October 14, 2025 • 43 mins
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, William A. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss President Donald Trump's war on DEI in higher education and explain what level of enforcement is required to ensure the deeply-rooted ideology doesn't return.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:39):
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Cornell Law professor William Jacobson, founder
of Equal Protect dot org, a civil rights initiative devoted
to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to
race or ethnicity. It's a critical project and relevant to
(01:01):
what we plan to talk about today. We discuss President
Trump's new higher ed reform plan targeting the DEI cult
on college campuses. Professor Jacobson, As always, it's a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us on the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Absolutely this is basically what we're talking about. The President
recently announced a sweeping new plan to reform American higher education,
pledging his administration's commitment to rooting out what he called
woke education. Policies that have been corrupting college campuses across
(01:40):
the country. That woke stuff is very much tied to
the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. It's not just an agenda,
it's a way of life on these college campuses. Do
you think that this latest move by the president will
accomplish what he hopes it can do well.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's a very difficult situation because the DEI culture, which
is a culture that focuses not on individuals and not
on individual rights, but on group identity issues, is so
deeply deeply embedded.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
In the universities.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I mean, I see it at Cornell myself that it's
going to be very tough to get rid of. It
has a quasi religious feel to it. It is the
reason to be for a lot of administrators and a
lot of professors, and it's going to be tough.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I think that his.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Use of federal funding is probably the biggest and best
instrument that he has, and he has wielded.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That so far to some extent with success.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
But there was the agreement with Columbia to change certain practices.
But at its core, this is a cultural problem and
that's going to be much tougher to get at. So,
in response to the question is he likely to be successful,
what's the chances? It's hard to say. I think if
this effort he's making is sustained only for two to
(03:12):
three years, it will ultimately fail. The way I like
to describe it is the DEI bureaucrats and advocates on
campuses are like survivors of a shipwreck clinging to a
lifeboat waiting for help to arrive. They think they can
outlast the Trump administration and we'll find out in three years,
(03:35):
you know, whoever this success or administration is going to be.
But clearly nobody wants to change. They're not going to change.
They will only change superficially to the extent their funding
is dependent on it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But they are not going.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
To give up the ideology. It's going to take many
years to get there.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think that's a good way to put it, that
they are clinging to the thing and obstinately as as possible.
I think about a recent video coming out of the
University of Iowa and good old Iowa City, small town midwest,
(04:18):
you know, big ten campus obviously, and so you know,
really into the cult of DEI. But we see video
of a of a faculty member or someone within the
college talking about how, yeah, we we we're supposed to
(04:40):
be changing this. This was a statewide order similar to
what is happening at the national level with what the
president is doing here, and they talked about how they
just change the terminology, but the result is the same
sort of discrimination that we've seen throughout. How do you
(05:01):
get through that kind of mindset and actual assault on
laws in this country?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The enforcement has to be local. You have to get
the schools to police themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And the way that.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Trump administration is trying to do that and they're compact
with Higher Education that was released not long ago. They're
offering a carrot and a stick. The carrot is for
schools which you're willing to reform in compliance with that compact.
(05:38):
There will be financial incentives. They will essentially get the
fast track on federal funding, and there will be other
perks that come along with it. So, if you're willing
to reform yourself on all these horrible practices, if you're
willing to move the campus a little bit back towards
the center, if you're willing to open up viewpoint diversity,
(05:59):
not just skinct diversity, if you're willing to do all
these things, there will be an incentive for you, there
will be a carrot. But there's also the stick in
that same compact, which is, if you're not willing to
do that, well, we're going to just keep doing what
we're doing. We're going to scrutinize you, and if we
find violations of law, we're going to yank your funding.
(06:20):
And you, colleges choose which way you want to go.
It's a fork in the road. You can cooperate with us,
or you cannot cooperate with us. Your choice, and there's
a carrot if you cooperate, and there's a stick if
you don't. And I think that's probably the right approach
because trying to regulate what happens on campuses from Washington,
(06:43):
d C. One is generally speaking not a good idea
and two ineffective anyway, because as you mentioned, they're behind
closed door, still doing the same things. They're rebranding. So
we issued a report over a year ago about the
branding efforts at Cornell. It used to be called Diversity,
(07:03):
Equity and Inclusion. Then they changed the name to I
think it was Diversity and Inclusion, and now they've changed
the name to something ridiculous. I don't even remember what
it is, something with the word belonging in it. Okay,
So they're constantly branding belonging in inclusion.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I belong yes, belonging in inclusion, which continues to have
the original concept of And again, all of these words
that they've used, these catchphrases, are exactly the opposite of
what we think about when we think about, you know,
a colorblind society. They don't want a color blind society.
(07:46):
They don't want things based on merit, they don't want
it's just a thumb on the scale of it all.
That's what the whole concept of equity is really all about.
It's about opening up spots for the people that they
think have been discriminated against. It's like your organization talks
(08:08):
about that to fight racism. You don't use racism, But
that is exactly what they're doing, is it not.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I mean, that's a worldview that does not view individuals
as individuals. So when somebody applies to your school, you
don't care so much about who this person is.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
You care about what skin color they have.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Which box can be checked, which ethnicity they are, which
gender identity, they are all of those things that are
group identities as opposed to focusing on the individual. And
I think it was Chief Justice Roberts in one of
the cases a few years ago, said the way to
stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis
(08:56):
of race. But they don't see it that way. They say, well,
there was slavery, there was Jim Crow. And my response is, well, okay,
tell me about the individual. Don't tell me about groups.
Don't tell me about one hundred years ago. Tell me
about this individual. And there's almost no societal harm that
can't be fixed by focusing on the individual. So if
(09:18):
an individual was in fact subjected to racism, that can
be considered. The Supreme Court said that in the Students
for Fair Admissions the Affirmative Action case specifically said that
it is okay to consider an individual's experience with racism,
but you cannot stereotype and assume that everyone with a
certain skin color has suffered harm and everyone with a
(09:41):
different skilled and color has gotten rewarded in life. Those
gross generalizations and stereotypes are not good enough as a
matter of law. But that's what the attitude is. So
if you have somebody who was in fact discriminated against.
That can be considered when they're applying to college or
anything else.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
And so this is the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
The Trump administration is fighting a deeply ingrained culture, which
is why pushing the obligation to enforce these rules and
the civil rights laws onto the colleges I think is
probably the right way. They know what's going on on
the campus. They may not want to admit it, but
they know and they should be held responsible. So that compact,
(10:27):
among other things, makes the president or chief executive of
a university responsible for these violations, responsible for failure to
adhere to the compact. It also requires that these policies
be adopted throughout the university, and that's really the way
(10:49):
to do it. So I think they're onto something here,
but there is going to be there. Already is massive pushback,
massive claims that this interferes with academic independence. I guess
my response to that is where has academic independence gotten you.
