Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns, But the Rot Runs Deep.

0:01 - By now, we've all watched as three of our most influential leaders in so-called higher education from Harvard, MIT, and Penn humiliated themselves before Congress and the world. I've gotta say, I've enjoyed watching these smarmy, condescending hypocrites squirm, and they all deserve to be fired and run out of education, but not for the reasons you might think. Here again, we need to find moral clarity. Now, a quick recap. They were asked a clear, if bombastic, question.

0:30 - Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's/Penn's/Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? - And each gave an almost identical lawyer-prepped answer. - I've heard chance, which can be anti-Semitic, depending on the context. - We are an inclusive community, but one deeply committed to free expression. - It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman, - It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today? - Okay, so what's wrong with these answers and what shouldn't be wrong?

1:03 One thing that's obviously wrong is the heartless, smirking, tone-deaf approach each of them takes, given what's actually happening right now on their campuses to Jewish students. These people are leaders of large complex organizations. That means their job includes managing public relations and being politically savvy in moments like this. On that style score alone, they should all be fired. I mean, good grief! It's painful to watch, isn't it? What is going on with the weird smirks and smiles?

1:34 Are all three of them nervous in exactly the same way? Did none of them get media training? Are they really that bad at this or are they just contempt-filled and condescending? I'm guessing it's a mix of all three. Their subsequent apologies after the fact have only dug the hole that much deeper. But on substance, the issue is far more complex. And if you want to be a defender of America's highest values and the bedrock principles of Western civilization, you need to pay closer attention.

2:07 We are called in this moment to take a deep breath, control our emotions, and be clear about what we stand for as a nation. Let's all remember what the First Amendment of the US constitution actually says. "Congress shall make no law "respecting an establishment of religion, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; "or abridging the freedom of speech, "or of the press; "or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, "and to petition the government for redress of grievances."

2:40 Sorry, Mr Bin Laden and your new TikTok fans, no Sharia law for you here. Now, it's important to remember that the issuing question is the power of Congress, of the government. Sorry, Congress, but you can't tell TikTok to take any of those videos down or any of the other treasonous censorship crimes we've learned about through the Twitter files. And notice that among these First Amendment protections is the right to peaceably assemble. That right, in fact, rests on the ability to privately exclude certain people and behavior from your group.

3:12 A church can exclude non-believers from becoming members. That's an essential First Amendment right too. This is really important to American freedom. You don't have to hire people you don't want to hire. You don't have to include people you don't want to include in your private club, dinner party, or college campus. And why would you want to be part of a club that doesn't want you as a member? Screw them! So, what does this mean for free speech in our schools?

3:38 For starters, it's completely defensible to curtail various forms of otherwise legal speech and expression inside a private organization, including a school. Pornography is legal, but I do not want it shown to third graders. And even for colleges, if you want to ban various lessons or forms of protest on your private campus property, go right ahead. If you want to enforce morality codes on expression in order to establish a particular cultural norm on your campus, be my guest.

4:08 It's a free country. You get to make the rules of your organization and nobody is forcing students to attend. And we, the taxpayer, shouldn't be forced to subsidize the students who do, by the way. But that's for another video. Make your codes of conduct as you see fit. Just be honest about what you're offering and the trade-offs. Recognize that you are sacrificing open inquiry and innovation in favor of other values, such as cultural conservation or political solidarity.

4:35 Realize that you might actually be creating a museum or a monastery instead of a university. Frankly, I'd take a monastery over Harvard these days. Even so, in such a scenario, one would expect that any degree of restrictions on First Amendment expression would include an explicit ban on calls for antisemitism and genocide. Implicit or explicit, that is, unless your campus was, say, enforcing Bin Laden Sharia law, I suppose. And this right here is the problem. MIT, Harvard, and Penn, and the rest of the higher ed establishment don't admit to be doing any of the above.

5:10 They don't claim they're building new woke secular churches, which they are. Instead, they claim to be staunch defenders of free expression, open inquiry, and the pursuit of truth. Those claims were reiterated on the record under oath in their testimonies before Congress. - During their time at Harvard, by helping them build the skills that allow them to engage in constructive dialogue, even on the most complex and divisive issues. Because what we seek is not simply free expression, but the reason dialogue that leads to truth and discovery, and that does the work of moving us all forward.

5:48 - So, at least in theory, if these claims were true, their answers could have been seen as not just acceptable, but even brave. Awkwardly delivered but brave. A real university education should provide as close to an open battle of ideas as possible, which means that the official free speech policy of a real university should essentially be as close to the current legal definition of the First Amendment as it can. In fairness, some faculty at Penn are advocating for just that.

6:19 I fully expect them to be accused of white supremacy in short order. Also, consider that Harvard and Penn are some of the top law schools in the world. MIT is a titan of science and technology. No idea should be off limits, so long as it doesn't devolve into directed threats of violence or other incitement to imminent lawless action. How, for example, could one deeply study history without being exposed to radical arguments for all the sides of prior conflicts?

