Thank you.
Thank You're far too kind checking each check our faces are bad.
I love to see you guys.
By the way, I bring the Latin love to the to the podcast. I always say how much I love you guys, how much I miss you, how much I like you. You see, that's the Latin language speaking through me me.
I miss you every day.
You see.
That's your Chilenyan side being actually transparent with our friendship.
That's nice.
And then I go, guy, stop being awkward. I don't even want to know that you have feelings, let alone what they are.
His Anglo Saxon awkwardness coming in.
Excuse me. I am neither Anglo nor Saxon. Even worse, I am Germanic.
Germanic.
He's an orientalist from now Oh yeah, he's purely a boot It's just one of those Odin worshippers.
Exactly.
Well, I would love to tell you about Fabava, but we're gonna pay it because we missed a lot of news, and this is a lot. Most of the news is just like funny, we got we got the tariffs and the trade wars, Trump crashing the market like the worst. Everyone knows this already, but it's just too fun it's the it's the first time that like one person has caused the crash of a market instead of like COVID or nine to eleven.
And I kind of find what we're going to talk about today funny too. I don't know if you're very implying that it's not funny. I think it's very funny.
I heard it was the biggest market downturn of the doubts the twenties.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.
Which is a typical I always feel it feel like it's a typical thing to hear when I go on news binges.
Great big question, it's the biggest, No, not since it's a great depression.
The biggest COVID, I thought.
Oh, COVID, Yeah, that's true.
No, I think it's already larger than that.
They said, like all time it was the big doesn't matter, We're gonna move on.
It's agree.
The only thing that's potentially about this, like the market crashes, which is you know, it just does that. That's a thing. Line goes up, line goes down. But the the the unthinkably damaging thing that has happened there is the treasury drop. Because usually when the market drops, then treasury securities go up, and this time they didn't go up. I haven't. I haven't checked what they are at this week, but that
could be. That's like that changes the future, that changes the hegemony of the American dollar potentially.
But hooray I mean this and this also may explain Trump's push into crypto and to deregulate crypto just just as hedging in case everyone flees the dollar as the reserve currency into These things.
Are all so boring compared to what we're actually going.
To talk about. Hey, crashing the market is base. If Bernie Sanders had one, he would have to do all the same stuff.
Or yeah, aren't we all still waiting for the big one?
Like it?
You know there's ups and downs two thousand and eight COVID. When's the big one coming that everything goes?
I think, comrade Trump, it's going to push us into the future unwillingly.
That's the portal to the future. Is the is the downward the crash?
Yeah? Right, we also never talked about, like Canada politics, massive shift. It's completely just based on.
The the rise of the car.
But let's not let's not go to into detail. But the Conservatives we're going to have a majority government and now they're not. Now the Liberals are are they set for majority or still minority government?
Majority?
I heard they were up, but I don't know by home.
That is just the most insane one eighty And it's just because we vote with our feelings, and our feelings are we don't like are Alberton, Ron de Santis nerds?
So where's Canada again?
That's yeah, that's such a it's right above the United States. Yeah, just as a geography lesson, we share a border with them.
It's kind of big. It's hard to miss.
Yeah, people are mostly concentrated on very very small places.
But you saw how Trump thought when he was talking about Canada becoming the fifty first state. He looked at He's like, look at it. It'd be a beautiful big thing if it became a that's the reason you know what you want. But also, like a note on Karney, Mark Karney, the very very likely new prime minister. Totally incidentally, someone like randomly bought me this book like years ago, which is right here. It's his It's Mark Karney's actual book, and I thought it'd be quite funny. Maybe we could
cover it on the podcast. Maybe there's something funny in here that we could read all values. It's like his philosophy.
I love both value and values. These are important terms to me.
Yeah, cool, cool terms.
Yeah, Yeah, that's intriguing. What's why is the s anyway?
Well, you got marks for value and Niatzure for values.
And these guys doing both.
Yeah, I bet.
There's a ton of marks in that book.
I'll bet you that was just a I'll bet you that was the publisher, like his editor being like, we need him a clever title, Pier, let's just do with.
Let's put this s under rature exactly.
Okay, So what we're covering today is not all the stuff that we just talked about. Maybe we will know at some point, but we want to talk about Trump declaring war on universities because most of us have spent I think, are all of us still in a university close enough? Ifiliating you're taking a degree right now? Right? Yeah, anyway, we've spent a combined like fifty years in a university.
I'm still very affiliated with universities for sure.
Yeah, and we know what's wrong with them, having spent so much time there. And we're going to decide whether Trump knows what's wrong with them? If they are, they're a sickness I think was what he said on Truth Social And I love when people say things like sickness because then you get all the religious metaphors in there. And there's no doubt that universities do some annoying shit. There's no doubt that university heats are corrupt. So I'm
not crying over here. Eric at one point on this podcast did a deep dive into the corruption of his university where the board had all these ties to a nonprofit and then all the money was like circled through there for building contracts on campus, building completely unnecessary buildings on campus, just because the construction or the builder is like the brother of on the board. So this stuff
happens all the time at universities. I'm sure they're basically corporations, no doubt, and academics, with their pursuit of wisdom and free inquiry, that could happen at a university, but it's not guaranteed. But Trump hates all the university and we agree generally speaking as academic side, that we hate university administrations. The academic hates them.
Yeah, I kind of hate both sides of this. Debate, So it's going to be pretty cool. I agree.
I kind of hate both sides of this to too.
What are what are both the sides?
Trump and the universities?
Trump and the university?
Oh oh, in terms of that, yeah, Trump versus Trump versus higher education and the universities that he chose as well.
Yeah, yeah, he was selective.
Yeah yeah, maybe this is maybe gonna be a controversial thing to put on the table. But like there were a couple of Trump's demands that I was kind of like, yeah, it's a good idea. Maybe which ones like one or two, Like I would say.
Should be like prefaced by setting people on the mood and like telling a little bit of the behind story.
And we read some New York Times articles here for this, maybe we should just give them a quick run.
I randomly choose Eric to do that, to give the rundown of what's random selections?
Random selection deliberately chosen by Yeah.