I'm all in favor of academic independence, but you have
(11:09):
killed the golden goose, Okay, the goose that laid the
golden egg. You had a good thing going academia. You
had almost unlimited federal funding. All you had to do
is be modestly moderate. All you had to do is
not purge conservatives from the campuses, which has happened. There
are almost no conservative professors left on campuses.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Approaching zero.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
All you had to do is not get carried away,
and you couldn't do that. Okay, So you're telling us
that you want absolute independence. On the other hand, your
absolute independence has created a terribly unhealthy situation for higher education.
You've turned the population against you. You're biting the hand
(11:53):
that feeds you. This is an unsustainable model. It's in
your own interest to do what we're asking you to do.
You can't keep going with this bubble because it's going
to burst sooner or later, and the higher education system
needs an intervention. And that's how I view what the
Trump administration is doing, is they need an intervention. They
(12:16):
cannot reform themselves because there is no internal opposition left.
There is nobody who is going to reform them who
works on a campus. There may be people like me
who speak out, but I'm almost or close to a
loan on a massive university campus. There you will not
find I think even one or two other people at
(12:39):
Cornell who will say the things that I'm saying and
call for the reforms I'm calling for, so there is
no internal opposition left. Higher education cannot reform itself. It's
on an unsustainable bubble that's going to destroy higher education.
It needs an intervention. It needs an adult in the room.
And I think that the person who's doling out the
(13:00):
money is that logical person, and that person is the
federal government. I wish the federal government wasn't involved at all.
I wish that academia had been more responsible, but it wasn't.
You if in a better world, the federal government should
keep its hands off of academia, but we don't live
in a better world. We live in a world where
(13:21):
it has become a bubble where half the population is
not just excluded, but demonized on campuses.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
What kind of model is that?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
What kind of future is that for higher education? There's
no future. The bubble has burst, and it's time for
the adult in the room to force reforms onto higher education.
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Speaker 1 (14:17):
The intervention, Yes, enema. Possibly the higher education system could
use an enema. You're right when you say the purging
that's gone on over the last not just few years
when everybody's attention turned to this DEI cult and all
of that sort of thing. This has been going on
(14:38):
for a long time. It's picked up its pace obviously
over the last decade and certainly over the Trump era,
because that is the political side of all of this thing.
But you said it earlier. I think you put your
finger on it when you talk about the individual versus
the group. That's what DEI really is about. It's the group.
(14:59):
It's group think, it is group politics, it is identity politics.
And how much of this stuff is really driven by
power by politics as opposed to good education.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, well, I think that our political system, if you see,
and getting back to this issue of conservatives being purged,
it's not so much that people have been fired, although
that has happened in certain cases.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
It's more that they're not hired.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so you have a culture which over thirty to
forty years has excluded half the population from participation in
the campuses, and that results in bad policy, bad politics,
because these are the people who go to become journalists
and politics and all other sorts of things that have
(15:59):
impact on society. It's one of the ways we got
to where we are now that New York City looks
likely to elect an outright socialist who hates our country
as its mayor.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well, so was that the design? Was that the plan
all along?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I think it was.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean, if you look at the writings back in
the sixties and the seventies, and you look at the approach,
the left recognized that if you want to change society,
you change it by taking over education. Now, I don't
think forty years ago they said we're going to get
a socialist elected mayor of New York City. But what
(16:39):
they did recognize is that that was a weak point
in society. The most conservative family, the most traditional family.
The second you put your kids in a public school,
whether it's K through twelve or even private higher education,
the second you put them into the education system, you
have surrendered them. You've surrendered them to people who don't
(17:01):
have our best interests at heart, and who view our
country is inherently evil. And that's what they teach kids.
I mean, the entire thrust of the leftist agenda is
that the United States is uniquely evil in the world,
and capital is uniquely evil in the world. And that's
why you have increasing numbers of students, or increasing numbers
(17:23):
of younger people who believe that socialism is a better model.
And yes, wasn't their plan. Yes, it was their plan
to convert a generation. It was not their plan to
elect somebody the mayor of New York City who's a socialist.
They probably didn't even dream that big. Okay, they probably
wouldn't have even thought that was possible, that the home
(17:46):
of capitalism, the home of the stock exchanges, you know,
the home of you know, corporate America, We're going to
convert that to socialism. I don't even think they dreamed
that big, But it's the end result.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It certainly is. And you know, I've talked about higher education.
Higher education, as you mentioned, needs an intervention sort of
our public school systems, and it's all tied together. It's
maybe a conversation for a different day. We're really focusing
on what's happening in our universities and college campuses on
(18:21):
the front of carrot and stick. We have seen some
movement on this front from the Harvards of the world,
if you will, talking about changing policies. As we mentioned,
they can change those policies, they can change the terminology
but still do the same sort of thing. That's why
(18:43):
enforcement is so critical in all of this. But we
have seen some movements some university saying, okay, we don't
want to lose that funding. It's not because they had
an epiphany and they said, you know what, we've been
engaging in racism now, you know, come to think of it.
Professor Jacobson and the rest of the folks who are
fighting against this racism, they're absolutely right. Anti discrimination or
(19:09):
anti racism is actually is actually racism and all of
these sorts of things. They're doing it because there are
dollar signs at stake here and a good significant amount
of dollar signs. Do you see them really fully changing
because of these sorts of federal policies. At least over
(19:33):
the next three years.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I see changes being made. Three years is not long enough.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
If this project to reform education ends in three years
at the twenty twenty eight election, then the gains will
be temporary. This is going to become roaring.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Back, like an allergic reaction. It's going to be much worse.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Because there's a lot of angry people in the DEI
industrial complex right now.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
You have to.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Eliminate the departments, eliminate the jobs, eliminate the ideologies. And
if that keeps up for in my estimation, six to
ten years, I think you will have effected tremendous change
because people will move on. But if it's only two
to three years, it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Won't be long enough. It won't be long enough.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And that's why I think there was some irrational exuberance
early in the Trump two point zero term when he
issued a bunch of executive orders addressing the DEI problem
and the problem in contracting, etc. And my view was
that the reports of the death of DEI are premature.
(20:50):
To paraphrase a famous saying, and it's true it's going
to take many years. It's going to need to change
what has happened with the bureaucracies and everything else. I
think it can change, but six to ten years is
my time frame.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, definitely, And all of those executive orders issued can
go right away, just as we saw in twenty twenty
one when the DEI president Joe Biden took over and
whatever he was signing, whatever was put in front of him,
or his auto.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Pattern, whatever the machine was signing.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Whatever the machine was signing at that time, he was
all in. And that is the problem is that if
you really want systemic change, just like the leftist in
this country, they have played the long game, there has
to be a long game for it, and obviously that
involves at a basic level politics. Our guest today is
(21:49):
Cornell Law professor William Jacobson, founder of Equal protect dot org,
a civil rights initiative devoted to the fair treatment of
all persons without regard to race or ethnicity. We'll talk
more about that organization coming up in just a moment,
but let's go back to the new reform strategy from
(22:13):
the Trump administration. What does it ultimately aim to do?
