, does the solution have to come internally from these institutions? Does it have to come externally with, I don't know, donating threats to stop donations, threats to not accept grads from these universities. How does this resolve itself?
- [39:44]
D
Well, let me say two things. One is that there is now intense external pressure. It was really striking to me. So when you look at, for example, Larry Hogan, who used to be the governor of Maryland, a deeply Democrat leaning state, a very moderate Republican, who is a loud and consistent critic of Donald Trump, who won significant electoral majorities in a very Democratic leaning state, announced that he would not take up his fellowship at Harvard next year because he was disgusted by the university's actions. But more broadly, because he seems to have realized that even among those moderate Republicans, the Harvard brand is now toxic. These universities are approaching an existential crisis because they actually depend on federal research dollars, on federal student aid that finances the very large loans that many students take out, and of course, on the tax exempt treatment of their endowments. And when you have less than 20% of Republicans now trusting higher education in the United States, when you have a clear minority of the American population overall say that they trust American higher educational institutions, I think the financial model is significantly imperiled. So there is the immediate pressure from alumni or other prominent people, sometimes politicians calling for the ouster of some of those university presidents from very significant donors saying we're not going to give money. But I think there's a much broader political pressure that these universities are going to be on. But I think they haven't yet fully understood. They haven't yet fully, because they assumed that Harvard, of course, has many friends in Congress and nobody would ever come after their endowment. So for me, the only answer out of this, both out of strategic interest of the university, but also out of principle, is to recommit to their stated mission to say we are going to get out of a game of making political statements. Of course professors and students are free to engage in political speech, but it's not our role as an institution to opine about the war in the Middle east, the war in Ukraine, or the latest Supreme Court ruling. The University of Chicago has adopted that principle many years ago and it has served it very, very well. Secondly, we have to punish people very clearly for infringements of student conduct. Rules that have always been there, that don't restrict free speech. One of the shocking things in the last month, for example, is that universities have been unwilling to punish students who disrupt lectures over the last years. Students who violently disrupt the talks of visiting scholars who are controversial have not been punished. So we haven't actually stood up for the rules. We need to have free speech because nobody deserves the hackler's veto. Nobody deserves to be able to use violence to stop other people from speaking. No reasonable conception of free speech involves that right. And universities haven't enforced existing rules on that. Thirdly, I think they should stand up for very extensive conception of free speech. I am fine with people on campus saying very offensive things about Jews if it isn't the case that they are the only ones who are allowed to say offensive things. Everybody else gets punished for very mild disagreements with a certain set of identitarian views. But suddenly, when it comes to cause of genocide of Jews, it all depends supposedly on context that is unsustainable. I think instead of punishing more and engaging in this zero sum competition to cancel the most number of people, to censor the most number of people, these universities should go back to adopting a very broad definition of academic Freedom that, yes, involves permitting very offensive forms of speech. And then fourth, the most complicated thing these universities have to deal with the DEI bureaucracies. You now have more administrators at Yale University than undergraduate students. We know from polls that these administrators are deeply illiberal, that they are far more likely than faculty members or students to say, for example, that it is acceptable to use violence to disrupt an offensive speaker. And in particular, in many diversity excellent and inclusion departments, you have a conception of a world that pits whites versus people of color, that sees Jews as oppressors. The universities have to take on that problem because they are the ones who hold a lot of institutional power and have created part of this problem.
- [44:21]
A
And we're referring now to American universities. But of course, the point is, this is, as you write, it's becoming an American export and going all over the world to other campuses. But your confidence there about what can be done. I wonder if. My worry is that in a way after 2023, you could imagine this ideology actually doubling down in its conception of Jews as dominant and powerful because they will add to that charge sheet that they are guilty of what many of them are already calling a genocide. And therefore I wonder if not if in future they get going to brand Jews as even less worthy of protection than they are now, rather than changing course in the way you set out.
