#377 – Harvey Silverglate: Freedom of Speech

32:29But do you also believe in this open space of discourse that the insultor will eventually lose? I think that's true. I think of the insultor eventually will wear out his own or welcome. I do. But I like to know who the insultor is. Because it gives you a deeper understanding of human nature. Yeah. And usually, by the way, by experience, it's been that the insultors have generally not been as smart as the people they've insulted. And that's probably one of the reasons they insult them because they feel inferior. I mean, I'm not trying to be a psychoanalyst here. But a lot of the people who are the haters are pretty low down in the intellectual scale.

33:14Anyway, 95 % of administration, you would fire, you're calling to fire 95 % of the administration. People should know. I think people that don't really think about the structure of the way the universities work are not familiar, I think, with the fact that administration, there's a huge bloat of administration. When you think about what makes a great university, it's about the students, it's about the faculty, it's about the people that do research, if it's a research university. They don't think about the bureaucracy of meetings and committees and rules and paperwork and all that and all the people that are involved with pushing that kind of paper.

33:57And there's a huge cost to that. But it also slows down and suppresses the beautiful variety that makes the university great, which is the teaching, the student life, the protest, the clubs, all the fun that you can have in the university, all the very kind of exploration, which you can't really do once you graduate. Correct. So the university is a place to really explore in every single way. So let me just talk about this important thing because I'm very fortunate to have contacted you, almost by accident, in a very important moment in your life. You're running for the Harvard Board of Overseers.

34:41What is this board? How much power does it have? And what would you do if elected it? Okay. First of all, I have a prediction that in about five years, they could have probably changed the name because Overseers reminds people of the slavery and we're in a such a politically correct ear now that the English language is being restricted, corrupted the way I put it, because certain words are forbidden. We have some problems in this country, and I think part of the problem is the educational system has lost a sense of what academic freedom and free speech are all about. And I think it's essential that the educational system begin to take more seriously what free speech and either freedom really are.

35:32That's why I'm running for the Harvard Board of Overseers. So let me just link on the role of the administration in protecting free speech. So what often happens, I think you've written about this, is there's going to be a few, maybe a small number of hypersensitive students and faculty that protest. So how does Harvard administration resist the influence of those hypersensitive protesters in protecting speech and protecting even hate speech? Harvard has done fairly well under the presidency of Lawrence Backow. I have had a couple of meetings with Backow. I like Backow. I have donated to Harvard a print of my late wife took a picture of Bob Dylan and Alan Ginsburg when the Rolling Thunder review got to Harvard Square and it's sort of an iconic photograph.

36:33She called it the music lesson because it's got Dylan teaching Ginsburg how to play the guitar. And I donated one of those to Harvard. It's hanging in Backow's office. He, the new president, Claudine Gay, is not known for respecting academic freedom and free speech. People have said to me, well, give him a chance. Well, I'm willing to give her a chance, but she does have a record. And she's a bureaucrat. I don't think she believes in free speech and academic freedom. I think she's a progressive, not a liberal. I'm not happy with the, the, the, the appointment of, uh, Claudine Gay, and it has made more essential by attempt to get on the board of overseers.

37:21So let's talk about the board of overseers. And, uh, you're run for it. The specifics, actually. It would be, you'd be nice because I think you're a writing candidate. And the election is over on May 16th. Yes. And I think there's specifics. I'll probably give them in the intro, give links to people, but the specifics are complicated. I mean, just mention that you have to be Harvard alumni. So I've graduated from Harvard. You have to in order to run in order to vote in order to vote. And the process I imagine is not trivial, but, uh, this is done online. And if you're an alumni, you should have received an email from a particular email address, Harvard, at MG, election services court .com.

38:11And presumably, there's a way to get some validation number from that email. And then you go online, you enter that validation number and you vote. And you do vote for Harvey. You have to enter his name correctly. Harvey Silverglate and spell it correctly. Obviously, I'm imagining this because I'm MIT not Harvard. So I'm imagining the process is not trivial. You have to click on things, you have to, uh, sort of follow instructions that are not trivial. And I'll also provide an email if the process is painful. It doesn't work for you that you can email email Harvard and complain. IT help at Harvard IDU.

38:56And so I'll provide all the links. But is there something else you can say about the voting process, uh, what you're running on? This is my second run. The first time I got enough signatures to get on the ballot, then the Harvard Alumni Association sent out a letter to all living Harvard alums recommending that they vote for the officially nominated candidates that excluded two petition candidates of whom I was one. And um, I wrote to the Alumni Association and I said, you have now sent out the curriculum V ties and the policy positions of all the officially nominated candidates. There were two petition candidates on the ballot.

39:52I would like to be able to send out my positions to the voters. They wrote me back saying our policy is to only send out the policy positions and the platforms of officially nominated candidates. Can you believe that? Well, this is a liberal arts college, right? Um, from the, where from the clash of ideas, truth of Burgess, well, really? This is what I call Harvard's not so subtle means of candidate suppression, not voter suppression, candidate suppression. And um, everybody can vote, but not everybody can run. It is, it will, it will becomes a liberal arts college where, you know, the clash of ideas will produce the truth.

40:46We're one of the class of ideas on the board of, overseas. The board of offices is important. It doesn't have the same power and authority as the Harvard Corporation, so -called president and fellows of Harvard College, but it's very influential and very important. And it would be a great perch for me to try to exert influence for the university to get back to where it was before it was taken over by the administrators. Well, I'm pretty sure that most of Harvard alumni and most of the students currently going to Harvard, most of the faculty at Harvard probably stand behind that ideas and the ideals that you stand behind.

41:26Yep. The people that love Harvard and what it stands for. See, the alumni were educated in an era when these concepts were taken more seriously. And before the administration administrators took over. So I do think if I get my message out, I'm going to win a seat. And if I win a seat, I will have a great perch for trying to convince the real power that beat, which is the Harvard Corporation, to do the things that I'm suggesting. You know, get rid of nine percent of five percent of the administrators, get rid of the speech codes, reduce tuition by 40 percent. All of these salutary benefits. Can you imagine if Harvard became the most affordable college in the United States?

