Terms of Engagement – Censorship by Settlement?

Archon Fung:  Hey, welcome back. You’re listening to Terms of Engagement. I’m Archon Fung. I’m a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer: And I’m Stephen Richer, former elected Maricopa County Recorder, and now a senior practice fellow in democracy at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School.

Archon Fung: We’re back for our third episode in our new weekly series, so join us, live on noon on Tuesdays, and we’ll be discussing the latest developments in democracy.

Stephen Richer: And today we’re going to discuss a topic that is near and dear to anyone who’s working at a university. But we also want to point out that we are always taking your questions. We’re always soliciting your input. So, if you type in your question while you’re listening live, it’s something that we’ll take a look at. And if you want to give us recommendations for future topics, you can also email us after the show.

Archon Fung: So the subject of today’s discussion is the, hot, hot deal between Columbia University and the Trump administration. We have our first special guest ever on the series. we’re lucky to be joined by Professor Suresh Naidu, who is a professor of International and Public Affairs, and the Jack Wang and Echo Ren, professor of economics at Columbia University. Suresh works on many things, political economy, labor history, labor markets, and he has a special interest in the effects of democracy and non-democracy on economy. And so, that’s what we’re talking about here. He has written a great, New York Times op-ed on the Columbia deal, which we’ll post in the show notes. So welcome, Suresh.

Suresh Naidu: Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me on.

Stephen Richer: And I want to point out, as we always do that Suresh, Archon, and I are only speaking on behalf of ourselves. We are not speaking on behalf of the Harvard Kennedy School, Columbia University, or Harvard University, all of which are affected by the most recent settlement between Columbia and the Trump administration. But we are speaking solely for ourselves,

Archon Fung: Absolutely solely as individuals. So, last week, leaders of Columbia University reached a deal with the Trump administration. According to reporting from our crack researchers here at the pod. Some of its main elements are that the federal government will restore funding for research, including $400 million in grants that were frozen this year. And in return, Columbia University will pay $200 million settlement to the federal government. In addition, Columbia University will pay $21 million to Jewish affiliates of Columbia University for losses and pain suffered during the protests. I’m glad that, MAGA has seen clear to institute a reparations policy, which I’ve long been interested in this instance. In addition, Columbia University will, expel, suspend, or revoke the degrees of 70 students who are involved in the protests. I’m not sure whether that’s like what they’ve already done or, or additional activity they will report to ensure that there is no DEI promotion on campus.

Archon Fung: That’s the institutional reeducation part of the deal as I read it. And then additionally, Columbia will report to a third party monitor to assure compliance. if you read through the agreement to the very end signing for the administration as Attorney General Bondy, secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, and of course, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So, Suresh you wrote a very provocative piece in the New York Times in which you’re quite critical of the deal. You said, quote, the deal is unlikely to end the attacks. The federal government and this administration are simply too powerful and too arbitrary to be credibly bargained with the deal won’t end Columbia’s torture. Whatever onerous terms the school has agreed to will be deemed to have been broken in the face of a campus protest. An edgy syllabus, elite classroom discussion, or even acerbic student opinion piece, new civil rights violations will be imagined. New vistas of anti-Americanism on campus will be discovered and the attacks will continue. Other people, like your interim president, Claire Shipman and our own Larry Summers have said that the deal is quite good. And indeed, Larry said that this is the best day for Harvard, for higher education all year. why are you right? And why are they wrong?

Suresh Naidu: I think, maybe it comes down fundamentally to like a belief in like what you think is happening to American institutions as part of this process. And so I think if you think this is just like an, an administration that’s temporary, it’s political,  you know, it’s going to get reversed in the midterms or in the next presidential election, we will, we can get back to business as usual eventually, then I think you think, okay, we can ride this out. We can have a deal. We, you know, we, we will, you know, we, it we can accommodate and just shield ourselves until things are back. But I think, like, you know, I, as you mentioned, I study political economy. I study a lot of things in comparative and eco and historical terms. And when you think of what’s happening here as like a symptom of what’s happened in other countries in various authoritarian terms, I don’t know that you’re, that my esteemed colleagues and my, my, acting president think that the, you know, I think that that,  that this does not, you don’t make a deal with this type of administration and think that it’s going to tie their hands going forward.

