Thinking Christian about Harvard, Genocide, Israel, and the State of Higher Education

Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today Richard and I are going to talk a little bit about censorship and specifically the comments made by the president of Harvard University, MIT, and UPenn regarding anti-Semitism and some of the congressional hearings that have just come out. And I mean, really what we want to think through is not just the sort of polarized context in which all of this is happening and maybe some of the, the answers that were probably a little easier than the college presidents made it out to be. But also just looking at the whole context of this and trying to, you know, think it through from a more gracious standpoint to the extent that that's possible. And so kind of just want to start, you know, and in thinking through this whole situation where we've got this war in Israel and Gaza, you know, Israel and Gaza, Israel Palestine has always been an issue. It's been a big conversation going forward, you know, reaching back into the past. We know that people have strong feelings about this. But I think Richard, you know, when I was watching some of those congressional hearings and the presidents were asked whether or not calls for the genocide of the Jews are against their codes of conduct. And I was hearing their answers and having them say things like, well, it depends on the context. I'll be honest, it just didn't ring true to me given the amount of time we've spent on hate speech and microaggressions and trigger warnings and, you know, all of those kinds of interesting things that we've had over the last several years. I'm wondering how this doesn't constitute at least one of those things. Yes, that's right. Well, and I agree with you. You know, we just did a show on the, it was actually the opposite type of show where students are yelling speakers down and not giving them a right to speech. They're not giving them their due. They're not giving them any respect. And we talked about that. And, you know, and then we have this situation happen where there's this uprising in on college campuses with a lot of rhetoric and a lot of threats, threatening language to a whole race of people. And so how do you stand there? And I liken it to Michael Dukakis and the presidential debates back in the 80s where he answered a question that, but there was a detachment to that, the answer that he gave. And they gave a very vivid approach to the candidate's wife, Dukakis's wife. Yeah, wasn't it something like, you know, what if your wife were violently attacked and raped? And Dukakis kind of came back and just said, you know how I feel about this issue? Right, right. Yeah, there's a level of detachment that happens with this, I think. It's a very strange, their answers in that setting. Right. And, you know, I get it. There's a lawyered aspect to all of this, right? Absolutely, right. In a litigious society, you know, maybe you have to be careful with this. But at the same time, I think it should have been an easy yes. I mean, it should have been an easy yes to say yes. When students are chanting or calling for the genocide of Jews, or if they were, I don't, this is part of the frustration I have with this whole issue. It's difficult not to believe that the, or difficult to sort out and tease out, let's say, that some of what we're hearing coming out of these campuses isn't being enhanced, exaggerated. Right. Right? So I know what I've seen. I've seen, let's say, the letter that was initially put out when, you know, I'm sorry, October 7th, you know, right after the attacks on Israel happened and Hamas attacked Israel. I've seen that letter. I've read that letter from the Harvard students groups that were calling, you know, saying that it was 100% Israel's fault and these kind of things. Right. You know, and so outside of that, it's really difficult to know anymore what is actually happening on that campus, what the students are actually doing, and how many of the students is this really, you know, what does all this look like? And I think that's a complicating factor too, but at the same time, I think, you know, as a hypothetical, if students are calling for the genocide of any race, didn't have to be the Jews, any race, why wouldn't that be against your code of conduct? To me, that's not a... And, you know, I've been in higher ed before. There's a certain degree of debate and conversation that you want to cultivate among students, but you really do want that to be cordial debate. You want it to be cordial conversation. Disagreement can happen without hating each other and really without expressing hatred. And so I think it's fair game to sort of sit back and say, okay, well, what is the relationship between Israel and Gaza? You know, what are the pros and cons of both sides? How does Israel exacerbate the situation perhaps? How has Hamas and their seeming willingness to do anything really created a lose-lose for Israel? I think all of those kinds of questions are sort of up for grabs. And you can have those conversations without the sort of animosity that seems to be there in a lot of these contexts. But I think that you can even root for one side or the other, I suppose, but I have difficulty believing that you can call for the complete and total elimination. Right. You know, that's a very different level of... That's not even really an argument. That's, you know, saying a particular race should no longer exist. Yes, that's right. That's a rough one. Yeah, it is. You know, and I guess you have to also see or try to figure out, what is Hamas? Is it a terrorist group or is it a race of people? Because I've heard really well-meaning people say, let's call for the elimination of, let's eliminate Hamas off the face of the earth. And they're not a race of people. They're people who have practiced terrorism and have done some pretty violent things. Now, I will say this in all fairness, our old friend Artificial Intelligence has played into some of the rhetoric that has gone on and doctored pictures and a lot of things, at least allegedly, these are. And so it's hard to tell what is true and what is not true, even from pictures and from what people are saying, because we're not even sure exactly who's speaking, whether it's a machine or it's actually people in some of this dialogue. Yeah, I think we're sort of running into this convergence of very difficult information. Like we're in an information age that is making it difficult for us to tell true from false. And we're also in a situation where we've lost a moral center. And by moral center, I don't mean Christian nation or Christian values or anything like that. I tend to think Christians should be limited to those understandings that for which Christ is essential. And so I don't usually like to use the word Christian to describe our nation. I don't think Christ was ever central to our nation. I don't like to use it in terms of values because usually what we're talking about is not values that emerge from a deep and abiding commitment to Jesus Christ. Those Christian, that Christian descriptor, I think should be limited to the church and to the body of Christ that actually are united with him. So when I say moral center, here's what I mean. A general understanding of God's order that's inferred from creation, understood from justice, closer to like a general revelation kind of an idea where we are seeking some level of truth. We're seeking some level of justice. We're seeking to identify falsehoods and root those out. And we're looking to our governing authorities to institute and really not necessarily reward good, but certainly curtail evil. And I think where we sit right now, you know, when I hear calls for the elimination of Hamas, for instance, I'm not wild on those either. Right.

