Pod Insights Lex Fridman Podcast #377 – Harvey Silverglate: Freedom of Speech About this episode Harvey Silverglate is a free speech advocate, co-founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression, and author of several books on freedom of speech and criminal justice. He is running for Harvard Board of Overseers on a platform of free speech. If you’re a Harvard Alumni, please consider voting for him by Tue, May 16, 5pm ET: https://www.harvey4harvard.com/ballot Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
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FIRE’s Website: https://www.thefire.org/
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:23) – Freedom of speech
(28:04) – Bureaucracy in Universities
(44:18) – Clash of ideas
(47:56) – Public education is broken
(59:33) – Jeffrey Epstein
(1:12:26) – Freedom of thought and liberal arts
(1:23:30) – Interviewing controversial people
(1:27:14) – Alan Dershowitz
(1:30:28) – Donald Trump
(1:37:27) – FBI
(1:45:52) – Criminal justice system
(1:48:20) – Advice
Transcript 16,053 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lex Fridman? The following is a conversation with Harvey Silverglate, a legendary free speech advocate, co-founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the author of several books on the freedom of speech and criminal justice, including The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses. Harvey is running to be on the Harvard Board of Overseers this year with a write-in campaign. So you have to spell his name correctly, Silverglate. Promising to advocate for free speech and to push for reducing the size of Harvard's administration bureaucracy. Election is over this Tuesday, May 16th, at 5:00 PM Eastern. To vote, you have to be Harvard alumni.
0:43 Lex Fridman? So if you happen to be one, please vote online. It's a good way to support freedom of speech on Harvard campus. Instructions how to do so are in the description. As a side note, please allow me to say that since there are several controversial conversations coming up, I tried to make sure that this podcast is a platform for free discourse where ideas are not censored, but explored, and if necessary, challenged in a thoughtful and pathetic way. It's by having such difficult conversations, not by avoiding them, that we can begin to heal divides and to shed light on the dark parts of human history and human nature. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
1:28 Lex Fridman? We got Factor for nutritious and delicious pre-made meals, Simply Safe for home security, and Athletic Greens for, well, delicious, delicious health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring, go to lexfridman.com/hiring. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Factor, a ready to eat meal kit service that delivers nutritious and delicious meals straight to your door. They got keto, they got vegan,
2:11 Lex Fridman? they got calorie smart, they got protein plus. And if you know me, you know which one I go with. I go with keto. For over a decade, I've been eating mostly carnivore keto, which when I don't have services like Factor, ends up me going to the grocery store, getting some ground beef and just cooking that and eating that with a little bit of salt. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's downsides. One of the downsides is there's not diversity and flavor and richness and experience in the eating process, especially if I get to share that experience with somebody else. Second, it takes quite a bit of time. And so I think Factor solves these problems. They got such amazing meals.
2:55 Lex Fridman? They're so delicious and they fit into my diet, my keto diet. And they allow me to share those meals with other people and really enjoy them, the full variety of it. It tastes delicious and it's fun and it's so easy to do. It fits into my day. You just heat the thing. I don't know how many minutes, maybe like two minutes, and you just get to enjoy it. It's fresh, it's healthy, it's affordable. I love it. Get Factor and enjoy clean eating without the hassle. Go to factormeals.com/lex40 and use code Lex40 to get 40% off your first box. That's factormeals.com/lex40 and use code Lex40. This show is also brought to you by Simply Safe,
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4:20 Lex Fridman? of make sure your home is protected with an easy to use, easy to monitor, easy to interact with, easy to set up security system. That's what Simply Safe is. Go to simplisafe.com/lex to get a free indoor security camera plus 20% off your order with interactive monitoring. And I do recommend you get the interactive monitoring. This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens and it's AG1 Drink, which is an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I've been drinking it every single day, twice a day. It's a thing I break my fast with when I'm traveling, got the travel packs.
5:00 Lex Fridman? I mean, it's just, it's a simple part of my day that makes me feel at home. That makes me feel happy. That makes me feel like I have a nutritional foundation to take on the day and do all the kinds of crazy stuff, physical and mental that I do. Sometimes things become such an integrated part of your life that you start to take them for granted and you only realize how much they mean to you when they're gone. So the times when I run out of travel packs and I'm traveling or, or there's a curveball where I have to travel unexpectedly, all that kind of stuff, I realize, oh, wow, there's these little parts of the day that bring me joy. And one of them is drinking an Athletic Greens drink.
5:45 Lex Fridman? Maybe it can be part of your life in the same kind of way. They'll give you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to athleticgreens.com/lex. This is the Lex Freedom Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Harvey Silverglade.
6:24 Lex Fridman? You co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also known as FIRE, a legendary organization that fights for the freedom of speech for all Americans in our courtrooms, on our campuses, and in our culture. So let's start with a big question. What is freedom of speech?
6:42 Speaker 01 First of all, the organization, when I co-founded it in 1999, was called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. It focused on free speech issues on college campuses in academia. And only earlier this year did we decide to expand our reach beyond the campuses, which is why the name, although the acronym FIRE remains, it's now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
7:16 Lex Fridman? The E used to be education.
7:17 Speaker 01 The E used to be education. It's now expression. And we basically do a lot of the cases the ACLU used to do. The ACLU now more is a progressive organization rather than a civil liberties organization. And we've taken the role of dealing with free speech in the society generally. And now this is a particularly, an era prone to censorship. Everybody thinks they're right, and that people who disagree with them should not be able to voice their views. It's a very difficult period right now, both on campus
7:56 Speaker 01 and off campus. It's about as intolerant an era as I can remember. I'm going to be 81, May 10. I was born on Mother's Day, 1942. And I can't remember it being this bad. I was born during the McCarthy era.
8:14 Lex Fridman? So that says a lot.
8:15 Speaker 01 And it sort of reminds me of that.
8:19 Lex Fridman? Well, let's start with that, almost a philosophical question, a legal question, a human question. What is this freedom that you care so much about, that you fought for so much, freedom of speech?
8:30 Speaker 01 It is the most important right that Americans have. It's not a coincidence or an accident that it's named in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
8:43 Speaker 01 Without it, no democratic society can be democratic for long. And I'm an absolutist. That is, I believe that, for example, people say to me, but what about hate speech? Well, hate speech is much more important than love speech. And the reason is, I'm much more interested in knowing whom I should not turn my back on than I am interested in figuring out who loves me or who likes me. So hate speech is the most important, in my view. And yet, it's banned in, for example, schools. It's unbelievable.
9:23 Speaker 01 Kids are not schooled into understanding the glory of the First Amendment when schools say to them they shouldn't say things that are going to make somebody feel bad. I mean, the purpose of speech is to express honest views that people have. And so I believe hate speech is as important as love speech, and my view is more important.
9:49 Lex Fridman? So it should be brought to the surface rather than operate in the shadows?
9:53 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Absolutely.
9:56 Lex Fridman? What is the connection between freedom of speech and freedom of thought?
10:00 Speaker 01 Well, in a free society, thoughts start in the brain and then they come out the mouth. So they're different ends of the same spectrum.
10:12 Lex Fridman? So to you, the censorship of speech eventually leads to a censorship of thought?
10:18 Speaker 01 Of course. Censorship of the mode by which other people know what you're thinking.
10:23 Lex Fridman? So there's some aspect of our society that is, that thinking is done collectively. And without being able to speak to each other, we cannot do this kind of collective thinking.
10:32 Speaker 01 Correct. And out of speech, the theory is that ultimately, out of speech comes truth. That isn't necessarily so. But I do think that when there's free speech, better decisions are made. Because people put their views on the table in a frank, accurate way. And then those views mix together and clash. And out of that usually comes the better, the better decision.
11:02 Speaker 01 Not always, but usually, more often than not. But if somebody is not allowed to be, you know, sit at the table of decision making, then the decision making process is poorer, less robust, less diverse, and ultimately less successful.
11:23 Lex Fridman? Can you elaborate on the idea of free speech absolutism? So hate speech can be quite painful to quite a large number of people. Does this worry you?
11:37 Speaker 01 Yep. Living in a free society requires that you expose yourself to some discomfort. You call it pain. It's maybe emotional pain. It's not physical pain. But it's the price we pay for living in a free society. Every so often, we're insulted. We're emotionally hurt. Think of the alternative. All the alternatives are worse. Nobody ever promised us a rose garden. We're lucky to be in a country that has the First Amendment. It's also the, it's the most diverse country in the world because of immigration.
12:20 Speaker 01 I mean, my grandparents, my father's side came over from Russia. My mother's side came over from Poland. I'm very happy that my grandparents came in from Russia. I would not want to be in Russia today. I'd probably be sharing a cell with a Wall Street Journal reporter. So I'm thankful that they came in. And this is a great country. It's got troubles right now, but our country doesn't. And we've had, before we had a civil war, we had segregation, we had the decimation of the Indians. We're not perfect, but it's the best place in the world for somebody who values liberty.
13:05 Lex Fridman? So you don't think that hate speech can empower large groups? That eventually lead to physical action, to physical harm to others.
13:16 Speaker 01 No, I don't. I think that that we have developed a culture in which it's understood that if you don't like what you hear, you talk back. You write, you write something. We don't punch each other. We insult each other. Is insulting great? Well, I don't know. It's okay. I used to, as a kid in Brooklyn, where I was born, I was born and raised in Bensonhurst, we used to say, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never harm me." And it's absolutely true. What was true when I was five is true when
13:55 Speaker 01 I'm almost eighty-one. So I've lived a long time. I've seen it all. And I'm talking from experience as well as theory. It's what happens when you reach your eighties.
14:08 Lex Fridman? I read that you had this line that you cannot be protected from being called an asshole.
14:13 Speaker 01 Correct. Especially if you're an asshole.
14:17 Lex Fridman? Well, that's, but you don't have to be an asshole to be called an asshole.
14:21 Speaker 01 That's correct.
14:22 Lex Fridman? And I think the internet has taught me that.
