Lex Fridman Podcast - #377 – Harvey Silverglate: Freedom of Speech

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Harvey Silverglate is a free speech advocate, co-founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression, and author of several books on freedom of speech and criminal justice. He is running for Harvard Board of Overseers on a platform of free speech. If you're a Harvard Alumni, please consider voting for him by Tue, May 16, 5pm ET: https://www.harvey4harvard.com/ballot Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Factor: https://factormeals.com/lex50 and use code lex50 to get 50% off first box - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Vote for Harvey: https://www.harvey4harvard.com/ballot Harvey's Website: https://www.harveysilverglate.com/ FIRE's Website: https://www.thefire.org/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:23) - Freedom of speech (28:04) - Bureaucracy in Universities (44:18) - Clash of ideas (47:56) - Public education is broken (59:33) - Jeffrey Epstein (1:12:26) - Freedom of thought and liberal arts (1:23:30) - Interviewing controversial people (1:27:14) - Alan Dershowitz (1:30:28) - Donald Trump (1:37:27) - FBI (1:45:52) - Criminal justice system (1:48:20) - Advice

The following is a conversation with Harvey Silverglate, a legendary feast-beach advocate, co-founder of Fire, the foundation for individual rights and expression, and the author of several books on the freedom of speech and criminal justice, including the Shadow University, the betrayal of Liberty and America's campuses. Harvey is running to be on the Harvard board of Overseas this year with the writing campaign. So you have to spell his name correctly, civil-glate. Promising to advocate for free speech and to push for reducing the size of Harvard's administration bureaucracy, election is over this Tuesday, May 16th at 5 p.m. Eastern. To vote, you have to be Harvard alumni.

So if you happen to be one, please vote online. It's a good way to support freedom of speech on Harvard campus. Instructions how to do so are in the description. As a side note, please allow me to say that since there are several controversial conversations coming up, I tried to make sure that this podcast is a platform for free discourse where ideas are not censored but explored, and if necessary, challenged, in a thoughtful and pathetic way. As by having such difficult conversations, not by avoiding them, that we can begin to heal divides, and to shed lights on the dark parts of human history and human nature.

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And now, dear friends, here's Harvey Silverglate. You co-founded the foundation for individual rights and expression, also known as fire, a legendary organization that fights for the freedom of speech for all Americans in our courtrooms, on our campuses, and in our culture. So let's start with a big question. What is freedom of speech? First of all, the organization, when I co-founded it in 1999, was called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. It focused on free speech issues on college campuses

in academia. And only earlier this year did we decide to expand our reach beyond the campuses Which is why the name of the acronym fire remains It's now the foundation for individual rights and expression the e used to be education the used to be education It's now expression and we basically do a lot of the cases the ACL ACLU used to do, the ACLU now more as the progressive organization rather than a civil liberties organization. And we've taken the role of dealing with free speech in the society generally.

And now this is a particularly an era prone to censorship. Everybody thinks they're right and people who disagree with them should not be able to voice their views. It's a very difficult period right now, both on campus and off campus. It's about as intolerant an era as I can remember, I'm going to be 81 May 10th. I was born on Mother's Day 1942 and I can't remember it being this bad. I was born during the McCarthy era. So that's a lot. And it sort of reminds me of that. Well, let's start with that almost a philosophical question, a legal question, a human question. What is this freedom that you care so much about, that you fought for so much freedom of speech?

It is the most important right that Americans have. It's not a coincidence or an accident that it's named in the first amendment to the Constitution. Without it, no democratic society can be democratic for long. And I'm an absolutist that is, I believe that, for example, people say to me, but what about hate speech? Well, hate speech is much more important than love speech. And the reason is, I'm much more interested in knowing whom I should not turn my back on

that I am interested in figuring out who loves me or who likes me. So hate speech is the most important in my view. And yet it's banned in, for example, schools, it's unbelievable. Kids are not schooled into understanding the glory of the First Amendment when schools say that they shouldn't say things that are going to make somebody feel bad. The purpose of speech is to express honest views that people have. And so I believe hate speech is as important as love

speech and my view is more important. So it should be brought to the surface rather than operating the shadows. Absolutely. Absolutely. What is the connection between freedom of speech and freedom of thought? Well, in a free society, thoughts start in the brain and then they come out the mouth. So they are different ends of the same spectrum. So do you, the censorship of speech, eventually leads to a censorship of thought? Of course, censorship of the mode by which other people know what you're thinking. So there's some aspect of our society that is, that thinking is done collectively and without being able to speak to each other, we cannot do this kind of collecting.

Correct. And out of speed, the theory is that ultimately out of speech comes truth. That isn't necessarily so. But I do think that when there's free speech, better decisions are made, because people put their views on the table in a frank, accurate way. And then those views mix together and clash, and out of that, usually comes the better a decision. Not always, but usually more often than not. But if somebody is not allowed to be a, you know, sit at the table of decision making, then the decision making process is poorer,

less robust, less diverse, and ultimately less successful. So can you elaborate on the idea of free speech, absolutism? So hate speech can be quite painful to quite a large number of people. Does this worry you? Yep. Living in a free society requires that you expose yourself to some discomfort, you call it pain.

It's maybe emotional pain, it's not physical pain. But it's the price we pay for living in a free society. Every so often we're insulted. We're emotionally hurt. Think of the alternative. All the alternatives are worse. Nobody ever promised us a rose garden. We're lucky to be in a country that has the first amendment. It's also the most diverse country in the world

because of immigration. I mean, my grandparents, my father's side, came over from Russia. My mother's side came over from Russia. My mother's side came over from Poland. I'm very happy that my grandparents came in from Russia. I would not want to be in Russia today. I'd probably be sharing a cell with a Wall Street Journal reporter. So I'm thankful that they came in.

And this is a great country. It's got troubles right now, but our country doesn't. And we've had, before we had a civil war, we had segregation. Oh, we have the decimation of the Indians. We're not perfect. But it's the best place in the world for somebody who values liberty.

So you don't think that hate speech can empower large groups that eventually lead to physical action, to physical harm to others? No, I don't. I think that we have developed a culture in which it's understood that if you don't like what you hear, you talk back. You write something. We don't punch each other. We insult each other. Is insulting great?

Well, I don't know, it's okay. I used to, as a kid in Brooklyn, where I was born, I was born and raised in Bensonhurst. We used to say, sticks and stones can break by bones, but names can never harm me. And it's absolutely true. What was true when I was five is true when I'm almost 81. So I've lived a long time. I've seen it all. And I'm talking from experience as well as theory.

It's what happens when you reach your Aides. I read that you had this line that you cannot be protected from being called an asshole. Correct. Especially if you're an asshole. Well, that's... But you don't have to be an asshole to be called an asshole. That's correct. And I think the internet has taught me that.

Well, the internet has posed a particular challenge to free speech absolutists because of some of the stuff that's on there has got awful. But I have no different rule for freedom of speech on the internet than I have in newspapers or in lectures or in classrooms or conversations among people. What do you think about the tension between freedom of speech and freedom of reach as is kind of sometimes termed? So the internet really challenges that aspect. It allows speech to become viral and spread very quickly to a very large number of people. Well, you know, we've had we've had revolutions in

them in the modalities of communication. After all, newspapers were the first challenge. Radio and television posed a new challenge. The FCC tried, but ultimately gave up the attempt to control obscenity for example. And the Supreme Court has been pretty close. The one thing that liberal and conservative Supreme courts, right now we're in a conservative era due to Trump nominations. During much of my life, we were the Warren court. It was William O. Douglas, so Brennan, the liberal court. One thing they agree on is free speech. They don't agree on much else, but they do agree on free speech. And I think the reason is that they recognize that, well, my group is in the ascendance today, but it may not be

tomorrow. And I want to have objective clear rules so that when I'm in the minority, I'm able to voice my opinion. And so it's one of the few things that both sides of the political spectrum agree on. The only people who don't or the people way over on the right that I call the fascists and the people way over on the left, who are the communists, but with respect to most people in this political spectrum, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Libertarians, they agree on the primacy of free speech because it protects them when protection is needed. So do you, even on the internet, free speech absolutism should rule? Yes. Nobody's going to die.