I agree. I think we need to recognize it, and that's not, I realize that's a little pithy, and it's very difficult. Like, so I don't know that I begrudge Israel, I'm not a military strategist, so I really have no opinion on what it is that Israel is doing to combat Hamas at this moment. I just don't have an opinion on it. I think it's a very difficult situation, and in a fallen world, you're going to face those all the time. And I think there's negative consequences no matter what action you take. And so I leave that to people who have much more savvy in that than I do. But I will say I don't think that people should, especially Christian people, should be hating their neighbors, hating their enemies. And, you know, I would identify Hamas as a people who are enemies of justice. I think they are, you know, a terrorist group. And regardless of their motives, right, let's say their motives are completely righteous. I don't think they are, but let's say they are. There is still no justification for doing what they're doing. And so that's where I think we have to be careful as believers. Well, yeah, and we could go back to the Crusades for this very same thing. And, you know, there's both sides pointing fingers and saying these are war crimes. There's, and, you know, they may be true, and that may be true. And of course, it's not for you or me to say that. There's certainly those trials that are coming up that will decide whether what one side or the other did were war crimes, and that just needs to play out. Yeah, I will say, I mean, as we look at these, you know, the students at Harvard, Penn State, and MIT, right, when we look at the state of the students there, if they're really sort of pushing on these issues by chanting on campus, holding up signs, petitioning, writing letters, those kind of things. Yes, there's the question of how do we talk about these things in a more intelligent manner? You would hope that the students and the faculty at these institutions would be pushing for a deeper intellectual conversation that would be, again, cordial, civil, even amongst disagreements. But that doesn't appear to be what we're seeing. What it appears to be what we're seeing is sort of enraged protest. It reminds me of what I've read about the Vietnam War and the sort of protests that were going on there. And, you know, I think you just have to ask yourself, you know, is this what we're teaching the next generation makes change? I saw a great little video online. These guys were talking about their support of Ukraine and how they'd made the ultimate sacrifice. And it was a satiric kind of piece. And, you know, the interviewer who's talking to him says, well, did you volunteer to go over to Ukraine? No, no. Did you, were you trying to like fight in the front lines or anything like that? They're like, no, no. Like we changed our Facebook profile picture to the Ukrainian flag. And I just sit back and I'm like, you know, it's funny almost because it's true. And so I think what we're, what we've got is we've got a next generation of students who honestly think that, you know, these activities that they're engaged in are going to have a positive effect on the world. Right. And it's a very strange moment. I can remember being a dean and students bringing in petitions to me and I refused. I refused to look at them. It, it just doesn't, you know, it's like, this is not how you change things. And so usually what I do is I tell them, you know, hey, if you want to talk about how you go about changing this and what the right mechanism and process is for you to address this, it's not easy, but that's what'll work. This will never work. There's a coaching aspect that I think has to go along with that. That's probably putting it too lightly. Coaching? Yes. Yeah. You know, but I, I am a little concerned that we're forming students that somehow are going to be, you know, trying to change the world through social media campaigns and petitions and writing open letters. I mean, they've created a real big kerfuffle here that, that sort of, I suppose, raises issues, but I don't think it's going to turn out the way that they wanted it to turn out. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. If you Googled just the Middle East, there's one word that keeps on coming up, or actually one phrase, and it's always rush to judgment. No matter who it is, there's a rush to judgment. And a lot of it does come from journalists or newspapers, which is really funny because when you say, well, it's a battle of headlines, and you say, well, when did newspapers matter? When did they really matter as much? And, you know, headlines don't seem to have the same impact as they did 25, 30 years ago. The headlines are in different areas. I mean, they could be a Facebook page or post or any of those kind of things. That's a different battle, but the rush to judgment seems to be still that gotcha investigative reporting or whatever. And it's, I can really beat somebody to the punch on a story if I'm the judge, jury and executioner. Here's what I'd say. Harry