0:02

This is a Global Player original

0:04

podcast. The president of the University

0:07

of Pennsylvania, Liz McGill, has resigned

0:09

and we've just gotten word that

0:12

the chair of the University of

0:14

Pennsylvania's board of trustees, Scott Bach,

0:16

has also resigned, effective immediately. The

0:19

UPenn controversy began spiraling earlier this

0:21

week after McGill's testimony before Congress

0:24

about anti-Semitism on campus. The

0:27

former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who

0:29

died the other week, once said that

0:32

the battles in

0:34

academia were so vicious because there

0:37

was so little at stake. What

0:40

we have had in the past few

0:42

days is a battle

0:45

within academia that has actually

0:47

shown much more is at stake. Three

0:50

college presidents, not just three

0:52

college presidents, three presidents of

0:54

Ivy League institutions, Massachusetts

0:57

Institute of Technology, MIT, Harvard

0:59

University, and the University of

1:01

Pennsylvania, UPenn. The presidents were

1:03

all up before a congressional

1:06

committee to talk about anti-Semitism

1:08

on campus since what happened

1:10

on October 7th. The

1:14

answers the presidents gave

1:17

have caused an absolute firestorm

1:20

across America. They were being

1:22

questioned by a Republican

1:24

congresswoman, Elise Stefanik from New

1:26

York. At MIT, does

1:29

calling for the genocide of Jews

1:31

violate MIT's code of conduct or

1:33

rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes

1:35

or no? If targeted

1:37

at individuals not making public

1:40

statements. Yes or no? Calling

1:43

for the genocide of Jews does not constitute

1:45

bullying and harassment? I have not heard calling

1:48

for the genocide for Jews on our campus. So

1:50

those would not be according to the MIT's code

1:52

of conduct or rules? That

1:55

would be investigated as

1:58

harassment if pervasive and severe. Ms.

2:01

McGill, at Penn, does calling for

2:03

the genocide of Jews violate Penn's

2:05

rules or code of conduct? Yes

2:08

or no? If

2:10

a speech turns into conduct, it can

2:12

be harassment. Yes. I am asking specifically

2:15

calling for the genocide of Jews,

2:18

does that constitute bullying or

2:20

harassment? It is a

2:22

context dependent decision, Congresswoman. It's a

2:25

context dependent decision. That's your testimony

2:27

today. Calling for the genocide of

2:29

Jews is depending upon the context.

2:31

That is not bullying or harassment. This

2:34

is the easiest question to answer

2:36

yes, Ms. McGill. And

2:39

Dr. Gay, at Harvard,

2:41

does calling for the genocide of Jews

2:44

violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?

2:46

Yes or no? It

2:48

can be depending on the context. What's

2:51

the context? Targeted as

2:53

an individual, targeted at an individual.

2:56

It's targeted at Jewish students,

2:58

Jewish individuals. Do you

3:00

understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

3:03

Do you understand that dehumanization

3:05

is part of antisemitism? So

3:08

I guess today we're going to try

3:10

and unpick a few things here, which

3:13

is what is happening on American

3:15

campuses? Have we

3:17

started to notice a double standard

3:19

for Jewish students since the events

3:22

of October the 7th? Or

3:25

is this a wider question about

3:27

what the author Jonathan Haidt might have

3:29

called the coddling of the American mind?

3:31

Have we become too

3:33

soft altogether on what is

3:36

and isn't allowed as free

3:38

speech, as academic exploration on

3:41

university campuses? And where does that

3:43

line come up? Welcome to

3:45

News Agents USA. It's

3:53

John. It's Emily. And The

3:55

other thing about this whole campus row,

3:57

rumpus, whatever you want to call it.

4:00

The pressure that is still on

4:02

the to college presidents remaining is

4:04

it's this is about much more.

4:06

The. What is happening on a

4:08

university campus? This is absolute

4:10

manna from heaven. For.

4:13

The Republican right Who think

4:15

that. Liberals

4:17

democrats to to woke that suppressing

4:19

free speech and they have tried

4:21

to get this fight going on

4:23

any number of different issues. As

4:25

a black lives matter that it

4:28

went too far in one direction.

