The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Antisemitism on Campus with Rabbi Jay Michaelson

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is a journalist, teacher, and rabbi. He is the author of ten books, including The Heresy of Jacob Frank, which won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship.  He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination.  Jay is a frequent commentator on CNN and a contributor to Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The Forward, and other publications. Dr. Michaelson worked as an LGBTQ activist for ten years and has been included in the ‘Forward 50’ list of influential American Jews.  

🎵 So, good evening everybody. Welcome to Live from the Table. My name is Noam Dwarman. I'm the owner of The Comedy Cellar. I'm here tonight without Dan Natterman, who's, where is he, Max? In Maryland. In Maryland. And without Perry L., who has COVID for like the fifth time. I think they're boycotting my appearance. It's like a boycott divestment sanctions thing. I'm the one who's supposed to boycott it. Anyway, but we're here with J. Michelson, Rabbi J. Michelson. How do you like it?

How do you like it? I like it just J. Michelson. J. Michelson, who is a journalist, teacher, rabbi, and lawyer? Yeah, ex-lawyer. Ex-lawyer, but it's not in your bio, but I deduced it. He is the author of 10 books, including The Heresy of Jacob Frank, which won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for a scholarship. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish thought from Hebrew University. Oh, a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Yale Law. See, we didn't closet it. It's in there. Is that a, that's, Yale is no joke. And a non-denominational rabbinic ordination. Oh, non, what does that mean? You're not conservative. You're not reform. you're not Reformed,

you're not Orthodox. No. Exo. Ex-Orthodox. Really? Well, for like 10 years I was Orthodox practicing, yeah. Wow. Were you raised Orthodox?

No, I was raised conservative. I was like a nice Jewish boy from Long Island. And then I got into religious practice for like mystical, spiritual reasons, and the Orthodox have that in spades. Oh, that's very interesting. We should talk about that. Almost finished here. He's a frequent commentator on CNN. I always tell her these intros are too long, but this is it. CNN,

but you have a lot to recommend. You're a contributor to Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The Forward, and other publications. Dr. Michelson worked as an LGBTQ activist for 10 years and has been included in the Forward 50 list of influential American Jews. I'm not on that list. We should put you on there. You just pay off the right people. He lives outside of New York City. Where do you live? Montclair, New Jersey. Oh, who else lives in Montclair? Doesn't Coleman Hughes come from Montclair? Half of the media. No, Coleman's about to get married. And once he gets married, he's going to move to Montclair. I told him this. You know Coleman? Yeah. How do

you know Coleman? We're on CNN together a lot. Yeah. They like put him on as like the centrist and they put me on as the lefty and like, they let us fight it out. Oh, he and I are very, very close friends. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love hanging out with him. Um, uh, you know, we're really close friends. All right. So you, uh, the, the, you've written a lot. I think I invited you here first when you wrote about, I guess it was the Harvard and the university president. You timed it really well. Maybe you precipitated the resignation because you did the invitation before it happened. Then it happened. Then I wrote another article, and now here I am.

You're like right on the news. I do that a lot. All right, so let's take it step by step, because I'm very interested to get the reasonable left-wing perspective. You went to Yale Law School, so in some ways, I can understand where you're coming from. What was your take on these university professors? You seemed to defend them when the rest of us Jews were clutching our pearls. Yeah, defend and criticize is what I would say. So the people I want to criticize most is whoever was in the Harvard Public Affairs office, and Penn also, that basically said, we're going to

defer to our lawyers. There's a legal commentator by the name of David Latt, he has a sub-stack, and he interviewed a bunch of lawyers who do crisis prep, which is what this basically was. And the consensus was they were kind of in, can I say cover your ass on the podcast? You sure can. I just did.

Fuck yeah. All right. And that was the mode, like don't say anything that's going to be held against us, basically. So they knew they were facing hostile questions from Elise Stefanik. And the lawyer said, don't say anything. Just quote the policy and just do nothing. And that was exactly the wrong advice, right? That didn't read the room.

So that was the right legal advice. If I was on the legal team, I might say the same thing. They were worried that down the road, if somebody, you know, that they could be opening Harvard up for, you know, for litigation or for at least some kind of enforcement action or congressional inquiry if she had said something that they then didn't enforce. So she's like, yes, of course this would violate the policy. How dare you even suggest such a thing? And then they didn't enforce it. That would be legal action. But that's the wrong advice. I think you're old enough to remember, probably listeners or not, that Mike Dukakis question, which was asked in the presidential campaign when you were seven years old. There was a question asked to him that, what if he was against the death penalty? About the death penalty.

Yeah. And he's like, what if your wife was raped and murdered? It was this awful question. And what he was supposed to do was be outraged, right? That's what that question was for. Instead, he gave a legalistic answer. And it was one of the many things that sunk that campaign. But what... Okay, but what should they have answered? Well, so the question was a trick question, right? It was a trap. The question was, if somebody calls for genocide against the Jews, first of all, we could talk about that phrase later, would that violate the harassment policy? The right answer would have been to say, that's a horrible thing, I condemn it completely. As to

whether it violates the harassment policy, that depends on context. Instead, she only said the second half, but that's accurate. So let's say we're in a college seminar, you and I are in a college seminar, and I say something asinine about Israel. Israel is a colonialist state. It should be driven into the sea. All the Jews are murderers or something like that. But in a college seminar where we're discussing political science, I don't think that's harassment, right? That may be a bigoted, asinine thing to say, but it's not harassment. It's harassment if I harass you. If I say the same sentences at a Shabbat services at Harvard Hillel, that's obviously harassment, because I'm going there and I'm harassing you. So it does. It depends on context. Again, so I'm defending her answer, but I'm not defending the tactic of answering in that way, which was, in my view, collectively... Can I tell you that I think you're way too informed, and because you're so informed, you're not receiving it the way people like me received it?

Yeah, I mean... What I heard was, this woman who runs the university, that scored minus 10, I think, on the fire. What is fire? Freedom in... Whatever they say.

Rights in education. They actually scored below zero. Who was involved in firing a lawyer as a dorm dean because he had the nerve to defend Harvey Weinstein. But most criminal people, most criminal defendants are unsavory. She was involved in getting Roland Fryer, tried to get him fired and have his tenure revoked.

There's been some other things that people who have, a professor who invited Charles Murray was then not rehired. I mean, there's a whole list of things that Harvard did. So each one of those examples was about faculty, right? Or, you know, or guest speakers. Right, right.

That's what I'm saying. You're getting too technical. I don't think that's too technical. Well, let me just say that this university that was so fussy and so outrageous in terms of communicating to their students that they had every reason to expect to be protected from things which might bother them, now was equivocating about the advocacy of genocide. And those two concepts just can't hold. It's got to be one or the other.

Yeah, I mean, I get that narrative. That makes a lot of sense. But it does fall apart in the details, right? And the details do matter. Then the details are wrong. You can't have a university... The details are not wrong. You can't... This is why...

One second. This is why it was a Trek question. Let me say one more thing. I promise I'll say it. You can't have a university which says, if you're an attorney who takes the wrong

criminal defendant, we're not going to let you be a dean of a Winthrop House, whatever it was. But you guys possibly can march saying, kill all the Jews. That can't be. Come on. I'm going to defend that.

Okay, go ahead, defend. Because there's a huge difference between being an employee of the university and being a student. Students say stupid shit all the time. They have since as long as they were students. And their right to say stupid shit should be defended by the

university, including shit that is extremely offensive, if it crosses the line into harassment. So let's even say, let's take a borderline case. Let's take a case where there's like a ceasefire rally, nothing overtly anti-Semitic, but a ceasefire rally that happens, again, at the Harvard Hillel during Shabbat services. That's like borderline harassment, right? You're a Jewish kid. You're just trying to go to services. And here are these protesters blocking your entrance or whatever it is that they're doing. That to me starts to look like harassment. But if you're just saying something, if you're a student who's saying something stupid, offensive, even racist, even anti-Semitic, this is why it was a trick question. Again,

do I think it's good? Of course not. Do I think that the university should condemn that speech? If somebody marches down a Harvard yard and says, kill all the Jews, yes, obviously they should condemn it. But that's the thing in all of the headlines, well, in most of the headlines that cover this thing, they say, Claudine Gay refuses to condemn anti-Semitism. That's not what she said. She was asked a trick question about, does it violate a harassment policy? Which actually, for me, is a very Jewish question. It's halakhic, right? This is like a Talmud study thing. It's like a trick question. It's like, well, if a man's ox kills somebody else, is that person liable? That's horrible.