Frankfurt, philosopher, he wrote a book called On BS. Now he used the real term BS. Yes. But he makes a distinction between lying and BS. So lying has a relationship to the truth. Lying is opposed to the truth, but it almost has to acknowledge that the truth is there. It has to care that the truth is there. For you to lie, you have to know what the truth is and actively work against it. Right. And so in some ways, lying is actually fairly simple to call out, right? You know, if I say, you know, no, all zebras have five legs. And you can find a zebra that has four legs. My lie has been exposed and it's fairly easy to do that. Right. What Harry Frankfurt calls BS is actually, it has no particular relation to the truth. It's just trying to be relevant. Right. In other words, it's trying to grab our attention, sort of like someone, you know, on the shore waving you back to shore, right? Oh, look over here, look over here, look over here, look over here. It's all about salience. It's all about relevance. It's all about grabbing our attention. And whether or not it expresses the best version of the truth, you know, it doesn't really matter. It can have some falsehoods in it. It can be completely skewed. You know, I've said this before, but everything has a point of view, right? And so it's not that they're never, I'm not calling for something unbiased, but I think that we've gotten away from telling the best possible version of the truth from a particular perspective and allowing that just to stand. Right. And if it catches attention, it catches attention. Right now, what we have is, and these rushes to judgment, what we have is a competition for relevance. And it is completely, it's not completely devoid of truth. That's not the point. When you're thinking about BS, what you're thinking of is it's using the truth. The truth has become the servant of relevance. Right. And so, you know, we might ask ourselves, even with, you know, the Middle East, obviously, let's say the, you know, the actual war itself is relevant. It's got a lot of

Right. Some of the things reported, maybe not, right? The fact that Harvard, UPenn, MIT students are, you know, certain ones of them are against Israel, or maybe they're chanting anti-Semitic things, is that relevant? Yeah, probably, but maybe not on the scale that we're giving it relevance. Right. In other words, you know, yeah, I, like, I understand why they had the congressional hearings. They want to make sure that these schools aren't cultivating anti-Semitism based on their reception of federal funds. But at the same time, it's difficult to believe that there are no, like, little, you know, 200-person schools in no-name towns around the country that have had similar problems that aren't before Congress. In other words, the relevance of this has to do with the fact that it's Harvard, MIT, and UPenn. And, you know, these are symbolic. I think they've become symbolic of very left-wing institutions, right? I would say MIT less so, UPenn less so, but definitely Harvard, right? Left-wing institutions, they've become symbolic for that, these bastions of liberal thought, right? And that is why this is being framed as relevant for us. But it's really difficult for me to believe that some of the things that we're hearing and we see in the news, even aside from these things, are actually relevant to most of our lives. And I think the real problem with what Frankfurt calls BS is that it redirects our attention toward things that are less relevant than, you know, more core issues. Right. You know, I mean, you know, most people, I mean, we talk about the debt ceiling or, you know, debt in America, those kind of things, but it's never a particularly long talking point, right? And it's not because it's not important. I mean, these things are extremely important for our next generation. What do we get stuck in? We get stuck in things like, you know, Harvard and anti-Semitism, right? And so it's not that these things aren't relevant. It's just what they end up doing is they end up captivating our attention in such ways that they polarize and they become part of our everyday conversations. They become very divisive because we're being asked to make sucker's choices, right? Is it Israel or Gaza? It has to be black or white. There's no, you know, is it, you know, that crazy young college students do stupid things? That's sort of like the perennial characterization. We might wanna think that, you know, we might wanna think it's different, but it's not. And it's not going to be. Like part of the educational problem that I see when we look at these colleges is, what are these students being formed into? Right. Like, why isn't there someone standing up and saying, look, you can have your political beliefs, no problem. You will not express them this way. Right, right, exactly. This is not how intelligent human beings who are trained at our school are going to express themselves. Not a chance. So you can either stop or you can not be part of our institution. Right. But there's no adult in the room saying that. Yeah, I