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>> Jonathan Movroydis: It's Thursday, October 19th, 2023, and you're listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world. I'm Jonathan Mavroydis, senior product manager of the Hoover Institution, and I'm sitting in the chair of Bill Whelan, the Virginia Hobbes Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism.
So that he can answer questions and provide commentary about California policy and politics in which he's well versed. Bill Whalen, in addition to being a Washington columnist, writes weepy for Hoover's California on your mind web channel. Whalen is joined today by Lee OHanian, Hoover Institution senior fellow and professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in macroeconomic research at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ohanian also writes weekly about the policy environment of the Golden State for California on your mind. Good day, gentlemen, let's talk about the latest developments in policy and politics in the Golden State. Bill, let's lead off by talking about your article in California on your mind that was just released today.
Legislative season ended on Saturday, and as you know, Bill, that Governor Newsom might be doing some image crafting by showing restraint and moderation in his decisions to veto specific pieces of legislation. The goal, to showcase himself as a bit of a centrist should he pursue ambitions for higher office, or at least as you suspect. Quote, what Newsom also did was give the impression that he was channeling his predecessor, Jerry Brown, who famously subscribed to the canoe theory of governing.
Paddle left, paddle right, stay in the mainstream as you write Bill. In a boilerplate veto message, Newsom took a page from Brown's playbook by pleading fiscal responsibility. Quote, with our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined in considering bills with significant fiscal implications such as this measure, Newsom said.
An example of this you talk about in your article is Newsom's seeming evasion, in his decision to veto a bill that would have allowed adults 21 or older to possess and use psychedelic medicines found in mushrooms as a way to address mental health issues. Newsom signaled that he could have supported such a bill, but that it lacked regulated treatment guidelines.
If that were the case, why didn't he work with legislators in Sacramento to craft a bill that he would find acceptable before it reached his desk? And, Bill, would you care to elaborate on this? And in other cases, that Newsom was able to find a way to veto bills advanced by his own party? >> Bill Whelan: So for those not familiar with the song and dance in Sacramento, the legislature, at the end of its session September 14th has to produce bills. If it wants to send them to the governor.
They then go to the governor, he has 30 days to sign them or not. If he doesn't sign them, they become law automatically. So the governor has to weigh in one way or the other. Two things that struck me, one you alluded to was just the sheer inefficiency of the system. Jonathan with the mushroom bill, we'll get to that second, but what stands out here is at the beginning of the 30 days, the first week or two, Newsom vetoed a couple of measures that came as a surprise.
Or at least it sparked these headlines of Newsom suddenly being centrist and cautious and cynic than I am just seems to be awfully convenient for a governor who wants to become a more of a national figure. In other words, you veto these bills, which you think are kind of normal for a California governor to sign. He doesn't, and so he looks counter current. But the fact is when you look at the 900 bills or so that he signs, he actually is kind of predictably progressive for the most part.
But the one bill that did catch my attention was the mushroom bill that you mentioned for this regard goes to the governor's desk. It's been flirted with for several years now. It goes to the governor's desk, so does he sign it or not? Well, he vetoes it, but when he vetoes it, Lee and Jonathan, he has a very specific message saying that a provision was missing from it.
So here's the question that you got to in the beginning, Jonathan, if Newsom had known ahead of time he was going to veto a bill because it lacked that provision. Why didn't, a, he work with lawmakers beforehand [LAUGH] or b, just tell them, don't bother sending me without it? Just in other words, it's a waste of everybody's time to send to the governor. Now, of the 900 bills that went to the governor, there are a handful that are just going to go for the sake of it.
Just you make lawmakers happy by getting their bills out of there. But for the most part, this is a team operation as a democratic legislature and a democratic governor. So you think that they do a little better in cahoots. And we're gonna be mentioning this guy's name several times here cuz we're gonna get to a conversation soon about singer player healthcare, which is suddenly live in California. Jerry Brown was the master of this in at least two regards.
Number one, he would signal legislature ahead of time. Don't bother sending it to me, which he did with single payer a couple of times. But secondly, he would attach it in his veto messages. Lovely idea, but we simply can't afford it. And this came up time and again in the early news, some veto measures where he would say, like the idea, we just can't pay for it, and so makes him look like a fiscal conservative. So, Lee, so here we have it.
