I appeared on the Rick Leventhal Show on Newsmax on April 15 to talk about the fight between the Trump administration and Harvard over federal funding freezes. This may be a fight that finally needs to be had.
WAJ (00:58):
… The Harvard faculty is completely radicalized. Only 3% of the faculty at Harvard identifies as conservative, versus nationally 37% of people identify as conservative. It’s a monoculture, which has become increasingly radicalized, but it’s radicalized really only in one direction. It’s basically becoming a Zionist free zone. And when you exclude Zionists from campus the way they do, you’re excluding Jews. When you have marches calling for an Intifada, which was the bloody campaign against Jews in 2002, we know what you mean. And there’ve been Senators who’ve visited various campuses, including Columbia, who’ve spoken to students. They were afraid to walk around with Jewish stars around their necks. This would never be tolerated if it was any other minority group, but it’s tolerated because the campus is so radical.
Leventhal (02:10):
Bill, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when former President Obama said that it was okay for mask wearing Hamas supporters to chant for Intifada and violent resistance to Jewish students who were just trying to go to class. Why would he say Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism are unlawful and stifling academic freedom? It’s, as you said, it’s a double standard.
WAJ (02:34):
Well, actually it’s these protestors, the ones taking over buildings, the ones erecting, checkpoints, et cetera, who are interfering with academic freedom. There’s a lot has been made about this Columbia student they’re trying to deport. He devoted his time here, a foreigner, to preventing other students from exercising their rights, other students getting their education.
The reality is also there is no real academic freedom on campuses. You can’t get hired, it’s almost impossible to get hired if you’re either openly pro-Israel or conservative on campuses. For 20, 30 years, the faculty has been purged of conservatives and openly pro-Israel faculty. So the notion that somehow the Trump administration trying to bring a balance back, trying to increase ideological diversity, is destroying academic freedom, it’s just the opposite. It’s trying to restore it.
Leventhal (03:33):
And Obama isn’t the only Democrat to stick up for Harvard, New York. Governor Kathy Hochel, your governor, also released a statement saying quote, cutting funding to these institutions is absolutely despicable. And in the same statement, she says, people who criticize the anti-Semitism on campus are not wrong. Adding, anti-Semitism is rampant in ways that are shocking to me. Well, thanks, Governor. But you can’t have it both ways.
WAJ (04:00):
Right. If you want to be free from federal restraints, don’t take federal money. I mean, that’s the quid pro quo. You take federal funding and you have to comply with the civil rights laws. You have to comply with a whole host of federal mandates. Hillsdale College made a decision not to take a penny of federal money. They can do pretty much whatever they want. Harvard takes apparently $9 billion of federal money, and they have to comply with federal requirements. That’s the price they pay.
Harvard would be well advised, as well as many other schools, not to bite the hand that feeds you. They have become so divorced from the American public. And polling by reputable organizations shows that trust in higher education is at an all time low. More people, or the same number of people who trust higher ed don’t trust it. It’s losing popularity, it’s losing credibility. It’s ideologically divorced from the nation.
These schools would be better off looking inward and saying, what did we do wrong? What could we do better? How did we create a situation where the population of the country is turning against us?
Don’t blame Donald Trump. These remedies he’s seeking are really a symptom of a population which is fed up with higher ed.
Leventhal (05:16):
I’m glad you said that. As a professor at Cornell, one of the schools that Hochel mentioned, what are your thoughts on Trump threatening to freeze funding and what can Cornell do, your school, what can Cornell do better to protect its Jewish students?
WAJ (05:34):
Well, it’s going to have to increase the diversity of the faculty ideologically. There are very few openly conservative professors. I might be one of a handful in a campus of 2000 faculty. There there is programming, which is really noxious, by various academic departments, I support their freedom of speech and right to do that, but there’s no counter programming. There’s no balance.
The Cornell administration needs to make a concerted effort to bring balance back to the campus. As of now, it’s a monoculture, it’s a monoculture at the faculty and the administrative level. And the administrators in some ways are as radical or more radical than the faculty. So really changing the way you’ve done everything.
And get rid of the DEI programming, which causes a lot of the isolation and targeting of Jewish students, the notion that somehow Jews are white oppressors. You see it at Cornell, when they organize boycotts of Israel or a motion against Israel, it’s always framed as going against the white oppressors.
Get rid of the DEI ideology, bring balance back to the campus, nd you’ll go a long way. Because the antisemitism is a symptom of a deeper problem.
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