Global News Podcast - The Trump administration stops Harvard from enrolling foreign students

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

The Trump administration bans Harvard from enrolling foreign students. Also: Israel blames critics of its war on Gaza for the murder of two US embassy staff, and why the Netherlands accuses Belgium of stealing wind.

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Now we got a show. Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. of Friday the 23rd of May. The US government tells Harvard University it must immediately stop enrolling new foreign students and transfer existing ones. Israel blames critics of its war on Gaza for the murder of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington. And why the Netherlands has accused Belgium of stealing wind. Also in the podcast. Tick to TikTok voice that goes up like this and apparently it's used quite a lot by radio presenters who want to leave you with the idea that they've got more

to say. Are AI voices changing the way we speak? From the world's first organ transplant to the creation of the iron lung to the invention of baking powder, Harvard has played a key role in transforming people's lives. The university holds nearly 6,000 patents while 52 of its staff have been awarded Nobel prizes including for literature and peace. But according to the White House, Harvard has become quote a hotbed of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators. In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has frozen two billion dollars in its funding and threatened to remove

its tax-exempt status. Now the US Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, has revoked the university's ability to enroll foreign students, saying any who are currently there will have to transfer elsewhere. Among the international students who will be affected is Leo Jeddern from Sweden. People have come to this country to study and take part of the great freedoms that we have, the academic freedom, freedom of speech. It has been people's dream to come and study here. I remember myself four years ago when I got the acceptance letter from Harvard. It was probably the best day

of my life and now all of that is being taken away from us and we're being used as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard and it just feels dehumanizing. It feels extremely, extremely cruel. The university says the move is unlawful. I heard more from our North America correspondent, John Sudworth. On the face of it, at least Oliver, this looks like very bad news for obviously students who are hoping to come to Harvard, but in particular, and most urgently, those who already have places. As you mentioned, Harvard has called this decision unlawful. I think that's an indication that we can almost certainly expect to see further legal action.

The university is already taking on the Trump administration in the courts over its decision to freeze some of its funding. I think this will almost certainly end up there as well. So it will be the courts, I think, that will decide in the immediate term what happens to those students already at Harvard, some of whom are due to graduate in the next few days. So a really urgent situation for them. Longer term, of course, this is really...

Looks like Harvard and the Trump administration are digging in for a fight, ultimately a fight over the independence of higher education in general, the questions of freedom of speech on US university campuses and in classrooms, and questions over the power and reach of the US government. Yeah, I mean, the Homeland Security Secretary also said they were considering similar moves

at other universities. Isn't the administration concerned though about damaging these institutions which over the years have really boosted America's technological advantage? Yeah, and that's the point that Harvard has made in its response to this latest decision. It says this isn't only damaging to the university, which has some 6,000, 7,000 or so foreign students, about a quarter of its total student body. That, of course, brings in a substantial amount of revenue. So not only damaging to its own ethos, values and bottom line, but damaging,

it said, to the country as a whole. But, you know know clearly for the Trump administration this is about bigger issues, it's about talking to its own base. You know the idea that the elite institutions in particular are infected with woke ideology as Mr. Trump claims that they have been hotbeds of anti-Semitism in particular over their handling of the student pro-Palestinian protests on campuses over the past few years. This has been a running theme for President Trump almost from the moment he took office.

And I think what we're seeing now are signs that both sides are digging in, as I say, for a longer-term fight. And Harvard, particularly as it's been the university that has been the most vocal and the most public in its pushback, looks now like the institution around which some of this fight is centred. And I think we can be absolutely certain that this will one way or another end up before the American courts. John Sudworth. The killing of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC on Wednesday evening has been widely condemned. Yaron Lishinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, who were about to get engaged, were shot dead outside a Jewish museum near

the US Capitol. A 30-year-old man from Chicago has now been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Ilyas Rodriguez was heard chanting, quote, free Palestine as he was taken into custody. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netan Yahu called the shooting an act of terrorism but blamed three of Israel's allies Britain, France and Canada for their recent condemnation of Israel over the suffering in Gaza. These and other leaders have bought into Hamas's propaganda that says Israel is starving Palestinian children and not only is Hamas putting out this lie. A few days ago, a top UN official said that 14,000 Palestinian babies would die in 48 hours.