4:30

on transgender issues of women's rights.

4:32

you name it, they've been trying

4:34

to start that culture war. Going.

4:37

On yet on this they have

4:39

suddenly got purchase. Is this sub

4:41

legal protections for their arguments that

4:44

college campuses have gone mad Because

4:46

if you can't condemn genocide, what

4:48

the hell can you to on?

4:51

there is something wrong with the

4:53

liberal establishment in this country personified

4:55

by these college president fly. And

4:57

I think a yet none of them have

5:00

any right to somebody like run the Census

5:02

emerges to get the word woke into every

5:04

other sentence that he says. In

5:07

the legislature we. We

5:13

will never surrender to the

5:15

woke. Up. There

5:22

on the census has kind of struggles make

5:24

he wasn't going anywhere. Basically on the

5:26

white. Messaging partly because he just

5:28

didn't do it as well as

5:30

done some did it and he

5:32

hasn't really games any sort of

5:35

to sit in the polls from

5:37

the point of missing. but I

5:39

think what you are now seeing

5:41

his those on the rise. Saying.

5:44

He see with in Bayonne about this.

5:46

For this case we've been telling you

5:48

this is happening for decades and now

5:50

suddenly you see what we're talking about

5:52

On I think it was just examining

5:54

at least a sonic in a little

5:56

bit more that she is of the

5:58

trampling. She is a man. and

8:00

to just be considered. Take the heat

8:02

out. Take the heat out. But by

8:04

not answering a question directly, does calling

8:07

for the genocide of Jews violate the

8:09

cone of conduct of your university? You've

8:12

got to say yes. You have to that

8:14

question. Now just, and I know you'll hate me

8:16

for this, but just to put this in wider

8:18

context, what they were

8:20

talking about specifically was the chant from

8:22

the river to the sea, right? Does

8:25

that constitute a chant of

8:27

genocide? When you hear

8:29

calls for intifada. Intifada is both an

8:32

uprising, but also arguably the end of

8:34

the state of Israel. Does

8:37

that mean genocide? So

8:39

I think within each of

8:41

these questions is the language

8:43

itself. And it started with

8:45

Elise Stefanik talking about the disciplining of

8:47

students on campus who were calling for

8:50

intifada. Now when it got down to

8:52

the actual question about genocide, yes of

8:54

course it's an easy question. You just

8:56

say that would be hate speech. It

8:58

would cross the threshold of our conduct.

