00:13:57At this, I'm not gonna find another girl like her in a million years.
00:14:09Also, I've never had fun. Sorry, Rod. That says someday, boo. And as they say, never done it. And I've never had fun. Sorry, Rod. That says someday, boo. Do you trust me?
00:22:33Look at this. You're not going to find another girl like her in a million years.1.00
00:22:42It's all so magical. I've never had fun. Sorry, Rod. That says someday, boo. End of.
00:22:58We have just learned moments ago that the Supreme Court has now striking down both Harvard and UNC's program when it comes to race used in admissions.
00:23:08The standoff that's happening between the president and Harvard University.
00:23:12The Trump administration plans to ask all federal agencies to find ways to end their contracts with the Ivy League school.
00:23:18I guess what I'm saying is your brief, and this is very explicit in your brief, is like it just doesn't matter if our institutions look like America.
00:23:31Harvard and Columbia have just been named the worst colleges for free speech.
00:23:36I am deeply disappointed by the intolerance for freedom of speech.
00:23:41It's shocking to see that these schools are suddenly hiding behind the valence of free speech and claiming that this is happening because they value free speech so much on their campus, where historically that's just simply not been true.
00:23:52What we are seeing from the Trump administration is a wholesale attack.
00:24:29It's time to go straight to the top to the people who failed you.
00:24:31At the University of Texas, At Kansas University, UCLA, Cal Berkeley, Stanford, USC, Penn, Penn State, Columbia, NYU, Boston University, Harvard, any of their esteemed professors in these schools who are willing to have a debate with a college dropout comedian, they can name the time, the place, pick the moderator, and the rules.
00:25:45Racial affirmative action is an attempt, sometimes flawed, but is at least an attempt to push us beyond the gravitational pull of our racist past.0.62
00:25:59If I ask the same question right now to an Asian student on campus, did you earn your spot here?0.91
00:26:46My name is Elliot Detchen, and I am the president of the Harvard Republican Club.
00:26:49I want to begin by thanking all of you for being here tonight to support Professor Randall Kennedy and Stephen Crowder.
00:26:57The Harvard Republican Club is the oldest college Republican club in the country.
00:27:01Our mission is to help Harvard live up to its great history and as well to advance the America First agenda on campus.
00:27:08Accordingly, our credo is the inscription above Dexter Gate depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.
00:27:15The format for this evening will be a debate between Stephen and Professor Kennedy, followed by audience QA.
00:27:21Our moderator for tonight will be our very own director of speakers, Eli Solomon.
00:27:33And now, Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School.
00:27:39He is also the author of several influential books and one of the few who has had the opportunity of clerking for Thurgood Marshall.
00:27:46With degrees from Princeton, Yale, and Oxford, and a three decade long tenure at Harvard, Professor Kennedy is one of America's preeminent scholars.
00:29:02Well, thank you guys all for coming out tonight.
00:29:05My name is Eli Solomon, and I'll be the moderator for tonight.
00:29:09So, just to give a brief run of show first, each participant is going to have the opportunity to give a brief opening statement.
00:29:17Then, we're going to move into a more free flowing debate style.
00:29:20And then, after about an hour, each participant is going to have the opportunity to give a closing statement, and then we'll move on to a brief intermission and QA.
00:29:30So, with that being said, Stephen, if you'd like to give your opening statement.
00:29:41First of all, I would definitely like to thank the Republican Club here, the Harvard Republican Club, so I have to get the title right, for helping to organize this event.
00:29:49Without them, none of this would have been possible.
00:29:51This is about 10 years in the making, so please give them a round of applause.
00:30:01And also, sorry to all the people who couldn't make it.
00:30:33I also appreciate his sense of humor, which is lost on quite a few people, because Professor Kennedy wrote a book titled Nigger, The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, knowing full well that uptight white people would have to say that when citing his work.
00:30:57Now, he is a professor, and I should also note that above all, By the way, if you guys can turn down your mics, I'm hearing you guys, and someone's going to take a shot, they'll do it.
00:31:07It should be noted that, unlike the faculty at UPenn, other professors at Harvard, or even the dozen or so institutions to whom I extended this offer, Professor Kennedy is a unicorn in that he did something no one else would.
00:31:22He is, as Teddy Roosevelt described, the man in the arena, and I say this genuinely without a hint of ass shining that he has my utmost respect and undying admiration for that.
00:33:43Harvard had more attempts than any other school in the country, but it's organic.
00:33:49Harvard, this doesn't exist in a vacuum, disinvited Devon Jane Buckley from a talk on British Romanticism because she doesn't believe in male women, but rolled out the welcome mat for an Angela Davis keynote.
00:34:01To be fair, she was only a two time communist vice presidential candidate and spoke to and on behalf of the Castro regime while committing crimes against humanity.0.98
00:34:12Didn't run afoul of gender, though, but it's organic.
00:34:16Speaking of keynotes, published Johnson and Zhang's study of 1,875 commencement speakers at 52 schools, Harvard included, showed that liberal speakers outnumbered conservatives for 36 years straight, averaging a ratio of more than 10 to 3, some years 15 to 1.
00:34:36In fact, when Roland Fryer of Harvard, noted professor, found no racial bias, In police shootings.
00:34:44His colleagues here told him not to publish it.
00:34:46He hired eight fresh research assistants, replicated it, got the same answer, published it anyway, and for his troubles, he lived under police protection for over a month, buying diapers for his seven day old daughter with an armed guard, while Harvard largely stood silent.
00:35:22But he did so while defending the practice of disinvitation itself as a form of expression.
00:35:28He still stands up and unambiguously defends Harvard and academia at large, while conservatives who show up to speak get shouted down, threatened, vilified at campuses at large, and let's be honest, sometimes get shot.
00:36:26Tonight, he will undoubtedly turn around, in some cases, rightfully so, call out conservative overreach to object to a funding condition or a curriculum standard as if refusing to subsidize discrimination with our tax dollars is the same as burning a book.
00:36:44Telling a university that it can't use your money to sort people by race is not censorship any more than telling a public school they can't hand a nine year old hardcore pornography.0.98
00:38:42I'd also like to thank Steve's production crew.
00:38:48Everybody has treated me just fine, and I appreciate it.
00:38:58Now, with respect to my opening remarks, I'm going to make two brief points.
00:39:08Number one, the biggest danger to higher education in the United States today is our federal government, pursuant to the Reagan, excuse me, pursuant to the Trump administration.
00:39:28The Trump administration has engaged in a campaign of extortion in which it has wrung various settlements out of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, most notably.
00:39:49It has attempted to extort my university, Harvard University, and in doing so, it has shown a complete Disregard for statutory law.
00:40:07It has shown a complete disregard for constitutional law.
00:40:12It has shown a complete disregard for sound, conservative, conservative principles like due process, like freedom of expression, like Concern for the prerogatives of private institutions like limited government.
00:40:41These are conservative tenets that the present administration, the Trump administration, has shown no attentiveness for.
00:41:04Express not only my defense of higher education in the United States, particularly my university, Harvard University, I don't want to simply defend it, though I do defend it.
00:41:50But overall, day to day, the question is what has been the social contribution of universities like my own in terms of science, in terms of the
00:42:10Creating young people who are able to think and think clearly, think well, of all sorts, of all different sorts.
