Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country, mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet
Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylyx, and today we
tackle the question is it time for the ivys to die? Last night when
you taught Columbia University is open support for Kamas holding signe say doc dougrigade your
next target point day, do it today. So here you have it.
America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. How's the
foot him? Excuse me? Welcome. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number six
hundred and eighty nine. I'm James Lilys in drizzly Minneapolis. Rob Long is
in Gotham, and Peter's in California. And I guess in all three of
these locations they're characterized by some you know, something akin to discord on the
campuses. Quite extraordinary. What we've been seeing this week quite extraordinary. And
I think the people who were saying, well, it's going to be great
because Trump's going to dominate the tray. Everybody's going to look at the Trump
stuff people are seeing on display. A segment of the left that well,
we've been seeing for years, but really hasn't been this emboldened, this nasty
in some time. And it's not going to end soon. It's going to
spill over into the convention and another zesty summer of love is coming up.
Guys, looking at this, what do you say? I know, of
course that these people are not anti Jewish at all. No, it's just
a matter of being anti Zionist, a very very specific designation and distinction that
we must respect or not. Rob Peter, I'm I'm a little you know,
it's a little late to keep saying that. I'm shocked. I am
still shocked. I was in my office the other day, actually, I
was meeting somebody for a cup of coffee on the Stanford campus and in the
background I heard a great racket and some music being played, brass instruments being
played very badly, and that usually means it's a Stanford marching band on the
way to a football game. I thought, wait a minute, it's wrong.
It's spring. And I turned and it was a parade and there were
Palestinian flags waving and placards being held aloft and it's all right there. And
then as I returned home. I happened to pass a couple of fraternities and
a couple of the fraternities, or excuse me, this is complicated. Here
on the Stanford campus. There are only a few real old fashioned fraternities left.
Now there are theme houses. I guess these were a couple of theme
houses that had Palestinian flags draped from the windows. And there as I passed
the Hillel House, there's a Stanford cop at the Hillel House. So it
is all it's disconcerting to see it flaring up all over again. I thought
that, at least with regard to this one campus here in California, things
had died down, that there was a flare up on October seventh, but
things had been quiet, and now it's not quiet. And I just don't
understand how Stanford students now some of the people in the parade, many of
the people in the parade may not have been Stanford students, But those theme
houses were on Stanford, the Stanford campus, and they're lived in by Stanford
students. How can they understand so little about the history of the twentieth century.
How can they understand so little about the twenty first century of the history
of the of the Middle East, of Israel and the surrounding area. And
you cannot understand the history and chant from the river to the sea. You
just can't. So I don't. I don't. It's none, none of
this is even computing. But it just it is more than disconcerting. Well,
you certainly can't if you wish that history had turned out differently. Rob,
Yeah, I mean, I actually feel like this is divorced from history
and divorced from what's happening. It's it's emotional craziness that you you you know,
they this is a unfair cherry picking, but they did. I saw
a video of these young women in Nyu, not that far from where I'm
standing right now, a couple of blocks, and they were protesting something,
and some of what are you protesting? You know? They said Gaza or
something? Oh, what's what's happening there? We don't. Why are you
protesting NYU? And I don't. I don't really know. And then she
looked to her friend like can you help me in for Yeah, you know,
I'm not as educated on that as a S should be. You know,
we're here in solidarity. So we came from Columbia to our friends and
nyun so we're here to solidarity. I mean, these things kind of have
their do they develop their own life. It's like I'm protesting this thing I
don't really care about her know much about, and then the university is like
complaining about it, and then that is why I'm protesting. I'm protesting because
you're against it. And it's this kind of this very strange, coddled generation
that is that it's not their fault. Here's my position, it's not their
fault. Their teachers were almost to the to the person's sixties radicals, the
sixties sippies grew up to work, go back right back into the academy and
be the professors and now their tenured professors in schools, and they have been
teaching and high schools and they have been teaching them these students. This incredibly
mythic view of the nineteen sixties, this heroic myth that students protested and they
ended a war. It was a bad war, and student protests ended it,
which is just not true. It was a bad war, that's fair,
and students protested, that is also true. They did not end the
war. That is a historically completely inaccurate. Point the last American left,
I think because I got in nineteen seventy five, almost six seventy four to
seventy five. In nineteen seventy two, after at least eight years of student
protests, the country voted in a landslide for the candidate who was not going
to was not going to leave Vietnam without peace with honor, wasn't he?