9:01

But actually in the context that she had

9:03

originally started with, which was are you allowed

9:05

to call for an uprising? Is an intifada

9:07

an uprising? Is from the river

9:09

to the sea a genocidal chant? Should

9:13

that actually face disciplinary conduct or

9:15

dismissal? Then it becomes a little

9:17

bit more grey. And that is

9:19

where universities and the whole

9:21

issue of free speech and counselling has

9:23

got really really complicated. Because we want

9:26

grey, right? We want to be able

9:28

to talk about grey. But it's

9:30

also about, I'm sorry Emily, that's not

9:32

what it makes me feel. You can't

9:34

say that to me because you have

9:36

offended me for whatever ABCDE offers. There

9:38

are an awful lot of Jewish people

9:41

who believe that from the river to

9:43

the sea, i.e. from the river Jordan

9:45

going west, it should

9:47

all be Palestine. Well that means you're kicking

9:49

the Jews out of Israel. And so to

9:51

a lot of Jewish people, Israeli people, they

9:53

think it is genocidal. So an awful lot

9:55

of people, the Jewish people, would say, I'm

9:57

sorry, you may not mean that. sounds

10:00

like it to me and given

10:02

history you can see how it

10:04

becomes the sensitivity and it's all about what it

10:06

means to me. Your words, they may

10:08

sound alright coming out of your mouth but

10:10

to me they sound offensive and if they've

10:12

all got equal value then you're on a

10:15

slippery slope where you can't express yourself. Right

10:17

and I guess that's where you're handing all

10:19

this on a plate to the right of

10:21

the party who say, oh look

10:23

what the liberal elites have done, they've absolutely got

10:25

themselves their knickers in a twist because now they

10:27

don't know what they permit and what they don't

10:30

permit and if you go down the road of

10:32

banning people from saying certain things that's

10:34

where you end up. If you don't believe

10:36

there's such a thing as bad publicity these

10:38

three college presidents are probably the most famous

10:40

college presidents in American history for their appearance

10:43

at the congressional committee but if you believe

10:45

that publicity can sometimes be very uncomfortable one

10:47

of them's lost their job, one of them's

10:49

already lost their job, another one is under

10:51

pressure I mean the two of them are

10:53

under pressure and there are all sorts of

10:55

donors saying we're not giving you

10:57

any more money to your institution and there's

11:00

even talk of federal government passing some of

11:02

its funds to these vastly established,

11:04

the irony of course is if

11:06

you are the president of a college, an Ivy

11:08

League college, your main job is to shake a

11:11

tin, wrackle it and get money. And end up

11:13

with a library. Exactly and end up with a

11:15

library. Well we're going to talk now to Simon

11:17

Sharma, he's a historian, he's also a

11:20

professor formerly at Harvard now at

11:22

Columbia University. He is in other

11:24

words somebody who is right at

11:27

the coal face of what universities

11:29

and their cultural life look like right now.

11:34

The News Agents USA with Emily

11:36

Maitless and John Sople. The

11:41

News Agents USA. Well

11:43

we are joined now by a former professor

11:45

of history at Harvard University, one

11:47

of the universities in the crosshairs, now

11:49

professor of history at another Ivy League

11:52

Columbia University, one Simon Sharma. Simon,

11:54

it's great to have you with us, thank you so

11:56

much. Very nice to be with you.

11:58

Thank you so much. fiercely

14:00

the issue I suppose, you know, as

14:02

the three Ivy League presidents all said, an

14:05

issue of free speech. It's

14:07

often spilled over into very

14:10

kind of belligerent demonstrations,

14:12

physical demonstrations. Students

14:14

at colleges on the West Coast

14:16

physically preventing people invited from actually

14:18

having a chance to speak. So

14:21

that's the prologue. And I suppose

14:23

what I was saying in the answer to your first question,

14:26

to John's question, was that really

14:28

it seemed to me what's happened

14:30

over the last couple of months has not

14:33

just been an aggravation of

14:35

degree, but actually spilled over into

14:37

an incredible tearing apart of

14:39

what's at stake and what's actually

14:42

unfolded to the extent that really

14:44

outsiders have been calling for those

14:46

three women presidents of Ivy League

14:48

colleges to actually resign and one

14:50

has. So can I ask you then, I

14:52

mean, were those three

14:55

presidents wrong? Do

14:58

you think they were fundamentally wrong?

15:01

Not to call out, I

15:04

think it was about not to discipline students who've

15:06

been calling for intifada as genocide.

15:09

Were they wrong to

15:11

take that position? Or do you think

15:13

they were? I mean, the bigger

15:16

question is, were the rules getting

15:18

too stringent about what can and

15:20

cannot be said by students on

15:23

campus without us assuming it all

15:25

leads to violence? Yeah, I

15:27

mean, I think what happened was really dismal.

15:29

I mean, the answer to your question is

15:31

yes, they were wrong. But what happened was,

15:33

I mean, it was very peculiar, it was

15:35

almost an anthropological problem. The appalling kind of

15:37

invoking of context, a word that's

15:40

just hopelessly and utterly overused now,

15:42

I think really, seemed to be

15:44

a kind of Weasley way of

15:46

working around a very direct question.

15:48

And that's the woman asking the

15:50

question, Elise Stephanie is a

15:53

known Trump supporter, she is an

15:55

election denier, she went from being

15:57

a fairly liberal Republican into being an absolutely

15:59

hardcore. or government transport her

16:01

under any circumstances. So she was

16:03

a kind of belligerent prosecutor, and

16:05

therefore for them, I guess, really

16:08

a kind of emblem of the bad

16:10

guys. But that shouldn't have made any

16:12

difference whatsoever. I hate what you're

16:15

saying about context, but I just want

16:17

to try and sort of open that

16:19

up a bit, because from what I

16:21

understood, the questioning was about whether people

16:23

on campus who talked about an intifada,

16:25

which can mean both an uprising, or

16:28

if you like, you know, an extermination, depending

16:30

on how you hear that, whether

16:32

those people should be disciplined. And

16:35

I guess the question is, are students allowed

16:38

to call for a

16:41

revolution? I

16:43

mean, students have always called for revolutions, right?