You see, many international institutions are complicit in spreading this lie. The press repeats it, the mob believed it, and a young couple is then brutally gunned down in Washington. Mr Netanyahu's Foreign Minister Gideon Sarr went further, saying there was a direct line connecting the Washington killings to what he described as anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli incitement on the part of foreign leaders, especially from Europe. The French Foreign Ministry said that accusation was completely outrageous and completely unjustified. Opponents of Israel's actions in Gaza say they should be allowed to criticize the Israeli government without being labelled anti-Semitic. But is that possible in the current tense atmosphere?

I asked the diplomatic analyst Jonathan Marcus. That is an incredibly thorny and difficult question. The Israeli government, of course, tends to see any criticism of Israel as being anti-Semitism. Even for those Jews abroad who are critical of Israel themselves, they are well aware that there is a fringe of the anti-Israel hostility, which is something more than just hostility to one Israeli government. So the two things have a relationship, anti-Semitism and being anti-Israel, but they are not exactly the same thing. And what's clear, I think, is if you look, for example, at the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, if you listen to

one of Israel's former prime ministers, Ehud Olmert, they have been hugely critical, as many people are in Israel, of the current government there. There are huge demonstrations regularly in Israel that I know the BBC has followed against not just Mr Netanyahu and the war in Gaza, but also against the various internal legal reforms that he's trying to enact. It seems to me that there is no doubt that you can criticize Israel for actions that the government takes. If that criticism extends

to a denial of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, or if it branches off into criticism of Jews in countries thousands of miles away from Israel, attacks on synagogues, attacks on Jewish communities and so on, that is clearly outrageous. And that then shows you that there is at the fringes a link between some criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. But it seems to me to be ludicrous to look at a government that is prosecuting a war on this scale with the civilian casualties that are involved, possibly to no obvious end, and not to be able to criticize them and then to refute such criticism as simply being a prejudice of centuries-old kind. That seems to me to

be nonsensical. And with France now pushing back against these comments from Gideon Sarr, where does this go from here? Well, I think there's a bumpy relationship clearly now between Israel and many of its key allies in the West. I wonder in a sense as to whether a sort of a threshold hasn't been passed bumpy relationship clearly now between Israel and many of its key allies in the West. I wonder in a sense as to whether a sort of a threshold hasn't been passed now. Israel has been given the benefit of the doubt for a very, very long time. Many, many people wonder whether war crimes have been committed and so on. So I think perhaps a threshold has been reached where key allied governments are not willing

to countenance what's going on any longer. The difficulty, of course, is many of those governments have very few ways in which they can directly influence the Israeli government and Mr Netanyahu. The only outside power that clearly can influence him is the Trump administration in the United States. And whilst there are many things that Mr. Trump has done, which suggests a slight cooling in his relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, the suspension of military operations against the Houthis, the efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, the normalization, if you want to call it that, of relations between the United States and the new regime in Syria,

in terms of actually turning to Mr Netanyahu and his government saying enough is enough, this has to stop now, we haven't got to that stage yet. And short of that, I think Mr Netanyahu is going to carry on. Relations between Israel and key Western capitals will become more and more difficult but nothing else is likely I think to change. Diplomatic analyst Jonathan Marcus, as more countries invest in green energy the North Sea has become a key site for harnessing wind power. Now though the Netherlands has accused its neighbor Belgium of stealing wind from Dutch

turbines. I heard more from our correspondent in the Netherlands Anna Holligan. It doesn't sound like very neighbourly behaviour, does it? I've been digging into this and to put it simply for those of us who don't specialise in physics and renewable energy, wind turbines designed obviously to extract wind from the air. Behind a wind turbine, the wind is blowing less hard and the rapid spread of wind power in the North Sea is having an impact on atmospheric stability and it's affecting the wind in the wake of these wind farms. It's a phenomenon known as wind shadow or more simply the wake effect. If you have one wind farm behind a huge cluster of wind farms, obviously that's going to

