GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer
Trump Takes on Higher Education
8/8/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
As Pres. Trump threatens funding over campus antisemitism, Harvard refuses to back down.
Two things can be true at the same time, says Harvard professor Noah Feldman. Antisemitism in the US is real, and President Trump is using that very real threat to unfairly target elite universities.
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GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS
GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS. The lead sponsor of GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is Prologis. Additional funding is provided...
GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer
Trump Takes on Higher Education
8/8/2025 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Two things can be true at the same time, says Harvard professor Noah Feldman. Antisemitism in the US is real, and President Trump is using that very real threat to unfairly target elite universities.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- The really hard question is, imagine that there were something that the Trump administration was demanding that didn't compromise Harvard's principles.
And imagine Harvard was ready to do it, and then Trump says, "Great, let's make a deal."
How do you hold Donald Trump to his deal?
(bright music) - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."
I'm Ian Bremmer.
The Trump administration has launched an escalating assault on America's top universities, waging a campaign of rhetoric, executive orders, and lawsuits against institutions like Columbia and Harvard.
At the same time, ICE agents have targeted international students, including some who have publicly criticized Israel, in a series of headline-grabbing arrests.
In July, a federal judge appeared skeptical of the administration's attempt to strip Harvard of billions in research funding.
But a final ruling isn't expected until September.
And even if Harvard prevails, it's unlikely to be the last battle in this war.
Just days later, Columbia University agreed to pay over $220 million in a deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding.
My guest today, Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar.
Feldman argues that President Trump's attacks on universities are an attempt to undermine their ability to promote independent critical thinking.
And Feldman also argues that President Trump is exploiting charges of antisemitism as political cover to attack elite universities.
For Feldman, it's not just academia under fire, it's truth.
You'll hear it directly from him in a moment.
Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."
- All right, Vladimir.
If you don't end that war in Ukraine in 50 days, I'm gonna do something very strong.
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And... (lighthearted music) - Noah Feldman, thanks for joining on "GZERO World."
- Thank you for having me.
- Why is President Trump prioritizing a fight against higher education in the United States?
- I think Donald Trump is very committed to his own view of the world, and that view is often at odds with what institutions say is the truth.
And institutions are the most effective way to convince people that something actually is true.
And so Trump's gone after universities, he's gone after media, and he's going after courts, 'cause each in its own way is a kind of independent institutional voice telling people this is the way things are.
And so from that perspective, it kinda makes sense for him to go after universities and prioritize them.
- What kind of truth do you think universities are able to promote in the United States?
- Well, the first thing I would say is it really is the purpose of a university, to pursue the truth.
And that's why my university has as its motto, a single word, "Truth."
Now, that doesn't mean- - "Veritas," yes.
- That people... "Veritas," exactly.
So that doesn't mean that there is a single truth that we can get on every subject, 'cause subjects are different.
When it comes to science, I'm not a radical relativist, I believe that there are true facts about the world.
And in the case of scientific research, the goal is to get as much evidence as we can through experiment and observation and theory to come as close as we can to a true account of how the world works.
And I think the same is true to a certain degree in social science, like economics, where, again, there may not be an absolute objective truth, 'cause after all, we're studying how people behave, but we could come up with regular rules that cover a lot of the data and can give us useful predictions going forward.
That's another kind of truth.
Then there's the kind of truth that comes in philosophy and in morals, and that kind of truth isn't exactly the same.
It's true in the sense that there might be a truth about what's good and what's evil, but lots of people are gonna always disagree about it, even if there is a truth.
And universities are a place for talking that through seriously and considering all the different points of view and trying to get the best answer.
And the last thing I would say is that's even true in literature.
You know, it's even true in poetry that some poems are better than other poems.
And that's not true in the same way that the truths of physics are true.
But it is true in the sense that thoughtful people who spend time thinking about it can make arguments and convince each other.
And so that's also a kind of truth that we pursue.
- I appreciate you laying that out and also the fact that hard sciences, social sciences, and humanities are fundamentally different.
Because of course when you attack a university and you undermine an ability of a university to conduct the affairs that it is meant to conduct, you're not just hitting the poetry or the comp lit department or anthropology, you know, you're actually hitting all of them.