Remember, death threats are not protected. Nobody's going to die. So people are going to be a little bit insulted. That's the price you pay for living in a free society. And it's a small price, in my view. Some people don't have as tough a hide as others, well, then develop it. I don't mean to sound cruel, but you know, you're living in a free society, you develop a tough

hide. So that's the cost of living in a free society. Yep, there is a cost. And the thing is that it can really hurt at scale to be cyber bullied, to be attacked for the ideas you express, or maybe ideas you didn't express, but that somebody decided to lie about you and use that to attack you. Well, first of all, there are, there are some exceptions, the first of many. Li Libal and slander is an exception. Direct threats or an exception. You know, if you say such a thing, I will murder you. That is not lawful.

If you say to somebody, if you say about somebody, oh, you beat your wife, that is not lawful. If in fact, the person knows you don you beat your wife, that is not lawfully, in fact the person knows you don't beat your wife. There are some limits, defamation is one, direct threats or another, so it's not absolute, the first moment is not absolute, but it's more absolute than it isn't any other society and it's pretty near absolute. For example, fraud, if you sell somebody a car and you say, oh, this is in great running shape and in fact it's an old jolapi and it's not going to make it more than 10 miles, that's fraud.

That's not free speech. So free speech is not absolute. There are these limits, but they're very narrow specific categories of limits. But there's gray area here because while legally you're not allowed to defame a person in the court of public opinion, especially with the aid of anonymity on the internet, rumors can spread at scale, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people can make up things about you. You have to defend yourself using more speech. We're through freedom of speech and we're big boys and girls.

You have to defend yourself. In some societies, if you say something, if you right now, if you say something nasty about Putin, you'll end up in the gulag. If you say something nasty about Biden, you end up in the New York Times, where would you rather be? Well, let's talk about the thing you've done for over 20 years, which is fight for the freedom of speech on college campuses. So, why is freedom of speech important on college campuses?

Well, it's important that we're in this society, but it's most important on college campuses, why? Because that's where we educate our young citizens. And if you are educated under a notion that some dean can call you on the carpet because you say something which is considered racist or you can say something which is considered dangerous to social cohesion, then it's not a liberal arts college. No. The theory that I used in the shadow university, a book you've written, the shadow university 1998, 1998. You were ahead of a lot of these things. I was afraid that as a pessimist, I always saw the bad side of things.

Betrayal of liberty on America's campuses, the shadow university, the bookie co-authored with the Alan Charles. Yes. One of my Princeton classmates, Alan Charles Corsos, who's now an emeritus professor of enlightenment history at the University of Pennsylvania. I only taught for one semester and I can go into that later. The reason I did not continue to teach in colleges. It was Harvard Law School.

I taught a course in the mid 1980s. But in any event, the college campuses are one of the most important of all for free speech. This is where people get education. And if you don't really get a good education, if certain points of you are not allowed to be expressed, because education comes from the clash of ideas, and you then have to decide, this is how you become a thinking adult. You have to decide which ideas make more sense to you, which ones you're going to follow,

the college experiences transformative, and if there is censorship on campuses, it's highly destructive of the educational enterprise, and ultimately to the entire society. You know, we have in the sciences, we have a scientific method. Scientific method is you try experiments and you see which ones work and then you develop theories based upon the results of experiments. Well, this is not much different

from every other aspect of life. You have to entertain different views on different subjects. You hear to entertain different views on different subjects. You hear all the views and you make a decision as to which one's accurate, which one's not. So, a scientific method I apply to non-science, to history, to journalism, to all of these things. So, that scientific method includes ideas, hateful ideas also. Correct. If you don't allow hateful ideas, I mean, when scientists do experiments, nobody says to them,

oh, you know, don't, don't do that experiment because it would be very bad if that turns out to be accurate, you know, that outcome. That's not the way it works. Every point of view is thrown into the marketplace, whether it's science or whether it's a, you know, non-science. And that includes the kind of ideas and the kind of discourse that might actually lead to an increase in hate on campuses. The first amendment prohibits speech which is like we'll produce imminent, imminent violence. So for example, you know, the exception is yelling falsely, falsely yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. A lot of people misstate it. They say, well, the exception is yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. A lot of people misstate it. They say,

oh, the exception is yelling fire in a movie theater. Well, if there's really a fire, are you performing a real important function? But it's falsely yelling fire. You can start a riot. People would be crushed, try to get out. So there are these that that's one of the exceptions, the first amendment, as the Supreme Court has defined it. There are very few exceptions, and defamation is an exception. I'm not a fan of that exception, frankly, but if you say something about somebody that has serious implications in their life, in their ability or in a living. If you say, you accuse somebody of being a pedophile, but it's not true, that person can sue you.

My own view is I think that's an unfortunate exception, but I'm not on the Supreme Court. I think that I'm with a friend of mine was Nat Hentoff, Nat Hentoff who wrote for decades for the village voice in New York. He was a friend of mine. He was a free speech absolutist. And he wrote a fabulous book called Free Speech for me, but not for thee. And he was an absolutist and I'm with that hand tough. Even on the defamation aspect. I mean, I agree with you in some sense just practically speaking. It seems like that the way the best way in the public sphere to defend against the formation is with more speech. Correct. And through authentic communication of the truth as you see it.

Yeah, you know, at times the Boston Globe has said something about me that hasn't been accurate. They have variably published my letter to the editor. I'm also upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset.

I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset.

I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset. But all that means is I get the fame with the most people. Can we also comment on from the individual consumer of speech? There's a kind of sense that freedom of speech means you should be forced to read all of it. Freedom of speech versus freedom of reach.

We as consumers of speech, do we have the right to select what we read? We do. And nobody can force us to sit in the room and listen to a radio program that we don't want to listen to. Nobody can force us to read a book that we don't want to read. The whole motion of freedom of speech means that people have autonomy on their choices. In order to form a complete mind, a complete human being, there's a kind of tension of that autonomy

versus consuming as many varied perspectives as possible, which is underlying the ethic of free speech. So on college campuses, it seems like a good way to develop the mind is to get as many perspectives as possible, even if you don't really want to. Well, that's, that is the theory. Academic freedom is supposed to be the highest degree of free speech. You should be able to entertain all kinds of hateful, threatening ideas, and the

way I put it is, there's something wrong when you can say something with complete abandon without any fear in Harvard Square, whereas on the other side of the fence, you can't say it in Harvard Yard, you should be the opposite. And what happens is universities, from the best to the worst, from the most famous to the least well-known, have been taken over by administrators. Administrators do not really subsume academic values. They know nothing about the Constitution.

They know nothing about free speech. they know nothing about free speech, they know nothing about academic freedom, they feel that their job is to keep order. And so they develop speech codes, kangaroo courts to enforce the speech codes, and these are very dire developments. I wrote about them in the shadow university in 98 and tried to deal with them in 1999 when I started fire, coach started fire. And I would fire, the reason I'm running currently for the Harvard Board of Overseas is what I'd like to do is convince the Harvard Corporation, so-called President and Fellows of Harvard College,

the chief governing board of the university with the real power. The board of all this is a secondary body, but quite influential, to fire 95% of the administrators. It would have a salutary effect on the academics of the university. It would have a salutary effect on free speech and academic freedom. It would cut to missions by about 40 percent. And it would create a whole different atmosphere on the

campus. And the same group said MIT or any other place. I think administrators are a very bad influence on American higher education. Can you sort of elaborate the intuition why this thing that you call administrative bloat is such a bad thing for university? Well, first of all, just in terms of the cost of maintaining, there are more administrators in the Merck or I education than there are faculty members.

The cost is enormous. Number two, they are a nimical to the teaching enterprise and they feel that their job is to control things, to make sure there are no problems and nobody's feelings are hurt. Being called, you know, before a dean because you said something that insulted somebody is something that shouldn't happen in a miracle higher education. Yet it happens because you have these administrators who think it's their job to protect people from being insulted. You insult a black student, you insult a woman. There's a disciplinary hearing, well, there shouldn't be black people are accustomed to being insulted. Jews are a customer being insulted.