He was against you know it, Nixon versusmc govern. MC government's going to
leave McGovern was the choice of those students. They did not have an impact
on the foreign policy at all. What they did was they dispersed over the
years and they went into teaching high school and college, and they produced a
generation that now comes from Columbia down to NYU to protest a thing they don't
know what they're protesting for, to show solidarity for people who they don't understand,
to argue about a part of the world that they do not They could
not locate on the map maybe or the key events on a timeline, but
they know that they can participate in this drama because their teachers were to participate
in the drama, and because all the cultural stories about the sixties were all
about how great the drama was this is self dramatics of the most sophomoric,
sophomoric but empty kind, because they say this for the SDS, or say
this for what's his name, and you know all those guys say this for
the hippies. They kind of they they'd been raised in the fifties. They
went to actually schools of taught American history. Now they may have been distorted
by the time they got there to college, but they were They were a
lot more formed about America's role in the world and about the dangers of the
world than the generation today, although they were not effective. So you know,
maybe anyway, that's my rant is now over a new thought for me,
which is now maybe forty eight hours old. But as somebody said something
on my Twitter feed and I thought, oh, actually that's right as well,
every word Rob said about the teachers. But you know what it's also
involved here the admissions offices. They chose these students. You know, these
students wrote pat little essays about how socially concerned they are and how they had
protested this or done that social activism in high school. They chose these social
activist nit wits. Columbia has the students it chose well. I mean,
there are many things here. You have to feel sorry for the students at
NYU because unlike the people who have the nice green velt, the big swath
of lawn on which they can pop up their tents, which all look alike
and all come from somewhere. When I was in college and we're gonna,
if we're gonna protest, I haven't the faintest idea of what we would do
Tentwise, we would probably go over to Midwest Mountaineering and pool our money and
get maybe one, you know, pop up that we could all fit into.
But the profusion of tents that just appear place by place by is almost
as if there's some sort of network of NGOs. That's funny good Anyway,
the poor students at n YU don't have a mall, a green space because
NYU is just slotted into a whole bunch of buildings to the square. So
you got to feel kind of bad for them. But secondly, you're right,
yes, this is, as Rob said, the process of the long
march of the people who very comfortably, very wonderfully attach themselves like lampreys to
these great institutions and found for themselves money sucker, intellectually wise from the rest
of their peers a place to get, you know, respects, and the
rest of it hallowing at an institution so that they can preach against it,
but by themselves living every single measure of a comfortable life. That's the product
of Western academia. Hypocrites, the lot of them, and intellectually bankrupt people,
morally bank socially, emotionally bankrupt, people who are still wafting on some
cloud of self regard that they that they first conjured up in the sixties.
From the seventies, I say, it's communists, men in hell with it.
But as for the students, right, we have valorized the protest at
the point where just about any the very act of protesting itself sanctifies whatever it
is you're doing, and whatever it is you're protesting, unless you're marching around
with the tiki tours wearing khaki pants, in which case you have you know,
you're the worst person ever in the world. We have Charlottesville times ten
all over the country when it comes to not just ionized Zionist activity, anti
Jewish act, specifically stating things that are beyond the palein American discourse, freedom
speech, yes, of course, but go back to poland go back to
Blorus saying that of American citizens who are of Jewish descent and faith is anathema
to the culture and is as anti American as you can possibly get wrong.
It's absolutely wrong. An expulsion out of follow from what I think kind of
sounds like hate speech. I don't like hate speech things, but that's the
term they're going to use, and those are the banishment from society is going
to be the price that you pay for it. According to the left,
Well, then I'm one of those American guys who say, let's apply all
these laws equally. But it's what what what galls me? With so many
things galled me obviously, and not that beaut But for some, for some
people, the sound of mass rhyming chanting makes their blood rise and their spirits
sore. I find it absolutely contemptuous, and I find it a substitute for
thought and a tribe chance that indicates that you not that you've thought through the
issues, not that you have a grasp on the issues, but that you're
part of an organism that spontaneously arose in order to perform this dance for everybody
else to show that you're on the right side of things. And I think
it's almost back to silent majority. I think most people when they look at
this, a lot of people who are on the left center left, do
not feel the same sort of exultation when they hear id FKKK all the same
They don't, and they may maybe the silent majority of the next election.
We don't know, but I I just have an instinctive revulsion to it.
It's the sound of everything crumbling, and we went through it in twenty twenty
and we're gonna hear it again. No. I mean, I guess what
sort of interesting about it to me is the idea that it's kind of reflexive.
The I guess the theory is, and this is actually up ultimately a
sort of a problem disconnect in society, which is that the theory is if
you're a student, is that you're told if you're successful or you're the winner,
something must be bad. You did something, you stole something, you
know. I have an argument some of my very pro Israel Jewish friends about
whether October seventh, whether they're facing an existential issue here, existential problem,
existential crisis for Israel. And my point is of course no. No,
The answer is no. Israel has had now eighty years, a very very
focused, very effective leadership. The security of the state of Israel is not
in question. It is militarily maybe it was unprepared on Cover seventh, but
it is far superior to its enemies. And it has shown time and time
again that Israel is a very is a secure state and not set it's not
under attack occasionally, but that they're going to win and they're gonna win because
they've been focused on that for eighty years and they've done a really wonderful job
doing it, and they that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
But people are they are made is they are discomforted by that. And
the prevailing sentiment among sort of the progressive left is if you're strong and you
protected yourself, you're probably a criminal. That if you have built something,
you know you didn't build that, as Obama said, that you probably took
it from somebody. And so there is among the left, and I think
especially among the Jewish left, this kind of what's happening is a kind of
an academic, kind of a break psychological problem, which is like, Israel
is a successful state because because it took its security seriously and focused on it,
and had a culture and a population that was focused on this great idea
of a Jewish homeland that is literally the theme of the Hebrew Bible. Right,
that's the theme of the oldest, longest lasting religious text in human history.