What are we talking about? Like a guy just died because of an animal. Well, we talk about whether he's liable. Don't you have it backwards? Shouldn't the university be a place where people who defend, like there was one woman where I have it here who, I think she'd written a book on testosterone and she had certain views about male and female sex

differences. Larry Summers had said things about sex differences. Charles Murray has various views on things. I mean, it's about a student. Right, but I'm saying, shouldn't universities stand for having intellectual people whose views might be quite unpopular being able to speak to students as opposed to allowing students to run amok, perhaps carrying swastikas or whatever it is. Why would that be part of the university's mission?

The university's mission is to have students grapple with difficult ideas, some of which may be true. And this obviously metastasizes into so many things in life where Twitter was banning things and the New York Times was saying that lab leak theory was racist. I mean, it all comes from this same seed. Yeah, so this whole anti-cancel culture thing, I don't know. So let me go back to some of your specific examples. So now I'm a woman who was, God forbid, was a victim of sexual assault when I was a teenager. I'm living in a dorm. Literally, the guy in my dorm defended Harvey Weinstein. I think you can make a pretty good case that that dude should not be a dorm counselor, whatever the hell his job was. Right? That's not just like my feelings are hurt or somebody said something that was offensive.

That's like the guy who defended a convicted rapist is like the dude in my dorm room. I think that's like a little weird. You went to Yale Law School. He's innocent. I thought he was, yeah, well, I can keep that part out. Why would he be convicted? Why would he go to jail? He went to jail.

Yeah. So he's clearly not innocent. Yeah, but he went to jail after the trial. He was innocent during the trial. This is your example, not mine. I don't know what the chronology of this example is. I would say that if there's somebody, if he was already guilty...

All right, so that's an example. It's not just about hurt feelings or something like that. Now, let's turn it around. What other crimes shouldn't a lawyer be able to defend and keep his job at the university? It's not about keep his job. It's keep a specific job. He's the dude in the dorm. You would feel okay sending your daughter to that dorm where the guy who defended Harvey Weinstein is the person in charge of keeping her safe? Absolutely. Come on. No, there's no way you would. You'd be like, wait a minute. This guy's the guy. I mean,

I understand what lawyers do. You understand what like, wait a minute. This guy's the guy. I mean, I understand what lawyers do. You understand what lawyers do. But nonetheless, I mean, of all of the situations, give him some other job. I am shocked. I'm honestly shocked to hear you say this. First of all, you know the famous story that John Adams. And I just want to say, I don't know the details. If this was your example, so there may be details I don't know about. Sullivan, is it?

Ronald Sullivan. It's not a story I know about. So I'll take it fully back if there's facts I don't know about. But in the way that you've laid it out. No, there's no facts you don't know. It's as simple as that. I just don't know that that dude is the guy who I want

keeping women safe in dorms. It's not that I don't want him on the faculty of the law school. He should certainly be. Look, Alan Dershowitz is on the faculty of the law school. He does a lot of things. You had him on the show.

So it's like, fine. So Johnny Cochran shouldn't be on the faculty. He should totally be on the faculty. But should he be the guy whose job it is? He's a defense attorney. He's not... Come on. You really wouldn't go for that.

This is like a crazy hypothetical. Hold on. This is a crazy hypothetical. No, no. This is not a hypothetical. It actually happened. No, like if one of our kids was in the court. And absolutely, I would tell my daughter, he's not defending the idea of rape.

He's defending a criminal defendant. I get it. But he wasn't a public defender who had to take the case. He was hired. He took the money. He did the thing. Like, I'm not like saying, again, I'm not canceling him. So you know that John Adams defended one of the people, one of the British soldiers at the Boston Massacre.

So he wasn't the head of a dorm at Harvard, was he? But it's a very context-specific question. But he was elected president. All right, I think we're going off on a byway. No, no, no, this is interesting. So then he was elected president, so there is an analogy there. The American people were able to say

that this guy who defended one of the murderers at the Boston Massacre was still able to be trusted in charge of America. I'm just, look, the example you gave was very context-specific. I'm not saying he should be canceled. I'm not saying he should be fired. I'm saying that in that particular thing. But let's go back to this allegation.

So if they're really students running amok with swastikas, which was the phrase that you used. I kind of want to stay on the lawyer thing because— What do you want me to say? I've said what I said. It's a context-specific case where a person is in charge of the safety and well-being of students in an extremely vulnerable situation. Right, but are you saying, therefore, that you don't trust a defense attorney to properly look after— First of all, the safety and well-being, I mean, this is kind of not even true, but let's say it was true.

I mean, in my dorm—so when I was a freshman in my first year at Columbia, a student, there were two male students, one of whom was gay, the other was straight. The straight student sexually harassed the gay student. The RA on my floor, who happened to be a conservative Christian, said, well, boys will be boys, we're not going to report this, we're not going to press charges. So I havehand experience with what dorm life is like in sexual harassment. So are you saying... It suggests to me that somebody who voluntarily chose of all of the criminal defendants in the world to take this one where

there was, come on, an overwhelming amount of evidence even before the trial. He's innocent until proven guilty. But as a lawyer, you know, you have the decision about which clients you're going to take. So of all the... Well, somebody's got to defend him. Okay, but of all the defendants in the world, you chose to, you, this hypothetical lawyer, chose to take this money from Harvey Weinstein

of all people, and now you're going to be in this role of being the guardian? It is a vulnerable situation for people in dorms, and I just don't know that it's that horrible. I'm not, I didn't plan to talk about this. It's not even a case I even knew about until you mentioned it. But I'm just saying, like, there's this hyperbole that, like, oh, if I feel bad, somebody gets canceled or something like that,

but that's not really how it is. And again, there hasn't been a single example where it's been a student saying something stupid, getting canceled. No, I agree. And if they are running amok with swastikas, that violates the harassment policy, because if I'm a Jewish kid walking across campus and there's people running amok, that's your phrase, with swastikas, that violates the harassment policy. Because if I'm a Jewish kid walking across campus and there's people running amok, that's your phrase, with swastikas, that is going to come... Well, how about not running? How about just... Wait, just a second. I just want to say one thing and then we'll move on. I don't think you could draw any... I don't even think you

actually believe this, that you can draw any conclusions from someone to say that a criminal defense attorney... Criminal defense attorneys, essentially, they handle cases of people who are accused of terrible things. Some of them are innocent. Some of them are not. You say you knew that Harvey Weinstein was guilty. But, of course, how many cases have we seen go up in smoke like that? You don't know. But to compare that to somebody who would therefore not care about somebody being raped in the dorm is amazing to me. No, my point about the RA, which is a true story, that happened on the floor of my dorm,

that story is to say that this is a heightened case. Like we would pretend you could use a lawyerly term if we wanted heightened scrutiny, that this is an extremely sensitive situation. And we use rules that we normally wouldn't use. We normally wouldn't say, we can't, we wouldn't say to that lawyer, you know, you can't work at the 7-Eleven or you can't be a law professor at Harvard Law School. We would just say that, well, gosh, this is a pretty sensitive situation. These people are, you know, young. I would tell, I would tell my daughter, well, gosh, this is a pretty sensitive situation. These people are, you know, I would tell, I would tell my daughter, honey, you're, you're out to lunch here. He's an attorney. This has nothing to do. And you have no reason to think he's not a good person. I would think reasonable people could disagree about that. I guess you're right. Clearly that's already

happened. So, so, all right. So then, um, you think they can carry—the students can carry swastikas. So, again, any time there's—if they're carrying it in any way that is creating an unsafe environment or whatever the exact words were from the Harvard harassment policy for any student, then that's in violation of the harassment policy. But you can— But that wasn't the question, was it? But I'm asking you. The question was calls for the genocide of the Jewish people.

So I don't even know what that means. Let's take a... Nobody ever says, I hereby call for the genocide of the X or Y people. Nobody says that. What they make are statements which are tantamount to calls for genocide. So let's flip the script for a second. So B'Tzal Smotrek, a minister in the current government, said that the Palestinians should be transferred out of Gaza, that Gaza should be turned into a, you know, there should be not just settlements, but the whole place should be reoccupied. Palestinians, now we found out today that there's even actual, I can't believe this is happening, apparently there really are conversations between Israel and Congo, that the Congo is going to take in Palestinian, quote unquote, refugees from Gaza.

Is that a call for genocide? It's certainly a call for ethnic cleansing. So now already, just the phrase call for genocide, just that phrase already requires interpretation. But it's not a call for genocide. So we don't know. To me it is. It's a call for ethnic cleansing or transfer population. Ethnic cleansing, hold on.

