Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Gaza and Free Speech

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Gaza and Free SpeechSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, May 1st, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us today. Professor Sachs, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for your time and for what I know will be some sharp and stimulating analysis.

Let's start with the hot issues of the morning. You live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You are a tenured and highly respected and longtime member of the faculty of Columbia University. You also believe in the freedom of speech. What are you seeing and hearing as to what's happening on the Columbia campus as a consequence of the administration and the local police and their attitudes toward the freedom of speech? Well, what we're seeing is something absolutely horrifying and completely unjustifiable, and that is a crackdown on free speech and on protest, protest that I happen to agree with because it's protesting Israel's brutality in Gaza, and that needs protest. So our students are not only speaking as they should be free to do, but they're, in my opinion, speaking on the right side of morality and the right side of world pressing issues. But the administration does not want

this speech. This is a national syndrome. Colombia is right in the cauldron, but this is, of course, across the nation right now. The basic problem is simple. And that is that the U.S. government is pursuing a disastrous policy of complicity in a completely brutal, and I would say genocidal, approach of Israel. And young people are against it, and our students are against it, and they're speaking out, and we are becoming more and more repressive in our national demeanor and approach, not wanting to hear speech that contradicts the official narrative. So what we have is, because a university is a community. It's a community of students and faculty and scholars on a campus where we're supposed to debate, deliberate, protest, do many things. But it's supposed to be a place of thinking, not a place for

the NYPD or any other exercise of force to stifle speech. So it's a great tragedy and a huge mistake of the administration buckling under the weight of university donors who have their point of view, under the weight of the U.S. Congress, under the part and parcel of the power structures trying to stifle opposition to what is truly an indefensible policy of the United States, which is complicity in something that looks a lot like a genocide. I don't want to get too into the legal weeds, but Columbia is the recipient of federal funds. Obviously, all major universities are. It'd be hard to find a research university in America that isn't. And when they receive those funds, they sign an agreement with the federal government, among other things they agree to,

is to respect the freedom of speech. On top of that, Columbia is in New York City, and it is governed by New York City ordinances and by laws of the state of New York. Both the state of New York and the city of New York have public accommodations laws, which define the open spaces on the Columbia campus as public accommodations, meaning the public can stand there and express any opinion on anything. Doesn't this matter to the university? Well, it's interesting. You know, this issue about the federal funding has been weaponized in exactly the opposite direction. We would say that the university has a responsibility to free speech, but what is being weaponized is Title VI, which is the claim or the commitment of universities not to discriminate, and what is being claimed completely erroneously, in my opinion. And I think, again, with a deliberate

misconstrue is that discrimination, in this case, they're saying applies to Jewish students, and Jewish students are being subject to discrimination because of what they call harassment. But the harassment is speaking out against Israel. And the claim is that that per se is discrimination against Jewish students. Now, this seems to me to be wildly wrong, completely outside of true understanding of free speech and jurisprudence, but also completely a manipulated twist of this Title VI claim. Title VI does not protect Jewish students or anyone else from hearing the peaceful protests of other students and to say that anti-Israel speech is somehow discriminating against Jewish students, somehow is anti-Semitic, is a profound twist that is unacceptable in my view, logically unacceptable, legally unacceptable, ethically unacceptable, and I think manipulative in the way that it's being stated. This is what

we saw in the congressional hearings where the university presidents, including the Columbia president, were asked about statements or chants like from the river to the sea that students were making. Now, from the river to the sea is a statement about who controls the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It actually happens to be the case that extremists on both sides of this divide, Palestinians say, well, it's all Palestinian, and extremist Jews say, well, it's all Jews, it's all greater Israel, so-called. But to call that chant anti-Semitic and therefore a violation of Title VI is wildly dangerous and wrong.