So this is a big deal, right, and they took it seriously,
and they are going At no point does anybody think, oh, you
know what, Homas might win. They're not going to win, so that
if you're an academic leftist, you're like, well, then then Israel must
be evil. It's got to be bad because the winners are always bad.
Everybody who wins, you know, everybody who wins a war is a criminal
and did a bad thing. And everybody who succeeded somehow took it that we
we just don't have. We no longer understand how people got where they got
and that they worked hard to get there. And I feel like there's part
of that I see. I see my my Jewish friends who are liberal who
are now kind of trying to recalibrate their idea, and I see it in
the culture in general, the idea that if you if you were successful,
or if you accomplished your mission and behind where you take it from. Yeah,
I know. That's that's why I haven't fully thought this through with us.
You know you're right behind. Every fourth is a great crime. It
is the idea that is it. I agree, that's a profound point.
I might modify your view on whether or not Israel is involved in an existential
crisis to this extent, it's not a threat to their existence as long as
they have us. They need our carrier groups in the Eastern med they need
our technology to help them with the Iron Dome and successors to the Iron Dome.
They need musicians, they need support, They need us. And that
is an interesting matter because here we have the Biden administration scrambling to try to
figure out what to do because among many people, in particular Jewish donors,
the population of Jews in this country is so small, so two percent.
There's really no place where the Jewish vote is going to be decisive. But
Jewish contributions, Jewish participation in the democratic all of that matters enormously. And
if you look at our friend Andrew Gutman, who's running for Congress now in
Palm Beach, is himself Jewish, he's running as a Republican. He's tweeting
that he's hearing over and over and over again from Jews in his congressional district.
He's campaigning, shaking hands, giving speeches. So he's on the ground
at this saying I've been a Democrat all my life. This time I'm voting
for you. So you've got one party, the Democratic Party, which among
one of its traditional constituencies, isn't doing enough. And then Biden requires the
youth vote to defeat Donald Trump. And we know two things about the polling
among the young. One is that they are uninterested and bored by this campaign.
Why wouldn't they be. You've got one octogenarian, another subtergenarian, But
we also have it's this youth vote that thinks the Biden administration is supporting Israel
too much. Well, that is the political bind that the Biden administration is
couldn't have, couldn't happen to a nicer group. But if you're thinking in
terms of is this an existential crisis for Israel, it's a problem for Israel
if they don't have the American if they don't have firm support across both our
parties. It's just a dangerous position to be in, to have only Republican
support, to only to count on Republican support, except that I just mean
to say that that the history of the state of Israel is an amazingly triumphant
histreys of a people who you know, for thousands of years have had you
know, you know how many you know, attempted murder, attempt you know
how many, how many attempts to to eliminate them have been barely thwarted,
right, and they have a homeland, and and they protected it with incredible
courage and strategy and focus and sacrifice. That is, you know, I'm
one of the great stories of modern civilization. It didn't come without a price,
and it didn't doesn't come without a price today. But it's an extraordinary,
extraordinary victory for good over evil that you know, we should at least
celebrate that. That seems to me to be certainly to story, quite a
big story. The other piece of it, of course, is that everything
changes the day around gets a nuclear weapon, right, everything changes that day
they cannot be permitted to get one. And you know what they're saying in
Aman and Riad and Cairo and problem you take it out, go ahead,
what they're saying them out, you know, the thank God for these Raelis
because they're going to do something about this. I mean, the great is
the great secret is Israeli strategy in the past twenty thirty years has been isolate
Hamas, drive them to the arms of Iran, make them Iranian clients,
make them clients of the Ayatola in Tehran. And then let's see what the
king of Saudi Arabia and the king of Jordan, and the dictator and the
dictator in Damascus and the military dictator in Cairo have to say. And you
know what they're saying. They're saying, they're looking at their shoes and saying,
yeah, well, let's uh. You know, you like that great
moment in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when one of the kids is running
off to do something dangerous and Charlie and Willie Walker is saying, don't stop,
don't please stop, Oh no, don't don't touch that button in the
least energetic way possible. That is what the Arab countries are saying to is
right now, I'll stop better stop that, don't do that, meaning they
want them to go ahead and do it that you know, look it's one
way you can look at all this disaster, this chaos is horrible, and
warfare is terrible, and you can look at all I think it's just a
giant disaster. But in some ways this is a logical outcome, one of
the logical outcomes of a strategy that has that was necessary for Israel to pursue,
which is to make small, incremental peace with its Arab powerful Arab neighbors,
not big piece, a little piece here and there, you know,
here and there, starting from really this is a twenty three year process,
starting from September twelfth, two thousand and one, and isolate and drive their
enemies on the on the ground to the arms of the only agreed enemy in
the region that everybody hates, and that's Iran. And Iran foolishly and Moss
foolishly fell right into it. Unfortunately, it led to this terrible war where
people are it's a horrible thing that's happening there. But it did clarify.
