April 1, 2025 • 32 mins
The Trump administration is targeting higher education. Colleges and universities across the United States are faced with the threat of funding freezes over their handling of free speech, anti-semitism and transgender issues, among other topics, on campus.
Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber joins host David Gura to discuss the newly announced freeze on some federal grants, the role of academic research, Princeton’s commitment to free speech and more.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Trump administration is
targeting higher education colleges and universities across the United States.
It's scrutinizing and criticizing how administrators responded to Hamas's attack
on Israel on October seventh, twenty twenty three, Israel's response
(00:23):
to it, and the protest that followed. It's demanding changes
to the way schools approach free speech on campuses, and
it's threatening to freeze billions of dollars worth of federal
funding for research. This is a precarious moment for the academy, worrisome.
To Christopher Eisgruber, who's the president of Princeton University, one
of the oldest and highest ranked schools in the US.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We've never seen the use of federal funding in the
way that it is being used now to try to
control universities, and if we really go down that road,
that is a very dangerous road to go down.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Icecreuber says. Princeton, like Harford Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania,
has been notified that some of its federal funding is
under review. Eisgruber confirmed that to Bloomberg a few hours
after the Trump administration announced it's reviewing roughly nine billion
dollars in contracts and grants with Harvard. This funding is vital,
Ice Grouper says, it has been since World War II.
(01:19):
It's one element of a partnership between government and academia
that's led to innovations and inventions and fueled a knowledge
economy in the US that's been the envy of the world.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Why is it that's such a huge proportion of Nobel
Prizes get awarded to Americans? Why is it that the
best scientists and engineers from all over the world want
to come to the United States. It's because of this
extraordinary partnership. We've had here.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Another threat to that knowledge economy, concern among foreign born
students and researchers at US colleges and universities that they're
no longer welcome. I'm David Gura, and this is the
Big Take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Christopher Eisgruber,
the president of Princeton University, sits down with me for
a wide ranging conversation about American higher education. We talk
(02:06):
about free speech, academic freedom, and the Trump administration's cracked
down on colleges and universities, its impact on students and faculty,
and the future of research and innovation in the US.
This interview has been edited and condensed. We're at a
moment where there aren't many leaders of colleges and universities
(02:28):
who are willing to speak up or speak out about
what's happening.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You are.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I'm grateful for that. Why is that the case. Why
do you feel it's important to speak up about the
challenges facing higher education today.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think it's important to speak up because there are
fundamental principles at stake right now. American universities, in my view,
are the best in the world, and I think the
best they've ever been, and there are the best they've
ever been because of their fidelity to certain principles, including
academic freedom and free speech, and because of a very
constructive partnership that's existed for about seventy years now between
(03:02):
American universities and the American government. All that is in
danger right now, and we have to speak up for
those principles in order to defend them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I want to talk a bit about free speech, which
is something I know that you've engaged with for the
entirety of your career, and I'll ask you to put
it plainly, how do you define free speech in the
context of a college or university.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So I think free speech is first of all, the
lifeblood of a great university. People have to be able
to raise controversial ideas. You have to have vigorous discussion
on the campus, and you have to defend it even
when people are saying things that are very unpopular or
at times that seem zany to the outside world. Because
(03:46):
that's how you get at truth, and that's what our
universities are about, and that's how you educate students and
prepare them for the world. We believe on our campus
that people should be free to ouriculate ideas even if
people find them immral, offensive or wrong headed, and that
has justice. Brandeis said in a famous concurrence on the
(04:09):
Court in the nineteen twenties, the remedy for bad speech
is more speech, not intervention by the government or for
that matter, by the university administration. Now you do have
to have what the Supreme Court calls time, place and
manner regulations, which mean that you can say lots of things.
People can criticize me, they can criticize the government They
(04:31):
can say lots of other things on the campus, but
it doesn't mean that you can pitch tents in an
encampment or take over a building, whether you're in Washington,
d c. Or whether you're on the Princeton University campus.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Over the course of your tenure, you have talked about
these principles with it seems like every freshman class that
comes here, is there a universal understanding of them? And
has it been more difficult over these last couple of
years to communicate two students the wider community or of
what those principles are and how you uphold them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Much more self conscious over the last few years in
communicating those principles. I think when I took office, I
mistakenly thought free speech was something you could take for granted,
that everybody on a college campus believed in it, and
that if I had to do anything to defend it,
I would be defending it from threats from the outside.
And there is some of that right right now. We
are very concerned about threats from the outside. But one
(05:22):
of the things we learned is free speech is a
hard idea and we have to be explaining it to
our own campus and making sure that people understand it.
So I think right now, our campus community, partly because
I am talking to the students about this every year
and we are discussing it on the campus, is well
aware of the free speech principles that we apply at Princeton.
(05:47):
Whether they agree or disagree with those principles. You asked
in your question whether there's universal understanding, there is not.
There's free speech, like other concepts, is contested. It's contested
in our society, it's contested in the world, and people
have different views about it. And just as people should
disagree about other things on a college campus, it's okay
(06:09):
if they disagree about what free speech means and what
it entails, but we have to be clear about On
the one hand, you can disagree about this, but here
are the principles that we will apply as a university.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
A recent challenge, perhaps the biggest recent challenge, has been
on this issue of anti semitism on college campuses, and
there has been a push to I was asking about
a universal definition earlier. Come up with a universal definition
for antisemitism that would be adopted. Is that something that
is in place here that you consider putting in place here?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, so let me start by saying that I have
been dismayed at the rise of anti semitism in the world.