Women are a customer being insulted. And it's very good to know who doesn't like you. It's useful. It is very, it's essential information to know who doesn't like you. If everybody is forced to say I love you and nobody can say I hate you, you get a false view of what life is all about.

Outside of the university. Outside of the university. I mean, you do graduate eventually. And that's ultimately the mission of the university is to prepare you to make you into a great human being and to a great leader that can take on the problems of the world. Correct.

And you don't do it by treating you like a little flower. But what role does the university have to protect students to women, African Americans, anybody, Jews, anybody who gets, can get the victim of hate speech? They, they, they protect you from physical assault, if somebody physically assaults you, then they, they, they get punished, But they shouldn't, they shouldn't protect you against insult, because that is a violation of academic freedom, the freedom of the insultor to insult you. And also, as I said, it's very useful to know who doesn't like you. It's useful for the so-called victim. I think it's said, I want to know who doesn't like me. It's as important to me as knowing who likes me.

But do you also believe in this open space of discourse that the insulter will eventually lose? I think that's true. I think that the insulter eventually will wear out his or her welcome. I do. But I like to know who the insult is. Because it gives you a deeper understanding of human nature. Yeah, and usually by the way, by experience, has been that the insults have generally not been as smart as the people they've insulted. And that's probably one of the reasons they insult them because they feel inferior. One of the reasons they insult them because they feel inferior. I mean, I'm not trying to be a psychoanalyst here, but a lot of the people who were the haters

are pretty low down in the intellectual scale. Anyway, 95% of administration, you would fire, you're calling to fire 95% of the administration people should know I think People that don't really think about the structure the way the universities work are not familiar I think with the fact that administration there's a huge bloat of administration You know when you think about what makes a great university? It's about the students. It's about the faculties, about the people that do research, if it's a research university. They don't think about the bureaucracy of meetings and committees and rules and paperwork and all that and all the people that are involved with pushing that kind of paper. And there's a huge cost to that, but it also slows down and suppresses the beautiful variety that makes the University great, which is the teaching,

the student life, the protests, the clubs, all the fun that you can have in the University, all the very kind of exploration, which you can't really do once you graduate. Correct. The University is a place to really explore in every single way. So the university is a place to really explore in every single way. So, let me just talk about this important thing because I'm very fortunate to have contacted you, almost by accident, in a very important moment in your life. You're running for the Harvard Board of Overseers. What is this board? How much power does it have? And what would you do if elected it?

Okay, first of all, I have a prediction. Yes. That in about five years, they could have probably changed the name because the overseer's reminds people of the slavery era. Yes. And we're in a such a politically correct ear now that the English language is being restricted, corrupted, is where I put it, because certain words are forbidden. We have some problems in this country, and I think part of the problem is the educational system has lost a sense of what academic freedom and free speech are all about. And I think it's essential that the educational system begin to take more seriously what free speech now, if it really are.

That's why I'm running for the Harvard Board of Overseers. So let me just link on the role of the administration in protecting free speech. So what often happens, I think you've written about this, is there's going to be a few, maybe a small number of hypersensitive students and faculty that protest. So how does Harvard administration resist the influence of those hypersensitive protesters in protecting speech and protecting even hate speech. Harvard has done fairly well under the presidency of Lawrence back how. I have had a couple of meetings with back how. I like back how. I have donated to Harvard a print of my late my late wife took a picture of Bob Dylan and Alan Ginsburg when the Rolling

Thunder review got to Harvard Square. And it's sort of an iconic photograph. It's called it the music lesson because it's got Dylan teaching Ginsburg how to play the guitar. And I donated one of those to Harvard. It's hanging in backhouse office. He, the new president, Claudeine Gay, is not known for respecting academic freedom on free speech.

People have said to me, well, give her a chance. Well, I'm willing to give her a chance, but she does have a record. And she's a bureaucrat. I don't think she believes in free speech and academic freedom. I think she's a progressive, not a liberal. I'm not happy with the appointment of Flo Dean Gay, and it has made more essential by attempt to get on the board of overseers. So let's talk about the board of overseers. of over seers. So let's talk about the board of over seers and you're run for it, the specifics actually. It would be nice because I think you're a writing candidate and the election is over on May 16th. Yes. And I think there's specifics. I'll probably give them in the intro, give links to people, but the specifics are complicated. I mean, just mention that you have to be Harvard alumni. So I graduated

from Harvard. You have to run in order to vote. In order to vote. And the process I imagine is not trivial, but this is done online. And if you're an alumni, you should have received an email from a particular email address, Harvard, at MGElectionServicesCorp.com. And presumably, there's a way to get some validation number from that email. And then you go online, you enter that validation number and you vote. And you do vote for Harvey. You have to enter his name correctly, Harvey Silver

Glate and spell it correctly. Obviously, I'm imagining this because I'm MIT not Harvard. So, I'm imagining the process are not trivial. And I'll also provide an email if the process is painful, it doesn't work for you that you can email. Email Harvard and complain. IT help at Harvard IDU and so on. I'll provide all the links,

but is there something else you can say about the voting process, what you're running on? This is my second run. The first time I got enough seagulls to get on the ballot, then the Harvard Alumni Association sent out a letter to all living Harvard alums, recommending that they vote for the officially nominated candidates that excluded two petition candidates of whom I was one. And I wrote to the Alumni Association and I said, you have now sent out the curriculum V ties and the policy positions of all the officially nominated candidates.

There are two petition candidates on the ballot. I would like to be able to send out my positions to the voters. They wrote me back saying our policy is to only send out the policy positions and the platforms of officially nominated candidates. Can you believe that? Well, this is a liberal arts college, right? Where from the clash of ideas, truth of Burgess, well, really? This is what I call Harvard's not-so-subtle means of candidate suppression, not voter suppression, candidate suppression. And everybody can vote, but not

everybody can run. It will become a liberal arts college where the clash of ideas will produce the truth. We're one of the class of ideas on the board of officers. The board of officers is important. It doesn't have the same power or authority as the Harvard Corporation, the so-called President Fellows of Harvard College, but it's very influential and very important. And it would be a great perch for me to try to exert influence for the university to get back to where it was before it was taken over by the administrators. Well, I'm pretty sure that most of Harvard alumni and most of the students currently going to Harvard,

most of the faculty at Harvard probably stand behind that ideas and the ideals that you stand behind. Yep. The people that love Harvard and what it stands for. See, the alumni were educated in an era when these concepts were taken more seriously. And before the administration administrators took over. So I do think if I get my message out, I'm going to win the seat. And if I win a seat, I will have a great perch for trying to convince the real power that be, which is the Harvard Corporation, to do the things that I'm suggesting. You know, get rid of nine percent of the five percent of the administrators, get rid of

the speech codes, reduce tuition by 40 percent. All of these salutary benefits. Can you imagine if Harvard became the most affordable college in the United States? Well, the affordability is another aspect, but I think before that, just the freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of thought. Yeah. In America's greatest universities, I think, is something that everybody would agree on. It would have a tremendous effect on the whole country.

And is there something to say about the details of how difficult it is for alumni to vote? Well, experience with this. The vote online, or you can vote by paper ballot. You can request the paper ballot. And all I could say is that the hard part is getting the message out. My name doesn't appear on the ballot

because I couldn't get enough signatures. Well, Harvey, Harvey Silverglate. S-I-L-V-E-R-G-L-A-T. You know, when my grandparents arrived from Russia, the name in Russia was something like Zilberglit, and the immigration officer had several choices. He could have said Silvergate, Gate is a real, Silver and gate a really English words

Yeah, he could have said silver Glade the G. L. A. D. E Those are really English words. That's how my name is often this spell the the silver gate or silver Glade Silver Glate is a nonsense syllable and Why the immigration officer chose to translate a right silver And why the immigration officer chose to transliterate silver glit and silver glit, I have never understand and it is the cause of endless mistakes in my name. Well, the fundamental absurdity of life. Yes, it's also the source of its beauty.

Yes, anyway, we shall spell it out and we shall get a yell loud and wide that everybody who's ever graduated from Harvard should vote for you if they believe in the ideals of the great American universities, which I think most people do. Let me also ask about diversity inclusion and equity programs. You've had a few harsh words to say about those. The idea of diversity, I think, is a beautiful idea. You've said that Harvard's idea of diversity is for everyone to look different and think alike. Correct.