guess that's the thing. And as you said, it's, you know, there's a lawyer behind every statement that somebody makes, right? So yes, your thesis is correct. There's no adult in the room. Right. I mean, I think back on my time and this would have been, I was a dean before all the woke stuff really started to take off and before students, I think, gained a high degree of power at institutions. Right, yeah. But I can remember going to a student group and they were really frustrated about some of the things that were going on. I just happened to be there and they were talking about these different things. And they're making plans to sort of drive change at the institution. So I was a new dean and they're talking about a social media campaign and they wanna really blast the institution and all this kind of stuff. And then they invited me up to speak and I said, hey, before I say what I was planning on coming here to say, I just wanna let you know, I'm here to listen. I'm here to help. But if you all put this stuff out on social media, you will find in me an enemy, whether I agree with you or not. Right. Because you should not be rewarded for thinking that Facebook posts and Twitter and whatever else you're using can actually push people to change. I just, I'll never been to it. Right. And so they're kind of, it was really silent. And I said, but I'm here to talk. And if you wanna talk about how to get some of these things changed, we can talk about that. It's not a problem. It's the mechanism. It's about the mechanism you're using, not about the changes you wanna make. Yes. And so like, that's the sort of tension I see in this situation where, you know, these students are being allowed to use mechanisms that they shouldn't be allowed to use. It's not helpful to anyone. And it's just creating problems. And it's like, adults don't solve problems like this. I've never given my wife a petition, right? Just on a micro scale. Like it doesn't happen, you know. If you have disagreements with someone at work, right? Yes, there's legal processes you can step through. There's HR that you can go to. But most of the time, don't you just sort of kind of come together and figure out a solution? You hope. Right. It boggles my mind a little bit that this is where we're at. That, I think, is my biggest problem with this whole situation is that you've got a group of people who think this is okay. Yeah, but it is, when you look at it and you think of mediums that have happened, you know, in the 90s, it was called spin. You know, you would spin the truth. And we have talked a little bit about the news cycle. The news cycle is another way of saying what we're hearing. And that the news cycle where something falls off of the news cycle that's still a relevant, is still happening, you know, but it gets ignored in some ways. That's just another part of spin. I think, I think maybe that's, when you think of cycle and you think of spin, maybe those words are right as far as using those words because they're dizzying. There's so much of it for a short period of time, but it's only for that cycle. And then it's going to go away. It'll come back only when it becomes a relevant story to cover. And so we're, we have a very short span of attention, as they say. And that's part of it too. Well, here's what I would also say. Because I agree with you on the spin aspect. I think the other aspect of spin that we are seeing right at this moment, so UPenn's president resigned after the congressional hearings. Right. And so now what are we seeing? Well, we're seeing a slew of news stories calling for the resignation of these other two presidents, MIT and Harvard. Now, what's interesting is if you actually look at it, okay, so I've been, I've consulted in higher ed for, I don't know, probably a little more than a decade right now. And one of the schools I've worked with had a longstanding president. He was there for, I think, somewhere in the 10 to 12 year range. And he left. Some donors went with him. And then all of a sudden, the school's in financial trouble. Right. They're having this big problem filling their operational deficit. Their enrollment systems aren't working well. Their marketing systems aren't working well. And the next president is just getting browbeaten for these things. And it's like, well, but is it really his fault? Like, it's his responsibility now. I agree with that. So come up with some solutions. Figure these things out, right? These are not emergencies that he created. They're emergencies that he's dealing with. Right. Now, at the risk of sounding like I am defending Claudine Gay, which I am absolutely not. I think she should have given way different answers in that congressional hearing. But she has been president of Harvard. Do you know? No. July 1st, 2023. Oh, really? These are not her problems. Now, she's been in academic leadership, so you could argue that she's been part of the problem. Right. But if you think about, she's been in since July 1st, 2023. This is not a culture that she created. Yeah. Right? This is a culture.