Suresh Naidu: And that was the point of the article and the, the analogies to like Charles II, and that this is a well-known problem in political economy is that unchecked governments can’t make promises. And so, we put institutions in place so that they can make promises and by the Trump administration by taking away so many of the checks and balances as taken away its ability to make promises. And so, we’re kind of operating in a, with a different rule book, I think. And so one much more informed, I think, by political economy and the experience of, of, of people in authoritarian countries, rather than thinking of it as I think, like, you know, our office of general counsel thinks of it, which is just like, we just need to get a settlement and a contract and the contract will hold and we, we business will continue,

Stephen Richer: Right? So in the ordinary world, if you and I entered into a contract, the reason why we’d have confidence in that is we could run to the court. If you breached, could the contract, and you’re saying this is a world in which pretty much the courts no longer exist, no third-party enforcement mechanism exists. So, the only means for enforcement is if you’re stronger than I am, or I’m stronger than you are, I think you probably win that fight. But so are you saying that no matter what the terms of the settlement between Columbia and the Trump administration, Columbia was wrong to have entered into an agreement?

Suresh Naidu: I think do I think there’s no terms that were acceptable. I’m not sure, but I think the, the steepness of the tradeoff you Want to accept is extremely high given the inability to commit. And that’s my economics. Like, well, there’s never a corner, there’s always some terms, but,   but, but, you know, but given the inability to make a promise, I think, and, and, and again, note that the agreement still has an, like e even though preserves the autonomy of the university in the opening, it then immediately says nothing. Yeah. Will be construed to like, you know, the new investigations and continue. We even the agreement itself opens us, keeps us open to further EOC investigations, for example. And I’ll just say even independent of EOC, there’s so many agencies, so many margins from international students, all kinds of things that they can attack the university on. That getting peace on these things doesn’t buy us peace on these other margins,

Archon Fung: Right? So if I were, I, as I’m thinking about it, I might be okay with if it were just the money, ’cause that’s like kind of a, a maybe a form of extortion, but you know, whatever or taxation depending on how you view it, right? And you pay the money, but at least you get to keep being a university and you maintain your independence. So like the money is one level, and then the operating freedom is a much deeper level. And so Claire, your university’s leadership has said, well, that’s our red line is independence. We’ve got to maintain our independence. And, Brian Rosenberg in the Chronicle vi higher ed has an op-ed in which an opinion piece in which he, he cites, the princess bride. He says, according to Claire, Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, the deal with the Trump administration quote, safeguards are independence. And then, Rosenberg goes on to, highlight all the ways in which the independence of the university is jeopardized by the deal. And he says, well to paraphrase the great movie, the Princess Bride, and in Ego Montoya, he says, independence. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. So let’s have the quilt clip from, Andre the Giant and the princess bride

Inigo Montoya: I do not think it means what you think it means

Archon Fung: So does it preserve the independence?

Suresh Naidu: I mean, I think from, from the perspective of the president, I can kind of see, given what I’ve heard about other things that the administration and what they’ve asked of Harvard, for example, you can imagine they, they asked for, like literally they want a member of the federal government committee on the board of trustees, or they want a veto point on the next president. Like, there’s probably things that were asked for by this government that they, the, the trustees probably did like manage to push back on knowing that those things would just generate like such an up, you know, would be, would be untenable. So, I think they, they, you know, that given what the, the scope of what the government was asking for that, that was probably asking for, there was probably some things that from their perspective they preserved.

But then I think, you know, I still think that the, the idea that we are now safe, like that we are independence has been successfully safeguarded. I think that is like not true. I think there’s even things in the agreement, for example, like I’m in both SIPA, international Public Affairs and in econ, both of those schools now have to hire somebody that’s going with the studies as a of the deal. And so, you know, so it’s maybe it’s things that we would’ve done anyway. Yeah, possible you could, you could, you, you think that, but now we put it in writing as in terms of with the, as part of the agreement with federal government. So have we preserved our independence? I don’t know.

Stephen Richer: So Suresh, what do you say to, well, let’s just take one point of independence, which is you wrote this article, you wrote an article that is arguably critical of the university’s leadership. I think that you come across as empathetic and understanding of the situation. And I think that none of us envy the, the president of Columbia right now, but ultimately you still exercise your academic freedom. And so tell us about that process, did you think twice before hitting submit to the New York Times?

Suresh Naidu: I mean, I didn’t write anything before I got my naturalization, which happened two weeks ago, <laugh>. And so, I was like deliberately, I had deleted all my social media.

Archon Fung: That was a real consideration for you?

Suresh Naidu: That was a real, I had a habeas petition ready to go for like, if things went,  and so, you know, I think if you’re not a citizen in this country and you’re definitely thinking twice about your public engagement, but as a professor, I still feel like, you know, now I still have, I have tenure. I’m still protected by the norms that we have. I do think, you know, I do think as this gets chipped away, the conservative movement, like, and tenure a hundred percent.