Anti Semitism is clearly a problem in our country and
on campuses, and while rare, we've seen manifestations of it
on our own campus. And we have to stand steadfastly
against antisemitism and other forms of hate. But we do
(06:59):
that at Prince and through anti discrimination principles that are
broad and that do not incorporate specific definitions of particular
kinds of discrimination. So we expect that people will not
be discriminated against on the basis of their religion, or
their nationality, or their ethnicity. And we put that in
(07:19):
very broad terms, and we don't define it specifically for
anti semitism, or for anti black racism, or for other
kinds of discrimination. And we think, just as is the
case with many American anti discrimination laws, that having those
broad definitions is a better and more effective way of
stopping the problem.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We're kind of talking about this from a kind of
top down way, but I'm curious sort of how you
establish this and enforce it in a classroom. So for
a student who goes into class and says something that
might be construed as controversial or out of mode with
what most people in the class I'm think, how do
you make sure that he or she feels comfortable doing
that and won't face any kind of retaliation retribution from
(08:00):
TA or a professor's result of doing that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Right, So that's a really important question. And when we
start talking about what's going on in the classroom, just
to draw an important distinction here, we're talking about academic
freedom as it applies to faculty members and to students,
rather than about free speech per se. Free speech applies
if you're in a park or out in a square
on the campus, the campus quadrangle, and it gives you
(08:24):
these really broad rights to say things that may be
offensive or as I indicated earlier, as any when you're
in a classroom, we're part of we're engaged there in
a truth seeking endeavor where we have a different set
of rules requiring that people be respectful to one another
and that they also have the freedom and this is
(08:45):
part of academic freedom, just as as part of free
speech to raise controversial opinions and to be able to
do so without retaliation. So we have that spelled out
in our rules and procedures of the faculty, not just
that you won't be retaled against. But they specifically say,
for example, that even the professor's viewpoint is open to
(09:06):
challenge in the classroom. They say that professors must treat
students with respect as well as the other way around.
And we expect students to treat one another with respect
because that's in the rules and procedures of the faculty.
If there are departures from that, students where others can
make complaints about how it is that a faculty member
(09:27):
is behaving.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I want to stick with academic freedom. And I've heard
you speak out efforts by powerful actors in government and
outside it who are trying to control the research that
scholars do in the classes they teach. How difficult is
it to keep a firewall up, keep insulation surrounding this campus,
to keep those powerful actors, as you put it, out
of the classrooms, out of the campus itself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, I think it's a It requires a very firm
commitment to principle and a willingness to do hard things.
University presidents and leaders have to understand that the commitment
to allow academics, including our faculty, and including our students,
to pursue the truth as best they see it is
fundamental to what our universities do. We have to be
(10:10):
willing to stand up for that. In principle, we have
to be willing to speak up, and we have to
be willing to say no to funding if it's going
to constrain our ability to pursue the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Coming up, we discussed the developments at Columbia University, the
cancelation of four hundred million dollars in grants and contracts
there and Columbia's subsequent agreement to make changes to a
raft of university policies, and I get President Ice Grouper's
thoughts on the future of academic research. The federal government
(10:48):
has taken some dramatic action against universities in the last
several weeks. It's reviewing around nine billion dollars in federal
contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University, part of a
crackdown on what it says is a tolerance of anti
semitism on college campuses. It froze four hundred million dollars
in grants and contracts to Columbia University over the way
(11:08):
it's handled anti semitism on campus. Columbia responded by announcing
changes to university policy on a range of issues, from
how it handles protests to the way it defines anti semitism.
Princeton is also in the government sites. Christopher Iiscruber told
me government agencies have frozen several dozen research grants.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We had noticed actually yesterday of the suspension of some
funds and are still seeking a clarification of exactly why
these funds were suspended. So there's no respect in which
we're immune from this. As from our standpoint, this compact
(11:51):
is important to us, and I think it's important for
universities to send shoulder to shoulder as we go forward.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
How worrisome is that to you you watch that happen
in institutions around the country.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's deeply worrisome. It's deeply worrisome because, as I said earlier,
this pact between the government and research universities, which goes
back to shortly after World War Two, has been fundamental
to the excellence of American research universities, and it has
contributed tremendously to the prosperity, health and security of our country.
(12:28):
And that pact has depended on the idea that the
American government will come to universities and ask them to
do research that is in the interests of the American people,
and universities have done that spectacularly, making both the country
and the universities stronger. Throughout that time, the American government
has respected this principle of academic freedom. That means that
(12:49):
when that research has undertaken, universities and their faculties can
pursue the truth as they see it. What we're seeing
now is the use of research and funding and the
leverage that it gives the government over universities as a
lever to try to change what it is they teach,
and that threatens to disrupt the quality of our universities
(13:11):
and the principles that are fundamental to them.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
What do you make of the agreement that Columbia came to.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, well, there are two separate questions here. One question
is is it a good idea to take particular departments
at a particular university and subject them to greater scrutiny
and supervision from the central administration. That's a perfectly valid
question to ask, and universities, as they pursue excellence, pursue
(13:38):
the truth, and seek to ensure quality, will sometimes make
a judgment that a particular department needs additional support or
supervision in some way. That's a legitimate thing for them
to do. And I don't have a view about whether
or not Columbia as a university should be making that
judgment about a set of departments there. I'm not in
(13:59):
a position to assess those issues. But a second question
is should the government come in and, without running through
any of the processes that provide due process protections to
a university, take funding that's given to the university for
one subject, say medical science, and threaten to withdraw in
(14:23):
order to force Columbia to do what the government thinks
it should do with regard to one of its departments.
That is, it seems to me what's happened that Columbia,
and that is an intrusion on academic freedom that ought
to concern every American because what's happening then is the
government is withdrawing research funding again without the due process
(14:44):
that accompanies any sort of investigation, and using it to
try to force a university to move a department in
a direction that the government thinks is desirable. And when
you ask why is it that's such a huge proportion
of Nobel Prizes get awarded to Americans. Why is it
that the best scientists and engineers from all over the
world want to come to the United States. It's because
(15:04):
of this extraordinary partnership we've had here where the government
says we're going to do research through these universities, We're
going to fund that, and we're going to enable these
universities to become the best in the world and produces
these extraordinary innovations on behalf of the American people. Universities
do a broader range of research than that, And then
there's research that's done at universities that are funded from
(15:26):
other sources, including, for example, endowments or tuition payments that
enable universities to contribute to our understanding of great literature,
for example, or American history.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Given that history and the breadth that you describe, would
it be impossible for the private sector to do the
kind of research that's done at American colleges and universities.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, there's no way the private sector could substitute for
what American research universities are doing now, both on their
own and in partnership with the government. And I suspect
if you ask the private sect, our tech companies or
our pharma companies they would agree with that, And the
reason is because we do the kind of long term
research that doesn't have the payoff that's going to matter,
(16:11):
the predictable, immediate term or medium term payoff that is
going to matter to our corporations. Because what we've realized
as Americans for a long period of time is that
if you ask deep and profound questions about science, they
will eventually pay off with innovations way down the road.