Totally random.
It was determined by previously existing material conditions.
So was it a April eleventh?
Right?
These demands were sent to Harvard, which which included ending DEI and critical race theory, kinds of connected programs and things that are funded overall to well reduce the autonomy of the university governance, basically by instituting merit based hiring practices instead of instead of I guess would you call them like a dei quota or affirmative action type stuff. Yeah,
targeting international students. We've been hearing a lot about that and the deportations and referring to protests as riots.
And I just quickly added that the stick he's using though, is like federal funding, right, so he's going to cut I was going to get I was.
Going to get to that. One broad thing he's done in all of his post Project twenty twenty five strategies, including this one, is to weaponize federal funding. And those are the basic that's basically he sent these demands by mistakes, some say to Harvard, and I mean, I guess that's similar demands that were sent to Columbia and similar demands he's putting on. But Harvard is also fighting back and suing Trump, being like, we're a private institution, First Amendment,
freedom of speech, blah blah blah. Government overreached. So those are the two sides Trump's demands and Harvard like retaliatory lawsuit.
And can I just just for context, I think this is this is is an ongoing fight between the Republicans and the universities versus all these critical race theories and saying that universities are supposedly Marxist hellholes that are forming revolutionaries and whatnot. But I think what I think it was the event that really triggered this direct attack against educational institutions. What was the predominance of protest in favor of the Palestinian people and against the genocide that is
going on in Israel. I think that was the main trigger, and that detonated into like a completely a defeat in the propaganda war because I think now the majority of millennials and centennials in the US are pro Palestinia and against Israel. And I think that is a little bit of context and backdrop to justify why Trump is attacking the universities.
On that point. Like in our group chat, Pills assigned a little bit of homework and you know, I want to be the good boy who you know, the good student who did his homework. And one of them was was he said, you know, focus on like the narratives. I guess I don't know. I mean I'm just kind of kidding here. So I was just trying to think to myself. I was like, what are the two narratives?
Maybe this isn't even what Pills meant by narratives, but I was thinking to myself and kind of to Diego's point, I see, like the Trump side narrative is like universities are like bastions of left wing indoctrination, hostile to white and Jewish students, and on a accountable to like the broader public and its public responsibility. And I would say that he's trying to and he's framing himself and like people like Christopher Ruffo and all these people as restoring
balance and freedom right, especially for conservative speech. And then I would say that the university's narrative, like Harvard's narrative, is institution's value autonomy, academic freedom, non partisan inquiry, and this crackdown is an authoritarian overreach that's like trying to use weaponizing research funding. And you know, they have this idealized vision of the university as like stewards of an
independent inquiry. You know, they advanced knowledge through academic freedom and that requires insulation, and they see this as like an infringement on that those are kind of like the way that I see the two narratives. I don't know if that's what you're looking for, pills, but that's that's what I came up with.
Yeah, I was looking for the mythology. Part of the mythology here doesn't it doesn't exactly make sense. I'm not really sure why Trump would be or the closest people to Trump are concerned about anti Semitism.
Well, this is what this is why to me, it's clear and like not to sound conspiratorial, and it's just so easy when this topic comes up to sound like, you know, like someone who's into Jewish conspiracy Jewish conspiracy theories.
But it's just simply true that like the Jews, like the Israel Lobby does have a lot of influence in like the Trump administration and both the Democratic and Republican parties, And I just like know if it's just like it's just almost certain that like in the wake of October seventh, like there's many people in the administration who are like, look, the universities are like contributing to this, you need to do something about this, And they're kind of framing it
as like an attack on Jewish students and then this is leading to these kinds of demands. So like it's just you know, and they're they're and they're funding a lot of election campaigns. And sorry if that makes me sound like a fucking Israel conspiracy theorist, but like that shit just seems true.
I mean, since since the war between Hamas and la could right, it's been anti semitism on campus charges all in the media. Even in Canada. We experienced it, hear, that's why we're talking about this. We have some experience with it, and those those kinds of things. Anti semitism on campus was like really you know, trumped up as after the war started.
So I don't who knows whether or not Trump himself cares about anti Semitism. People around him might, people around him might. But also there's so much in this of like Rufo. We read Rufo a while ago, and he's he's the big the CEI mind virus is taking over these universities and we need to cleanse and purge them. But I think it's one of the things is funny because they the demands were to purge your departments that are known for anti Semitism, including including like Middle Eastern studies,
South Asian Studies, I believe, and Harvard Divinity School. And by the way, the Harvard Divinity School it's probably like two or three hundred years old, I'm sure, and Protestant, so I'm sure they did the oldest they did some anti Semitism, there's no doubt about that.
It was an endowment from the late seventeen hundreds by some British trader or something. It's a permanent endowment, so they can only ever use that endowment money to re up that divinity professor position. So that's why it is still there because like permanent endowments, you just have to keep using them for their original purpose, even if it's two hundred years old.
But let's keep going. Let's keep going into this a little bit because there's, first of all, this is the administration and the university lawyers that are dealing with Trump. These are not academics, so do they care about academic freedom. They kind of have to for like brand purposes. But if we compare now Columbia University to Harvard Columbia University storied school, a lot of the the greats went there
or went through there. It's reputable, and Trump says, you guys have to stop funding the South Asian Studies Department and surveil your students better because anti Semitism, and Columbia, this prestigious center of learning, just goes, yes, sir, you mean, we'll get right on that. And now now this like not to be too self righteous here, because this is
probably the right move. You just say to Trump, yes, we're going to get our best people on it, sir, and then you don't really have to do anything because he just wants the He wants the nod. And then you get your billions of dollars of funding continue and the academics who are who are getting funded continue to get funding. No one lose their jobs. But you look
like a dog for capitulating. And I think Harvard, whether or not they I mean they certainly could follow follow suit, but I think this would be this is like so damaging to your reputation as an independent center of learning. And then just to capitulate to a complete clown who actually, well Trump, Trump did have a university, so maybe he uh, maybe he actually does know what he's on about here.
When I was doing my homework on this, I wanted to do Marx, Lacan and the Lose on like as a framework to address this topic, But I think, like the Lose, we can probably leave if we have time, because it's the least interesting.