Stephen Richer: So, Archon, what was your hot take when you, when you saw this come down. What was your feeling?

Archon Fung: I guess I felt like, maybe Columbia was doing the best it could do. So,  maybe trying to square the circle here from, president Shipman’s perspective is maybe sires, you’re right, that, you have little assurance that the administration will stick to the deal, but you are playing the probabilities and trying to cash out the best,  kind of utility maximization for the university that you can, under circumstances that certainly no one would wish upon the university, any of these universities. And so you think, oh yeah, this is the best we can get in the medium and, and short term. I know I acknowledge Shire’s criticism that they may go back on it, that we may have to come back to the table, but still, I got to protect my people and this is what I see as the, the best way of doing that in a very difficult environment.

Stephen Richer: And she has said, President Shipman has said, let’s see, that she has heard from members of different science departments, natural science professors, natural science researchers, that they are very grateful that this funding has been unfrozen. And she encourages us to think about it in not so black and white terms. So, she wrote in her letter to the Columbia community for months, Columbia’s discussions with the federal government have been set up as a test of principle, a binary fight between courage and capitulation. But like most things in life, the reality is far more complex. End quote. Is it, is it more complex or is this, is this simply capitulation?

Suresh Naidu: It is more complex, but not just in the parameters that President shipment lays out. It’s more complex in the sense that Columbia’s not just the interests are not just Columbia preserving the institution of Columbia. And I think this is also kind of putting Columbia up there with all the other universities that are under attack with the other institutions that are under attack and thinking about, well, okay, my duty as president of Columbia is probably to preserve Columbia, Columbia University as an institution. And so, in terms of that narrow objective, this is probably the correct play, but it’s not clear that Columbia University’s objective ought to only to be Columbia University Yes. As part of this larger network of civil society organizations.

Archon Fung: Great. And on that note, we wanted to share a little bit of an interview on the PBS News Hour between Amna Nawaz and Michael Roth. And Michael Roth is the president, long president of Wesleyan University. And he, in my view, has been the most outspoken among university leaders in of the view. We’ve gotta hold the line for higher education and resist encroaching, I think he would say authoritarianism.  so could we play the clip from the NewsHour?

Amna Nawaz:  I’m joined by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, President Roth, welcome back to the NewsHour. Thanks for joining us.

Michael Roth: Thanks for having me. So

Amna Nawaz : Let’s just start with your initial reaction. When you heard the news and the details of this settlement, what did you think?

Michael Roth: Well, I felt like one must feel when you’ve paid a ransom in a kidnapping situation and the person who’s been kidnapped is returned safely and you think, thank goodness the kid’s okay, or the person kidnapped is okay, but I wouldn’t praise the agreement, that led to the liberation of the kidnapped person. And so in this case, I was pleased that this particular moment of, assault on a higher education by the Trump administration has been resolved, at least for now, though, who knows, these agreements come and go with this White House. I was, and I am distressed to that in this country today, the executive branch of the federal government wants to be able to dictate terms to private universities, law firms, newspapers, TV stations. And so all of these things are evidence that the current administration is trying to erode support for institutions in civil society.

Stephen Richer: I think that’s a very apt analogy. And again, a principle is, you know, the United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists and, and that’s a bad game theoretical model strategy, but you have a lot of sympathy for a parent who’s negotiating with terrorists to return their child. And, you know, I I would imagine that Columbia’s president has been overseeing layoffs, has been overseeing, cuts to discretionary programs, has been o overseeing cuts to entire science projects, and that $200 million and some, some terms that hopefully don’t infringe on Columbia’s intellectual freedom too much seems pretty tempting.

Archon Fung: Yeah. So we’ve got, a comment in the chat that is actually, I think from the pro administration position. And so he ask, he says, Sosh, would you be so critical of this agreement if Columbia had treated Indian students as it treated its Jewish students and staff? What do you think?

Suresh Naidu: I think, you know, I would just like to point out that, that a large chunk of the extremely active pro-Palestine students on campus Jewish are Jewish, and their, their sentiments are completely not included. My colleague James Seamus has a, an a a quite acerbic take on this, like exactly which Jewish, students and members on campus are getting part of the settlement, and which ones aren’t the ones that were like offended by the encampment yet a payment. The ones that were participating in the encampment holding a cedar in the encampment we’re not. And so, I think like the, I think outside of campus, it just appears that there’s a monolith, but I think really from being around it’s, it’s a, it’s a big split and, but it’s a big split inside the Jewish community on campus. Yeah. And, you know, without having to take a side on that, I think it’s like lives inside Jewish community.