42:13Well, the affordability is another aspect, but I think before that, just the freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of thought. Yeah. In America's greatest universities, I think, is something that everybody would agree on. It would have a tremendous effect on the whole country. And is there something to say about the details of how difficult it is for alumni to vote? Well, experience with this. You could vote online or you can vote my paper ballot. You could request the paper ballot. And all I could say is that the hard part is getting the message out. My name doesn't appear on the ballot because I couldn't get enough signatures.

43:00Well, Harvey, Harvey Silverglate. S -I -L -V -R -G -L -A -T. You know, when my grandparents arrived from Russia. The name in Russian was something like Zilvaglit. And the immigration officer had several choices. He could have said Silverglate. Gate is a real silver and gate, a real English words. He could have said Silverglate, G -L -A -D -E. Those are really English words. That's how my name is often this spell. The Silverglate or Silverglate. Silverglate is a nonsense syllable. And why the immigration officer chose to translate Silverglate as Silverglate, I will never understand. And it is the cause of endless mistakes in my name.

43:54Well, the fundamental absurdity of life. Yes, it's also the source of its beauty. Yes. Anyway, we shall spell it out and we shall get a yell, loud, and wide that everybody who is ever graduated from Harvard should vote for you if they believe in the ideals of the great American universities, which I think most people do. Let me also ask about diversity inclusion and equity programs. You've had a few harsh words to say about those. The idea of diversity, I think, is a beautiful idea. You've said that Harvard's idea of diversity is for everyone to look different and think alike. Correct. Can you elaborate?

44:38And be comfortable. And be comfortable. Yeah. First of all, it is impossible. If liberal law of education is taken seriously, it's impossible for students to feel comfortable. Why? Because one of the roles of college is to challenge all the beliefs that they grew up with, which mostly are the beliefs inculcated by parents and by elementary school teachers. And the idea is to be able to challenge those thoughts, those ideas. And if you don't have free speech and academic freedom, those views get reified, they do not get challenged. So it violates the fundamental role of higher educational institutions to have any restrictions at all.

45:29That's number one. Number two, as I think I said earlier, if people, students are not allowed to be frank with one another, they don't really learn about one another. And I've given a lot of lectures in which I have said, and I think students now understand that I'm much more interested in hearing from the people who hate me than the people who love me. I'm much more interested in knowing who disagrees with me than people who agree with me. That's how I learn. And that's how they learn the clash of ideas, which is the theory behind the first amendment. The truth will somehow emerge or if not truth, at least a better truth, a true truth, a more useful truth, if ideas are allowed to clash.

46:27Especially in the structure of university where, at least I would say there's some set of rules, some set of civility. I think I would rather read mine comp to understand people that hate. There is also quality to disagreement that we should strive for. And I think in universities, a place where when disagreement and even hate is allowed, it's done in a high effort way. Somebody asked me once about what books I would have as required reading in literature courses, and I listed my income. And they were horrified. And I said, well, it's one of the most important books of the 20th century. I mean, 60 million Jews died, and enormous number of other people died, because one guy wrote a book called mine comp and took it seriously.

47:18It's one of the most important books ever written. How can an educated person not have at least reased through mine comp? And it's not a great read though. It's not a great read. He was not a great writer, but you do get a sense the sociopath that was Ed Olf Hitler. Yes, because he really acted on the words that he wrote. Yeah. And it was there. And if people took that work seriously, correct, they would have understood. It's one of the most important books of the 20th century. And it's politically incorrect to read it. It's crazy. But can you speak to the efforts to increase diversity in universities, which I think is embodied in this DIE effort of diversity, inclusion, and equity programs?

48:12Where do they go right? Where do they go wrong? Okay, let me tell you first of all, this may surprise a lot of people. I am opposed to affirmative action. And I think that what it does is it labels people by their race, by their religion, and by their national origin. Precisely what we don't want people to do is be pigeonholed in those categories. The reason that affirmative action has become the way that universities decide on who gets admitted is because historically, people in what's called marginalized groups, blacks, gays, Hispanics. have been discriminated against in the admissions process.

49:10Now, what I have suggested is that instead of affirmative action, and by the way, here's a prediction, the Supreme Court is going to abolish affirmative action. There's a case pending, there's a Harvard case.

49:26There were two cases joined together, one of a public university and one of a private university. The private university is Harvard. I predict that the Supreme Court will vote six to three to abolish affirmative action. It is on its face, it is a violation of equal protection of the law. Some groups are favored because of race or ethnicity. It is a classic violation of equal protection clause. When affirmative action was approved, the deciding vote was just the Sandra Deo Conner. She wrote a very famous opinion in which she said, I hesitate to vote to keep up dear to who affirm the notion of affirmative action because it's such an obvious violation of the law.

50:19We have an urgent problem in society. We are not educating our members of racial ethnic minorities. We have to try to get them into our colleges. I think it should be approved for 25 years and it should perform this role. The 25 years is coming up. I think it's three or four years left. The Supreme Court is going to abolish it. You can take my word for that because it's such an obvious violation of equal protection. Why did the affirmative action come into play? Because the secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Public secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Why are they so bad? Partly because of the control that the teachers' union has Randy Wollingart and runs the public school system in the United States.

51:26What I have suggested is that the effort should be to, this is an emergency, it's a national emergency, to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. One way to do it is to hire teachers who are fabulous teachers rather than necessarily members of the union. I have come to oppose public workers unions. I am a very strong supporter of unions in the private sector. Why do I think there's such a difference between unions in the public sector and the private sector? In the private sector, management is arguing, bargaining with its own money and with the money of shareholders. In the public sector, there's only one side.

52:27There is the teachers' union and then there's a school committee that is dealing with the taxpayers' money, not their room. And so it's a very skewed power balance. So as supportive as I am of private sector unions, I am in a position of public sector unions. They're very destructive. And I think without teachers' union, teachers who are really skilled will be able to get jobs. They would not have to worry about the seniority of teachers who long since have given a really creative teaching. And we have to improve the public educational system. I had in my late wife and I had a classmate of, we have a son who's now 44 who went to the public schools in Cambridge.