Wait what you we think you have time for Marx and Lacan?
Yeah, well only have time for too.
I did. I did in my homework.
So, like the quick question that I found very interesting when when applying the Marxist critique of even the relationship between ideology, what's the role of academia in perpetuating the existing ideology and Trump's movement is very interesting because now the way I see it is that Okay, wait, so Harvard as a university within capitalism, it's another company. It
behaves as another company. I think even one of you guys said in the chat that the if Kara traded in Wall Street, it would be trading like between the top.
Five hundred companies.
Is like full of money, full of endorsements, is washing money everywhere, evading taxes.
So it's a big company.
So we know it is actually a company, but it's supposed to be working as a as a university, as an academic institution. But regardless, like if we take the Marxist analysis the role of institutions is to perpetuate the existing ideology. So what Trump is doing is weird to me because in a way, it's like, okay, if capitalism has this intrinsic characteristic of being ever expanding like this in a globalist neoliberal trend, of tearing down whatever resistances have, it
melts everything into solid into thin air. So capital has this ever expanding growth strategy. It's more represented in Harvard
than in Trump. And according to me, what Trump is doing, it's more like, I don't know if he's been anti capitalist by punishing the freedom of an institution that is perpetuating the ideology the religion of capital, because let's be honest, like what Harvard does is like the supreme Church of capital, even even if in the humanities or whatever they do that is supposed to be left leaning, everything is like the Church of Capital in Harvard. So Trump, by censoring them,
it's it's a weird move. So my my conclusion, and I wanted to hear from you guys, is that, Okay, So what is Trump doing in this in the relationship between universities perpetuating the currently existing ideology?
Well, I have that's interesting. That's that's I feel like that's almost that's so much deeper than I was going to go, like, like I think in a way like to me, I guess, okay, Like so my first reaction to that is I feel like that analysis is sort of premised on the idea that everyone knows the material conditions are what matter, and I don't think that's true. I think many, many people, especially in this American political moment,
actually think that the culture war is what matters. More So, you and I could agree that they're wrong about that, but it's also just true that that's what they believe. So but they think that they think the online.
It doesn't matter what they believe.
But their behavior is still gonna like I think, so maybe that's maybe we do disagree with them because I think like their behavior is going to be Like like Christopher Ruffo, I don't think that like his behavior is necessarily like it's going to be mediated by material conditions, but he really thinks that like, you know, stopping DEI and wokeness like matters the most, right, Like that's what
he thinks matters the most. And I and I think like there's also some short term thinking going on here where like right now Trump and like the conservatives see, oh, like we won this last election because we had advertisements that said, you know, she's for they them, Trump's for you and me. Right that worked, Like, let's keep attacking this because that's what's gonna win us the next election
if we can put all this wokeness stuff on the defense. So, like, I don't think that they're thinking that long term, that big picture. They're just like people don't like wokeness. Attacking wokeness won us the election. Universities are seen as part of this elite woke discourse. Let's attack the university. That's gonna win us brownie points. Like, I think it's as simple as that.
Yeah, But but I also think it connects back to the way Peels was talking about religion last episode in a way that in a way, now religion as ideology, it's working as a stabilizing agent, and you know, and this this recoil to previous belief systems, it's a it's an intention for for stability.
That that was my reading.
I think you're onto something, but you're you're being a little too simplistic with it, Like who's capital and who's anti capital? I think this is more like capital versus capital.
It's a yeah, I too think it's capital verse.
I was gonna say that, yeah, And I think a helpful concept would be like hegemony.
Right, it's too factions one. I don't know if you call it like you could call it something like well, you could call it something like new money versus old money. But like, because he's got he's got the tech people, he's got the new conservatives, they're trying to they're trying to get their piece of the pie. And Harvard and Columbia kind of represent like democrat, you know, old money even even like Bush is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I looked at it as Pills did, and and I think I agree with Diego. But but yeah, you know that they're competing models of capitalism that you can sort of loosely group under, like the right wing
and the left wing. And and Trump's Trump's right wing version is different than the previous ones, right like the neo conservative kinds of different kinds of traditional So he's fighting against like a kind of liberal creep, as they sometimes call it, and he's fighting against like a different conservative model that's been much closer to the interventionist kind of George Bush style conservatism, which Trump wants to reverse, which is why all the warhawks are going over to
the Democrats. And this attack on the universities, I think it serves I think it serves various purposes. You know, I don't think we can just look at it even you know, what does Trump care about? Does he care about the who cares what he cares about? Because, like Diego said, his beliefs don't matter, right, his behavior is determined within the horizon of capitalism, and he is looking at the ideological front. Harvard doesn't produce anything, it changed,
it doesn't. It's not a productive entity. But it is an ideological state apparatus. I guess you could call it and remember it's a private institution, but Alficer said that doesn't matter if it's a private institution or a public institution. It's still an ISA, right, So he's just taking it to the hegemony side, right. And so you know the anti Semitism stuff, right, that serves other purposes that are
closely allied with Netanyahu. You know, the NDI, the attacks on LGBT and transgender women in university sports, and like the motherhood stuff. That's another block of the ideology there right, And that's you can see that in the university attacks, you know, limiting immigration, targeting immigrants, targeting radical ideologies, that's another block, another front of his attack.
Right.
These are all just whether or not he believes in any of these things or cares about any of these things. There, they're justifications or framings, right, And that's what we were looking at with the news too. Are there counter framings going on here in the New York Times? Not really, They just refer to it as a culture wars. We're
back in that old myth of succession. But and then obviously Fox and the the media that's more likely to be Trump friendly, is saying, you know, these demands, Harvard is rejecting very reasonable demands.
But isn't it Isn't it also notable that like none of the STEM stuff is being attacked.
Oh yeah, it's ironices bros.
All the tech bros are like are obviously behind Trump, and they're like the STEM work is important, like all everything that's in STEM is is.