00:42:21I'm not just thinking of people, I'm not just thinking of liberals, I'm thinking of earnest, hardworking, insightful, smart, conservative students like I teach every day.
00:42:44And these institutions of higher education have been subjected to all manner of vilification for a long time.
00:42:59In light of that, it's no wonder that there has been a dip in public confidence in these institutions when they are constantly fed all sorts of misleading reports about what goes on.
00:43:16Number one, the threat that is being posed by the federal government.
00:43:23Number two, my defense and, in fact, championing of higher education, particularly the higher education that is presented by Harvard University.
00:45:21Provide funding to the scientists out there in America who we think will do the best job of helping, of conquering disease.
00:45:32Harvard scientists, Harvard affiliates, compete for this money.
00:45:37This money was allotted to them, and the federal government, the Trump administration, says because of putative deficiencies in other parts of the university, we are going to stop you.
00:45:55Yeah, from getting this money, that's what I was so that's not so I very much appreciate that you answered it.
00:46:00Yeah, so the general so it would put you guys like where Hillsdale is or Liberty, a university that doesn't receive public funding that actually is a private institution.
00:46:08Also, that funding would be by the way allocated to other universities who would conduct the research and not have things like racially discriminatory admissions practices, not have litmus tests for faculty to guarantee that there's an ideological monolith.
00:46:4499, the lowest you'll find is 95, 94, double, triple the disinvitations of conservatives, 36 years running as far as commencement speakers, conservatives less than 17% feeling free to speak out.
00:46:56Do you think that maybe, for example, What the Trump administration has said you can't do anymore.
00:47:01And I know that it ended before the Trump administration because you saw the writing on the wall.
00:47:04But, like requiring all incoming faculty in an entire department or those who want to be promoted within the faculty to sign a DEI pledge.
00:47:13Does the taxpayer, the ambassador of the taxpayer, have the right to say, well, if you want to do that, you pay your own way, reach into your $60 billion endowment?
00:48:18Colleague Harvey Mansfield, conservative, long standing conservative, has said that there needs to be diversity, there needs to be affirmative action for conservative professors.
00:49:32The former dean of Harvard Law School, John Manning, the current provost of Harvard University, proud conservative, clerked for Judge Bork, clerked for Justice Scalia, long standing member of the Federal Society.
00:50:16Harvard faculty donors, 41 Democrats, zero Republicans.
00:50:19Harvard registered faculty, 88 Democrats, one Republican.
00:50:22Zero of 118 Harvard law professors gave to Trump's campaign in 2023, 2024.
00:50:28Academia at large, 95 Democratic donors for every one conservative.
00:50:34And that's not by accident because for five years at Harvard, and I know that you oppose this, for five years you were required to take a DEI pledge, to check a box if you wanted to be promoted, tenured, or hired.
00:50:50I actually have the exact descriptions here.
00:50:53Harvard's own hiring checklist required a statement describing efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, belonging.
00:51:00The hiring case statement must include a description of all efforts to identify candidates from diverse populations, including women and minorities.
00:51:08For tenure, candidates had to show how the candidate has contributed to diversity, inclusion, belonging in all areas of their professional life.
00:51:15Harvard's own 2023 search guide told chairs to consider reading the applicants of women and minorities first.
00:51:21Should a public school teacher be allowed to teach that black people are inferior any more than white people are inherently guilty?
00:52:17There was external pressure, and you saw an incoming administration who said that they would crack down on it, and that's why.
00:52:23That's the federal government overreach here is hey, if you force people to sign pledges like this, and we think it's been going on for a while, we're going to look into your books and you're going to have to pay your own way, like reach into your 50 something billion dollar coffers.
00:52:36Steve, I think that you need to be careful with your facts.
00:53:10It's not a pause on taxpayer funding to a school that was such a monolith that they had a DEI pledge until they realized people were on to them.
00:53:55I'm talking about my book that you mentioned, taken off the shelf of the Naval Academy because I take it that future officers can't handle that book.
00:54:59Why is it that it was so difficult for you to say that you object to the United States government taking books out of the United States Naval Academy's library?
00:56:04This is straight from them, it's not abstract.
00:56:07You are not allowed to teach at these academic institutions, which would include the Naval Academy.
00:56:13Anything, this is a quote, as treating people as preferred or disfavored groups based on sex, race, or origin instead of individuals, including claims that one race is inherently superior, that individuals are inherently racist or oppressive by their group, that moral character is determined by race or sex, promoting guilt over historical actions by group members, discriminating for diversity or equity, or saying virtues like merit and colorblindness are racist or that America is fundamentally racist.
00:56:41Which part of continuing to teach that is worth losing the public funding?
00:56:45Because it seems pretty clearly outlined.0.98
00:56:47And I wouldn't want to fund KKK University.0.60
00:56:56A decent institution of higher education would allow its library to include all sorts of books that would include all sorts of awful ideas from, you know, I don't, pick it, Mein Kampf.
00:57:20Should Mein Kampf be taken out of a library of higher education?
00:58:58And with academia in tandem, affirmative action, accepting students with lower academic performances based on affirmative action, these ideas of DEI, you can lump it all in together if we need to here.
00:59:10I was just clear in my description giving a spot to a black kid because, sorry, Andrew Pham, you have too many A's in your last name.0.51
00:59:17And again, this is all done in the name of a collective nebulous good, but when there's an individual named, you see the negative results.0.77
00:59:25And the litmus test that Harvard had, getting back to the idea of an ideological monolith, That is ensuring that no conservatives, that no people with my perspective or many of the people here work or are promoted at Harvard.
00:59:38Do you acknowledge that that's a problem or do you still defend that institution?
00:59:42Again, I said it from the beginning that I'm perfectly willing to accept, I do accept, that there are problems at my institution.
01:00:33Some people say that for various reasons, conservative.
01:00:42Who might, given their background, be good candidates for academic positions, decide to go into other industries, other areas where they can, you know.
01:01:27But let me tell you, let me tell you why, let me tell you why I said at the beginning that I don't simply defend but actually admire higher education and particularly Harvard University.
01:03:17I'm talking about Harvard today, where less than 17% of conservatives, and by the way, a small minority of your own professors feel.
01:03:25Safe to speak out publicly on controversial issues.
01:03:2899 to 1, 95 to 1, 93 to 1, 36 years in higher education, as far as by the way, I mentioned commencements because you guys choose it.
01:03:35It doesn't require hundreds of thousands of dollars to make happen from a private group and institution.
01:03:39We're talking about this today, where this litmus test that went on, we can just say it's a small, it happened for five years.
01:03:47Do we actually believe that DEI, in forcing any internal staff and faculty and any incoming staff and faculty to sign that pledge, we believe that's the start of it?
01:03:58Or do we believe that's a symptom of a place that has been such a political monolith for so long and so discriminatory that they were comfortable in executing it?
01:04:06And Harvard argued that it wasn't a litmus test.
01:05:00It's not that it's the problem, it's the boldness.
01:05:03And Harvard doubled down, and Harvard has defended it, and that's why you'll face this specter of losing public funding for a private institution.