Ethnic cleansing, as horrible as it is, is not genocide. So I wrote an article for the Forward attacking the use of the word genocide and discussing Israel's Operation Gaza. The left hated me for it. That's fine. I went through the Genocide Convention. There are five prongs. Genocide invites killing. Actually, in the Genocide Convention, forced population transfer is one of the five indicia

of whether the international law crime of genocide is being committed. So it's not sufficient in and of itself, but it's one of the five components. So go ahead, make your point. So my point is that even the phrase call for genocide requires interpretation and context. So we saw the controversy, it's like a month or two ago, around the phrase from the river to the sea. Most Jews, I know most Jews, a lot of Jews, myself included, see that as, if not a call for genocide, something pretty close to it, right? However, there are also a lot of Jews and non-Jews who don't see that phrase as a call for genocide. So it depends on context. Already, the answer that

she gave was factually accurate, but politically stupid. She gave the correct answer, that it really depends on context. If somebody is at a political rally and says Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea, is that a call for genocide or not? It really depends. So, I'm looking at the definition of genocide. I don't see moving people in the UN thing. You can pull it up. It's in my, you can just use the J-Mind. Killing members of a group, causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of the group,

deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring children of the group. Oh, just children. All right. So, transferring children to another group, in other words, taking their children away. So, you're

giving the ambiguous cases, and they... Give me the most crystal clear case you can realistically imagine. Right, but she didn't, she purposely, because she had started out with River of the Sea, Stefanik, and then she, like a lawyer, went to the ad absurdum. She says, what if they're just purely calling for genocide? Kill all the Jews. Kill all the Jews.

So that's not what she said, though. She said call for genocide. You said kill all the Jews. So I would say, yeah, if somebody gets up in a public space and says kill all the Jews and there's, you know, different kinds of people around, that sounds like a violation of the harassment policy. No, no, no. Your point relies on the notion that the things being said are not actually calls to genocide. You're saying they say river to the sea. No, no, let's say it's kill all the Jews. I mean, I would say... But your earlier point about river to the sea... Right, she just said it kill all the jews i mean but your earlier point about river to the sea right she just said it depends on context but using that example her con when she says it depends on context what she means you could say that but not it's not really a call to genocide that's the context they mean they say river to the sea but they're not it's they don't

actually mean kill all the jews and stefani wait, but what if it is a call for genocide? Is that violate the policy? And she says, you know... It still depends on context. I mean, again, I'm not defending... So give me a context where it's okay. It depends on what the phrase is. I mean, I could say, I don't know, I'm thinking off the top of my head, I can't think of any context in which someone's standing up and saying, kill all the Jews. I can't either. Okay. So in that context, if that's the call for genocide, then it doesn't, then that's it. That's it. That violates the policy. But there are a lot of ways.

I think any call for genocide, listen. How about Tibet as part of China? No, that's, I. That is a call for genocide. We know historically that the Chinese Communist Party has occupied Tibet since 1959. Your podcast is going to get in trouble for me even saying this. You're not going to get distributed in China. We know that a million Tibetans were murdered by the Chinese regime in one of the largest genocides of the last century. And when someone says Tibet is part of China, that's a call for genocide. Tibet is not part of China. It's a nation occupied by China. Well, look, I am actually on the other side. I'm to the right of you on this in the sense that I would let people say whatever the hell they want. I really don't care. So you're only claiming that it's a double standard because— I only care about the double standard.

I don't think that many people— So in that case, you would say she was right but hypocritical. So you would say— That's what I started by saying. I think the real outrage is with the utter hypocrisy for years they've been telling us about trigger warnings and trigger warnings based on what because the kids are so sensitive and safe spaces and crying rooms and all this stuff and then all of a sudden say but you know calls for genocide that that's you know we don't we

that should be okay but finish the sentence she didn't say that should be okay that's where i'm going to keep harping on this point she said it, but finish the sentence. She didn't say that should be okay. That's where I'm going to keep harping on this point. She said it doesn't violate the harassment policy. She didn't say it would be okay. In fact, in her subsequent statement, she said, well, that's a big difference. There's a huge, there's a lot of things that are not okay, but don't violate a harassment policy. If I steal some of the equipment from this kind of cool recording studio, that's definitely not okay, but it doesn't violate a harassment policy. It was a very specific question calculated to bring about this result, and that's what happened.

Here's your question. Stefano, can you say yes to that question of, does calling for genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules on bullying and harassment? Claudine Gay. Calling for the genocide of Jews is anti-Semitic. Stefano, so? Claudine Gay. And that is anti-Semitic. Stefanik, so, Claudine Gay, and that is anti-Semitic

speech, and as I have said, when speech crosses into conduct, Stefanik, and it's a yes, I've asked the witnesses, when speech crosses into conduct, we take action. So, what I take from that is that anti-Semitic speech is okay.

Not okay. Stop saying okay. Well, allowable. Every time. It's not allowed. It's only not in violation of a harassment policy. Okay, let's define that as okay for these people. It's not. No, I'm not defining it as okay. Okay, not in violation of policy.

Not of a harassment and bullying policy. Meaning you can do it. You can engage in it on campus. And it won't violate the harassment policy. If you say something anti-Semitic. Does it violate some other policy? Sure, it probably does. Why didn't she mention it?

Because she wasn't asked that question. Oh, come on. That was exactly the trap that I mentioned at the top. Come on. That was exactly... It's hate speech. You have three presidents of two Ivy Leagues and MIT, and they are...

What are they, Department of Motor Vehicle Bureau? Who can't answer? They ask like robots? Claude Engay is a quantitative scholar who's known in the academic circles as a kind of a bureaucrat and a technical thinker. But three of them! Look, the pen president, too,

law professor, not really known. These were fish out of water. Why are you turning yourself into a pretzel to defend the indefensible? I'm not in a pretzel at all. You're the one who's saying that violates a harassment policy is the same as okay.

That's not true. There are plenty of things. Don't hang me up on okay. You know what I mean by okay. No, I don't. There are plenty of things that are not okay, that are racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or homophobic or what have you,

that are terrible, that we condemn. As she did. She said it's anti-Semitic. But itobic or what have you, that are terrible, that we condemn. As she did, she said it's anti-Semitic, right? But it doesn't violate a harassment or bullying policy. And you should support that because you're the one waving the free speech flag. I do support it. None of the examples that you gave were about a violation of a harassment and bullying policy.

They were about faculty members or they were about guests of organizations that were invited by faculty members. They were about people getting platforms. So you're telling me in all this repeated questioning, the head of MIT, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania, when they were asking about does it violate the harassment or bullying policy, all of them knew, well, it doesn't violate that policy,

but it certainly violates other policies. And not one of them thought to say, well, it's not the harassment policy which it violates. It violates this policy. Even when they were looking stupid and ridiculous to the world, not one of them thought to say, let me just be clear, they're not allowed to say it. It's just a different rule that prohibits it. I'm not even sure that they're not allowed to say it is even accurate. I'm not even sure. If you get up and you, if somebody gets up and says something racist at a university, again, in the right context,

let's say it's a college classroom. So somebody gets up and defends Charles Murray. That was your example. Charles Murray- No, they didn't defend him. They wanted to let him speak. So let's say that Charles Murray speaks. He says the bell curve.

Black people are stupider than white people. Okay, so now somebody in class says, you know, I read the bell curve, and I was really, this person says, I'm afraid of somebody taking this clip out of context. I read this book. I'll be the one to do it. Yeah, I know.

I read this book, and I think it's smart. This is a great idea. I think he's totally right. This is why black people score more poorly on text, on standardized tests. This is exactly right. That, to me, is a racist statement. And yet, I don't know, is that student going to be punished for saying something stupid in a classroom? Okay, well, first of all, I don't know that Charles Morey was coming to talk about the bell curve because the bell curve was so long ago. And in many of these cases, these speakers

are disinvited not for what they're going to speak about, but for other opinions that they might hold. So, for instance, at Stanford Law School, no speaker who was Zionist was allowed to come to speak for anything. All the student groups got together, and they forbid any Zionist speaker. It's funny, because I was banned from Berkeley for being a left-wing Zionist, because I was, as a supporter of J Street, which is a Zionist organization, I was deemed insufficiently kosher for the Hillel to speak. But the notion of race and IQ, as unpleasant as I find that conversation, not even that long ago,

there was an op-ed in the New Yorkork times about it the bell curve was on the front page of the uh new republic when it came out it was reviewed in every major publication um it's it's harvard i would say that someone wants to support they can handle it can't they yeah and i think that was her point and that was't her point, she wasn't telling me, but that's the point of what I'm trying to say. There are ideas that are odious that if they are discussed in the right context, that is protected speech. That's what you, if you like fire, if you like all this protected speech stuff, and we're free speech libertarians, and we hate cancel culture, that is what we should support. The case with Charles Murray at Harvard in particular, again, this is in particular again but you're not one of those free speech people i mean you don't even want to you don't even want a defense attorney i didn't like the defense attorney taking

taking a responsibility the guy who's defending the accused rapist being the person who's going to protect you know people and being safe in a dorm but i'd be happy to hear him speak if he wants to give him a give a speech but that that's not just free speech. That's speech fundamental to the very system of government that we have. When I was at law school, Dershowitz came to speak. Can I ask you one question? You said, come on, we knew that Harvey Weinstein was guilty. No, I didn't say we knew. You said we knew.