14:24 Speaker 01 Well, the internet has posed a particular challenge to free speech absolutists because of some of the stuff that's on there is god awful. But I have no different rule for freedom of speech on the internet than I have in newspapers, or in lectures, or in classrooms, or conversations among people.
14:46 Lex Fridman? What do you think about the tension between freedom of speech and freedom of reach, as is kind of sometimes termed? So the internet really challenges that aspect. It allows speech to become viral and spread very quickly to a very large number of people.
15:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, you know, we've had, we've had revolutions in, in the modalities of communication. After all, newspapers were the first challenge.
15:15 Speaker 01 Radio and television posed a new challenge. The FCC tried, but ultimately gave up the attempt to control obscenity, for example. And the Supreme Court has been pretty close. The one thing that liberal and conservative Supreme Courts, right now we're in a conservative era due to Trump nominations. During much of my life, it was Warren Court, it was William O Douglas, Brennan, it was liberal court. One thing they agree on is free speech.
16:00 Speaker 01 They don't agree on much else, but they do agree on free speech. And I think the reason is that they recognize that, well, my group is in the ascendance today, but it may not be tomorrow, and I want to have objective, clear rules so that when I'm in the minority, I'm able to voice my opinion. And so it's one of the few things that both sides of the political spectrum agree on. The only people who don't are the people way over on the right that I call the fascists and the people way over on the left, who are the communists. But with respect to most people in this, on the political spectrum, Republicans, Democrats,
16:45 Speaker 01 socialists, libertarians, they agree on the primacy of free speech because it protects them when protection is needed.
16:56 Lex Fridman? So to you, even on the internet, free speech absolutism should rule?
17:02 Speaker 01 Yes. Nobody's going to die. Remember, death threats are not protected. Nobody's going to die, so people are going to be a little bit insulted. That's the price you pay for living in a free society. And it's a small price, in my view. People, some people don't have as tough a hide as others. Well, then develop it. I don't mean to sound cruel, but you know, you're living in a free society, develop a tough hide.
17:36 Lex Fridman? So that's the cost of living in a free society.
17:39 Speaker 01 Yep, there is a cost.
17:41 Lex Fridman? The thing is, it can really hurt at scale to be cyberbullied, to be attacked for the ideas you express, or maybe ideas you didn't express, but that somebody decided to lie about you and use that to attack you.
17:56 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, there are, there are some exceptions to the First Amendment. Libel and slander is an exception.
18:08 Speaker 01 Direct threats are an exception. You know, if you, if you say such and such, I will murder you, that is not lawful. If you say to somebody, if you say about somebody, oh, you know, you beat your wife, that is not lawful if, in fact, the person knows you don't beat your wife. There are some limits. Defamation is one, direct threats are another. So it's not, this is not, the First Amendment is not absolute, but it's more absolute than it is in any other society, and it's pretty near absolute.
18:48 Speaker 01 For example, fraud. If you sell somebody a car and you say, oh, this is in great running shape, and in fact, it's an old jalopy, and it's not going to make it more than 10 miles, that's fraud. That's not free speech. So free speech is not absolute. There are these limits, but they're very narrow, specific categories of limits.
19:11 Lex Fridman? But there's gray area here, because while legally, you're not allowed to defame a person, in the court of public opinion, especially with the aid of anonymity on the internet, rumors can spread at scale. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people can make up things about you.
19:31 Speaker 01 You have to defend yourself.
19:33 Lex Fridman? Using more speech.
19:34 Speaker 01 We're big, we're through freedom of speech. We're big boys and girls.
19:39 Speaker 01 You have to defend yourself. You know, in some societies, if you say something,
19:46 Speaker 01 if you, right now, if you say something nasty about Putin, you'll end up in the Gulag. If you say something nasty about Biden, you end up in the New York Times. Where would you rather be?
19:57 Lex Fridman? Well, let's talk about the thing you've done for over 20 years.
20:03 Lex Fridman? Which is fight for the freedom of speech on college campuses. So why is freedom of speech important on college campuses?
20:09 Speaker 01 Well, it's important everywhere in the society, but it's most important on college campuses. Why? Because that's where we educate our young citizens. And if you are educated under a notion that some dean can can call you on the carpet. Because you say something which is considered racist, or you can say something which is considered you know, dangerous to to social cohesion.
20:43 Speaker 01 Then it's not a liberal arts college, no. The the theory that I used in the Shadow University.
20:52 Lex Fridman? A book you've written, The Shadow University.
20:55 Speaker 01 Nineteen ninety eight.
20:56 Lex Fridman? Nineteen ninety eight. You were ahead of a lot of these things.
20:59 Speaker 01 I was, I'm afraid that as a pessimist, I always saw the bad side of things.
21:05 Lex Fridman? Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, The Shadow University, a book you co-authored with Alan Charles.
21:11 Speaker 01 Yes, with one of my Princeton classmates, Alan Charles Coors, who's now an emeritus professor of Enlightenment history at the University of Pennsylvania. I only taught for one semester and I can go into that later, you know, the reason I did not continue to teach in colleges. It was Harvard Law School, I taught a course in the mid nineteen eighties.
21:35 Speaker 01 But in any event, the college campuses are one of the most important for for free speech. Because it's where people get education. And if you don't really get a good education, if certain points of view are not allowed to be expressed, because education comes from the clash of ideas. And you then have to decide, this is the, this is how you become a thinking adult. You have to decide which ideas make more sense to you, which ones you're going to follow.
22:07 Speaker 01 The college experience is transformative.
22:11 Speaker 01 And if there is censorship on campuses, it's highly destructive of the educational enterprise and ultimately to the entire society. You know, we have in the sciences, we have a scientific method. Scientific method is you try experiments and you see which ones work and then you develop theories based upon the results of experiments. Well, this is not much different from every other aspect of life. You have to entertain different views on different subjects. You hear all the views and you make a decision as to which one's accurate, which one's not. So a scientific method I apply
22:53 Speaker 01 to non-science, to history, to journalism, to all of these things.
23:01 Lex Fridman? So that scientific method includes ideas, hateful ideas also?
23:05 Speaker 01 Correct. If you don't allow hateful ideas. I mean, when scientists do experiments, nobody says to them, oh, you know, don't do that experiment because it would be very bad if that turns out to be accurate, that outcome. That's not the way it works. Every point of view is thrown into the marketplace, whether it's science or whether it's, you know, non-science.
23:33 Lex Fridman? And that includes the kind of ideas and the kind of discourse that might actually lead to an increase in hate on campuses?
23:41 Speaker 01 The First Amendment prohibits speech which is liable to produce imminent, imminent violence.
23:51 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
23:52 Speaker 01 So for example, you know, the exception is yelling falsely, falsely yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. A lot of people misstate it. They say, well, the exception is yelling fire in a movie theater. Well, if there's really a fire, you're performing a real important function by yelling fire. But it's falsely yelling fire. You could start a riot. People would be crushed, try to get out. So there are these, that's one of the exceptions of the First Amendment as the Supreme Court has defined it.
24:28 Speaker 01 There are very few exceptions. And defamation is an exception. I'm a, I'm not a fan of that exception, frankly. But if you say something about somebody that has serious implications in their, in their life, in their ability to earn a living. If you say, accuse somebody of being a pedophile, but it's not true, that person can sue you. My own view is, I think that's an unfortunate exception, but I'm not, I'm the Supreme Court. I think that, I'm, I'm with, a friend of mine was Nat Hentoff.
25:09 Speaker 01 Nat Hentoff, who wrote for decades for The Village Voice in New York. He was a friend of mine. He was a free speech absolutist. And he wrote a fabulous book called Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee. And he was an absolutist, and I'm, I'm with, I'm with Nat Hentoff.
25:30 Lex Fridman? Even on the defamation aspect. I mean, I agree with you in some sense, just practically speaking. It seems like that the way, the best way in the, the public sphere to defend against defamation is with more speech.
25:45 Speaker 01 Correct.
25:46 Lex Fridman? And through authenticity, through authentic communication of the truth, as you see it.
25:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. You know, at the times, The Boston Globe has said something about me that hasn't been accurate. They have variably published my letter to the editor. I'm also not bashful about getting in chart, in touch with the reporter. They, at the end of every column, they give the reporter's email address. And I know people say that I, I have more access to the media than most people. But all that means is I get to fame more than most people.
26:25 Lex Fridman? Can we also comment on, from the individual consumer of speech?
26:30 Lex Fridman? There's a kind of sense that freedom of speech means you should be forced to read all of it. Freedom of speech versus freedom of reach. We as consumers of speech, do we have the right to select what we read?
26:45 Speaker 01 We do. And nobody can force us to sit in a room and listen to a radio program that we don't want to listen to. Nobody can force us to read a book that we don't want to read. The whole notion of freedom of speech means that people have autonomy on their choices.
27:04 Lex Fridman? In order to form a complete mind and complete human being, there's a kind of tension of that autonomy versus consuming as many varied perspectives as possible, which is underlying the ethic of free speech. So on college campuses, it seems like a good way to develop the mind is to get as many perspectives as possible, even if you don't really want to.
27:29 Speaker 01 Well, that's, that is the theory. Academic freedom is supposed to be the highest degree of free speech.
27:40 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
27:41 Speaker 01 You should be able to entertain all kinds of hateful, threatening ideas. And the way I put it is, there's something wrong when you can say something with complete abandon, without any fear, in Harvard Square, whereas on the other side of the fence, you can't say it in Harvard Yard. It should be the opposite. And what happens is, universities, from the best to the worst, from the most famous to the least well-known, have been taken over by administrators. Administrators do not really subsume academic values. They know nothing about the Constitution. They know nothing about free speech.
28:25 Speaker 01 They know nothing about academic freedom. They feel that their job is to keep order. And so they develop speech codes, kangaroo courts to enforce the speech codes.
28:39 Speaker 01 And these are very dire developments. I wrote about them in the Shadow University in ninety-eight and tried to deal with them in nineteen ninety-nine when I started FIRE, co-started FIRE. And I would fire, the reason I'm running currently for the Harvard Board of Overseers is what I'd like to do is convince the Harvard Corporation, the so-called president fellows of Harvard College, the chief governing board of the university with the real power, the Board of Overseers is a secondary body, but quite influential, to fire ninety-five percent of the administrators.