What are some of the details of that that are important,
some of the details that may, in your estimation, not
be effective in combating all of this.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Well, I think that it reinforces what is already the
law for non discrimination. What makes very clear how broadly
it expands non discrimination based on race, ethnicity, other factors,
and sex, although there.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Are some carve outs for sex.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And it puts the executive, the chief executive, the president
of the university on the hook for violations. So instilling
that personal responsibility I think is important for the enforcement
of the law. It could also be extremely important because
they're going to have to certify compliance, and there are
(23:10):
laws out there that if you falsely certify compliance in
order to get funding, the funding can be pulled back
by the federal government, and so that increases the stakes.
They're making individuals responsible, which I think is likely to
have an impact.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
This is one that's going.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
To be fought, and it's a little harder to measure.
They're talking about protecting academic freedom, but also ceasing policies
that demonize conservatives and others who are not in the
majority viewpoint. That's harder to measure, and that might be
subject to legal challenge in terms of viewpoint but that's
(23:53):
what they're trying to do. They're trying to change the
culture on campuses. And a perfect example is Harvard University,
which has been ground zero for a lot of these problems,
and it's Harvard. Crimson did a survey showed that three
percent of the faculty self identified as conservative or very conservative,
(24:16):
and almost eighty percent identified as liberal or very liberal.
Compare those statistics to the general population. Using Gallop and
Pew sort of numbers from reputable firms, approximately thirty eight
percent of people in the US identify as conservative or
very conservative. Approximately twenty eight percent identify as liberal. So
(24:40):
there are more conservatives in this country at least people
who identify as conservative then there are liberals.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yet you go to Harvard and it's.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Completely out of whack, it's completely skewed. And that's okay
to an extent, But what does it say about a
university system that produces faculty who are in a completely
different universe than the population of the country. And that's
just unsustainable. That is not a sustainable model. You cannot
have a university system that hates its host country and
(25:13):
expect that system to.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Go on forever.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And that's what we have and so they're trying to
address that, but it's going to be tough. There are
other things here dealing with promotion, institutional neutrality, so that
institutions are not taking positions you're remembered much like the
corporate world. After George Floyd, there were a lot of
(25:35):
pronouncements about it, universities essentially making political statements. And they
also want to limit the number of foreign students to
a certain percentage of the student body, which I think
could have an important impact if you notice a lot
(25:56):
of the problems we've had on university campuses have and
from foreign students, particularly at places like Columbia. And this
is not saying you don't have foreign students, but I
think they want it limited to fifteen percent of the
student body. Not more than fifteen percent should be foreign.
(26:16):
And that gets to something that we've written about, which
is how is it that our universities a great American universities,
the great American universities are in some cases majority foreign.
Columbia I believe was majority foreign. Many schools have thirty
forty percent. These universities no longer really are American universities.
(26:38):
They're foreign universities that happen to be based in America,
and that's not.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Healthy for our society. So a lot of what this
is trying to do.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
If you isolate an individual element, you can argue with it.
You can say that doesn't make sense, that's not a
good idea. You know, maybe we want more foreign students
for whatever the reason. But when you view it in
the context of the totality, it's simply trying to bring
our universities back towards the mainstream of the country, not
(27:09):
necessarily into it. We're not talking about creating conservative universities,
but we're talking about creating universities that are more in
sync with the country as a whole, where diversity of viewpoint,
including critical viewpoint of the United States States, is preserved.
(27:29):
But it can't be the only thing you hear on campuses,
which is what it is now.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
It seems to me that the critical race theory crowd
would like separate, but equally sees may be divided into
the liberal campuses and conservatives. You can go have your
conservative institutions and water fountains over there. I mean, I
know it sounds absurd, but that's what we're doing. In fact, though,
(27:56):
I think what we're seeing in in higher education across
the country, from Harvard to the smallest four year colleges.
Is this whole push to make conservatives into liberals, to
change people's perspectives forcibly, you know, And that happens in
(28:19):
a lot of different ways. It happens, as you mentioned before,
by not how hiring conservative professors, by dominating your enrollment
with foreign students from radically anti American countries. It's no
wonder this kind of stuff is happening. But here I
(28:41):
want to ask you, in context of what we have
seen over the last month, in particular the assassination of
Charlie Kirk on a college campus that didn't happen in
a vacuum. Do these universities have blood on their hands now,
not just for Charlie Kirk, but all kinds of different
(29:02):
incidents we've seen.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say they
have blood on their hands, but they have created an
atmosphere of intolerance, and that atmosphere of intolerance.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Is endemic to the universities.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Now. Charlie Kirk being assassinated is an extreme example, but
Charlie Kirk was not allowed to appear at Cornell University.
Can't remember the year. I want to say three or
four years ago, but time wise it could have been
five years ago. I don't remember the year, but Charlie
Kirk was not allowed to appear on campus. They were
(29:41):
left wing objections to him appearing. The university eventually claimed
there was some paperwork problem and that's why he couldn't appear,
but nobody believed that at all, and he ended up
having to appear off campus in downtown Ithaca.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So these are non problems that started.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
This is nothing new at my website, you know, we've
covered shoutdowns and shutdowns at Cornell and elsewhere. There was
a forget the year, I think like twenty seventeen, it
might have been. There was a one of the founders
(30:21):
of the Tea Party movement was invited to speak at
campus and they had to move him into hiding and
move the event into hiding because of threats against the event.
Rick Santorum was heckled at Cornell and Culter all sorts
of people you know aren't shot, but it's a hostile environment.
(30:46):
I will say Cornell has taken strides to protect speakers more,
but the fact that they even have to take those strides,
I cannot recall, and I'm not saying it never happened,
and I've been covering higher Ed since two thousand and eight,
I cannot recall a left wing speaker being runoff campus.
(31:06):
It may have happened, but it would be an aberration.
It would be the exception to the rule. It's only
conservatives who get chased off of campuses. It's only conservatives
who get shouted down. It's only conservatives who have to
show up with armed security. It's only conservatives who have
to hold the event in secret, in hiding on campuses.
(31:28):
So and this is including at places like Cornell, which
is far from the worst. I mean, people always ask me, well,
what's what's it like at Cornell? I said, well, the
good news is we're not Columbia.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You know, they should have t shirts that say that.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We're not Columbia. Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
But nonetheless, even though we're not Columbia, there is that culture,
and it's gotten better. The administration, after a lot of criticism,
some federal intervention, alumni complaints, pressure from alumni groups, has
done a better job in the last couple of years
with that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
But why should they have had to do that?
Speaker 3 (32:06):
What is it about the culture at Cornell and many
other universities that breeds the intolerance for opposing viewpoints, for
non leftist, nonliberal viewpoints. What is wrong with this picture,
and that's something that I think the Trump administration is
trying to get at, is what is wrong with this
picture is that you have a monoculture which does not
(32:29):
welcome outside viewpoints. For the most part, there are exceptions,
but that is I think a fair characterization of Higher
ED in its totality, and it's particularly a characterization of
Higher ED at the so called elite level. The top
ranked schools, not just the IVY League, but that top
tier of schools are extremely intolerant.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And why is that?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
And that's getting back to my point that Higher ED
needs an intervention because of that culture of intolerance. It
can't even recognize its own intolerance. If you were to
ask the students shouting down people on campuses, the liberal
leftist students shouting people down, they would not think of
themselves as intolerant. They would think of themselves as doing
(33:14):
a very good thing, that they're protecting others from this
hateful speech. So the culture's completely broken in Higher ED
as a whole. And that's what I think Trump administration
is trying to address. I'm not confident they will have
ultimate success. Again, I think this needs to be a
six to ten year effort. Some people might argue longer,
(33:36):
but I don't think anybody can argue the two to
three years is going to be enough.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I always enjoy the richness of the hilarity, because if
we don't laugh, we cry. But of the people with
the coexist bumper stickers screaming in people's faces to shut up.