53:24He has a friend, first name Eugene, who was black kid from Roxbury, whose mother understood that the schools in Roxbury were terrible. The schools in Cambridge were pretty good. He lived in our house Monday to Friday and he went to school with Isaac in the Cambridge public schools. Elsewhere I would show up the school committee meetings when there was bargaining between the teachers' union and the school committee. The teachers' union objected to our being there. We argued with taxpayers. We have a kid in the school and his best friend lives with us and goes to school with him. We have a real interest.

54:16And the school committee walked out of the bargaining session. The city council then reconsidered his vote and they voted that citizens, taxpayers, parents of kids in the school could not show up to these negotiation sessions. I thought that was absolutely outrageous. But I understood why because these contracts are crazy. No sane municipality should enter into some of these contracts. So I have become an opponent of the National Teachers Association, the Cambridge Teachers Association. I don't think there should be unions for public employees because there's no real bargaining going on. I think that the public school system will never be improved as long as the teachers are unionized.

55:22So that to you is that the core of the problem that results in the kind of inequality of opportunity that affirmative action is designed to solve. So if the educational system in the elementary and high school levels is improved, we would need affirmative action. These kids would get good educations. So from all backgrounds, poor kids in the United States will get good education if public unions are abolished. Correct. But do you more? And it's a down the the postal service would probably work better too. That's a whole another conversation. But do you at the core of the problem of inequality in universities that diversity, inclusion and equity programs that trying to solve is the public education system of secondary education.

56:17Yes, correct. Elementary and secondary. Elementary and secondary education. Well, then is there use? What is the benefit? What is the drawback of DIE? Diversity, inclusion and equity programs at universities that covered? It's an affirmative action basically. And what it does is it allows the system of elementary and secondary education to be bad because they could say, oh, we get our kids into Harvard. Yes, but you haven't educated them. And it covers up the wound. And I think we'll never improve as long as we're able to cover up the wound. And as I said, affirmative action is going to be abolished by the Supreme Court.

57:02It's a clear violation of equal protection. There's what's sandwiched day of honor understood, but ignored intentionally, but as an experiment. And I believe it's going to be abolished and that's going to have that's going to force the elementary and high schools to get serious. Do you see the same issues that you discussed now at Harvard at MIT? We're here in Boston. So I have to talk about the great universities here in Boston. You've written about MIT. I'm the University I love. I'm a research scientist there. Do you see the same kind of issues there? Yes, I do. Do you remember, can you explain the case of Dorian Abbott lecture that was canceled at MIT?

57:46Yeah, well, this is not the only, it's not the only incident. There have been incidents all around the country of academics, professors who have used it. Don't comport with the, as the great Lily and Helm and another friend of my late wife said they, they, she said she refused to cut her garments in order to fit the fashions of the day. Dorian Abbott didn't cut his suit to fit the fashions of the day in his intellectual suit. And so he was, this has happened that Princeton, this has happened at Harvard, this has happened at MIT. The great universities in the country have decided that the clash of ideas is not such a good idea because some people's feelings will be hurt.

58:40Well, this is, there was quite a revolt against it. Fire sounded the alarm. And then in the end, the universities were, I believe, Abbott was invited to come back. I think he turned them down. He shouldn't have turned them down, but he did. And when, when the lightest cast upon these situations, the universities back down because they're so embarrassed. And the newspapers, because newspapers depend on the first amendment in order to exist, newspapers tend to give pretty good publicity to these cases of such issues. So they grow the universities. So they really emphasize they catalyze the embarrassment.

59:26Yes. So is that one of the ways? Is that the best way to fight all of this? Yes. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. You've written about MIT's connection to Jeffy Epstein. Yes. He was well connected at MIT and at Harvard. What do you, what lessons do you draw about human nature, about universities, about all of this from the saga? Let me say this. I believe that universities, if somebody was, for example, donate to a university and it's on the requirement that the building be named after them. If the university is taking donations and the person is funding a building, the unit wants the building named after them, the building should be named after him, however, or them.

1:00:14Harvard is facing this now with the Sackler building because Sackler, the Sackler has become now a persona non grata because of their role in producing the opioids that caused a huge scandal, a soapy, oil addiction. There are people who want to remove the name, the Sackler from the Sackler Art Museum in Harvard. Larry Bakow, the president of Harvard, to his credit, has refused to do that. If it reminds people that the money was earned through selling opioids, that's good. That's good that people understand that that's where the Sackler Scott Dam money. They should be reminded in my undergraduate alma mater Princeton.

1:01:05There's a movement to remove the name Woodrow Wilson because Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton before he became governor of New Jersey before he became president of the state. How he got to be governor of New Jersey was he was so insufferable that the trustees of Princeton got an nomination to run for governor of New Jersey. They said we got to get this guy out of here.

1:01:29He was anti -black and anti -semitic because the trustees were as well, but because he just was insufferable, he drove the faculty crazy and they got a battle.

1:01:42Princeton was thinking of changing the name. I wrote a letter to president Icekrobert, Princeton saying, this is part of the university's history. You want to rewrite history falsely? Woodrow Wilson was the president of this institution. He was one of New York predecessors. He never answered me either. I think these people, they know they have no answer. The reason I didn't get a response from president Icekrobert is the same as the reason I didn't get a response from the headmaster of Milton the Academy. They understand that what they're doing is violative of the fundamental precepts of academic institutions.

1:02:24They're ashamed. They feel they have no choice because they feel that they would be criticized for racism, homophobia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Curricized by how many people? Well, they feel that they would be criticized by students and parents and donors. I disagree with that. I actually think there are more people out there that agree with me than agree with them. Yeah, by a large margin. By a large margin, in what I call the real world, which is the world outside the campus, but academics are afraid they'd be criticized. They're incredibly thin skinned. When I say academics, I mean academic administrators.