01:07:04You said you were going to tell me about the Harvard studies and you went to conservative snowflakeism, which I'm very familiar with and, of course, is a bogus term.
01:07:1488% of conservatives at academia at large say that shouting down the heckler's veto of speakers is wrong, is always wrong, compared to only about 30 something.
01:08:00Nothing was done until the Trump administration said you can't do that because you keep silencing voices of dissent or you lose your public funding.
01:09:47So what we're talking about is, let's suppose.
01:09:50Suppose that a speaker has been invited to a campus, and then there are people in the university who object to that speaker being invited to the campus, and they speak up and they say to the people who invited them, We want you to disinvite that person.
01:10:14And that has occurred, that has occurred at various institutions, and my position.
01:10:22Is that the people who say, We want you to disinvite that person, they are expressing themselves just the same way as the people who made the invitation.
01:10:36And one of the examples I give has to do with a Christian conservative institution in the South that at the inauguration of its new president.
01:10:55Invited a scholar who had done various things for Planned Parenthood.
01:11:04A student said, a group of students said, We want you to disinvite that speaker because that speaker's views run counter to our religious or ethical beliefs.
01:11:23And the question was, were these students doing something wrong?
01:11:54Also, is this a school where students themselves can be kicked out because there's a code of conduct?
01:11:59That's tied to theology, a private institution, for example, supporting abortion.
01:12:03I know at Liberty University, an actual private institution, you can get kicked off for drinking.
01:12:07That's not the same as Harvard rolling out the red carpet for a two time communist vice presidential candidate while banning people like, let's be honest, disinviting Ben Shapiro, myself.
01:12:20Jordan Peterson lost his fellowship at Cambridge.
01:12:23You say disinvitation is a form of expression when these people can't hear the perspectives of folks like me, of folks like half the country who elect presidents.
01:12:35You said a couple of times, you mentioned, for instance, a while ago, an episode in which somebody from abroad, and you said, you know, Harvard disinvited them.
01:13:23And certainly, again, in case we've forgotten these numbers, as far as Harvard registered faculty, 88 Democrats, 1 Republican, donors, 41 Democrats, 0 Republicans, 0 of 118 Harvard law professors.
01:15:12Does not bother me at all because I would think people at Harvard Law School may have glimpsed something when they did not contribute to a person who, when he got in office, attempted to attack the legal institution and firms, telling firms, you can't even go into buildings, federal buildings.
01:16:17Because if you believe that a classroom benefits from more melanin, a black student, because of their lived experience, certainly you'd also say the same about faculty as it relates to half the country.0.74
01:16:33A while ago, I clearly said I'm okay with making special efforts to recruit, to bring in conservative academics.
01:16:48In settings where there is an obvious paucity of conservative academics and in which their presence would be useful to the pedagogical mission of Harvard University. I'd be totally in favor of that.
01:17:54And people were laboring under a misimpression, if that dissuaded conservative academics from trying to get into positions, I would be in favor of Harvard making special efforts to recruit them.
01:19:04Well, maybe if San Francisco, hold on a second, if San Francisco, which has far more political balance than Harvard, if San Francisco can be used as a punchline, and it is, Harvard can be villainized.
01:19:16By the way, on this issue of baseline, you've mentioned this a number of times baseline.
01:20:48Unlike yourself, I will answer your questions.1.00
01:20:50It wasn't until recently, and of course, I was against blocking women, blocking blacks, for the same reason I'm against blocking Asians not so fast.1.00
01:20:59Welcome, black kid who's not as qualified, because it's just another form of discrimination, even if you call it preference.1.00
01:21:56So you're saying Harvard has to discriminate against a political ideology and Asians who score too high and straight white males because somewhere off in the red states that aren't represented here, there's someone who married their cousin and has flippers' hands and thinks that blacks shouldn't be allowed?
01:23:23There are many people that I know and deeply respect. Who are against affirmative action.0.73
01:23:35I've been a defender of affirmative action.
01:23:37By the way, I still am a defender of affirmative action.
01:23:39But there are people who criticize affirmative action, are against affirmative action, and I think that there are, you know, they have reasonable grounds for what they say.
01:23:52I also think, however, that there are many, many people who actually prefer the old regime.
01:24:04And when I say the old regime, I mean the monopolization of coveted places in American life.0.95
01:24:12You mean sorting people by race, and in that case it was just sorting out blacks.0.99
01:24:15Now you want to sort them in and sort out Asians and whites.0.97
01:24:17Here's, and so my point is, my point is, and here's where I guess, you know, we just, you know, disagree.
01:24:28I think that sexism remains a big problem in America.
01:24:33I think that anti gay prejudice remains a big problem.
01:24:41I think that anti black prejudice remains a big problem in America.
01:24:47And in the universities, part of the resentment, part of the reason why universities have been on the receiving end of the vilification is because people are resentful of the progress that has been made and that has been shown.
01:27:17And by the way, when I was an untenured professor, I was very critical of various aspects of.
01:27:27Policies at Harvard and made no, it did not bother me at all.
01:27:32Would you have provided the required statement describing your efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, belonging, description of all efforts to identify candidates from diverse populations, including women or for tenure candidates, how the candidate specifically has contributed to diversity, inclusion?
01:27:51I know because you said that this was gross, that this was awful, this pledge, and it shouldn't have been made so.
01:29:01I know it ended before Donald Trump became president.
01:29:04But you and I both know, everyone knows that the practice behind the scenes, the soft practice of making sure that people ideologically in line with DEI are only amongst the ranks, was there long before the public pledge.
01:31:28But that's not really the central part of what I'm saying.
01:31:33The central part of what I'm saying really is based on a long standing association with the university, talking with lots of people, having antenna up, and getting a sense of what's going on.
01:31:48And what I'm saying is the portrait you're presenting is simply not what's going on, it's inaccurate.
01:31:58And I would ask you, and I, you know, I would ask you tomorrow or the next day or this evening or whenever, get in touch with, you know, conservative students, talk with them, and get a sense of what they say.
01:32:18At my institution, at my institution, you know, very liberal, to be sure, the most active.
01:32:32Student group on campus, at least politically, the Federal Society, conservative group, highly esteemed within the university community, the law school community, have their speakers, they do all sorts of things.
01:32:52This is not a group of people who are walking on eggshells and are feeling like they can't express themselves.
01:33:30And often, the reason that we're doing this is because we have sat down, this wasn't meant for students.
01:33:35We always plan to sit down and talk with students and talk with at least one professor.
01:33:39In every instance, it was the professors banning us from those discussions.
01:33:43And one of the worst offenders, by all metrics available, is Harvard.
01:33:47So if we do agree with the problem of it being slanted askew, I guess it's to varying degrees.
01:33:54I say it occurs nowhere else in nature.0.99
01:33:56It would be an ideological monolith, if organic, that would need to be studied for centuries to come because you found it nowhere else, including the gayest, bluest areas of the country.0.97
01:34:05And that would discourage people from speaking out when they look at the policies.0.97
01:34:10The pledges, the sorting by ideology, by race here at Harvard, and you say it's not that big a deal because there's one group who's allowed to operate within these parameters.
01:35:16I know that before the Supreme Court struck down that lawsuit when we're talking about affirmative action in Asian students, the representation was really high of black Americans here at Harvard.