That's what we have on our college campuses right now.
And you know, there's there's a there's a big problem.
(34:02):
You know, there's myriad examples, as you mentioned at Cornell,
I remember the UW. Madison, which certainly is no battion
of conservatism. But in twenty sixteen, Ben Shapiro appeared on campus.
They didn't want him there, but they ultimately did allow
him to speak, and the same sort of stuff they
(34:25):
were shouting him down. They wouldn't let him go on,
and you know, I think he handled it well, but
at one point it just boiled over and they had,
you know, just just angry, vain popping leftists, you know,
surrounding Shapiro and surrounding a colleague of mine, Vicky McKenna,
who does a talk radio show, a conservative talk radio
(34:48):
show in Madison, of all places. You know, Vicky is
you know, maybe one hundred and two pounds soaking wet,
and they had her surrounded and they were threatening her.
That's what I take away from what we've seen over
the last decade in this country on college campuses. But
(35:10):
it's also the students. When you have students who are
paying tuition going to these colleges and feel not just
like they don't belong they're not part of the belonging
that these institutions talk about, but they actually feel threatened
(35:31):
on these college campuses. And we've really seen that over
the last several weeks from leftists who have been celebrating
the assassination on college campuses of Charlie Kirk. How do
you protect students ultimately, because that's a big part of
this that isn't always addressed well.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
One of the ways is you simply enforce the rules.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And I've seen that at Cornell and elsewhere as relates
to the Israel Gaza war, that a lot of the
anti Israel students will claim that they're being discriminated against
because of their viewpoint that pro Palestinian viewpoints are not
allowed on campus. In fact, pro Palestinian viewpoints dominate campus.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
But that's their argument, and.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
My response is, no, you aren't suspended for your pro
Palestinian speech. You were suspended because you pushed through a
police lineup to get to a career event and disrupt
it and prevent other students from interviewing.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
That's why you were suspended.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
That's an actual example at Cornell, a couple of dozen
students I believe, were suspended because there was a career event.
They didn't like one of the companies that was going
to be there. It was one of the weapons manufacturers,
I can't remember which one, and they decided that nobody
should be able to hold this event. And the Cornell
(37:01):
had police protecting the entrance to the building, and these people,
literally it's on video, pushed through the police pushed them aside,
and a couple of them got criminally charged, and of
course those charges were pretty much dismissed, as they always are.
But that's why you're suspended, Or you're suspended because you
disrupted the library. You're not allowed to use electronic bullhorns
(37:23):
in the library while people are trying to study, and
you did that, and so it wasn't your viewpoint, it's
your conduct, and they don't seem to accept that. So
a lot of the violence, a lot of these things
don't require a change of the rules. They just require
enforcing rules that already exist. And university administrators, who a
lot of times agree with the protesters, don't want to
(37:46):
do that, and they think, oh, that's just free speech.
Well it's not free speech when, like at UCLA, you
set up a blockade on campus and declare a Zionist
free zone and don't allow people to pay us through
unless they pledge to be anti Zionists. You're not allowed
to do that. That's not your right, that's not speech,
that's conduct. And so enforce this as to the rioters,
(38:10):
as is to the people who shout down. There was
a recent event at Cornell, and I keep bringing up
Cornell not because it's worse than any place, just it's
more of my experience. I know more of what's going
on there.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
There was a recent.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Event where in order to bring diversity of viewpoint to
the campus on the Israel Palestinian issue, because all the
vocal faculty or against Israel.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
All the vocal student groups are against Israel.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
The president of the university organized a panel and I
forget who was on it, but there were names we
would all know. I think Brett Stevens might have been
one of them. I could be wrong in that, but
you know, kind of name brand people up on stage.
And that event was disrupted. So an event meant to
bring diversity of viewpoint to campus was disrupted and they
enforced the rules and several students got arrested and suspended.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Because that's Cornell, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Basically, once you're given the warning to stop the heckling
and you don't obey it, that's now a rule infraction.
And they did enforce it, and I think that was important.
And of course now they're complaining about that that it
was enforced against them because they're pro Palestinian. Know it
was enforced because you do not have the right to
prevent others from speaking, and you do not have the
(39:21):
right to prevent others from listening, and that's what they do, so.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Enforce the rules.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
If the schools just enforced existing rules, that would go
a long way towards solving the problem of disruptions on campus.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And shoutdowns on campus.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
When you think it has reached the bottom of absurd,
they keep digging. That's all I can say about that.
And you know, it's remarkable to see this over and
over again and hear the highly charged language from these
leftists on college campuses American politics in general, pointing the
(40:01):
finger at Donald Trump and fellow conservatives the MAGA movement
as fascist. I ask the question, who really are the
fascist in the United States of America today? It would
seem to me the people who are trying to shut
down freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of self
on college campuses. I'll close with this question, And like
(40:26):
any halfway decent attorney, I know the answer to this question,
but I want to get a survey from you. What
happens if we don't get this stuff under control. What
happens if after three years all of the reforms in
(40:46):
place go away.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
It all comes roaring back, and they will be retribution
against the people who spoke out against it.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
It will be very ugly.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I think that you will see victory relapse taken, and
it will it will be very ugly. And I think
that's what we're likely to see if this is only
a three year endeavor. I think that they will believe
they're right, and they will believe it's time for retribution,
just like they did when Joe Biden was elected. They
(41:19):
sought retribution against people who served in the Trump administration.
And that's what's going to happen. So you know, there
is a lot at stake in the next election. Are
we going to continue to reform Higher ED, bring it
some place close to where the country is, bring it
(41:39):
more into the mainstream. Are we going to get Higher
ED to stop biting the hand that feeds it and
develop a culture of diversity of viewpoint or are.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
We going to double down?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
And that's really what I think is at stake for
Higher ED in the next election.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
But it's not just at stake for Higher ED. I
truly believe that we don't get a handle on this,
and throughout our society the same stuff happening in corporate America.
As you mentioned before, all of our institutions embedded in
our bureaucracy. So we don't get a handle on this.
Right now. The Republic truly is in peril. I believe that.