It is political speech. It should be protected. It's substance. It's a real political argument about contested land. And in the context of an actual massacre that's underway, it's perfectly understandable that such a chant would be made. It may not be too pleasant for believers in the other side to hear it, but free speech isn't about being pleasant. It's about the right to speak, especially about politics. That's the point. Before I play Prime Minister Netanyahu's rant condemning free speech on American college

campuses to raise your blood pressure, why do you think, let's just take a step back, people want to suppress the speech they hate or disagree with, particularly in a place, Columbia University, CCNY, UCLA, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, dedicated to the interchange of ideas, a place that teaches people to challenge ideas and to challenge themselves. Yet, these places don't want to hear speech with which they disagree. Why is that? Well, I think a number of things are happening, but let me say first that the faculty is aghast at what's happening. There was a vote of the Barnard faculty, which is tightly linked with Columbia and across the street from Columbia, where by more than 70%, there was a vote of no confidence in the Barnard leadership. I think that this reflects a general mood of shock and dismay and unhappiness and bitterness about how this scholarly and academic

community is being broken apart. So when we say that they don't want to hear it, we're not talking about the faculty and the students. We're talking about the administrators. Now, administrators are bureaucrats. And what are they responding to? They're responding to some major donors who actually are quite explicit, some big Jewish donors and some other donors. We don't want to hear this kind of talk. Clamp down. They're responding to politicians. There was a letter by 21 Democratic House members, that is members of the House of Representatives, to Colombia. Get on with it. Crack down. We don't want to hear this.

Of course, the Republican side of Stepanek and others are saying the same. These politicians, to a significant extent, receive money from the Israel lobby, from AIPAC, which puts in tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars this year in campaign funding in an election year. This is big bucks for these politicians. They're pretty cheap, but so millions speak to them and they're responding to donors as well. And then there's a general phenomenon, which is quite interesting. There's a huge generational divide. Older people tend to support Israel in American public opinion. Younger people are backing Palestine. And this is a deep generational divide. And the older people in the administration of these universities, they don't get it. They don't understand that there's a very different view of young people.

By the way, I think the young people are right. I think that they are reacting to what Israel is today. Older people think of Abba Eban and Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. And Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli leader who wanted to make peace with the Palestinians. And he was assassinated for that. By a right-wing kook. Exactly. And this is the point. That Israel actually doesn't exist right now. The Israel that does exist right now is an extremist, right-wing, nationalist, religious nationalist government that could not be uglier in its rhetoric. Just in the last couple of days, the finance minister,

Batsal al-Smotrich, said something. I printed it out because it's unbelievable. There are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Bala, Nezerat, these are cities of Gaza. Total annihilation, I'm quoting, you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. There's no place under heaven. There are no half measures. This is the finance minister speaking. up universities, blowing up hospitals, blowing up apartment blocks, blowing up mosques, blowing up water facilities, killing people that are coming for food because a million people are on the brink of starvation because of the Israeli blockade. And so what's the response of Congress to all of that TikTok feed? It's to try to close down TikTok to get an owner that would be loyal to Israel, not loyal to the video feed that is coming over TikTok right now. It's unbelievable. What they're trying to do is hide from the American people the truth about what is going on. That's why free speech is so

important. Correct. Because at a momentous time like this, it is free speech that enables people to see the truth. And that is precisely why this crackdown is occurring. No other reason whatsoever. In the two leading Supreme Court cases on this, Professor Sachs, the court articulated exactly what you said. One called Terminello versus Chicago, which has to do with a riot allegedly caused by the speech of a Catholic priest attacking Harry Truman, and one called Brandenburg versus Ohio, which was a KKK leader demanding violence against blacks and Jews, violence which never happened. Both times, the Supreme Court exonerated the speech and said free speech is not only essential to human happiness, it is vital to a democracy. It is vital that people be able to say whatever they want about the government when they want to say it.

Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu. So, Chris, this is the one where he condemns college campus protests, the edited down version. It's about two days ago, Jeff. You have to hear this to believe this. The International Criminal Court in The Hague is contemplating issuing a... We don't have it. Okay. See if you can find the one where he condemns college campus protests. But he did that.