have a significant impact on the speed of the wind that reaches the one right at the back. If you've flown over the North Sea recently between the Netherlands and the UK, you'll be aware it's filling up with these offshore renewable energy farms, those huge white wind turbines. Geography means Belgian wind farms in the North Sea are benefiting from this just as a result of where they're placed. Effectively, it seems as though they're snatching power from the Dutch turbines next door. Yeah I mean what have the Belgians said about these accusations and where can this go from here? Well you know I mean it seems as though this is kind of a happy accident

for the Belgians. It looks as though they're taking according to this expert about 3% of the power that's coming from Dutch installations. And I've been up to the Arctic where again, there's a kind of land grab for natural resources. This absolutely has the potential to escalate as more and more countries are investing in wind farms. You know, right across Europe, they're planning to build in parts of the North Sea. So this will only become more lucrative and there will be more and more of a battle for these natural resources. Anna Hulligan in the Netherlands. Like it or not, we're all becoming more familiar with AI-generated voices.

So much so that there are suggestions they could be having an impact on the way humans speak. As Richard Hamilton reports. The Scottish rail operator Scott Rail is among the latest companies to adopt AI Voices for its announcements. It's using a text-to-speech system on its trains called Iona. This train may be longer than platforms at certain stations on this route. Announcements will be made in the relevant rear coaches on approach. Please allow sufficient time in order to alight safely. The prevalence of AI voices is becoming so widespread now that you may feel you're bombarded with them. Here are two other examples, a TikTok voice and chat GPT on how to boil an egg.

You've already heard this voice many many times. Maybe you were wondering why it sounds so realistic. Is it a real man? No, I'm not. My name is Adam, the best AI voice you've ever heard. Here's a quick guide. One, place eggs in a pot and cover with cold water. Two, bring water to a boil over medium-high heat. Three, once boiling, cover the pot, turn off the heat, and let sit.

Four, transfer eggs to ice water to cool, then peel. Some early research suggests AI voices are impacting the way we speak to each other. This robotic voice appears to be creeping into human intonation. Bethan Mair is a speech and language therapist. We've noticed for many years children speaking in a cartoon kind of voice, particularly kids with autism or Asperger's in this very monotonous voice. Certainly in terms of young people, I was thinking of a young man I know of about 17 who has what I would describe as a TikTok voice that's characterized by inflection

at the end of utterances and what we call vocal fry, which is these long, creaky vowels. So, yes, that's certainly creeping in. The TikTok voice sort of goes up like this and apparently it's used quite a lot by radio presenters who want to leave you with the idea that they've got more to say. And vocal fry is sort of very kind of creaky and sort of gives the sense of gravitas. But does it really matter if trains talk to us or we talk to our fellow humans as if we were robots? Beth and Mare goes on to say that if you're neurologically typical, this behaviour is a fairly harmless fad which young people would soon grow out of. But she's concerned

that vulnerable children with existing communication disorders could get stuck in such patterns of speech, making them feel even more alienated from the rest of society. Richard Hamilton. And still to come on the Global News Podcast... It's incredible watching them taking turns to incubate the eggs as well. It's hard to decide if there is a dominant female or not or if it is quite an equal partnership. The birds with an unusual family dynamic.

More than 11 weeks after Israel began a full blockade of Gaza, the first aid has been given out to desperate Palestinians. 90 lorryloads of humanitarian aid was eventually allowed in after a delay at the border while the UN and Israeli military resolved a dispute over the best route. Vera Davis has this report. A slow but steady stream of trucks carrying sacks of flour from the World Food Programme arriving at the Kerem Shalom crossing this morning. After inspection, the pallets should be taken on Palestinian trucks to storage centres in Gaza.

A disagreement between the UN and the Israeli army over the aid's route meant that around 90 trucks had been stuck at the border. The UN says that issue has now been resolved and the first new aid to arrive after Israel's 11-week-long blockade has made it to some areas. But it's nowhere near enough, and there were chaotic scenes at one bakery at the Nusret camp in central Gaza. Workers passed pita breads to a sea of hands, desperately reaching through a hatch. Humanitarian organizations warn of acute levels of hunger among Gaza's 2.1 million people.