(42:19):
How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, I mean, if you.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Wanted to destroy our country what would you do differently
than they have done?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah, good point, very good point. I think they have
mastered the role of destruction. And again, you can only
imagine what would happen if they are left without some
kind of accountability over what they've done the last couple
(42:52):
of generations in this country. Tough to contemplate. Thanks to
my guest today, Cornell law professor William Jacobson, founder of
Equal protect dot org, a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
(43:13):
I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:39):
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Cornell Law professor William Jacobson, founder
of Equal Protect dot org, a civil rights initiative devoted
to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to
race or ethnicity. It's a critical project and relevant to
(01:01):
what we plan to talk about today. We discuss President
Trump's new higher ed reform plan targeting the DEI cult
on college campuses. Professor Jacobson, As always, it's a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us on the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Absolutely this is basically what we're talking about. The President
recently announced a sweeping new plan to reform American higher education,
pledging his administration's commitment to rooting out what he called
woke education. Policies that have been corrupting college campuses across
(01:40):
the country. That woke stuff is very much tied to
the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. It's not just an agenda,
it's a way of life on these college campuses. Do
you think that this latest move by the president will
accomplish what he hopes it can do well.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's a very difficult situation because the DEI culture, which
is a culture that focuses not on individuals and not
on individual rights, but on group identity issues, is so
deeply deeply embedded.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
In the universities.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I mean, I see it at Cornell myself that it's
going to be very tough to get rid of. It
has a quasi religious feel to it. It is the
reason to be for a lot of administrators and a
lot of professors, and it's going to be tough.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I think that his.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Use of federal funding is probably the biggest and best
instrument that he has, and he has wielded.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That so far to some extent with success.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
But there was the agreement with Columbia to change certain practices.
But at its core, this is a cultural problem and
that's going to be much tougher to get at. So,
in response to the question is he likely to be successful,
what's the chances? It's hard to say. I think if
this effort he's making is sustained only for two to
(03:12):
three years, it will ultimately fail. The way I like
to describe it is the DEI bureaucrats and advocates on
campuses are like survivors of a shipwreck clinging to a
lifeboat waiting for help to arrive. They think they can
outlast the Trump administration and we'll find out in three years,
(03:35):
you know, whoever this success or administration is going to be.
But clearly nobody wants to change. They're not going to change.
They will only change superficially to the extent their funding
is dependent on it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But they are not going.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
To give up the ideology. It's going to take many
years to get there.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think that's a good way to put it, that
they are clinging to the thing and obstinately as as possible.
I think about a recent video coming out of the
University of Iowa and good old Iowa City, small town midwest,
(04:18):
you know, big ten campus obviously, and so you know,
really into the cult of DEI. But we see video
of a of a faculty member or someone within the
college talking about how, yeah, we we we're supposed to
(04:40):
be changing this. This was a statewide order similar to
what is happening at the national level with what the
president is doing here, and they talked about how they
just change the terminology, but the result is the same
sort of discrimination that we've seen throughout. How do you
(05:01):
get through that kind of mindset and actual assault on
laws in this country?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The enforcement has to be local. You have to get
the schools to police themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And the way that.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Trump administration is trying to do that and they're compact
with Higher Education that was released not long ago. They're
offering a carrot and a stick. The carrot is for
schools which you're willing to reform in compliance with that compact.
(05:38):
There will be financial incentives. They will essentially get the
fast track on federal funding, and there will be other
perks that come along with it. So, if you're willing
to reform yourself on all these horrible practices, if you're
willing to move the campus a little bit back towards
the center, if you're willing to open up viewpoint diversity,
(05:59):
not just skinct diversity, if you're willing to do all
these things, there will be an incentive for you, there
will be a carrot. But there's also the stick in
that same compact, which is, if you're not willing to
do that, well, we're going to just keep doing what
we're doing. We're going to scrutinize you, and if we
find violations of law, we're going to yank your funding.
(06:20):
And you, colleges choose which way you want to go.
It's a fork in the road. You can cooperate with us,
or you cannot cooperate with us. Your choice, and there's
a carrot if you cooperate, and there's a stick if
you don't. And I think that's probably the right approach
because trying to regulate what happens on campuses from Washington,
(06:43):
d C. One is generally speaking not a good idea
and two ineffective anyway, because as you mentioned, they're behind
closed door, still doing the same things. They're rebranding. So
we issued a report over a year ago about the
branding efforts at Cornell. It used to be called Diversity,
(07:03):
Equity and Inclusion. Then they changed the name to I
think it was Diversity and Inclusion, and now they've changed
the name to something ridiculous. I don't even remember what
it is, something with the word belonging in it. Okay,
So they're constantly branding belonging in inclusion.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I belong yes, belonging in inclusion, which continues to have
the original concept of And again, all of these words
that they've used, these catchphrases, are exactly the opposite of
what we think about when we think about, you know,
a colorblind society. They don't want a color blind society.
(07:46):
They don't want things based on merit, they don't want
it's just a thumb on the scale of it all.
That's what the whole concept of equity is really all about.
It's about opening up spots for the people that they
think have been discriminated against. It's like your organization talks
(08:08):
about that to fight racism. You don't use racism, But
that is exactly what they're doing, is it not.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I mean, that's a worldview that does not view individuals
as individuals. So when somebody applies to your school, you
don't care so much about who this person is.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
You care about what skin color they have.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Which box can be checked, which ethnicity they are, which
gender identity, they are all of those things that are
group identities as opposed to focusing on the individual. And
I think it was Chief Justice Roberts in one of
the cases a few years ago, said the way to
stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis
(08:56):
of race. But they don't see it that way. They say, well,
there was slavery, there was Jim Crow. And my response is, well, okay,
tell me about the individual. Don't tell me about groups.
Don't tell me about one hundred years ago. Tell me
about this individual. And there's almost no societal harm that
can't be fixed by focusing on the individual. So if
(09:18):
an individual was in fact subjected to racism, that can
be considered. The Supreme Court said that in the Students
for Fair Admissions the Affirmative Action case specifically said that
it is okay to consider an individual's experience with racism,
but you cannot stereotype and assume that everyone with a
certain skin color has suffered harm and everyone with a
(09:41):
different skilled and color has gotten rewarded in life. Those
gross generalizations and stereotypes are not good enough as a
matter of law. But that's what the attitude is. So
if you have somebody who was in fact discriminated against.
That can be considered when they're applying to college or
anything else.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
And so this is the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
The Trump administration is fighting a deeply ingrained culture, which
is why pushing the obligation to enforce these rules and
the civil rights laws onto the colleges I think is
probably the right way. They know what's going on on
the campus. They may not want to admit it, but
they know and they should be held responsible. So that compact,
(10:27):
among other things, makes the president or chief executive of
a university responsible for these violations, responsible for failure to
adhere to the compact. It also requires that these policies
be adopted throughout the university, and that's really the way
(10:49):
to do it. So I think they're onto something here,
but there is going to be there. Already is massive pushback,
massive claims that this interferes with academic independence. I guess
my response to that is where has academic independence gotten you.
I'm all in favor of academic independence, but you have
(11:09):
killed the golden goose, Okay, the goose that laid the
golden egg. You had a good thing going academia. You
had almost unlimited federal funding. All you had to do
is be modestly moderate. All you had to do is
not purge conservatives from the campuses, which has happened. There
are almost no conservative professors left on campuses.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Approaching zero.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
All you had to do is not get carried away,
and you couldn't do that. Okay, So you're telling us
that you want absolute independence. On the other hand, your
absolute independence has created a terribly unhealthy situation for higher education.