(16:31):
They're going to make a difference to our country and
our world. But you can't put all of that in
a corporation where the board the leadership are beholden to
shareholders who want to see a return on a faster
timeline than from a nineteen eighty two paper to the
twenty twenties. Right, that kind of unpredictability and that kind
of path require this partnership, and it is what is
(16:55):
unique about the American innovation ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So you have the federal government freeze and funding at
PEN we've learned that the government is looking at funding
to Harvard to the tune of eight or nine billion dollars.
These seem like huge numbers. How do you deal with
that level of uncertainties? You're putting together the budget and
thinking about what research can be conducted at a school
like Princeton. If there's the possibility that a seemingly mercurial
(17:20):
government could say we want to pause this, we want
to freeze this, we want to look at this, and
it's going to effectively stop that funding for research.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, that kind of interruption, right what you described as
the mercurial character of that kind of intervention, will, if
it persists, undermine the partnership that has been so critical
to America's success. So one thing is how do I
deal with that as a university president. That's a challenge,
(17:47):
and you can deal with it through some short term
chop but over time, the American government needs to recommit
to that partnership and to sustain its commitment if we're
going to succeed. But think about some of the young
people who are making decisions. Think about a young woman
who is thinking about doing an mdphd and is graduating
from college right now. Question is is she going to
(18:10):
bet ten years of her life on the idea that
there's going to be research funding when she comes out
of that so she can make the discoveries that are
going to cure cancer or help us address Alzheimer's disease.
That committing ten years is a tough proposition, even with
a stable funding arrangement in place. Some of the people
are going to make the decision they're going to do
(18:30):
something else. Or think about an assistant professor who has
to prove their worth in a tenure process and depends
on grants to be able to do that, or a
graduate student who's coming out and says, do I take
a high salary in a private company or do I
commit myself to this research that's going to make a
difference decades down the road and prove to be the
(18:50):
fundamental source of innovation. We're going to squander that talent
pipeline if we have this kind of erratic intervention coming up.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Christopher Eiscreup talks about his options as he deals with
the government determined to make fundamental changes to the American
university system. That includes how he might negotiate with the
government and deploy his university's own considerable resources. Universities are
under attack, but they're not exactly a soft target. Many,
(19:22):
particularly the Ivy League, have considerable resources. Harvard's endowment is
more than fifty billion, dollars in size, and Princeton has
more than thirty three billion dollars under management, but universities
are loathed to plunder these nest eggs. I ask Christopher
Einsgruber what universities can do to get that frozen government
funding unfrozen to get back to business as usual.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think the following things are clear. Right, we have
to comply with the law. If there's an allegation that
there's some kind of unlawful behavior, we have to change that.
We have to stand steadfast against anti Semitism and all
other forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the
government to address those if that's their concern. But we
(20:10):
will also continue vigorously to defend academic freedom, and we
will insist on the due process rights of the of
the university. So I think the range of options that
a university or anybody else has under those circumstances are,
first of all, to litigate if there are concerns, to
(20:31):
address legitimate concerns where they exist, and to continue to
work with the government to address and and move forward
on what I think are shared goals. And there should
be shared goals here of of making sure that the
univer that the United States continues to be the world
leader in research and innovation, making sure that we address
(20:53):
all forms of hate or discrimination on our campus, and
making sure that we conduct research lawful. So those conversations
I think we can have. You know, there are other
people who urge, well, are are there ways that you
can accommodate the government in some way or bend to
the government's policy preferences in order to restore funding. I
(21:16):
think that's the wrong way, at least for an academic
institution to be thinking about what its responsibilities are. We
need to be true to our mission, and we need
to be true to our values, and I think that's
a way of being true to the broader American mission.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
So, worst case this funding goes away, are there places
that you can turn to replace it? Is that from
the private sector, is it from alumni? Is it from
the endowment? I know you've said in the past, think
of it as an annuity, don't think of it as
a saving's account. You're not comfortable saying this is something
from which you could draw an exceptional amount of money.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, David, thank you for making the point that when
we talk about the endowment in particular, it functions like
an annuity because we spend from it already at five
percent a year to defray the cost of research, make
it more affordable to the government for us to be
able to do research here and also to make our
education affordable to our students. But look, if government funding
(22:14):
were to go down, right, we and others would look
for other sources that we could use to support the
funding to the research that has to take place on
our campuses. We would look for things that we could
stop doing. They would be real cost to that. Because
I'm proud of what we're doing on the campus. We
would try to raise other funds. We would look at
(22:34):
ways to potentially reallocate endowment funding, which would involve very
difficult choices. But at the end of the day, what
would happen here and elsewhere is that less research would
get done, and that would be a bad thing, I
think for America because we would no longer have the
kinds of innovation or the same degree of innovation and
(22:56):
leadership that we have had to date.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So with regard to the endowment, it could be used
for a rainy day, but the forecast isn't calling for one. Yeah,
is that? Well?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
The the endowment people. So now I do have to
say some things about annuities and savings accounts. People sometimes
think about the endowment as something that gets used on
a rainy day, like a savings account that you keep
off to the side. We spend more than five percent
per year of the annownment and have to be able
to do that in perpetuity, or we're not able to
(23:25):
answer the able to offer the financial aid that we
do to our students, or pay all of our faculty
across all of our disciplines, or support the research that
we do beyond what comes from federal funding. So if
you're making a choice you can use the annownment. You
can start to say, well, look we've got pressures on
it here, and we have to use it differently than
(23:48):
we were using it before. I was the chief budgetary
officer for the university during the global financial crisis, and
under those circumstances we had to pull in our wings.