Archon Fung: Yeah. And everyone should be aware of that. And for people who, you know, weren’t on campuses last spring, I’ve just been amazed at how different the imp just the impression of what happened was, whether it’s Columbia and Harvard, was it a bunch of people yelling and, you know, antisemitic slogans all over the place? Or was it people doing yoga and holding seders? Like people have both of those like dramatically different impressions and I found it,

Suresh Naidu: It’s possible

Stephen Richer: I’ll take the position that I find the agreement itself to be pretty unoffensive. I think the process is incredibly problematic. I think the net influence or net impact on the country is extremely problematic. But the agreement itself says stuff like, we won’t discriminate on the basis of race. We recognize that by our own admission, over 60% of our Jewish students, were feeling uncomfortable at our campus. We’re going to stay, take steps to improve that we’re going to take steps to improve our ideological diversity. And for somebody who would say, you know, this isn’t the role of the federal government, universities can figure this out on their own. I, I think somebody could say, but they hadn’t and they weren’t until the Trump administration put this highly unorthodox pressure on them. And so I, you know, somebody like that might be like, yeah, we don’t, we, we don’t love how he always does it, but we like what he accomplished this. Yeah.

Archon Fung: Hey, Stephen, so as a,  somebody who knows much more about process and the law than I do, do you see this as much different in kind than Obama era dear colleague letters around sexual harassment and assault saying, Hey, you universities, you’ve been allowing all of this horrible sexual assault to go on for decades, maybe much longer, and now you’ve gotta do something about it. So, department of Education’s going to write you a letter and they’re, you guys are going to have to create some offices and some processes to handle this problem, which you haven’t been handling for some time. Is this just the Trump version of, of that?

Stephen Richer: I think it’s different, but there has been deal making with past administrations. Now perhaps Suresh would say you can make deals with past administrations because they’ve shown themselves to be a more reliable partner. But in this instance, it seems to be piecemeal regulatory deal making so far the most prominent of which have been University of Virginia, who’s, you know, offered up their president as tribute University of Pennsylvania who made changes to their athletic programs and now Columbia University. And so I would say that yes, there are challenges that academia, writ large needs to address, but that by picking and choosing, pointing out Columbia, pointing out Harvard, it does seem somewhat pretextual that it’s predicated on the, the, the politics of the university and the relationship with the administration more than it is any widespread policy that the administration wants to effectuate.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Yeah.

Suresh Naidu: Can I also just like point out on the intellectual diversity? Maybe it’s because I’m an economist and like we have, like, there is, there is a, you know, it’s, it’s, it is still overwhelmingly liberal, but there is, you know, my, my neighbor’s a libertarian, I co-teach with a libertarian. Like it feels diverse, but we share the basis of evidence and a scientific standard so that when somebody comes in being like, oh, the gold standard is like the most amazing invent, like, we kind of collectively put reject it because it’s not based on good academic work. And I think the standard of the academy is good academic work. And I think what a lot of the, like Robert, Kennedy Jr thought on vaccines is now going to be part of like what we need to consider as intellectual diversity, but it’s not going to stand up to the, like are they going to add, basically the worry is that the standards by which we do the intellectual work will be lowered for conservatives.

Archon Fung :One thing about the viewpoint diversity kind of demands that, puzzles me is I think people mean very different. It’s like the Diego Montoya <laugh>, they, they people mean very different things by intellectual and viewpoint diversity. I think what many, university boards and administrations have in mind is, oh, conservatives, like somebody who’s a Hayekian or a libertarian, but maybe the Trump administration has something very different in mind by viewpoint diversity. I’m over here in a democracy center, and I guess what would count as viewpoint diversity is somebody who thinks that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, which for him is the most, important fact in, in this domain, in my domain. Right. And, as you say, I for one, don’t believe that that claim would stand up to much scrutiny has not stood up.

Stephen Richer: So, so let, we, we need to talk about the implications because almost every news article that wrote about this quoted the Trump administration and Linda McMahon as saying this can serve as a model, as a template for future universities that are negotiating with the administration. So, is this the end of the resistance? Is, is this it

Suresh Naidu: I think, well, that’s a good question. I mean, it does lie now to the other universities. I think having seen the terms of this agreement. Is this like something that now will finally stimulate some more coordination of these institutions to kind of try to put up more of a collective, at least, resistance to this? Or if it’s like, no, is this acceptable and they’ll, they will also capitulate one by one? I think that is the, the question I would ask, like what are the obstacles to the collective action by either the universities or a civil society that you think America, you know, should have a lot of these, these are we very well resourced, very professional, very like solidly network organizations? Why can’t they get it together?