01:35:26And then it went down to, I believe, about 11%.
01:35:47All those are really good questions that people have been wrestling with.
01:35:52My view is that, you know, I've never thought that affirmative action is the end all and be all.
01:36:00And indeed, if somebody came to me and said, I tell you what, Kennedy, I propose the following deal you give up racial affirmative action in higher education in return for a guarantee.0.55
01:36:22Of excellent K through 12 education, I'd take that in a minute.
01:37:27Oh, it stigmatizes to some degree its beneficiaries.
01:37:36It does, so if we're talking about the Harvard example, for instance, it does have the inadvertent effect, and I said inadvertent, not purposeful, but inadvertent effect.
01:40:35Who is harmed by affirmative action as has been practiced at Harvard for at least several decades, and the Supreme Court said you can't do that anymore?
01:41:11Yeah, people said he was a Nazi and a racist because he said, I don't like guttering on a plane and seeing a black female pilot and asking myself, does she deserve to be there?0.72
01:41:21And people, because folks like Charlie Kirk and myself are never allowed the platform to defend themselves here at places like Harvard, the portrait, the character was painted for them.
01:41:30And that, what you just said, was portrayed as racial supremacy from Charlie Kirk.
01:42:45Second, we've had certain disagreements about things that have been voiced in the last hour.
01:42:54I would, as we depart this, as we leave this, at least this part of the discussion, there were certain things about which we agreed, and I'd like to underline those.
01:43:07We agreed that freedom of expression, freedom of learning, freedom to think, freedom of teaching is an imperative.
01:43:23We also agreed that invidious discriminations against people, whether it be race, whether it be gender, whether it be sexual orientation, are also bad, and it seemed to me that we agreed on that.
01:44:53Daniel Allen and it cost us a lot of money, right?
01:44:55This is the thing they'll expend our resources, agree to it, and then change the terms.
01:44:59Demanded to after this conversation when this was first set up, which we went to UPenn and they said you can't live stream it.
01:45:05She demanded the right to retroactively remove consent and have it removed from our channel afterward, along with three days to clear what was meant to be a live stream.
01:45:13For the same reason that we have to get individual permits and work with private groups on campus to simply present the perspective that, I don't know, biological male, female sorting by race is a bad thing.
01:45:24One thing I think that is important is at a certain point you do have to look around.
01:45:30You do have to go, okay, let's take stock of reality here.
01:45:35Have you looked around at the student body at Harvard and academia?
01:45:40Do we really actually want to sit here and say, well, you know, because the Trump administration and Grants, and we're talking about federal funding, DEI, it's just as bad.
01:45:48Have you seen the protests and the screeching and the vandalism and the acts of violence, and then look at the polls as it relates to suppression of free speech?
01:45:57The left always wants to make it about the response and not what elicited that response.
01:46:06And it's actually so prolific from the left, not just on Harvard, or not just here at Harvard, that I've written it down.
01:46:12Okay, when we talk about systematic censorship and suppression of speech, Twitter accounts that tweeted Trump 2020 got suspended four and a half times as many as Biden accounts.
01:46:232022, Biden's Homeland Security launched a disinformation governance board, got paused, not because it was the right thing to do, but because of external pressure.
01:46:35Federal judge who read the government's messages to the platforms, by the way, called it arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history in Missouri versus Biden.
01:46:45The Fifth Circuit Court found the White House and FBI likely coerced or significantly encouraged the platforms.
01:46:50Supreme Court Reversed on standing, not on the merits.
01:46:53Zuckerberg himself wrote Congress that the Biden White House pressured Meta for months to censor COVID posts, including practicing doctors who were recommending intervention mechanisms when it was a novel virus.
01:47:05He had 51 former intelligence officials signing a letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story, the laptop, by the way, which was shown by Rudy Giuliani on my show to the world for the very first time as Russian disinformation, and anyone who posted it was banned until they decided that could be allowed, but the original link wasn't restored.
01:47:22Twitter blocked people from the New York Post story.
01:47:25The Twitter files later showed that it was suppressed.
01:47:27On COVID, the White House press secretary said out loud that they were flagging problematic posts for Facebook.
01:47:33Twitter permanently banned a sitting president.
01:47:35To be clear, in 2021, Jen Sack, he called for Joe Rogan to be banned from Spotify.
01:47:40The Biden administration actually applied pressure to social media accounts to ban parody accounts.
01:47:45And while we're talking about having a voice 2019, my YouTube channel, where this is being broadcasted, was demonetized despite them saying that no policies were violated because of the Disinvitation as a form of expression.
01:48:00So when we look at that, and when we look at disinvitation as a form of expression, you have to ask what that is and who is most likely to apply it.
01:48:10The same reason if we go, okay, libertarianism versus communism.
01:48:33But we do see the same thing when you look at those on campus here at Harvard from their internal reviews who support the silencing, the shouting down.
01:48:39It's not even close, it's a four to one, three to one ratio.
01:48:42When you look at people today who support Violence against other political ideologies, it's the left, and they find safe refuge here on campus.
01:48:51And so, like I said earlier, it'd be pretty simple to fix this problem.
01:48:57No more sorting people by race, no more litmus tests, students get in based on merit, funding follows the law, both faculty and students, one rule now for everybody.
01:49:20It's not racism when we're looking at DEI or affirmative action, it's remedy, another word for reparations.
01:49:28I'd like to see Harvard and academia, and by the way, all big tech platforms as far as users, the public town square, look like, I don't know, the NBA or the PGA, the NFL or World's Strongest Man, the STEM field where people are in aerospace engineering or nursing.
01:49:46All I am suggesting is that you stop with the blockades, the coercion, the censorship, and allow a manifestation of organic representation which has been barred from all of these platforms and institutions for decades in the name of progress.
01:52:12You stay in reality, and I show you exactly what it is, how much, the benefits of each clinical ingredient with a certificate of analysis so you can confirm it yourself.
01:58:15So, you know, Charlie Kirk is what brought me here because I was Ed Abbott and always will be a diehard Charlie Kirk fan for the rest of my life.
01:58:26And Charlie Kirk is what led me to learn about Steven Crowder and get it to you, so thank you.
01:58:32To me, Charlie's most impressive thing was like his super intelligence.
01:58:35Which most people don't have, super balls to go out there, which most people don't have.
01:58:56And my question is actually for the esteemed professor, who certainly has balls, because I appreciate you walking in here to the heart of the Lion's Den.0.99
01:59:05And, you know, Another late great, Norm MacDonald, said the world is, the idiot sees the world as good versus evil.0.99
01:59:14The cynic sees the world as evil versus evil.0.99
01:59:18And the truth is and always will be that it is good versus good.
01:59:24And finally, to my question, I think it's easy for most on the right who have God to try to find grace in the face of these heated discussions, which America needs.
01:59:35But my question, Professor, since you're on the inner left, How does the left, who I don't want to say is godless, because there are many people on the left who have God, but that's sort of a cheat sheet for the right to get to grace.
01:59:46How would you suggest, Professor, that especially young people, but anyone, could find their way to grace in these discussions that are so difficult?