We had to cut positions to take financial aid up,
but we froze are hiring. We weren't able to do
some things in terms of building new facilities that would
(24:08):
allow us to seize new research opportunities during that period.
But we made tough choices about what we were going
to do, and you can make those choices going forward.
At the end of the day, what those choices will
mean is there are certain research projects that would have
been undertaken that won't be undertaken because you've had to
(24:28):
reallocate what the endowment does away from one project to another.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Something that has been so central to the knowledge economy
that we've been talking about has been students who have
been born and lived in other countries who've come here
to Princeton other universities to study and do research work.
Are you worried that, given what we've seen in recent weeks,
it'll be a less full pipeline of students doing that.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I'm neabbly worried about that this university, and virtually every
America university, depends on talent from around the world in
order to reach its excellence. I mentioned earlier in our
discussion the circumstances during World War Two that allowed the
United States to seize this competitive advantage, and that had
(25:15):
a lot to do with emigrants coming to our country
from Europe. Princeton University had a kind of a new
birth during that period because of all the extraordinary mathematicians
and physicists who escaped the Nazi regime and came to
the United States because of the freedom it offered, the
freedom to pursue their research and the freedom to live
according to the dectates of their faith and without discrimination.
(25:39):
And this country and our universities have been a magnet
to people from around the world throughout our history, I
would say, in ways that have benefited the country tremendously. Now,
with this combination of attacks on universities and some of
what we are seeing around immigration and the treatment of
(26:01):
Green card holders and visa holders, I think people will
ask a second time about whether or not they want
to come to the United States. If that happens, it
will undermine our ability to attract talent, and it will
make us weaker as a country.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I'd like to devetail this with what we've been talking
about with regard to academic freedom and free speech. So
there's this video that was shot in Somerville, Massachusetts of
a tought University doctoral student. I don't know if you've
seen it, but she's walking around and six masked law
enforcem missiles come and apprehend her take her away. What
do you say to a student here who sees that video,
(26:36):
has heard what you've had to say about the climate
of free speech on a college canvas, and sees in
real terms there the effect that that could have today,
That that's a young woman who was here in the
United States studying, yes, participating in student life by making
her opinions known in the student newspaper, and now finds
herself in an extremely precarious position and threatened with being
(26:58):
kicked out of this country.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes, so I've had these questions from students, and it's difficult,
and I think when I talk to them, I have
to acknowledge that difficulty. So part of what I say
to them is, look, it's really important that they be
able to speak up and participate on campus. And my
own view as an American and as a constitutional lawyer
(27:20):
is that it's really important for us as a country
to continue to protect the free speech rights of non
citizens as well as citizens. It has been one of
our great strength as a country. And I also tell
them that we Princeton will do what we can do
within the law in order to support students. But I
have to tell them because I have to be honest
(27:40):
with them at the same time that the legal protections
that exist for non citizens are not the same as
they are for citizens. So I think students have to
make a judgment about how and when that they speak up.
There are going to be some circumstances in some ways
of speaking that are safer and others. I think classrooms,
(28:01):
for example, remain very safe environments for students to speak up,
and the kind of conventions of civil discourse and engagement
help to provide protection for students. But I have to
be clear with the students, and David, I have to
be clear with you, right, these are real risks that
interfere with the kind of engagement that we should want
from students who are in our country, and with the
(28:24):
kind of discourse that has to go on on campuses.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I'm glad you've brought us here because I'd love for
you to put this moment in a broader historical context.
There have been moments in the past where free speech
on college campuses has been tested, where there have been
protests where we've seen the government take an aggressive tack
against against that. Does this feel like an outlier moment?
Does it feel like there are historical analogs that you
(28:49):
can look to. How do you see this moment in
the broad sweep of American history.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I think it's both true that what we are seeing
right now is a kind of manager festation of trends
that are always present in the United States, but also
a rather acute moment and a deeply worrisome one. So
if I may, I would take this back to Tokeville,
the great sociologist who came to the United States in
(29:15):
the nineteenth century and wrote this tremendously perceptive book that
tells you lots of extraordinary things about Americans. I was
getting ready for a speech a couple of months ago
and pulled my Toauville off my shelf because I was
hoping for a quote from him about Americans and the
scientific enterprise here. And I didn't find what I was expecting.
I had forgotten my Tokeville, as it turned out, because
(29:35):
what he said was the Americans are never going to
be good at abstract science, and they're never going to
have a great literature because they're too concerned with the
pragmatic and the pressures of the moment. And I realized, Wow,
for all the things that Tokeville got right, one thing
that he got wrong was he did not visualize the
American universities that we have today. He didn't visualize what
(30:00):
happens here at Princeton. He didn't visualize the Iowa Writers'
Workshop that happens at the University of Iowa, or the
Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at
Santa Barbara. That wasn't on his radar screen. But I
think what he got right was these institutions exist, as
I don't know, things that Americans regard simultaneously with pride
(30:25):
and at the same time suspicion. Throughout their history. They
take great pride in the excellence that gets manifested at universities,
and they can be somewhat suspicious of the extraordinary freedom
of thought and academic freedom that exists here and the
ideas that emerge out of universities. So we have seen
throughout our history times when there are intrusions on free
(30:48):
speech and efforts to kind of rein in or control
the extraordinary freedom that our country has allowed these universities
in ways that have made them great. But I think
this particular period is unusually severe. We've never seen the
use of federal funding in the way that it is
being used now to try to control universities, and if
we really go down that road, that is a very
(31:10):
dangerous road to go down. We've seen various kinds of
anti immigrant moments in the past, but the efforts right
now to seize on the vulnerability of immigrants in order
to control or punish political speech that they're engaged in
are unusual by comparison to the sweep of American history.
(31:34):
So we're in a moment right now where education has
become politicized beyond the norm in America, and I think
we need to return to our root principles as a
country and reaffirm the importance of these institutions to what
it is we do as a nation. Thank you very much,
Thank you, Jesse. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
This episode is produced by Alex Secura, who also mixed it.
It was edited by Patty Hirsh, Sarah McGregor, and Janet Lauren.