I know. He didn't mention Columbia by name, but he chastised the American government for not cracking down on college campuses. By the way, just the arrogance of that, that a prime minister of another country would enter into the fray of our campus issues is itself so vulgar that it shows the complete arrogance right now of the Israel lobby. They, what they don't understand and what is so perturbing them is that they thought that American public opinion was in the pocket, that there was no issue, that they could do what they wanted, that nobody would care. And what we're seeing is young people care. Now they're shocked by that. They're dismayed by that. They don't get to do all the brutality that they want. And so here is an Israeli prime minister, an utter disaster in my view, the most disastrous leader in Israel's history in my particular point

of view, but he's weighing in on our campus life. Stay away, Netanyahu. Manage your own country. And by the way, my own view is that the most important thing the United States could do right now is to say, we don't agree with what you're doing, Netanyahu. But, you know, we you're a sovereign country. You do what you want, but not with our bombs. What happened with our money? What happens if he does order the IDF to invade Rafah, and they do slaughter, there's a million and a quarter people there, Jeff, and they do slaughter another 30,000 civilians? What will happen? Very clear. Secretary Blinken will say, oh, we're very concerned. We're very concerned about the situation in Rafah. And we've been advising the government of Israel to protect the civilians, and they've assured us that they will. Of course, there are no red lines on any aid that we give. We don't put any restrictions on Israel. But we're deeply, deeply concerned. Excuse me while I wipe a tear from my eye. That's what

will happen. Will any state actor use force to repel or resist this coming slaughter? Well, if the slaughter comes, no. Israel will create mass murder and havoc. But they're doing that already. The official count is 15,000 to that official count. And then when one considers that this is a population that has been reduced to the edge of starvation, the hospitals have been destroyed. The healthcare system doesn't exist. The access to safe water doesn't exist. That the number of deaths that are attendant upon this destruction and siege may increase the total number to well over 100,000 so far, perhaps even, I've heard even higher numbers. Of course, only demographers in the future are going to tell us what really happened, but the headline number that we hear, 35,000, is surely a dramatic underestimation. So this is happening before our eyes. This isn't even complicated.

This is the main point. We're watching in real time a massacre in which the U.S. is complicit, in which the Secretary of State wrings his hands and does nothing, in which the president of the United States mumbles. And all that happens is Israel continues, and we hear a finance minister speaking absolutely genocidal language. There are no half measures. Rafa Deir al-Bala, Nesarat, total annihilation. This is the language of genocide. Here is Prime Minister Netanyahu inserting himself in American domestic politics as he condemns the freedom of speech on college campuses. What's happening on America's college campuses is horrific. Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel.

They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now, fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently, but there has to be more. More has to be done. We see this exponential rise of anti-Semitism throughout America and throughout Western

societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists. And what is important now is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say enough is enough. We have to stop anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world. So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who are concerned with our common future and our common values, to do one thing. Stand up, speak up, be counted. Stop anti-Semitism now. Not a peep from the White House, not a peep from the

Vice President, not a peep from the hand-wringing secretary of state, not a peep from the bellicose national security advisor, no member of the president's cabinet, no judicial officials, nobody. Nobody said anything about a foreign leader attempting to assert his political dominance in a value as cherished and integral to American culture and history as the freedom of speech. But how upside down every single word is. Yes. As this man leads an army that is committing massacres and genocide, in my view, and we'll hear from the International Court of Justice soon.

This is what is so absolutely astounding. What is happening on our campuses is protesting Netanyahu and his policies, and they are absolutely right to be doing that. Before we go, we'll just switch gears to the other hotspot in the world. It turns out that of the $61 billion that Congress voted and the president signed into law to go to Ukraine, about 40 is staying here. About 10 has already gone in cash into the bank deposits that the American government wires to Ukraine. God only knows where that's going. And much of the military equipment that President Zelensky wanted had been sent there before the vote in Congress. That means, under the law, that the hand-wringing Secretary of State needed to sign a statement under oath that it was essential

to American national security and was an emergency, and therefore we couldn't wait for Congress to vote before we sent this equipment out there. More deception, more lies. But the question I want to ask you is, what good will this vote and this cash and this military equipment do? Isn't Ukraine on its last legs? And isn't it without the manpower, almost literally, is losing so many people. The count is around 500,000 dead at this point. The official numbers of the Ukrainian government are, of course, nothing but absurd propaganda when they mention much lower numbers. Everyone knows this. We see the cemeteries across Ukraine, the obituary count across Ukraine.