16:46

The problem in that actual moment at

16:48

that congressional hearing was that that's not

16:50

the question, the excellent question you've just

16:52

put. If you'd been asked a question,

16:54

that's exactly what you said, and you

16:56

should have said that. What

16:58

Stefanik very cunningly and deliberately said,

17:01

does calling for the genocide of

17:03

Jews constitute a violation of your

17:05

guidelines on bullying and harassment? It

17:07

was rather like on the one

17:10

hand, it was sort of an

17:12

impeccable question, but it's actually not

17:14

relevant, necessarily relevant. They should have

17:16

said, which specific

17:18

chance or which specific

17:21

actions do you see as

17:23

constituting a genocidal threat, for those that might

17:25

be a threat? But they didn't say that.

17:27

They'd all been drilled by, I think the

17:30

same kind of lawyer. I do that, it's

17:32

very important though, I do just fill

17:35

in a little bit of the immediate

17:37

campus history that has certainly happened at

17:39

Columbia, clearly as well as at

17:41

Harvard and Penn, and MIT.

17:44

That is in the early days

17:46

after October the 7th, Jewish

17:49

students were physically extremely

17:51

frightened and upset and

17:53

intimidated. There was swastikas

17:56

appearing in the bathrooms of

17:58

the student lodgings. and dorms.

18:01

It was impossible to wear a kippah, yarmulke,

18:03

and they had nowhere to go to. Students

18:06

at my own institution really felt they

18:08

came to a place called the Institute

18:11

of Israel and Jewish studies because they

18:13

felt they were not being protected by

18:15

the administration or by the

18:17

campus police that was responsible to what

18:20

the administration told them. So there was

18:22

an issue of feeling physically

18:24

extremely insecure. So they felt

18:26

at two levels, one in

18:28

terms of trying to go

18:30

about their studies and in case

18:32

of just feeling incredibly ostracized

18:35

as a kind of pariah community.