And the purpose that universities have in the United States and globally is much broader than what people have been fighting about over the past months.
- That's really true.
And I will say, there is something ironic that Trumpy people, who probably if you ask them, "What do you really hate?"
they probably would say, "We hate the humanities," or "We hate the social sciences."
But the main target they're actually going after is the hard sciences, because they've been cutting federal funding.
And biology, and to some degree, physics and chemistry, are funded unimaginably more than are the humanities.
So they're actually going after that part of the university that you would think every person, regardless of their politics, would think was valuable and useful.
And they're also going after a part of the university that creates jobs, you know, and that makes discoveries that sometimes are life-saving, and often are useful to national defense, and often start businesses indirectly that then go out and make money that creates more jobs.
So they're really being perverse even on their own terms.
- Let's talk about the areas where they are most upset and where, frankly, there's been, you know, a lot of, there's been cancel culture, there's been political correctness, there's been safe spaces, there's been wokeism.
I mean, most Americans, and I'm not talking just about blue-collar Americans, I'm talking about the entire swath of the political spectrum, believes that that went too far and that universities were not actually representing or educating students for the civic good in some of these departments.
Do you agree with that?
And where do you think criticism should be levied and why?
- Well, I think that runs together two different challenges, each of which is important to take seriously.
One is, are we, in universities, doing a good job of teaching young people?
And I think we all agree that we want from young people is to not accept the truths that we teach, but to think hard for themselves.
We need to teach them to think hard for themselves, to learn how to get facts, and especially in today's world, to distinguish made-up stuff from real stuff.
And of course an argument can be made that the universities haven't always successfully done that, but, you know, we're fighting against some really powerful forces out there in the world.
Ideology, sources from social media, polarization, populism, all of which tend to undercut the idea that, you know, maybe we can get better answers to questions.
But there's legitimate criticism there for sure, and universities can do better at that and should.
The second is the question of what you were calling broadly "woke culture" or "cancel culture."
And there, look, we're talking about a cultural style that's identified with the political left, and there's a lot of people in universities who are on the political left.
And, by the way, they're not only in the humanities.
You also will find them in the hard sciences.
It's true that universities as a whole, not every university, but as a whole, are culturally more left wing than other institutions.
And there, I think it's absolutely fair to say that some of the cutting edge of left views has come out of universities and that universities, it's not that they need to eradicate that, what they need is a real diversity of viewpoints, including mainstream centrist viewpoints, which we have, and also conservative viewpoints, which we have, but only in very, very small numbers.
I think we'll do a better job of getting at the truth and educating our students and learning stuff if we respectfully listen to many points of view.
Canceling people is never a good idea in a university.
Never.
It's always a valuable idea to hear someone's perspectives, even if you think they're completely wrong.
And that's what I try to do in the programs that I run and in my classes.
I try to make people entertain lots of different points of view.
And since I teach constitutional law, I kinda have an excuse to do that 'cause I can tell students, "I don't care what your views are, I want you to tell me what Justice Clarence Thomas would say about this issue.
You know, I want you to tell me what Justice Amy Coney Barrett would say about this issue."
And that's one way to drive conversation to include conservative points of view, even if the students themselves may not be conservative, and even if I'm not on board with Thomas' or Barrett's views.
- We've heard a lot, of course, about who should be benefiting from this.
There are those that are making arguments that a university like yours, Harvard, which is one of the best universities in the United States, in the world, should be principally for educating American citizens, not for others around the world, because the United States should benefit from it.
Just like we want more jobs for Americans and the rest.
What do you respond to that?
- Well, let me just start by accepting the premise for a second, that universities like Harvard should benefit the United States.
If we take some of the smartest students from all over the world and we educate them, and a high percentage of those people choose to come to the United States, to stay here, to get jobs here, to advance knowledge, to create businesses, we're skimming the cream of the crop, if you'll pardon the metaphor, from the smartest people all over the world.
We are serving the national interest by bringing smart, creative, hardworking people from all over the world to the United States and getting them to stay and create jobs and businesses.
