Ivy beleaguer: Harvard hung out to dry

0:28The Economist of populist versus centrist. The outcome matters far beyond Poland's borders, though, because the country now has the status of continental heavyweight. And I don't know how you feel about wine tasting, but I've never had much patience with all that sniffing, swilling and spitting. Our correspondent went to a different kind of drink sampling. Do you fancy a bottle of finest, vintage? Well, you'd better listen to find out what.

1:01First up, though.

1:10Imagine if the snazzy university you wanted to go to had$2.7 billion of its funding withheld, and then$100 million more. If there was a risk that it might not even be able to enroll you legally. If the country it was in stopped even making student visa appointments. threatening a deep dive into your social media accounts looking for wrong think, you'd just go elsewhere, wouldn't you? The Trump administration wants to have a hand in America's higher education in ways that are nothing short of chilling. And its biggest target? Harvard. We give them billions of dollars, which is ridiculous. We do grants, which we're probably not going to be doing much grants anymore to Harvard.

1:56Students, professors, and the university's administration have come out swinging. First our funding, now our friends! First our funding, now our friends! We will fight until this end! We will fight until this end! And that's at least part of the reason Mr. Trump has gone so hard on Harvard. Taking potshots at elite institutions is an easy political win for him. He can claim all those coddled academics foment the left-wing wokery that made America less than great. Look, there are meaningful arguments to be had about campus politics, academic freedom, entrenched biases. But kneecapping the country's premier university so as to cow the rest of them will make, is already making, America less great.

2:44What's going on between the Trump administration and Harvard is quite confusing. John Priddo is our United States editor and hosts Checks and Ballots, our show on American politics. The administration keeps coming at Harvard with one thing. Harvard tries to get that stopped in the courts. Then the administration escalates, tries something new. And so what we have now is a mixture of things that have been held up in the courts and things that look like they could really affect Harvard and, by extension, higher education in the rest of America pretty badly. I guess the question that arises from what you've just said is, is this about Harvard or is this about elite institutions more generally or both?

3:27I think it's a bit of both. I was talking to a university president last week who said to me, you do not want to be the tallest blade of grass in American higher education. Harvard is the tallest blade of grass. It has the largest endowment,$50 billion. There are five other universities in America that have endowments over$20 billion. Harvard's is the biggest by a full 10 billion. Another element is that Harvard has stood up rather than tried to lie flat. There has been tension between conservatives and elite educational institutions in America going back to the 1950s when William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale.

4:05So it's part of an old thing that has existed for a while, but there's also a specific new Donald Trump element, and in particular, the tactics used are new, Jason. So in the past, conservatives maybe complained that Ivy League universities were full of liberals and the professors were teaching un-American values to their students, but they didn't do much about it in a direct way. The Trump administration is happy to use these levers, be they funding, be they control over student visas, be they other things, to try and force Harvard in particular to do its bidding. Do its bidding. What do you mean by that?

4:42What does the administration want to do besides just smack Harvard and other elite institutions down? That's such a good question because the ask on Harvard, let's stick to Harvard for the moment, is not clear. So when Kristi Noem, who's the secretary for Homeland Security, told Harvard that it couldn't have foreign students, she accused Harvard of being a hotbed of anti-Semitism and also being too close to the Chinese Communist Party. Both of those things are arguable, to say the least. I think it's not true that Harvard hasn't taken anti-Semitism seriously, if there's not too many double negatives.

5:16So the university had a commission of inquiry. It issued a long report at the end of April, which makes for pretty alarming reading and does suggest that there's quite a bit of anti-Semitism at Harvard. It's not the anti-Semitism of Europe in the 1930s. it's an anti-Semitism that says that all Jews and all Israelis are complicit in the oppression of Palestinians and therefore can be treated as pariahs. So it's a very bad form of anti-Semitism. I don't wish to downplay it, but it's slightly different from the one in the 1930s. And I think that university authorities are taking it seriously now.

5:56And that is, as you say, the most serious charge, but that's not the only thing that's going on here. What else do you think this is about? I think if you look at the timeline, it's fairly clear what happened. The Trump administration sent Harvard a letter on April the 11th saying you need to reorganize yourself in the following ways and carry out the following reforms. The president of Harvard responded and said, we can't just do what the federal government says. And then the Trump administration escalated. And the more that Harvard said, we're going to fight this in the courts, the more the escalation kept coming.