he inherited. She may have been part of that creation, but the reality is that there was someone above her in the organization. There was a board of trustees. There was another president, probably a provost. You know, there's like a lot of academic structure there who is allowing this culture to build. And so, you know, when I look at it and I say, you know, should she be you know, should she resign for the answer she gave? I don't know. Right. As someone who has been in, you know, sort of in front of firing squads, not anywhere big, as big as the, you know, Congress. Right. I know how easy it is to give stupid answers. Oh, yeah. Right. It's easy. And so, you know, I don't know that she needs to resign for that. What I would say is that if she is going to continue this sort of cycle and culture at Harvard, then yeah, someone should do something. But I don't think it should be a resignation, quite frankly. Right. I sort of wonder where the actual leadership of Harvard is on this, the actual leadership of MIT is, because there is the president is not in charge. The higher education institutions, if anybody knows anything about them, there's usually something called shared governance. And so the president just doesn't usually have sort of the sword, the wheel, and do whatever they want to do. Right. And at places like Harvard and MIT, you're going to have tenure to worry about. You're going to have a number of different things that you've got to think about. And normally they have a more narrow sphere of delegated authority that they can actually exercise. Right. And, you know, so these are complex institutions, complex organizations. And my concern would be, is that, you know, OK, UPenn's president resigned. Maybe that could have been for a whole host of reasons. Maybe she just didn't want to deal with it. Right. But to think that her resignation solves the problem at UPenn is an absolute fallacy. Right. It doesn't. And if Claudine Gay were to resign, it wouldn't solve Harvard's problem either. And that's what I think, you know, as we think about news cycle and spin, that's where the focus is right now, because it's easy. Right. These people just, you know, sort of gave really weird answers in front of Congress. And it's easy. Everybody's going to, yeah, they should resign. You know, like you're going to get people rallying behind that. But the reality is, do we want them to resign or do we want to fix the problem? Right. And I wouldn't even say, again, she's been president since July 1st, 2023. She's been on faculty there and a dean for a longer time. People knew who she was. The people who hired her knew who she was. And so, if she's the sort of person who's going to sustain the culture that everybody now has a problem with, you have to ask yourself the question, why was she hired in the first place? Hey, stick around. We'll be right back. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And so, there's a systemic problem here that isn't going to be solved by the resignation of just these two people. And I think to put all the weight on them is commensurate with their responsibility, but it's foolish from our standpoint to think that firing or resigning and getting these two people to resign is ever going to fix those problems. It would have been a bigger story if it was the football coach. Yeah, I mean, you think about that, though. I mean, I'm partially serious because, you know, you think about what happened with Joe Paterno, you know. Sure. And all of those things that happened. It took him a long time to say, you know, he's got to go, right? Well, I mean, it's really interesting because you figure most people knew who Joe Paterno was. Yeah. Most people probably didn't know who the president of UPenn is. I didn't. I didn't know Claudine Gay was president of Harvard. I mean, at these institutions, they are not the front-facing representative. Right. They are administrators. They're sort of shepherding various processes. But it's not like the CEO of a company generally. Right. It doesn't function like that. And so, I think that, you know, there's just some sense in which, uh, when you're thinking spin in the media, scapegoating these two female presidents, and it doesn't really matter if they're female. They just happen to be. Right. But scapegoating these two presidents is convenient. Right. It's convenient, but I don't know that it's actually a fix. Because, like I said, if you just look at her longevity, July 1st, 2023, are you telling me the last guy didn't contribute to this? You're telling me the previous president didn't contribute to this. You're telling me that longstanding faculty, who generally have a high degree of input over who their peers are within the institution, who gets to teach at Harvard, aren't part of this problem. Right. Right. It is, I'm telling you, it's a much bigger issue than people are giving it credit for, and we have to think more systemically about it. So if you have, if you get the role of president, you should just wear a sign on you that just says scapegoat? You know, I, I remember going, so I actually went to Harvard for, um, uh, they had these, uh Institute of Education Management workshops. Gotcha. Right. And so I was there for two weeks, did this, um, did this whole thing at Harvard. And I remember interacting with some of the people in my cohort, and one of them was from California. And, you know, where I was at, we didn't have tenure. Faculty didn't have tenure. And so it was um easier if you had uh disciplinary issues or somebody was going off the rails doctrinally or whatever. You know, it was much easier to move them out of your organization than if they had tenure. Right. But in California, they not only have tenure, they have unions. And I, I remember hearing this poor woman talk about how she's trying to handle um faculty, faculty unions, tenured faculty, when they can teach, when they can't teach, you know. They were trying to start online programs, but that wasn't part of the union contract. And, you know, you had all this kind of stuff going on. Right. Now that was unique to California. Right. But it illustrates the complexity. And I remember the mental note in my head was never work in academic administration in California. I mean, it, it just, you know, there's, there's a layer of complexity that um deans and other administrators are forced to work through. It's just part of the way an institution is governed. So there's very few places. I would say I was in one of the one place where I had much more autonomy to move as a dean than most of my colleagues. And so, you know, there is a sense in which, I think, if you're president of these institutions, should you be giving better public answers? Absolutely. But my guess is that if they're admitting that some of these activities that have been going on on campus are harassment and they've done nothing about it, it opens them up to litigation just the same. And so you're almost in a catch-22. As soon as you don't do something about it, like immediately, you're in trouble. But I would also just say, by way of, again, by way of spin, right? We wouldn't be talking about this issue at all had they done what was right and then suffered negative consequences for it. Right, right. Exactly. Which they almost certainly would have. Right. Right. But we're okay with somebody sort of bearing their cross. Right, that's not news. Right. What's news is these atrocities that we see happening that nobody's addressing. And now we want to, now we want to pin somebody down and beat them about the head and shoulders for it. I just, you know, I have some sympathy, not agreement, but sympathy, because I know how hard it is to make these tough decisions. It's not easy. It's not easy. These are really difficult.