29:22 Speaker 01 It would have a salutary effect on the academics of the university, it would have a salutary effect on free speech and academic freedom, it would cut tuitions by about forty percent, and it would create a whole different atmosphere on the campus and the same as you said of MIT or any other place. I think administrators are a very bad influence on American higher education.
29:52 Lex Fridman? Can you sort of elaborate the intuition of why this thing that you call administrative bloat is such a bad thing for university?
30:01 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, just in terms of the cost of maintaining, there are more administrators in American higher education than there are faculty members. The cost is enormous. Number two, they are inimical to the teaching enterprise and they feel that their job is to control things, to make sure there are no problems, that nobody's feelings are hurt. Being called, you know, before a dean because you said something that insulted somebody is something that shouldn't happen in American higher education, yet it happens because you have these administrators who think it's their job.
30:46 Speaker 01 To protect people from being insulted. You insult a black student, you insult a woman. There's a disciplinary hearing. Well, there shouldn't be. Black people are accustomed to being insulted. Jews are accustomed to being insulted. Women are accustomed to being insulted. And it's very good to know who doesn't like you. It's useful. It is very, it's essential information to know who doesn't like you. If everybody is forced to say, I love you, and nobody can say, I hate you, you get a false view of what life is all about.
31:25 Lex Fridman? Outside of the university?
31:26 Speaker 01 Outside of the university. I mean, you do graduate eventually.
31:32 Lex Fridman? And that's ultimately the mission of the university, is to prepare you, to make you into a great human being, into a great leader that can take on the problems of the world.
31:39 Speaker 01 Correct. And you don't do it by treating you like a little flower.
31:44 Lex Fridman? But what role does the university have to protect students? To women, African Americans, anybody, Jews, anybody who gets, can be victim of hate speech?
31:55 Speaker 01 They protect you from physical assault. If somebody physically assaults you, then they get punished. But they shouldn't, they shouldn't protect you who gets insulted because that is a violation of academic freedom, the freedom of the insulter to insult you. And also, as I said, it's very useful to know who doesn't like you. It's useful for the so-called victim. I think it's just that I want to know who doesn't like me. It's as important to me as knowing who likes me.
32:29 Lex Fridman? But do you also believe in this open space of discourse that the insulter will eventually lose?
32:36 Speaker 01 I think that's true. I think the insulter eventually will wear out his or her welcome. I do. But I like to know who the insultor is.
32:48 Lex Fridman? Because it gives you a deeper understanding of human nature.
32:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, and usually, by the way, my experience has been that the insulters have generally not been as smart as the people they've insulted. And that's probably one of the reasons they insult them, because they're, they feel inferior. I mean, I'm not trying to be a psychoanalyst here, but a lot of the people who are the haters are pretty low down in the intellectual scale.
33:15 Lex Fridman? Anyway, 95% of administration, you would fire, you're calling to fire 95% of the administration. People should know, I think, people that don't really think about the structure, the way the universities work, are not familiar, I think, with the fact that administration, there's a huge bloat of administration. You know, when you think about what makes a great university, it's about the students, it's about the faculty, it's about the people that do research, if it's a research university. They don't think about the bureaucracy of meetings and committees and rules and paperwork and all that, and all the people that are involved with pushing that kind of paper.
33:57 Lex Fridman? And there's a huge cost to that, but it also slows down and suppresses the beautiful variety that makes a university great, which is the teaching, the student life, the protests, the, the, the, um, the clubs, all the fun that you can have in a university, all the very kind of exploration, which you can't really do once you graduate.
34:19 Speaker 01 Correct.
34:20 Lex Fridman? It's the place, the university is a place to really explore. In every single way.
34:26 Lex Fridman? So let me just talk about this important thing, because I'm very fortunate to have contacted you, almost by accident, in a very important moment in your life. You're running for the Harvard Board of Overseers. What is this board, how much power does it have, and what would you do if elected?
34:46 Speaker 01 Okay, first of all, I have a, I have a prediction.
34:49 Lex Fridman? Yes.
34:50 Speaker 01 That in about five years, they're gonna probably change the name, because overseers reminds people of the slavery era. And we're in such a politically correct era now, that the English language is being restricted, corrupted is the way I put it. Because certain words are forbidden. We have some problems in this country. And I think a part of the problem is the educational system has lost the sense of what academic freedom and free speech are all about. And I think it's essential that the educational system begin to take more seriously what free speech and academic freedom really are. That's why I'm running for the Harvard Board of Overseers.
35:35 Lex Fridman? So let me just linger on the the role of the administration in protecting free speech. So what often happens, I think you've written about this, is there's going to be a few, maybe a small number of hypersensitive students and faculty that protest. So how does Harvard administration resist the influence of those hypersensitive protesters in protecting speech and protecting even hate speech?
36:04 Speaker 01 Harvard has done fairly well under the presidency of Lawrence Backhow. I have had a couple of meetings with Backhow. I like Backhow. I have donated to Harvard a print of my late. My late wife took a picture of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg when the Rolling Thunder review got to Harvard Square. And it's a, it's sort of an iconic photograph. She called it the music lesson because it's Scott Dylan teaching Ginsberg how to play the guitar. And I donated one of those to Harvard. It's hanging in Backhow's office. He, the new president, Claudine Gay,
36:49 Speaker 01 is not known for respecting academic freedom and free speech. People have said to me, well, give her a chance. Well, I'm willing to give her a chance, but she does have a record. And she's a bureaucrat. I don't think she believes in free speech and academic freedom. I think she's a progressive, not a liberal. I'm not happy with the the appointment of Claudine Gay. And it has made more essential my attempt to get on the Board of Overseers.
37:21 Lex Fridman? So let's talk about the Board of Overseers and your run for it. The specifics, actually. It would be, it would be nice because I think you're a right in candidate. And the election is over on May 16?
37:37 Speaker 01 Yes.
37:39 Lex Fridman? And I think there are specifics, I'll probably give them in the intro, I'll give links to people, but the specifics are complicated. Let me just mention that you have to be Harvard alumni, so have graduated from Harvard.
37:53 Speaker 01 You have to, in order to run and in order to vote?
37:55 Lex Fridman? In order to vote. And the process, I imagine, is not trivial, but this is done online. And if you're an alumni, you should have received an email from a particular email address, [email protected] . And presumably, there's a way to get some validation number from that email. And then you go online, you enter that validation number and you vote. And you, to vote for Harvey, you have to enter his name correctly. Harvey Silverglate, and spell it correctly. Obviously, I'm imagining this because I'm MIT, not Harvard. So I'm imagining the process is not trivial.
38:38 Lex Fridman? You have to click on things, you have to sort of follow instructions that are not trivial. And I'll also provide an email. If the process is painful, it doesn't work for you, that you can email. Email Harvard and complain. [email protected] and so on. I'll provide all the links. But is there something else you can say about the voting process? What you're running on?
39:03 Speaker 01 This is my second run. The first time, I got enough signatures to get on the ballot. Then, the Harvard Alumni Association sent out a letter to all living Harvard alums, recommending that they vote for the officially nominated candidates. That excluded two petition candidates, of whom I was one.
39:34 Speaker 01 And I wrote to the alumni association and I said, you have now sent out the curriculum vetise and the policy positions of all these officially nominated candidates. There are two petition candidates on the ballot. I would like to be able to send out my positions to the voters. They wrote me back saying, our policy is to only send out the policy positions and the platforms of officially nominated candidates. Can you believe that? Well, this is a liberal arts college, right?
40:17 Speaker 01 From the, where from the clash of ideas, truth emerges. Well, really? This is what I call Harvard's not so subtle means of candidate suppression, not voter suppression, candidate suppression. And everybody can vote, but not everybody can run. It is ill becomes a liberal arts college where, you know, the clash of ideas will produce the truth. What about the clash of ideas of the board of overseers? The board of overseers is important. It doesn't have the same power and authority as the Harvard Corporation, the so-called president fellows of Harvard College.
41:00 Speaker 01 But it's very influential and very important. And it would be a great perch for me to try to exert influence for the university to get back to where it was before it was taken over by the administrators.
41:14 Lex Fridman? Well, I'm pretty sure that most of Harvard alumni, most of the students currently going to Harvard, most of the faculty at Harvard probably stand behind the ideas and the ideals that you stand behind.
41:26 Speaker 01 Yep.
41:27 Lex Fridman? The people that love Harvard and what it stands for.
41:29 Speaker 01 See, the alumni were educated in an era when these concepts were taken more seriously. And before the administration, administrators took over.
41:40 Speaker 01 So I do think if I get my message out, I'm gonna win the seat. And if I win a seat, I will have a great perch for trying to convince the real power that be, which is the Harvard Corporation, to do the things that I'm suggesting. You know, get rid of nine, five percent of the administrators, get rid of the speech codes, reduce tuition by forty percent, all of these salutary benefits.
42:08 Speaker 01 Can you imagine if Harvard became the most affordable college in the United States?
42:13 Lex Fridman? Well, the affordability is another aspect, but I think before that, just the freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of thought at America's greatest universities, I think, is something that everybody would agree on.
42:27 Speaker 01 It would have a tremendous effect on the whole country.
42:34 Lex Fridman? And is there something to say about the details of how difficult it is for alumni to vote? You have experience with this?
42:43 Speaker 01 The, you could vote online, or you can vote by paper ballot. You could request a paper ballot. And all I could say is that the hard part is getting the message out. My name doesn't appear on the ballot because I couldn't get enough signatures.
43:00 Lex Fridman? Well, Harvey, Harvey Silverglate.
43:03 Speaker 01 S I L V E R G L A T. You know, when my grandparents arrived from Russia, the, the, the name in Russian was something like Zilbeglit. And the immigration officer had several choices. He could have said Silver Gate. Gate is a real, silver and gate are real English words. He could have said Silverglate, G L A D E. Those are real English words. That's how my name is often spelled, either Silver Gate or Silverglate. Silverglate is a nonsense syllable. And why the immigration officer chose to transliterate silver zilboglit as silver glade?