You've turned the population against you. You're biting the hand
(11:53):
that feeds you. This is an unsustainable model. It's in
your own interest to do what we're asking you to do.
You can't keep going with this bubble because it's going
to burst sooner or later, and the higher education system
needs an intervention. And that's how I view what the
Trump administration is doing, is they need an intervention. They
(12:16):
cannot reform themselves because there is no internal opposition left.
There is nobody who is going to reform them who
works on a campus. There may be people like me
who speak out, but I'm almost or close to a
loan on a massive university campus. There you will not
find I think even one or two other people at
(12:39):
Cornell who will say the things that I'm saying and
call for the reforms I'm calling for, so there is
no internal opposition left. Higher education cannot reform itself. It's
on an unsustainable bubble that's going to destroy higher education.
It needs an intervention. It needs an adult in the room.
And I think that the person who's doling out the
(13:00):
money is that logical person, and that person is the
federal government. I wish the federal government wasn't involved at all.
I wish that academia had been more responsible, but it wasn't.
You if in a better world, the federal government should
keep its hands off of academia, but we don't live
in a better world. We live in a world where
(13:21):
it has become a bubble where half the population is
not just excluded, but demonized on campuses.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
What kind of model is that?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
What kind of future is that for higher education? There's
no future. The bubble has burst, and it's time for
the adult in the room to force reforms onto higher education.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
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(14:04):
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Speaker 1 (14:08):
Be informed.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Check out the Watchdout on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
The intervention, Yes, enema. Possibly the higher education system could
use an enema. You're right when you say the purging
that's gone on over the last not just few years
when everybody's attention turned to this DEI cult and all
of that sort of thing. This has been going on
(14:38):
for a long time. It's picked up its pace obviously
over the last decade and certainly over the Trump era,
because that is the political side of all of this thing.
But you said it earlier. I think you put your
finger on it when you talk about the individual versus
the group. That's what DEI really is about. It's the group.
(14:59):
It's group think, it is group politics, it is identity politics.
And how much of this stuff is really driven by
power by politics as opposed to good education.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, well, I think that our political system, if you see,
and getting back to this issue of conservatives being purged,
it's not so much that people have been fired, although
that has happened in certain cases.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
It's more that they're not hired.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so you have a culture which over thirty to
forty years has excluded half the population from participation in
the campuses, and that results in bad policy, bad politics,
because these are the people who go to become journalists
and politics and all other sorts of things that have
(15:59):
impact on society. It's one of the ways we got
to where we are now that New York City looks
likely to elect an outright socialist who hates our country
as its mayor.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well, so was that the design? Was that the plan
all along?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I think it was.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean, if you look at the writings back in
the sixties and the seventies, and you look at the approach,
the left recognized that if you want to change society,
you change it by taking over education. Now, I don't
think forty years ago they said we're going to get
a socialist elected mayor of New York City. But what
(16:39):
they did recognize is that that was a weak point
in society. The most conservative family, the most traditional family.
The second you put your kids in a public school,
whether it's K through twelve or even private higher education,
the second you put them into the education system, you
have surrendered them. You've surrendered them to people who don't
(17:01):
have our best interests at heart, and who view our
country is inherently evil. And that's what they teach kids.
I mean, the entire thrust of the leftist agenda is
that the United States is uniquely evil in the world,
and capital is uniquely evil in the world. And that's
why you have increasing numbers of students, or increasing numbers
(17:23):
of younger people who believe that socialism is a better model.
And yes, wasn't their plan. Yes, it was their plan
to convert a generation. It was not their plan to
elect somebody the mayor of New York City who's a socialist.
They probably didn't even dream that big. Okay, they probably
wouldn't have even thought that was possible, that the home
(17:46):
of capitalism, the home of the stock exchanges, you know,
the home of you know, corporate America, We're going to
convert that to socialism. I don't even think they dreamed
that big, But it's the end result.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It certainly is. And you know, I've talked about higher education.
Higher education, as you mentioned, needs an intervention sort of
our public school systems, and it's all tied together. It's
maybe a conversation for a different day. We're really focusing
on what's happening in our universities and college campuses on
(18:21):
the front of carrot and stick. We have seen some
movement on this front from the Harvards of the world,
if you will, talking about changing policies. As we mentioned,
they can change those policies, they can change the terminology
but still do the same sort of thing. That's why
(18:43):
enforcement is so critical in all of this. But we
have seen some movements some university saying, okay, we don't
want to lose that funding. It's not because they had
an epiphany and they said, you know what, we've been
engaging in racism now, you know, come to think of it.
Professor Jacobson and the rest of the folks who are
fighting against this racism, they're absolutely right. Anti discrimination or
(19:09):
anti racism is actually is actually racism and all of
these sorts of things. They're doing it because there are
dollar signs at stake here and a good significant amount
of dollar signs. Do you see them really fully changing
because of these sorts of federal policies. At least over
(19:33):
the next three years.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I see changes being made. Three years is not long enough.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
If this project to reform education ends in three years
at the twenty twenty eight election, then the gains will
be temporary. This is going to become roaring.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Back, like an allergic reaction. It's going to be much worse.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Because there's a lot of angry people in the DEI
industrial complex right now.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
You have to.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Eliminate the departments, eliminate the jobs, eliminate the ideologies. And
if that keeps up for in my estimation, six to
ten years, I think you will have effected tremendous change
because people will move on. But if it's only two
to three years, it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Won't be long enough. It won't be long enough.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And that's why I think there was some irrational exuberance
early in the Trump two point zero term when he
issued a bunch of executive orders addressing the DEI problem
and the problem in contracting, etc. And my view was
that the reports of the death of DEI are premature.
(20:50):
To paraphrase a famous saying, and it's true it's going
to take many years. It's going to need to change
what has happened with the bureaucracies and everything else. I
think it can change, but six to ten years is
my time frame.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, definitely, And all of those executive orders issued can
go right away, just as we saw in twenty twenty
one when the DEI president Joe Biden took over and
whatever he was signing, whatever was put in front of him,
or his auto.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Pattern, whatever the machine was signing.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Whatever the machine was signing at that time, he was
all in. And that is the problem is that if
you really want systemic change, just like the leftist in
this country, they have played the long game, there has
to be a long game for it, and obviously that
involves at a basic level politics. Our guest today is
(21:49):
Cornell Law professor William Jacobson, founder of Equal protect dot org,
a civil rights initiative devoted to the fair treatment of
all persons without regard to race or ethnicity. We'll talk
more about that organization coming up in just a moment,
but let's go back to the new reform strategy from
(22:13):
the Trump administration. What does it ultimately aim to do?