It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producer
is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our
deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is
(32:22):
Nicole beemster boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and
review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps people find the show. Thanks for listening, We'll be
back tomorrow
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Trump administration is
targeting higher education colleges and universities across the United States.
It's scrutinizing and criticizing how administrators responded to Hamas's attack
on Israel on October seventh, twenty twenty three, Israel's response
(00:23):
to it, and the protest that followed. It's demanding changes
to the way schools approach free speech on campuses, and
it's threatening to freeze billions of dollars worth of federal
funding for research. This is a precarious moment for the academy, worrisome.
To Christopher Eisgruber, who's the president of Princeton University, one
of the oldest and highest ranked schools in the US.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We've never seen the use of federal funding in the
way that it is being used now to try to
control universities, and if we really go down that road,
that is a very dangerous road to go down.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Icecreuber says. Princeton, like Harford Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania,
has been notified that some of its federal funding is
under review. Eisgruber confirmed that to Bloomberg a few hours
after the Trump administration announced it's reviewing roughly nine billion
dollars in contracts and grants with Harvard. This funding is vital,
Ice Grouper says, it has been since World War II.
(01:19):
It's one element of a partnership between government and academia
that's led to innovations and inventions and fueled a knowledge
economy in the US that's been the envy of the world.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Why is it that's such a huge proportion of Nobel
Prizes get awarded to Americans? Why is it that the
best scientists and engineers from all over the world want
to come to the United States. It's because of this
extraordinary partnership. We've had here.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Another threat to that knowledge economy, concern among foreign born
students and researchers at US colleges and universities that they're
no longer welcome. I'm David Gura, and this is the
Big Take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Christopher Eisgruber,
the president of Princeton University, sits down with me for
a wide ranging conversation about American higher education. We talk
(02:06):
about free speech, academic freedom, and the Trump administration's cracked
down on colleges and universities, its impact on students and faculty,
and the future of research and innovation in the US.
This interview has been edited and condensed. We're at a
moment where there aren't many leaders of colleges and universities
(02:28):
who are willing to speak up or speak out about
what's happening.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You are.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I'm grateful for that. Why is that the case. Why
do you feel it's important to speak up about the
challenges facing higher education today.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think it's important to speak up because there are
fundamental principles at stake right now. American universities, in my view,
are the best in the world, and I think the
best they've ever been, and there are the best they've
ever been because of their fidelity to certain principles, including
academic freedom and free speech, and because of a very
constructive partnership that's existed for about seventy years now between
(03:02):
American universities and the American government. All that is in
danger right now, and we have to speak up for
those principles in order to defend them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I want to talk a bit about free speech, which
is something I know that you've engaged with for the
entirety of your career, and I'll ask you to put
it plainly, how do you define free speech in the
context of a college or university.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So I think free speech is first of all, the
lifeblood of a great university. People have to be able
to raise controversial ideas. You have to have vigorous discussion
on the campus, and you have to defend it even
when people are saying things that are very unpopular or
at times that seem zany to the outside world. Because
(03:46):
that's how you get at truth, and that's what our
universities are about, and that's how you educate students and
prepare them for the world. We believe on our campus
that people should be free to ouriculate ideas even if
people find them immral, offensive or wrong headed, and that
has justice. Brandeis said in a famous concurrence on the
(04:09):
Court in the nineteen twenties, the remedy for bad speech
is more speech, not intervention by the government or for
that matter, by the university administration. Now you do have
to have what the Supreme Court calls time, place and
manner regulations, which mean that you can say lots of things.
People can criticize me, they can criticize the government They
(04:31):
can say lots of other things on the campus, but
it doesn't mean that you can pitch tents in an
encampment or take over a building, whether you're in Washington,
d c. Or whether you're on the Princeton University campus.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Over the course of your tenure, you have talked about
these principles with it seems like every freshman class that
comes here, is there a universal understanding of them? And
has it been more difficult over these last couple of
years to communicate two students the wider community or of
what those principles are and how you uphold them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Much more self conscious over the last few years in
communicating those principles. I think when I took office, I
mistakenly thought free speech was something you could take for granted,
that everybody on a college campus believed in it, and
that if I had to do anything to defend it,
I would be defending it from threats from the outside.
And there is some of that right right now. We
are very concerned about threats from the outside. But one
(05:22):
of the things we learned is free speech is a
hard idea and we have to be explaining it to
our own campus and making sure that people understand it.
So I think right now, our campus community, partly because
I am talking to the students about this every year
and we are discussing it on the campus, is well
aware of the free speech principles that we apply at Princeton.
(05:47):
Whether they agree or disagree with those principles. You asked
in your question whether there's universal understanding, there is not.
There's free speech, like other concepts, is contested. It's contested
in our society, it's contested in the world, and people
have different views about it. And just as people should
disagree about other things on a college campus, it's okay
(06:09):
if they disagree about what free speech means and what
it entails, but we have to be clear about On
the one hand, you can disagree about this, but here
are the principles that we will apply as a university.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
A recent challenge, perhaps the biggest recent challenge, has been
on this issue of anti semitism on college campuses, and
there has been a push to I was asking about
a universal definition earlier. Come up with a universal definition
for antisemitism that would be adopted. Is that something that
is in place here that you consider putting in place here?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, so let me start by saying that I have
been dismayed at the rise of anti semitism in the world.