We haven't eaten for five days, says this mother in Gaza City. There was no flour, sugar or anything, she says. My girls love to drink tea, but I have to tell them we have got no sugar and they won't drink it. We can't find food or drink. And a kilo of flour for bread cost around 100 shekels. That is around 21 pounds. The Israeli government insisted again today there was no food shortage in Gaza, that hundreds of trucks have entered, including significant quantities of baby food and flour for bakeries. But, according to Palestinian officials, dozens of elderly people and flour for bakeries. But according to Palestinian officials, dozens of elderly people and infants have already died from starvation in Gaza.

They're calling for more aid to be allowed in through well-established UN mechanisms, not an untested, alternative Israeli plan that would force people to travel long distances within Gaza to reach distribution centers. Where Davis sat the Israel-Gaza border. Will cutting taxes for the rich ultimately boost the whole US economy? The idea was famously dismissed as voodoo economics when Ronald Reagan proposed it in

the 1980 election. In the end he had mixed success with his economic policy lowering unemployment but increasing both inequality and the national debt. President Trump's economic plan passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday morning by a single vote is making a similar bet. It will cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans but to offset the costs it also reduces benefits for some of the poorest and it's still expected to add trillions of dollars to the U.S. government debt.

Republican Congressman Pete Sessions defended the bill, telling us it would stimulate growth and increase employment. We had in the 90s a very popular idea and that was we were going to reduce benefits for people who were on welfare. And three and a half million people found jobs. We were going to reduce benefits for people who were on welfare and three and a half million people found jobs. They found jobs that helped to provide them not only healthcare and benefits, they found healthcare that created a better life and an outcome for their families.

We now, after necessarily eight years of Barack Obama and four years of Joe Biden, that's 12 years of the last 16, there have been administrations that encouraged people to stay at home, to not see work and the amount of people on welfare has gone up. We're hopeful that this will push people to work. Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. But Democrats have described the bill as extreme and toxic. Martha Gimble is the head of the Budget Lab ThinkTag at Yale University and served as a senior economic adviser under Presidents Obama and Biden. She disputes the claim that the bill will stimulate lasting growth.

There is substantial outside analysis showing that that is not what this bill is going to do. Because of the amount of deficit spending that they are putting onto the American people, you'll have a very short burst of economic growth, much like feeding sugar to a toddler. And then like the toddler who is high on sugar, it's going to collapse. And so my team's modeling, the Congressional Budget Office's team's modeling all show that after a couple of years of sugar-fueled growth, growth becomes much, much slower. And you know what? You can make up whatever numbers you want, but you cannot fool the bond market. And if you look at how the bond market is responding to this, the bond market is flashing red and telling people that they have to contemplate less in

deficit spending because they are not happy about this. The bond market does not think that they're going to be able to grow the economy out of the debt hole. Former Democratic Economic Advisor Martha Gimble. Sloths or sloths as they're also known may be slow, but that might be exactly what saved them over the millennia as their relatives died off. A new study shows today's sleepy tree dwellers are the last survivors of a once vast family of sloths, most of which were wiped out by early human hunters. As Carla Conti explains.

Sloths are nature's slow movers. But new research suggests that their famously sluggish lifestyle may have been the key to their survival when their larger relatives died out. From the sleepy treetops in Central and South America to fossil vaults deep underground, scientists have traced the incredible evolutionary story of the sloth, and it's one that spans 30 million years. But these mammals didn't always look the way they do now. Researcher and paleobiologist Juan Cantalapiedra says they came in many forms. These first sloths were around, we have estimated between like 100 and 300 kilos in weight, so they were already pretty bulky. If you compare them with living sloths, which are usually below 10 kilos,

that's why they can just spend all their life in the trees because they are really tiny. These giant ground sloths were likely hunted to extinction, but smaller sloths living high in the trees survived. Research carried out by Cantala Piedra and his colleagues suggests that their disappearance coincided with the spread of early human hunters. We start to see really a dramatic decrease in diversity around 15,000 years ago and this is really matching very well the timing of like the widespread of humans across the continent. So it seems like it's really tracking the expansion of humans in this case. Today, six surviving species