But they're not behind Trump because of the tariffs now, right, and the timing is super important. Columbia, My theory is
that Columbia must have collapsed when things looked very different. Harvard, yes, is a much richer institution, but they also decided to push back at a later date when you know, it's so obvious now that the tech bros, at least as far as Elon Musk represents them, are on their way out of the center of influence because Tesla is fucked and the doge is insane and everyone knows it now, and Musk is is making his graceful entrance exit with trying to save as much face as possible.
I was I was going to say also, I was going to say also that the thing about the budget and the endowment, like because because the pills earlier, you asked like Columbia wasn't like, didn't resist. Columbia's endowment is a measly fourteen point eight billion with an important detail, thirty six thousand students total. Okay, and Harvard uh, and Harvard is there there. Endowment is fifty one billion for twenty thousand students.
Wow, for half.
Yeah, So it's so insane.
Harvard is wealthier than the wealthiest four Americans. It's it's very it's the world's wealthiest. Like public university, I believe, not a public university, private university.
I don't want I don't want to get too into this, but you can't like directly pull from your endowment to fund research projects like that. So I know it's like, oh, they have all this money, but their money is like assigned to other stuff. And then but they need the budgets like that if you get.
It, like the Divinity chair we mentioned, but they do. That's a permanent endowment. They can only ever use the money to re up that channel.
But they do also have like a hedge fund like that makes them more money.
No doubt.
Well, yeah, that's they're worth like nine hundred billion I think total assets. The the endowment is just the whatever fifty billion endowment. That's what they have. And it's a combination of permanent endowments, so strings always attached, temporary endowments, strings attached for a while. Then they can use it for whatever they want. And then there's just endowment endowments.
Right.
They just come through the foundation wing, that private foundation wing that universities love to have, and they can. The board then decides how that money and it's and its proceeds are used.
I absolutely love my position in this podcast that the guy that that like throws well theory out there, and then you guys with a proper education like ground me and find the nuances in what I said. I absolutely adore it, but I want to just taking the advantage of my ability to stretch. I just want to say this, It's almost as if there's a self aware mechanism within the logic of capital that knows that the excess in the stretchability of liberalism, the metaphysics of liberalism, what was
impeding the growth of capital. You know, it's as if that, okay, so capital will go as a flow of water like whatever. There's lease resistance and more ability for self reproduction like this self awareness of lise resistances and ability to replicate itself, and wokeness was now becoming a cost for capital, was becoming a.
Burden for capital.
It's as if this is like capital itself turning itself down a little bit so it can continue to exist because that path was already becoming a jopar d for capital.
Global Can you explain how wokeness stops capital?
Yeah, in the sense in the sense that it became a for example, a problem for self replication. It didn't like in the nineties and in the early two thousands. Everything that was connected to this sense of humanities and helping others was explain that the sense that you when you buy a coffee in Starbucks, you're already paying for the guilt, you know, So like wokeness, green washing, pink washing, purple washing, was already assuming the guilt in consumption and
charging it to you. And that model worked for like a decade or two. But now it seems like the guilt is no longer enough to justify the cycle and the expansion of consumption.
I guess I kind of see it differently. I don't. I don't really think that wokeness has anything to do with with capital's own movement. It has to do with the people who are who are in power in the structure. They need to feel that they're doing good things. Well they're not, so.
It actually it actually helps capital, I would say often.
Yeah.
But but then you get the Trump faction. The Trump is the reaction the people that, like every single Trump supporter already hates Harvard, so they're gonna they're gonna be appeased by this. They are left out of success abundance. They've been left out for a long time.
And then here's a gain contradictory.
This is what is really contradictory because ninety seven percent of the like of the wealth of the country, it's in half of the billionaires in the in the in the capitalist class in the US. And these are the people that are going to Harbor in Colombia, you know, like this this is what is really weird. Like the working class of course they hate Harvard. They will never
go there, like they couldn't care less about it. But the issue is that it's it's like when you say there's two wings of capital competing against itself, Like I don't see it, Like the capitalist class is very small, Like there's a bunch of people with know class consciousness, which is different, but the capital is class is actually very very small.
But that but doesn't that tell you, like I.
Mean, there's two branches of capitalists ideology, maybe not not individ capital numbers of a class.
The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to feel persuaded that like within kind of capitalist in incentives, there's like disagreement about like how are like to put it really simply, like how are we going to be rich? Are we going to be rich in like this globally interconnected world, or are we going to be rich in like our in the United States as American where we get to be like church going people or something like that. I don't know, maybe that doesn't.
Make Sense's the protectionist.
Yeah, the protectionist exactly. It's like, are we going to be rich like alone over here? Are we going to be rich? And like that does seem like there's maybe a disagreement in within capital among capitalists.
Which is the other side of the coin of the anti interventionist thing is protectionism. That's the other side of the coin and universe these be like doing those attacks on the international students serves a couple different purposes again, right, because he can say all those they are radicals, we need to ideologically vet them to make sure that they
are comply with American values. That's part of his demands and sort of the broader Project twenty twenty five vision of all American institutions, not just the Department of Education, but you know all of them, you know, Trump friendly people with the coud American values, right, And that's that's so this like sort of conformity and ideological vetting type
of thing he wants to put in there. But yeah, that's another side of that coin, right, Like universities are not for educating people's kids and then sending back to their country and we lose their intellectual capital. Right, it's for it's for educating Americans right here in America kind of thing. Right. I think that fits. That's the vision. There's at least that's that's the framing of it, right. You can you can frame it in different ways, and
and I think it's connected to those issues anyway. That's why I say this is like a you got to look at the menu and be like, Okay, there's all these things we want to do. What's next? Okay, something that the Department of Education. Okay, but all right, let's hit the anti semitism button, the LGBTQ thing. How do we get people worked up about that. I'll run something on the transgender women in sports that'll get people upset and then we can do this. Okay, what's next? Uh?
Traditional family values? All BLM. Let's show kids a video about how BLM is like a criminal organization that promotes anti police sentiment and in our like you know all that it's just like a menu they just select, you know, how it's the framing today, what what the researchers say, These things resonate with the people we want to resonate with, Okay, but like it has nothing. Yeah, that's that's how I'm kind of imagining it in a weird metaphorical way, that these things are going.