6:47 Remember those dreadful stats on Holocaust knowledge? A deep study of the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany surely benefits from such an open debate. Students should read "Mein Kampf". It's not hard to imagine how a mock debate between students where one side has to fully defend Hitler's positions would be a legitimate educational experience. That means there is a context where a student could be calling for the genocide of the Jews and it not be a form of harassment and intimidation.

7:16 And that's just one easy example. Even the myriad of stupid campus protests, so long as they're truly peaceful, can be teachable moments. After all, we get to see what these people actually stand for and what they really believe. Do you really think the world would be better off if we simply replace left-wing cancel culture with equal and opposite right wing cancel culture? That's a serious question. Think about it real hard, especially if you're like me with a son or daughter about to enter college.

7:47 Don't you want to know if the school's packed with anti-Semitic communist lunatics before it's too late and they're acting on their nutty Maoist dreams? I sure do. Pushing speech underground doesn't kill it. Black markets only make dangerous products more toxic. As the parent of a high school senior, I want more forums where every idea, no matter how radical, is open to vigorous debate. I may personally think that many of these college professors are deranged, collectivist lunatics, intent on destroying Western civilization, and too many of them are.

8:20 But I want my son to forge the iron of his mind in a battle of ideas with these wack jobs because he's going to encounter these stupid ideas out there in the real world. And frankly, even these wack jobs can be good teachers. I don't want him to be like those Bin Laden blinkered TikTokers stopped in their tracks like a deer in headlights as a mack truck barrels towards them with the driver shouting "Allahu Akbar." Again, the man who only understands his position barely understands even that.

8:51 You can always learn something from other people, even those who's deeply held beliefs you find repulsive. Students should be training to do ideological battle on the basis of actual arguments without appeal to authority or identity. We need to have moral clarity about this. We need to understand that this is one of the core ethics underpinning our civilization. We need to stand up for this principle. So, what does this mean for these three college presidents?

9:23 The role of leadership in any organization is partly to establish and maintain the culture. And in higher education, free speech should be that culture. The only way to maintain such a culture is to walk the walk. That means allowing all views to be heard. That means being very intentional to maintain broad viewpoint diversity in the teaching staff and enforce total neutrality among the administrative bureaucrats. If Harvard, MIT, and Penn were educational environments like this, then these leaders would've been taking a brave stand for enlightenment values with their testimonies.

10:00 They would've been acting as real heroes of education, but they aren't. They're just hypocrites and everyone knows it. All of these schools absolutely suck for open discourse and freedom of expression. This is not an opinion. This is a well-studied fact. The examples are legion and well-documented by FIRE, Christopher Rufo, and countless student surveys. The reason I will not pay to send my son to any of these schools is because the only people that have free reign to express themselves are radically anti-Semitic, far-left bozos.

10:33 Instead of being one of many views on campus, they are supreme. They have ultra super majority. On many college campuses, you won't find a single conservative teacher in any of their humanities departments. Not one. And when you do, they're like one in a hundred or a thousand. So a white male, like my son, won't be invited into open discourse, but will be bombarded by bullying, racism and hatred. His mind will just be under siege and driven towards closure or overreaction.

11:04 And it's not just the Ivy Leagues, Red-State schools like University of Texas here in Austin are just as bad. University of Texas! What this means is that these institutions are worthless, worse, they're actually frauds. These presidents should not be fired for equivocating about talk of genocide. They should be fired for that equivocation being a disgusting, hypocritical exception to their otherwise censorious school culture.

11:35 They claim to create learning environments that promote the pursuit of truth, but in practice, they deliver the opposite. These university leaders have utterly failed on their own terms as articulated in their testimonies. All of these presidents and many, many more should have been fired along with their entire administrations and much of their teaching staffs long before these testimonies for running a trillion dollar criminal enterprise. Yeah, you heard that right? The US higher ed industry is nearly $1 trillion in size annually.

12:06 This really does matter. Right now is an important moment. It's a moment where the tide can change, where examples like the ousting of Penn's president can lead to positive transformation of important institutions in our society. But we need to have moral clarity if we want the future of our education system and the culture that flows from it to live up to our highest values. We have to understand exactly what we're fighting for, not just what we're fighting against.

12:37 We should be for America's highest values as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech and expression are the first and most essential rights of a free and prosperous society. Every individual should be treated equally under the law, rather than as members of an identity group or tribe. We need to recommit to understanding why these values matter and how they've underpinned the most successful society in human history. We need to stand up for them when they are under attack and we need to teach them to our kids and make sure that the future generation knows and feels that this is who we are.

13:17 These values can and should unify us as Americans, but they're more than that. They can unify everyone as human beings. America is among a small set of truly unique experiments in history. We have a highly diverse democratic republic, and by and large, we actually all get along pretty well. We have these principles to thank for that and we should never forget it. (soft music)