Archon Fung: I think it’s really hard. So the, I was reading this book a couple of years ago by John Keen called The New Despotism, and he looks, part of it’s about India, but he looks at, you know, kind of Turkey and hungry and he says, look, the new Despotism is not like the old one. It’s not primarily, you know, the jack boot and the knock on the door in the middle of the night. It’s really kind of a big Amway scheme where the despot is at the top and there’s positive and negatives incentives that roll all the way down. And so all the way down through the bureaucracy and to civil society and to newspapers and to hi a higher education, and they just turn the dials so that you get stuff if you are more supportive of the government and you suffer, little costs and sometimes big costs if you’re not, and if you can kind of get that set up, it strikes me as a pretty robust kind of way to preserve order, at least for a little while because it’s kind of incentive compatible all the way through this cascade.

And so the, mounting collective action seems difficult. And I think, we’re talking a little bit before the shows why, you know, America has extremely rich civil society. Why haven’t we seen more collective action? And I think we have just not from the leadership, like, our colleague Erica Chenowith, their research shows that there’s been tons of kind of protests from the grassroots. And I think, I guess my own kind of, too nice account of that is that if you are at the top of the civil society institutions, you’re just more vulnerable to the Amway scheme because you have more to gain and more to lose from either making a deal or not making a deal.

Stephen Richer: I think we’re also finding out just how leveraged modern universities are with the federal government. Absolutely. A lot of people look at the Endowment of Columbia and the history of Columbia and ditto Harvard, and they say, well, they should be able to, to fight this easily. And I just think that we, all of those comments underestimate the tools that the federal government has at its disposal and the importance of federal research grants to each of these schools. And I think that could change universities moving forward, but that will be a slow

Suresh Naidu: Hard change. I just Want to like make this clear to, I think you guys know this, but pretend anyone, it’s like those research grants are payments for research services. And so it’s the fact that the federal government doesn’t care about research <laugh>, that is the fundamental thing going forward and that they’re willing to cut off this to exercise these political prerogatives is partly just because the research that is like done in the public interest is not enough of a priority for the government for them to not turn it off. Yeah. And I think we Yeah,

Stephen Richer: Absolutely. Merit’s repeating this is not the federal government saying, Archon, here’s a hundred million dollars for your program. Use it. Well, it’s, we want the specific research done. Archon bids for it in a competitive grant making process. He gets it. He conducts that research over a multi-year period. I do want to, I know we’re running a little short on time, but I want to ask Resh, what’s the sentiment at Columbia? Is it, is it like a funeral or is it a relief?

Suresh Naidu: I think it’s, it’s not, I think people are sad. It’s anger and then mixed with some relief. You know, people are like, oh, I don’t have to fire, I won’t have to lay off people. Like there is definitely from my public, from my, medical school colleagues that are also extremely upset then, you know, that I think they’re holding those sentiments in their, in their, in their heads and they’re continuing to organize. And so like end with a pitch that like our A A UP chapter has grown like exponentially and ours too, <laugh>. It’s going to be the locus I think for replacing as they tear down faculty governance. A UP chapter probably going to have to take up a lot of the slack.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Great.

Stephen Richer: And then I gotta do this Archon.

Archon Fung: Yeah, go for it.

Stephen Richer: You’re, you’re president of Harvard University for the next month. Exact same deal is offered to you. Do you take it 200 million and the demand and the agreement,

Archon Fung: I let it roll out in the courts for a little bit longer. Play for time, see what happens. Yeah, I mean we got a pretty favorable court ruling, set of them actually. So, I

Stephen Richer 00:30:31 Think, well, I would say a little bit, say you don’t, you don’t know how long you’re going to have to resist for, are you resisting for three and a half years? Are you resisting for seven and a half years?

Archon Fung: We don’t know. One day at a time. <laugh> <laugh>

Stephen Richer: Boo cop out. Cop out.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Alright, so, as promised we never go for more than 30 minutes, so we are at time. As a reminder, send suggestions to info@ash.harvard.edu. And a huge thanks to Suresh for, I dropped the invitation very late last week. He jumped on it and it’s been just an amazing conversation. Thank you very much, Suresh.

Suresh Naidu: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on.

Stephen Richer: Thanks, Suresh. Yeah. And thanks for watching.

Archon Fung: Alright, take care you guys.