18:37

And that was the kind of

18:39

background. So Simon, given that background,

18:41

did those college presidents know

18:43

what they were saying and knew what

18:46

the effect would be when they were

18:48

before that congressional committee? Or were they

18:50

only kind of cognisant of it when

18:52

there was the massive backlash that

18:54

followed their appearance? I can't believe they

18:57

didn't know about it, John. I mean,

18:59

I would be wrong to say

19:01

I know exactly the degree of

19:03

what they could or could not have actually

19:06

understood to be the case at

19:08

Harvard, MIT, and Penn. But

19:10

I'd be amazed that they didn't. Again,

19:12

the experience of the two great colleges

19:15

in New York, my own Columbia, NYU,

19:17

all happened really in the first couple of

19:19

weeks. So I find it

19:22

very difficult to believe that Claudine Gay

19:24

and Elizabeth McGill and Sally Cordless

19:26

hadn't taken cognisance of how serious it

19:28

was all going to be. So

19:30

look, one of the books that caused

19:33

quite a stir in the UK was

19:35

David Bideal's Jews Don't Count. Was

19:38

it a kind of manifestation of that

19:40

thesis, if you like, that there is

19:42

identity politics that is sensitive about all

19:44

sorts of group, whether it be based

19:46

on gender or sexuality, but when it

19:48

comes to Jews, you kind

19:51

of look the other way? It's a

19:53

textbook case, I think, of David's Jews Don't

19:55

Count. What's wrong, and what

19:57

was the lack of education, was the assumption

20:00

really that Jews are necessarily

20:02

the white supremacist colonial settler

20:04

oppressors, even if the Jews,

20:06

concerned, as in the case

20:09

of David Badil, don't count

20:11

themselves the Zionists. So this

20:13

simplification of communities into

20:16

the oppressor and the oppressed had

20:18

took a terrible toll and still continues

20:20

to take a toll. Except I'd only

20:22

say Simon, that in that questioning,

20:26

Elise Stefanik asks her if

20:28

she'd been talking about any other ethnic group, the

20:30

answer would have been obvious. She says, African

20:33

Americans, what would you say to that? And

20:35

just when Claudia Gay is about to respond,

20:38

she cuts her off and she

20:40

cuts her off again. And

20:43

so the truth is, we don't

20:45

know what Claudia Gay's response to

20:47

that would have been. I'm

20:49

not dismissing the Badil argument, which I

20:52

think is very powerful, that quite often

20:54

people just don't recognise ansemitism in the

20:56

way they recognise other racism. But

20:59

it may be, all I'm suggesting

21:02

is it may be that there is

21:04

a wider question about academic freedom going

21:06

on here and that her response would

21:08

have been the same. I mean, if,

21:10

can I ask you something more widely?

21:13

Like if somebody was doing research, right,

21:15

at Columbia on whether

21:17

the Chinese brain worked

21:20

cognitively faster than the

21:22

Caucasian brain, would that

21:24

be considered racist? Would that be outlawed?

21:26

Would there be campus outrage that a

21:28

professor was trying to do that stuff? Because

21:31

we remember, for example, that, you know, I

21:33

think it was Harvard that revoked a deanship

21:36

when students were protesting about somebody joining

21:39

them from the legal team of Harvey

21:41

Weinstein, right? You know, there's a lot

21:43

of stuff that gets shut

21:46

down, right? We know that. Yeah,

21:48

no, I agree with you. And there's been

21:51

news about Claudia Gay today, actually.

21:53

I mean, she's not resigning. I

21:55

think that's probably the right decision.

21:57

The governing board of Harvard trustees

21:59

has has issued a statement supporting her

22:02

and it is true to say,

22:04

you know, she's issued several statements

22:06

really about expressing horror and

22:09

abhorrence for anything that might be

22:11

construed as anti-Semitic abuse of free

22:13

speech. But however, the unfortunate thing

22:15

is that there was a letter

22:17

actually asking for her resignation and

22:19

the response to that has been

22:22

a letter from, I think, you

22:24

know, many hundreds of African-American faculty

22:26

people at Harvard. So some

22:28

of whom, like my very good

22:31

friend and buddy Skip Gates, Henry

22:33

Louis Gates, you know, has been

22:35

the center of the comradeship

22:37

between Jewish intellectual

22:39

communities and African-American communities.

22:42

So I think that's right. I mean, they think there are

22:44

larger issues. And the one that we haven't

22:46

talked about is that at the moment, even

22:49

before any of this happened, before

22:51

October the 7th, taking a punch,

22:53

a swing at so-called

22:55

elite institutions at university

22:57

is part of the

23:00

ultra-Republican right-wing playbook. Simon,

23:02

can I just, can I ask you something

23:04

very directly? I mean, I know your history,

23:06

okay, but I guess when you're teaching, do

23:08

you, I mean, do you worry? Do

23:10

you worry about being a teacher on campus

23:13

and do you worry about getting cancelled? Do

23:15

you worry about the stuff that your students

23:17

might suddenly kind of think? I

23:19

wrote a book and published a book now, when was

23:21

it, 15 years ago called Rough Pressings, which

23:24

was the story of enslaved people

23:26

who joined King George's Loyalist Army,

23:29

when they were given the promise that

23:31

the reward for doing so would be

23:33

liberation from the status of slave and

23:35

it was promised, which was with

23:37

many tragic complications delivered. It

23:40

won, I shamelessly say, the

23:43

National Book Critics Circle Award in for

23:45

nonfiction in America. Would I

23:47

actually be allowed to publish that book? Because

23:50

I'm from, as it were, heavy

23:53

quotation marks, the wrong or inappropriate

23:55

community now. That has

23:57

crossed my mind, I wonder, I sometimes fear.

24:00

that fear that it may be the case that

24:02

I wouldn't. So that's awful

24:04

for me. That is a terrible

24:06

kind of shutting down of the

24:08

possibilities of intellectual empathy. Do

24:11

you think that we've gone slightly mad?

