00:00For more, we can speak to Dennis Hogan, a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University.
00:06Hello to you, Dennis, and thank you for speaking to Paris Direct here on France 24.
00:11I'm not sure if you got to hear that previous report, but in it, Stephen Pinker said the government cannot impose restrictions that would amount to turning Harvard into Trump University.
00:24My only concern there is that the U.S. president is doing a lot of things that legal analysts and experts are saying he doesn't have the right to do, and yet he continues to try.
00:37Yeah, I think that's exactly right, and I do think that there's a strategy of testing both, I think, the norms as well as what the legal system is willing to tolerate.
00:54And that's why I think it's so important that Harvard and other organizations like the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, have filed suit to stop these illegal actions.
01:07Because really, really it is about, you know, seeing how far he can get away, how much he can get away with.
01:12I'm just curious what the atmosphere is like, if I'm not mistaken, a commencement ceremony starting next week.
01:19What are the feelings like there on campus?
01:22I mean, people are very scared and very concerned.
01:28I think it's important to understand that something like 27 percent of Harvard's student body are international students.
01:36And that's not just in the college where I teach, but across all the different schools, the law school, the Kennedy School, the Divinity School, etc.
01:44And so we're not talking about a population that's small, and we're not talking about a population that's marginal.
01:51We're actually talking about a population that's really essential to the work that's being done on campus.
01:58And so people are rightly concerned.
02:01You know, put yourself in the position of an international student who's worked really hard to get into school, has come to school, is working towards a degree, and now finds themselves as a pawn in this political game.
02:14You know, it's very unfair.
02:16It's actually quite cruel.
02:18Yeah, and I'm curious, like, if I do put myself in their shoes, first of all, I'd be happy I was at Harvard.
02:24Second of all, I don't know what you do.
02:26Do you have faith in the Harvard University being able to fight back against the U.S. president?
02:33Or do you follow a contingency plan and transfer to another university?
02:38I'm not sure how you figure out the solution here.
02:41What are some of the students saying they might do that you've seen or spoken to?
02:48Well, you know, it's difficult because I think everybody is still kind of waiting to see how things play out.
02:54The speed with which the policy was temporarily halted, I think, is an encouraging sign.
03:02I'll also say that the communications from the university have been extremely consistent, that this is a non-negotiable fight for them, that they value international students and international scholars who come on some of the same visas that the SEVP program includes, which I think is heartening.
03:21But, of course, everybody is going to be kind of making individual decisions.
03:27I think over the long term what's very concerning is that this really strikes at the very heart of the university system that the United States has built over the last several decades, one that has been a place where students all over the world have sought to come and work and study.
03:45I certainly can say that if I was a student looking to travel abroad for a degree who had not yet enrolled at any school in the United States, I would certainly not – I would certainly look elsewhere.
04:00Yeah, and this week in the New York Times had a fascinating chart on their website chronicling which universities have the highest proportion of international students.
04:11Harvard, Harvard not in those first 10 universities, why is Trump focusing in on Harvard?
04:18Why Harvard and not someone else?
04:21Well, you know, for better or worse, Harvard has been synonymous with the highest echelon of the American educational prestige hierarchy for almost as long as Harvard has been around.
04:34And so Harvard is a symbol, I think, of what private universities in the United States have achieved and can achieve.
04:45I think that, you know, if you think about in 2021, for example, J.D. Vance, now the vice president, gave a speech in which he said professors are the enemy, universities are the enemy.
04:55There's been a longstanding goal for the Trumpist right to seize a hold of universities, which they view as sort of bastions of a counterpower, which, you know, I think is a very exaggerated view.
05:11Like most people in universities are not doing hyper-politicized work.
05:16Most people are actually really committed to responsible inquiry into their subject matter, you know, the matter of their subject expertise.
05:27But I think that it's both viewed as good politics in the sense that Trump, as he seeks to have increasingly autocratic control over every aspect of American life, wants to silence, and if not silence, then take hold of any organ of civil society, be it the judiciary and the law, be it universities, be it journalism, et cetera.
05:53And then it's also good politics in the sense that the American electorate is very polarized along educational lines, which is a problem.
06:02You know, I don't think that there's many people who would defend the ways that elitism have governed access to education in the United States, where it's become increasingly unaffordable.
06:14But they're viewed as good targets for him politically and in terms and practically.
06:20Yeah, and so much of that based on mistrust in what is seen as the elite, whether it's scientists, academics, or journalists, as you also mentioned there.
06:32How do our professions increase trust within the American public?
06:38Well, I think that part of what has to happen, you know, and I don't pretend to be an expert in reversing the political polarization or the political distrust.
06:54You know, you'd have to talk to my colleagues in political science or the Kennedy School about that.
06:57But I think that part of it has to be first turning on its head this idea that Trump is somehow the standard bearer of the common person.
07:11You know, I mean, this is an administration that is stocked with billionaires, with the very, very richest people in the United States.
07:17And as they sort of visit this terror on, you know, not only international students, not only scholars, not only journalists, but also immigrants across the country,
07:30they are doing it while attempting to pass a bill that throws millions of working class Americans off of their health insurance,
07:38that increases the cost of taxes for the bottom 40 percent of earners while giving massive tax breaks to the very wealthy.
07:48Like, the idea that they're somehow attacking the elites, you know, is absurd.
07:53And I think that has to—that case needs to be made clearly and repeatedly.
07:59Yeah, and Francis McCoy will definitely be continuing to follow this battle between the U.S. president and Harvard.
08:06Dennis, thank you so much. Dennis Hogan joining us there, a lecturer at Harvard University. Thank you.