43:47 Speaker 01 I'll never understand, and it is the cause of endless mistakes in my name.
43:54 Lex Fridman? Well, the the fundamental absurdity of life.
43:57 Speaker 01 Yes.
43:58 Lex Fridman? Is also the source of its beauty.
43:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:00 Lex Fridman? Anyway, we shall spell it out and we shall get yell loud and wide that everybody who has ever graduated from Harvard should vote for you if they believe in the ideals of the great American universities, which I think most people do.
44:18 Lex Fridman? Let me also ask about diversity, inclusion and equity programs. You've been you've had a few harsh words to say about those. You know, the idea of diversity, I think, is a beautiful idea. You said that Harvard's idea of diversity is for everyone to look different and think alike.
44:37 Speaker 01 Correct.
44:37 Lex Fridman? Can you elaborate?
44:38 Speaker 01 And and be comfortable.
44:40 Lex Fridman? And be comfortable.
44:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. First of all, it is impossible, if liberal arts education is taken seriously, it's impossible for students to feel comfortable. Why? Because one of the roles of college is to challenge all the beliefs that they grew up with, which mostly are the beliefs inculcated by parents and by elementary school teachers. And the idea is to be able to challenge those thoughts, those ideas. And if you don't have free speech and academic freedom, those views get reified. They do not get challenged.
45:18 Speaker 01 So it is it violates the fundamental role of higher educational institutions to have any restrictions at all. That's number one.
45:32 Speaker 01 Number two, as I think I said earlier, if people, students are not allowed to be frank with one another, they don't really learn about one another. And, you know, I've given a lot of lectures in which I have said, and I think students now understand it, I'm much more interested in hearing from the people who hate me than the people who love me. I'm much more interested in knowing who disagrees with me than people who agree with me. That's how I learn, and that's how they learn, the clash of ideas, which is the theory behind the First Amendment.
46:15 Speaker 01 That truth will somehow emerge, or if not truth, at least a better truth, a truer truth, a more useful truth, if ideas are allowed to clash.
46:27 Lex Fridman? Especially in the structure of a university where, at least I would say, there's some set of rules, some set of civility. I think I would rather read Mein Kampf to understand people that hate. There is also quality to disagreement that we should strive for. And I think a university is a place where when disagreement and even hate is allowed, it's done in a high-effort way.
46:52 Speaker 01 You know, somebody asked me once about what books I would want to have as required reading in literature courses, and I listed Mein Kampf. And they were horrified. And I said, well, it's one of the most important books of the 20th century.
47:08 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
47:09 Speaker 01 I mean, six million Jews died, an enormous number of other people died, because one guy wrote a book called Mein Kampf and took it seriously. It's one of the most important books ever written. How can, how can an educated person not have at least breezed through Mein Kampf?
47:27 Lex Fridman? And... It's not a great read, though.
47:30 Speaker 01 It's not a great read. He was not a great writer. But you do get a sense for the sociopath that was Adolf Hitler.
47:38 Lex Fridman? Yes, because he really acted on the words that he wrote.
47:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:43 Lex Fridman? And it was there, and if people took that work seriously.
47:46 Speaker 01 Correct.
47:47 Lex Fridman? They would have understood.
47:49 Speaker 01 It's one of the most important books of the 20th century, and it's politically incorrect to read it. It's crazy.
47:57 Lex Fridman? But can you speak to the
48:02 Lex Fridman? the efforts to increase diversity in universities, which I think is embodied in this DIE effort of diversity, inclusion and equity programs? Where do they go right? Where do they go wrong?
48:15 Speaker 01 Okay, let me tell you, first of all, this may surprise a lot of people.
48:21 Speaker 01 I am opposed to affirmative action.
48:26 Speaker 01 And I think that what it does is it labels people by their race, by their religion and by their national origin. Precisely what we don't want people to do is be pigeonholed in those categories. The reason that affirmative action has become the way that universities decide on who gets admitted is because historically, people in what's called marginalized groups, blacks, gays, Hispanics, have been discriminated against in the admissions process.
49:10 Speaker 01 Now, what I have suggested is that instead of affirmative action, and by the way, here's a prediction. The Supreme Court is going to abolish affirmative action. There's a case pending, a Harvard case.
49:26 Speaker 01 It's there are two cases joined together, one of a public university and one of a private university. The private university is Harvard. I predict that the Supreme Court will vote six to three to abolish affirmative action. It is, on its face, it is a violation of equal protection of the law. Some groups are favored because of race or ethnicity. It is a classic violation of equal protection clause. When affirmative action was approved.
50:01 Speaker 01 The deciding vote was Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She wrote a very famous opinion in which she said, "I hesitate to vote to keep up, to affirm the notion of affirmative action because it's such an obvious violation of equal protection. But we have an urgent problem in this society. We are not educating our members of racial ethnic minorities, and we have to try to get them into colleges. So I think it should be approved for 25 years.
50:40 Speaker 01 And it will, it should be, it should, in 25 years, it should have performed its role. Well, it hasn't. And the 25 years is coming up. I think it's three or four years left. The Supreme Court is going to abolish it. You can take my word for that. Because it's such an obvious violation of equal protection. Why did affirmative action come into play? Because the secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Public secondary and elementary schools are so bad. Why are they so bad? Partly because of the control that the teachers' union has.
51:21 Speaker 01 Randy Weingarten runs the public school system in the United States. And what I have suggested is that the effort should be to, this is an emergency, it's a national emergency, to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. And one way to do it is to hire teachers who are fabulous teachers rather than necessarily members of the union. I have come to oppose
51:59 Speaker 01 Public workers' unions. I am a very strong supporter of unions in the private sector. Why do I think there's such a difference between unions in the public sector and the private sector? In the private sector, management is arguing, bargaining with its own money and with the money of shareholders. In the public sector, there's only one side. There is the teachers' union, and then there's a school committee that is dealing with the taxpayers' money, not their room. And so it's a very skewed power balance.
52:40 Speaker 01 So as supportive as I am of private sector unions, I am in opposition of public sector unions. They're very destructive. And I think without the teachers' union, teachers who are really skilled will be able to get jobs. They would not have to worry about the seniority of teachers who long since have given up really creative teaching. And we have to improve the public educational system. I had, my late wife and I had a classmate of, we have a son who's now 44, who went to the public schools in Cambridge.
53:25 Speaker 01 He has a friend, first name Eugene, who was a black kid from Roxbury, whose mother understood that the schools in Roxbury were terrible, the schools in Cambridge were pretty good. He lived in our house Monday to Friday, and he went to school with Isaac in the Cambridge Public Schools. Elsa and I would show up to school committee meetings when there was bargaining between the teachers' union and the school committee. The teachers' union objected to our being there. We argued, we're taxpayers. We have a kid in the school and we have, his best friend
54:10 Speaker 01 lives with us and goes to school with him. We have a real interest. And the school committee walked out of the bargaining session. The city council then reconsidered its vote and they voted that we, that citizens, taxpayers, parents of kids in the school could not show up to these negotiation sessions. I thought that was absolutely outrageous. But I understood why, because these contracts are crazy. No sane municipality should enter into some
54:50 Speaker 01 of these contracts. And so I am a, I have become an opponent of the National Teachers Association, the Cambridge Teachers Association. I don't think there should be unions for public employees because there's no real bargaining going on. And I think that the public school system will never be improved as long as the teachers are unionized.
55:21 Lex Fridman? So that to you is at the core of the problem that results in the kind of inequality of opportunity that affirmative actions does not solve?
55:32 Speaker 01 Correct. If the, if the educational system in the elementary and high school levels is improved, we wouldn't need affirmative action. These kids would get good educations.
55:43 Lex Fridman? So from all backgrounds, poor kids in the United States will get good education?
55:49 Speaker 01 Correct.
55:50 Lex Fridman? If public unions are abolished?
55:53 Speaker 01 Correct.
55:54 Lex Fridman? And but do you more-
55:56 Speaker 01 And incidentally, the postal service would probably work better, too.
56:01 Lex Fridman? That's a whole nother conversation. But to you, at the core of the problem of the inequality in universities, that diversity, inclusion and equity programs are trying to solve is the public education system of secondary education.
56:17 Speaker 01 Yes, correct. Elementary and secondary.
56:19 Lex Fridman? Elementary and secondary education. Well, then, is there use? What is the benefit? What is the drawback of DIE, diversity, inclusion and equity programs at universities like Harvard?
56:32 Speaker 01 It's an affirmative action, basically. And what it does is it allows the system of elementary and secondary education to be bad because they could say, oh, we got our kids into Harvard. Yes, but you haven't educated them. And it covers up the wound. And I think we will never improve as long as we're able to cover up the wound. And as I said, affirmative action is going to be abolished by the Supreme Court. It's a clear violation of equal protection. It's what Santrish Day O'Connor understood but ignored intentionally, but as an experiment. And I believe it's going to be abolished and that's going to have, that's going to
57:17 Speaker 01 force the elementary and high schools to get serious.
57:23 Lex Fridman? Do you see the same issues that you discussed now at Harvard, at MIT? We're here in Boston, so I have to talk about the great universities here in Boston. You've written about MIT. I'm, it's a university I love. I'm a research scientist there. Do you see the same kind of issues there?
57:39 Speaker 01 Yes, I do.
57:41 Lex Fridman? Do you remember, can you explain the case of Dorian Abbott lecture that was canceled at MIT?
57:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, you know, this is not the only, it's not the only incident. There have been incidents all around the country of academics, professors who have views that don't comport with the, as the great Lilian Helm and another friend of my late wife said, they, they, she said she refused to cut her garments in order to fit the fashions of the day. Dorian Abbott didn't cut his suit to fit the fashions of the day in his intellectual suit. And so he was, um, this has happened at Princeton, this has happened at Harvard, this has happened at MIT.