Anti Semitism is clearly a problem in our country and
on campuses, and while rare, we've seen manifestations of it
on our own campus. And we have to stand steadfastly
against antisemitism and other forms of hate. But we do
(06:59):
that at Prince and through anti discrimination principles that are
broad and that do not incorporate specific definitions of particular
kinds of discrimination. So we expect that people will not
be discriminated against on the basis of their religion, or
their nationality, or their ethnicity. And we put that in
(07:19):
very broad terms, and we don't define it specifically for
anti semitism, or for anti black racism, or for other
kinds of discrimination. And we think, just as is the
case with many American anti discrimination laws, that having those
broad definitions is a better and more effective way of
stopping the problem.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We're kind of talking about this from a kind of
top down way, but I'm curious sort of how you
establish this and enforce it in a classroom. So for
a student who goes into class and says something that
might be construed as controversial or out of mode with
what most people in the class I'm think, how do
you make sure that he or she feels comfortable doing
that and won't face any kind of retaliation retribution from
(08:00):
TA or a professor's result of doing that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Right, So that's a really important question. And when we
start talking about what's going on in the classroom, just
to draw an important distinction here, we're talking about academic
freedom as it applies to faculty members and to students,
rather than about free speech per se. Free speech applies
if you're in a park or out in a square
on the campus, the campus quadrangle, and it gives you
(08:24):
these really broad rights to say things that may be
offensive or as I indicated earlier, as any when you're
in a classroom, we're part of we're engaged there in
a truth seeking endeavor where we have a different set
of rules requiring that people be respectful to one another
and that they also have the freedom and this is
(08:45):
part of academic freedom, just as as part of free
speech to raise controversial opinions and to be able to
do so without retaliation. So we have that spelled out
in our rules and procedures of the faculty, not just
that you won't be retaled against. But they specifically say,
for example, that even the professor's viewpoint is open to
(09:06):
challenge in the classroom. They say that professors must treat
students with respect as well as the other way around.
And we expect students to treat one another with respect
because that's in the rules and procedures of the faculty.
If there are departures from that, students where others can
make complaints about how it is that a faculty member
(09:27):
is behaving.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I want to stick with academic freedom. And I've heard
you speak out efforts by powerful actors in government and
outside it who are trying to control the research that
scholars do in the classes they teach. How difficult is
it to keep a firewall up, keep insulation surrounding this campus,
to keep those powerful actors, as you put it, out
of the classrooms, out of the campus itself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, I think it's a It requires a very firm
commitment to principle and a willingness to do hard things.
University presidents and leaders have to understand that the commitment
to allow academics, including our faculty, and including our students,
to pursue the truth as best they see it is
fundamental to what our universities do. We have to be
(10:10):
willing to stand up for that. In principle, we have
to be willing to speak up, and we have to
be willing to say no to funding if it's going
to constrain our ability to pursue the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Coming up, we discussed the developments at Columbia University, the
cancelation of four hundred million dollars in grants and contracts
there and Columbia's subsequent agreement to make changes to a
raft of university policies, and I get President Ice Grouper's
thoughts on the future of academic research. The federal government
(10:48):
has taken some dramatic action against universities in the last
several weeks. It's reviewing around nine billion dollars in federal
contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University, part of a
crackdown on what it says is a tolerance of anti
semitism on college campuses. It froze four hundred million dollars
in grants and contracts to Columbia University over the way
(11:08):
it's handled anti semitism on campus. Columbia responded by announcing
changes to university policy on a range of issues, from
how it handles protests to the way it defines anti semitism.
Princeton is also in the government sites. Christopher Iiscruber told
me government agencies have frozen several dozen research grants.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We had noticed actually yesterday of the suspension of some
funds and are still seeking a clarification of exactly why
these funds were suspended. So there's no respect in which
we're immune from this. As from our standpoint, this compact
(11:51):
is important to us, and I think it's important for
universities to send shoulder to shoulder as we go forward.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
How worrisome is that to you you watch that happen
in institutions around the country.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's deeply worrisome. It's deeply worrisome because, as I said earlier,
this pact between the government and research universities, which goes
back to shortly after World War Two, has been fundamental
to the excellence of American research universities, and it has
contributed tremendously to the prosperity, health and security of our country.
(12:28):
And that pact has depended on the idea that the
American government will come to universities and ask them to
do research that is in the interests of the American people,
and universities have done that spectacularly, making both the country
and the universities stronger. Throughout that time, the American government
has respected this principle of academic freedom. That means that
(12:49):
when that research has undertaken, universities and their faculties can
pursue the truth as they see it. What we're seeing
now is the use of research and funding and the
leverage that it gives the government over universities as a
lever to try to change what it is they teach,
and that threatens to disrupt the quality of our universities
(13:11):
and the principles that are fundamental to them.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
What do you make of the agreement that Columbia came to.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, well, there are two separate questions here. One question
is is it a good idea to take particular departments
at a particular university and subject them to greater scrutiny
and supervision from the central administration. That's a perfectly valid
question to ask, and universities, as they pursue excellence, pursue
(13:38):
the truth, and seek to ensure quality, will sometimes make
a judgment that a particular department needs additional support or
supervision in some way. That's a legitimate thing for them
to do. And I don't have a view about whether
or not Columbia as a university should be making that
judgment about a set of departments there. I'm not in
(13:59):
a position to assess those issues. But a second question
is should the government come in and, without running through
any of the processes that provide due process protections to
a university, take funding that's given to the university for
one subject, say medical science, and threaten to withdraw in
(14:23):
order to force Columbia to do what the government thinks
it should do with regard to one of its departments.
That is, it seems to me what's happened that Columbia,
and that is an intrusion on academic freedom that ought
to concern every American because what's happening then is the
government is withdrawing research funding again without the due process
(14:44):
that accompanies any sort of investigation, and using it to
try to force a university to move a department in
a direction that the government thinks is desirable. And when
you ask why is it that's such a huge proportion
of Nobel Prizes get awarded to Americans. Why is it
that the best scientists and engineers from all over the
world want to come to the United States. It's because
(15:04):
of this extraordinary partnership we've had here where the government
says we're going to do research through these universities, We're
going to fund that, and we're going to enable these
universities to become the best in the world and produces
these extraordinary innovations on behalf of the American people. Universities
do a broader range of research than that, And then
there's research that's done at universities that are funded from
(15:26):
other sources, including, for example, endowments or tuition payments that
enable universities to contribute to our understanding of great literature,
for example, or American history.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Given that history and the breadth that you describe, would
it be impossible for the private sector to do the
kind of research that's done at American colleges and universities.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, there's no way the private sector could substitute for
what American research universities are doing now, both on their
own and in partnership with the government. And I suspect
if you ask the private sect, our tech companies or
our pharma companies they would agree with that, And the
reason is because we do the kind of long term
research that doesn't have the payoff that's going to matter,
(16:11):
the predictable, immediate term or medium term payoff that is
going to matter to our corporations. Because what we've realized
as Americans for a long period of time is that
if you ask deep and profound questions about science, they
will eventually pay off with innovations way down the road.