Can you elaborate? And be comfortable. And be comfortable. Yeah. First of all, it is impossible. If liberal arts education is taken seriously, it's impossible for students to feel comfortable. Why? Because one of the roles of college is to challenge all the beliefs that they grew up with, which

mostly are the beliefs inculcated by parents and by elementary school teachers. And the idea is to be able to challenge those thoughts, those ideas. And if you don't have free speech and academic freedom, those views get reified, they do not get challenged. So it violates the fundamental role of higher educational institutions to have any restrictions at all. That's number one. Number two, as I think I said earlier, if people, students, who are not allowed to be frank with one another, they don't really learn about one another.

don't really learn about one another. And, you know, I've given a lot of lectures in which I have said, and I think students now understand that I much more interested in hearing from the people who hate me than the people who love me. I'm much more interested in knowing who disagrees with the people who agree with me. That's how I learn and that's how they learn the clash of ideas, which is the theory behind the First Amendment. That truth will somehow emerge, or if not truth, at least a better truth, a true truth, a more useful truth, if ideas are allowed to clash. Especially in the structure of the university where at least I would say there's some set

of rules, some set of civility. I think I would rather read Mein Kampf to understand people that hate. There is also quality to disagreement that we should strive for. I think in universities, a place where when disagreement and even hate is allowed, it's done in a high effort way. You know, somebody asked me once about what books I would have as required reading in literature courses, like List of Mind Conf, and they were horrified. And I said, well, it's one of the most important books of the 20th century. in literature courses, and I listed Minecraft, and they were horrified. And I said, well, it's one of the most important books to the 20th century.

I mean, 60 million Jews died, and enormous number of other people died, because one guy wrote a book called Minecraft and took it seriously. It's one of the most important books ever written. How can an educated person not have at least reased through mind comp and it's not a great read though. It's not a great read. He was not a great writer, but you do get a sense for the the sociopath that was at all Hitler. Yes, because he really

acted on the words that he wrote. Yeah. And it was there. And if people took that work seriously, they would have understood. It's one of the most important books of the 20th century. And it's politically incorrect to read it. It's crazy. But can you speak to the efforts to increase diversity in universities, which I think is embodied in this DIE effort of diversity, inclusion, and equity programs. Where do they go right? Where do they go wrong?

Okay. Let me tell you, first of all, this may surprise a lot of people. I am opposed to affirmative action. And I think that what it does is it labels people by their race, by their religion, by their national origin. Precisely what we don't want people to do is be pigeonholed in those categories. The reason that affirmative action has become the way that universities decide on who gets admitted is because historically people in what's called marginalized groups, blacks, gays, Hispanics have been discriminated against in the admissions process.

Now what I have suggested is that instead of affirmative action, and by the way, here's a prediction, the Supreme Court is going to abolish affirmative action. There's a case pending, case pending as Harvard case. It's there are two cases joined together, one of a public university and one of a private university. The private university is Harvard. I predict that the Supreme Court will vote six to three to abolish affirmative action. It is on its face, it is a violation of equal protection of the law. Some groups are favored because of race or ethnicity. It is a classic violation of equal protection clause. When a affirmative action was approved, the deciding vote was just the Sandra Day O'Connor. She wrote a very famous opinion

in which she said, I am hesitant to vote to keep up dear to who affirm the notion of affirmative action because it's such an obvious violation of people protection. But we have an urgent problem in the society. We are not educating our members of racial and ethnic minorities. And we have to try to get them into our colleges. So I think it should be approved for 25 years. And it should be, in 25 years, it should have performed this role. Well, it hasn't. And the 25 years is coming up. I think it's three or four years left.

The Supreme Court is going to abolish it. You can take my word for that. Because it's such an obvious violation of equal protection. Why do the former ev election come into play? Because the secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Public secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Why are they so bad? Partly because of the control that the teachers' union has Randy Wollingart and runs the public school system in the United States. And what I have suggested is that the effort should be to, this is an emergency, it's a national emergency, to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. And one way to do it is to

hire teachers who are fabulous teachers rather than necessarily members of the union. I have come to oppose public workers unions. I am a very strong supporter of unions in the private sector. Why do I think there's such a difference between unions in the public sector and the private sector? In the private sector management is arguing, bargaining with its own money and with the money of shareholders. In the public sector, there's only one side. There is the teachers union, and then there's a school committee that is dealing with the taxpayers' money, not their own. And so it's a very skewed power balance. So, as supportive as I am of private sector unions,

I am in a position of public sector unions. They're very destructive. And I think without the teachers union, teachers who are really skilled will be able to get jobs. They would not have to worry about the seniority of teachers who long since have given a really creative teaching and we have to improve the public educational system. I had in my late wife and I had a classmate of we have a son who's now 44 who went to the public schools in Cambridge. He has a friend, first name Eugene, who was black kid from Roxbury, whose mother understood that the schools in Roxbury

were terrible, the schools in Cambridge were pretty good. He lived in our house, Monday to Friday, and he went to school with Isaac in the Cambridge Public Schools. Elsewhere I would show up the school committee meetings when there was bargaining between the teacher's union and the school committee. The teacher's union objected to our being there. We argued with taxpayers. We have a kid in the school and we have his best friend lives with us and goes to school with them. We have a real interest. And the school committee walked out of the bargaining session. The City Council then reconsidered its vote and they voted that citizens,

taxpayers, parents of kids in the school could not show up to these negotiation sessions. I thought that was absolutely outrageous, but I understood why because these contracts are crazy. But I understood why because these contracts are crazy. No sane municipality should enter into some of these contracts. And so I have become an opponent of the National Teachers Association, the Cambridge Teachers Association. I don't think there should be unions for public employees because there's no real bargaining going on. And I would think that the public school system will never be improved as long as the teachers are unionist. So that to you as at the core of the problem that results in the kind of inequality of opportunity that affirmative actions design itself.

Correct. So if the educational system in the elementary and high school levels is improved, we would need affirmative action. These kids would get good educations. So from all backgrounds, poor kids in the United States will get good education. If public unions are abolished. Correct. And but do you more than said, only the postal service would probably work better too. That's a whole another conversation. But do you at the core of the problem of inequality in universities that diversity, inclusion and equity programs that are trying to solve is the public education system of secondary

education? Yes, correct. Elementary and secondary. Elementary and secondary education. Well, then is there use? What is the benefit? What is the drawback of DIE, diversity inclusion and equity programs at universities that covered? It's an affirmative action, basically. And what it does is it allows the system of elementary and secondary education to be bad because they could say, oh, we get our kids into Harvard.

Yes, but you haven't educated them. And it covers up the wound. And I think a little never-improved as long as we're able to cover up the wound. And as I said, affirmative action is going to be abolished by the Supreme Court. It's a clear violation of equal protection. What's sandwiched, day-to-conner understood, but ignored intentionally, but as an experiment. And I believe it's gonna be abolished and that's gonna have, that's gonna force

the elementary and high schools to get serious. Do you see the same issues that you discussed now at Harvard at MIT? We're here in Boston, so I have to talk about the great universities here in Boston. You've written about MIT. I'm a university I love. I'm a research scientist there. Do you see the same kind of issues there? Yes, I do. Do you remember, can you explain the case of Dorian Abbott lecture that was canceled on MIT? Yeah, well, this is not the only, it's not the only incident. There have been incidents all around the country of academics, professors who have used it, don't comport with the, as the great Lily and Helm and another friend of my late wife said they, they, she

said she refused to cut her garments in order to fit the fashions of the day. Dorian Abbott didn't cut his suit to fit the fashions of the day in his intellectual suit. And so he was, this has happened that Princeton, this has happened that Harvard, this has happened that MIT, the great universities in the country have decided that the clash of ideas is not such a good idea because some people's feelings

will be hurt. Well, there was quite a revolt against it. Fire sounded the alarm. And then in the end, the universities were, I believe, Abbott was invited to come back. I think he turned them down. He shouldn't have turned them down, but he did. And when the light is cast upon these situations, the universities back down because they're so

barris. And the newspapers, because newspapers depend on the first amendment in order to exist, newspapers tend to give pretty good publicity to these cases of such issues. So they grow the universities? Yes. So they really emphasize they catalyze the embarrassment. Yes. So is that one of the ways?