So, Gavin Newsom becomes basically not Jerry Maguire, but Jerry Brown. Show me the money. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, Bill. It's [COUGH] the mushroom bill just seemed such a classic for Newsom in the sense that, given what a lot of people think, he's gonna be running for national office as president. This would have been such an obvious one for opponents to throw at him. Governor Mushroom is, it would be the headline that we would be seeing. So I don't know to what extent this was his.
But I agree, this should never come to his desk if he's obviously not gonna sign it. So do you think this was his ability to try to do a little grandstanding and shutting this one down and trying to play the morality card about how there's a lot of regulations that should have been put into place and get a little bit of mileage out of that? >> Bill Whelan: Okay, well, Governor Mushroom, that's great. So we had Governor Moonbeam. Now we know Governor Mushroom, I love it.
Maybe the governor's thinking was this, put on my Gavin Newsom cap here for a second. He might have been thinking that here I am, the guy who really championed recreational marijuana in California. Remember, he was a big proponent of that initiative in 2016, and it won. So now we have legalized pot in California, and its a mess. Never written about this for California on your mind, where you have a thriving underground market.
There's actually more money made underground on marijuana in California than above ground because the taxes, plain and simple. So its a bad system, it needs to be fixed. So maybe Newsom was thinking, Lee, that, if I now put mushrooms into play, besides the fact that law enforcement is having a heart attack over this. Because its hard to just kinda monitor this and just think of all the stone people driving around on mushrooms.
We just don't have control of it in terms of economically control it as well. So maybe he was really, really being cynical here. He was thinking, five years from now, if I'm president United States, or running for president, [LAUGH] United States. I don't wanna be the guy who not only inflicted marijuana upon California in terms of being a mess, but now created a hot mess that is mushrooms.
So, but I think you get onto something important here, Lee, that mushrooms are ultimately kind of a giggle when you talk about just California shrooms. Yeah, why not [LAUGH]? >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah and, Bill, it's interesting in that a lot of Newsom's vetoes, he tried to have this very somber tone about, we just can't afford it, show me the money. But on the other hand, he signed legislation that I thought was just nuts.
It's a bill called Senate Bill 253 that requires the California Air Resources Board to impose rules on large companies, that is, those who have revenues exceeding a billion dollars per year. For example, Apple, Chevron, Walmart. They have to disclose their carbon emissions, and they have to disclose those emissions not only from the electricity they use and their production.
But [LAUGH] by 2026, they're also somehow supposed to disclose emissions made by all of the producers in their supply chains and their customers, millions of customers. I have absolutely no idea how they're gonna comply with this. This is a law with absolutely no benefit whatsoever, this regulatory requirement.
Unless you think about the enormous costs that could be imposed on corporations down the road that would lead them to be taxed on the basis of their carbon emissions as well as their customers carbon emissions. And supply chain carbon emissions, this is just an awful lot. So there's a level of schizophrenia, I think, when it comes to the bills that he didn't like, and he says we can't afford them.
And then just crazy bills such as SB 253 that he likes, that imposes enormous costs on corporations with no benefits whatsoever for consumers. >> Bill Whelan: Lee, you're overlooking a gigantic political benefit here at a 253. Newsom is going to hop on an airplane and put a lot of carbon in the sky and go to China so he can talk to Chinese leaders about climate change. This strikes me as, first of all, a really kind of ill-timed mission to China and that the world is looking at the Middle east.
And there are kind of larger geopolitical questions about what our colleague Neil Ferguson calls the axis of ill will. This is Iran, China and Russia basically trying to destroy the world in bits and pieces. So I'm not sure it's a good thing for him to be going over there and shaking hands with Chinese officials and trying to have a big group hug about climate change.
But the first here to benefit here is he gets to put the word first in his press release, because if there's one thing this governor has, it's a fetish with the word first. He just loves to sign bills and say that California is the first of the nation to do blank. But you're right on climate change. This bill is just a mystery in terms of its benefits, the compliance would be fascinating. And this is just creating more regulatory actions in California time.