And it's not an accident that many of our most successful entrepreneurs in the United States at every level, from the mom-and-pop level to the people who start multi-billion-dollar corporations, were not born in the United States and came to the United States for their education.
So first of all, we are doing that, and we are serving lots of people.
Second of all, it's true that the United States is a country where it has to look out for its own interests, without a doubt.
And it's true that universities like Harvard can do a better job than we have of being engines of opportunity for lower middle class and poor people who are smart enough to come study at Harvard but don't have the economic opportunity to come and do so.
We can do more on that than we have done.
But we also are responsible to the rest of the world.
You know, it sounds old-fashioned to say it post, you know, Donald Trump becoming president.
But if someone makes a discovery that solves a disease, that's not just great 'cause it's good for Americans, it's great 'cause it's good for everybody.
And universities do have some responsibility to the whole world because they have a responsibility to getting to the truth.
And the truth isn't local, it doesn't respect borders.
- Let's talk about Harvard a little bit because, of course, Harvard has been a big part of this fight.
You've written specifically about what it means to be a Jew.
And so, you're really, in many ways, someone experiencing a lot of this, because feelings of antisemitism not being addressed adequately in Harvard, a big piece of what has bothered President Trump.
Let's start right with that issue and whether you think, I'm not talking about, you know, sort of the former president of Harvard and her presentation in Congress, but the issue itself, how has Harvard done?
How are they doing at addressing antisemitism?
- The first thing, I think it's really important to acknowledge is that antisemitism is real and it's a problem and it exists right here in the United States.
You know, Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, had his house firebombed the night of the Passover Seder right into his dining room.
Not an accident.
You know, in Boulder, Colorado, there was a terrorist attack with Molotov cocktails on a local march of Jewish Americans.
Not an accident.
These things are real, and they have to be taken very seriously.
That said, there's a huge difference between terrorist attacks on Jewish Americans and student advocacy that's strongly pro-Palestine that can sometimes cross over into antisemitism.
What Harvard has tried to do is make it really, really clear that just like our rules say, we will not tolerate discrimination or harassment or bullying on the basis of racism or sexism or homophobia, we similarly do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or bullying on the basis of antisemitism.
That's what those rules do say and that's what they should say.
And so Harvard has done a much better job over the last year in change of clarifying those rules, of telling everyone what they are, and also of enforcing them as appropriate.
So I think that's how we're addressing the issue.
I will also say that, you know, I've spent a lot of my life in and around universities and a lot of it in and around Harvard, I've been teaching here for nearly 20 years.
And I myself, despite being openly identified as Jewish, I wore a yarmulke when I was in college every day, I run a program on Jewish and Israeli law, I'm not hiding, I've never, not even once, personally experienced antisemitism on this campus.
It's not to say that it hasn't happened to other people, but it is to say that I think it's pretty unusual in that regard.
And that, I think, is something that is easily lost in this debate.
And the last point I would just make is this is Donald Trump we're talking about here.
There is a flavor of using antisemitism as an excuse to go after Harvard.
You know, just the other day, I was talking to a friend of mine, a very famous physicist who had just gotten the letter from the National Science Foundation ending his grants for his research.
And it said, you know, "Because of antisemitism at Harvard, you can't do your research."
And he said to me, like, "I'm Jewish.
Two of my three collaborators on this project who are also scientists are Jewish.
And here's someone's telling us we can't study black holes because of antisemitism on campus."
It just makes no sense at all.
And that's when you realize that this really is, you know, a Trump special, where he's taking something that is a real issue and then using it as a false flag to go after the university.
- Is it appropriate, is it helpful, leaving aside the personality of Trump, which I recognize is relevant to the discussion, to single out antisemitism as a type of discrimination that deserves preferencing in an environment where we have rule of law, in an environment where we're trying to protect any minority, any identity group, whether it's homosexuals or Muslims or Black people, from facing discrimination?
I mean, in that environment, do you find it's helpful, harmful, or somewhere in between for so much?
And it's not just Trump that's talking about, you know, sort of antisemitism as a special grouping that deserves protection.
- Well, I think of it in terms of a split screen.