Is that the best way to fight all of this? Yes. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. You've written about MIT's connection to Jeffy Epstein. Yes. He was well connected at MIT and at Harvard. What lessons do you draw about human nature, about universities, about all of this from the saga? Let me say this.

I believe that universities, if somebody was, for example, donate to a university and it's on the requirement that the building be named the epitome. If the university is taking donations and the person is funding a building and wants to build named after them, the building should be named after him, however, the Harvard is facing this now with the Sackler building because Sackler, the Sackler has become now a persona known grata because of their role in producing the opioids that caused a huge scandal, a soapy, or addiction. There are people who want to remove the name, the sacra from the saccharotmins, you may

have heard. Larry Bakow, the president of Harvard, to his credit, has refused to do that. And if it reminds people that the money was earned through selling opioids, that's good. That's good that people understand that that's where the Sackles got their money. They should be reminded in my undergraduate alma mater Princeton, there's a movement to remove the name Woodrow Wilson. Because Wilson was president of Princeton before he became governor of New Jersey, before he became president of the states. How he got to be governor of New Jersey was he was so insufferable that the trustees of Princeton got an nomination to run for governor of New Jersey.

They had to, we got to get this guy out of here. And not because he was anti-black and anti-semitic because the trustees were as well, but because he just was insufferable. He drove the faculty crazy and they got about. And so Princeton was thinking of changing the name. I wrote a letter to President Icekroger, Princeton saying, you know, this is part of the university's history.

You don't want to rewrite history falsely. William Wilson was the president of this institution. He was one of your predecessors. He never answered me either. I think these people, you know, they know they have no answer. The reason I didn't get a response from President Icecruva is the same as the reason I didn't get a response from the headmaster of Milton the Academy.

They understand that what they're doing is violative of the fundamental precepts of academic institutions. They're ashamed, they feel they have no choice because they feel that they would be criticized for racism, phobia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Curricized by how many people? Well, they feel that they would be criticized by students

and parents and donors. I disagree with that. I actually think there are more people out there that agree with me than agree with them by a large margin, by a large margin in what I call the real world, which is the world outside the campus. But academics are afraid they be criticized. They're incredibly thin skinned. I want to say academics, I mean, academics, I mean academic administrators, did very thin skin, politically correct, holy and then now. As I said, I would fire 95% of them and I would be more careful in who I elected to any

institution. So I said, Pauline Gay is probably going to be a disaster at Harvard. So it takes guts, it takes courage to be in the administration when the task of protecting the freedom of speech is there. And also, which in part requires you to admit and to uphold the mistakes you have done in the past. Correct. Not to hide them. Correct. And that to you, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein for Harvard and for MIT is a very recent mistake. Well, this is a debate whether it's a mistake. They took money from him. Yes. Okay. Is it a mistake to take money from bad people? Do you have to do a moral test of a potential donor. I don't think so.

It's complicated because- If there are no conditions attached to it, I think it's emotionally complicated. I don't think that it is rationally complicated. It's emotionally complicated. It's particularly complicated if they want naming rights. Yes, you know, the Jeffery Epstein biological laboratory That would be a problem from most universities. I

don't think that naming rights have to be given to somebody that you don't think is worthy of having the name I think the university has the right to say no will will take your money, but we will not name the building after you. I think they have a right to do that. There's some degree in which you whitewash the name, though. If you, not, not, not with naming rights, but if you take the money, if you take the money, it allows the person in public discourse to say that they're collaborating, they're working together with Harvard and with MIT.

Well, I have a problem with universities making morals tests, I'll share, of donors, because not every donor is as bad as Epstein, but some of the donors made their money in industry by being repatious, by paying low wages, by exploiting people. You can make the case that accepting money from the Department of Defense from DARPA, from the United States organizations that contributed to waging war and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians over the past few decades.

Folks like the 10-year professor, known child skill, make the case that that is far more evil than accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein. Yes. Still, Jeffrey Epstein is a known pedophile. Yes. So that's why I say I would not give him naming rights. I think the university has the autonomy to not give naming rights. But I think that giving morals tested donors is a Pandora's box. What do you think about the aftermath of the Jeffrey Epstein saga?

It feels like I'm not familiar with Harvard's response, but MIT's response seemed to fire a few scapegoats and it didn't seem like a genuine response to the evils that human beings are capable of sort of rising to the surface, the description in a fully transparent way of all the interactions that happened in Jeffy Epstein and what that means. Yeah, what that means about the role of money in universities, what that means about just human beings in power. Money is essential to run the university. One of the reasons is essential is because the university is artificially, artificially requires huge

massive money. And that's partly because of the administrative army that they support. And they wouldn't be less dependent on the Jeffrey Epstein's or the world if they didn't have the sort of all part of the same circle. But there's a tension here. You're saying we shouldn't be putting a moral test on money, but actually if you make, if you expand the amount of money needed to run the university, you're going to make less and less more and more unethical decisions. Correct.

And the system, I am flexible enough to say that I don't think I would name a building after somebody who was truly evil. I think university has the right to limit the naming rights for a donor. If I was an absolutist, I would not even say that. I'm not an absolutist. I have my limits. And that's one of them. The Jeffrey Epstein biological laboratory, it's a little bit much. It feels like there should be a requirement on, there should be more requirements on who to

accept money from. But the question is that the concern you have is about who gets to decide and what's the alternative correct i think there is no alternative i think the turning down donation because you you don't approve of the conduct of the donor is a pandora's box but i'm just sick and by the fact that an evil human being was allowed to walk in the halls of a university I love. So what do we do with that? Well, you tell me that you know the student's arrival or you tell me that the faculty members are really you tell me some of the administrators are evil.

But that doesn't. Sure, sure. So saying scapegoating, saying that Jeffy Epstein is evil can help us forget, can aid us in forgetting that there is other evil in the world. And some of it might be roaming still the halls of MIT and Harvard. Hey, listen, I won't tell you the name, but I represented somebody in the MIT administration a few years ago who was charged with sexual and properties against students. And as a lawyer, I represented that person.

People said, how could you represent some of the people I represent at bad people? See, how can you represent them? I said, well, if I was a cardiologist and this person had a hard attack on the street, I didn't to live a CPR, I would have my license taken away. I'm a lawyer. The only difference between my obligation and the dothosobligation is the constitution gives people the right to a system of counsel. They don't have the counsel. There's nothing about the assistance of cardiologists. I have a very high duty to represent unpopular people. Well, I think I apply the same test to college donors.

The university should not have a morals test. Who's money to take. I do draw a lot about naming rights or buildings. And I say that's an inconsistency with my absolutionism. But I just emotionally, I just can't deal with having, you know, as I said, the Jeffrey Epstein biological laboratory. Well, for me emotionally, there's nothing that sickenens me more in the university than the abuse of power. Right. And there's a little awful lot of people who abuse power at university. And especially when it comes to abuse power of the students. So sexual harassment, so in the realm of

sexual abuse of power and all kinds of other. Well, it's a crime to use one's power position in order to take sexual advantage of a student. It's a crime. Yeah. This is not a close question. Yeah, but it's there's a legal crime. And there is a deeply ethical crime and there's an emotional response that I have.

You are a good lawyer and perhaps a good man to want to defend some folks who are evil in this world. I don't think I have that emotional fortitude. Well, you shouldn't be a criminal defense lawyer or a cardiologist. I think you're right. I'm still deeply sick and by Jeffrey Epstein and the faculty, the administration, that still might be in these great American universities that are abusing their power in small ways and big ways. But that's human nature. You get a little bit of power and you're in bad manner, a bad woman and you take advantage

of it. We see that in the smallest of ways and in the biggest the ways. And institutions and regimes all across the world. Boy Harvey, it's a complicated situation. Well, it's a complicated world. And it's complicated to be a human being. And this is nothing new. And we should talk about it, without restriction. All right, just a linger on liberal arts in 2014, and probably still today, you wrote that liberals are killing the liberal arts.