6:27So this is mainly about power. One thing I don't think it's about. By the way, there's lots of internet rumours about whether Barron Trump was rejected by Harvard and Donald Trump has taken this personally. I haven't seen any evidence to that effect. So if somebody raises that in a cafe or a bar, the correct response is a quizzical raise of the eyebrow. It's quite a complicated picture here. One thing you can say for sure is that Donald Trump thinks that these rich universities shouldn't be getting government money. Shouldn't be getting or he just wants to use that as the stick. I think both things can be true at the same time.

7:01And as to the shouldn't be getting, I mean, you'll appreciate this as a former research scientist. Most of the funding that institutions like Harvard get from the federal government is to fund scientific research. The federal government sometimes pays some of the costs of laboratories where experiments are done and world changing science is conducted. So in Harvard's case, the federal government has announced that it's going to withdraw or freeze over$2 billion in public funding. And that sounds like it's taxpayers giving lots of money to Harvard, which already has this$50 billion endowment and all these wealthy students.

7:40That's not actually the case. That is government-funded scientific research. And cutting that will have a really bad effect on science in America. So clearly the administration has Harvard in particular in a financial chokehold. What's been the response? How are they going to deal with that? Well, you might think, Jason, given that Harvard has this 50 billion endowment, that the government cutting funding wouldn't make any difference. But that's not how things work. So to begin with, endowments are hypothecated. It's not just a general pot of money that you can spend on whatever you want. So if you as a donor funded the Palmer School of Cocktail Studies, the president of Harvard can't just take the massive endowment that you've given to the university and spend it on whatever it wants another point is that the university gets tied up in not just administering all these various fights with the federal government there's cost of court cases so even if the courts ultimately say actually the Trump administration has to back off there will be an effect on this and there's a signaling effect to researchers to students around the world who might want to come to Harvard or other top universities.

8:54Applications for scientific research jobs from non-US citizens have fallen 25 % since last year. And just to add one more financial point, if you look at the budget bill that is currently pinging between the House of Representatives and the Senate, there's a proposal in that to increase the tax on endowments, which would really hurt places like Harvard and other IVs with large endowments. What we've seen a lot from the Trump administration is big threats and then backing off. For this particular fight, how do you view this one? In the language of game theory and nuclear war, the Trump administration has escalation dominance here because of the large amount of federal funding and because of the way that the government can control things like student visas.

9:39The Trump administration, each time that Harvard defies it, can escalate more and more and more. I think the Trump administration has already got to the top of that escalatory ladder. I don't think there's anything else that they can threaten. I mean, they may surprise me and I have to come back on the podcast next week and talk about the latest move. So on a 1 to 10 scale, they are on about 11 at the moment. I don't see the Trump administration backing off on this one. And what will happen now is these various different fights over funding, over student visas will play out in the courts. John, thanks very much for your time.

10:15Thanks, Jason.

10:45least three universities in Hong Kong are directly inviting international students at Harvard to join their institutions instead. American research and American science in particular will suffer. And that's the subject of this week's episode of Babbage, our weekly show on science and technology. Economist Podcasts Plus subscribers have a listen. Wannabe listeners? Subscribe.

11:27Poland is getting ready for the second round of its presidential election, and it's going to be tight. Ten days ago, the first round didn't go quite as predicted. Rafal Troskowski, the centrist candidate, only squeaked by his opponent, Karol Nowrodzki, who's backed by the conservative Law and Justice Party, which goes by its Polish acronym, PEACE. And a bunch of votes swung to right-wing parties.

11:57Poles know what's at stake here. Competing rallies have flooded the streets of the capital, Warsaw.

12:08The outcome of the runoff will define Poland's direction. Peace ruled for eight years, steadily dismantling institutions and worrying bureaucrats. Now out of power, it's been doing its best to gum up the reforms of the new government. And all of this comes as Poland is stepping into the international limelight. So the war in Ukraine has shifted Europe's center of gravity to the east, and Poland has emerged as a heavyweight. Piotr Zalewski has been writing about Poland for The Economist. Its position on the continent is arguably at its strongest in centuries. The question is whether it can take advantage of that.