The rich kids, the rich people's kids are still they're going to Harvard, Yale, and Columbium, but these rules and stipulations they don't target those people. They like, if we have a university's it's like point oh five percent that are doing cultural studies, gender studies, those those kinds of things, they have to identify this as as being representative of
the university as a whole. So I find it. I do find it interesting that the Lawyer's Administration Board, they are saying to Trump, no, we're not going to do this on behalf of those, on behalf of those you know, point oh five percent of their their faculty or whatever it is. So I don't know, it's almost like they actually do believe in the university mission, or at least they say they do, because this would be very damaging to their brand if they were just to say yes to to Trump's demands.
Yeah, well, I was going to say.
There's that word again. Believe what they believe in. It's without the psychological tones. I would agree, because, like I said, I think it's just that Harvard just refused when things looked different. Columbia caved when things looked like they were going in a different direction.
And now I think you're being a little cynical to just think that Harvard is a corporation that only cares about making profit, because if they were, this would be fine. They don't. They don't need these five people. They can say yes, Well, I would.
Look at the beliefs I guess according to ideologies like we were talking about earlier, and like you know, what's the hegemony that the university represents right now? And what does Trump want it to be? And what are like other maybe other models of what that like that, what what kind of ideology do I want coming out of the university system here? And like who's who's there and might agree with me? And who's preventing me? Like who might be out of line with my direction and vision of things?
Right?
So that's why you know they're dragging the presidents of universities in front of like who is that that other one? That got canned, right, Like.
This was Clyde and Gay like plagiarized something.
Like sending a message basically saying, you know, you can't you know, do whatever you want. We can get to you, right, we can. We can change your administration if we want to, right, which is the message he wants to send, also to the Federal Reserve. He wants to send it to every major institution that like, you know, we control you. Right now, it's just with withholding funds, but eventually it's going to be more direct.
Yeah, I think I think that's a cool part of this story.
Like it it takes away the the clothing of universities and just reveals them as they as what they are, mercenaries. I think Colombia was the quicker mercenary and Harvard is probably going to negotiate a little bit more. But in the end they respond their mercenaries. They're up for sales.
That's what I don't see it, Like Harvard's suing Trump suing Trump. Yeah, a cynical company, well cynically as cynical as I can be. Trump Trump's demands to Harvard don't don't harm their bottom line, Like I don't. This is what I'm still saying it doesn't harm the bottom line. They could capitulate. But as cynical as I can be, because you're you're saying, well, this is revealing what they are. I'm saying people still act like they believe in something
like academic freedom because they said no too far. Now the cynical, as cynical as I can be is to say, well, this is a branding decision for them, because if they were best for us. But I still, you know, I have I have more faith that there's something more than that that some people in the universities, even in the administration that we all hate, some of them believe in something like academic freedom, free and quiry.
I agree, I totally agree. It's so uncommon for you to be the optimist on the panel here kill he's a b.
I would not call this optimism. I would call this like you're painting thousands of kids.
It's not optimism, but it's but it's a certain kind of it's a certain kind of centrism. Centrism, well, it's a certain kind of resistance to like the most cynical take.
I thought I thought people was going to be team tanked top.
But that's just because. But but you're totally right. I mean, I entirely agree with you. I think like the cynical take can only get you so far, and I just think, like it's just true there are a lot of people in the university who believe in these things. I think, I think that's true. I totally think that's true. And I think that I agree. The most cynical take, I think you had you hit the nail on the head
is like to look at this the most cynically. It's like it's bad for the Harvard brand if they capitulate like so, that's like a self interested decision. It's like their brand would look bad if they just capitulate to like someone who's seen as a proto fascist.
Maybe maybe it's cynical to say, Okay, they're looking at their brand, they're looking at their public image. But I don't think the lawsuit. You can't say Harvard is standing up to Trump because they're thinking about their image. You know, it's like a standard thing. You know, this is a
different kind of cynical. Right, They sued Trump because that was like the best course of action, right, Like they're in such a good position to win immediate gains from that, and then to be fully resolved is going to take years and years, and it's going to end up in the Supreme Court in years, and those Supreme Court judges are then going to have to decide whether this is a conflict of interest because they were fucking educated at Harvard too, and so are the lawyers and everybody was.
Harvard has its own law school, right they can they can like do all this in house. But anyway, No, it's not about public image and it's not about grand beliefs valorizing education. It's just like this was the best move right. They've attacked us and would take the cultural the cultural temperature and say, Okay, now's the time to
move instead of capitulating, let's try this right. Because they probably Columbia probably considered the same options and decided against it because they thought they might not have been as well positioned. Harvard obviously thinks it's well positioned, and all it really wants to do. The purpose of this lawsuit is just to stave off the attack. It's just if
they did nothing, that would be ridiculous. So they did something because obviously the Trump administration is in a position this time where they have less boundaries and less holding them back from doing them we want to do compared to the last time around. But they're still shit at it and making humongous mistakes, and their messaging is completely self contradictory.
I e.
Some people say it was the demands were sent by mistake. How do you mistakenly send a that people signed assigned draft? Like, who's ever heard of that accidentally sent to the person that you were not supposed to send it to? Plus like all the other leaks and crazy shit that's going on, I.
Think that's obviously just a lie that they sent it by mistake, because because they pushed back.
Sure, but it's a mixed message, that's all of it. It's still a mixed message. Whether or not it's true, it's a mixed message. It's out there. There's some people saying this and some people saying that, and they appear to be from the same team, saying opposite things or sending mixed messages explaining the facts differently, Like the Beatles, right, they always explain the same story completely different ways.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what's actually like, What's what's very sad about this? Because you might think, oh, yeah, we're we're poor, we're never getting into Harvard. Good go fuck you. But something else that happened last week was Linda McMahon w WWE star Linda McMahon said that right before they get Rufo gets his way and they dismantled
the Department of Education. She said, we're gonna uh refer all student loans that are in default to debt collected debt collection God, which is, I don't know, that's sane, that effects I think like fifty million people was the number I saw, which is, I don't know, that's just cruel.
It's ending loan forgiveness was on the list of things that they sent.
You guys have more student debt than credit card debt.