- [45:06]
D
No, that is absolutely the danger. And that is why I think it's such a mistake, as some people have done in the last days, to try and solve this problem by adding Jews rather plausibly to the group of marginalized victims. So there's two kinds of solutions to the current crisis. One is to say, well, we've urged, but in treating only women and African Americans and Latinos and so on and so forth as oppressed groups and building a culture in which how we treat each other always depends on the kind of group you are part of. That's all right. But obviously Jews should also be one of the groups that receive special protection, special treatment. And if you commit a microaggression against Jews, Jews, then you need to be punished. The problem with that approach is in part that this relies on the goodwill of administrators, because it'll depend on what the DEI office says in five or ten years whether Jews will still continue to be counted as one of those minority groups. And then I have a second, more substantive critique of this, which I developed in my book on the identity trap, which is that I just think that kind of zero sum conflict between different ethnic and religious groups is not going to be conducive to a tolerant society in which we're actually encouraged to seek commonality, get along, and tolerate strong disagreements. So I think the only way out is to stop playing the game, is to stop saying that how I treat you should depend on the kind of group of which you are a part to stop saying that. What you're allowed to say, not too loud to say, should depend on the say so of a DEI office or of some college administrator. And the great advantage of these neutral rules like free speech or academic freedom, the great advantage of universities no longer taking these institutional stances is that they don't encourage that kind of competition. I mean, let me put it this way. This is something I said a lot after October 7th. I love my university president, actually. He's a deeply thoughtful person who has helped keep our university less in throw of these ideas than others. I don't give a shit what he thinks about the Israel Palestine conflict. I don't need to hear from him. But if he's spoken out about everything else, then I start to think, hang on a second. Why hasn't he said anything about this? He did say something about it once. The university is in the habit of picking winners and taking sides. There's always going to be somebody who says, you've talked about all of this, but I happen to be Armenian. Why on earth did you not say anything about Nagano Karabakh? What happened there is terrible, but because there's not many Armenian students and it's far away, you're ignoring it. I'm gonna feel slighted. The right answer. You're never gonna get it right. The only right answer is to adopt neutral rules that stop universities from taking sides and playing favorites in that kind of way.
- [48:00]
B
Yeah, Shamunk. The book is the Identity, A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. And it goes into. Into. It's excellent, by the way. It goes into great detail of some of what we were talking. The podcast is the Good Fight. I personally love it and thank you so much for coming on. We have so much more to talk about, so we hope we'll get a chance to do it with you in the future. Thanks so much, Yasha.
- [48:19]
D
I would love to come back on the show. This is really fun.
- [48:22]
B
Thank you.
- [48:22]
A
Thank you, Yasha.
- [48:30]
B
You know, that was a fascinating conversation with someone who knows academia very, very well, all of the nuances, and to me, next time we have him on, because we will have him next time. So Yascha is obviously Jewish and he was raised in Germany, and I think it's Very interesting to hear from him generally more about the differences between anti Semitism in Europe. What now? This new wave or flood rather, of anti Semitism in the United States, the differences between them. But that's all for our, our next conversation with him sometime in the future.
- [49:00]
A
Yeah. And as you say, he sits at just this really interesting place because American and German and obviously he has that particular angle in terms of antisemitism in Europe. There are reminders all the time, but a particularly florid one came in the form of Gregor Brown. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing his name correctly, but he is a far right member of the the Polish Parliament who was shown on TV this week bringing out the fire extinguisher in order to snuff out the candles on a Chanukia lit in the Polish Parliament to mark the festival of Chanuka. Denounced actually everywhere by colleagues, which is good. The new incoming Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, former Prime minister as well, called the incident a disgrace and said it was a unacceptable but just obviously a reminder that in Poland, anti Semitism obviously has a deep and long history and it isn't completely extinguished when you think of the behavior of this one member of Parliament.
- [50:07]
B
Extinguished being the operative word. I will have word with my Polish father on how you pronounce that name, Jonathan. The critique on that will be coming next week, but we will say our thank yous to Gaia Glaser, Omer Primat, Omri Barak, and we shall meet next week.
- [50:25]
A
We shall. And we should say the audience has been growing in a very big way in recent weeks and we are very, very grateful for that. But the way that you can ensure others join you in listening to Unholy is to rate and review us. Wherever you get your podcasts, you are spreading the word, the audience is expanding and we're grateful. So keep doing that. I'll see you next week, Yoni.
- [50:48]
B
See ya.