We don't need this but look, you put the word first in front of this governor, he's gonna pretty much leap at it. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, and leap at it, including the lemmings jumping off the cliff [LAUGH]. He'd go off, and as he goes off, he beyond first. It never amazes me some of the really bad logic that comes from his mind. And this trip to China, that just seems like a non starter. California can't negotiate anything with China about climate emissions.
But this will, Bill, you should point out, this will give Newsom the opportunity, when the time comes down the road and he's running for national office, to say, I'm the guy who went to China. I'm the guy that talked to Xi and come up with some [COUGH] sugar coated description of what they talked about and the substantial progress he was able to make as California governor with China and climate change.
>> Bill Whelan: You don't go all the way over there without some business in hand that you know will be done. So I suspect you'll probably be signing some things that were started in the Schwarzenegger and Brown administration. So we'll continue with him. But again, it's just to me where the world's in a very complicated place right now.
Two wars going on, and just to be jumping on a plane and going over to talk climate with China just really seems to be kind of current, really what the world's concerns are at the moment. >> Lee Ohanian: It does seem to be quite down deaf. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Gentlemen, a bill that Governor Newsom didn't sign this month or did not veto this month with Senate Bill 770, which you write about in your column this week, Lee.
As you described in the article, Senate Bill 770, signed by Gavin Newsom earlier this month. Directs California's Health and Human Services agency to work with the federal government to create one health financing system that would manage healthcare for all Californians. This is the first step to implementing a single payer plan because California receives large federal contributions for healthcare, including Medicare, all of which would need to be folded into a single payer system.
Existing private insurance programs as well as Medicare would no longer exist. >> Lee Ohanian: Well, Jonathan, I think this is another example of Bill pointing to Newsom as saying, I wanna be first, I wanna be first. So Newsom wants to be first in terms of taking a major state and implementing single payer healthcare, which is what most of Europe has, and single payer healthcare in Europe, for the most part, is crashed and burned. So this is, again, it's absolutely horrible.
It's an absolutely horrible idea from the economic standpoint of getting benefits from health care dollars. And also the kind of health, the type of the terrible health outcomes we're gonna see based on the empirical record of single payer. I think the only thing we can hope for is that it is going to be an enormous challenge to try to create single payer in California because it would eliminate Medicare.
And it would eliminate Medi-Cal, which is California's Medicaid program, those are just obviously huge programs. And what particularly surprised me about this is that it got very little press. I mean, this would be a life changing program within the state because nearly everyone would fall under this single para umbrella except for very wealthy people.
And I point out in my column that Newsom would be one of those very wealthy people who could afford to pay completely out of pocket for the doctor you wanted to see in for the procedure he wanted to have. But just to give you some example of just how badly single payer has failed, I cite some statistics in the column, including stats from Canada.
Where I know that there's more MRI machines on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles than in the entire 5 million person province of British Columbia, which is, of course, where Vancouver is. And because the enormous scarcity of [COUGH] MRI imaging in Canada, patients are waiting so long, including patients who are suspected of having cancer, their tumors are doubling in size, sometimes before they ever get imaging.
And this is exactly what single payer does, it imposes no discipline on the demand side of the market. It constrains supply in terms of payments to providers, treatments, technologies such as imaging. And you just get these terrible outcomes. Another example I gave was that the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, which is the longest continuously operating single Perry program, has been around since the end of World War II.
In a lot of areas in England, cataract surgery is not provided, why is that? It costs $4,000 per eye at least here in California, it costs $4,000 per eye. They don't have the budget for it. But instead of simply acknowledging that, the National Health Service in the UK says, well, cataract surgery is a, quote, limited clinical value, unquote. It turns out cataract surgery is about 99% successful very few side effects.
It's a life changing surgery can mean the difference between good vision and ultimately becoming blind. But this is what single payer is. And it is terribly concerning that the media did not pick this up and question it, and that California voters are gonna be in for just an enormous surprise. If the state and the federal government figure out a way to make this happen. >> Bill Whelan: Okay, Lee, since I mentioned Jerry Brown, let's get into him for a second.
So Jerry Brown governed California twice for eight years. He governed it for the eight years preceding Gavin Newsom in 2017 Lee and Jonathan, he went to Washington and was asked by lawmakers about single payer care. Obviously, he'd heard a bunch Bernie Sanders on this, so he's asked about it. And Brown asked a very simple question guys, here was this question. He said, where do you get the extra money? And he added, this is the whole question.