1:03:03They're very thin skinned, politically correct, holy and then now. As I said, I would fire 95 % of them and I would be more careful in who I elected to any institution. So I said, Pauline Gay is probably going to be a disastrous Harvard. So it takes guts. It takes courage to be in the administration when the task of protecting the freedom of speech is there. And also, which in part requires you to admit and to uphold the mistakes you have done in the past. Correct. Not to hide them. Correct. And that to you, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein for Harvard and MIT is a very recent mistake. Well, this is a debate whether it's a mistake.

1:03:51They took money from him. Yes. Okay. Is it a mistake to take money from bad people? Do you have to do a morals test of a potential donor? I don't think so. It's complicated because if there are no conditions attached to it, I think it's emotionally complicated. I don't think it is rationally complicated. It's emotionally complicated. It's particularly complicated if they want naming rights. Yes. You know, the Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein biological laboratory. That would be a problem from most universities. I don't think that naming rights have to be given to somebody that you don't think is worthy of having their name.

1:04:41I think that university has the right to say no. We'll take your money, but we will not name the building if you. I think if you have a right to do that, there's some degree in which you whitewash the name though. If you not not with naming rights, but if you take the money, it allows the person in public discourse to say that they're collaborating, they're working together with Harvard I have a problem with universities making morals tests of donors because not every donor is as bad as Epstein, but some of the donors made their money in industry by being repacious, by paying low wages, by exploiting people.

1:05:29You can make the case that accepting money from the Department of Defense from DARPA, from the United States organizations that contributed to waging war and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians over the past few decades. Folks like the 10 -year professor, known Chomsky will make the case that that is far more evil than accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein. Yes. Still, Jeffrey Epstein is a known pedophile. Yes. So that's why I say I would not give him naming rights. I think the university has the autonomy to not give naming rights, but I think that giving morals tested donors is a Pandora's box.

1:06:16What do you think about the aftermath of the Jeffrey Epstein saga? It feels like I'm not familiar with Harvard's response, but MIT's response seemed to fire a few scapegoats and didn't seem like a genuine response to the evils that human beings are capable of sort of rising to the surface, the description in a fully transparent way of all the interactions that happened in Jeffrey Epstein and what that means. What that means about the role of money in universities, what that means about just human beings in power. Money is essential to run the university. One of the reasons is essential is because the university is artificially requires huge amounts of money, and that's partly because of the administrative army that they support.

1:07:16They wouldn't be less dependent on the Jeffrey Epstein's world if they didn't have the sort of all part of the same circle. But there's attention here. You're saying we shouldn't be putting a morals test on money, but actually if you make if you expand the amount of money needed to run the university, you're going to make less and less more and more unethical decisions. Correct. I'm flexible enough to say that I don't think I would name a building if somebody who is truly evil. I think the university has the right to limit the naming rights on a for donor. If I was an absolutist, I would not even say that.

1:08:01I'm not an absolutist. I have my limits. And that's one of the Jeffrey Epstein biological laboratories. A little bit much. It feels like there should be a requirement on there should be moral requirements on who to accept money from. But the question is that the concern you have is about who gets to the side. And what's the alternative? Correct. I think there is no alternative. I think the turning down donation because you don't approve of the conduct of the donor is a Pandora's box.

1:08:44But I'm just sick and by the fact that an evil human being was allowed to walk in the halls of a university I love. So what do we do with that? Well, you tell me that you know the student's arrival or you tell me know the faculty members are really telling me some of the administrators arrival. But that doesn't. Sure. Sure. So, saying scapegoating, saying that Jeffrey Epstein is evil can help us forget, can aid us in forgetting that there is other evil in the world. And some of it might be roaming still the halls of MIT and Harvard. Hey, listen, I won't tell you the name, but I represented somebody in the MIT administration a few years ago, who is who is charged with sexual and propriety against students.

1:09:35And as a lawyer, I represented that person. People say, how could you represent some of the people I represent a bad people? So how can you represent them? I said, well, if I was a cardiologist and this person had a heart attack on the street, I didn't to live a CPR. I would be have my license taken away. I'm a lawyer. The only difference in my obligation and the death of the obligation is the constitution gives people the right to assistance of counsel. They don't have this kind of, there's nothing about the assistance of cardiologists. I have a very high duty to represent unpopular people. Well, I think I apply the same test to college donors.

1:10:17The university should not have a morals test. Who's money to take? I do draw a line about naming rights or buildings. And I say that's an inconsistency with my absolution. But I just emotionally, I just can't deal with having, you know, as I said, the Jeffrey Epstein Biological Laboratory. Well, for me, emotionally, there's nothing that sickens me more in the university than the abuse of power. Right. And there's a lot of people who abuse power in the university. And especially when it comes to abuse power of students. So sexual harassment, so in the realm of sexual abuse of power and all kinds of other.

1:11:03Well, it's a crime to use one's power position in order to take sexual advantage of a student. It's a crime. Yeah. This is not a close question. Yeah, but there's a legal crime. And there is a deeply ethical crime. And there's an emotional response that I have. You are a good lawyer and perhaps a good man to want to defend some folks who are evil in this world. I don't think I have that emotional fortitude. Well, you shouldn't be a criminal defense lawyer or a cardiologist. I think you're right. I'm still deeply sickened by Jeffrey Epstein and the faculty, the administration that still might be in these great American universities that are abusing their power in small ways and big ways.

1:11:53But that's human nature. You get a little bit of power and you're in bad manner, a bad woman and you take advantage of it. Yep. We see that in the smallest of ways and in the biggest of the ways. And institutions and regimes all across the world. Ah, boy. Harvey, it's a complicated situation. Well, it's a complicated world and it's complicated to be a human being and this is nothing new. And we should talk about it without restriction. All right. Just a linger on liberal arts in 2014. I'm probably still today. You wrote that liberals are killing the liberal arts. Yes. So can you explain? Yes. The problem with I'm a political liberal.

1:12:39The problem with the political left is that it has divided between what's called progressives and liberals. Liberals are people of the left who believe in the first amendment, an absolute first amendment and in due process of law. And the problem with what progressives now in the pursuit of equality, what they view as equality, they're willing to bend those rules. And this movement actually started in Brandeis. The critical, it's the critical race theory. It started at Herbert Mark Kuzum as a professor at Brandeis and he came up with his theory. The theory was this. This is right out of war well.