That's American, the Unadian.
Sorry sorry, the US sorry, sorry, my bad. Soon.
So, if you look at the weirder elements of Trump supporters, you get the sense of where the myth comes from, the myth makers around the Trump brand. And the best I could come up with is like a succession myth, you know, like Trump is like Zoo and Biden and the old order is like Chronos or something, and he wants to like castraight the old order to give to give your a Lacinian way, and it's a it's he's he's he's threatening. He's threatening the system with castration, is
what he's doing. The new gods are taken over and they're and they're they're protectionist, anti interventionist libertarians.
I was also I feel like I should say because I said at the beginning of the episode, like one of Trump's demands that I kind of liked, So I feel like I should probably just like share that. I don't know, Yeah, well, it's like ending DEI and hiring, like I'm I'm for that. I think, like as someone who's been on the job market, like right now, I think, you know, like having to write a DEI statement, it's just so stupid and redundant.
You have to write a DEI statement.
Often for many positions. You have to write like explaining like how you'll contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion in the university, And I.
Do you col yourself Latin X on applications.
There's a box to check, Yes, I do. Of course, I'm fucking gaming the system as best as I can. But I'll say that like the reason why, like I just find it objectionable and unredundant, because like, when I write my teaching statement, I think like good pedagogy means making students feel included, making everyone feel welcome, like they have a part, like you cover that in your teaching statement. So it's like, then you have to do this other thing.
And I do like, maybe this is going to sound hyperbolic, but I do see it as like an ideological litmus test. It's like are you up, Like, are you like fully on board with intersectionality and all this stuff. That's basically what it is. And I do think it's inappropriate and I disagree with it. So that's my most anti woke feeling about the university.
I completely agree with you, and I think it's absolutely fine to say, you know, I have criticisms of the higher education system, very colish criticisms of it, and I'm glad there's change coming. I just do not agree at all with the purposes or the ways that these changes are being brought about. And I don't and I simply
don't agree with all of the changes either. And some of the changes I agree with that is something that should be changed, but the way that they want to change it and the way they're going about changing is the complete fucking opposite, Like, don't centralize control of the universities under the president and then centralize the control of all the universities under the president of the United States, Right,
that is stupid. Get rid of the governors, get rid of the boards of governors and the investors and all the business fucks that make all the decisions, and bring in collegial governance. Empower the Senates, empower the departments to make their own decisions in autonomy. That's we're going in the complete opposite direction of that. Just like DEI is a ass covering MECHANI, right, it's a butt covering mechanism.
They can say, well, this guy was racist, but according to our form, he's not a racist.
Right.
We gave him the personality test and everything, and he came out not racist. So we're clear, right, we're not on the hook for this great great Okay, send him to jail, Send off. Where did Hyde go to university?
Off?
Who fucking cares? He signed a DEI thing when he got in there.
We checked and he's read and agreed to quit with Kim Kimberly Cranch.
Look, and it's another version of ideological vetting, like asking that's the thing that's international students if they agree with American values.
That's just well exactly de That's that's what I find so objectionable, is like it gives that. But like there's a lot of I think academics who are in denial about that, but I do think. And actually it's funny.
I was doing interview prep because I did an interview for this job that I didn't end up getting, but I uh, I did some interview prep with one of my professors, and I found out that like in our department, like when when we do interviews, like there's a question literally on their preliminary interview that's what does diversity mean you? Like what kind of a trap? Bullshit question? Is that? Like that is like like that's literally just a trap. That is an ideological trap.
That's like to check your shock test.
It's a ror shock test, and like it's like if you hesitate, it's like then they can see, oh, you're probably a conservative, and like we don't want you here, Like if you hesitate for a second. And I just find that to be totally.
Eat your body language.
Yeah, I bet you. They don't if you're applying for a job at the law school. I doubt you'd have to answer this question.
Yeah, but you know these attacks, you know, when they've created these associations, uh say, when the Trump administration wants to do X or Y whatever they want to do. So they create these associations, right like DEI whatever it is,
wherever it originated. You know, it's okay, DEI is going to be mentioned in the same sentence as critical race theory, which is going to be mentioned in the same sentence as Marxist radicals, which is going to be mentioned in the same sentences, foreign funding, all these things, right, So they just try to create these completely arbitrary sets of associations, right, Which is the fun thing so Sarah taught us about language is there's a lot of arbitrarity in there, and
you can just try to create these mental associations and that's just the hegemonic strategy.
The funny thing my professor said, I was like, does anyone ever answer that question? Well, like what is diversity? And she admitted she was like not really, yeah, it's like something So I'm like, why are you guys, Like what are you doing? Like like I didn't say that professor. But I was just like, but I was just like, why are you doing this? Then? Like, what's the point we'd like to see you suffer.
This is the thing that drove Peterson insane exactly. But if we're talking about like it, to consider I e to consider like wokeness as a religion. This is the kind of rituals that belong to it is you know, like like there's it's not a law to put your your pronouns in your email signature, but it would be really good if you did.
But if you want to belong you have to.
Well it's a signal.
It's a signal a killer.
If you did. It's not a lot to give a land acknowledgment, but you probably should. It's kind of belongs to the HR section of the university, which is the most it's more woke than the departments.
You know, I recently learned because I saw this, Like I was looking at a colleague's like website, they're on the academic job market, and I noticed that they had something which I had never seen before, which described themselves as a settler scholar, and I kind of and and I had that reaction. I kind of laughed. I was like okay, like settler scholar, Like what kind of new
like woke thing is this. But then a colleague explained to me that there's actually a legit good reason for having it, especially because this person works on indigenous issues
in politics. So like the thing is like it's actually plays a function where if you're working on indigenous issues, it's a way of making clear I'm not indigenous basically because there is, because there can be like a weird thing and it's happened in the past where like white people kind of like adopt and co opt and pretend to be indigenous when they're like really into indigenous issues, So like I can at least respect that. There's like
it's playing a function. It's not just like pronouns or just like something that doesn't or like having a land acknowledgment in your email where it's really just like virtue signaling. It seems to play a role here. And also like the person too who like did it, it's like they're definitely white, but like they kind of have dark hair and dark complexion, and it's like you might it's like possible if you saw them, you'd be like, oh, maybe maybe they're indigenous.