Now, Brown went on to play Point out that during this conversation, the reporter said the overall cost of medical care in California equaled about 18% of the state's GDP, which is about $450 billion a year. They added one last thought for the reporters. Quote, you take a problem and say, I'm going to solve it by something that's even a bigger problem, which makes no sense. So, Lee, in the crafting of this bill and now pushing it forward, has anyone talked about how it's gonna be financed?
>> Lee Ohanian: Well, there was a bill a couple of years ago, Bill, that would have, quelle surprise, imposed a substantial tax on California businesses to help fund it. So that bill failed, but it would be just a behemoth in terms of dollars, in terms of administrative scope. And Bill, I just don't get it. What taxpayers are thinking about, what voters are thinking about, they are gonna be trusting their lives to the people who have brought you high speed rail.
o the people who brought you the employment development department that flushed $33.2 billion down the drain, and fraudulent payments. This is the gang that can't shoot straight and yet seems like we're ready to turn our health choices and decisions over to government bureaucrats. And Bill, what Sanders will often say about single payer is it's universal coverage and you can't be denied treatment. Well, yeah, it's universal coverage, but you have to wait for the treatment.
Yeah, treatment is denied all the time. Treatment is routinely denied. So that is a fib that's told all the time by Sanders and by those who advocate single payer. And coverage is not the issue. For years, California has had close to 100% coverage either within employer provided private programs, individuals buying private programs, or people falling into some public program like Medicaid, Medi-Cal. Medi-Cal has 15.3 million enrollees in it.
Virtually everyone in California is covered except for for those who are in the country illegally and/or relatively young. Newsom did extend coverage to those in the country illegally, but who are relatively old. So it's not an issue about coverage, but this myth about you can't be denied treatment. Treatment denial happens all the time in single payer, and it just drives me up the tree when people are willing to believe that. >> Bill Whelan: Let me ask you a mechanical question here, Lee.
As I understand it, this is SB 770 we're talking about. As I understand it, Lee, what this does is it directs the state's Health and Human Services agency to work with federal partners on what the bill calls a unified health financing system. The agency would be required to submit an interim report by January 2025, a federal waiver framework by June of 25, and a final framework for state leaders by November of 25. Lee, here's what I'm trying to get my head around.
Does this mean that we'd be looking at a ballot initiative in 2026? I'm asking because at all times, as our listeners will know, I go to the most cynical corners when it comes to Governor Newsom. And what could be more cynical than to put single pair on the ballot in 2026? And if it fails, you said, hey, I tried, but if it passes, your successor is gonna [LAUGH] get elected in November 2026. It'll be his or her problem to deal with.
>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, yeah, Gavin's looking at this as a bit of a no lose. He can say I kept my campaign promise and, look, we got it on the ballot and then he's gonna be gone by the time the mud hits the fan, so to speak. >> Bill Whelan: Well, it's gonna be a very interesting ballot initiative because, yes, California is progressive. You think the idea might sail through.
But, Lee and Jonathan, if you look at the fate of bonds in the past several cycles in California, bonds have not done too well. It's for a simple reason, people just don't wanna spend money in these days. And so if you come along with single payer care and lord knows what kind of dollar sign is attached to it. I got to believe that the opponents that have a pretty good time, not just with the message of government run healthcare, but it's also, how is California gonna possibly afford this?
Because, yeah, Lee, as you mentioned before, going after millionaires, I don't think taxing millionaires alone will do the job here. >> Lee Ohanian: No, it won't. And the more you go after millionaires, the more they leave and see somewhere else. And, Bill, to give you an idea about budget, this year, the 15.3 million enrollees in Medi-Cal, that budget is about $140 billion. So scale that up by a factor of approximately three, and you're at about, what, $420 billion.
I'm sure once you kick in inflation and additional administrative costs, you're looking at half a trillion dollars. And, Bill, that's in a healthcare system that's performing abysmally, both in terms of administrative failures. There are continued deficiencies within the system that pop up all the time on the California State Auditor's reports of Medi-Cal. Reimbursements are so low, Bill, in my column, I noted some providers getting as little as $18 reimbursed per patient.