1:13:38In order to create true equality in a society where you have some downtrodden and some who are the uber mentioned. In order to create real equality, you have to reduce the rights of the upper classes and artificially increase the rights of the lower classes. And that will produce an unequal treatment. True equality will be attained. This is nonsense. The idea of discrimination, producing true equality is nonsense. My view is, as I've said earlier in our discussion, that the way to increase the opportunities for the lower classes is to give them real educations. And until we do that, it's not going to happen.

1:14:46And in order to do that, we have the overcome the problem of the teachers unions at the elementary and secondary school levels. Until we're willing to do that, honestly, and then improve those schools, we're going to have a problem of a large number of uneducated people who need a boost because we haven't given them proper educations. What do you think about some of the more controversial faculty in the world? So an example, somebody I've spoken with many times on Mike and offline is Jordan Peterson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work. Yes. But he is an all -spoken critic of or proponent of free speech on campus.

1:15:29And he's been attacked quite a bit. He's a controversial figure which throw the university to protect the Jordan Peterson's of the world. I think a university has an absolute, absolute, not relative, not worried, that absolute role obligation to protect the academic freedom of even the most controversial faculty members. And you can imagine, out of university campus, you have more people who are outliers than you do in the general population. And that's the hope at least, hopefully, yeah. And those outliers have to be protected. They can't be pressured. They can't be fired. They can't be disabled from spewing their views whether they're considered racist, whether they're considered to be a promoted idea of human society that's considered obnoxious.

1:16:30It doesn't matter. If you can't have freedom of thought on the college campuses, where can you? You know, them were lost as a society were lost. And as an educational institution, education institutions no longer educate, they were indoctrinated. That we have to avoid it all, of course. And we should also remember that the outlier might also be the only bearer of truth. So in Nazi Germany, speaking against the fascism, fascist regime, and communist Soviet Union speaking against communism, they might hold the key to solving the ailments of that society. Absolutely. And some of the most important discoveries in science, for example, were mocked at the beginning.

1:17:22We think of poor Charlie Darwin. Charlie, I see he is on nickname levels with you. Well, because we're talking about these big topics of sexism, racism, and hate, you should not forget about the smaller topics which might even have the much bigger impact, which is what you're speaking to, which is outlier ideas and science. So basically welcoming controversial ideas and science. And by controversial, I mean, just stuff that most of the community doesn't agree on, it doesn't actually harm anyone at all. But even then, there's always pressure. One of the things I'm really concerned about is how little power young faculty have, that there's a kind of hierarchy, seniority, that's that universities have empowered by the administration, where young faculty that come in, they're kind of pre -tenure.

1:18:20Yeah, there's a process in chasing tenure where you're kind of supposed to behave. And there's an incentive to kind of fit in and to not be in all cast. And that's a really huge problem because oftentimes the youth is when the craziest, the biggest ideas, the revolution ideas come. And if you're a force to behave and fit in and not speak out, then even on the realm of science, though, the innovation is stifled. Well, now you trigger my, I'll tell you this story. Your trigger, this is good. In the mid 1980s, I decided to take a four -month sabbatical from my law practice. Yes. Professor James Vormberg, who was the time dean of the Harvard Law School, heard about it.

1:19:09Heard about it from his wife, Elizabeth Betty Vormberg, who I was very friendly with because we were both on the ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts Board at the time. And the Betty told Jim that Harvey was taking this sabbatical. Jim called Harvey and asked Harvey if he would like to teach a course at the Harvard Law School because there was nobody who had teaching criminal law from the perspective of somebody who actually was in court litigated. There was all theoretical. I said, sure, I'll do it. So I taught a semester at Harvard Law School. The student evaluations were fabulous. Why? Because it was really interesting.

1:19:56They were hearing a lawyer who was talking about real cases. I actually brought in a few of my clients to some of the classes. And so Jim called me and said, hurry, the students love this course. I'd like to offer you a 10 -year -track position at the law school. You'd have to give up your law practice. I turned them down. He said, did you just say no? I said, yes, I said no. He said, how come? He says, nobody has ever invited administration. Has ever turned down a 10 -year -track offer at Harvard Law School. So because I could see that I'm not a good fit, that the administrators are overrun the place, that faculty members, especially untenured, afraid to say things that might not get help them in a 10 -year quest, it's not a good fit for me.

1:20:53You saw this in the mid 1980s already? Yes, 1985. And I went back to my law practice. I did not want to get into this meet grind that I saw. If you were, I started to see it before the turn of the century because I co -authored the shadow university in 1998 and then co -founded fire in 1999. I was a really student of this phenomenon. What are some other aspects of the book, the shadow university, that we may have not covered? Well, let me tell you a story. I believe I tell it in the shadow university because it was I'm loving these stories, Harvey. The story is a fabulous. Let me tell you a story of I did a tour of the country, go visiting campuses.

1:21:47I visited a college called Hamline University, I believe it was in Indiana, Raleigh, Illinois, somewhere in the Midwest. And I attended a freshman orientation. Now listen to this. This was a freshman orientation. The administrators, the deans and the deenats and the deputy assistant deans and deenats and the third deputy assistant deans and deenats lined the students up according to their skin hues. The blonde, blue -eyed white folks were at one end. The darkest, you know, African -Americans who had, whose bloodlines had not yet mixed with any of the whites on the other end. And the exercise was you had to tell how your race affected your success in life up until that point.

1:22:49I thought it was the most demeaning thing that why could imagine demeaning. I thought to myself they could do the same about sexual orientation. They could do the same about religion. They could do the same about national origin. It would be demeaning no matter what. And the students actually verbalized how their race had either been a plus or a minus. They did. They did. And I thought it was so demeaning. It just confirmed all of my distaste for this kind of approach. Let me ask you from the interviewer seat. So I get to do this podcast and I often have to think about giving a large platform and having a conversation with very controversial figures.