Besides it does it did clarifying the many the posts that I read talk about
the the IDF incursion into Gaza is something that just happened for some weird reason
which escapes us at the moment, everything was fine pretty much. Oh,
Gaza was an open air prison, don't you know. Oh, they were
being starved by the Israelis, don't you know? All the Israelis were being
so cruel that they actually reduced to five the daily shuttles between Gaza and the
hospitals to treat people who couldn't get treated in Gaza. Oh, the genocide.
But then something happened, and I can't quite remember exactly what it is,
something to do with parent some guys in parasails. Well that was it.
Yeah, some guys, some guys from Gaza were parasailing off the coast
and the IDEF shot them down. Because anyway, they don't wave that away,
just wave that away. What matters is, of course, that the
IDEF went in and killed thirty three thousand people so far, specifically the number
that comes from Hamas, and Hamas itself is downplay has has said, well,
you know, why to maybe twenty three thousand, We don't know,
we're kind of checking our records. Why anybody believes that I have from the
faintest idea and that they're believed that everybody that Israel has that the IDEF has
killed is a civilian, and preferably a fourteen year old boy with a dewy
face or an infant's that's it. I mean, they're not going after soldiers.
They're no, they're targeting mothers. They're going after the use the least
useful military targets available. Somehow, that seems to be again the assertion,
and all of this is an overreaction the idea that a neighboring country, it's
called Gaza country, the Leks, this group to run them. This group
has in their charter river to the sea, kill the Jews, death to
the Jews, and then the people that they elect promptly go and do something
like they did on October seventh, the details of which we'll come to my
mind. And that the proper response to this is to let that government remain
in power, is what they're saying. I mean, you can't go into
Gaza, you can't go after Hermas. You can do, but perhaps you
could have done something to tip for tat it. So let's just imagine then
that the IDEF goes into Gaza and indoscrab. Let's say that they choose a
music festival for some reason, and they parachute in and they kill a lot
of young people, and they drag the women back and they rape the women.
They put it as a matter of fact. They film themselves doing all
these various atrocities, and then they drag hostages back to Israel and periodically will
release videos of them with an arm missing, you know, spouting some platitudes
about this, about how they're being treated, and refuse to tell them anybody
where they are and don't release them or maybe one or two of the sord
What would the reaction on the campuses be. I think the reaction on the
campuses would have been equal in its ferocity to Israel going in and attempting to
routigate, eradicate Hamas once and for all. And perhaps that's the calculation that
they made when it comes to international you know, what were the Jews?
I don't like anything we do, so let's just go do it. And
what's more, the idea that going in and having a targeted assassination in the
music festival and dragging people back, that somehow that's that that that is the
proper response beggars imagination. There's no way it is. There's absolutely no way
it would it would even be conceived of by the government. So that's the
strange things like sending in the military to do a military job of killing the
guys who are behind this is the war crime. But if they'd just gone
in and done a tit for tap somehow, that would have been a tempered
response. And I just hear a horn there from that was me. That
was that's the that's the that's the city with you, right, yeah,
well, you know the city agreeing with me. I don't know what I
see in Colombia's madness. I mean when when I hear students, you know,
we had that video that was released yesterday by one of the leaders of
the organized talking about how Zionists do not deserve to live. This is a
student on record, student leader that they don't deserve to live and it's all
he can do to keep from killing them. And he hasn't killed him yet.
And we're supposed to actually applaud perhaps when this guy says that I haven't
killed a Zionist yet. It's a nasty, nasty group of people. But
where do they go from here is the question. Let's say they graduate,
where do they go exactly? Do they go into the world of business that
they supposedly hate so much because the late capitalist hellscape that oppresses everything. Do
they just sort of suck it up and say, well, I'll be a
good voter, I'll be a good revolutionary in my own way, in my
own time. I guess I have to live in the system. Or do
they just spread into any more you know, social institutions and governments and urban
yeah governments, and charity groups and social groups and the rest of it and
continue. I mean, I miss the old day. I missed the days
when the scolds and the reformers were standing on a corner with a Salvation Army
band, you know, and being you know, prim and a little bit
puritan as opposed to these endless, endless, tiresome, odorous Marxists that had
been devil since that Harry Bastard wrote his book. Ah, I don't know
how to respond to that. I don't know what to I mean, look,
what's gonna happen? You said, what's gonna happen? I mean I
think what's gonna happen is they're gonna where those kids are going to go into
the They're gonna go into teaching. Yeah great, unless I mean, I
I had lunch yesterday with old friend of ours, old friend of our,
of Bricochets, Andy Kestler, great columnists for the wal Walls Journal, wonderful
guy, friend of I just looked at Peter's face and he was like,
really, what's going on there? And he's one of the smartest people who
writes these hilariou It's brilliant but also very entertaining, lovely columns on Wall Street
Journal. If you have not read Anty Kessler's columns, you really should treat
yourself. And we're talking about this stuff, and you know, we're saying,
like, well, the only solution, I mean, it used to
be that you'd say, oh, you know what, we need to reform
these places. We need to reform these schools. The schools need to do
X, Y and Z know. And we're talking about this yesterday. I
don't know if he agreed with me, but what I said was no,
No, they need to be replaced. They need to they need to no
longer exist, they need to market beats to squash them out. And we
need to stop treating a Columbia or Yale or Dartmouth or a Harvard degrees if
it means meaningful, and that we need to stop referring to that as an
education, because it's an education is as a specific noun that means something.