And there are doctors who are saying, look, I've got a patient, I referred them out to a specialist. Some of these patients are already waiting two years to see a specialist, or they've got to travel hundreds of miles to find someone who accepts Medi-Cal and doesn't have a two year wait list. So what troubles me here is that single payer just flouts the basic economic laws of supply and demand. You artificially try to constrain spending, supply drops, you provide no skin in the game.
On the demand side, that is, you go to England, copays are zero, demand skyrockets. All that can be done is that people wait in line, and you've got people waiting in line who are in terrible pain, low quality of life, and in some cases, who are probably gonna die before they receive treatment. >> Bill Whelan: Yeah, I think Jonathan stumbled on something important earlier where he asked whether or not this is in the democratic mainstream.
And I think, yes, if you're seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in this day and age, you've probably got to say, I'm in favor of single payer care. And again, to be a sinecure, Lee and Jonathan, what's better than a governor who can say not only am I in favor of it, but by gosh, we put a program together and we put it in front of the voters. The voters just couldn't do it or better yet, we passed it, but I'm not there to watch over it.
So I think it's all about checking a box, if you're Gavin Newsom. >> Lee Ohanian: Yep and the, and Bill, your point about, I'm first. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Gentlemen, let's discuss a column that Lee wrote last week for California undermined, called California's chilling attempt to muzzle physician speech. The article centers on a bill that Governor Newsom signed last fall that if and when enforced, would charge California physicians with professional misconduct.
And would possibly result in loss of their license if they were to question the medical community's consensus opinions regarding COVID-19. Lee, you write, quote, but like so many California laws AB 2098 is vague, poorly written, and represents gross government overreach. Lee, just how badly is the bill written and how much does it overreach? >> Lee Ohanian: Jonathan the bill was terribly written.
And what, in my opinion, was even worse than the awful language in the bill is the reason the bill was written. So the reason the bill was written is because, and I quote, and this is actually in the text of the bill. Major news outlets claimed that physicians and healthcare providers were among the most important promulgators of misinformation and disinformation about COVID.
So all you needed was a couple of newspaper stories alleging that doctors were spreading misinformation about COVID, to suddenly get a law that Newsom signed to say a physician would be subject to punishment of professional misconduct, if they made a statement that was against the mainstream views about COVID. Okay, so now we get to the point of how badly was it written? Well, what's the mainstream consensus views?
I mean, COVID was rapidly evolving scientific opinions, people's perceptions of disease were changing every week, every month. It was essentially non-actionable. And it not only blocks people's first amendment freedom of speech rights, but it also was likely violating 14th amendment due process clause.
Because what is the physician supposed to do when you make some statement about COVID saying, hey, my patients have done well on this particular treatment, or my patients haven't done well on this particular treatment. Who's to say that's consistent with the mainstream or not? So, long story short, a handful of physicians challenged this in court. Temporary restraining order, injunction was put into place.
The judge agreed that it was terribly written, that it was likely violating First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights. And, attorneys will say, if you get a temporary injunction against you, you're probably gonna lose. So the law was stopped. Then about six weeks ago, the attorneys representing this handful of physicians then filed a motion for summary dismissal, that is to eliminate the law altogether. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. State Bill 815 was signed by Newsom.
And as Bill pointed out, this flurry of bills hit Newsom's desk over the last month or so. SB 815 was one signed by Newsom. SB 815 was simply a regularly occurring, recommissioned California's medical board. It was basically a pro forma but within SB 815 was a clause that eliminated the muzzle on California physicians regarding COVID. No one has come forward to say where the elimination of the previous law, how that got into SB 815, who did it? The author of SB 815 said, I didn't do it.
I don't know where it came from, maybe it came from the governor's office. Newsom didn't say one word about this. So from the standpoint of every once in a while, good things happen, this law is no longer an issue, but it's chilling from the standpoint that Jonathan, let me read you the text of the law, and then I will share with you Newsom's interpretation of the law.
Okay, so the text says it will be professional and will be unprofessional conduct for a physician, disseminate misinformation related to COVID, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, is prevention and treatment. That seems pretty clear, doesn't it? This is what Newsom said.