On the one hand, the kinds of attacks against Jews that we've seen just in recent months, they did not exist in the United States in a meaningful way for most of the last half century.
You know, many, many synagogues and temples in the United States now have armed guards outside them.
And when I was a kid, I remember, you know, backpacking in Europe and being shocked to go to synagogue and see armed guards.
It was inconceivable to me that that could happen in the United States.
So there has been, in that sense, a rise of salient examples of antisemitism in the US.
And when there's a new, it's not new, but when there's a newly virulent form of hatred, it's worth paying attention to it and giving it sort of a little extra nudge.
But in principle, I couldn't agree more with what I think is the premise of your question, Ian.
Every form of hate deserves the same amount of condemnation.
And in the United States, where our really deep structural forms of hatred really do tend to focus much more on race, you know, the United States is still a country where Jews have lived longer with greater safety and greater equality than any other country on Earth by an enormous historical margin.
You don't wanna overemphasize that kind of hatred.
It's not appropriate.
- When I think about Harvard today, it does feel like there's a very strong effort to come to some form of agreement.
I mean, it's kinda like the position Canada's in today.
It's kinda like the position the Europeans are in today.
Like even if you feel like you have right on your side, ultimately, you're going to get hurt by this fight.
So, how much is there an effort to, let's just, you know, hold our nose and end this so that we can do the work for our students, we can get back to research and all the rest?
How much is there an effort to just kind of get to peace?
- No one at Harvard, from the president, from the head of our corporation, which is our board of directors, all the down to, you know, the most junior professor, staff member, or student, wants to, that I've heard, wants to knuckle under to Trump.
I think people understand that the university doesn't have any value if it can't be independent.
And if Trump wants to tell us what to teach and how to teach it and who our students can be and who our faculty can be, we're sacrificing our very reason for being.
And that's why the university decided to fight.
We didn't seek it out, but that's why the university decided to fight.
At the same time, there are lots of people in the university, especially people in the sciences whose labs are in the process of being shut down, you know, for whom years of research, sometimes it's at the edge of working out, is being blocked, who think, look, if there's anything that we can do, short of compromising on our core values, that will enable us to go back to what we do for a living, we should do that.
And that I also hear from lots of people.
The really hard question is, imagine that there were something that the Trump administration was demanding that didn't compromise Harvard's principles.
And imagine Harvard was ready to do it, and then Trump says, "Great, let's make a deal."
How do you hold Donald Trump to his deal?
You know, usually if there's a lawsuit and you make a settlement, you go to the court and the court blesses your settlement and it makes it an official order of the court.
And if either side breaks the deal, the court says to that side, "Hey, fix it.
You messed it up."
But you can't do that with Donald Trump.
Federal district court's not gonna be able to hold Donald Trump consistently to some deal that he made.
And so the real problem is, how do you actually reach a deal that's viable and possible and sustainable over time?
'Cause the worst thing that I can imagine would be the university folds before it wins in court.
The Trump administration says, "Okay, we're not worried about you anymore."
And then weeks or days or months later, Trump says, "I change my mind.
You know, now here are my new demands."
And we know that Trump tends to act that way when he, we've seen this in, you know, you've been covering it constantly, in the tariff context, where countries say, "Oh, sure, we'll do this, we'll do this," and Trump says, "Oh, that's great."
And then he says, "Oh, and another thing, and I want more."
So that's just as much a risk for the university as it is for a country.
In fact, we're probably more at risk 'cause we're not a country, we're just a university.
- Now, you're the expert of law.
But I do wanna push back at least a little bit when you say, look, you cut a deal with Trump and he's gonna break it, and that's a risk.
And so am I over-reading that?
I mean, are you really arguing that there isn't any judicial constraint on the president?
- It's not that there isn't any constraint.
For example, right now, what Trump has done to Harvard is unlawful in my view and Harvard's view, and Harvard's gone to court.
- And Harvard's suing.
Harvard's suing.
- And they're suing.
And my hope and expectation is that Harvard will win that suit at all of the levels of the judiciary.
But in the process of waiting for the court to decide, you could go at least a year, it might even be two years, before the final judgment comes, and tremendous harm can be done in the meantime.