Instead it's a diploma, which is a certificate you got. The culture needs
to reject it and replace these institutions with new and different and better institutions,
not fantasized about reform them. Rich people in charge, even a rich conservatives
in charge, have a hard time doing that because they went to Harbord too
or Yale princident or you know whatever, and they're like, well, I,
you know, can't you just fix this bad part about this great credential
that I have instead of throwing the credential out And the answer is no.
And I suspect that across the culture in politics too. I mean, look,
I don't know people listening to this that are staunch Republicans, and there's
staunch Trump voters, and there are people listening to other podcasts that are staunch
Democrats and staunch Biden voters. But there's a whole bunch of people we all
know who are in the middle, and there's bigger that number is getting bigger
and bigger and bigger that are saying that even people who are going to you
know, hold their nose and vote for one of the two clowns running are
saying, how did this happen? Right? How did we get to this?
And we got to this because the parties are old and ossified and sclerotic
and they need to be replaced. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth's,
NYU Columbia are sclerotic. The universities are ossified, and they need to be
replaced. We need new brands, new names, new institutions. Is a
very unpleasant thing for a conservative to say, because we're supposed to be conserving
these things. But you know, every now and then, you got to
throw it all out. You've got to throw the baby and the bath water
out and get yourself a new baby and the tub Peter. You are there
in academia, you see the likelihood of this actually happening, because it seems
to me that the institutions that we have seen covered themselves with bespattered with the
feces of their own actions in the last four or five years, is we've
watched every single one of them sunder their responsibilities and waste their credibility. That
the only thing that actually replaces these institutions which are still here, still around
us, is some societal catastrophe that that that that takes the whiteboard and just
takes everything off it. And then and then of course you you, you
turn, you turn to the assembled people and say, well, what do
we write next? That's never good because what they end up writing is some
utopian nonsense that falls apart in bloodshed and the guillotine in about four or five
years. So absence some sort of catastrophe that it makes the very concept of
Harvard and Yale part of the old and before times, is it likely that
these institutions will be changed? I don't know. By the way. I
agree with Rob that Yale must be replaced, but I have some reservations about
Dartmouth. Yeah, yeah, and the bath water out ball. So here's
what. Dartmouth has a new president. She's been on the job for about
a year now, and after October seventh, Dartmouth responded, is of course
I'm paying close attention because I have my youngest child is about to graduate in
a few weeks, and so I'm paying attention to what's happening at Dartmouth.
I've all right. They responded pretty well. They put together instead of big,
huge protests, the college immediately organized. I believe it was a history
professor who understands a great deal about the Arab world, and another professor who
understands a great deal about the history of Israel and Judaism, and they had
events for the kids to come actually learn things that they couldn't learn on Fox
News or CNN. My point is this, this is the moment when those
institutions either get it together and reform themselves or at this point, I do
believe we're at a decisive moment. Rob will be proven right if within six
months or so we don't see, well, how Yale reforms itself. I
don't know, but Harvard has a vacancy in the presidency. Whom Harvard chooses
as the new president will tell us a great deal about whether these institutions.
When I say these institutions, what do I mean, I'm I mean no
new institution is ever going to have three centuries of history, which is what
Harvard has, or two and a half two hundred and eighty year, which
is what Dartmouth has Yale. Yale's the second oldest is I recall, so
Yale's close to three hundred is a year as well. No new institution will
have that. No institution, No new institution will have one hundred thousand alumni,
nor will it have what's the Harvard and dominant. Harvard and Yale are
both in the midillions billion. Yeah, Dartmouth is eight billion or something like
that, A little small, much smaller. So they have resource, they
have they have tradition, they have records of service to the country at least
up until the nineteen sixties. They're worth saving if they can be saved,
and we will very soon know. A question for rob Look what happened in
Texas. They tried it in Texas, they got dispersed. They tried it
in Georgia. Oh boy, did they get dispersed. It tried in Florida.