(16:31):
They're going to make a difference to our country and
our world. But you can't put all of that in
a corporation where the board the leadership are beholden to
shareholders who want to see a return on a faster
timeline than from a nineteen eighty two paper to the
twenty twenties. Right, that kind of unpredictability and that kind
of path require this partnership, and it is what is
(16:55):
unique about the American innovation ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So you have the federal government freeze and funding at
PEN we've learned that the government is looking at funding
to Harvard to the tune of eight or nine billion dollars.
These seem like huge numbers. How do you deal with
that level of uncertainties? You're putting together the budget and
thinking about what research can be conducted at a school
like Princeton. If there's the possibility that a seemingly mercurial
(17:20):
government could say we want to pause this, we want
to freeze this, we want to look at this, and
it's going to effectively stop that funding for research.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, that kind of interruption, right what you described as
the mercurial character of that kind of intervention, will, if
it persists, undermine the partnership that has been so critical
to America's success. So one thing is how do I
deal with that as a university president. That's a challenge,
(17:47):
and you can deal with it through some short term
chop but over time, the American government needs to recommit
to that partnership and to sustain its commitment if we're
going to succeed. But think about some of the young
people who are making decisions. Think about a young woman
who is thinking about doing an mdphd and is graduating
from college right now. Question is is she going to
(18:10):
bet ten years of her life on the idea that
there's going to be research funding when she comes out
of that so she can make the discoveries that are
going to cure cancer or help us address Alzheimer's disease.
That committing ten years is a tough proposition, even with
a stable funding arrangement in place. Some of the people
are going to make the decision they're going to do
(18:30):
something else. Or think about an assistant professor who has
to prove their worth in a tenure process and depends
on grants to be able to do that, or a
graduate student who's coming out and says, do I take
a high salary in a private company or do I
commit myself to this research that's going to make a
difference decades down the road and prove to be the
(18:50):
fundamental source of innovation. We're going to squander that talent
pipeline if we have this kind of erratic intervention coming up.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Christopher Eiscreup talks about his options as he deals with
the government determined to make fundamental changes to the American
university system. That includes how he might negotiate with the
government and deploy his university's own considerable resources. Universities are
under attack, but they're not exactly a soft target. Many,
(19:22):
particularly the Ivy League, have considerable resources. Harvard's endowment is
more than fifty billion, dollars in size, and Princeton has
more than thirty three billion dollars under management, but universities
are loathed to plunder these nest eggs. I ask Christopher
Einsgruber what universities can do to get that frozen government
funding unfrozen to get back to business as usual.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think the following things are clear. Right, we have
to comply with the law. If there's an allegation that
there's some kind of unlawful behavior, we have to change that.
We have to stand steadfast against anti Semitism and all
other forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the
government to address those if that's their concern. But we
(20:10):
will also continue vigorously to defend academic freedom, and we
will insist on the due process rights of the of
the university. So I think the range of options that
a university or anybody else has under those circumstances are,
first of all, to litigate if there are concerns, to
(20:31):
address legitimate concerns where they exist, and to continue to
work with the government to address and and move forward
on what I think are shared goals. And there should
be shared goals here of of making sure that the
univer that the United States continues to be the world
leader in research and innovation, making sure that we address
(20:53):
all forms of hate or discrimination on our campus, and
making sure that we conduct research lawful. So those conversations
I think we can have. You know, there are other
people who urge, well, are are there ways that you
can accommodate the government in some way or bend to
the government's policy preferences in order to restore funding. I
(21:16):
think that's the wrong way, at least for an academic
institution to be thinking about what its responsibilities are. We
need to be true to our mission, and we need
to be true to our values, and I think that's
a way of being true to the broader American mission.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
So, worst case this funding goes away, are there places
that you can turn to replace it? Is that from
the private sector, is it from alumni? Is it from
the endowment? I know you've said in the past, think
of it as an annuity, don't think of it as
a saving's account. You're not comfortable saying this is something
from which you could draw an exceptional amount of money.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, David, thank you for making the point that when
we talk about the endowment in particular, it functions like
an annuity because we spend from it already at five
percent a year to defray the cost of research, make
it more affordable to the government for us to be
able to do research here and also to make our
education affordable to our students. But look, if government funding
(22:14):
were to go down, right, we and others would look
for other sources that we could use to support the
funding to the research that has to take place on
our campuses. We would look for things that we could
stop doing. They would be real cost to that. Because
I'm proud of what we're doing on the campus. We
would try to raise other funds. We would look at
(22:34):
ways to potentially reallocate endowment funding, which would involve very
difficult choices. But at the end of the day, what
would happen here and elsewhere is that less research would
get done, and that would be a bad thing, I
think for America because we would no longer have the
kinds of innovation or the same degree of innovation and
(22:56):
leadership that we have had to date.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So with regard to the endowment, it could be used
for a rainy day, but the forecast isn't calling for one. Yeah,
is that? Well?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
The the endowment people. So now I do have to
say some things about annuities and savings accounts. People sometimes
think about the endowment as something that gets used on
a rainy day, like a savings account that you keep
off to the side. We spend more than five percent
per year of the annownment and have to be able
to do that in perpetuity, or we're not able to
(23:25):
answer the able to offer the financial aid that we
do to our students, or pay all of our faculty
across all of our disciplines, or support the research that
we do beyond what comes from federal funding. So if
you're making a choice you can use the annownment. You
can start to say, well, look we've got pressures on
it here, and we have to use it differently than
(23:48):
we were using it before. I was the chief budgetary
officer for the university during the global financial crisis, and
under those circumstances we had to pull in our wings.
We had to cut positions to take financial aid up,
but we froze are hiring. We weren't able to do
some things in terms of building new facilities that would
(24:08):
allow us to seize new research opportunities during that period.
