The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Warning to Elite Universities, There’s a New Sheriff in Town

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the implications of Donald Trump's executive orders, particularly those targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas in government. He delves into recent incidents at Columbia University and NYU involving pro-Palestine protests and their potential consequences for student visas: “My point is this, all of these Elite students at these elite universities talk a great game, but when they've never faced any consequences, if Donald Trump and if these universities are afraid of Donald Trump and they clamp down, I think you're going to see deterrence start to work to discourage other protests, because one thing we know about all these young students, they are careerist and they are careerists used to being pampered…” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. All of these elite students at these elite universities talk a great game. They've never faced any consequences. If Donald Trump and if these universities are afraid of Donald Trump and they clamp down, I think you're going to see deterrence start to work to discourage other protests because one thing we know about all these young students, they are careerist. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. has issued a flurry of executive orders in his first week in office.

One of them outlawed DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion quotas, or reverse racial discrimination, whichever term you'd like to use in government. But it doesn't, I think, apply to private entities unless you roll at any private entity, i.e. a university like mine, Stanford, who gets federal funds, will be subject to it. And that's going to be tricky. but I hope he tries to make that executive order as well. My point is we've had some things in the news very quickly. Columbia University right at the beginning of the new spring semester

had a class offered by a Jewish professor on the history of Israel and Judaism in the Middle East. And it was swarmed by pro-Palestinian protesters. We don't know who they were. They had masks on, of course, and they disrupted the class because it was what, taught by a Jewish person, and there were Jewish students there. And they disrupted it. And now we're told that Columbia University, it's under a shadow of suspicion that they are anti-Semitic, to tell you the truth. They are now looking at these people. I would advise all of these people, though, this is not Joe Biden. If you are on a student visa and you disrupted or broke into a classroom and you, what, committed a felony or the university suspends you, then I think it's very likely that the State Department will look at your student visa. This came up because at New York University, last year during the finals, no less, the same

type of protests swarmed the library and disrupted everything. and New York University has suspended those pro-Palestinian, I shouldn't say pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protesters for one year. So what are they going to do if some of them are on foreign student visas? My point is this, all of these elite students at these elite universities talk a great game. But when they've never faced any consequences, if Donald Trump and if these universities are afraid of Donald Trump, And they clamp down, I think you're going to see deterrents start to work to discourage other protests. Because one thing we know about all these young students, they are careerist, and they are used to being pampered, whether they're Americans or foreigners.

And if some of them have to go back to their beloved Palestine or Syria or Egyptians, they're going to be very unhappy. And if some of these children of the elite are suspended, are charged with felonies, and that's on their record, they're going to be very unhappy. I'd like to finish very quickly with another thing that came up related to education. There's a wonderful interview with Mark Andreessen, the original, the Wall Street entrepreneur, financier, but especially techie. And he was the one that created netskip. next net escape. He's a multi-billionaire, along with his partner, Ben Horowitz. He gave a long interview to a New York Times colonist Ross Tuthal. But here's what I'm interested in. At one point, he was asked, what made you change? Why did you endorse Donald Trump? And he said,

among other things, they tried to control our industry. In other words, he said, we could deal with the taxes. We could deal even in the regulation, but they wanted to pick winners or losers and deny us to express ourselves. But here's the point. He said, and we looked at the students that we were hiring from these elite universities, the DEI people, the radical, and we realized from what they were saying about us, their employers, they wanted to destroy us. This should be taken very seriously like by Stanford University, by UC Berkeley, by USC, by UCLA,

by Cal, all these universities that feed into Silicon Valley. These people are getting very tired of your graduates going in there, and they're not prepared very well. The entrance exams have been watered down. There are four years without a SAT requirement, four years without a comparative adjudication of GPA. The quality of the graduates that Silicon Valley people, like Indrice and hire is going like this, and the activism and the obnoxiousness is going like this. And if I was to distill that entire interview, it would be something like, we in Silicon Valley don't really respect the Stanford brand or the UCLA brand or the Berkeley brand very much anymore because these people are not very good at what they used to be excellent at, and they

don't like the people who hire them and the people who hire them are us. So we're going to see some big changes and it's long overdue. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Please subscribe to the Daily Signal for our next episode. Maybe you can check out my own website at Victor Hansen.com for podcast, lectures, ultra series behind a paywall, but more importantly, just daily columns that are accessible and free to everyone. very much.