Not gonna fly? Is the question, maybe not to blow up those
institutions, but to somehow manage to transfer the credibility that they have to places
that are less likely to let a thousand jew haters bloom. Yeah, I
mean sure, okay, I mean I like. I like my solution,
which is like total destruction of that institution and rebuilding it from the from the
rubble. But I see that you're probably yours is a more judicious and probably
more effective and more realistic suggestion, I would just say about the Harvard thing,
which I think will be interesting. I hear. My prediction for the
next president of Harvard will be somebody who you have no idea. They'll be
the blandest, most anadyne, most carefully calibrated pay portrayal of that person,
whoever that person is. I mean, if they could, if they could
generate an AI president of Harvard, they would do it, because what they
need is somebody who has no opinions and doesn't represent anything and is it going
to make anybody man and has no paper trail on that person. My guess
is that person is going to come from stem right. I mean, that's
who you want. That's the goal. That's like somebody who's like basically been
doing important research and something useful. Uh and and and it's going to be
a dog whistle for people on the right because we're going to be kind of
figured. You know, listen, if you've been sitting in a lab and
you if you believe that there's a right answer to the problem, and you
believe that there is such a thing as truth, then you're probably on our
side correct. So that's that will be how that shakes up, I think,
but I still feel like, you know, I don't know why we
You know, what we need is more we're clinging to these brands. I
don't know, we should just no brands. I mean, like, what
Barry Weiss is doing is amazing. What see what Ben Sass is doing in
Florida is incredible. I think there are people that are trying to come up
with a new way, a new way of treating, a new way of
treating higher education that is in fact the old way, which is, how
do I teach you? I prepare, teach you to be a great citizen,
a useful citizen, Prepare you for a life of some kind of production
service, and give you the tools you need to make your way in the
world, instead of how do I give you a four year subsidized vacation so
you can explore your trauma and figure out how the world and your life have
been unbearable for you. I'm not quite willing to join you in destroying the
IVYS, but here's where I am willing to join you. This is America.
It's a great, big country, and the idea that the Ivys have
retained with the IVYS eight institutions ones in New York and that all the rest
are in two are in New York, Columbia and Cornell, and all the
rest are in New England. And they're very very they do hold a special
place in our history. But the idea that they should have dominant levels of
prestige, that they should have been the dominant educational institutions. As long as
they that's over. It's just done. Here's one thing we have in this
country. We have regions, we have federalism. We have the University of
Florida, which is a great public institution. And the people who run the
University of Florida in part the governor, but also other I think they're called
trustees. I can't recall the governing structure. But they bring in Ben Sas
and what is Bensas? What is one of Ben SAS's first moves to end
DEI at the University of Florida. Folks, some of you will lose your
jobs, some of you will be transferred into new positions within the university.
Those of you who lose your jobs will be able to apply for new But
it's over. And two weeks later, the University of Texas says DEI is
done. And they are a little less nuanced about it. They just fire
a bunch of people. Well, God blessed Texas and God blessed Florida.
We've got different. We have this entrepreneurial spirit. So the University of Austin
is a brand new institution. This is what Barry Weiss is participating in.
It's what my colleague here at Hoover, Neil Ferguson is participating in full disclosure.
It's what my oldest son, where my oldest son is working down in
Austin right now, put helping to put together the University of Austin, which
will admit students this fall. It will be up and running and functioning.
It is an accredited university. It has raised many tens of millions, I
think at this stage that's fair to say, many hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's going to work. Let them have it. The idea that the
University of Texas should in any way bowance scrape to Yale. It's over.
That's just done. You managed to I like, how you you've taken my
bold statement and you've said, well, not obviously at dark but Yale for
sure. Yeah, the unambiguous. Yeah, you start bringing the village down,
and you burn the whole village down. You could start again. It's
no big deal, right, We'll be fine. I mean, look,
I mean I remember years and years ago talking to a reading an artist read
a great book by the great writer James Grant, who is a wonderful financial
writer, and then im and he's like, you know, we have this,
we have this idea that these things aren't supposed to change, that all
monecary monetary system lasts forever, and they don't like the dollar changes its value
and what it stands for, and then world currency changes happens a lot like
these changes do happen, right, and there's a lot of chaos when they
do, and a lot of fear when they do. But yeah, you
know, I don't know. We should be prepared for that, and we
shouldn't cling to what seemed to me to be institutions that are totally out of
gas. Look, if something doesn't suit, something doesn't suit you and suit
your your culture and your needs anymore, come up with something better replace it.
It would be great to wake up one dred, to wake up one
hundred years later and find that Yale and Harvard are the nation's preeminent technical schools,
vocational schools. There used to be I know, look at that guy,
his son got a plumbing degree from Yale. Oh Man, respect that
was there. There were there were seminaries right which seminary was was essentially a
trade school, and then there was a there was a this Sheffield Science School
or Sheffield Science Academy or something was basically half of Yale. Now it's now
financially these these institutions of at least Ye and Harvard. I don't know about
the other ones, but those institutions financially are if you look at their budget,
if you look at their financial profile, they are healthcare companies. They're
hospitals and research hospitals with a little bit of a university attached to it on
the side. In terms of the amount of money they are, they are
the healthcare insurance. So it's it's they're already there. We just have We
just don't want to give it up. Because the people who write New York
Times, people are on TV and people like me were like like, we
want you to think that Yale was really something special, which it was,
but we want you to think it confers confers upon me. Some kind of
like extra credibility, which it does not do, which I don't have to
tell the Bricachet listeners that they already know. I've done more to diminish the
prestige of Gale University on this podcast than anybody. Well. I mean,
the notion of a university always in the public mind had a certain segment of
airyheaded, professor absent minded types who would wander around and to think about keats
and the rest of it, and have no practical application to the rest of
the world. Now, though, I think there is the general idea that
the people who feel these universities are motivated by two things, one of profound
ignorance of the past and to a profound hatred of it and everything that they
that they do. Instead of producing some scholarly, dense, ultimately useless guide
to Lord Byron's seventeenth conto of Don Juwon. Instead, what they're doing is
they're turning out interchangeable, unreadable, dense concatenations of buzzwords about social issues,
the only purpose of which is to identify and to clarify the evil nature of
this system and the requirements that would be completely dismantled. I mean that's it,
by the way, in any way an overstatement. When Claudie Kay,
the president of Harvard, when her papers began to circulate on the on the
internet because she'd been accused of plagiarism, accurately accused, we now it immediately
became clear they were exactly what you just described unreadable, I mean, nothing
but rivers of jargon, plagiarized. It was like, how could you tell
exactly where do you find such bad writing to steal? If you if you
barred the use of the slew of sociological nonsense in the in these people's works,
they would would be unable to produce a thesis paper because I mean,
it's like new speak. There's no way to vocalize or to conceive of the
idea. But the ideas themselves are just tiresome, tiresome repetitions of the whole
idea that we are all merely helpless, powerless cogs in a system of systemic
systemism, and that only through true valuation and interrogation of our intersectionality can liberation
be. It's just, I mean, it has gone so far up betime
quarters that the entire I mean, it's importantly, they've just made intellectual pretzels
of themselves. And so but we kind of get that now, don't.