I signed it because it would apply only to those egregious instances in which a physician is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with one of their patients. I can't imagine how you can read this text of the bill. It shall constitute unprofessional conduct to disseminate misinformation related to COVID, to how Newsom interprets it.
Only those egregious instances in which a licensee is acting with malicious intent, they're two totally different things I have absolutely no idea where that came from, but the law has now disappeared under the radar. No one's willing to say how it disappeared. Newsom won't talk about it, nobody in the Senate will talk about it. But again, it's just another example of California just running roughshod over people's rights and then not being willing to acknowledge that, hey, you know what?
We maybe went overboard on this. >> Bill Whelan: So, Lee, I have two questions for you. One, do the name Scott Atlas or Jay Bhattacharya appear anywhere in this legislation? Because Dr. Jay, these are both hoover fellows, by the way, but they also have had past recurrent affiliations with the Stanford medical School as well, teaching over there.
Jay Bhattacharya was very outspoken during COVID, came up the great Barrington Declaration, questioning really a lot of things the government was doing proven right in the long run. Scott Atlas not only did the same question a lot of COVID policy, but actually served in the Trump White House briefly, his advisor as well. We feel like these guys are being targeted. But the other question, Lee, is, let's say that I'm a doctor and I run afoul of this, who is hearing me?
In other words, if I'd go before some sort of tribunal to be heard on this, am I gonna get a fair jury, or is this just gonna be a bunch of very like-minded people appointed by the governor to decide my fate? Which will be a fate accompli. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, both Scott and Jay have been really vilified by the medical profession. And Bill, as you note, a lot of their perspectives and opinions, which both blended economic analysis with medical opinions.
And focused on the costs and benefits and the trade offs involved, the various COVID policies, they were spot on. Yeah, particularly when it came to issues such as shutting down in person instruction schools. Both Scott and Jay thought those were terrible ideas. Now it's looking like they were absolutely right, those were terrible ideas. So it's very disturbing just how much the medical community just rushed to judgment and impugn both doctors.
Both Jay and Scott impugned their motivations and [COUGH] wouldn't even really listen. But it seems this is where we are now. It's gonna be, do as I say, and if you don't, you're gonna be fined for misconduct and you might even lose your license. >> Bill Whelan: I think it's fine to have a system where there is some sort of board to appear before. I mean, individuals and all professions should be held accountable.
But if it's an echo chamber, I don't understand the purpose of having the board, but that's just, again, my very cynical take. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, and Bill, you're up at Stanford every day. A lot of the Stanford community was just remarkably critical, and I think, [COUGH] again, rushed to very negative judgments about Atlas and Bhattacharya. And as time has evolved and as their opinions proved to be Much more correct than the quote, consensus views.
As far as I can tell, those at Stanford who have criticized them have not changed their minds, have not said, you know what, maybe they were right, and I should apologize. And as far as I can tell, none of that has ever happened. >> Bill Whelan: Yeah. >> Jonathan Movroydis: And gentlemen, as the war between Israel and Hamas wages on, protests are occurring on college campuses throughout the Golden State including where you are at UCLA, Lee.
Students and faculty at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, USC and Cal State Long beach told Los Angeles Times reporters the climate on their campuses has created a chilling effect on speech. And efforts to discuss the conflict civilly. Lee, first, can we get your reflections on the environment at UCLA? And then Bill, can you discuss what has happened at Stanford University, where we work at the Hoover Institution?
>> Lee Ohanian: Well, Jonathan and Bill, I think there's a couple of points here that are interesting to discuss. One is the tension involved on college campuses which are supposed to behave as a free speech. And the second is the lack of success among a lot of college administrators in terms of having a clear policy towards implementing that. I'll get to you soon in a second, we've seen a lot of terrible publicity about Harvard, University of Pennsylvania.
Lawrence Summers, who was treasury secretary under Clinton, I believe he was the head of Obama's National Economic Council. He's a heavyweight in terms of democratic economics. He's a professor at Harvard, he's former president of Harvard. He came out very critical of Harvard because Harvard had something like 25 or 30 student group scientists, a nutty letter saying, Israel's getting what they deserve. And whatever violence is taking place in the Middle East is all the fault of Israel.