Yes. So can you explain? Yes, the problem with I'm a political liberal. The problem with the The problem with the political left is that it has divided between what's called progressives and liberals. Liberals are people of the left who believe in the first amendment, an absolute first amendment, and in due process of law. And the problem with what progressives now, in the pursuit of equality, what they view as equality, they're willing to bend those rules. And this movement actually started in Brandeis. The critical, it's The critical race theory started at Herbert Mark Kuzum,

was a professor at Brandeis and he came up with his theory. The theory was this, this is right out of war well, in order to create true equality in a society where you have some downtrodden and some who are the uber mentioned. In order to create real equality, you have to reduce the rights of the upper classes, and artificially increase the rights of the lower classes. That will produce of the lower classes. And that will produce an unequal treatment. True equality will be attained. This is nonsense. The idea of discrimination,

producing true equality is nonsense. My view is, as I've said earlier in our discussion, that the way to increase the opportunities for the lower classes is to give them real educations. And until we do that, it's not gonna to happen. And in order to do that, we have to overcome the problem of the teachers unions at the elementary and secondary school levels. Until we're willing to do that, honestly, and then improve those schools, we're gonna have a problem of large number of uneducated people who need a boost because we haven't given them proper

educations. What do you think about some of the more controversial faculty in the world? So an example somebody I've spoken with many times on Mike and offline is Jordan Peterson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work. Yes, but he is an outspoken critic of or proponent of free speech on Mike and offline is Jordan Peterson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work. Yes. But he is an outspoken critic of, or proponent of free speech on campus and he's been attacked quite a bit. He's a controversial figure. Which throw the university to protect the Jordan Peterson's of the world?

I think a university has an absolute, absolute, not relative, not worried, that absolute role, obligation to protect the academic freedom of even the most controversial faculty members. And you can imagine, out in university campus, you have more people who are outliers than you do in the general population. And that's the hope at least, hopefully, yeah. And those outliers have to be protected. They can't be pressure, they can't be fired, they can't be disabled from spewing their views, whether they're considered racist, whether they're considered to be, you know, a promoted idea of human society that's considered obnoxious.

It doesn't matter. If you can't, if you can't have freedom of thought on the college campuses, where can you, you know, then we're lost, as a society we're lost. And as an educational institution, education institutions no longer educate, they will indoctrinate. That we have to avoid it all, of course. And we should also remember that the outlier might also be the only bearer of truth.

So in Nazi Germany, speaking against the fascism,ist regime and communist Soviet Union speaking against communism. They might hold the key to solving the ailments of that society. Absolutely. And some of the most important discoveries in science, for example, were mocked at the beginning. We think of poor Charlie Darwin. Charlie, I see he is on nickname levels with you. Well, because we're talking about these big topics of sexism, racism, and hate, we should not forget about the smaller topics which might even have the much bigger impact,

which is what you're speaking to, which is outlier ideas and science. So basically welcoming controversial ideas and science. And by controversial, I mean, just stuff that most of the community doesn't agree on, it doesn't actually harm anyone at all. But even then, there's always pressure. One of the things I'm really concerned about is how little power young faculty have. That there's a kind of hierarchy, seniority, that's that universities have empowered by the administration, where young faculty that come in, they're kind of pre-tender. Yeah. There's a process in chasing tenure where you're kind of supposed to behave.

And there's an incentive to kind of fit in and to not be in all cast. And that's a really huge problem because oftentimes the youth is when the craziest, the biggest idea is the revolutionary ideas come. And if you're a force to behave and fit in and not speak out, then even in the realm of science, though, the innovation is stifled. Well, now you now you trigger my, uh, I'll tell you this story. The your trigger. This is good. In the mid 1980s, I decided to take a four month sabbatical from my law practice. Yes. Professor James Vroomberg, who was the time dean

of the Harvard Law School, heard about it. Heard about it from his wife, Elizabeth Betty Vroomberg, whom I was very friendly with because we were both on the HCOU, the HCOU of Massachusetts Board at the time. And the Betty told Jim that Harvey was taking this sabbatical. Jim called Harvey and asked Harvey if he would like to teach a course at the Harvard Law School because there was nobody who had teaching criminal law from the perspective of somebody who actually was in court litigated.

There was all theoretical. I said, sure I'll do it. So I taught a semester at Harvard Law School. The student evaluations were fabulous. Why? Because it was really interesting. They were hearing a lawyer who was talking about real cases. I actually brought in a few of my clients at some of the classes. And so Jim Cole, me and said, hurry, the students love this course. I'd like to offer you a tenure track position at the law school. You'd have to give up your law practice. I turned them down. He said, did you just say no? I said, yes, I said no. He said, how come? He says, nobody ever has ever invited administration

has ever turned down a tenure track offer at Harvard Law School. So because I could see that I'm not a good fit that the administrators are overrun the place that faculty members especially untenured who are afraid to say things that might not get, help them in the tenure quest. It's not a good fit for me. You saw this in the mid 1980s, all right? Yes, 1985. And I went back to my law practice.

I did not want to get into this meat grinder that I saw. If you were, I'd started to see it before the turn of the century because I co-authored the shadow university in 98 and then co-founded fire in 99. I was a really student of this phenomenon. What are some other aspects of this book, the Shadow University, that we may have not covered? Well, let me tell you a story. I believe I tell it in the Shadow University, it was a part of...

I'm loving these stories, Harry. The story is a fabulous. Let me tell you a story of, I did a tour of the country visiting campuses. I visited a college called Hamline University that believed it was in Indiana, Raleigh, Illinois, somewhere in the Midwest. And I attended a freshman orientation. Now listen to this. This was a freshman orientation. The administrators, the deans and the deenats and the deputy assistant deans and deenats, the third deputy assistant deans and deenats lined the students up according to their skin hues.

Oh boy. The blonde, blue-eyed white folks were at one end. The darkest African Americans who had bloodlines had not yet mixed with any of the whites on the other end. And the exercise was you had to tell how your race affected your success in life up until that point. I thought it was the most demeaning thing that why could imagine demeaning. I thought to myself, they could do the same about sexual orientation. They could do the same about religion. They could do the same about national origin,

it would be demeaning no matter what. And the students actually verbalized how their race had either been a plus or a minus. They did. And I thought it was so demeaning, it just confirmed and I thought it was so demeaning, it just confirmed all of my distaste for this kind of approach. Let me ask you from the interviewer seat. So I get to do this podcast and I often have to think about giving a large platform and having a conversation with very controversial figures and the level of controversy has been slowly increasing. What's the role of this medium to you? This medium of speech between two people and me speaking with a controversial figure, me or some other interviewer.

What's the role of giving platform to controversial figures? Say members of the KKK or dictators, people who are seen as evil? Well, we want to face the world with reality. And the reality is that there are some unpleasantnesses in the world. You know, running from genocide, right through to ordinary discrimination, to offensiveness, it's the real world as we know it exists, we are afraid to say it. Do we want to make people think that we live in a world where those words are not used,

where those animals that cities don't exist. The answer is no. But you can whitewash, you can normalize the use of those words, and you can whitewash the acceptability of certain leaders. So for example, interviewing Hitler in 1938, 1935, 1936, 1937, 38, those are all different dynamics there. But you can normalize this person and in so doing create enormous harm.

Well, see, I don't see it as normalizing. I see it as exposing. If more people had taken one come seriously, Franklin Roosevelt would have acted much sooner. He only got us into the war, as Congress gives, into the war. One of the Japanese made the mistake of attacking Pearl Harbor. But there were some people in the State Department, there were some people in the administration who were trying to get Roosevelt to see what Hitler was really like, and he was blind to it. And this was one of the greatest presidents in the United States ever had.

He was blind to it until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So I think that words, unpleasant ideas, as expressed by words, are essential for communicating fact and truth and reality. And that's why I think that we should not whitewash language. We should not whitewash the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pretty close to MIT. And Harvard. And Harvard. And your reality actually means something. Yeah, but from the role of the interviewer, that's something I have to think a lot about, whether interviewing Hitler, you said exposing.