We've all seen this on display over and that is that the public the popular
conception now that people who go to these places or I mean, I can't
conceive of the people who send their kids to school to learn this stuff actually
think there's merit in it. They're just doing, as Rob said, for
the certificates that brands them as employable at this level in this place. Yeah.
Look, the the one of the side effects, which was positive I
think in general of education was that you you you you got confused that do
you You went and you learned enough that about the world that it made you
confused, like well, I don't know, like it's confusing, right,
And you just don't see that on the Columbia or NYU campus. Those kids
are not confused. They don't They don't mean they should be, but they're
not embarrassed that they don't know why they're down on n YU. They go,
I should learn more about it specifically, but they just know that in
general that that that they're doing the right thing, and which is something they've
been told by their teachers, which is their teacher because their teach. I
mean all my teachers were not on my team. Not of my professors,
because they were that was the wrong generation. But most of them, certainly
every single graduate teaching assistant I had, and every sort of English teacher and
on history teacher, most of them anyway, had had some kind of important
adolescent experience in the sixties and decided that their curriculum was going to be based
upon how great the sixties were. And you can any university you go you
look at, there will be a class or two, or ten or fifty
about the sixties and how great they were and how important they were. There
will not be any classes about the fifties or the forties, or the twenties,
even maybe the twenties in English literature, but like or the seventies,
right right, the generation that rioded in the streets in the sixties and did
nothing went on to teach classes about how great they did. They wrote their
own myths, and this is the generation that grew up on that myth.
You're making an absolutely fascinating point that takes me back in my own memory.
I'm just enough older than you, Rob, thank you for admitting that.
Yeah, well, when I was at Dartmouth, there were two layers of
professors, and when I was there, the senior professors had all trained in
the fifties and they were all men. They were, yes, I think
without exception that they were all men, and they had standards. They spoke
well. Vincent Starzinger constitutional law. You never saw Vincent Starzinger without a jacket
and tie. And in class he would say, mister Robinson, what do
you have to say about Reynolds v. Simms? Mister law. That was
still alive, it was still real. But at the same time, the
associate professors, the young guys had trained during the sixties, and it was
exactly as you described. But I was there at the last glimmering where you
could avoid the jokers. I mean, I can remember walking into class and
there I won't name his name. I don't think he ever got ten year
at Dartmouth because he seems to have disappeared. But this guy had long hair
and he wore jeans, and his class began. He sat on the desk
and looked at us and said, well, okay, let's talk about it.
What did you guys make of Taming of the Shrew? And I thought
to myself, my parents, dart. This is hard for them for me
to pay to come here. I don't want to hear what my classmates make
of taming. In other words, you could just you could just feel it.
You could at the sixties were right there. So, of course,
needless to say, I had dropped that course and ran back to Jeff Hart,
who had trained at Columbia under Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling in the
great old days. But you could see it. You're absolutely right, the
sixties were decisive. But I have to disagree with Rob. Do they talk
about did they talk about the fifties? Did they talk about the seventies?
Yes, they do, because they have to constantly mind the past for proof
of all of the various horrible things that the culture has done to marginalize people
forever. So, in other words, are they going to teach the full
breadth and scope of the seventies? How it was, how the first part
was a kurdled eff fluorescence of the nonsense of the sixties, and how the
later part was a complete descent into into Weymar era style degeneracy. Before we
stood up and put our tie back on and our suit coode back on instead
of behavior. I mean, do they tell that state. No. What
they will do is they'll have a class about how the origins of queer theory
can be found in the first transgender person to start the riots at Stone Wall,
and they'll get somebody who's great poems that were published in a chap book,
who didn't capitalize their name and didn't have any particular rhyme scheme as being
the most important pote of the eras. So they'll go back and they'll they'll
the past can be excavated over and over again to exalt and bring up all
the people who are now the heroes, the people who stood thwart the various
culty. So don't teach them the cult. It's a given that the culture
of the time was wrong because it was hero inormative, it was white supremacist,
it was Western civilization. That's a given. So the only the only
bones you can make is to go back and find all the reasons that it
were wrong. Now that we've all agreed that it's wrong, but it kills
me that these people do these things in these settings that are designed to sum
up the great aspirational notion of Western architecture and how it must gall them really
to walk around with these ideas festering and curdling in their head and igniting their
heart, and to look around and to know that they are utterly incapable of
constructing a civilization that can construct something like the beauty that they see around him.