But we made tough choices about what we were going
to do, and you can make those choices going forward.
At the end of the day, what those choices will
mean is there are certain research projects that would have
been undertaken that won't be undertaken because you've had to
(24:28):
reallocate what the endowment does away from one project to another.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Something that has been so central to the knowledge economy
that we've been talking about has been students who have
been born and lived in other countries who've come here
to Princeton other universities to study and do research work.
Are you worried that, given what we've seen in recent weeks,
it'll be a less full pipeline of students doing that.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I'm neabbly worried about that this university, and virtually every
America university, depends on talent from around the world in
order to reach its excellence. I mentioned earlier in our
discussion the circumstances during World War Two that allowed the
United States to seize this competitive advantage, and that had
(25:15):
a lot to do with emigrants coming to our country
from Europe. Princeton University had a kind of a new
birth during that period because of all the extraordinary mathematicians
and physicists who escaped the Nazi regime and came to
the United States because of the freedom it offered, the
freedom to pursue their research and the freedom to live
according to the dectates of their faith and without discrimination.
(25:39):
And this country and our universities have been a magnet
to people from around the world throughout our history, I
would say, in ways that have benefited the country tremendously. Now,
with this combination of attacks on universities and some of
what we are seeing around immigration and the treatment of
(26:01):
Green card holders and visa holders, I think people will
ask a second time about whether or not they want
to come to the United States. If that happens, it
will undermine our ability to attract talent, and it will
make us weaker as a country.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I'd like to devetail this with what we've been talking
about with regard to academic freedom and free speech. So
there's this video that was shot in Somerville, Massachusetts of
a tought University doctoral student. I don't know if you've
seen it, but she's walking around and six masked law
enforcem missiles come and apprehend her take her away. What
do you say to a student here who sees that video,
(26:36):
has heard what you've had to say about the climate
of free speech on a college canvas, and sees in
real terms there the effect that that could have today,
That that's a young woman who was here in the
United States studying, yes, participating in student life by making
her opinions known in the student newspaper, and now finds
herself in an extremely precarious position and threatened with being
(26:58):
kicked out of this country.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes, so I've had these questions from students, and it's difficult,
and I think when I talk to them, I have
to acknowledge that difficulty. So part of what I say
to them is, look, it's really important that they be
able to speak up and participate on campus. And my
own view as an American and as a constitutional lawyer
(27:20):
is that it's really important for us as a country
to continue to protect the free speech rights of non
citizens as well as citizens. It has been one of
our great strength as a country. And I also tell
them that we Princeton will do what we can do
within the law in order to support students. But I
have to tell them because I have to be honest
(27:40):
with them at the same time that the legal protections
that exist for non citizens are not the same as
they are for citizens. So I think students have to
make a judgment about how and when that they speak up.
There are going to be some circumstances in some ways
of speaking that are safer and others. I think classrooms,
(28:01):
for example, remain very safe environments for students to speak up,
and the kind of conventions of civil discourse and engagement
help to provide protection for students. But I have to
be clear with the students, and David, I have to
be clear with you, right, these are real risks that
interfere with the kind of engagement that we should want
from students who are in our country, and with the
(28:24):
kind of discourse that has to go on on campuses.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I'm glad you've brought us here because I'd love for
you to put this moment in a broader historical context.
There have been moments in the past where free speech
on college campuses has been tested, where there have been
protests where we've seen the government take an aggressive tack
against against that. Does this feel like an outlier moment?
Does it feel like there are historical analogs that you
(28:49):
can look to. How do you see this moment in
the broad sweep of American history.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I think it's both true that what we are seeing
right now is a kind of manager festation of trends
that are always present in the United States, but also
a rather acute moment and a deeply worrisome one. So
if I may, I would take this back to Tokeville,
the great sociologist who came to the United States in
(29:15):
the nineteenth century and wrote this tremendously perceptive book that
tells you lots of extraordinary things about Americans. I was
getting ready for a speech a couple of months ago
and pulled my Toauville off my shelf because I was
hoping for a quote from him about Americans and the
scientific enterprise here. And I didn't find what I was expecting.
I had forgotten my Tokeville, as it turned out, because
(29:35):
what he said was the Americans are never going to
be good at abstract science, and they're never going to
have a great literature because they're too concerned with the
pragmatic and the pressures of the moment. And I realized, Wow,
for all the things that Tokeville got right, one thing
that he got wrong was he did not visualize the
American universities that we have today. He didn't visualize what
(30:00):
happens here at Princeton. He didn't visualize the Iowa Writers'
Workshop that happens at the University of Iowa, or the
Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at
Santa Barbara. That wasn't on his radar screen. But I
think what he got right was these institutions exist, as
I don't know, things that Americans regard simultaneously with pride
(30:25):
and at the same time suspicion. Throughout their history. They
take great pride in the excellence that gets manifested at universities,
and they can be somewhat suspicious of the extraordinary freedom
of thought and academic freedom that exists here and the
ideas that emerge out of universities. So we have seen
throughout our history times when there are intrusions on free
(30:48):
speech and efforts to kind of rein in or control
the extraordinary freedom that our country has allowed these universities
in ways that have made them great. But I think
this particular period is unusually severe. We've never seen the
use of federal funding in the way that it is
being used now to try to control universities, and if
we really go down that road, that is a very
(31:10):
dangerous road to go down. We've seen various kinds of
anti immigrant moments in the past, but the efforts right
now to seize on the vulnerability of immigrants in order
to control or punish political speech that they're engaged in
are unusual by comparison to the sweep of American history.
(31:34):
So we're in a moment right now where education has
become politicized beyond the norm in America, and I think
we need to return to our root principles as a
country and reaffirm the importance of these institutions to what
it is we do as a nation. Thank you very much,
Thank you, Jesse. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
This episode is produced by Alex Secura, who also mixed it.
It was edited by Patty Hirsh, Sarah McGregor, and Janet Lauren.
It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producer
is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our
deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is
(32:22):
Nicole beemster boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and
review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps people find the show. Thanks for listening, We'll be
back tomorrow
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.