I said there was a lot of evidence. All right. Overwhelming evidence, something like that. I said there was a whole lot of evidence. It was part of your point. Let me ask the question. Is it the fact that he took on somebody accused of rape? Or just Harvey Weinstein?

And then who gets to make that decision? He makes that decision, and he lives with the consequences of that decision. So the Harvard rule should be no lawyer who defends rapists, murderers, I don't know, what other things should be allowed to be in charge of a dorm, or be an RA at a dorm, whatever you call it, dean of a dorm. I would just say- That's insanity. You know that. I'm going to let you rethink that.

You know that's crazy. I don't think it's crazy at all. That's counter to all our civics. It's not. These people are innocent or proven guilty. No, no, come on. When you're a lawyer and you're considering taking a case, you get a whole bunch of evidence that we as the general public do not get.

This wasn't one guy who raped one person. As we now understand, as it is a matter of the public record, this was over decades. It was many, many people. I don't think he was charged with raping more than one person. I don't want to get into the... I don't know the details of it.

I got to tell you, Harvey Weinstein is probably the first person that I ever looked at a photograph of and was like, yeah, he rapes. I'm not sure this motherfucker has a choice Not a handsome man not a lot of meat and extra skin on his face Hey, he's ugly, you know the sad part is he's done so well in life. He probably doesn't know he's ugly. You know what the sad part is? He's done so well in life, he probably doesn't know he's ugly.

You know, when you're good looking, everybody will tell you, oh, you look wonderful. You're so great looking. When you're ugly, you got to figure that shit out for yourself. It's a lot of putting clues together through the ears. Why am I not getting in the club? I got all the right shit on. It was Brad Pitt doing that shit. You wouldn't have heard a peep.

The girl would just come back down like, I got the part. Yuck. And yet, and yet, it is important that I acknowledge, ladies, you are absolutely right. There you go. And you got to all be mindful of that, guys, because it's gonna happen to any of us. It happened to me. I can see that.

I see myself showing up. Hi, I'm here for my 3 a.m. with Mr. Weinstein. Hey, Harvey, I got your text. I'm here to talk about the script. Seems like it's gonna be hard to read in candlelight, but I guess I could try. Sound like a fucking nightmare. Could you imagine that shit? Could you imagine if you was in a business meeting and a motherfucker pulled their dick out? In the middle of the meeting, I'd be like, yo!

Yo, my man, this is the most unprofessional shit I've ever seen in all my days. Just let me finish, Dave Chappelle. I'll put you in all three Lord of the Rings. Hurry up, nigga. I have other meetings to go. I have a 4.30 a.m. at Brett Ratner's house. I believe it's wardrobe fitting. What we do know is that he sexually harassed.

He fondled people with the massage. He made them jerk him off while he was getting a massage. He did this for decades. We don't know that. That's alleged. I believe that was actually in part of the finding against him. Anyway, when you're the lawyer, you get all this. I say alleged because I don't want to get you sued. That's what I'm saying. I appreciate that. Everything

I say is actually representing the views of this podcast anyway, so you'll just get sued. But you understand my point that you can't reduce it to the specifics of what you think you do or don't know about that case if it's going to be about people, if lawyers are going to be raping so often.

The reason I share that story from my own dorm experience is to say that being in charge of a dorm is not just some general thing. It's a very specific— Yeah, I saw it. One woman. It is so—if you really think that he—if that's your belief, that because this conviction was about one woman and all of these other women who testified— No, Jay, I don't have a belief or not a belief about Harvey Weinstein. Do you not think that being in charge of a dorm

is a slightly more sensitive context and role than hosting a podcast? I'll answer you. First of all, I don't have a belief or not a belief about Harvey Weinstein. If I had to, if you put a gun to my head, I would probably err on the side of many more of these things being true than not.

But I feel strongly that we live in a system, and the system embraces certain fictions because, as they say in the law, better to let 100 guilty people go free than one innocent man be convicted. And if we start teaching our people to short circuit the system and say, well, as long as you read it in the paper and you feel it's true, then not only should you start treating that guy like he's guilty, but you should also treat the people who work for him as, as,

as aiders and abettors. You should start treating the lawyers as pariahs. Like this is the road to ruin for an American system. The civics of our system depend on us having thicker skins than that and understanding just like the first amendment teaches us, you're going to hear terribly upsetting stuff. It's funny that you like the, the dorm, the person in the dorm who has to know that the attorney who's her RA,

as you put her, the Dean, as Harvard puts it, is defending a rapist is then going to have to go on campus and may see the swastika and their parents might've died in the camps, but that, that you're okay with. I mean,

like people, people are going to see things that upset them. It's not about seeing things that upset or hear things. It's not about seeing things that upset them. Or hear things that upset them. It's not about hearing things that upset them. It's about your personal safety and safety from sexual harassment in particular is being entrusted. No, no, no, I'm not going to stay on this point. And we'll leave it, but I just want to finish this thing.

Go ahead. The law recognizes context all the time. Let's take the stupidest cliche in the book, shouting fire in a crowded theater. You can go out onto Bleeker Street and shout fire, and that's no problem. You shout the same word in a crowded theater, now it's incitement to violence or whatever, the public disorderly conduct, whatever that is. So we understand that acts that are fine in one place are not fine someplace else. This guy is totally fine, totally kosher. He defended somebody. He did his thing in general.

In the unique context of being in charge of a dorm, we hold it to a different standard. And if people can't, if, you know, we're talking about like, can people not understand, you know, nuance and whatever, they should understand that nuance. We use a higher standard when it's the place where all of these 18-year-old girls, boys, and everybody else, where they sleep, where they bathe, where they have sex with each other consensually, or hopefully all the time, but probably not, where it's a very vulnerable context. That's it. It's not generalizable. All these hundreds of years without this ever being an issue. Because women were raped and men didn't care about it. That's how we got all these hundred years.

How do you think? Okay, but rape is not the only... Women were harassed and men didn't care about it. No, no, but somebody could also be defending a murderer and people certainly had people in their family,

people who were murdered. It's not about feelings. This is what the right always does. It's like, oh, it's about hurt feelings. I'm saying... It's about the personal safety of the women in that dorm. And not just their feeling of safety, but actually their safety. Right, but so if you're defending a murderer, aren't they in risk of being murdered?

My last time I checked that murder in dorms was a lot less common. So you really do think that somebody who would defend somebody accused of rape would be soft on preventing rape in the dorm? You really think that? I think it's a fair question. No, that's crazy. That's crazy talk. You know that's crazy talk. No, I don't think it's crazy.

I think reasonable people would disagree about that. All right, listen. I have friends who are defense attorneys. They have daughters. You must know people who... Of course. You can't possibly believe that because they defend tax evaders, they're more likely to evade taxes. If they defend rapists, they're likely to look the other way on rape.

If they defend murderers, they're less likely to be concerned about murder. You can't believe it. We also know from some of the excesses on both sides, right and left, where there has been overzealous prosecution of accused male sexual predators and where there has been under-enforcement, let's say, or under-prosecution, we know that it's not that black and white. We know that in campus sexual harassment, it's lots and lots of shades of gray. And again, this is not what I came here to talk about. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about now she got fired for plagiarism. Well, she resigned, but yeah.

What's that? She got asked to resign and resigned. But, you know, well, we're being very Talmudic in this conversation. Now she was asked to resign. Do you think she was fired? I mean, this is how we do it.

You never fire anybody if you can get them to just resign. This way she saves face. Harvard probably saves some money. But do you think that this was a... Oh, yeah. This was clearly... She's fired.

Yeah. Okay. So now... Constructively fired. So now she's constructively fired. And I don't know. I looked at quite a few of the examples of the plagiarism. And I'm not being over the top here.