58:29 Speaker 01 The great universities in the country have decided that the clash of ideas is not such a good idea because some people's feelings will be hurt. Well, this is, there was quite a revolt against it. Fire sounded the alarm. And then in the end, the universities were, I believe Abbott was invited to come back. I think he turned him down.
58:55 Lex Fridman? Uh huh.
58:56 Speaker 01 Uh, he's, I, he, he shouldn't have turned him down, but he did. Um, and, um, when, when the light is cast upon these situations, the universities back down because they're so embarrassed.
59:09 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
59:10 Speaker 01 Um, and the newspapers, because newspapers depend on the First Amendment in order to exist, newspapers tend to give pretty good publicity to these cases of censorship.
59:20 Lex Fridman? So they grill the universities.
59:21 Speaker 01 Yes.
59:22 Lex Fridman? Uh, so they, they really emphasize, they catalyze the embarrassment.
59:26 Speaker 01 Yes.
59:27 Lex Fridman? So is that one of the ways, is that the best way to fight all of this?
59:30 Speaker 01 Yes, sunshine is the best disinfectant.
59:32 Lex Fridman? Uh, you've written about MIT's connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
59:35 Speaker 01 Yes.
59:36 Lex Fridman? He was well-connected at MIT and at Harvard. Um, what do you, what lessons do you draw about human nature, about universities, about all of this from, from this saga?
59:47 Speaker 01 Let me say this. I believe that universities, if somebody wants to, for example, donate to a university and donates on the requirement that the building be named after them. If the university is taking donations and the person is funding a building, you know, and wants the building named after them, the building should be named after him, her or them. Harvard is facing this now with the Sackler Building. Because Sackler, the Sacklers have become now a persona non grata because of their role in producing the opioids that caused the huge scandalous opioid addiction.
1:00:30 Speaker 01 There are people who want to have removed the name Sackler from the Sackler Art Museum at Harvard. Larry Backow, the president of Harvard, to his credit, has refused to do that. And if it reminds people that the money was earned through selling opioids, that's good. That's good that people understand that that's where the Sacklers got their money. They should be reminded. In my undergraduate alma mater, Princeton, there's a movement to remove the name Woodrow Wilson. Because Wood Wilson was president at Princeton before he became governor of New Jersey, before he became president of the United States.
1:01:15 Speaker 01 How he got to be governor of New Jersey was he was so insufferable that the trustees of Princeton got on the nomination to run for governor of New Jersey. They had said, we gotta get this guy out of here. And not because he was anti-black and anti-Semitic, because the trustees were as well, but because he just was insufferable. He drove the faculty crazy, and they got him out. And so Princeton was thinking of changing the name. I wrote a letter to President Isgruba at Princeton, saying, you know, this is part of the university's history. You don't want to, you want to rewrite history falsely? Woodrow Wilson was the president of this institution.
1:02:00 Speaker 01 He was one of your predecessors. He never answered me either. I think these people, you know, they know they have no answer. The reason I didn't get a response from President Isgruba is the same as the reason I didn't get a response from the headmaster of Milton Academy. They understand that what they're doing is violative of the fundamental precepts of academic institutions. They're ashamed, that they feel they have no choice, because they feel that they would be criticized for racism, homophobia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Criticized by how many people? Well, they feel that they would be criticized by students and parents and donors. I disagree with that.
1:02:43 Speaker 01 I actually think there are more people out there that agree with me than agree with them. Yeah, by a large margin. By a large margin, in what I call the real world, which is the world outside the campus. But academics are afraid they'd be criticized. They're incredibly thin skinned. When I say academics, I mean academic administrators. They're very thin-skinned, politically correct, holier-than-thou. As I said, I would fire ninety, ninety-five percent of them and I would be more careful in who I elected to lead these institutions. So I said Pauline Gay is probably going to be a disaster at Harvard.
1:03:22 Lex Fridman? So it takes guts, it takes courage to be in the administration when the task of protecting the freedom of speech is there.
1:03:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:31 Lex Fridman? Also, which in part requires you to admit and to uphold the mistakes you have done in the past.
1:03:39 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:03:40 Lex Fridman? Not to hide them.
1:03:41 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:03:42 Lex Fridman? And that to you, I mean Jeffrey Epstein for Harvard and for MIT is a very recent mistake.
1:03:48 Speaker 01 Well, there's a debate whether it's a mistake. They took money from him.
1:03:52 Lex Fridman? Yes.
1:03:53 Speaker 01 Okay. Is it a mistake to take money from bad people? Do you have to do a morals test of a potential donor? I don't think so.
1:04:06 Lex Fridman? It's complicated because.
1:04:07 Speaker 01 If there are no conditions attached to it, I think it's emotionally complicated. I don't think that it is rationally complicated.
1:04:17 Speaker 01 It's emotionally complicated. It's particularly complicated if they want naming rights.
1:04:22 Lex Fridman? Yes.
1:04:23 Speaker 01 You know, the Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein Biological Laboratory. That, that would be a problem for most universities. I don't think that naming rights have to be given to somebody that you, that you don't think is worthy of having their name. I think the university has the right to say, no, we'll, we'll take your money, but we will not name the building after you. I think they have a right to do that.
1:04:49 Lex Fridman? There's some degree in which you whitewash the name, though. If you, not, not with naming rights, but.
1:04:57 Speaker 01 You take the money?
1:04:58 Lex Fridman? If you take the money, it allows the person. In public discourse to say that they're collaborating, they're working together with Harvard and with MIT.
1:05:07 Speaker 01 I have a problem with universities making morals tests of donors. Because not every donor is as bad as Epstein, but some of the donors made their money in industry by being rapacious, by paying low wages, by exploiting people.
1:05:28 Lex Fridman? You can make the case that accepting money from the Department of Defense, from DARPA, from the United States organizations that contributed to waging war and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians over the past few decades.
1:05:44 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:05:45 Lex Fridman? Folks like the tenured professor Noam Chomsky will make the case that that is far more evil than accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein.
1:05:53 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:05:54 Lex Fridman? Still, Jeffrey Epstein is a known pedophile.
1:05:59 Speaker 01 Yes. So that's why I say I would not give him naming rights. I think the university has the autonomy to not give naming rights, but I think that giving morals tests to donors is a Pandora's box.
1:06:16 Lex Fridman? What do you think about the aftermath of the Jeffrey Epstein saga? It feels like, I'm not familiar with Harvard's response, but MIT's response seemed to fire a few scapegoats, and it didn't seem like a genuine response to the evils that human beings are capable of, sort of like rising to the surface, the description in a fully transparent way of all the interactions that happened with Jeffrey Epstein, and what that means. Yeah, what that means about the role of money in universities, what that means about just human beings in power.
1:06:54 Speaker 01 Money is essential to run a university. One of the reasons it's essential is because the university is artificially, artificially requires huge amounts of money, and that's partly because of the administrative army that they support. And they would be less dependent on the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world if they didn't have So it's sort of all part of the same circle.
1:07:26 Lex Fridman? But there's a tension here. You're saying we shouldn't be putting a morals test on money. But actually, if you make, if you expand the amount of money needed to run the university, you're going to make less and less, more and more unethical decisions.
1:07:42 Speaker 01 Correct. And as I said, I am flexible enough to say that I don't think I would name a building after somebody who was truly evil. I think university has the, has the right to limit the naming rights for a donor. If I was an absolutist, I would not even say that. I'm not an absolutist. I have my limits. And that's one of them. The Jeffrey Epstein Biological Laboratory, it's a little bit much.
1:08:14 Lex Fridman? It feels like there should be a requirement on, there should be more requirements on who to accept money from. But the question is, the concern you have is about who gets to decide? And what's the alternative?
1:08:28 Speaker 01 Correct. I think there is no alternative. I think that turning down donation because you, you don't approve of the conduct of the donor is a Pandora's Box.
1:08:44 Lex Fridman? But I'm just sickened by the fact that an evil human being was allowed to walk in the halls of a university I love. So what do we do with that?
1:08:54 Speaker 01 Well, are you telling me that none of the students are evil? Are you telling me none of the faculty members are evil? Are you telling me none of the administrators are evil?
1:09:03 Lex Fridman? But that doesn't, sure, sure. So saying, scapegoating, saying that Jeffrey Epstein is evil can help us forget. Can aid us in forgetting that there is other evil in the world. And some of it might be roaming still the halls of MIT and Harvard.
1:09:21 Speaker 01 Hey, listen, I won't tell you the name, but I represented somebody in the MIT administration a few years ago, who is who is charged with sexual improprieties against students. And as a lawyer, I represented that person. People say, how could you represent? Some of the people I represent are bad people. So how can you represent? I said, well, if I was a cardiologist and this person had a heart attack on the street and I didn't deliver CPR, I would be have my license taken away. I'm a lawyer. The only difference between my obligation and the doctor's obligation is the Constitution gives people the right to assistance of counsel.
1:10:04 Speaker 01 They don't have, the Constitution says nothing about the assistance of cardiologists. I have a very high duty to represent unpopular people. Well, I think I apply the same test to the college donors. The university should not have a morals test. Who's money to take? I do draw a line about naming rights of buildings. And as I say, that's an inconsistency with my absolutism. But I just emotionally, I just can't deal with having, you know, as I said, the Jeffrey Epstein Biological Laboratory.
1:10:42 Lex Fridman? Well, for me emotionally, there's nothing that sickens me more in the university than the abuse of power.
1:10:49 Speaker 01 Right, and there's an awful lot of people who abuse power at university.
1:10:52 Lex Fridman? And especially when it comes to abuse power of students.
1:10:55 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:10:56 Lex Fridman? So sexual harassment, so in the realm of sexual abuse of power and all kinds of other.
1:11:03 Speaker 01 Well, it is a crime to use one's power position in order to take sexual advantage of a student. It's a crime.
1:11:10 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
1:11:11 Speaker 01 This is not a closed question.
1:11:14 Lex Fridman? Yeah, but it, there's a legal crime and there's a deeply ethical crime and there's an emotional response that I have. You are. A good lawyer and perhaps a good man to want to defend some folks who are evil in this world, I don't think I have that emotional fortitude.