24:13

Do you fear that what

24:15

is happening on universities and institutions

24:18

of learning that have

24:20

just kind of somehow lost where

24:22

magnetic north is? Yeah, completely,

24:24

John, very well put. I

24:27

think we're at a double crisis

24:29

just within those circumstances. On the

24:31

one hand, those of us inside

24:33

the academic world are trying to

24:36

defend the authority and

24:38

integrity of knowledge itself. And

24:41

it's getting harder and harder because

24:43

feeling and emotion, the internet, of

24:46

course, doesn't help with this, actually.

24:48

The internet is an invitation to

24:50

impulsive shouting and screaming

24:53

and tribal stockadeism, really. So

24:55

on the one hand, we're really

24:58

trying to do this and we're

25:00

having to kind of fend off the

25:03

kind of tribal outrage du jour at

25:05

a moment in world history where

25:08

we're getting all these kind of

25:10

existential crises, biological, environmental migration, thrown

25:13

at us. You know, that's a

25:15

very large story for possibly another talk we

25:17

might have. But the answer to your question,

25:19

are we all going mad? We

25:21

are, we are. I think mad in both

25:24

the American and the English sense. It's slightly

25:26

unhinged and the temptation to

25:29

fury because fury is cells. The

25:31

algorithms want there to be screaming

25:34

and shouting because it actually is

25:36

clip paid. Sami Sharma, thank

25:38

you so much for joining us. Thank

25:40

you so much. All the best, bye. It's

25:43

complicated, isn't it? Because on

25:45

the one hand, you're saying,

25:47

for God's sake, why

25:49

didn't she call that out? Why

25:51

didn't she say that was unsubmitted? Why didn't she

25:54

say we don't want that kind of

25:56

speech on campus? Why didn't she call that

25:58

out as genocide, right? And

26:00

on the other, we're saying, have campuses,

26:03

have students gone mad that they keep

26:05

on trying to shut down questioning? Now,

26:07

I think the problem is that the

26:09

left has sort of created this rod

26:11

for their own back, which is either

26:13

you go into trying to make campuses

26:15

the safe space, in

26:18

which case everything should be shut

26:20

down or seen through a filter

26:22

of vulnerability or disempowerment or whatever

26:24

it is, in which

26:26

case, then I guess you can't

26:28

condemn the presidents. Yeah, I'm

26:30

not sure I agree. I

26:32

think that the presidents were asked

26:35

a pretty straightforward question. I mean,

26:37

cleverly constructed by Lee Stefanik.

26:41

And they should have given the

26:43

tensions, given the sensitivities, given

26:45

the fact that if you are the president of

26:48

an Ivy League college, you're

26:50

not a political neophyte. You

26:52

know that your words are

26:55

going to be examined. You are before words

26:57

matter. Words matter. You're before a

26:59

congressional committee. I thought the

27:01

words that they spoke were careful,

27:04

but ultimately, artless and stupid

27:07

for not having just embraced us. And of course,

27:09

we don't support. Of course, of course we don't.

27:12

And they didn't because they were more

27:15

concerned maybe about those safe spaces. No,

27:17

no, the opposite. That's my point. So

27:19

we're trying to talk about the importance

27:21

of academic freedom, right? So

27:23

either we don't want academic

27:26

freedom or we do want academic freedom.

27:28

But maybe you can't choose, oh, yes, we

27:30

want it now, but we don't want it

27:32

then. We want freedom to sort of say,

27:35

yes, you can explore these ideas. But we

27:37

don't want students calling for an intifada, which

27:39

is a revolution, right? Which goes back

27:42

to my question. If you are calling for

27:44

a revolution against oppressed people, is

27:47

that potentially genocidal? Or is it what all

27:49

students do everywhere where they call for the,

27:51

you know... We're going to get into a

27:53

debate that could be gracing a philosophy lecture,

27:55

which is where does one person's freedom begin

27:58

and where does another person's freedom begin? Yeah.