decisions, and those answers in Congress should have been easier answers. At the same time, you have to take into account, these are just not easy decisions, and they're not easily fixed. Maybe the question was wrong. Maybe they should have asked, they should have asked them or her, what keeps you up at night? You would have got an honest answer, right? It probably would have been a more honest answer, quite frankly. I mean, even delving into some of the very specific policies, right? Like if you were to ask one of those presidents, what is your process for hiring a faculty member? What is your process for firing a faculty member? Right. People would have gotten a sense for the complexity of those situations and that it's not just up to a faculty member. Yeah. You know, and I was kidding a little bit about that, but I also meant it in some ways too. Maybe it's sometimes it's the way these questions are posed. You know, if you're going to get, if you're going to ask a legalistic, if you're going to ask a legalistic, or if you want a legalistic answer, you're going to get, you have to ask a legalistic question, right? Yeah. It's a very tough situation. And all I would say is, you know, as we look at this on college campuses, I think a big part of the challenge of college, I don't know whether I want to call it a problem, but I want to call it a challenge. The challenge of higher education right now is that so much of it is peer oriented. The sorts of accountability that are built into higher education, I think are being shown to be insufficient. That's probably the nicest way to say it. I think that there just hasn't been, there's been too much leaning on academic freedom, which I find to be extremely important and would not want to have higher education without academic freedom. At the same time, I think that academic freedom has been used to cover over research agendas, instruction, political comment, the formation of students that probably should not be part of those academic institutions. And so I think there just has to be a recalibration there. and for that recalibration to happen, there has to be a harder look on, I think, tenure policy. I think, you know, academic promotion and ranking. I think accountability to non-faculty persons. Right. You know, it's, as someone who sat in faculty committees who were considering, you know, whether or not one of their peers should be censured or fired, I can tell you that's not, there's no way, shape, or form that someone who works as a faculty person is, that's not a normal part of their job. And so you're going to sentence somebody to losing their job, losing their livelihood, that you know that you've worked alongside, you've met their kids, you've met their spouse. Those are not conversations that faculty persons should be having. Right. But they, they so often do. And they largely determine how those things go at many institutions. And so, yeah, I think that overall, what I would encourage is, you know, number one, sort of, if you're going to have an opinion on this, you know, beyond what was said in those congressional hearings, educate yourself on how higher ed works. You know, my guess is the bylaws of each of those schools is available online somewhere. And I actually looked up Harvard's last night. They actually have one for each of the schools. Like I found one for Harvard Law. I found one for Harvard Graduate School of Education. And so, you know, that just demonstrates the amount of complexity that someone who sits atop all of those is actually dealing with. Yeah. And so, you know, educate yourself on how higher education works and why this is going on. And because I don't believe that a president sitting from July 1st, 2023, she may be part of the problem, but I can't imagine that in that little time, she has so influenced a massive institution and all these faculty who, you know, are generally autonomous toward an anti-Semitic bent. This is stuff that is embedded within a much deeper culture and it's going to take a long time and a lot of effort to actually fix. And so, that would be my two cents on this whole thing. It's extremely difficult, but ultimately I think a battle worth fighting. And I think it needs to be something that if you could reform Harvard, I think it could reverberate out into the rest of higher education. Right. Well, as you, as you wrote to me last night, you said, finally, we have to ask ourselves how students are being, I think you meant informed, right, at Harvard? No, I actually meant formed. Or formed. Yeah. Formed at Harvard. Yeah, actually, I like that better. Yeah. A Harvard man, you know. That's right. That's right. That's right. What values are they being taught in the quest for truth? I really liked that, James. I think that's something that, that's exactly right. And, you know, for me, I, you know, I went into journalism because it is a pursuit of truth. It's, and, you know, sometimes the truth takes you in uncomfortable places. And, but that's okay. That's where the, you know, the truth is going to still rise to the top no matter what. It would seem that beyond correcting, condemning their hateful message, someone should talk with them about speaking without knowledge and making judgments on partial evidence. I think that's really good. And that's our rush to judgment statement before. Instead of rushing to this judgment, because I, we got phone calls from people who, Israel and Hamas in this, this whole thing. And then this, this whole, you know, with, with what's happening in academia and with the students, there's a lot of rush to judgment there. So it just keeps on rush to judgment stuff begets rush to judgments. You know, it's interesting. I mean, we've talked about this a number of different times. We've had the target conversation. You know, I can't remember whether we did a discussion