1:11:34 Speaker 01 Well, then you shouldn't be a criminal defense lawyer or a cardiologist.
1:11:37 Lex Fridman? I think you're right. I'm still deeply sickened by Jeffrey Epstein and the faculty, the administration that still might be in these great American universities that are abusing their power in small ways and big ways. But that's human nature. You get a little bit of power and you're a bad man or a bad woman and you take advantage of it.
1:12:01 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:12:02 Lex Fridman? We see that in the smallest of ways and in the biggest of ways in institutions and regimes all across the world. Ah, boy, Harvey, it's a complicated situation.
1:12:15 Speaker 01 Well, it's a complicated world and it's complicated to be a human being and this is nothing new.
1:12:21 Lex Fridman? And we should talk about it without restriction. All right, just to linger on liberal arts, in 2014, and probably still today, you wrote that liberals are killing the liberal arts.
1:12:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:34 Lex Fridman? So can you explain?
1:12:35 Speaker 01 Yes, the problem with, I'm a political liberal. The problem with the political left is that it has divided between what's called progressives and liberals. Liberals are people of the left who believe in the First Amendment, an absolute First Amendment, and in due process of law. And the problem with progressives now, in the pursuit of equality, what they view as equality, they're willing to bend those rules.
1:13:18 Speaker 01 And this movement actually started in Brandeis. The critical, it's the critical race theory. It started Herbert Marcuse was a professor at Brandeis and he came up with this theory. The theory was this, this is right out of Orwell. In order to create true equality in a society where you have some downtrodden and some who are the uber menschen.
1:13:47 Speaker 01 In order to create real equality, you have to reduce the rights of the upper classes and artificially increase the rights of the lower classes. And that will produce out of unequal treatment, true equality will be attained. This is nonsense. The idea of discrimination producing true equality is nonsense. My view is, as I've said earlier in our discussion,
1:14:30 Speaker 01 that the way to increase the opportunities for the lower classes is to give them real educations. And until we do that, it's not going to happen. And in order to do that, we have to overcome the problem of the teachers' unions at the elementary and secondary school levels. Until we're willing to do that honestly and improve those schools, we're going to have a problem of a large number of uneducated people who need a boost because we haven't given them proper educations.
1:15:14 Lex Fridman? What do you think about some of the more controversial faculty in the world? So an example, somebody I've spoken with many times on mic and offline is Jordan Peterson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work.
1:15:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:15:24 Lex Fridman? But he is an outspoken critic of or proponent of free speech on campus, and he's been attacked quite a bit. He's a controversial figure. What's the role of the university to protect the Jordan Petersons of the world?
1:15:37 Speaker 01 I think a university has an absolute, absolute, not relative, not worded, that absolute role, obligation to protect academic freedom of even the most controversial faculty members. And you can imagine out on university campus, you have more people who are outliers than you do in the general population.
1:16:03 Lex Fridman? And That's the hope, at least.
1:16:06 Speaker 01 Hopefully, yeah. And those outliers have to be protected.
1:16:12 Speaker 01 They can't be pressured, they can't be fired, they can't be disabled from spewing their their views, whether they're considered racist, whether they're considered to be, you know, promote an idea of of human society that's considered obnoxious. It doesn't matter. If you can't, if you can't have freedom of thought on the college campuses, where can you? You know, them were lost, as a society were lost. And as an educational institution, educational institutions no longer educate, they will indoctrinate. That we have to avoid it, of course.
1:16:52 Lex Fridman? And we should also remember that the outlier might also be the only bearer of truth. So in Nazi Germany, speaking against the fascism fascist regime, in communist Soviet Union, speaking against communism, they might hold the key to the solving the ailments of that society.
1:17:11 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And some of the most important discoveries in science, for example, were mocked at the beginning. I mean, think of poor Charlie Darwin.
1:17:25 Lex Fridman? Charlie, I see he is on nickname levels with you. Well, because we're talking about these big topics of sexism, racism, and hate. We should not forget about the smaller topics, which might even have the much bigger impact, which is what you're speaking to, which is outlier ideas in science. So basically welcoming controversial ideas in science. And by controversial, I mean just stuff that that most of the community doesn't agree on, and doesn't actually harm anyone at all. But even then, there's always pressure. One of the things I'm really concerned about is how little power young faculty have.
1:18:06 Lex Fridman? That there's a kind of hierarchy, seniority, that's that universities have, empowered by the administration, where young faculty that come in, they're kind of.
1:18:18 Speaker 01 Pre-tenure.
1:18:20 Lex Fridman? Yeah, there's a there's a process in chasing tenure where you're kind of supposed to behave.
1:18:27 Lex Fridman? And there's an incentive to kind of fit in and to not be an outcast. And that that's a really huge problem because oftentimes the youth is when the craziest, the biggest ideas, the revolutionary ideas come. And if you're forced to behave and fit in and not speak out, then even in the realm of science, the innovation is stifled.
1:18:49 Speaker 01 Well, now you now you trigger my having to tell you this story.
1:18:54 Lex Fridman? That you're triggered. This is good.
1:18:56 Speaker 01 In the mid 1980s, I decided to take a four month sabbatical from my law practice.
1:19:02 Lex Fridman? Yes.
1:19:03 Speaker 01 Professor James Vorenberg, who was at the time dean of the Harvard Law School, heard about it, heard about it from his wife, Elizabeth Betty Vorenberg, whom I was very friendly with because we were both on the ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts Board at the time.
1:19:21 Speaker 01 And Betty told Jim that Harvey was taking a sabbatical. Jim called Harvey and asked Harvey if he would like to teach a course at the Harvard Law School because there was nobody who had teaching criminal law from the perspective of somebody who actually was in court, litigated. It was all theoretical. I said, sure, I'll do it. So I taught a semester at Harvard Law School. The student evaluations were fabulous. Why? Because it was really interesting. They were hearing a lawyer who was talking about real cases. I actually brought in a few of my clients to some of the classes.
1:20:04 Speaker 01 And so Jim called me and said, Harvey, the students love this course. I'd like to offer you a tenure track position. At the law school, you'd have to give up your law practice. I turned him down. He said, Did you just say no? I said, yes, I said, no. He said, how come? He says, nobody ever has ever in my administration has ever turned down a tenure track offer at Harvard Law School. I said, because I could see that I'm not a good fit, that the administrators overrun the place, that faculty members, especially untenured, who are afraid to say things that
1:20:45 Speaker 01 might not help them in the tenure quest. It's not a good fit for me.
1:20:53 Lex Fridman? You saw this in the mid 1980s already?
1:20:56 Speaker 01 Yes, 1985. And I went back to my law practice. I did not want to get into this meat grinder that I saw. Actually, I started to see it before the turn of the century because I co-authored The Shadow University in 98 and then co-founded FIRE in 99. I'm an early student of this phenomenon.
1:21:23 Lex Fridman? What are some other aspects of this, the book, The Shadow University, that we may have not covered?
1:21:29 Speaker 01 Well, let me tell you a story. I believe I tell it, The Shadow University, because it was part of-
1:21:34 Lex Fridman? Let's go. I'm loving these stories, Hari.
1:21:36 Speaker 01 The stories are fabulous. Let me tell you a story of, I did a tour of the country, visiting campuses. I visited a college called Hamline University, I believe it was in Indiana or Illinois, somewhere in the Midwest. And I attended a freshman orientation. Now, listen to this. This was a freshman orientation. The administrators, the deans and the deanets and the deputy assistant deans and deanets and the third deputy assistant deans and deanets lined the students up according to their skin hues.
1:22:18 Lex Fridman? Oh, boy.
1:22:19 Speaker 01 The blond, blue-eyed, white folks were at one end. The darkest, you know, African-Americans whose bloodlines had not yet mixed with any of the whites. On the other end. And the exercise was you had to tell how your race affected your success in life up until that point.
1:22:49 Speaker 01 I thought it was the most demeaning thing that I could imagine. Demeaning. I thought to myself, they could do the same about sexual orientation. They could do the same about religion. They could do the same about national origin. It would be demeaning no matter what.
1:23:08 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
1:23:09 Speaker 01 And the students actually
1:23:13 Speaker 01 verbalized how their race had either been a plus or a minus.
1:23:18 Lex Fridman? They did.
1:23:19 Speaker 01 They did. And I thought it was so demeaning, it just confirmed all of my distaste for this kind of this kind of approach.
1:23:30 Lex Fridman? Let me ask you from the interviewer's seat. So I get to do this podcast and I often have to think about giving a large platform and having a conversation with very controversial figures. And the the level of controversy has been slowly increasing. What's the role of this medium to you? This medium of speech between two people and me speaking with a controversial figure, me or some other interviewer? What's the role of giving platform to controversial figures? Say, members of the KKK or dictators, people who are seen as evil?
1:24:14 Speaker 01 Well, we want to face the world with reality. And the reality is that there are some unpleasantnesses in the world. Running from genocide right through to ordinary discrimination to offensiveness. It's the real world as we know it exists. We're afraid to say it. Do we want to make people think that we live in a world where those words are not used, where those animosities don't exist? The answer is no.
1:24:47 Lex Fridman? But you can whitewash, you can normalize the use of those words, and you can whitewash the acceptability of certain leaders. So for example, interviewing Hitler in 1938, 1935, 1936, 1937, 38, those are all different dynamics there. But you can normalize this person and in so doing, create enormous harm.
1:25:08 Speaker 01 Well, see, I don't see it as normalizing. I see it as exposing. If more people had taken Moncom seriously, Franklin Roosevelt would have acted much sooner. He only got us into the war, asked Congress to get us into the war, when the Japanese made the mistake of attacking Pearl Harbor. But there were some people in the State Department, there were some people in the administration who were trying, trying to get Roosevelt to see what Hitler was really like, and he was blind to it. And this was one of the greatest presidents the United States ever had.
1:25:48 Speaker 01 He was blind to it until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So I think that words, unpleasant ideas, as expressed by words, are essential for communicating fact and truth and reality. And that's why I think that we should not whitewash language. We should not whitewash the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pretty close to MIT.