01:59:55And apologize for my face, I was jumped by 11 Lindsey Clancy jurors on the way here.
02:00:41That's right, we have a terribly divided society, and we're not going to be able to make the sort of society that we want to have if we are constantly daily seeing one another as enemies.
02:00:59And so the question is how do we proceed and disagree without becoming enemies?
02:01:10And, you know, I think, at least initially, it's worth spending some effort, time, energy on making a distinction between being an enemy and being an adversary.
02:02:44It's just his kind of basic writings on life, where he talks about doing the hardest thing first so you have the energy to do so, being grateful that you get to leave your bed, doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing.
02:02:54Now, Marcus Aurelius wasn't super familiar, especially at the time of these writings, with Christianity.
02:02:59Matter of fact, it was misperceived historically that he increased persecution of Christianity because he was often out in the battlefield.
02:03:06And when you had, obviously, the legislators back home increasing the persecution, he didn't know until months afterward.
02:03:27So do the right thing for the right thing's sake and then die.
02:03:32As opposed to do it because it's all about filthy rags, if not done for the glory of God, and that we all have grace shine upon us, especially as it relates to eternal salvation.
02:03:43So I think that grace is something that's given to us and doesn't really change the practice so much in seeking truth.
02:03:50If you are pursuing truth, grace will naturally come to varying degrees.
02:03:57But I think that grace and the absence of truth, unfortunately, has been where we've counterbalanced too much and people are afraid to speak truth.
02:05:29And your point is shouldn't we be thinking about how to make education More accessible to more people.
02:05:39And on that one, I'm totally in agreement with you.
02:05:43I think that part of it has to do with institutions.
02:05:49I might say, by the way, that at Harvard University, if you come from a family that makes less than $200,000 a year, and $200,000 is doing pretty good, if you make from a family that makes $200,000, you don't have to pay tuition.
02:06:12And I think that as a matter of public policy, we should be doing more to make education available to all who want it and can make good use of it.
02:08:33And who guarantees that school is unaffordable?
02:08:35If you look at the industries where we have seen hyperinflation, and Thomas Sowell is brilliant on this, by the way, nothing I'm saying is original health insurance, schools, banking, all industries that are incredibly subsidized and regulated.
02:08:47I can tell you this because my brother went to SEGEP in Quebec, French Canadian.
02:08:51They didn't know how to file him, so they filed him as a junior by the time he went to UT.
02:08:56He got tens of thousands of dollars because he was a foreign student.
02:08:59Born in the United States but raised in Canada.
02:09:02There is an incentive for schools to make it unaffordable and out of reach so that they can get additional subsidization through the form of scholarships and grants.
02:09:10In other words, if we have a free market with school, and you see it outpace inflation dramatically, hey, how much can you afford to go to school?
02:09:22Congratulations, we just found $30,000 for you.
02:09:26That's why you see the hyperinflation because schools are leaving money on the table.
02:09:30If not for things like DEI, affirmative action, class based admissions, and you don't see it the same way with community college.
02:09:37And I think that bubble's about to burst because we just saw a study today that AI educated people right here at Harvard better than professors.
02:09:43So I think that it'll become more affordable.
02:09:55Are you saying that a person, let's imagine a really hard working, Student, very capable.
02:10:08They could get in, you know, they could go to one of these fancy places.
02:10:13The only problem is that they come from a family that just doesn't have the financial means to send them there.
02:10:21Are you saying that it's a mistake to provide the financial resources for that student to go to that place?
02:10:28I am saying that the increase in spending in the form of scholarships and Pell Grants and government assistance to the tune of trillions of dollars over the decades have led to the rampant inflation that we see at higher education.
02:10:39There is an incentive for schools to make it unaffordable for people because the government makes up the gap.
02:10:45It wouldn't happen if you were paying for your own school.
02:10:47So it sounds good, again, to that individual because it's promising something.
02:10:52Societally, that's why school is very expensive.
02:10:53Thomas Sowell has written about this at great length, and yeah, we've experienced it firsthand.
02:12:18Yeah, if someone wants to grab a Derek Bell book, knock yourself out.
02:12:24It doesn't include pornography, by the way.
02:12:26I think we would both agree on that, but I appreciate it.
02:12:28And I do think you have a good professor in your class.
02:12:30I think, and I mean this, I think sometimes he and people like him are the victim of being reasonable because sometimes you assume that people are as reasonable as you, and it's not the case.
02:12:42I think a lot of students would tell you that.
02:12:43So it's both a compliment but also a blind spot.
02:12:46Counselor Singleton, I'll see you in the morning.
02:12:54And I want to send out a special shout out for Section 5.
02:13:08All right, so, Professor, thank you for coming.
02:13:12I think it was amazing that you showed up.
02:13:13It was awesome because a lot of people have turned things down in the past.
02:13:18But you said you wanted to give an opportunity to more students, and I think diversity in TEI in general actually excludes.
02:13:26I actually think it's more along the lines of division, exclusion, and inequality.
02:13:31And I have a personal experience from this through work.
02:13:35Maybe it's not in education, but I was forced to watch a video by Verna Meyer as an activist video saying that because I was white, I had unconscious bias.0.53
02:13:44And that I needed to go out and reach out and make friends with someone who was a POC at my employer.
02:14:02DEI is inherently racist because I think it might actually be class that you're speaking to, where you need to give opportunities to people that don't have the money to get that under $200,000 family income.
02:14:16So I guess my question is is DEI inherently racist because it seems to be based on race and not income or capability of the family?
02:14:35Stories like that, and I think that that's a bad thing.
02:14:44It has generated a tremendous amount of resentment.
02:14:49I think part of the resentment against DEI stems from being, you know, from people being told that they gotta do this, they gotta do that, they gotta watch this, they have to attest to that.
02:15:05It stems from people saying something where, in which, you know, the context was obvious.
02:15:14They didn't mean to say anything bad, but something came out a little bit sideways, and people take it in the worst possible light and try to make somebody's life miserable.
02:15:55I know people who are in, you know, DEI offices, have been, you know, sort of officials, have been in charge of those things that used a lot of common sense, totally humane, and, you know, did good things at their institutions.
02:16:13You know, sort of take things, you know, sort of, you know, be a bit more particular, singular, be hesitant to paint with big bright lines and saying that, you know, this whole thing is bad when, you know, well, some of it's bad.
02:16:36Some of it has been administered in a bad way.
02:17:30I just want to say, first of all, as a man of God, I consider myself extremely blessed to be here and listen to two great minds speak on such controversial topics.
02:17:38I want you both to know I'll be praying for both of you.
02:18:07This is my question, it's mostly for the professor.
02:18:09When you were speaking of the book banning at the Naval Academy and stuff, you had spoken about how you were very pro free speech and pro all books, and you would even cite in Mein Kampf.
02:18:23In your response to Stephen's question about it, I looked into it, and at the Kennedy School in Harvard, there's a course called The Power of DEI.
02:18:33I'm just curious if at Harvard there was a course that was titled The Power of Mein Kampf that was arguing for the ideas espoused in Mein Kampf, if you would still be as adamant about your stance on free speech as you are.
02:18:50When the ball's in your court, it's easy to say, Of course, I agree with everything, even the stuff that no one agrees with anymore.