I have a fifth grade son. And actually, this is a true story. When this all broke, he actually was doing his first research project. And that day, he had written something that I suspected might be too close to a Wikipedia page or something like that. And I went and checked, and actually, he was all right. But if I had found any of those examples like I saw in Claudique, my fifth grader, I would have been like, no way. You have to do it over. This is ridiculous.

You know, even if he had cited it, I would have said it was the and there's 50 examples of them. Seven out of 15 of her published papers. I thought it was five out of 11. No, it's gone up since. So she obviously deserved to be resigned, right? She deserved to be reprimanded. We would never be... First of all, let's just be real that we would never be having this conversation

if there weren't people who were motivated for an ideological reason to go after her, right? So what? Okay, well, but so what? That's why we're having this, right? This was a hit job. But have you ever said, I'm sure we all...

Have you ever in your life said that in a conversation about what Trump might have done wrong? No, of course I did. Yes. You said, well, the only reason we're talking about Trump doing this is because people...

That's the nature of the world. I mean, I wrote those articles. Like, yeah, sure, but, you know, this is... Either it's true or it's not. Who cares why they went after her? No, of course we care because ultimately this was a kind of

hit job that they went after her and they made a mountain out of... No, no, it's a hit job if it's not true. No, it's a mountain it's not. Who cares why they went after her? No, of course we care, because ultimately this was a kind of hit job that they went after her, and they made a mountain out of it. No, no, it's a hit job if it's not true. No, it's a mountain out of a molehill, so it's true, but it's true in context. It's 50 examples. Is it 50? It's up to 50. Or 49.

Oh, C or exaggerate. Well, I read 50 somewhere, and then I saw almost 50, so I'm... Look, her conduct ultimately is indefensible. Five would be enough. ultimately is indefensible. It's indefensible. So more than 40. Now we're down to that. But that's two days ago.

I think some more came out yesterday. Anyway, whether it's 40. Look in the last 24 hours. That one I'm not going to debate. So, you know, it's not defensible. I'm not defending it. I guess the question is, are all offenses fireable offenses? Well, what would happen to a student who did what she did?

Well, she was pretty smart about it. I mean, you know, it's hard to prove that this was played. I don't know. It's not hard to prove. It's clear. No, she changed enough of the words. No, she didn't. Have you looked at the examples?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, she did not change this whole. No, she always would change like two or three words. That's how you fake it, right? So you'd evade the... I'm not defending this. Okay, let me tell you something. I'm going to send you a link.

I'm not going to defend it. Online, there is a Harvard five-question quiz to teach students whether something is plagiarized or not. And at the end of each example, you have to say, is this correct? Is this allowed? Is this allowed? Is this allowed? The examples are so much further away from plagiarism than anything she came close to doing. And all of them by the Harvard standard, Harvard says, this is not okay. This is not okay.

But she not only changed just a few words, she also had some of those whole paraphrased paragraphs with no citation to where they came from. One of the experts who was plagiarized was furious about it. Well, that expert, you don't want to defend her. The other person who has their own reputation in the academic world. I don't know. I can only imagine you haven't actually read these paragraphs. No, no, no.

I've read them. I'm not defending them. They are. If a student did that, there is no way a professor could not give them an F and report them to the school authorities. Would that student then be expelled? I don't know enough about how these things operate. They would certainly be suspended. Should he certainly...

That's once. Now, if you did it 50 times, I think the student would absolutely have been expelled after the second time. Yeah, I don't know... And by the way, they couldn't be accidental. No, this wasn't accidental. Because of what you said. If it was accidental, it would be 100% the same. Yeah, no,'t know. And by the way, they couldn't be accidental. No, this wasn't accidental. Because of what you said.

If it was accidental, it would be 100% the same. Yeah, no, totally not accidental. I'm not defending it. I can't defend it. It's unconscionable behavior. And she's the president of Harvard. It's the wrong behavior. She has to go, right?

You know. Didn't the president of Stanford also get fired recently? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was much more closer, closer case than this one. This one is a more stronger on your side. I mean, her clotting gaze. Did he have enemies?

Yeah, actually, I believe it was more, it wasn't politically, like in this sense of politics. It wasn't politically. It was campus politics. So then that undercuts the idea. No, it was campus politics stuff there as well. I mean, look, I'm not defending.

Did anybody bring up in his defense the fact that he had enemies? I'm not, it's not about defending. I think it's just about what really happened. Did anybody bring up in his defense the fact that he had enemies? It's not about defending. I think it's just about what really happened. So the article I just published, which I'm sure will be in the show notes, is like, what really happened in this chess game? What really happened was she handed her enemies a weapon to hit her with,

and they used it. So that was her bad. She handed that weapon. But let's remember who used it, right? This is still part of the same campaign. This is not separate from that. So it's like both sides can be wrong at the same time. It's not like she's right. It's not like she's wrong, and they're wrong. Everybody's wrong. This sort of ideologically motivated pylon where people who have, whether they have, you know, political points to score, whether they have anti-cancel culture points to score, like you've been discussing or whatever it is that they want to score. Like,

so you're going after her for hypocrisy. Other people are going after her saying she's an anti-Semite, whatever. That's what's really going on. And this is the pretext, right? So again, the pretext is true.

I'm not defending her conduct and I'm, there's no way to defend it. You know, I can contextualize it, whatever. Listen, your friends don't drop a dime on you when you do stuff. So it's just a dynamic of the world that it's people who don't like you who are going to expose what you did. And you're right. Sometimes that's,

even when I'm on the side of the people who drop, I say, what are you doing? This is cruel. Sometimes it really is a pretext. But when the president of Harvard is engaging in that level of academic dishonesty and lying about it, then I think at that point, there are other issues here that somebody has to say, you know what, I don't care what their motivation was.

I'm happy they told me because this is outrageous and it undermines everything I believe in. In other words, what if you found out that the president of Harvard, Mel, raped somebody, and the people who came forward with it were some ideological enemies? Maybe that's why they came after him. In that case, I don't disagree strongly with what you're saying now, but what should happen, there would have been, if this was a regular context, there would have been a process, right? I don't know the ins and outs of the Harvard rules. I suspect she would go through the process and she would be asked to resign or she would be fired from that process. But she didn't get the process.

She didn't get due process. What really happened was that she's not able to raise money anymore. So she got fired, right? Your main job as a president of a university is to raise money. Can I add one thing? This is not yet totally vetted. We don't know all the details yet, but something tells me this might be

even more important than the plagiarism. There was another issue, I think it was one of her early papers, where the statistical interpretation is in question, and she won't share the data. Now, sharing your data is step A in any peer-reviewed thing. And there's only one reason that I can think of that you don't share your data is because the data doesn't have integrity in some way.

Yeah. Look, I'll defer to that. I mean, I- You've heard about this. No, I didn't hear about it. I mean, if that's true, there should be a process and she should suffer the consequences. Well, she can demand the process. She has a employment contract. A little late now. No, look, she may well lose her job.

I mean, I... No, they're keeping her. She's still making $850,000 a year. She might, for now. You know, I don't know that she's going to keep that job. So, look, I would absolutely agree. I think you can bet on her keeping that job.

Oh, I don't think so. Let me tell you why. You think because if they fire her, she's going to sue them, and who knows what's going to come out. Well, maybe. But she's definitely going to lose. I mean, if she— Oh, they're all going to lose. Yeah.

So, I mean, look, what should have happened in this case is these are serious allegations. They had the first round of allegations. They're like, nah, not great. Slap on the wrist. Keep going. Okay. Then the next allegations came up. They had the first round of allegations. They're like, not great. Slap on the wrist. Keep going. Okay. Then the next allegations came up. They should investigate them.

Looks to me like she should probably get fired as a result of the process. But that's not what happened, right? What happened was it was a few influential donors. It was her inability to raise money. She lost the confidence of a few people and then drip, drip, drip. And so she was pressured to resign.

That's the part that for me, that's what really happened, right? Apart from the like, whatever, you know, that's what really happened. And in no way to you is this exposing a horrible rot of hypocrisy on the left in control of these elite academic institutions? No, I mean, I guess you want me to, I don't know what you want me to say. I'm asking you, like the notion of all the things that they won't allow to be said or that-

But I still haven't gotten an example that's equivalent to a student saying something stupid. Well, I can guarantee you, if there had been a white group of students just saying, fuck BLM, the university would have put its foot down. That's not specific enough. Would have put its foot down how?

Would they have defunded the organization? Maybe. We just saw Students' Justice for Palestine get defunded all across the country. So that's already happening. So there's a lot of cancel culture coming from the right right now. I'm no fan of SJP, to put it mildly, right? But the foot is being put down. So would it be in violation of a university bullying and harassment policy

for some white students to say, fuck BLM? Probably not. I think my answer is it depends on context. They don't... I'm not seeing a single case of this hypocrisy. They decide what they want to do, then they find the policy it violates. I'm not seeing a single case of this hypocrisy. They decide what they want to do. Then they find the policy it violates. That's not true.

