Degrees of freedom? Harvard's shakedown dilemma

自由度?哈佛的整顿困境

The Intelligence from The Economist

2025-08-04

24 分钟
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Donald Trump's mission to bend higher education to his will maintains its sharpest focus on Harvard. Will the venerable university settle—and should it? Our correspondents meet with France's top general, who believes Russia will threaten Europe sooner than many people think. And a look at how satire changes when politics is beyond parody and its practitioners cannot be shamed.  Impressions courtesy of George Simpson
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  • The Economist hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

  • I'm your host Jason Palmer.

  • Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

  • Our correspondence Sarah down with France's top general who has some sobering views about the coming threats to Europe from Russia and how nuclear deterrence fits in.

  • And it's really hard to do political satire in what historians will one day call the Age of Trump.

  • It assumes a reality that's not already parody.

  • Our culture correspondent says that these days it's not the usual cast of sniffy liberals who are doing it best.

  • But first, in October of 2023, soon after the start of war in Gaza,

  • many American students made their views clear from encampments and sit ins across the country.

  • Free, free Palestine.

  • Free, free Palestine.

  • Free, free Pa.

  • Free, free Palestine.

  • Long story short, that started a broad conversation about campus ideology that's still going.

  • In December of that year, the presidents of Harvard,

  • MIT and the University of Pennsylvania were grilled at a congressional hearing.

  • The antisemitism we've seen on your campuses.

  • Didn'T come out of nowhere.

  • There are cultures at your institutions that foster it.

  • What is it about the way that you hire faculty and approve curriculum and that's allowing your campuses to be infected by this intellectual and moral rot?