of sloth represent a tiny remnant of what was once a vast and varied lineage. The researchers say their findings are a reminder of what has already been lost and what can still be protected. Carla Conti. When he welcomed the sub-af South African president Cyril Ramaphosa to the Oval Office on Wednesday, Donald Trump ambushed his guest with a video of thousands of white crosses by the side of a road, which the US president claimed was a memorial for Afrikaners murdered in recent years in what he called a genocide. The South African leader responded by saying, I'd like to know where that is because I've never seen this. A day on and our South Africa correspondent, Pumza Filani, has been speaking to a farmer who says the

crosses were actually put up as a protest in memory of one couple who were killed on their farm in KwaZulu-Natal province five years ago. Pumza has been speaking to the BBC's Sean Lay. What we found when we arrived at the scene of that very highly publicised video was not only that the crosses that President Trump had pointed to were not there, which was also that there aren't any graves on the site. This in fact had been erected as a monument. We found out a monument that had been put up by local farmers as a way of raising awareness and supporting a family who had lost a loved one, two people who had been killed in a recent attack on the farm. So as part of raising awareness,

they decided to stage this march and use these white crosses to symbolise what they said were extremely high rates of violence on farms across the country. So the idea that there are people in the white community there in Grasula Natal who are worried about violence against them, that's true, but what's not true is the suggestion that this is a site in which a thousand white farmers have died. Exactly, in fact we walked up and down that stretch of road and found a nearby village of mostly farm workers who were saying they were shocked to learn that their

community had made international news and also was being used as evidence of a so-called white genocide. They told me that they were shocked when they heard the incident of the farm attack a few years ago. This was back in 2020 when the incident happened and a couple of them actually even remembered the protest saying the reason they remembered it is because they've never seen anything like that, that their community was largely peaceful. President Trump used this phrase white genocide. Does that have any resonance in South Africa? Is anyone making that case there? Not at all. In fact this is something that across different parts of society has been dispelled repeatedly.

We've had security groups who've got no reason to side with the government in certain things who've said they are studying the rate of crime on the ground. What there is in South Africa is a crime problem. There is no evidence of a genocide. In fact, they've thrown it back to the White House saying if they know of a genocide, they must present that evidence. And it's something that's particularly painful for Black South Africans because they know what it is to live through mass killings under the apartheid government. So a number of people here feel insulted when they hear this name or this word brandished loosely as it has been by President Trump. Pumza Helani talking to Sean Lay.

Finally to an unusual love triangle involving birds. Scientists discovered three ospreys, one male and two female, sharing the same nest in Scotland. One of the females had nested at the site last year but when her previous partner failed to return, she allowed another female and a young male to join her. Lorna Gordon takes up the story. In a canopy of trees in the south of Scotland, an unusual love triangle has formed. A young male osprey, who's been named New Boy, flies in to feed two females sharing the same nest. There's lots of low-level vocalisation and as one of the female ospreys feeds, the other settles onto the four eggs to keep them warm, in a duty the two females appear to be sharing.

This nesting behaviour involving a trio of ospreys is very rare. Diane Bennett from the Tweed Valley Osprey Project says the set up appears to be harmonious. It's incredible watching them taking turns to incubate the eggs as well. We were thinking in terms of there will be one female being more dominant than the other, but over the past couple of weeks it's hard to decide if there is a dominant female or not or if it is quite an equal partnership. Many of the male ospreys didn't return to the area this year, including the older female bird's previous partner, and the lack of potential mates may have driven the unusual behaviour.

The eggs should hatch next week, but feeding four chicks and two female adult ospreys is a big ask, and experts will be monitoring the bird's behaviour closely via webcam to see whether the brood survives. Lorna Gordon. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Tom Bartlett and produced by Alfie Haberschen, our editors Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. to Mexico City. WISE always gives you a fair exchange rate with no markups and no hidden fees. So when you send, spend or receive money with WISE, you'll get the real deal for your money

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