So what I'm saying is, not that you can't make a deal and have a court bless it.
Sure, if the Trump administration agreed to that, you could do that.
But if Trump then breaks the deal, we're right back where we started.
We have to go back to court again, and we have to make our way through the courts again.
And what we've seen Trump doing with respect to various shutdowns and closures of government agencies and blocking of government grant money, is that when the administration is told by the courts, "You can't do this," they say, "Okay."
And the next day, they do it again.
So there's a risk that you do a deal and then it looks that way.
The other risk that the university has to face is imagine they do a deal and Trump sticks with the deal, but Trump does what he always does.
He goes out and he says, "This is a historic deal.
The university has bent the knee to me.
I now have the ability to tell the university what to do."
And let's imagine for the sake of argument that Trump is lying about that.
Just imagine.
He just made it up.
It's still really bad for the university, and really bad for higher education, for the word to be out there that universities just listen to the president.
It will further delegitimate higher education and further delegitimate science, and that has some cost to us as well, and that also needs to be taken into account.
- So you're happy so far, what I'm hearing from you.
The right decision for Harvard is to be going to the courts, to be spending the money.
You may be death by a thousand cuts by process, but it's the right approach.
- Well, it's the right approach unless and until the Trump administration in some genuinely credible way says, "Okay, we're done.
We genuinely promise that we're done."
And the university doesn't make any concessions that don't involve things the university would've liked to have done anyway in terms of, you know, expanding our intellectual diversity, let's say, improving our disciplinary systems, stuff that we were gonna do anywhere that we plausibly could have done anyway.
In that circumstance, if the university leadership decides to make a deal, and it's a credible deal and it lasts, okay, you know, I think I and a lot of other people in the university would say, "We don't love it, but we are fine with accepting it," because it is actually really a disaster if, you know, the university that, by a lot of measures, is number one in the world in terms of its science can't do its science.
You know, that's bad not just for the university, it's bad for the whole world.
- Now, you wouldn't know it from this jacket, but not all universities out there have the deep pockets that the Harvard folks do.
What happens, right, to the folks that can't continue to pay for these lawsuits ongoing?
Most American universities have nowhere close to the endowments that Harvard does.
- That's one of the reasons that Harvard does actually need to stand up.
And it's one of the reasons that I really hope that this ends with the vindication of the idea that universities have a fundamental First Amendment right to teach and to study the topics that they want to with the students that they want.
Because as you say, most universities might not be able to stand and fight.
They're even more dependent on government assistance and funding than Harvard is.
And if they're public universities, they're also subject to having their boards of directors appointed, often by state governors.
And so you find public universities that even if they wanted to stand and fight, a Republican governor can appoint a board of directors and tell them, "Don't fight.
You know, just go full Trump."
And that can happen.
So I do think that that's a greater risk for other universities, and it's a strong reason for Harvard to stand up to the extent that it's able to.
- Noah Feldman, thanks for joining us today.
(air whooshes) (bright music) And now we descend from the ivory-est of towers to the filthiest of talking dolls.
I've got your "Puppet Regime."
- All right, Vladimir.
If you don't end that war in Ukraine in 50 days, I'm gonna do something very strong.
- Oh, God, this again.
Okay, right, right, cool.
- What's that?
Cool?
I'll show you cool.
Now you have 10 days.
Okay, maybe 12.
- Love it.
Can't wait.
- Okay, that's it.
(Donald grunts) (dramatic music) - Ow!
- Holy crap!
- Why did you hit me?
Why did you hit me?
- Look, somebody's gonna pay the price for Vladimir not listening to me, and it's not gonna be me.
- China is also helping Russia.
- (blows) More than I'd like to, less than I could.
♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.
Come back next week.
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Check us out at gzeromedia.com.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fades) (bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.
- [Announcer] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (uplifting music) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.
Learn more at prologis.com.
- [Announcer] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."
Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.
Cox, a family of businesses.
Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.
And... (lighthearted music) (lively music)
Support for PBS provided by:
GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS
GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS. The lead sponsor of GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is Prologis. Additional funding is provided...