What are some of the details of that that are important,
some of the details that may, in your estimation, not
be effective in combating all of this.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Well, I think that it reinforces what is already the
law for non discrimination. What makes very clear how broadly
it expands non discrimination based on race, ethnicity, other factors,
and sex, although there.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Are some carve outs for sex.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And it puts the executive, the chief executive, the president
of the university on the hook for violations. So instilling
that personal responsibility I think is important for the enforcement
of the law. It could also be extremely important because
they're going to have to certify compliance, and there are
(23:10):
laws out there that if you falsely certify compliance in
order to get funding, the funding can be pulled back
by the federal government, and so that increases the stakes.
They're making individuals responsible, which I think is likely to
have an impact.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
This is one that's going.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
To be fought, and it's a little harder to measure.
They're talking about protecting academic freedom, but also ceasing policies
that demonize conservatives and others who are not in the
majority viewpoint. That's harder to measure, and that might be
subject to legal challenge in terms of viewpoint but that's
(23:53):
what they're trying to do. They're trying to change the
culture on campuses. And a perfect example is Harvard University,
which has been ground zero for a lot of these problems,
and it's Harvard. Crimson did a survey showed that three
percent of the faculty self identified as conservative or very conservative,
(24:16):
and almost eighty percent identified as liberal or very liberal.
Compare those statistics to the general population. Using Gallop and
Pew sort of numbers from reputable firms, approximately thirty eight
percent of people in the US identify as conservative or
very conservative. Approximately twenty eight percent identify as liberal. So
(24:40):
there are more conservatives in this country at least people
who identify as conservative then there are liberals.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yet you go to Harvard and it's.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Completely out of whack, it's completely skewed. And that's okay
to an extent, But what does it say about a
university system that produces faculty who are in a completely
different universe than the population of the country. And that's
just unsustainable. That is not a sustainable model. You cannot
have a university system that hates its host country and
(25:13):
expect that system to.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Go on forever.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And that's what we have and so they're trying to
address that, but it's going to be tough. There are
other things here dealing with promotion, institutional neutrality, so that
institutions are not taking positions you're remembered much like the
corporate world. After George Floyd, there were a lot of
(25:35):
pronouncements about it, universities essentially making political statements. And they
also want to limit the number of foreign students to
a certain percentage of the student body, which I think
could have an important impact if you notice a lot
(25:56):
of the problems we've had on university campuses have and
from foreign students, particularly at places like Columbia. And this
is not saying you don't have foreign students, but I
think they want it limited to fifteen percent of the
student body. Not more than fifteen percent should be foreign.
(26:16):
And that gets to something that we've written about, which
is how is it that our universities a great American universities,
the great American universities are in some cases majority foreign.
Columbia I believe was majority foreign. Many schools have thirty
forty percent. These universities no longer really are American universities.
(26:38):
They're foreign universities that happen to be based in America,
and that's not.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Healthy for our society. So a lot of what this
is trying to do.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
If you isolate an individual element, you can argue with it.
You can say that doesn't make sense, that's not a
good idea. You know, maybe we want more foreign students
for whatever the reason. But when you view it in
the context of the totality, it's simply trying to bring
our universities back towards the mainstream of the country, not
(27:09):
necessarily into it. We're not talking about creating conservative universities,
but we're talking about creating universities that are more in
sync with the country as a whole, where diversity of viewpoint,
including critical viewpoint of the United States States, is preserved.
(27:29):
But it can't be the only thing you hear on campuses,
which is what it is now.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
It seems to me that the critical race theory crowd
would like separate, but equally sees may be divided into
the liberal campuses and conservatives. You can go have your
conservative institutions and water fountains over there. I mean, I
know it sounds absurd, but that's what we're doing. In fact, though,
(27:56):
I think what we're seeing in in higher education across
the country, from Harvard to the smallest four year colleges.
Is this whole push to make conservatives into liberals, to
change people's perspectives forcibly, you know, And that happens in
(28:19):
a lot of different ways. It happens, as you mentioned before,
by not how hiring conservative professors, by dominating your enrollment
with foreign students from radically anti American countries. It's no
wonder this kind of stuff is happening. But here I
(28:41):
want to ask you, in context of what we have
seen over the last month, in particular the assassination of
Charlie Kirk on a college campus that didn't happen in
a vacuum. Do these universities have blood on their hands now,
not just for Charlie Kirk, but all kinds of different
(29:02):
incidents we've seen.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say they
have blood on their hands, but they have created an
atmosphere of intolerance, and that atmosphere of intolerance.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Is endemic to the universities.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Now. Charlie Kirk being assassinated is an extreme example, but
Charlie Kirk was not allowed to appear at Cornell University.
Can't remember the year. I want to say three or
four years ago, but time wise it could have been
five years ago. I don't remember the year, but Charlie
Kirk was not allowed to appear on campus. They were
(29:41):
left wing objections to him appearing. The university eventually claimed
there was some paperwork problem and that's why he couldn't appear,
but nobody believed that at all, and he ended up
having to appear off campus in downtown Ithaca.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So these are non problems that started.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
This is nothing new at my website, you know, we've
covered shoutdowns and shutdowns at Cornell and elsewhere. There was
a forget the year, I think like twenty seventeen, it
might have been. There was a one of the founders
(30:21):
of the Tea Party movement was invited to speak at
campus and they had to move him into hiding and
move the event into hiding because of threats against the event.
Rick Santorum was heckled at Cornell and Culter all sorts
of people you know aren't shot, but it's a hostile environment.
(30:46):
I will say Cornell has taken strides to protect speakers more,
but the fact that they even have to take those strides,
I cannot recall, and I'm not saying it never happened,
and I've been covering higher Ed since two thousand and eight,
I cannot recall a left wing speaker being runoff campus.
(31:06):
It may have happened, but it would be an aberration.
It would be the exception to the rule. It's only
conservatives who get chased off of campuses. It's only conservatives
who get shouted down. It's only conservatives who have to
show up with armed security. It's only conservatives who have
to hold the event in secret, in hiding on campuses.
(31:28):
So and this is including at places like Cornell, which
is far from the worst. I mean, people always ask me, well,
what's what's it like at Cornell? I said, well, the
good news is we're not Columbia.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You know, they should have t shirts that say that.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We're not Columbia. Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
But nonetheless, even though we're not Columbia, there is that culture,
and it's gotten better. The administration, after a lot of criticism,
some federal intervention, alumni complaints, pressure from alumni groups, has
done a better job in the last couple of years
with that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
But why should they have had to do that?
Speaker 3 (32:06):
What is it about the culture at Cornell and many
other universities that breeds the intolerance for opposing viewpoints, for
non leftist, nonliberal viewpoints. What is wrong with this picture,
and that's something that I think the Trump administration is
trying to get at, is what is wrong with this
picture is that you have a monoculture which does not
(32:29):
welcome outside viewpoints. For the most part, there are exceptions,
but that is I think a fair characterization of Higher
ED in its totality, and it's particularly a characterization of
Higher ED at the so called elite level. The top
ranked schools, not just the IVY League, but that top
tier of schools are extremely intolerant.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And why is that?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
And that's getting back to my point that Higher ED
needs an intervention because of that culture of intolerance. It
can't even recognize its own intolerance. If you were to
ask the students shouting down people on campuses, the liberal
leftist students shouting people down, they would not think of
themselves as intolerant. They would think of themselves as doing
(33:14):
a very good thing, that they're protecting others from this
hateful speech. So the culture's completely broken in Higher ED
as a whole. And that's what I think Trump administration
is trying to address. I'm not confident they will have
ultimate success. Again, I think this needs to be a
six to ten year effort. Some people might argue longer,
(33:36):
but I don't think anybody can argue the two to
three years is going to be enough.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I always enjoy the richness of the hilarity, because if
we don't laugh, we cry. But of the people with
the coexist bumper stickers screaming in people's faces to shut up.