1:23:45And the level of controversy has been slowly increasing. What's the role of this medium to you? This medium of speech between two people and me speaking with a controversial figure, me or some other interviewer? What's the role of giving platform to controversial figures? Same members of the KKK or dictators, people who are seen as evil? Well, we want to face the world with reality. And the reality is that there are some unpleasantnesses in the world. Running from genocide right through to ordinary discrimination to defensiveness. It's the real world as we know it exists. We are afraid to say it.

1:24:37Do we want to make people think that we live in a world where those words are not used, where those animals cities don't exist? The answer is no. But you can whitewash, you can normalize the use of those words and you can whitewash the acceptability of certain leaders. So for example, interviewing Hitler in 1938, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938. Those are all different dynamics there. But you can normalize this person and in so doing create enormous harm. Well, see, I don't see this normalizing. I see this exposing. If more people had taken one comes seriously, Franklin Roosevelt would have acted much sooner.

1:25:20He only got us into the war. As Congress gives, since the war, one of the Japanese made the mistake of attacking Pearl Harbor. But there were some people in the State Department. There were some people in the administration who were trying to get Roosevelt to see what Hitler was really like. And he was blind to it. And this was one of the greatest presidents in the United States ever had. He was blind to it until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So I think that words on pleasant ideas as expressed by words are essential for communicating fact and truth and reality. And that's why I think that we should not whitewash language.

1:26:12We should not whitewash the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pretty close to MIT and Harvard. And Harvard. And your reality actually means something. Yeah, but from the role of the interviewer, that's something I have to think a lot about. Whether interviewing Hitler, you said exposing. I think it's hard to know what Hitler's like in a room. But it's also hard to know I've never met Jeffrey Epstein's hard to know what Jeffrey Epstein's like in a room. But I imagine to some degree their charismatic figures. So exposing them in the interview setting is not an easy task. Well, interviewing is not an easy job.

1:26:57Yeah. It's not a good idea to have an interviewer be an idiot.

1:27:07I know exactly what you're saying. And I know why you're looking at me directly as you say it. I appreciate that. All right. Let me ask about your friend, your colleague, Alan Dershowitz. And I'll also ask about your review of his most recent book. But before then, it would be interesting to ask what you think of him as a human being as a lawyer. He's a quite an interesting case. He's represented some of the most controversial figures in history. Including Jeffrey Epstein. Including Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Tyson, Julian Assange, Jim Baker, and Jeffrey Epstein and even Donald Trump. So he's an interesting figure.

1:27:46What do you think about that? Clemens from Buello. What do you think about him as a human being as a lawyer? What he represents in terms of values and ideals? Well, he's a criminal defense lawyer. And the job of a criminal defense lawyer is to represent accused criminals. He is a lifelong Democrat. He didn't represent Trump because he agrees with him politically. What if a Hillary, I believe you're all? He what if a Hillary? Yes. That's what he says. And I absolutely believe it. He's a liberal Democrat. But he's a criminal defense lawyer as well as a professor. And I represented some very nasty people in my career.

1:28:33I wouldn't go out for coffee with them. But they have a constitutional rights to representation. And you take that very seriously. Yes. You notice something that people don't understand about Der Schubert's? He was asked to my Trump to represent him in the second impeachment as well. He turned him down. Why do you think he turned down? So people should know he represented Trump in the first impeachment. He represented only in the first. And he was successful in what Trump is impeached the second time he asked Alan to represent him. Alan has had a life -throwed policy of only representing somebody once, never twice.

1:29:13Why? Because he never wanted to be House Council to the Mafia. And so he early on had this position. He only represents somebody once. Mafia wants a lawyer who's in House Council who represents them in all their cases. So that's the reason. And now I'm never publicly explained that I know it's the fact because I've known him from the day that we met at Harvard Law School 1964. He was a first -year professor. I was a first -year student. We both had Brooklyn accents and we hit it off. We've been close friends ever since. So there's some kind of unethical line that's crossed when you continuously represent a client?

1:29:57Yeah. He thought it was not so much an ethical one. You have a right to represent Mafia people. But he didn't want to be House Council. He didn't want to be, have them ask him for advice and advance of what they were doing. He was willing to represent somebody once no matter how awful. I mean, Class Vambulo was accused of killing his wife. These are pretty nasty people. But he didn't want to be House Council to any of them. So you wrote a review of Alan Dershowitz's new book on Donald Trump. The title of that book is Get Trump, The Threat to Civil Liberties Do Process, and our Constitutional Rule of Law.

1:30:40Can you summarize this book and your review of it? Yes, by the way, I co -authored it with my research assistant sitting right here. Emily? Yes. And I thought that the book was another example of the fact that everybody is entitled to a defense and that Alan's being involved with purely professional. It was not political. It was not philosophical. And I thought that the fact that he was being criticized, he was being shunned because of his connection to the Trump, I found very interesting that this is a guy who represented such a court of distasteful figures as Class Vambulo. As Mike Tyson, as OJ Simpson, a Sheldon Siegel.

1:31:42And when he was considered to be a skillful lawyer, made his reputation, and then he represents Donald Trump, who to my knowledge, never killed anybody. And he's suddenly shunned. I thought the hypocrisy of it, the political preening was very distasteful to me. And it was not only because he was my friend, if he wasn't my friend, that they had had the same view. The holier than now nonsense, the hypocrisy of it, they wouldn't talk to him on both his being though. Alan is not a different. I'm not so sensitive. I'm, someone doesn't want to talk to me. He's no problem, no problem at all. But Alan is considering how controversial his life has been.

1:32:41Yes, somewhat sensitive. He's somewhat sensitive. I've got to tell you Alan, you know, Alan, don't let it get to you. I can relate. I can definitely relate. Taking on some controversial conversations, still wear my heart on my sleeve. It hurts all of it. It hurts. But maybe the pain makes you a better student of human nature. Yeah. Maybe that's the case for him. Nevertheless, the book has a, makes a complicated and I think an interesting point. He opens the pair. He opens the book with not that Donald Trump has announced this candidacy for a re -electionist president, the unremitting efforts by his political opponents to get him to stop him from running at any cost will only increase.