Yeah, I wanted to read Trump's truth social and there's it's laden with religion. This is his post. Perhaps Harvard, this is after Harvard pushed back. Perhaps Harvard should lose its taxes exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political ideological and terrorist inspired sickness.
Oh yeah, that's crazy.
Just whatever, Harvard as a terrorist supporting institution.
Yeah.
I think the religious myth here that they're trying to enforce is that if you want to be an American, you cannot be you have to be Proisrael.
You know, it's exactly the same thing, but reversed as what Hitler did when he says to all the universities, you guys, we're going to do some We're going to do some anti dejuification.
Oh yeah, purity, something about purity.
This is how Heideger became rector.
Yeah, exactly right.
Yeah, And that's you know, definitely, that's I think that's the broader liberal principles that are under attack here are the independence of these kinds of institutions, right, like obviously the Federal Reserve. Independence is very import for the global market, especially because the US dollars, like the global reserve currency, so you don't want, you know, whatever administration comes in, you don't want them to be able to just like
fire and hire whoever they want. Like some central banks are very much under the control of whatever administration is in power. And then it becomes very politicized and very unstable because it changes, especially in democracies where things are changing all the time. Right, same with the universities, right, like you know, all those those aren't just empty phrases about free speech and academic freedom and all those things, right,
they mean something within a liberal framework. They do, and they're good things as far as they go sometimes, but then they become politicized and we lose the essence of the issue. Like we are a settler colonial nation. We came here and did I mean, I don't mean to say we, but like, you know, the European colonization should be taught because it's history. But then it becomes you know, this political football. We start looking at the antinomies of
free speech while his hate speech free speech. Then you get into these fucking metaphysical antinomies around these subjects and you go nowhere because they've been politicized and d substantialized right, and de historicized, and then we just talk about what they mean in the infinite system of signs that they're supposedly getting their meaning from the structure of their position and whatever. But it is insightful because you know, I guess Barth, you know, in his mythology and other text
distinguishes between the denotation and the connotation. Right. The denotation is just like the substantial thing that the word is pointing to. But the connotation that's the big part, right, because that's like the associative network that that word exists in.
And certain words, you know, you create associations through repetition and then the connotation becomes that, right, So you know, a connotation can shift from BLM being a Black Lives Matter movement to BLM being an anti police criminal organization if the ideologists of the Trump administration can get their way, which interestingly, I had to mention this because it is
related to education, but it is not higher education. It's primary education because some prayer you right, They've put out these models for K to twelve and they have all these educational videos which are pure narratives. They're amazing, they're hilarious and oh my god, some of them are just totally ridiculous. Like you know, you can get a sense of what they want to convince you, even just by like a summary of the narrative, Like it's actually interesting.
It's interesting you mention that because I was yesterday, I was listening. I went on my first bike ride of the season because it's starting to get nice here in Toronto. And the nerd that I am, I listened to Supreme Court oral arguments. Uh when when I'm riding, and uh, they just did this case. It's like mock mood versus something.
And it's about like people complaining that there that their children in schools have to like read LGBT like propaganda according to their like their perspective, and like most of it was like bullshit. It was like, you know, like some story about like Uncle Bob, like marrying a man, and it's like okay, like relax, like that's a normal
thing that happens in life. But I will say, like in passing, there were like a few things that they mentioned that they had that they're that children were being exposed to that I did find that I did feel like, sorry, I did feel like the like like the like the religious parents have my cat's me owing at me. Uh that, like the religious parents kind of had a point like
was inappropriate. Like so, for example, there's one that was like teaching like eight year olds and seven year olds that they should be resisting heteronormativity at all times and they should be resisting norms. And I'm like, that is not appropriate. Yes, it's in the record that there's like a storybook that like from like this this LGBT Alliance about like you know, helping children like challenge like you should be challenging and I'm like eight year olds to sorry,
seven year olds should not be challenging norms. They need to be learning norms and fucking behaving themselves, okay something, And then.
The project sixteen something or there's something.
And there was like and I think and I think there was like one other thing about like about uh oh fuck. I can't remember what the other one was, but there were like two things that they mentioned at least that I was like, dude, that's like pretty like that like I'd be I might even be pissed if
like that they were teaching that to my kids. Like of course stories about like Uncle Bob and like the fact that gay people exist and can love each other like of course, story conservatives like that's a real thing that happens in the world, but like to try to take I think the thing that I object to is like to try to take like pretty controversial and contestable academic concepts and try to cram them down the throats of like of like six year olds and eight year olds.
Oh yeah, I remember what the other thing was. It was like a story that involved a thing about how like the doctor takes the child out and it just decides arbitrarily that it's a woman or a boy. That it's just like that that I forget what the termine in like gender theory is, but it's like, you know, when it comes out you like discursively, Like that really
all gender and sex are. It's discursive, And I'm like, that's a complicated, controversial thing that six year olds and seven year olds don't need to be like learning about. Like that's a complicated thing, is it?
Six year olds are reading Judith Butler.
It's like a like like a child story book version according to the oral arguments, I'd.
Have to I'd have to ask questions when he comes out of mommy and the doctor discursively declares it's just.
Yes, it's a declare. They just declare it, and it's and it's actually flexible and that you can be whatever you want. And they're just saying that and it's temporary, and I'm like, that is fucked up.
We have assuming it read doctors.