Oh, come on. Of course it's true. Of course it's true. Give me some evidence. Give me one example of that. You know what? I'll have you on again and I'll look into it. I guarantee you there are examples all over the country of people who have not been allowed to say this or that.

Students who have not been allowed to say this or that. Students who have not been allowed to say this or that. I know we've had students who got expelled because they were overheard saying the N-word to each other. I remember that. I need to look at the facts about that and what the policy was that they violated. The claim that somehow universities are soft on antisemitism or antisemitic speech on their campuses just flies in the face of what we've seen over the last several months, last few months, where people who say things that are borderline anti-Semitic—

I didn't say they were soft on anti-Semitism. Okay, so they're putting their foot down equally, so that's not hypocrisy. No, they're not soft on anti-Semitism. They're extremely harsh on anti-intersectional talk. They're not soft on anti-Semitism. They might be soft on anti-Semitism, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that for years,

they have been triggered. Where did this concept of hallucination, that everybody's worried about getting triggered, the whole notion of don't trigger, which you even alluded to with this Harvey Weinstein thing, this whole notion of don't trigger, which you even alluded to with this Harvey Weinstein thing, this whole notion of don't trigger has been everywhere, everywhere. And this is, and all of a sudden now- The real crisis facing higher education right now is the end of the tenure system, the starving of the humanities, the corporatization of college campuses,

and the reliance on very low-paid contingent faculty, of whom I've, you know, came up myself as an adjunct professor. That's the real crisis. This whole thing about the culture wars and cancel culture and students who are, you know, who are snowflakes and everybody's getting triggered. I'm sorry, but you're like, your right-wing media consumption is showing. It's just like, there are, of course, there are excesses. You know, there's, but there's a there's another podcast you could listen to.

There's a podcast called If Books Could Kill, and they went through sort of the top five stories of campus hysteria that pissed people off the most. There was that one with the Chinese food in the cafeteria, and the student was offended because it wasn't real Chinese food. Anyway, you can go through them. And the closer you dig, it's usually students saying stupid shit, which is always what they do.

I'm not saying that there's not an over-wokification of the left. Obviously, there is. But the magnitude of this crisis is nothing like the Ben Shapiros of the world want to make it out to be. It's just this is, again, a tool of a larger culture war that's about turning back the clock that I don't think is good for the Jews, but whether it is or not, these are the same people. Christopher Ruffo is now the hero of the Jews. I mean, this is the guy who says that I'm a groomer, for heaven's sakes. Like, these are not the good people that we want to be defending. So yeah, just, you know, we can go case by case on these campus, you know, incidents. But I don't think we're going to find this level

of hypocrisy. So your question was, isn't this hypocrisy? And my answer is still no. Well, I don't like the fact that you say my right-wing media, because it's not the case at all. But I'm just... It's just where these stories come from. Like, these stories circulate in an ecosystem, and it's not some shadowy conspiracy. It's just, you know, these stories get a lot of attention. Did you read James Bennett's 100,000-word essay in The Economist about his experience at the New York Times?

It was roughly 100,000 words. I did not read every word. Okay, well... I can plagiarize some of them, but I'll cite it without... That essay ought to tell you everything that you need to know to not attack me in an ad hominem way about right-wing media consumption. They're the same things happening on the left York Times. And he wrote in chapter and verse about how this sensitivity to things that people don't want to hear ruined the New York Times. And these claims of I don't feel safe and all this stuff. He literally described how the Times was a shell of a good paper now, even if it's trying to get back to where it ought to be.

The left says the same thing. There was a trans person who worked at the Times. So did it just magically bubble up? It doesn't exist at all? The universities? No, I'm not saying it doesn't exist at all. I'm saying it's like, again, it's this kind of- Is he a right-wing guy?

I don't know. No, he's not a right-wing guy. I have no idea what his politics are. I'm saying the same- If he's editorial page editor of the New York Times, you have some idea what his politics are. Ross Douthat's on the New York Times. He's a Christian conservative.

There are plenty of folks on the Times who are conservative. You're not being straight with me. Go ahead. I am. You can also read a left-wing critique of the Times. There was a trans employee at the Times who said from Dean Beckett on down that they just don't, quote, don't get it about trans people.

The Times has platformed anti-trans authors like Pamela Paul, who they've elevated to the senior editorial board. And so there's critiques of the Times from the left. There are also plenty of critiques of the Times from the left on their coverage of Israel-Palestine. Okay, but this is where you're wrong. First of all, James Bennett was not a right-wing critique of the Times. It was a left-wing critique of the Times.

If left-wing still means you believe in free debate. Number one. Number two, you might be a little too young. The New York Post used to have a guy. He died. It was Eric Brendel. I am too young. He was a very, very, very interesting story.

He was a drug addict. He died young. He was brilliant. I think he went to Harvard. And he was editorial page editor of the New York Post. He's a very, very pro-Israel, pretty right-wing guy. Not like anti-gay right-wing, but you know. And at that time, Pat Buchanan was one of the regular syndicated columnists at the time, at the Post. At the time, he wrote many of his famous anti-Semitic columns. And nobody at that time thought there was any reason that the Post shouldn't be running his

columns. We all understood that that's the way it goes. You're hearing dissenting opinions. You could be furious about this Pat Buchanan anti-Semitic column William Buckley wrote a book about it but this was perfect nobody would have the nerve to have said well you shouldn't be able to run columns like that because that was the ethic the people who were journalists then

were the people who were saying that the Nazis should march in Skokie that was the culture then, that's what liberal people believed. You know at the time that the Nazis should march in Skokie. That was the culture then. That's what liberal people believed. You know, at the time that the Nazis were marching in Skokie... Which they never did, actually. No, but they did march at the next town over, I think. The ACLU came under all kinds of attack

by mainstream Jewish organizations who said that it shouldn't happen. And I doubt, I'd have to check the record, I'm not sure that Abe Foxman was so on board with Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism. No, but I'm saying at a newspaper, the notion that at a newspaper... Do you think, like, if you had, you know, Jonathan Greenblatt on the show,

that he would be like, yeah, let's go back to the good old days where Papu Cannon's anti-Semitism would be platformed? I hope he would. I don't know. Of course he wouldn't. He wouldn't in a million years. I don't know why that has anything to do with me, but I'm not a fan of Jonathan Greenblatt. Okay, I'm just saying that it's not that the culture has evolved only in one direction.

It's also evolved, you know, I don't know which way, right, up, down, left, right. But, you know, there are a lot of things that we used to tolerate that we now don't really tolerate. So you have no tolerance for any of this unless it's on a college campus. That's way exaggerated. I have a lot of tolerance for it. It's a question of what you want to platform for. You don't think Substack should allow people to have authors who believe in white replacement theory? I'm right on the border of that.

It hits personally. You wrote a column about that. I have a Substack, and I forwarded the letter that people wrote, and I was dismayed by Substack's response. I'm still on Substack. I'm definitely like, I don't have a quick answer for you. I think it's a tough one. But students should be able to say white... The white replacement

people should be able to say whatever they want. I just don't know that it's great that a company is making a bunch of money off of them and elevating and giving them a megaphone. If a student wants to do white replacement theory on a college campus, Baruch Hashem, you can do it in any publication you want. I just don't know why I want to support that publication.

Hasn't there been enough... So you want the Nazis on Substack? Of course I do. Hasn't there been enough overshoot by people in the bottleneck of distribution in the last five years, that we should have learned our lesson by now, that as much as we think,

and we'd be happy if we could just limit it to the Nazis, that we know that once you put somebody in charge of what can and can't be said, through accretion, in a very short time, vital things get censored. And the price we pay for not having that happen is that the Nazis get to blah, blah, blah on the internet, which can't be stopped anyway. So I just quibble with, I was being a good boy and letting you finish instead of being Jewish and interrupting. The two words that I would push back on of what we just said are the word said and the word censored.

People can say whatever they want. Nazis should be able to say whatever they want. The real word is platformed. Should Substack be handing them a gigantic— So I joined Substack because it's going to amplify my message and I get to make money. Who platforms Substack? Substack platforms Substack. They built a successful business.

Substack doesn't control on its own servers. Substack doesn't own its own servers. Substack doesn't own its own... This is nonsense. We all know what Substack is. Come on. You're not going to hide behind the lines. No, no. I'm asking you, should...