I think it's hard to know what hit us like in a room, but it's also hard to know, I've never met Jeff, it's hard to know what Jeff, he has things like in a room, but I imagine to some degree, their charismatic figures. So exposing them in the interview setting is not an easy task. Well, interviewing is not an easy job. Yeah.

It's, it's not a good idea to have an interview, be an idiot. I know exactly what you're saying and I know why you're looking at me directly as you say it. I appreciate that, Harvey. All right. Let me ask about your friend, your colleague, Alan Dershwards. And I'll also ask about your review of his most recent book, but before then, it'll be interesting To ask what you think of him as a human being as a lawyer. He's a quite an interesting case He's represented some of the most controversial figures in history including Jeffrey Epstein including Jeffrey Epstein Mike Tyson Joanna Saan's Jim Baker and Jeffrey Epstein and even Donald Trump

So he's an interesting figure. What do you think about that? That's from Buello. What do you think about him as a human being as a lawyer, what he represents in terms of values and ideals? Well, he's a criminal defense lawyer. And the job of a criminal defense lawyer

is to represent accused criminals. The job of a criminal defense lawyer is to represent the accused criminals. He is a lifelong Democrat. He didn't represent Trump because he agrees with him politically. What if a Hillary, I believe you're all? He what if a Hillary? Yes. That's what he says. And I absolutely believe it.

He's a liberal Democrat. But he's a criminal defense lawyer as well as a professor. And I represented some very nasty people in my career. I wouldn't go out for coffee with them, but they have a constitutional rights to representation. And you take that very seriously. Yes. You notice something that people don't understand about the Derschowitz. He was asked by Trump to represent him in the second impeachment as well. He turned him down. Why do you think he turned down?

So people should know he represented Trump in the first impeachment trial. He represented only in the first. And he was successful in what Trump is impeached the second time he asked Alan to represent him. Alan has had a life-throwed policy of only representing somebody once, never twice, why? Because he never wanted to be house counsel to the mafia. And so he early on had this position. So, early on, had this position. He only represents somebody once. The mafia wants a lawyer who's in-house counsel, who represents them in all their cases.

So, that's the reason, and now, I never publicly explained that I know it's the fact, because I've known him from the day that we met at Harvard Law School in 1964. He was a first-year professor. I was a first year student. We both had Brooklyn accents and we hit it off. We've been close friends ever since. So there's some kind of unethical line that's crossed when you continuously represent a client.

Yeah, he thought it was not so much an ethical one and you have a right to represent Mafia people. But he didn't want to be House counsel. He didn't want to be, you know, have them ask him for advice and advance of what they were doing. He was willing to represent somebody who won, no matter how awful. I mean, Klaus von Buello was accused of killing his wife. These are pretty nasty people, pretty nasty people, but he didn't want to be House Council to any of them. So you wrote a review of Alan Dershowitz's new book on Donald Trump. The title of that book is Get Trump, the threat to civil liberties due process, and our constitutional rule of law. Can you summarize this book and your review of it? Yes, by the way, I co-authored it with my research assistant sitting right here.

Emily. Yes. And I thought that the book was another example of the fact that everybody is entitled to a defense and that Alan's being involved with Trump was purely professional. It was not political. It was not philosophical. And I thought that the fact that he was being criticized, he was being shunned because of his connection to the Trump,

I found very interesting that this is a guy who represented such a called them distasteful figures as Klaus von Bülo as Mike Tyson as O.J. Simpson a Sheldon Siegel. concealed. And when he was considered to be a skillful lawyer, made his reputation, and then he represents Donald Trump, who to my knowledge never killed anybody. And he's suddenly shunned. I thought the hypocrisy of it, the political preening, was very distasteful to me. And it was not only because he was my friend, if he wasn't my friend, I think I'd have the same view. The holier than now nonsense, the hypocrisy of it, they wouldn't talk to him on Martha's V and now. Alan and I are different.

I'm not so sensitive. I'm, someone doesn't want to talk to me. No problem, no problem at all. But Alan is considering how controversial his life has been. There's somewhat sensitive. He's somewhat sensitive and I have to tell him, you know, the Alan, don't let it get to you. He doesn't let it get to you.

I can relate. I can definitely relate. Taking on some controversial conversations, still wear my heart on my sleeve. It hurts all of it hurts. Yep. But maybe the pain makes you a better student of human nature. Yep.

Maybe that's the case for him. Nevertheless, the book has a makes a complicated and I think an interesting point. He opens the pair. He opens the book with not that Donald Trump has announced this candidacy for a re-electionist president. The unremitting efforts by his political opponents to quote get him to stop him from running at any cost will only increase. These efforts may pose the most significant threat to civil liberty since McCarthyism. So is he right? He's absolutely right. Because these attempted pros-

For example, the prosecution, the one prosecution that has been brought now with Alvin Brag in the Manhattan. I have looked at that and I don't believe the Trump is committed to crime. And yet, Greg was pressured to bring that people in his office with threatening to quit if he didn't indict, holy and proper, holy unethical, and he's going to lose the case. Has Trump committed crimes? Yes. Most of the tax crimes. He is cheated on taxes, his whole career as far as I could tell. He could easily be indicted for state and federal taxes, but they're not a sexy. And I think that he's become a target by ambitious politicians and vicious prosecutors. He has gotten some sympathy, which he

doesn't deserve. And a lot of it is, is pardon the phrase political correctness. The better people are not supposed to be trumpers. I had an interesting experience about Trump. I had two interesting experiences. The more recent one was I was in the house of Lauren Summers, the former president of Harvard, who was driven out by political correctness, by the way, he insulted women biologists.

I was in his house when he was still president of Harvard, when the Trump Hillary Clinton contest took place. And I was with Elsa. We were invited to the suburbs house in Brooklyn. And it looked like Hillary was going to win. And the Harvard faculty members, they were all celebrating, they were all figuring out what the cabinet positions were going to be, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then about 1130 at night, all of a sudden it was announced that in terms of electoral votes Trump had just eaked out of a victory that Hillary beat him in the popular vote, but he had won the electoral college and there was a immediate depression.

And that was being like quite over the room. The room with him, absolutely stone salad. And they were all disappointed. Well that was a memorable moment. And it told me that they were a little bit too overconfident. They were savoring, being part of a presidential administration. Ambition had been thwarted. I'm not a great fan of preening ambition.

I think it blinds people to realities. And the resulting arrogance from such ambition. And the arrogance, yes. It's one of the reasons I didn't accept Jim Vormberg's offer to be part of the academic community. I mean, I represent professors. I have friends who are professors. I represent students.

I have friends who are students. And I have a great regard for universities and higher education. But I was not about to become part of the culture. I thought that it was not good for me and not good for the institution either. That can, a culture that can breed arrogance. Yes. Self-importance.

Yep. And in a sense, the election of Donald Trump was a big FU to such. Correct. Which is why I think he, why I think he managed to pull it off. The jump topics a little bit. What do you think about something you've written about? What do you think about the mass surveillance programs by the NSA and also probably by other organizations, CIA, FBI, and others?

And broadly, what do you think about the importance of privacy for the American citizen? Okay. I believe that the FBI should be abolished. Because I believe that its culture was so corrupted by its first director, John Edgar Hoover, Jay Edgar Edgar Hoover, that is impossible to reform the FBI to make his agents honest, to force them to obey the Constitution, the first, fourth and fifth amendments especially. And it's a culture that cannot be changed. A Hoover established the culture and no FBI director since has been able to change it. If you go online, I did on YouTube a video for the ACLU of Massachusetts. It was when I was on the board. I was probably when I was president of the board

I was president of the board for two years. I was on the board for 20 years and I did a video about advising people to never ever ever talk to an FBI agent when they come back on your door Can you briefly explain the intuition? Yes, they have. Why not to talk to an FBI agent? They have a system.

When they come in and interview you, two agents show up. Never one. One asks the question, the other one takes notes. The note taking agent takes notes. And it goes back to the office and types up a report called a Form 302, which is the official record of what was asked and answered. So when I have a client interviewed by the FBI, I show up.