Yep, he James has done it again. He's talked to us into
total submission. Rob. Yeah, he's yeah, you know, I if
I if I just spam every if I spam everything with fifty points, then
nobody knows what to respond to. Rob. Is there anything else you'd like
to say about Yale? Rob, Robbie R just holding a torch of light
to I mean, the first thing he does is turn around to throw it
at his own house. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know,
uh, it's always a question, right are you throwing out the right stuff
or not? Right? That's that's that's kind of what we as you move
through life, as you move through the culture, like, Okay, we're
getting rid of some bad stuff and we're going to keep the good stuff,
and we just got to make sure we're throwing away the good stuff. They're
keeping the good stuff and throwing bad stuff, and we're doing a good job.
If you accept that the label of a thing doesn't matter, that there's
no particular value to Yale anymore. There oh, there is a there is
a value to education and to knowledge and to truth. Then you have to
ask yourself, what's the goal of a society. What's the goal of an
education is? That's to educate the next generation to be useful, productive citizens
and contribute meaningfully to the you know, further furtherance of the human race and
human flourishing in general. So it's not to keep Yale afloat. Now,
if that happens automatic anyway, fine, that's that's certainly has been the case
for the past two hundred years. But everything kind of runs out of gas
eventually and you had to change. So what's the goal isn't to mean I'm
not a nihilist. I'm not saying the goal is to throw to torch the
idea here. I'm just saying, find another way to do it. The
point, the strategy, the goal is the same, the pathway is different.
So Yale to Lenda st Well, there's hope. One of the most
popular series on streaming last month I think was The Three Body Problem, which
starts out with a very vivid and effective demonstration of a communist Red Guard struggle
session. And I'm watching this. I think it's Netflix, Apple, I
don't know. I think about Ian McGregor, who's stuck in a hotel in
Moscow during the Bolshevik revolutions. My god, the comedies are pretty general.
Moscow comedies are pretty yeah. Yeah, the Bolshies are pretty awful. Horrible
people there too, So I mean that's that's two representations commedi's in the media
and lately as being bad. That's a heartening sign. And also, while
we of course horror collectivism, we do like people getting together. And I
believe Rob you before we go, we need to tell us about some meetups
that are going to be happening. Yeah, I would just say the greatest
thing about Ricochet is that we have I r L in real life gatherings,
which are kind of the fun of it. You know, sometimes we I
think we spend too much time front of a screen. Later this year,
Ricochet members are getting together Bore the National Review Cruise. That's mid June,
so I think it's still places available, So if you're if you're mid June
free, you can join your fellow Ricochet members and go there. And I
know they always have a couple of meetups there and they have a couple of
tables and it's actually a lot of fun. But I've had I've had more
fun meeting Ricochet members on those cruises. I'm not going on this one,
but there are a lot of fun. Last week, Katie Koppleman member Katie
Cauleman put out in our tineray for fourth of July weekend meetup in Fargo.
I would be there. I would be there. That's around the corner from
you. Yes, okay, so that's fourth of July. Uh Fargar,
North Dakota. Matt Bauser is hosting the annual German Fest meetup in Milwaukee during
the last weekend of July, so we have, you know, we have
mid June and July kind of taken care of and the and Randy Wivoda is
hosting a meeting meeting up in Saint Louis in early October. And Randy is
like this incredible meetup, you know, Master mc impresario. He put together
the one we did in New Orleans a little while ago. And uh,
and they're always really they're more than just a meetup. He usually puts together
something else too, and Saint Louis is a really interesting place, a really
interesting city. So those are just the three that are on my dashboard,
but there are more always coming up. And if you're like, well,
listen the fourth of July, I can't make it. I can't get July
and June or done and October maybe, but I want to do one in
September. Join Ricochet, put up a member post, tell us when and
where you want to meet, and I guarantee you the Ricochet membership will show
up, because that's what we do. M It's like the Elks, it's
like the ioof It's like the Kowanas, the Rotarians and the rest of it,
with all the rules and the rest of it. So yes, Ricochet,
go there. Join if you haven't already, and if you've been listening
to six hundred and eighty on any of these podcasts, I think maybe six
hundred and ninety out of be the one that finally gets you to join,
or maybe six ninety one. I do. It's been it's been a lot
of fun. Nothing starts my Friday my weekend off better than sitting here in
this room, staring out at the skyline of my great City and talking to
Robin Peter and I hope everybody's enjoyed the conversation as well. We'll see you
all in the comments at Ricochet four point out next week. Guys, next
week, fellas Ricochet join the conversation