All this does is sending more people to their certain death as the war continues. There is no end to this other than through one answer, which has been there all along, which is that this mad idea of the United States, that it was going to put its military bases and NATO into Ukraine was a bad and reckless idea, and it would stop. And on that basis, the war could have been avoided entirely, or it could have ended in March 2022, or it could stop today. But this has been a Biden, part of Biden's thought process, such as it is, for 25 years. This goes back to the 1990s NATO enlargement. It goes back to 2008, the commitment by the United States over the strong opposition of Europe at the time that it would push for NATO enlargement. It goes back to the US participation in a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 to make this

happen. It goes to absolutely refusing to negotiate with Russia and it has destroyed Ukraine. It's destroyed a population that has either fled the country or is dying on the front lines right now. One is, well, three, Ukraine could be completely militarily defeated and occupied. Second, there could be a negotiated outcome, as there should have been all along, but for this madness of the U.S. to push the unpushable and unachievable, or the U.S. possibly with their complete craziness would double down and start putting troops on the ground more than are already there, because there are Western troops on the ground, of course, operating some of the weapon systems. And this could escalate to nuclear war.

So there's no answer other than the obvious one that has been there for 25 years. Don't do this reckless maneuver. But Biden, he's an old, stubborn man that's been at this for a quarter century, and we're heading deeper and deeper into the abyss, but leading Ukraine deeper and deeper into the abyss. Nothing of this helps Ukraine at all, except more deaths and more loss of territory and more risk of escalation to nuclear war. Here's Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, whom you know, shortly after the vote in the House of Representatives and the signing of this dreadful appropriations package by President Biden. Currently, the United States and its NATO allies persist in their fixation on dealing a decisive blow to Russia. They seem prepared to keep opposing our nation, using Ukraine as their last stand, so to speak. Simultaneously, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers carrying potential catastrophic outcomes.

Do you think Tony Blinken and Joe Biden understand the gravity of what he just said? I think right now, all Biden and Blinken want to do is get to November without an embarrassment. They don't understand much. I don't know what Biden understands of anything anymore, frankly. He's been in this completely military industrial complex mode for his whole career. He's lost in the past, and it's absolutely dreadful. I want to say, by the way, in the end, this vote passed in part because Trump and signal to Speaker Johnson, yeah, go along with it. The Republicans went along, the Democrats. Both parties are basically following along the security state.

Our democracy is in such dire straits right now. It's not an original thought, but there once was a Roman Republic. It became a Roman Empire. Is that really what we want? That's what we have happening right now. How did the Republican vote switch? How did the speaker switch from opposition to support? Oh, he was briefed by the CIA. Right. Same thing happened with the mass spying. He voted against it when he was a simple congressman from Louisiana, but the CIA spent a few hours with him. He came out and said, we have to have these spying powers, and it passed by one vote.

Andy Biggs and Chip Roy and Thomas Massey offered an amendment to require a search warrant. Where did that come from? Maybe the Fourth Amendment? A search warrant before they can access data about Americans. The amendment tied 212 to 212. Speaker Johnson left the Speaker Chair to vote against it, and then the legislation expanding spying powers without the requirement of the search warrant became the law of the land. What the U.S. is trying to do, which is to assert military supremacy and hegemony around the world cannot work. It will lead us to wars everywhere as it is doing. But because the public understands that this is completely the wrong course, it means more and more internal suppression. So we're seeing the bottom line of this policy right now, an approach that is destroying Ukraine, an approach that supports genocide in Gaza,

and an approach which leads to our campuses being overrun by the police. This is where we are heading right now. That's why your show about freedom is so essential for us. We are really on the brink. And it's both parties and it is the security state, which is our unbelievable threat. And it's their delusion that they run the world or can run the world that is the underlying mover of this disastrous approach, which is getting us into wars everywhere. Professor Sachs, no matter what we discuss or how dark the times are, you're a breath of fresh air and you're a glimmer of light in the darkness. Thank you very much for your astute and fearless analysis.

We'll see you again next week. I'm off to Milan to speak at the University of Milan. I'll be there next week. Oh, I to Milan to speak at the University of Milan. I'll be there next week. Oh, I'm going to be in, I'll be in Italy next week at the end of next week too. So maybe we'll, maybe we'll see each other, but I do believe that you're going to be on with us Monday before I take, take off on my trip. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Professor Sachs. All the best. Bye-bye. Bye. Coming up later today at three o'clock, Phil Giraldi at four o'clock, Aaron Matei at five o'clock, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.