Substack has built a wonderful product. Well, this is what happened to Parler. What I'm saying, Parler was not deplatformed by Parler. AWS and whatever... Yeah, no, I would not be for AWS and others deplatforming Substack because Substack won't deplatform the Nazis. What I would say is that it's not an outrageous thing. I said it actually happened.

Yeah, I'm on board. So there's a difference between saying and getting a megaphone and there's a difference between censored and saying I'm not going to make money off of your Nazism. And I think there is a principle there. And Substack already censors, quote unquote, censors,

or de-platforms speech, right? They're sex workers who had Substacks, and Substack threw them off. I don't know why. I don't know what they have against sex workers, but that's what they did. So they're already a little bit in the hypocritical waters themselves. And I think it's a tough look.

Substack is a private business. They can do whatever they want. For me personally, as a Substack contributor, or whatever I am, publisher is the word they use. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it. Yeah, it's a tough question, but I think it's... Actually, I don't think it's a tough question. I think that it's hard to say it out loud

because people will take it to mean that you somehow... No, everybody knows that you and I don't support Nazis. I mean, I think it's like... But the white replacement theory... You support people who make money off of Nazis. The white replacement theory is interesting because it's similar to what you said about River to the Sea. There are, you know, the pure white replacement theorists who, you know, we understand what they are. But then, for instance, I saw a couple of days ago in a paper that immigrant births, was it illegal? Oh no, more illegal immigrants are coming into the country in the last period than American babies were born.

I say, holy shit, that's a stat to grapple with. More new lives are coming in over the border than are being born to Americans. So if you extrapolate that, you are going to see some replacement, right? Now, somebody wants to write about that. I know that somebody is going to accuse them of white replacement theory, and then they're going to try to deplatform them.

I know that. And that's the reason why I want the white replacement theories to be, not because I, not because any nourishment. It's a firewall against the closer case. Because I guarantee you that's what's going to happen because that's what's happened in every single other issue we've dealt with in the last five years. I don't know.

You know, there's a candidate, he's not doing so well, but a candidate for president, you know, who just espoused white replacement theory in Iowa, Vivek Ramaswamy, you know, in the hardcore way. Isn't he brown? I know, yeah. I mean, the irony is not lost on me. You know, and he did it in the hardcore way. He's like, the Democrats are bringing in illegal immigrants in order to, you know, to get more votes and to replace white—he didn't use the word replace. Well, to get more votes, I think, is true.

Yeah, that's definitely not true. Anyway, it's not racist, but it's not true either. I think, is true. Yeah, that's definitely not true. Anyway, it's not racist, but it's not true either. I think, well, it's true to the following extent. It was conventional wisdom for a very long time that immigrants in general would be friendly to the Democratic Party, and even

if they were never... Which didn't play out. Right. And even if they were never legalized, their children would become citizens and they would be become voters. And we could guarantee just the way politics are, that if it was the opposite, if Republican thought these Republicans had thought that these would become Republican voters, Republicans would have been on the side of them.

That's just, that's, that's the horrors that are politicians. And if Democrats thought that these were going to grow up to become Republicans, they would not be all for it. And now that we're seeing that we, that they're all racist by assuming that you could just predict what an immigrant will be because of the fact they're immigrant and you shouldn't just, now we're saying, oh, these people are in play no matter where they come from. Surprise, surprise. A lot of Latinos are actually socially conservative.

Surprise, surprise. People actually are actually not just reducible to their label. Surprise, surprise. A lot of Latinos are actually socially conservative. Surprise, surprise. People are actually not just reducible to their label. Right, right. Now I think you're seeing a lot more flexibility on both sides, actually. Well, yeah. So I take your point that we want the bad white replacement person as a firewall. What's going on? Polls show Latinos back Donald Trump over Joe Biden.

It's amazing. Yeah, for now. We'll see. Well, even if it's just for now, it's still- That's pretty remarkable. That's a hell of a stat. But if you look too,

I don't know if we can read the fine print. The Republicans have a pretty good message right now that's hitting a lot of Latino voters where they are. It's the economic opportunity stuff. And Latinos are not, what is a Latino, right? So there's people from Cuba who have some pretty questionable ideas about people from Mexico. It's just like there's a, you know, it's a very diverse population. And, you know, we have this one label, like you said, and it just, it is interesting to see suddenly a moderation of Republican anti-immigrant rhetoric as we see the way that some of the immigrants and their children are voting. But yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I think the Nazis on Substack question is a close case.

I do know people who have left Substack as a result. It's a close one. And I do think that where I think I can be clear is in that disagreement with those words about said and censored. Because people can say whatever they want. The question is, people use the subsect tool because it is effective at magnifying their voices. And so to pretend that it doesn't magnify their voices, that's kind of BS. I'm going to tell you what—I know we have to go. I want to tell you about this censored thing. I understand your point, but there's a, uh, is it Kant, Kantian?

Like, um, the categorical imperative, where if you think something is right to do, you also imagine that everybody ought to do it. Sure. And if you believe that Substack ought to shut the gate on certain types of ideas,

it's a little weaselly to then say, but someone else can still do it. But then, of course, if I brought you that other person, well, they should stop too, and they should stop too. So the fact is, if you believe Substack ought to do it, you probably believe everybody ought to do it. And if you believe everybody ought to do it, it is a will for

censorship. No, but then I don't care, right? So let's take Tucker Carlson as a good example, right? So he said a bunch of stuff that I think crossed the line into pretty overt racism. So he was deplatformed. He's now on Twitter instead of Fox. His audience is much smaller, so he's causing a lot less harm. I'm not interested in eradicating bad ideas. It just feels as though there's a lot of gray area between platforming on the best tool and eradicating. And to the extent that Substack is a very good tool, I'd like them not to be platforming. There are plenty of other competitors to Substack who will gladly take up the Nazi vote. And look, Twitter is similar, not now in the new Twitter, but in the pre-Elon Musk Twitter, when people got banned from Twitter, they went elsewhere. They went to Parler. They went to Truth Social. They went to wherever they went. And those were

smaller. And that feels good. That's the market. That's the capitalist market saying, this is what we want, what we don't want. And I suspect if enough people, I'm not really one of them, but if enough people were like, fuck you, Substack, we're not going on Substack, that would be capitalism. That's the way it's supposed to work. It does work that way. These are very hard issues. There are hypotheticals and there's scenarios that can make everybody say uncle, but I think that we should just always err

on the side of free speech. I think where I might be coming around to agreeing with you has nothing to do with principle and just about practice. Like, if we look at the last 10 years, has banning what I would call crazy lunatic ideas from the mainstream, has that worked? And it clearly has not worked, right? We have more crazy lunatic ideas now, more QAnon, more anti-vax, more like crazy stuff now than we had 10 years ago. So it does seem as though the- Can I add to that?

It's deeper than that because by, I don't know where it started, but it's certainly part of it was Russiagate, then certain COVID stuff, then certain vax stuff, then the lab leak stuff, then whatever the other things that aren't coming to my mind. There's so many things which turned out not to be true that trust is really at an all-time low and for good reason. People have just gotten the feeling that the people in charge of feeding them information are so filled with an agenda now that they just can't take things at face value anymore. So I agree.

And since we're on our way out... But I also want to hear about Israel before you go on. I don't have time. I want to plant a little seed of concern around that, which is that when that conspiracy mindset about the people in charge of the flow of information, when that takes hold,

eventually it almost always circles around to anti-Semitism. There's a structural form of anti-Semitic rhetoric where it's populists versus the elites. And the elites are less numerous but too powerful. That's the Jews. The elites are overrepresented in media, government, and finance. That ends up being the Jews. And the elites don't have the best interests of us, the nation, at heart. That's the Jews. And so I agree with what you're saying. I don't disagree with it. But it makes my skin crawl, because inevitably, we get to the real conspiracy theory, the uber-conspiracy theory, which is anti-Semitism. Where are you in Israel?

Well, it's great. This is good. I get to promote my Substack piece for tomorrow. Oh, please. While I'm doing that. Yeah. I mean, I think where there's an interesting moment now... So I identify as kind of a liberal Zionist. I'm like a J Street, two-state solution, pro-Israel person. And people like me have really been hurt and confused, like many other Jews and others in the last few months, where, you know, obviously, I think everybody, Jewish or Jewish adjacent, was, you know, horrified and traumatized by October 7th, and the more details we get about systemic rape and the rest, just, it hurts. I had a friend who was murdered. I have relatives in the army. It's very personal, as I'm sure it is for you as well.