Harvard was silent, one day, two days, maybe three days, Harvard was silent. Then finally, their new president Claudine Gay came by and denounced Hamas. But this was the same university that within hours of the George Floyd story jumped all over that. So if you're a university president, you can either say, we're gonna steer clear of all political discussions. We're not gonna make statements about issues that aren't squarely within the framework of the mission of the university.
That's one way to handle it. Another way to handle what she should have said was to say, we have freedom of speech here at Harvard. Nonetheless, I'm gonna distance myself and everyone else I know here at Harvard from these student groups that I completely disagree with. Will respect right to have those statements, but I can't tell you, I can't disagree with many more. And then over at Penn, Jon Huntsman former governor of Utah, a huge donor to Penn has said, we're gonna cut off.
There's no more checks going from the Huntsman family to University of Pennsylvania which again, had kind of milk toasty response to what has happened. Now UCLA, like all other campuses, UCLA has been struggling to try to manage freedom of speech issues. There were a couple of professors from gender studies who had planned on having a, quote, emergency teach-ins about Palestine shortly after October 7th.
And what I found out is that both faculty who are in the gender studies department had offered students in their classes and in those taking other gender studies classes extra credit. If they were going to attend these, quote, emergency teach-ins seminars or lectures about the Palestinian-Israeli situation. Anyway, Bill and Jonathan, what is just so ironic about this is that gender studies is largely about LGBTQ+. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Right.
>> Lee Ohanian: LGBTQ+ in the middle of the Middle East and hardcore Muslim countries. You would be safe for about one second in those countries, there's no place you'd rather be than be in the United States. So there's an enormous disconnect between the support they offer to Palestinians and Islam, and their unwillingness to criticize a terrorist organization. The common theme I see at UCLA and other college campuses is, there's collective punishment of 2 million people who don't deserve this.
And there's never the recognition that Hamas is collectively punishing these 2 million people, and they've been doing this for the last 20 years. >> Bill Whelan: Yeah, Jonathan, you asked about Stanford. Stanford's kinda interesting place to look at, because historically it's not the same hotbed of activism as either this UCLA was back in the Vietnam days or Berkeley. Pretty much whenever anything happens, Stanford should always say more laid back.
If you have been on the campus the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that there were pro-Palestine bedsheets that were hanging around campus. The university asked them to be taken down, but only because they were hanging in the wrong places, not because they didn't care for the message. You walk on the sidewalks of Stanford, and you'll find entry Israel chalk along the sidewalks.
But it's not like there are people marching in the thousands begging drums every day asking for the war to end. There are two things so do telling about Stanford. One is the home to some of the smartest kids in America. You're 18, 19, 20 years old, and you may be smart but you are not necessarily knowledgeable. Certainly, when it comes to history, certainly it comes to foreign policy, and certainly in the incredibly complicated world that is the Middle East.
Well, it's like being of that age and being a new driver, but you sure as heck don't know how combustible engine works. And that's kinda kids with the Middle East, they just understand everything, it's work there. It's funny, three decades ago, when worked for Peter Wilson, he's governor of California, we had a problem with anti-Semitism in California. This is when Schindler's list came out and kids were going to see the movie, and they were laughing during the movie.
And a girl would get slaughtered in the Holocaust, and the kid in the crowd would laugh at it and make a joke, and this is awful. We realized something has to be done. So we worked with Steven Spielberg, and we put together, it was called the Schindler's project. Which was having kids go see the movie, but then having kids actually study the Holocaust in the classroom so they understood what was going on.
I think something similar could be done in this day and age with the movie Munich, which is also a Spielberg movie, I think released in 2005. And it has to do with how the Israeli government reacted to the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the 72 summer games in Munich. And it's a nuanced movie because it shows the brutality of all of this. But it has Hamas agents really kind of weighing with their moral conscience about killing the bad guys but also trying to limit the collateral damage.
So what it shows is, yes, Israel has a much more nuanced approach to reprisal as opposed to what the media have. But they're just essentially the incredible Hulk on steroids is going out and destroying everything in its way. So one issue at Stanford is the kids, but the other one, Lee and Jonathan, is the professors.