02:18:57If there were a course at Harvard that was preaching the power of Mein Kampf, would you still be as comfortable allowing Mein Kampf to be in places like our naval academies?
02:19:32So if we're talking about the United States Naval Academy, if we're talking about other public institutions, there is a set of laws that govern them.
02:20:30That's why, for instance, that's why, for instance, when there were these people who would go to the funerals of service members who had been killed and would shout the most hateful things.
02:21:03Right, it's a church with 12 people who are family members and they have like flipper toes.
02:21:08The point was that if you sue someone for intentional infliction of emotional distress, that is the government acting against people, and the Supreme Court said, no, as terrible as that is, we're not going to let the government act, even though what these people are saying really just, you know, singes the sensibilities of people.
02:21:31So to go back to your hypothetical, To go back to your hypothetical, if we're talking about a public institution, no, I don't think that a public institution would be allowed to say, no, you can't do that.
02:21:44If you're talking about a private institution, so if you're talking about my institution, there it gets really complicated too, because my institution has said that it voluntarily will act as if it was a public institution.
02:22:03And so at Harvard University, as things currently stand, No, that wouldn't, you know, if Harvard is sticking by what it says, it would not prohibit the teacher from doing exactly what you're saying.
02:22:18Now, I think there's a good argument that Harvard should not allow that on the grounds that it's a private institution.
02:22:27It should be allowed to create the sort of intellectual landscape that it wants to create.
02:23:05No, no, no, You know, one of the cases that's been bulked, that's sort of come back to public attention, is the Bob Jones case.
02:23:26So, Bob Jones University had a policy in which it did not allow interracial dating.
02:23:36For a long time, it didn't allow black people to come to Bob Jones, but it changed that, said black people can come, but we're not going to allow interracial dating.
02:23:45And the issue then arose as to whether Bob Jones University Should be able to have tax exempt status.
02:23:53And the IRS took away the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University, and that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States 8 to 1.
02:24:04Partly because of what's happened in the past few years, that has prompted me actually to change my mind with respect to Bob Jones.
02:24:16I think that the dissenter in that case, very conservative justice, William Winkus, I think that he was actually correct.
02:24:25That actually, this is a big country, people think all sorts of different things, and in pursuit of pluralism, let's truly let a thousand flowers bloom.
02:24:42Nobody is making people go to Bob Jones University.0.93
02:24:47Should there be room for the Nation of Islam having its university?
02:26:33Taxpayer pays, they have the right to decide.
02:26:36And yes, of course, we well know that Harvard has, they rolled out the welcome mat for a keynote of commencement from Angela Davis, and there are multiple people here who praise Maoist China and have praised socialist communist regimes that have led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
02:26:49I think that there should be no public funding to these institutions.
02:26:52That's how you end up with spending $10 million for shrimp running on a treadmill.0.93
02:26:57I think we know it's appropriate as far as a measure of public funding and what's not.0.56
02:27:00And I would say that America has the right to decide what America looks like and what we are teaching our children.
02:27:05And if it's a distinctly anti American idea, the ideas that we would agree on as far as Freedom, equality, right?
02:27:12All men being created equal, First Amendment, Second Amendment.
02:27:14I don't think that communism fits that within that parameter, and I don't think fascism, as it's known from the National Socialist, does either.
02:27:21The government has the right to say, that's anti American, so we're not going to fund it.
02:27:47My question comes from how Professor Kennedy seemed to dismiss the internal surveys that Stephen brought up from Harvard either as flawed or as unimportant.
02:27:57So, my question is if you believe that the surveys and information that an organization uses to guide their future and make their decisions, if you believe that information is flawed or not unimportant, how can you then defend that organization and the decisions it makes?
02:28:47It's constantly examining itself, and some of what comes up.
02:28:54I, you know, I persuade me and I believe in.
02:28:59But some of what it comes up with, nah, you know, I'm not persuaded.
02:29:06I think that it has asked leading questions.
02:29:09I think that it, you know, it has predetermined the answer that it wants to get.
02:29:15I'd say that about, you know, Harvard, and I've already expressed my admiration for it.
02:29:20But I do think that some of the, you know, some of what it comes up with, no, I'm not persuaded.
02:29:26And by the way, one of the things, In the past few years, there's a wonderful organization, FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
02:30:20I've heard you say that, and that's specifically why I didn't cite FIRE, but I cited Open Secrets as far as funding and cited that Johnson and Zhang study that was published over the course of 36 years and cited Harvard themselves.
02:30:33Fire study, the studies that are conducted, their methodology is pretty sound.
02:30:36You can look at the crosstabs, it's compared to 250 schools.
02:30:38But I specifically didn't cite it because I've heard the professor say this.
02:30:42This is Harvard's own internal review, and they even issued a statement saying that they need to do something about it, but they haven't actually discovered the measures or been able to implement them yet.
02:30:52So I do think that, especially when we're talking about funding for research, which I think is close to $700 million, somewhere between $600, $700 million annually with Harvard, if we can't trust their own internal research to be conducted.
02:31:05Just on political persuasion and free speech at Harvard, well, maybe we should re examine that funding because I think that Harvard actually graded themselves pretty fairly.
02:31:33I am a research scientist in what is lovingly referred to as the People's Republic of Cambridge.
02:31:42I actually worry in my workplace, based off of commentary around me, that I will be passed up for promotions, that I will be looked at differently because of my views.
02:31:52I got a new job within this company recently, and one of the first things I think I was six days into the job was, but you didn't vote for Trump, right?
02:32:01I was a graduate recently at the University of Southern California, very similar to Harvard in a lot of ways.
02:32:08I had to lie on papers in order to graduate because professors would grade me lower because of my opinion.
02:32:14With all of that, and you saying how you think diversity in ideology, in creed, in opinion is so important on campus, what experiences do you have that you can stand on this stage and still tell us that you think that we don't get discriminated against in academic settings,
02:32:34in private universities that have a monopoly of a lot of higher education that is mimicked with a lot of the Corporate world, a lot of the research world, because we have graduates and professors from these universities working in these same fields and giving us that same experience.
02:32:50I'm worried that people might even see this.
02:33:05If a teacher marked you down, if a professor marked you down because of their belief that you're a conservative or voted for Donald Trump or whatever, anything of that ilk, that was wrong, that was bad.
02:34:05First off, before we get, because I know you were nervous about being seen, when I made the joke earlier about how without ladies, Harvard was a quieter place, did you laugh?0.71
02:34:32That is a third rail for which people can be fired, the same reason that you could be.
02:34:38Discriminated against and not hired because of your political persuasion.
02:34:42And it's even worse for you because when you're looking at a lot of HR, right, you have people combing through right now seeing if you think, my God, Lindsey Clancy was guilty.
02:35:00And if we look at a place, an institution, especially one that's publicly funded, and we see an imbalance that occurs nowhere else in nature, not artificially enforce equity like DEI or affirmative action.
02:35:13But go with, okay, what blockades, what discrimination is taking place here that we have no one of this political persuasion?
02:35:28That's why Andrew Breitbart was kind of my mentor, he was the only person who would run any of my stuff.
02:35:33So at this point, what I will say, if this helps, they're going to figure it out no matter what.