1:33:23These efforts may pose the most significant threat to civil liberty since McCarthyism. So is he right? He's absolutely right. Because these attempted pros, for example, the prosecution, the one prosecution that has been brought now with Alvin Brag in the Manhattan. I have looked at that and I don't believe that Trump is committed to crime. And yet, Brag was pressured to bring that people in his office with threatening to quit if he didn't indict. Holy and proper, holy unethical. And he's going to lose the case. His Trump committed crimes, yes, most of their tax crimes. He has cheated on taxes, his whole career as far as I could tell.

1:34:10He could easily be indicted for state and federal taxes. But that's not a sexy. And I think that he's become a target by ambitious politicians and ambitious prosecutors. He has gotten some sympathy, which he doesn't deserve. And a lot of it is, with pardon the phrase political correctness, the better people are not supposed to be Trumpers. I had an interesting experience about Trump. I had two interesting experiences. The more recent one was I was in the house of Lauren Summers, the former president of Harvard, who was driven out by political correctness, by the way. He insulted women biologists.

1:35:04I was in his house when he was still president of Harvard, when the Trump Hillary Clinton contest took place. And I was with Elsa. We were invited to Summers house in Brooklyn. And it looked like Hillary was going to win. And the Harvard faculty members, they were all celebrating. They were all figuring out what they cabinet positions were going to be blah, blah, blah, blah. And then about 1130 at night, all of a sudden it was announced that in terms of electoral votes, Trump had just eaked out of victory that Hillary beat him in the popular vote. But he had won the electoral college. And there was a immediate depression.

1:36:00And that was meaning like quite over the room. The room with him absolutely stone salad. And they were all disappointed. Well, that was a memorable moment. And it told me that they were a little bit too overconfident. They were savoring being part of a presidential administration. Ambition had been thwarted. I'm not a great fan of preening ambition. I think it blinds people to realities. And the resulting arrogance from such ambition. And the arrogance, yes. It's one of the reasons I didn't accept Jim Warrenburg's offer to be part of the academic community. I mean, I represent professors. I have friends who will professors.

1:36:51I represent students. I have friends who are students. And I have a great regard for universities in higher education. But I was not about to become part of the culture. I thought that it was not good for me and not good for the institution either. They can a culture that can breed arrogance. Yes. Self -importance. Yep. And in a sense, the election of Donald Trump was a big FU to such correct. So just why I think he managed to pull it off. The jump topics a little bit. What do you think about something you've written about? What do you think about the mass surveillance programs by the NSA and also probably by other organizations, CIA, FBI and others?

1:37:41And broadly, what do you think about the importance of privacy for the American citizen? Okay. I believe that the FBI should be abolished. Because I believe that its culture was so corrupted by its first director, John Edgar Hoover, Jay Edgar Hoover, that it is impossible to reform the FBI to make his agents honest, to force them to obey the Constitution, the first, fourth and fifth amendments especially. And it's a culture that cannot be changed. A Hoover established the culture and no FBI director since has been able to change it. If you go online, I did on YouTube a video for the ACLU of Massachusetts.

1:38:43It was when I was on the board. I was probably when I was president of the board. I was president of the board for two years. I was on the board for 20 years. And I did a video about advising people to never, ever, ever talk to an FBI agent when they come knocking on your door. Can you briefly explain the intuition? Yes. Why not to talk to an FBI agent? They have a system. When they come in and interview you, two agents show up, never one. One asks the question the other one takes notes. The note taking agent takes notes. And it goes back to the office and types up a report called a Form 302, which is the official record of what was asked and answered.

1:39:34So when I have a client interviewed by the FBI, I show up. And I always agree, I almost always agree to the interview. But I bring a tape recorder. And I say, all right, I'm going to tape this and they say, well, my regulation, we're not allowed to do the interview of his tape. The record is the 302, the agent is taking notes. I say, well, I have a policy too. My policy is to never allow a client to be interviewed unless it's recorded. So it's unfortunate, but we're going to have to end this meeting and the agents get up and leave. And I have never seen a Form 302 that I consider to be accurate.

1:40:25The agents were right down what they wish you had said. Rather than what you said, it is a wholly corrupt organization that has not gotten any better since Hoover died. And fundamentally, the corruption is in the culture that is resisting the prosecution of the United States, the first and fourth and fifth. Correct. It's not financial corruption. It is corruption of the mission. And I think it should be abolished. And if we need a federal investigative agency, it should be a new name, a new culture, a new new director. And it's impossible to reform the FBI. Can you elaborate on what exactly is broken about the FBI?

1:41:19Is it the the famous saying from Stalin's KGB head Barry, show me the man and I'll show you the crime? Right. Is it that kind of process of? It's that kind of process. They decide who's guilty and then they go about concatenating a case against a person who they want to get. So the goal is not to find the truth or solve the case and close it and inconse to the reputations. But to show that an innocent man is guilty is also solving the case from their perspective. So to falsely convict or falsely imprison an innocent man is also solving the case. Well, it closes the case and they force the imprison innocent man.

1:42:08They're interested in closing cases. So that's the FBI. But broadly speaking about the surveillance aspect of this, what are your views on the right that an American citizen has to privacy? Well, what are tapping and electronic surveillance are very, very intrusive. And I think that the circumstances that these tools are used should be narrowed. For example, they're used in a lot of drug cases. Since I don't think drugs should be illegal in any event, I certainly think that it's a terrible violation of privacy to use why it's happening in a drug case. I could see it in cases of murder, or possibly in cases of serious extortion.

1:43:04But on other times, it has a crime. Where they wire a tap, especially drug cases, that bleed drug should all be legalized anyway. I think it's the price we pay as society is not worth it. There's on the Wikipedia page for nothing to hide, you're cited. In fact, your book that you gave me today, three felonies a day is cited. So nothing to hide argument. That's an argument that if you're a well -behaved citizen, you have nothing to hide in there for your privacy can be violated. Well, the problem is that under the federal criminal code, particularly the federal criminal code, it is very easy to be charged with a crime.