on it, but Balenciaga back in the day, right? And that created all this sort of public outrage. Right. And the way I, I guess my concern in these instances is that, you know, we're talking about, we're not talking about a retailer, right? I mean, arguably target is less influential than Harvard. I think, you know, arguably. But I think that if we just sort of rush in, do the same thing we usually do, which is get rage baited into this, really super frustrated, angry about everything. And then we see someone's, you know, we see sort of blood on the pavement, right? The president resigns and yay, we're done. Right. We will have failed a generation of students. That's right. Multiple generations of students, honestly. This is not what this is about. And that's, you know, this formation of students, I, you know, I really firmly believe that Christians are supposed to be involved in discipleship. Right. And that means that we are being formed in the image of Christ. But I also think that the secular world and its institutions seek to form people in a way similar to discipleship. There is an anti-discipleship happening. They're not seeking to form these people into the image of Christ because they don't know Christ, but they're seeking to form them into the image of something. Right. And so what is that? Why is this become so, why has this become a norm that we're starting to see sort of over and over in college campuses? Well, it has something to do with the underlying values of what's going on on those campuses. I think beyond values, quite frankly, I think it has something to do with the lack of accountability. Yes. You know, education in this country is largely a public trust. I know that language has a very specific legal meaning, so I don't mean to activate that, but we all pay for this. The public contributes heavily to higher education. At the state level, you know, some of our tax dollars go to supporting state institutions. Right.

We've got the Pell Grant, which, you know, if you're unaware, is just money that the government gives away, right? Even subsidization of student loans, student loan forgiveness, all of these things. Those are things that the public contributes to because we believe in the value of higher education. The unfortunate part is that these schools don't seem to be answerable at all to the public. And that's a problem. They no longer serve the public interest because they don't have to. Nobody's asking them to. I actually think these congressional hearings are good, as oddly political as I find them, right? They're good because what they're trying to do is say, look, you kind of work for us. Like, we spend a lot of money on your institutions. This is not what we're expecting. And so now we need to take a deep dive and figure out what the root of the problem is here. You're going to have accountability. I just happen to think it's a little late. Right. Like, you know, these things could be worked out in much more reasonable, far less public, unnecessarily, you know, heavy ways. Right. If there were just different accountability systems within higher education. And so my encouragement is just to say, like, give it its due. Don't give it your rage. Actually think about the significance of what is going on here and recognize that this can't be a blip in the news cycle. That this is something that's probably going to take a decade to solve. Right. You know, it occurred to me as you've been speaking, I traveled a lot during the Occupy Wall Street. And, you know, I, I always thought that Wall Street was really the scapegoat for what college, how colleges justified getting a degree for a certain amount of money. And with the promise that Wall Street was going to hire these people at a certain level, you know, a, you know, a hundred thousand dollars or more job when they got out of school. And when that didn't happen, Wall Street got blamed, not the colleges. Right. And so it's the same thing. There is, there is a bit of entitlement. That is actually taught in colleges now because, you know, if, if you get this degree, you'll get this. And so there's an entitlement saying, oh, we deserve that because we, we paid for this four to six year to eight year college education. And so it's, it's sort of a different show when we talk about that, but it is, but, but there is the same thing when you look at, okay, there's an attitude on college campuses that we're seeing that is disrespectful and is also violent and anti-Semitic and, or racist and, or whatever it is. And I guess it depends on what the situation is. But if you, if you look at it as a vicious cycle, Richard, I'd say what we're seeing right now makes perfect sense. Right. Right. What we want is we want the administrators to be in charge. Right. We want the president to be responsible. Yeah. Right. But the reality is that we've rigged the system. Right. Right. So colleges largely recruit on reputation and student value. We've created a commodity. Education is no longer education for its own sake. It's something we do in order to get a job afterwards. Well, what does that really create? It creates an increased buyer power. In other words, students walking into a college have far more say in what they want and how they want it, how much they're willing to pay for it, than they ever have. And so how does that work then? Well, college administrators are usually pretty strapped for cash. Like there's not a lot of colleges that have multi-billion dollar endowments. Right. Most of them are, are living enrollment cycle to enrollment cycle with smaller endowments that allow them to sort of weather difficult times, just like a household budget might. Right. You know, you know, my wife and I aren't millionaires, but we have enough in the bank that if we had a low month or something like that, like we'd be okay. Right. Right. You