There is a much-published story out of Stanford about a lecturer, not a tenured professor, but a lecturer who is teaching a class of freshmen and asked the Jewish kids in the class to raise their hands. When they did, he asked them to stand up, and then he told them to go take their possessions and sit in the corner of the classroom. And they further branded them by saying, now you know how it's like to be a Palestinian. And now you know what it's like to be Israeli, to be a colonizer.
And, Lee, I don't think this is why you got in the teaching profession, [LAUGH] to shame kids in front of other kids and humiliate them. And I just read that story and I wonder, boy, if it were my kid, I'm probably talking to a lawyer right now about what to do. But I guess, sadly, this is university life in America, 2023, Lee, where professors, teachers, lecturers don't leave their biases at the door. They come into the classroom and they push their ideology.
>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah and Bill, taking that one step further, there's an awful lot of college courses now being offered in humanities and social sciences, where the purpose of the court is not really being taught. What's being taught is a political agenda that's held by the faculty member. So whether it's Shakespeare, you're gonna learn about the professor's agenda and their opinions about Trump and their opinions about Israel and their opinions about Palestine.
You're not gonna hear too much about the Twelfth Night. And when we look at, when we look at the public's confidence in higher education, 30, 40 years ago, it was favorable, probably by 80%, 85%, bill. Today, favorability in higher education is down in the thirties, and this is a reason why. At UCLA, things just changed enormously after the 2016 election with Trump.
I've been at UCLA since 1999, between 99 and November 2016, I personally didn't notice a lot of crazy political stuff going on campus. I mean, I think it did, but it was somewhat under the radar. After Trump's election, things just changed enormously and they haven't gone back in these seven years. >> Bill Whelan: Well, I think that's kind of the new norm between Trump's election.
You mentioned George Floyd, where essentially just, we had a very loud conversation about that, now we're having one about Israel. One thing about universities is, I think they need to learn how to better communicate. At Stanford, at least the MO is for the university president to put out a press release when something happens. Ends up just being a very long word salad that's been written, obviously, by about a dozen people, and just, it goes on and on and on.
And it manages, Lee and Jonathan, to kinda be the worst of both worlds. It just takes too long to read and it doesn't really say anything at the same time. And I think if you were a CEO working for a corporation and had a board of directors to report to, or politician or voters report, you couldn't last long. But university professors are a different animal. But I just wish universities would be a little more declarative in what they say and also kind of have equal standards.
I'd like to see them equate anti-Semitism with racism, but I guess we're not there yet. >> Lee Ohanian: No, we're not there yet. Yeah, and there's a lot of gobbledygook that comes out. It's lots of words and there's a lot of discussion about people are hurting and we mourn the loss of life. If you need help, there's campus resources for this. And okay, it's fine to say that.
But you look at any of these statements, certainly the first statements that have come out, not the ones that came out after university presidents realized that they're getting pilloried. And there's just no clarity, there's no clarity about what the policies are. It would have been very, very easy for Harvard, for example, to shut this down immediately. And yet they have one of their former president, I don't remember his exact quote.
But he said something along the lines of, it sickens my stomach that the university is not distancing themselves from these 30 crazy student groups. That's all they needed to do but that's not what college education is anymore, Bill. >> Bill Whelan: No, you're right. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, as always, gentlemen, this has been very interesting and timely analysis. Thank you for your time. >> Bill Whelan: Well, actually, can I jump in here and add one last thing? We have breaking news.
I think Gavin Newsom must listen to our podcast because I just saw over my phone here, he's going to Israel. He's going to go to Israel before he goes to China. This is interesting politics again, to be the resident cynic here. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, just went to Israel and had a pretty good looking trip in terms of public relations wise. So I hope that somebody in Israel invited the governor, I'd hate to think that he has to go because she went.
But he is gonna head over there, I'm not sure exactly what he's gonna say or do, but there he is. So getting back, Lee and Jonathan, to our a conversation about Gavin Newsom kinda checking foreign policy boxes, there you go. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, again, thank you for your time. You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, the Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world.
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Please visit the Hoover [email protected] and sign up for the Hoover Daily Report, where you can access the latest scholarship and analysis from our fellows. Also, check out California on your Mind, where Bill Whalen and Lee Ohanian write every week. Again, this is Jonathan Movroydis sitting in Bill Whalen's chair this week. He'll be back for another episode of Matters of Policy and Politics, thank you for listening.
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