1:43:52Now why? Under the Constitution, the federal government does not have plenary criminal jurisdiction. That's up to the state. How is it that the feds indict in so many areas of American life? It's because the Supreme Court has allowed the following absolutely insane situation to prevail. Anything can be made a federal crime if in the course of the commission of the crime. The means of interstate communication or travel are used. That means that if you commit a crime, which is ordinarily would be a state crime, and you use the telephone or you send a letter, it suddenly becomes federal. That means that the limitation that the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution intended to keep the feds out of daily life and to give that jurisdiction to the state.

1:45:04Has been completely thwarted because I can't think of a case where somebody doesn't use the telephone in the course of planning, discussing something that's arguably criminal. And so this limited authority, the federal government, to bring charges in criminal cases is illusory. The feds can indict a ham sandwich. So basically everybody is guilty. And if the feds want to bring you in, they can. They can find a way. And that allows them to terrorize people who are dissidents. Yeah. What is broken, what works about the American criminal justice system from your perspective? The jury system. The jury system.

1:46:01Yes. You like the jury system. Every day citizens representing 12 ordinary people have to agree unanimously in order to convict. What do you think about the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court? What works and what is broken about the Supreme Court as an institution? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Well, the Supreme Court is unfortunately fairly political. And the current Supreme Court is overruling precedents, which are really improper. Presidents should not be overruled so easily. It's about to overrul a affirmative action. Now, I'm opposed to affirmative action. I think I made that clear earlier on discussion.

1:46:54But still, it's a precedent and it should be given some respect. But in order to in order to in order to propagate a more conservative agenda, the court is treating precedent as if it doesn't have any role. And that's a huge mistake. Some of the congressmen and the Democratic side are looking to enlarge the court in order to basically do what Franklin Roosevelt was not able to do. And that has changed the court's philosophy. But I think that's very short -sighted. Because this is a long game. This is a republic we have here. And anyone who tries to, for example, enlarge the court from 9 to 12 in order to get more liberals on the court, then some other administration will try to enlarge it from 12 to 15 to get more liberals on the court.

1:48:07You'd have a constant fiddling with very important institutions. So the law should have more lasting power than the political becaring of the day. Correct. Let me ask you, you've lived one heck of a life and fought a lot of battles and continued to do so with the Harvard Board of Overseers. First of all, thank you for that. But we're all human, we're all mortal. Do you ponder your death? Do you ponder your mortality? Are you afraid of it? Let me say this. My father died at 48. He died because he smoked. He died at 48 years. He smoked four packs of camels a day. He got a massive heart attack at 43.

1:48:53He continued to smoke despite death that he died at 48. So I did not expect to live this alone because I thought it was genetic. It turns out it was cigarettes. So here I am. I'm going to be 81 on May 10th. I was born on May 10th 1942, which was Mother's Day coincidentally. And I realized I'm not going to live forever. I also take pride in the fact that I have demonstrated that a lawyer does not have to go with a law firm in order to manage to make it. You can make your own right -year -old, what's the word, right -year -old ticket. I've done that. I agree that I've had an elite education. I went to Princeton and Harvard Law School.

1:49:43But I don't think you have to necessarily go to a lead institution in order to really make it. You need to work hard. But you shouldn't put yourself in a place where you're not going to feel comfortable and what's the word empowered like I was used to take to foreign birds in detention for a day of track position at Harvard Law School.

1:50:11I'll tell you one another story that illustrates this. I was originally pre -med, my freshman, South Four years at Princeton, I was in the pre -med program. Why? Because my parents wanted me to marry the daughter of our family physician. And the idea was I was in a medical school. I was going to go into medical practice with him in Hacking Sack, New Jersey. We had moved from Brooklyn at the time, long story, why we had to move from Brooklyn, had to do with my father's, having a problem with the Furry's Union, having his life thread. And we moved to Mayway, New Jersey, because he got a job in first shop in Bissech, New Jersey.

1:51:01And a family physician, they had three daughters, the oldest of whom was my age. She went to Hacking Sack High School. I went to Bogota High School. They both in North Burden County. And the idea was that she and I were going to marry. I was going to become, I was in a medical school, I was going to take become a partner of her father in his medical practice in Hacking Sack. When he retired, I was going to inherit the practice. This scenario was collected by Carolyn's mother and my mother. In my sophomore year of Princeton, I want to fellowship to spend that summer between my sophomore and junior year in Paris.

1:51:50I was fluent by then. I had taken an accelerated French course, my freshman sophomore year. And I went to Paris. It was my first time out of the country.

1:52:08I spent the entire summer working supporting myself. I participated in the AFR and I earned money for the room board. And I thought about my life and I decided, number one, I didn't want to be a physician. I wanted to be a lawyer. Number two, I didn't want to marry Carolyn. And I came back, I changed from pre -med to pre -law. I broke up with Carolyn, who was by that time, school with Douglas, right down the road from Princeton. She had followed me. Or I had followed her. And my life suddenly took a holy different term. So that summer in Paris, Paris had an outsized effect of my life. Every year, the Brown Theater shows Casablanca, where Bogart has this great line.

1:53:12He says, we'll always have Paris. And I think to myself, I always use Stade Elso. We used to see Casablanca every Valentine's Day. Because it was such an important movie to me. Because Paris was transformative in my life. We went to Paris every year during my vacation. We went to Paris. That was where she took some great pictures. Visited. He's this high and this high. He'd hang it up in the house. And so I always, even after Elso's death, I think Casablanca twice now. She died in 2020. And I've always, I always think, we'll always have Paris. We'll always have Paris. Well, Harvey, like I said, I hope you're very successful in your in your run for the Harvard Board of Oversiers.

1:54:15I think what you stand for in the realm of freedom of speech is I think the thing that makes these universities great institutions in American culture. And I'll do everything I can to help you succeed. And I just am really grateful for all the work you've done. And I'm grateful to you at talk with me today. This is amazing. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Harvey Silverglate. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Harry S. Truman. Once the government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition, it is only one way to go.

1:54:56And that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures. Until it becomes the source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.