02:35:37If you have any social media, if you've written anything, if you've talked at the salon, so let your freak flag fly and let the chips fall where they may because.
02:35:45You got to be yourself, even if the left tells you you can't.
02:35:51I appreciate the bravery in standing up, too.
02:36:05Basically, my question is about college admissions and affirmative action.
02:36:09I want you to expand on what seems to me to be a one dimensional view of the socioeconomic influence in college admissions.
02:36:15That is to say, You say DEI unfairly preferences one category of people over another, though we see this consistently throughout college admissions, even in standards that you would particularly call out, such as the SAT.
02:36:27Wealthy people can afford to pay for SAT tutoring.
02:36:29Wealthy people don't have to take care of their families.
02:36:34They can do after school programs that look better on resumes.
02:36:37Furthermore, we're talking about Harvard University.
02:36:39We can say that the hockey team, which is almost all white, obviously receives a preference in admissions.0.79
02:36:44My point is What do you mean they receive a preference in admissions?0.85
02:38:13And they separate it up into deciles, 10 categories.
02:38:16A black applicant in the fifth decile is multiple times more likely to be admitted into Harvard than an Asian applicant in the tenth, regardless of economic status.
02:38:28And if you actually take the Asian applying in the fifth decile, which really shouldn't be at Harvard, black students are about 12 to 20 times more likely to be admitted.0.75
02:38:37Even if that Asian student, like I said, is studying in the back of his dad's bodega, I think, and this is the problem with DEI, this is the problem with affirmative action.0.91
02:38:45You say I'm making assumptions, but support a policy that is entirely based exclusively on them.0.95
02:39:15When you were talking about these DEI practices, affirmative action, and the like, you used the terminology ideological monoliths and kind of sneering at the claims that it might be inorganic.
02:39:28So, with that framing, what would you say to practices conducted in Let's say childcare or special courses and pathways through pre K and 12 education or moving forward to namely corporate America and past that social clubs and health institutions and the like.
02:39:52Are you suggesting that the extent to which you would claim Harvard practices are inorganic, they are not modeled in those scenarios as well?
02:40:02I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.
02:40:05They are not similarly modeled to an extent of inorganicness that you're suggesting.
02:40:11Are you suggesting that these other industries that you've named or other venues have the same 95 to 1 monolith across the board?
02:40:19Well, given that you're picking out a group of schools, it would be reasonable for me to think that you could go somewhere, let's say Des Moines, Iowa, and pick a similar group of, let's say, childcare institutions that have similar practices.
02:41:26If I were to find one and I say, wait a second, this seems to have nothing to do with politics, and it's 99 1 exclusively conservative, outside of a think tank, I'd go, something's going on here.
02:41:50If you're asking me if there are institutions that exist in education or publicly funded where you're seeing a 99 to 1, 95 to 1, right, a censorship, a litmus test to block out liberals, I would be against that.
02:42:28Because you're making an absolute argument.
02:42:34So I'm questioning your absolute argument, which is suggesting by saying that it's monolithic that there is no other institution in corporate America or child care or health or whatever that practices the same.
02:42:53How could you say that if your argument is absolute?
02:42:55If there were other places where you saw a 99 to 1, 95 to 1, 3 to 1, 10 to 1 across the board, according to their own internal reviews, that were predicated with litmus tests exclusively on race and excluding people or ideological perspective, of course I would look at it and say this is inorganic.
02:43:26So, I just like to preface this by saying that from my personal experience, professor, that I have had, I guess, the understanding is that most people around you are liberal, and that's kind of the common starting ground from which people operate.
02:43:39And on top of that, I think one of the reviews at Harvard did a survey of the different courses, curriculum.
02:43:45It's overwhelmingly, the books we read, the canon is overwhelmingly liberal.
02:43:49There's very few classes that teach on Burke or any conservative thinkers.
02:43:53And on top of that, if you look at some publications, I believe they surveyed sociologists in 2012, and they found that one sixth of them.
02:44:00Would not invite a conservative to a conference, one third of them would refuse to hire a conservative for their job.
02:44:05And so, if we talk about science, it isn't created in a vacuum, it's created by people who are existing in spaces and coming from backgrounds.
02:44:13And if that background is overwhelmingly liberal, how can you expect that to not further propagate?
02:44:18And my question for both of you then is you both seem to want to go back to a classical liberal idea of just let a thousand flowers blossom, but given that if we just let the system continue to go, it's not going to auto regulate.
02:44:31To ensure some kind of balance, it's just going to keep going this one direction.
02:44:35We're kind of in a similar place vis a vis this as maybe we were with systemic racism.
02:44:40So, how can you not say that we should have some kind of substantive notion of fairness, not just a procedural one of, well, we're just going to let whatever goes, but whatever goes is just a mainstream liberal bias and paradigm?
02:44:56I think I said earlier in my comments that I am.
02:45:03Opposed to the sort of landscape that you just described.
02:45:10I think, by the way, that what you've described certainly fits with my impression.
02:45:17I think that there are parts of the university that, you know, are, you know, where the spectrum of what's taught, the spectrum of the teachers, the spectrum of books, all too narrow.
02:45:35And I think that it does inculcate a certain sort of conformity, and to that extent, you know, that's bad.
02:45:44I also agree to you that it's not just enough against that backdrop to, you know, sort of say, well, let's just see what happens.
02:46:09I said earlier, I'm okay with let's get conservatives in this.
02:46:18If it's a sociology department that's overwhelmingly left liberal, no conservatives, let's get some conservatives.
02:46:27If some smart conservatives, let's get them.
02:46:29I would also say, by the way, however, oh, I would also say, you know, there are people in certain departments, certain departments, you know, know people on the left.
02:46:46And I'd say for those, hey, maybe we need to take special steps to make sure that students get a good sense of the wide variety of thought that's out there.
02:46:59So, you know, to the description that you gave, That hit with me.
02:47:04It seems to me, from what I've seen, yeah, unfortunately, that sounds realistic to me.
02:47:12And I think that steps need to be taken to reform that.
02:47:53I say this, this is gonna make some people uncomfortable.
02:47:55You mentioned affirmative action, some of the victims being people who would be under more suspicion as to whether they had warranted their spot, I believe.
02:48:05Mr. Wong, you and I both know no one is suspecting you of that.0.93
02:48:09Every person who sees you here is going, that bastard earned his spots and probably had an SAT score, probably had a GPA quite a few points higher.0.69
02:48:17No one's going, did you get in because your last name's Wong?0.98
02:48:22And like Professor, we can't say the same for Harvard students who are black, who are walking up and asking questions.0.84
02:48:28So that is something where you look at the collateral damage across the board, which is just an un American way for people to view each other.0.72
02:48:35For people to look and go, did he earn his spot?
02:50:48But there's another student that we haven't discussed tonight, and I'd like a few words from you about them.0.90
02:50:56Not only has this particular student been Reluctant to have any free speech, but they also have to look out for how they appear, and that's the Jewish student.0.91
02:51:10That I think has been a problem in not only Harvard, but a lot of the elite colleges.0.97
02:51:17I know that other religions, although college tends to be a little more secular, people who are more religious have to kind of throttle it back.