28:00

And you know, have I got the freedom, Emily

28:02

Maitless, to come up and punch you on the

28:04

nose? Well, I have theoretically got the freedom to

28:06

do that, but it's not acceptable to do that.

28:09

And so I kind of think that if you

28:11

are trying to make the college campus a place

28:13

where everyone can feel welcome, and

28:15

you've got one group on that campus being

28:17

targeted, then frankly, you

28:19

should have given more acceptance of

28:21

that viewpoint when you're up before

28:23

the college. I agree. But my

28:26

question is, if you go back, should

28:28

it have been that the whole idea

28:30

of making the college campus welcoming was

28:33

the beginning of the problem? That actually

28:35

the moment you start saying, you

28:38

can't think like that, you shouldn't employ that

28:40

professor, that professor is doing work

28:42

on genetics that we don't think is right.

28:44

That law professor worked with Harvey Weinstein's team,

28:47

we don't like that. That's where the rot

28:49

sets in. You can't pick and choose suddenly. It's

28:52

interesting, because I don't know about when you're at

28:54

university. I mean, I remember protesting against

28:56

David Irving coming to speak, who was the

28:58

great kind of history

29:00

game around in circles. And this is

29:02

40 years ago. And he was the

29:04

great Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist in

29:07

many, many ways. And I protested against

29:09

him coming onto campus because I thought

29:11

it was not just historical revisionism, it

29:14

was an ignorance of historical fact and

29:16

trying to create a smokescreen. Now, that

29:18

I think is pretty clear. But

29:21

maybe that's just my vantage

29:23

point. But I think that

29:25

some of the stuff that's going on, where

29:27

people feel intimidated just because they're

29:29

Jewish or even because they

29:31

are Palestinian is unacceptable. Unacceptable.

29:35

The News Agents USA with Emily

29:37

Maitlis and John Sople. The

29:42

News Agents USA. Before

29:48

we go, we want to take you

29:50

into a really important case, one of

29:53

Trump's legal travails, the biggest one probably

29:55

that he's facing next year, because

29:57

Jack Smith, the special counsel who's

30:00

charged Donald Trump over his attempt

30:02

to overturn the 2020 election has

30:05

now gone to the highest court in

30:07

the land, the US Supreme Court,

30:10

to rule on the President's

30:12

claim that he

30:14

be immune from prosecution. So

30:17

it now sits with the Supreme

30:19

Court to decide, is

30:21

Donald Trump immune from

30:23

prosecution? Well, look, I mean, just in terms

30:25

of important court cases, it's not just the

30:27

most important court case for Donald Trump. It

30:29

is the most important court case in the

30:31

American history, because a former president has never

30:34

gone on trial before. So this is epic.

30:36

But what Donald Trump does, and we all

30:38

know this from all the history, is that

30:40

he delays and delays and delays, appeal court

30:42

to the next court to the other court,

30:44

and you keep putting sand in the gears.

30:46

So it slows the whole legal process down.

30:48

And to the president, what

30:51

Jack Smith has done is to roll the

30:53

dice and say, okay, screw that. Let

30:55

the Supreme Court rule, because if

30:57

it rules that he has not got immunity,

31:01

then Donald Trump has got no appeals left,

31:03

there's nowhere for him to go. And the

31:05

trial happens in March, early March,

31:07

which is when it is scheduled. We

31:09

should tell you that actually, that it's meant to

31:11

be March the 4th. Amazingly, it's the

31:14

day after Super Tuesday. So within

31:16

the space of 48 hours, we

31:18

could find out that Donald Trump

31:20

is the Republican nomination to be

31:22

president, and he's sitting before the

31:24

special counsel on the biggest trial

31:26

of his life. So everything

31:29

is at stake. And of course, by

31:31

going to this Supreme Court, which

31:33

has got a 6-3 conservative majority,

31:36

as a result of the three

31:38

justices appointed by one Donald Trump.

31:40

And so it is an amazing

31:42

gamble that the special prosecutor is

31:45

taking in this case to

31:47

go straight to the Supreme Court. But what he

31:49

doesn't want to see is the

31:52

case derailed, put off

31:54

until after the presidential election.

31:57

So it's one to watch. and

32:00

buy popcorn for.