1:26:17 Lex Fridman? And Harvard.
1:26:18 Speaker 01 And Harvard. And, you know, reality, reality actually means something.
1:26:25 Lex Fridman? Yeah, but from the role of the interviewer, that's something I have to think a lot about. Whether interviewing Hitler, you said exposing. I think it's hard to know what Hitler's like in a room, but it's also hard to know, I've never met Jeffrey Epstein, it's hard to know what Jeffrey Epstein's like in a room. But I imagine to some degree, they're charismatic figures. So exposing them in the interview setting is not an easy task.
1:26:52 Speaker 01 Well, interviewing is not an easy
1:26:56 Lex Fridman? All right.
1:26:56 Speaker 01 Job.
1:26:57 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
1:26:59 Speaker 01 It's, it's not a good idea to have an interview with being an idiot.
1:27:07 Lex Fridman? I know exactly what you're saying and I know why you're looking at me directly as you say it. I appreciate that Harvey. All right. Let me ask about your friend, your colleague, Alan Dershowitz. And I'll also ask about your review of his most recent book. But before then, it'd be interesting to ask what you think of him as a human being, as a lawyer. He's quite an interesting case. He's represented some of the most controversial figures in history.
1:27:34 Speaker 01 Including Jeffrey Epstein.
1:27:36 Lex Fridman? Including Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Tyson, Julian Assange, Jim Baker, and Jeffrey Epstein, and even Donald Trump. So he's an interesting figure. What do you think about that?
1:27:47 Speaker 01 Klaus von Buelow.
1:27:50 Lex Fridman? What do you think? What do you think about him as a human being, as a lawyer? What he represents in terms of values and ideals?
1:27:57 Speaker 01 Well, he's a criminal defense lawyer. And the job of a criminal defense lawyer is to represent accused criminals. He is a lifelong Democrat. He didn't represent Trump because he agrees with him politically.
1:28:13 Lex Fridman? Voted for Hillary, I believe you wrote.
1:28:15 Speaker 01 He voted for Hillary, yes. That's what he says, and I absolutely believe it. He's a liberal Democrat. But he's a criminal defense lawyer as well as a professor. And I've represented some very nasty people in my career. I wouldn't go out for coffee with them. But they have constitutional rights to representation.
1:28:40 Lex Fridman? And you take that very seriously.
1:28:42 Speaker 01 Yes. You notice something that people don't understand about Dershowitz. He was asked by Trump to represent him in the second impeachment as well. He turned him down. Why do you think he turned it down?
1:28:56 Lex Fridman? So people should know he represented Trump in the first impeachment trial.
1:28:58 Speaker 01 He represented him only in the first. And he was successful when Trump was impeached. The second time he asked Alan to represent him.
1:29:07 Speaker 01 Alan has had a lifelong policy of only representing somebody once, never twice. Why? Because he never wanted to be house counsel to the mafia. And so he, early on, had this position. He only represents somebody once. The mafia wants a lawyer who's an in-house counsel, who represents them in all their cases. So that's the reason. And Alan never publicly explained it. I know it's a fact because I've known him from the day that we met at Harvard Law School, 1964. He was a first-year professor. I was a first-year student. We both had Brooklyn accents and we hit it off. We've been close friends ever since.
1:29:51 Lex Fridman? So there's some kind of unethical line that's crossed when you continuously represent a client?
1:29:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. He thought it was not so much an ethical line. You have a right to represent mafia people. But he didn't want to be house counsel. He didn't want to be, you know, have them ask him for advice in advance of what they were doing. He was willing to represent somebody once, no matter how awful. Klaus von Bulow is accused of killing his wife. These are pretty nasty people. But he didn't want to be house counsel to any of them.
1:30:28 Lex Fridman? So you wrote a review of Alan Dershowitz's new book on Donald Trump. The title of that book is Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. Can you summarize this book and your review of it?
1:30:43 Speaker 01 Yes. By the way, I co-authored it with my research assistant, who's sitting right here.
1:30:48 Lex Fridman? Emily.
1:30:48 Speaker 01 Yes. And I thought that the book was another example of the fact that everybody is entitled to a defense and that Alan's being involved with Trump was purely professional. It was not political. It was not philosophical. And I thought that the fact that he was being criticized, he was being shunned because of his connection to Trump, I found very interesting that this is a guy who represented such.
1:31:26 Speaker 01 I call them distasteful figures as Klaus von Bulow, as Mike Tyson, as OJ Simpson, as Sheldon Segal.
1:31:43 Speaker 01 And he was considered to be a skillful lawyer, made his reputation. And then he represents Donald Trump, who, to my knowledge, never killed anybody.
1:31:58 Speaker 01 And he's suddenly shunned. I thought the hypocrisy of it, the political preening, was very distasteful to me. And it was not only because he was my friend. If he wasn't my friend, I think I'd have the same view.
1:32:17 Speaker 01 The holier-than-thou nonsense, the hypocrisy of it.
1:32:23 Speaker 01 You know, they wouldn't talk to me more if it's Vienna. Alan and I are different. I'm not so sensitive. If someone doesn't want to talk to me, no problem, no problem at all.
1:32:36 Speaker 01 But Alan is, considering how controversial his life has been.
1:32:41 Lex Fridman? He's somewhat sensitive.
1:32:42 Speaker 01 He's somewhat sensitive. And I've kept telling Alan, you know, Alan, don't let it get to you.
1:32:48 Lex Fridman? I can relate. I can, I can definitely relate. Taking on some controversial conversations, still wear my heart on my sleeve. It hurts, all of it hurts.
1:32:55 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:32:55 Lex Fridman? But maybe the pain makes you a better student of human nature.
1:32:59 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:33:00 Lex Fridman? Maybe that's the case for him. Nevertheless, the book has a, makes a complicated and I think an interesting point. He opens the, he opens the book with, now that Donald Trump has announced his candidacy for reelection as president, the unremitting efforts by his political opponents to, quote, "get him, to stop him from running at any cost will only increase. These efforts may pose the most significant threat to civil liberty since McCarthyism." So is he right?
1:33:30 Speaker 01 He's absolutely right because these attempted, for example, the prosecution, the, the one prosecution that has been brought now, Alvin Bragg in, in the Manhattan. I have looked at that, and I don't believe that Trump has committed a crime. And yet, Bragg was pressured to bring that. People in his office were threatening to quit if he didn't indict. Wholly improper, wholly unethical, and he's gonna lose the case. Has Trump committed crimes? Yes, mostly they're tax crimes. He has cheated on taxes his whole career, as far as I could tell. He could easily be indicted for state and federal taxes.
1:34:15 Speaker 01 But they're not a sexy. And I think that he's become a target by ambitious politicians, ambitious prosecutors. He has gotten some sympathy, which he doesn't deserve. And a lot of it is, pardon the phrase, political correctness. The better people are not supposed to be Trumpers. I had an interesting experience about Trump. I had two interesting experiences. The more recent one was I was in the house of Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, who was driven out by political correctness, by the way.
1:35:00 Speaker 01 He insulted women biologists. I was in his house when he was still president of Harvard, when the Trump-Hillary Clinton contest took place. And I was with Elsa. We were invited to Summers' house in Brookline. And it looked like Hillary was gonna win. And the Harvard faculty members, they were all celebrating. They were all figuring out what their cabinet positions were gonna be, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:35:40 Speaker 01 And then about 11:30 at night, all of a sudden, it was announced that, in terms of electoral votes, Trump had just eked out a victory, that Hillary beat him in the popular vote. But he had won the Electoral College. And there was an immediate depression. And that was-
1:36:02 Lex Fridman? Meaning like quiet over the room?
1:36:04 Speaker 01 The room became absolutely stone silent.
1:36:09 Speaker 01 And they they were all, you know, disappointed. Well, that was a memorable moment. And it it told me that they were a little bit too overconfident. And they they were savoring being part of a presidential administration. Ambition had been thwarted. I'm not a great fan of preening ambition. I think it blinds people to realities.
1:36:38 Lex Fridman? And the resulting arrogance from such ambition.
1:36:40 Speaker 01 And arrogance, yes. It's one of the reasons I didn't accept Jim Vorenberg's offer to be part of the academic community. I mean, I represent professors. I have friends who are professors. I represent students. I have friends who are students. And I have a great regard for universities and higher education. But I was not about to become part of a culture. I thought that it was not good for me and not good for the institution either.
1:37:08 Lex Fridman? That can, a culture that can breed arrogance.
1:37:11 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:37:12 Lex Fridman? Self-importance.
1:37:13 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:37:14 Lex Fridman? And I, in a sense, the election of Donald Trump was a big F you to such.
1:37:19 Speaker 01 Correct. Which is why I think he, why I think he he managed to to pull it off.
1:37:27 Lex Fridman? To jump topics a little bit, what do you think about something you've written about? What do you think about the mass surveillance programs by the NSA and also probably by other organizations, CIA, FBI, and others? And broadly, what do you think about the importance of privacy for the American citizen?
1:37:48 Speaker 01 Okay. I believe that the FBI should be abolished. Because I believe that its culture was so corrupted by its first director, John Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, that it is impossible to reform the FBI to make its agents honest, to force them to obey the Constitution, the the first, fourth, and fifth amendments especially. And it's a culture that cannot be changed.
1:38:29 Speaker 01 Hoover established the culture, and no FBI director since has been able to change it.
1:38:36 Speaker 01 If you go online, I did on YouTube a video for the ACLU of Massachusetts. It was when I was on the board. It was probably when I was president of the board. I was president of the board for two years. I was on the board for 20 years. And I did a video about advising people to never, ever, ever talk to an FBI agent when they come knocking on your door.
1:39:02 Lex Fridman? Can you briefly explain the intuition?
1:39:05 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:39:06 Lex Fridman? Why not to talk to an FBI agent?
1:39:07 Speaker 01 They have a system. When they come in and interview you, two agents show up, never one. One asks the question, the other one takes notes. The note-taking agent takes notes and then goes back to the office and types up a report called a Form 302, which is the official record of what was asked and answered. So when I have a client interviewed by the FBI, I show up. And I always agree, almost always agree to the interview. But I bring a tape recorder.