I'm not sure, but probably is for you as well. And yet, we've now seen two months of the way, or three months almost, of the way that this war is being prosecuted. And there are a lot of folks, you know, who are on the more progressive side, but not the hard left, not the anti-Israel left, who are really troubled by the way this particular war is now unfolding. So J Street, you know, I don't love everything they do, but two weeks ago, I think they put out a really smart statement supporting Israel's right to self-defense, categorically opposing any of this, like, you know, hardcore anti-Israel stuff that's out there, and also saying that the U.S. should be exerting some pressure to think about what are the ways in which this war is happening, what's the endgame, is the endgame really just the destruction of Hamas,

to what extent, you know, Netanyahu refuses to repudiate anyone further to the right of him, the people who are calling for ethnic cleansing. And that's not the war that American Jews support. And so I think there's kind of a ripening of this centrist position. That's neither the, you know, like the, they're sort of, after October 7th, I was prepared to just defend Israel because all my friends were attacking Israel. And that's what I did. And I defend Israel because all of my friends were attacking Israel. And that's what I did. And I wrote a whole bunch of articles like that. And that's what I do.

I write articles. That's what I did. And now it's a little more nuanced. So this is what I think about it. Do you have time to listen or do you have to go? What time is it? What time is it, Max? It's 6.48.

Five minutes? Five. Okay. I spent a lot of time today reading a book called Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger, which I know people don't like Kissinger, but this book is considered to be a classic. And I was reading the whole part about the run-up to World War II. And one of the themes in that book is the tremendous amount of unrealistic and naive and weak-minded thinking, which went into the miscalculations of that time.

Right. Appeasement and so on. But also just these highfalutin ideas that by disarming, we'll convince them that we're the good guys and therefore they'll be softer on us because we'll be less threatening. Everybody likes when you take their guns away. Crazy stuff. By Britain, by France. So I am

and it sounds like a disclaimer but it's not the case. I mean I'm haunted by all the death. And I rack my brains about it. But I also don't want to be a naive thinker. And certain things I think are true. First of all, Biden is taking a tremendous political hit. So if anybody thinks that there's some easy and effective way that Israel could be fighting this war differently and the Americans know about it and they're just like hey guys if you wouldn't mind you know

this is this is naive thinking I am I am quite confident that America would be ramming it down Israel's throat if there was a way to destroy this underground city surrounded by human shields in a less bloody way. I actually think the Biden administration is quote-unquote ramming it down Israel's throat. They're just doing it in a way that's not public. I mean, all of the reports, all of the reports from the Blinken trips and all this stuff, I think that pressure is happening.

Well, no, if you read the articles, for instance, one in Newsweek that got out of play, it says target for target. There is no disagreement. They wish they could be killing fewer civilians. But obviously, if they could easily, everybody has... Well, definitely they can't easily. Everybody has a sense to do it. But the thing is, the entire picture, this and then we can finish,

of 150,000 to 200,000 rockets in the north, maybe half of them are precision guided. Hamas in the southwest. The Houthis now destroying shipping, Iran enriching uranium. This is, for the first time in my lifetime and yours, actually an existential threat. And if you were to compare it to, is Israel more threatened existentially

than the United States was by Japan than the United States was by Germany by almost any kind of combination you say Israel is much much more threatened does Israel therefore have the right to react with the full strength

that we did when we were less threatened? Did we not have the right to do that? Is the world going to normalize human shields if we make Israel stand down and say, you know what, we're going to bend

to the human shields because we know that's the reason so many people are dying. There's no reason that people are, civilians are dying. If they could get them out of there, they don't have to put rocks. We know that's the reason they're dying. If Hamas wins, if Hamas winning,

I say by means staying in power, there will never be a two-state solution because the only reason it will be a two-state solution is because the Palestinians will decide we have no choice. If Hamas wins, they will smell, if they don't already, that we can wait them out here. Time is on our side. Next time, this can be a dirty bomb. What if next time we all press the button at the same time and 200 or maybe it'll be

300,000 rockets. Maybe they'll all be precision guided. And all the rockets from Hamas and from Iran and the shipping. Maybe we can kill a million Israelis. So they're playing for all the marbles now. And believe me, I'm not, you don't know me, I'm not heartless about this. But someone has to tell me already, after two months of hearing this stuff, how, and if they don't tell us how, then the only thing we should be saying when we hear this stuff

is not, yeah, I know you're, is right. How, if you don't have how, go back to the drawing board and let me know when you know, because otherwise you say you're a Zionist, it's all going down. The country is going— All right, you're making me late to my friends. But— Yeah, no, so— I'm saying, gird yourself to realism.

I wrote an article called What Next? or What Then? What Then? which was exactly that. Someone calls for a ceasefire, the question is, what then? Right? So game it out. And I reached a similar analysis to the way you do. It is the case that— But it's tough to say it out loud. It is the case—well, I said it. People look at you like you're crazy. conventional wisdom for fighting in a tight urban location like this check out that j street thing it talks a bunch of military they have a bunch of military experts who testified before congress these are not dumb people not not people like me these are people actually actually study this

that if your goal is to eradicate you know the fighters within the civilian population you don't bomb the fuck out of all the buildings you go in and you try to... But look, at the end of the day, too, it's really not clear what the end game is, because Sinwar is known by Israeli intelligence to have physically surrounded himself with Israeli hostages. It's like he's sitting here, and they're literally standing all around him. And if that's not an insolvable proposition, I don't know what is. You know, there's a terrible moral question. I haven't been able to answer it, which is how many of your own people, own innocent people, do you sacrifice

to save someone else's innocent people? I mean, look, that's what they, they will, at some point, some military commander will find where that scumbag is hiding and they will have that decision. They can kill him and they're going to kill 100 or 200, you know, and they will have that decision. They can kill him, and they're going to kill a hundred or two hundred, you know, like, they're going to kill

a hundred hostages at the same time. And why isn't the world calling on them to surrender, release the hostages, Israel, you know, and exile them to Tunisia or something, you know? Yeah, no, look, that's the—you're preaching the J Street Choir, you know, the call is— We don't hear this very often. It's Israel, Israel, Israel. How about Hamas? Stop. Release the hostages. Well, that was my claim, you know,

when there was calls for ceasefire in October and November. I was like, it's not ceasing fire if one side is holding hostages at gunpoint, right? Because if that hostage walks out, you will fire, right? So that's not a ceasefire. Like a ceasefire, that's a unilateral surrender if Israel were to just, Israel would ceasefire,

but Hamas not. But look, I think there's also the evidences to like the Netanyahu government bowing to their harder right, you know, the Ben-Gurion and Smotrix of the world. Not in the war cabinet. Decided they're not, decided not to enter into another round of negotiations for a pause.

I think that's not the right decision. There's a lot of gray area where the government is operating, where there is room. Don't be naive. There's no room for a pause. But there actually is. We'll do the exact same thing that they did the last time.

This is not going to strengthen Hamas if we have a two-week pause. First of all, there was a negotiation. We know Hamas turned it down. Both sides turned it down. No, no. All right, we're getting into the weeds. No, that's not true. No, you're really making me late to my friend.

Okay, Hamas turned it down, and they're down to their last number of hostages. They're never going to give them up. Why would they? I don't know. I don't know. I think, look, ultimately, we basically agree on the overall situation.

I think that we should be careful. All Netanyahu would have to do to make me happy would be to go tell the far-right people to fuck themselves and get out of the government. Oh, absolutely. And Netanyahu needs to go, and they need to return to the acceptable, even acceptable right of center.

This was a terrible thing that he made that deal with the devil. On that agreement, we can finish. We agree. Okay. But, and, you know, there's a lot of people dying. It is, it's just very painful. I understand, you know, I understand it all. I always feel very self-conscious as someone who says the stuff that I say that people don't understand how I feel about this.

I'm just trying to look at it in real life. And everybody should, you know, you should get that, get the Kissinger book, Diplomacy, and read the chapter on World War II, and immediately it'll jump off the page, all the analogies to all the arguments you're hearing now. There wasn't, in World War II, an analog to most of the last 20 years of Israeli policy of undermining the Palestinian Authority and supporting Hamas, because they wanted to kill the two-state solution. And there's no analog to that in the run-up to Nazi Germany. And that is a real tragedy that I think whenever this next phase of

war finally at some point ends, if it ever does, that we'll just look back at those 20 years where instead of strengthening the moderates, strengthening the center, they starved the center, strengthened the hard right so that the Israeli hard right would be satisfied. The center that was responsible for the second intifada? Is that literally the center? The real center. The center that we don't love. No, I'm saying that was— They're not—all right, all right. We're out of time. But who are we talking about?

We really are out of time. Okay. Listen, will you come on again? Sure. It was good. All right. Thank you very much. All right.