go into six low months, we're probably losing our house. You go into 12 low months, like we're living on, you know, like there are The elongated timeframe creates problems for these institutions. Right. And so what do you do? Well, you begin to cater to the students because you don't want to lose them. Yeah. And so what you realize is that education challenges students. Education pushes them to be different people. Right. But placating them allows them to stay the same and keeps them happy. And so we've sort of rigged the system here so that the more competition we've got, the more we treat education as transactional as opposed to transformational. Students have more say in how they're going to be treated, what they can and can't do, how they can and can't say it, how much they're going to pay for an education, who treated me this way or not this way or whatever. And so college administrators largely right now, I feel bad for them in a lot of ways. I feel bad for them because the job has become something that is less than education in a lot of ways, not always, but in a lot of ways. Right. You know, those students have no more respect for the public trust than the educators do. And when I've written on student loan forgiveness and those kind of things, I feel the exact same way about, I think students need more responsibility, not less. But whenever there are accountability systems that are sought to be employed, they're almost always instituted on the educational or institutional level, which further ties the hands of people who might otherwise be interested in educating students. Right. Now what they've got to do is follow rules. Well, following rules that don't apply to students, imagine, right? Like, hey, let's arm wrestle, Richard. I'll tie both hands behind my back. Who do you think is going to win? Right? It's like, that's how some of this tends to work itself out. Now that's a, you know, that's a very simplified explanation of it. No, but it makes sense. But I think the overall dynamic is really problematic here. And that's why I mean it's going to take decades to unwind this because we have created essentially a commodity. It's easy to get educated and then we're dependent on students being respectful. Yeah. Right. Respectful customers. Not of the sort that, you know, walk into McDonald's and, you know, leave their wrappers on the table for the next guy. Right. We're trying to get them to throw their trash away. Well, we all know how that kind of works. The more people you get involved, the fewer respectful people you're actually going to have. Yeah. And so I think we've got this big ball of problem that, that needs to be solved. Yeah. I would say, you know, sorry, I, I would just say this. I think part of the reason, and I think it's a, I think it's a lousy reason. Okay. So I'm, I'm saying it's a lousy reason. It would not be something that I would choose. But my guess is part of the reason they're not addressing some of these things on campus is because they don't want to mass exodus students. Right. Right. Well, I'll give you a little bit of what I used to tell people who I, I used to talk to that were involved with the Occupy Wall Street. And, you know, I, I found that, okay, they, they're mainly students who've graduated and they're, and they're looking for that, that promise job that they, that they had. And I, and I looked at all the brain power that was in these parks and, you know, across the country in New York and Philadelphia and, you know, every, there was like a franchise of them. And I said, why, why aren't they all getting together and writing a business plan or inventing something? I mean, you have all this brain power. These people are equipped to, you can, you can make your own job, you know? Well, I'll, I'll kind of close with this, but I'll say, you know, my son, he wants to go into history. He wants to be a history major. That's great. Right. And so we've talked, you know, he's talked, you know, about what he might want to do and he's thinking maybe he wants to go on for a PhD. And so I've been very blunt with him about what it takes to earn a PhD and that it's not a guarantee. Right. You're, you're being accepted into a guild. So you can devote a lot of life to this. And basically what I've told him is, you know, number one, nobody's going to give it to you. You get to earn it. Right. And, you know, number two, you have to be ready for disappointment along the way. Like this is hard work. This is arduous. This is not a given. And I think, you know, in some ways, PhDs, truly academic PhDs, right? Now, my wife has a PharmD. Hers is a little different.

certified license and boards, but there isn't a dissertation where your peers are evaluating you and you're deciding, you know, it's more objective as opposed to subjective. Right. So when I say an academic PhD, what I mean is a subjective PhD, right, where you're writing a thesis and some other people are judging whether it's good enough or not. That is not guaranteed. Right. And I think that that level of expectation, like, look, you're going through this educational process, right, you're getting an undergraduate degree. Nothing's guaranteed beyond that. You know, I've been out of a job with, you know, an undergraduate degree and two masters. So nothing's guaranteed, but we don't convey that. Be safe out there as you're digging through this information, but come on back to Thinking Christian next time. All right, cool. Want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you will find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Life Audio. Looking for ways to stay positive? Brighten your day with the free Story Behind podcast. Hear weekly short stories that showcase true joy, love, and hope. Listen now at lifeaudio.com or by searching for Story Behind wherever you get your podcasts.