And I always agree, I almost always agree to the interview. But I bring a tape recorder. And I say, all right, I'm going to tape this. And they say, well, my regulation, we're not allowed to do the interview with this tape. The record is the 302, the H is taking notes. I say, well, I have a policy too. My policy is to never allow a client to be interviewed unless it's recorded.

So it's unfortunate, but we're gonna have to end this meeting and the agent's gonna believe. And I have never seen a form 302 that I consider to be accurate. The agents were right down what they wish you had said. Rather than what you said, it is a wholly corrupt organization that has not gotten any better since Hoover died. And fundamentally, the corruption is in the culture that is resisting the

the the the the the the the the United States, the first and fourth and fifth. Correct. It's not it's not financial corruption. It is it is corruption of the mission. And I think it should be abolished. And if we need a federal investigative agency, you should be abolished. And if we need a federal investigative agency, it should be a new name, a new culture, holy new members, a new director. And it's impossible to reform the FBI. Can you elaborate on what exactly is broken about the FBI?

Is it the famous saying from Stalin's KGB head, Barry, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Right. Is it that kind of process of? It's that kind of process. They decide who's guilty and then they go about concacting a case against a person who who they want to get. So the goal is not to find the truth or to solve the case and close it in Kansas reputations. But to show that an innocent man is guilty is also solving the case from their perspective. So to falsely convict or falsely imprison an innocent man is also solving the case. Well it closes the case and they fals, an innocent man is also solving the case. Well, it closes the case and they fall asleep prison isn't man. The rich is in closing cases. So that's the FBI, but broadly speaking about the surveillance aspect of this, what

are your views on the the right that an American citizen has to privacy? Well, what are tapping and electronic surveillance are very, very intrusive. And I think that the circumstances that these tools are used should be narrowed. For example, they're used in a lot of drug cases. Since I don't think drugs should be illegal in any event, I certainly

think that it's a terrible violation of privacy to use wiretapping in a drug case. I could see it in cases of murder, possibly in cases of serious extortion, but on other times, it has a crime where they wire a tap, especially drug cases, exactly drug should all be legalized anyway. I think it's the price we pay as society is not worth it. There's on the Wikipedia page for nothing to hide, you're cited. In fact, your book that you gave me today, three felonies a day is cited. So nothing to hide argument.

That's an argument that if you're a well-behaved citizen, you have nothing to hide in there for your privacy can be violated. Well, the problem is that under the federal criminal code, particularly the federal criminal code, it is very easy to be charged with a crime. Now why? Under the Constitution, the federal government does not have plenary criminal jurisdiction. That's up to the state.

How is it that the feds indict in so many areas of American life? It's because the Supreme Court has allowed the following absolutely insane situation to prevail. Anything can be made a federal crime if in the course of the commission of the crime the means of interstate communication or travel are used that means that if you commit a crime which is ordinarily would be a state crime, and you use the telephone or you send a letter, it suddenly becomes federal. That means that the limitation that the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution intended to keep the feds out of daily life and to give that jurisdiction to the state has been completely thwarted, because I can't think of a case where somebody doesn't use a telephone in the course of planning, discussing something that's arguably criminal. And so this limited authority, the federal government, to bring

charges in criminal cases is illusory. The feds can indict a ham sandwich. So basically everybody is guilty. And if the feds want to bring you in, they can find a way and that allows them to terrorize people who are dissidents. Yeah. What is broken? What works about the American criminal justice system from your perspective from all the jury system? The jury system.

Yes. You like the jury system. Every day citizens representing 12 ordinary people have to agree unanimously in order to convict. What do you think about the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court? What works and what is broken about the Supreme Court as an institution? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Well, this Supreme Court is, is, is, um, unfortunately fairly political. And, um, the current Supreme Court is overruling precedence, which are, it's really an improper. Impressidence cannot, should not be overruled so easily.

Um, it's about to overrul a affirmative action. Now, I'm opposed to affirmative action. I think I made that clear earlier on discussion. But still, it's a precedent and it should be given some respect. But in order to, in order to, respect, but in order to, in order to, in order to propagate a more conservative agenda, the court is treating precedent as if it doesn't have any role. And that's a huge mistake.

Some of the congressmen, the Democratic side, are looking to enlarge the court in order to basically do what Franklin Roosevelt was not able to do. And that has changed the court's philosophy. But I think that's very shortsighted because this is a long game. This is a republic we have here. And anyone who tries to, for example, enlarge the court from 9 to 12 in order to get more liberals on the court, then some other administration will try to enlarge it from 12 to 15 to get more liberals in the coin. You have a constant

Fiddling with very important institution. So the law should have more lasting power than the big ring the political big hearing of the day correct let me ask you you've lived one heck of a life and fought a lot of battles and you continue to do so with the Harvard Board of Overseas. First of all, thank you for that. But we're all human, we're all mortal. Do you ponder your death? Do you ponder your mortality?

Are you afraid of it? Well, let me say this. My father died at 48. He died because he smoked, he died at 48, because he smoked four packs of camels a day. He got a massive heart attack at 43. He continued to smoke despite death that he died at 48. So I did not expect to live this long,

because I thought it was genetic. It turns out it was cigarettes. So here I am. I'm going to be 81 on May 10th. I was born on May 10th, 1942, which was Mother's Day, coming to Italy. And I realized I'm not going to live forever. I also take pride in the fact that I have demonstrated that a lawyer does not have to go with a law firm in order to manage to make it. You can make your own right-year-old ticket. I've done that.

I agree that I've had an elite education. I went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, but I don't think you have to necessarily go to a lead institution in order to really make it. You need to work hard. But you shouldn't put yourself in a place where you're not going to feel comfortable and what's the word empowered like I was used to take to foreign birds. In the station, for a day of track position at Harvard Law School. I'll tell you one, one other story that illustrates this. I was originally pre-med freshman, South Four years at Princeton. I was in the pre-med program. Why? Because my parents wanted me to marry the daughter of our family physician. And the idea was, I was going to go to medical

school. I was going to go into medical practice with him in Hacconsactive, Jersey. We had moved from Brooklyn at the time, long story, why we had to move from Brooklyn, had to do with my father's, having a problem with the Furry's union having his life threatened. And we moved to Mayward through Jersey because he got a job in first shop in Bissech, New Jersey.

And a family physician, they had three daughters, the oldest of whom was my age. She went to Hackensack High School. I went to Bogota High School, both in North Burden County. And the idea was that she and I were going to marry. I was going to become, I was in a medical school, I was going to take become a partner of her father in his medical practice in Hackelsack. When he retired, I was to fellowship to spend that summer between my sophomore and junior year in Paris.

I was fluent by then. I had taken an accelerated French course in my freshman sophomore year. And I went to Paris. It was my first time out of the country and I spent the entire summer working, supporting myself, I participated in the airfare and I earned money for the room board. And I thought about my life and I decided, number one, I didn't want to be a physician, I wanted to be a lawyer. Number two, I didn't want to marry Carolyn.

And I came back, I changed from pre-med to pre-law. I broke up with Carolyn, who was by that time, school with Douglas, right down the road from Princeton. She had followed me. All right, followed her. And my life suddenly took a holy different term. So that summer in Paris, Paris had an outside effect of my life. Every year the Brownal Theater shows Casablanca, where Bogart has this great line,

he says, we'll always have Paris. And I think to myself, I always use Stade Elso. We used to see Casablanca every Valentine's Day, because it was such an important movie to me because Paris was transformative in my life. We went to Paris every year during my vacation. We went to Paris. That was where she took some great pictures. A visor, he's this high, this high, he'd be right up in the house. And so I always, I, I, and even after Elsa's death, I think has a black of twice now. She died in the 2020. And I've always, I always think, but I always have Paris.

Well, who has have Paris? Well, Harvey have Paris. Well, Harvey, like I said, I hope, I hope you're very successful in your, in your run for the Harvard Board of Overseers. I think what you stand for in the realm of freedom of speech is, uh, I think the thing that makes these universities great institutions in American culture and I'll do everything I can to help you succeed. And I just am really grateful for all the work you've done and I'm grateful that you will talk with me today.

This is amazing. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Harvey Silverglate. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Harry S. Truman. Once the government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition, it is only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes the source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you