12:51And when you say that Poland is a heavyweight these days, what do you mean by that? Well, its new confidence starts with the economy. Real GDP per person has risen almost uninterruptedly over the last three decades. Unemployment is under 3%, one of the best in the EU. and EU aid has helped bring roads, agriculture and healthcare up to Western European standards, even competing with those of Germany. Prosperity has brought fast-rising tax revenues and fiscal freedom. Poland is leading the way on defence spending, which leapt from 2 % of GDP in 2019 to 4.7 % this year. When my colleague Matt Steinglass and I interviewed the Polish foreign Minister, Vadek Sikorsky, last week, he suggested Europe needed to keep up.

13:40Well, since President Trump's first term, we've already doubled non-U.S. spending in NATO. We need to double again, and then we'll achieve two objectives. We will deter Putin and gain respect in Washington. Some strains are shown, but public debt is a manageable 55 % of GDP. Poland is also becoming a diplomatic power. Witness the trip to Kiev by the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk. You say becoming a diplomatic power. How do you mean? Well, Poland for quite some time used to punch below its weight, but its stature has grown. Tusk's return to power in 2023 helped patch up relations with the EU.

14:29The war in Ukraine has also helped improve Poland's relationship with the US, with most supplies of American weapons and aid to Ukraine going through Poland. In fact, 95 % of Western assistance to Ukraine passes through Poland these days. The war has also vindicated Poles who had long cautioned Europe against cozying up and doing business with Russia. In fact, Sikorsky was quick to criticize a recent economist leader in which the paper noted Poland's views that a threat from Russia was bigger than Mr. Putin because Russian imperialism had deep roots and referred to it as extreme. But Sikorsky did take issue with that.

15:16We didn't like your last, um, your cover of two weeks ago. We felt the editorial was patronizing towards us. You little East European, yes, you're traumatized by Russia, but we know better. We were told for 25 years that we were oversensitive on Russia. And, you know, we're not accepting that kind of patronizing tone anymore. So Poland clearly has some fiscal headroom. It has influence with the US, with the EU, with the world more broadly. What's the catch here? You hinted earlier on that Poland might not be able to take advantage of that position. The Stubling Bloc is and has been domestic politics.

15:58Peace-led governments in the past have picked fights with the EU, aligned Poland with Hungary's Viktor Orban. They have imitated his takeover of public media, packed the courts, and seized control of the body that appoints judges. European courts say judges appointed under peace are therefore illegitimate. Tusk wants to clean up, but the outgoing president, And Andrzej Duda has vetoed or blocked some of his plans and forced the government to shelve others. Which is the point of conflict that we talked about a lot after the first round of the election. How does all of this stuff about Poland's position figure in with that second round, the ultimate outcome of this election?

16:40Well, a victory by Rafal Trzaskowski, a Tusk ally, would let the prime minister and his coalition government push ahead with at least some of those domestic reforms. A victory by Trzaskowski might actually allow the government to pursue a more ambitious foreign policy as well. Over the past year or so, foreign policy in Poland has been hostage to electoral concerns, with Tusk looking over his shoulder, having one eye on relations with the EU and another on the coming elections. And so he has borrowed heavily from the peace playbook. He has conditioned Ukraine's membership in the EU on its handling of historical disputes between Poland and Ukraine.

17:26Shaskovsky himself has pledged to restrict benefits for some Ukrainian refugees. And as one former foreign minister under peace told us, the government has become more peace than peace itself. Tusk has also opposed sending peacekeepers to Ukraine in the event of a troop. Both of the remaining candidates in this election, are Nowrowski and Trzaskowski, back Ukraine against Russia and support the beefing up of Olin's defenses. But Trzaskowski is much closer to Brussels than to MAGA world. If Nowrowski wins, Trump will probably do business with him rather than Tusk. Nowrowski, when it comes to domestic politics, will probably want to undermine the coalition government at every step, trying to pave the way for victory by peace in the 2027 parliamentary elections, if not earlier.

18:18So the stakes at home are very high. And what's your feeling on which way it's going to go? So at this point, a lot depends on how young voters break and on whether Traskowski can mobilize some of his supporters, those supporters at least who stayed home in round one. A lot is also riding on voters who backed Sławomir Mensen in the first round. Mensen of Konfederacja, a party of mostly young libertarians, euroskeptics and MAGA types, came in third with about 15 % of the vote. Nawrowski and Słaskowski are competing for every one of those votes at this point. Either way, at this point it's impossible to predict who will come out on top.