1:39:51 Speaker 01 And I say, all right, I'm going to tape this. And they say, well, by regulation, we're not allowed to do the interview if it's taped. The record is the 302. The agent is taking notes. I say, well, I have a policy too. My policy is to never allow a client to be interviewed unless it's recorded. So it's unfortunate, but we're going to have to end this meeting. And the agents get up and leave. And I've never seen a Form 302 that I consider to be accurate. The agents write down what they wish you had said.
1:40:30 Lex Fridman? Yeah.
1:40:31 Speaker 01 Rather than what you said. It is a wholly corrupt organization that has not gotten any better since Hoover died.
1:40:40 Lex Fridman? And fundamentally, the corruption is in the culture that is resisting the Constitution of the United States.
1:40:48 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:40:49 Lex Fridman? The First and Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
1:40:50 Speaker 01 Correct. It's not financial corruption. It is corruption of the mission.
1:40:59 Speaker 01 And I think it should be abolished. And if we need a federal investigative agency, it should be a new name, a new culture, wholly new members, a new director. And it's impossible to reform the FBI.
1:41:16 Lex Fridman? Can you elaborate on what exactly is broken about the FBI? Is it the famous saying from Stalin's KGB head, "Barry, show me the man and I'll show you the crime"?
1:41:29 Speaker 01 Right.
1:41:29 Lex Fridman? Is it that kind of process of...
1:41:31 Speaker 01 It's that kind of process. They decide who's guilty and then they go about concocting a case against the person who they want to get.
1:41:40 Lex Fridman? So the goal is not to find the truth or...
1:41:43 Speaker 01 It's to solve the case and close it and incense their reputations.
1:41:48 Lex Fridman? But to show that an innocent man is guilty is also solving the case from their perspective. So to falsely convict or falsely imprison an innocent man is also solving the case.
1:42:03 Speaker 01 Well, it closes the case if they falsely imprison an innocent man. There is a need in closing cases.
1:42:10 Lex Fridman? So that's the FBI. But broadly speaking about the surveillance aspect of this, what are your views on the right that an American citizen has to privacy?
1:42:22 Speaker 01 Well, wiretapping and electronic surveillance are very, very intrusive. And I think that the circumstance that these tools are used should be narrowed. For example, they're used in a lot of drug cases. Since I don't think drugs should be illegal in any event, I certainly think that it's a terrible violation of privacy to use wiretapping in a drug case. I could see it in cases of murder. Possibly in cases of serious extortion.
1:43:04 Speaker 01 But on other kinds of crimes, where they wiretap, especially drug cases, I believe drugs should all be legalized anyway. I think it's the price we pay as a society is not worth it.
1:43:20 Lex Fridman? There's on the Wikipedia page for nothing to hide, you're cited. In fact, your book that you gave me today, Three Felonies a Day, is cited. So, nothing to hide argument, that's an argument that if you're a well behaved citizen, you have nothing to hide and therefore your privacy can be violated.
1:43:38 Speaker 01 Well, the problem is that under the federal criminal code, particularly the federal criminal code, it is very easy to be charged with a crime. Now, why? Under the Constitution, the federal government does not have plenary criminal jurisdiction. That's up to the states. How is it that the feds indict in so many areas of American life? It's because the Supreme Court has allowed the following absolutely insane situation to prevail.
1:44:22 Speaker 01 Anything can be made a federal crime if, in the course of the commission of the crime, the means of interstate communication or travel are used. That means that if you commit a crime, which ordinarily would be a state crime, and you use the telephone, or you send a letter, it suddenly becomes federal. That means that the limitation that the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution intended to keep the feds out of daily life and to give that jurisdiction to the states has been completely thwarted.
1:45:07 Speaker 01 Because I can't think of a case where somebody doesn't use the telephone in the course of planning, discussing, something that's arguably criminal. And so, this limited authority, the federal government.
1:45:28 Speaker 01 To bring charges in criminal cases is illusory. The feds can indict a ham sandwich.
1:45:37 Lex Fridman? So basically, everybody is guilty. And if the feds want to bring you in, they can.
1:45:45 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:45:45 Lex Fridman? They can find a way.
1:45:46 Speaker 01 And that allows them to terrorize people who are dissidents.
1:45:51 Lex Fridman? Yeah. What is broken, what works about the American criminal justice system from your perspective?
1:45:58 Speaker 01 The jury system.
1:46:00 Lex Fridman? The jury system?
1:46:01 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:46:02 Lex Fridman? You like the jury system? Everyday citizens representing?
1:46:05 Speaker 01 Twelve ordinary people have to agree unanimously in order to convict.
1:46:13 Lex Fridman? What do you think about the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court? What works and what is broken about the Supreme Court as an institution? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
1:46:22 Speaker 01 Well, the Supreme Court is unfortunately fairly political. And the current Supreme Court is overruling precedents, which it's really improper. Precedents should not be overruled so easily. It's about to overrule affirmative action. Now, I'm opposed to affirmative action. I think I made that clear earlier in our discussion. But still, it's a precedent, and it should be given some respect.
1:47:01 Speaker 01 But in order to propagate a more conservative agenda, the court is treating precedent as if it doesn't have any role. And that's a huge mistake. Some of the congressmen on the Democratic side are looking to enlarge the court in order to basically do what Franklin Roosevelt was not able to do.
1:47:33 Speaker 01 And that has changed the court's philosophy. But I think that's very short sighted. Because this is a long, this is a long game. This is a republic we have here. And anyone who tries to, for example, enlarge the court from nine to 12 in order to get more liberals on the court, then some other administration will try to enlarge it from 12 to 15 to get more liberals on the court. You'd have a constant fiddling with a very important institution.
1:48:14 Lex Fridman? So the law should have more lasting power than the bickering, the political bickering of the day?
1:48:19 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:48:20 Lex Fridman? Let me ask you, you've lived one heck of a life and fought a lot of battles and you continue to do so with the Harvard Board of Overseers. First of all, thank you for that. But we're all human, we're all mortal. Do you ponder your death? Do you ponder your mortality? Are you afraid of it?
1:48:42 Speaker 01 Well, let me say this. My father died at 48. He died because he smoked, he died at 48 because he smoked four packs of Camels a day. He got a massive heart attack at 43. He continued to smoke despite that. He died at 48. So I did not expect to live this long. Because I thought it was genetic. It turns out it was cigarettes. So here I am, I'm going to be 81 on May 10th. I was born on May 10th, 1942, which is Mother's Day coincidentally. And I realize I'm not going to live forever. I also take pride in the fact that I have demonstrated that a lawyer does not have to
1:49:24 Speaker 01 go with a law firm in order to manage to make it. You can make your own, write your own, what's the word? Write your own ticket.
1:49:34 Speaker 01 I've done that.
1:49:37 Speaker 01 I agree that I've had a, an elite education. I went to Princeton and Harvard Law School. But I don't think you have to necessarily go to elite institutions in order to really make it. You need to work hard. But you shouldn't put yourself in a place where you're not going to feel comfortable. And what's the word empowered? Like I refuse to take Jevorinberg's invitation for a teletraic physician at Harvard Law School.
1:50:11 Speaker 01 I'll, I'll tell you one, one other story that illustrates this. I was originally pre-med, my freshman, sophomore years at Princeton, I was in the pre-med program. Why? Because my parents wanted me to marry the daughter of our family physician. And the idea was I was going to go to medical school. I was going to go into medical practice with him in Hackensack, New Jersey. We had moved from Brooklyn at the time. Long story why we had to move from Brooklyn. Had to do with my father's having a problem with the furries union and having his life threatened.
1:50:54 Speaker 01 And we moved to Maywood, New Jersey because he got a job in a fur shop in Bisac, New Jersey. And a family physician, they had three daughters, the oldest of whom was my age. She went to Hackensack High School. I went to Bogota High School. They're both in both North Bergen County. And the idea was that she and I were going to marry. I was going to become, I was going to go to medical school. I was going to take, become a partner of her father in his medical practice in Hackensack. When he retired, I was going to inherit the practice. This, this scenario was concocted by Carolyn's mother and my mother.
1:51:40 Speaker 01 In my sophomore year of at Princeton, I won a fellowship to spend that summer. It was my sophomore junior year in Paris. I was fluent by then. I had taken accelerated French course my freshman sophomore year. And I went to Paris. It was my first time out of the country. And I spent the entire summer working, supporting myself there. Participate the airfare and I I earned money for room and board. And I thought about my life and I decided, number one, I didn't want to be a physician.
1:52:25 Speaker 01 I wanted to be a lawyer. Number two, I didn't want to marry Carolyn. And I came back, I changed from pre-med to pre-law. I broke up with Carolyn, who was by that time at school at Douglas, right down the road from Princeton. She had followed me. Or I had followed her. And my life suddenly took a wholly different turn. So that summer in Paris, Paris had a outsized effect on my life.
1:53:05 Speaker 01 Every year, the Brattle Theater shows Casablanca, where Bogart has this great line. He says, we'll always have Paris. And I think to myself, I always used to say to Elsa, we used to see Casablanca every Valentine's Day. Because it was such an important movie to me. Because Paris was transformative in my life. And we went to Paris every year during my vacation. We went to Paris. That was where she took some great pictures. A bicycle is this high and this high. They were hanging up in the house.
1:53:44 Speaker 01 And so I always, I, I, and even after Elsa's death, I think Casablanca twice now. She, she died in 2020. And I'm always, I always think we'll always have Paris. We'll always have Paris.
1:54:06 Lex Fridman? Well, Harvey, like I said, I hope you're very successful in your in your run for the Harvard Board of Overseers. I think what you stand for in the realm of freedom of speech is, I think, the thing that makes these universities great institutions in American culture. And I'll do everything I can to help you succeed. And I just am really grateful for all the work you've done. And I'm grateful that you would talk with me today. This is amazing. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Harvey Silverglade. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Harry S. Truman.
1:54:49 Lex Fridman? "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition, it is only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes the source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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