Yeah, I wonder how many states added that to their official curriculum versus prigger. You who has been in Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida have all signed on. Right, the reach is much higher, right, I mean, as an aside, this is the worst part of polarization, right, is because each side takes the most extreme and non representative examples of bad behavior from each side and holds them up like and it talks about them in the present tense, like this
is something that is done regularly. They're just pumping out there's some factory out there pumping out books about gay marriage just all the time. No, there's nothing that's like an anomaly, but it's held up as you know, that's why you're hearing all this shit about campus protests and anti semitism. And you go there, you think it's like a slaughterhouse. Then you go there and there's fucking crickets,
nothing is happening. It's business as usual. You can you can take these you know, it's called the representational representative bias whatever. Anyway, that's how connotation works. But you know this, this Praeger you videos are amazing and these have been like this material can be used in a classroom according to the school boards of the states. I don't think the individual places are really agreeing with them. But here's one Los Angeles Matteo backs the Blue. Oh my god,
you can see where this is going. A young boy whose family fled to Los Angeles to escape drug cartels in Mexico. So he's crime on the rise due to Black Lives Matter protests, which he compares to crime spurred by cartels in Mexico. You know, there's that's part of the narrative of this video that's aimed at K to twelve children. Okay, So they're teaching them that anti police, about anti police sentiment, teaching them be pro police, right
or the other one? Another one fossil fuels, right, someone is about a kid who stands up for fossil fuel companies. Another one about Western values compares the British colonization of India and eliminating the cast system to the spread of Western values, and like the British brought prosperity and success to India as a result. No, no giant massacres or anything like that happened. They got rid of the cast system because that's the one that promotes Western values. They
even have one for us. Little Jimmy or whoever it was, had to go to the States and use their superior private healthcare system because our public healthcare system is so gummed up. It doesn't work properly, right, Like it doesn't. It doesn't bankrupt anybody who gets a fucking cold, so it must not be working properly, is the message there? I guess, not really green energy in Central Africa. You know,
we don't have the parts for these stupid plates. Bring in the oil instead, right, like all these and this is on K to twelve shit and that's got reach. So I don't know about like Daddy's New Friend book, how many curriculums that made its way onto But this shit, this far right craziness, which all this is all perfectly neoliberal. Diego said, where's the where's the capitalism? It's right fucking here, fossil fuel right, anti green energy, is just a version
of capitalism that these people want. Anyway, Again, rant's over, but.
It's but it's I mean, I agree with you. I mean, like the reason I thought about my example was because it's like a mirror image. They're just like a mirror images of each other in a way.
Let's end on a fun note here I sent I've sent you guys a list.
What the hell is that?
Okay, this is the banned word list.
So what the band is?
It's uh, it's allegedly the White House or some people in the White House.
Okay.
What the band word list has on it is if you're if your grant application or any of your research has any of these words in it, it's just automatically denied. They probably just ask Chad GBT did you find any of these words in the application? And then it's immediately rejected. So what's on the band word list? There's there's some good ones.
There are some very good ones.
Gay inclusive, inclusive. You can't say inclusive.
And you can't say all inclusive, so you cannot write about hotels, resoarts.
This has got to be bullshit. Elderly ethanol And.
Here's a good one. Here's a good one. Peanut allergies.
This can't Yeah, yeah, there's no way this is really it's.
Illegal to be allergic to peanuts from now on. Yeah.
Sex and really this was not exactly this list, but another one was published by the New York Times, So I think this is a reputable and it's it's only banned by the way for like federal grant applications.
It says they're being scrubbed from websites and documents of the government.
Did you see the other story about Nola gay, like the one the first woman or something to fly a plane like it got flagged at the Pentagon automatically because it had the word gay.
Gay science is also for beating from now on exactly, you.
Can't say the word victim connotations, change.
Tribal to go with a you can't say tribal or native. Wow.
I mean, I feel like that might be a place where the de I people will agree, uh with Trump on that that we shouldn't be using the word tribal.
You can't say systemic or stereotype. What You're not allowed to use Latin X anymore. So Latin latinos LATINX.
We all celebrate, We're done it seems a little bit. Some of these words are very general, like.
Bias, slow emission, vehicle A long.
Look, here's all the here's all the gender ones, gender, gender based, gender based violence, gender diversity, gender identity, gender ideology, gender affirming care or genders. Oh my god, female is banned? Male is not only male dominated? Is female is banned malely?
Yeah, there's take that both for here.
Dude, if this were if this were applied like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro Prager, they would have nothing to talk about. This is this is this is fifty percent of their material.
That's like a this is like a word cloud from Jordan Peterson or something. I don't know if this is a band wordless at all.
Yeah.
I think it was Marcus Aurelius that said that the higher the degree of the decadence of an empire, the weirder their rules become.
And I think this is this is, this is where we're going.
You can't say the word definition.
We should try one episode with at least in front of us and try to have a normal conversation avoiding those words so hard.
Vowel a very limiting without this vocabulary. This is like, this is, this is like Urban dictionary. This is like what you need need to understand Reddit a list of terms. I don't understand half of them.
So weird.
Twitter will become like absolutely in a day.
They put women and women like they, and then they put female and females like they. They make sure you put the plural on there. We don't want to leave any loopholes like.
People to abuse the system. Yet.
Oh that's why we say, you know, racisms, We have to say that. We have to publish a book about racisms while this list is going.
You are allowed to say male, but you're not allowed to say men. Men is banned.
I see men, they're men or men right above mental health and men. Oh, men who have sex with men? That's what you're not allowed to say, the whole phrase.
Oh sorry, okay, I made a mistake. It wasn't men, it was men who have sex with men. There's a line break there.
Can you say men that make love to other men? That's that's okay.
Well you can't. I guess you are allowed to say men, but you cannot say I.
Think this list is exhaustive.
So yeah, women is banned, and women away awesome, and feminism is banned too.
So put it on the signature of all your documents, like just like, best regards, diego ps men who have love making with you?
Yeah?
Are we still allowed to be an orientalist podcast?
Or is that banned as well?
Orientalism is allowed. It looks like, so we have survived another week, Yes we have.
Well, yeah, like Marxism is allowed on this list too, apparently, but that's it. I think they didn't think that one would be a problem.
This is again.
This is like, this is an ideological unity list, right, this is an imposition. This is exactly what like one of the fronts of the ideological battle here, one of the I think one of the actual goals of Trump is yeah, this ideological conformity with his vision of the future.
All right, well there's a.
Perfect example of that too.
Right.
We can't say we can't say he him, but you cannot say they that.
The language police works for both sides.
The language police works in miss it works in mysterious ways.
I love you, my fellow.
Men, double language agents.
All right, all right, see you men who have sex with men?
All right, Later