19:03but whatever the results, they will be hugely consequential for Poland. Thanks very much for your time, Piotr. Thanks for having me.

19:34Light, easy drinking, good mouthfeel, well-rounded. Nico Peterser is a South African beverage connoisseur who I met at a tasting and judging competition in Atlanta, Georgia. Rebecca Jackson is our U.S. Southern correspondent. Nico made it his mission to talk me through some of the finer notes that a sommelier looks for in this pretty unusual event. If you taste it, it almost tastes like snow. It does taste like snow. Almost tastes like ice. That particular elixir was from a glacial region of Norway. The next was closer to home for Nico. So let's move on to something a little bit more luminarily.

20:27I know this one very well because it's from South Africa. I'm from South Africa. It's called Mountain Falls. It's got a TDS of 200. TDS stands for Total Dissolved Solids, which may give you some idea of what we're tasting. This is got a TDS of 245. So 245 is a little bit higher than the 32 we just had, and you're going to immediately taste the difference. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's very different. So that one, the first one I'd pair nicely with sushi, like a sashimi, something very light, light salad, light fish. Where this one, I prefer to pair with a wine. Nico is a connoisseur not of wines or whiskeys, but water.

21:13So it's 2 ,000-year-old volcanic mineral water. There were hundreds of fancy glass bottles on the tables in front of us from all around the world. And all of them were vying for the best in show.

21:30Becca, is this for real? A judging competition for water? Rosie, you might not believe it, but it was. and it was amazing. It looked a lot like a fine wine tasting. There were six judges sitting at this fancy judging panel, and they were from all across the world, like Hong Kong, France, California. And what they do is each time they would get some water to taste, they would swirl it around their glass, hold it up to the light to look at it, take a sip, swish it between their cheeks, and then dump the rest. They did this for more than a hundred types of water. The judges had undergone months and months of training to learn how to appreciate how the minerality changes the water's flavour, how silica affects its mouthfeel, and the size of bubbles, its acidity.

22:14Becca, as I sit here with a bottle of Finest London tap in front of me, I mean, isn't this just a really high-level scam? So I'm not going to lie to you, Rosie, when I went into it, I thought it was. And I was kind of blown away by how different these waters tasted. I would say they actually did taste as different as wines did. If you can imagine what it would be like to take a sip of tap water, pool water, and lake water, you can begin to understand that these are not the same beast. But still, I mean, the idea of pairing sashimi with the right water is the most pretentious thing I think I've ever heard.

22:53I mean, why does it matter? You know, it might be, but people are obsessed with wines and whiskeys too. And this, they argue, is just sort of the next foodie frontier. It seems like there isn't quite yet a market here, but it's growing. There are 40 restaurants, some with Michelin stars, that have full water menus across the world right now. And where did this movement start? The man who's the brains behind this entire event, and honestly the movement itself, is this guy called Michael Masha. He explained to me that when he started, he was mocked on live TV. I had experiences when I was in front of a TV audience and with some water glasses and only a very friendly producer lady said, Michael, don't drink number three.

23:39I said, why is it? It's water from the toilet. So this was the attitude. Despite this relatively rough early start, people are now getting on board. Many of the people who were here in Atlanta for the weekend have been learning to be water sommeliers through Michael and Nico's academy. We started the Fine Water Academy because we were asked so many times, I want to be a water sommelier, how can we do that? So we wanted to do a training course. Today, there are over 250 water sommeliers who have been ordained by his academy. Becca, I'm still genuinely confused about where this leaves my bottle of London tap water.

24:21because you can get water out of a tap free. Is this really an industry with a sustainable future? To be honest, I'm not totally sure, but I'm not going to lie. It was so much fun. When Michael walked around and brought this 15 ,000-year-old glacial water with flakes of gold in it that tasted completely different from the water that came out of my tap, I was kind of just overjoyed. He uses it as a substitute for champagne, and I can't say that I would choose it rather than having something bubbly, but it was great. Becca, this is amazing stuff. I shall look forward to toasting you with a glass of finest water very soon.

25:01You too, Rosie. Can't wait.

25:21That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.