02:51:30But Harvard has had a problem with the Jewish student in that even with menorahs on Hanukkah, they have lit the menorah, they sing a couple songs, they acknowledge it, and they take it down for fear of having it being destroyed.0.83
02:51:49Just a few words for the Jewish student.0.65
02:53:10There was a student group, Students Against Antisemitism, that sued Harvard.
02:53:15They said in their suits that Harvard, you know, that antisemitism was rampant at Harvard and that Harvard University had been deliberately indifferent to the problem of antisemitism.
02:53:33Harvard University has definitely had an antisemitism problem.
02:53:38In its history, no two ways about that, including fairly recently.
02:53:47It's also the case that if one takes a look at Harvard University over, let's say, the past 30 years, if one asks, you know, so who is the current president of Harvard University?
02:55:26I think that this is one of those old things where people say, Oh, it sounds like you have a lot of Jewish friends, right?0.89
02:55:30A white guy, I got this black guy, like, you got black friends, it's racist.1.00
02:55:34But I think it's an entirely valid answer.0.86
02:55:36It's a response, because typically if someone is prejudiced, they don't have Jewish friends or family in some cases.
02:55:42I would say this they sort of bleed together, so I'm not sure which cases you cited versus Columbia, where it got pretty bad, where students were blocked.0.71
02:55:52Of course, In the same way, DEI, in the same way, affirmative action, in the same way, anti conservative discrimination, actual discrimination and abuse of anyone based on their heritage, their ethnicity, or their worldview, provided it's not something subversive like communism, is wrong.
02:56:09Jewish people shouldn't be discriminated against any more than someone who's black, someone who's Asian.
02:56:15I think this issue, by the way, has been very muddy, the water's been muddied, because criticism of the government of Israel, I think, is perfectly legitimate.
02:56:22I think students have the right to protest those actions.
02:56:26They have the right to have their public protests and displays.
02:56:30Often, when people lobby the same criticism against the Trump administration, they go, they're trying to enforce speech codes by saying we can't insert whatever here.
02:56:38No, they're saying that you can't block Jewish kids from going to school while yelling from the river to the sea, which means no Jews here.0.61
02:56:45I think that is reasonable when vandalism and acts of criminality are being committed.0.95
02:56:50I also think that right now the waters have been muddied because you see this on sort of the Marxist right people who are, frankly, Israel has an optics problem, and that's a legitimate issue to address.0.59
02:57:00But because Harvard, for the same reason they teach CRT, it's rooted in anti colonialism, very simplistic colonialism bad, therefore Israel bad, you are going to see a disproportionate anti Semitic worldview here.
02:57:11That needs to be separated from people who harass, block, insult, denigrate Jewish students because it has happened, and that's where the government stepping and saying, you just can't do that, they got to get to their classes, is appropriate.
02:57:23Telling people they can't criticize the nation or government of Israel would be entirely inappropriate.0.51
02:58:08I have two young children, and the high school.
02:58:13Well, you made a comment earlier about how you would be willing to get rid of affirmative action if you fix the K 12 schools.
02:58:19And Boston public schools are considered one of the best public school systems in blue cities in America, or for big cities in America.0.53
02:58:26And English High School in Jamaica Plain, where my children will attend, they spend $37,000 per student, and they have an 8 to 1 faculty to student ratio, I believe, last I checked.
02:59:20So I have to spend $30,000 a year on private school in addition to losing out on the $74,000 a year of my tax dollars that I would have paid.0.60
02:59:28And then what you say is now they can't come to Harvard because they went to private schools and we need to, you know, somehow there's some disconnect between, you know, how are we going to, we have to have affirmative action because we can't fix the public schools.
02:59:43The public schools are run by the left that was trained at Harvard.
03:01:07And I would imagine that you have to make sacrifices elsewhere so that you can put your children in a safer school than the one that your tax dollars already go to fund.
03:01:15That wouldn't be taken into account on affirmative action.0.98
03:01:39I have had an open invitation for decades and never once, never once heard a legitimate argument against it, but that's not something we have enough time for right now.
03:01:48So, hey, all of this should be performance based, including our public schools.
03:01:51Congratulations, we just said school choice, you're a charter school.
03:01:57This is going to be our final question for the evening, so thank you so much.
03:02:02Professor Kennedy, Stephen, thank you guys both for coming out.
03:02:05Professor Kennedy, you mentioned that you're a fan of affirmative action in DEI.
03:02:11I believe you said that you achieved your tenure in 1989.
03:02:14Does it bother you that there's a possibility you achieved your tenure status based on the color of your skin in the name of diversity rather than based on your merits?
03:02:40And by the way, when I say that I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action, does that mean that I just sort of showed up?
03:02:51And because I showed up, the various places, and I've been the beneficiary of selective institutions, the best school I've ever attended was my high school, St. Albans School for Boys, very selective school, excellent school.
03:03:30And not only by those institutions, not only by those institutions.
03:03:35I have benefited from teachers at those institutions who they never said it, they never said this to me.0.58
03:03:43But my sense is that I have been directly the beneficiary of teachers, and the teachers that I'm thinking about are white teachers.
03:03:53I think I've been the beneficiary of white teachers who felt really badly that for so long hardworking, promising black students had gotten.
03:04:13The bottom of the barrel, had been dissuaded in various ways, had been discouraged in various ways, and had not been allowed to blossom.
03:04:25My sense is that some of those teachers spent extra time with me, devoted something special extra with me, in part because of the color of my skin.
03:04:39Do I think that they were acting in any sort of bad way?
03:04:46And, and I hope this doesn't sound vain, but I'm going to say it anyway I think that what I have been able to do and people I've been able to help of all different complexions, of all different political persuasions, has substantiated the special help that was accorded to me.
03:05:12I am an affirmative action beneficiary and make no bones about it.
03:06:17I had the same thing being raised in Quebec, where I was forced because of the law, and it's actually enforced by the Ligue des Langues, the term meaning language police, it's not the official term.
03:06:26If you have one parent born in Quebec, whether they're English or French, you have to go to French school.
03:06:31And they thought I was basically retarded through the third grade until they said, you know what, maybe let's let them try doing long division in geography and English.
03:06:37And then, you know, I was like a B plus, A minus student.
03:06:41But she, when applying at school and for a job, will tell me, she's basically Italian.0.62
03:06:48We did a 23andMe, you know, that's when all the Mussolini expats went over.0.91
03:06:56Trust me, they want a Hispanic woman here.1.00
03:07:00But she said that was the first time she had heard of it.0.87
03:07:02Because her adoptive mom came from Cuba, where you work all month for a bar of soap.
03:07:07Cuban Americans, a lot of people who come from these countries, they're incredibly grateful, they're very industrious, and they don't often play identity politics.0.92
03:07:17So let's say, I don't know if you're a student here at Harvard, let's say you were, just like I mentioned this with Wong, Mr. Wong.1.00
03:07:26I don't think people would really think twice because they know a lot of Hispanic people who work really hard and who have parents who really crack the whip.
03:07:33And I would say this, Professor Randall Kennedy, obviously I've done my homework, and not only did he just mention it, I mean, he went to Cornell, I believe, was it Cornell, or sorry, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, do I have that right?