That's what we have on our college campuses right now.
And you know, there's there's a there's a big problem.
(34:02):
You know, there's myriad examples, as you mentioned at Cornell,
I remember the UW. Madison, which certainly is no battion
of conservatism. But in twenty sixteen, Ben Shapiro appeared on campus.
They didn't want him there, but they ultimately did allow
him to speak, and the same sort of stuff they
(34:25):
were shouting him down. They wouldn't let him go on,
and you know, I think he handled it well, but
at one point it just boiled over and they had,
you know, just just angry, vain popping leftists, you know,
surrounding Shapiro and surrounding a colleague of mine, Vicky McKenna,
who does a talk radio show, a conservative talk radio
(34:48):
show in Madison, of all places. You know, Vicky is
you know, maybe one hundred and two pounds soaking wet,
and they had her surrounded and they were threatening her.
That's what I take away from what we've seen over
the last decade in this country on college campuses. But
(35:10):
it's also the students. When you have students who are
paying tuition going to these colleges and feel not just
like they don't belong they're not part of the belonging
that these institutions talk about, but they actually feel threatened
(35:31):
on these college campuses. And we've really seen that over
the last several weeks from leftists who have been celebrating
the assassination on college campuses of Charlie Kirk. How do
you protect students ultimately, because that's a big part of
this that isn't always addressed well.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
One of the ways is you simply enforce the rules.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And I've seen that at Cornell and elsewhere as relates
to the Israel Gaza war, that a lot of the
anti Israel students will claim that they're being discriminated against
because of their viewpoint that pro Palestinian viewpoints are not
allowed on campus. In fact, pro Palestinian viewpoints dominate campus.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
But that's their argument, and.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
My response is, no, you aren't suspended for your pro
Palestinian speech. You were suspended because you pushed through a
police lineup to get to a career event and disrupt
it and prevent other students from interviewing.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
That's why you were suspended.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
That's an actual example at Cornell, a couple of dozen
students I believe, were suspended because there was a career event.
They didn't like one of the companies that was going
to be there. It was one of the weapons manufacturers,
I can't remember which one, and they decided that nobody
should be able to hold this event. And the Cornell
(37:01):
had police protecting the entrance to the building, and these people,
literally it's on video, pushed through the police pushed them aside,
and a couple of them got criminally charged, and of
course those charges were pretty much dismissed, as they always are.
But that's why you're suspended, Or you're suspended because you
disrupted the library. You're not allowed to use electronic bullhorns
(37:23):
in the library while people are trying to study, and
you did that, and so it wasn't your viewpoint, it's
your conduct, and they don't seem to accept that. So
a lot of the violence, a lot of these things
don't require a change of the rules. They just require
enforcing rules that already exist. And university administrators, who a
lot of times agree with the protesters, don't want to
(37:46):
do that, and they think, oh, that's just free speech.
Well it's not free speech when, like at UCLA, you
set up a blockade on campus and declare a Zionist
free zone and don't allow people to pay us through
unless they pledge to be anti Zionists. You're not allowed
to do that. That's not your right, that's not speech,
that's conduct. And so enforce this as to the rioters,
(38:10):
as is to the people who shout down. There was
a recent event at Cornell, and I keep bringing up
Cornell not because it's worse than any place, just it's
more of my experience. I know more of what's going
on there.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
There was a recent.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Event where in order to bring diversity of viewpoint to
the campus on the Israel Palestinian issue, because all the
vocal faculty or against Israel.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
All the vocal student groups are against Israel.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
The president of the university organized a panel and I
forget who was on it, but there were names we
would all know. I think Brett Stevens might have been
one of them. I could be wrong in that, but
you know, kind of name brand people up on stage.
And that event was disrupted. So an event meant to
bring diversity of viewpoint to campus was disrupted and they
enforced the rules and several students got arrested and suspended.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Because that's Cornell, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Basically, once you're given the warning to stop the heckling
and you don't obey it, that's now a rule infraction.
And they did enforce it, and I think that was important.
And of course now they're complaining about that that it
was enforced against them because they're pro Palestinian. Know it
was enforced because you do not have the right to
prevent others from speaking, and you do not have the
(39:21):
right to prevent others from listening, and that's what they do, so.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Enforce the rules.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
If the schools just enforced existing rules, that would go
a long way towards solving the problem of disruptions on campus.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And shoutdowns on campus.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
When you think it has reached the bottom of absurd,
they keep digging. That's all I can say about that.
And you know, it's remarkable to see this over and
over again and hear the highly charged language from these
leftists on college campuses American politics in general, pointing the
(40:01):
finger at Donald Trump and fellow conservatives the MAGA movement
as fascist. I ask the question, who really are the
fascist in the United States of America today? It would
seem to me the people who are trying to shut
down freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of self
on college campuses. I'll close with this question, And like
(40:26):
any halfway decent attorney, I know the answer to this question,
but I want to get a survey from you. What
happens if we don't get this stuff under control. What
happens if after three years all of the reforms in
(40:46):
place go away.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
It all comes roaring back, and they will be retribution
against the people who spoke out against it.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
It will be very ugly.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I think that you will see victory relapse taken, and
it will it will be very ugly. And I think
that's what we're likely to see if this is only
a three year endeavor. I think that they will believe
they're right, and they will believe it's time for retribution,
just like they did when Joe Biden was elected. They
(41:19):
sought retribution against people who served in the Trump administration.
And that's what's going to happen. So you know, there
is a lot at stake in the next election. Are
we going to continue to reform Higher ED, bring it
some place close to where the country is, bring it
(41:39):
more into the mainstream. Are we going to get Higher
ED to stop biting the hand that feeds it and
develop a culture of diversity of viewpoint or are.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
We going to double down?
Speaker 3 (41:52):
And that's really what I think is at stake for
Higher ED in the next election.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
But it's not just at stake for Higher ED. I
truly believe that we don't get a handle on this,
and throughout our society the same stuff happening in corporate America.
As you mentioned before, all of our institutions embedded in
our bureaucracy. So we don't get a handle on this.
Right now. The Republic truly is in peril. I believe that.
(42:19):
How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, I mean, if you.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Wanted to destroy our country what would you do differently
than they have done?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah, good point, very good point. I think they have
mastered the role of destruction. And again, you can only
imagine what would happen if they are left without some
kind of accountability over what they've done the last couple
(42:52):
of generations in this country. Tough to contemplate. Thanks to
my guest today, Cornell law professor William Jacobson, founder of
Equal protect dot org, a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
(43:13):
I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.
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