Transcript: Trump’s Vile New Attack on Harvard Is Already Backfiring

At the end of the day, what is this witch hunt about? It’s about freedom of expression. It’s about these international students who have come to the U.S. and are being accused of being anti-American or they’re accused of being antisemitic. There’s no consideration in any of that, regardless of what all these people think. And I’m sure you cannot group them all as having the same set of narrow ideas about the world, but they’re allowed to have their views; they’re allowed to say what they think; they’re allowed to do their research; they’re allowed to speak out in public. And this idea that we should be trying to clamp down on that and basically cut it off at the knees in any way possible—in this case, take away their visas; in other cases, collecting people and instilling fear and intimidation—that’s what this is about. And that is something that we historically have been against the U.S. Here we are a country that supports the liberty to have ideas, to speak them aloud, to visit, to meet with people, to call for change. That’s what makes the U.S. great and unique. And all of a sudden, it’s clear that the current administration doesn’t believe in any of that.

Sargent: Trump and MAGA hate the things that make America great. Just to wrap this up, can we talk about the broader project? I doubt Trump has any idea what actually goes on at universities, but some of the people around him who are genuine fascists definitely have a bigger goal in mind. They want to cripple liberal America, destroy liberal institutions, do their own long march through our institutions and take them over. But this seems to me to make it more urgent that universities band together here and not let themselves get pushed into bending the knee. How do you see this all playing out? I think it’s backfiring already. What’s your prediction?

Friedman: A few years ago, when campus protests started erupting, it was this moment where higher education was at a low point. There have been real challenges with freedom of speech on campuses from the left and the right. The war in the Middle East erupted on campuses in a way that was very disruptive and destabilizing, and the higher ed sector didn’t really know how to band together. They didn’t really know what to get together and say ought to be done, how to fix this. There was a lot of running in different directions.