David Remnick: Protests swept American campuses immediately after the October 7th massacre and the launch of the war in Gaza. Soon, accusations of antisemitism led to congressional hearings attacking university presidents. A Muslim valedictorian was forbidden to speak at graduation by the University of Southern California, which cited public safety. Then many administrators, starting with Columbia's President, began calling police to clear protests by force.

That has really escalated in the past two weeks with more than 1500 arrests on campuses across the country. Along with the enormous death toll in Gaza, now approaching 35,000, the campus protests also involve a distinct but fundamental American issue, freedom of speech. I wanted to get a couple of views from inside Harvard University. First, Lawrence Summers. Summers is a prominent economist, and he was president of Harvard University controversially at times for five years.

He's also widely known as a critic of Harvard, who sees the school as having drifted too far to the left. Let's begin with the historical parallel. When students were protesting the Vietnam War in 1968, some said things that were quite outrageous, preposterously kind slogans about Ho Chi Minh [unintelligible 00:01:34], but the vast majority, the vast majority, were on their feet and protesting because they were outraged about a war that they considered a horrific mistake. How is that different from now?

Lawrence Summers: I think most people at Harvard would feel that the decision and the way it was done to call in the police at Harvard in ways that led to violence against the protestors was a historical error that did grave damage-

David Remnick: We're talking about 1969 at Harvard.

Lawrence Summers: -on our campus. Far be it from me to take the position that no one should be marching or protesting against various aspects of Israeli policy. Marching and using chance that carry the clear implication that Israel as a Jewish state should cease to exist, I think is a very problematic act. Not necessarily an act that should be prohibited, but certainly an act that should be condemned. Now, by the way, to say that speech is anti-Semitic is not to say that the speech should be banned. It does seem to me that it is the obligation of leaders of an institution to set a moral tone.

I also think there's a difference. There's a kind of double standard in what is going on today vis-a-vis Israel that I don't think was an important aspect of the Vietnam experience. The Vietnam experience was the major foreign policy of the United States of America. On even the least sympathetic view of Israel as a violator of human rights, it is not the only violator of human rights in the world. It is not the largest violator of human rights in the world when there is complete indifference-

David Remnick: Well, but the United States is funding a lot of it.

Lawrence Summers: -between human rights abuses-- I'm sorry, David.

David Remnick: What I'm saying is I think you know the answer to that is that some of it has to do with policy complicity and funding of Israel militarily and otherwise. There's a sense of connection between the United States and Israel that there is not between some of the other states that you're talking about.

Lawrence Summers: I think part of what gives force to the concern about antisemitism is the very strong sense that Israel is being singled out, and Israel is the only Jewish state, and antisemitism is a 3000-year curse. Harvard and other major universities do have long histories of complicity with antisemitism.

David Remnick: The president of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania testified at a House committee hearing on antisemitism in December. We all remember that. Representative Stefanik grilled them relentlessly. Two of them soon resigned, including Harvard's President Claudine Gay. What was your reaction watching Claudine Gay? At what point did you start to feel concerned?

Lawrence Summers: Those kinds of hearings are a kind of performance art and an unfair performance art because the Congress people can interrupt. They're physically eight feet higher than the witnesses, and one doesn't get a real chance to explain one's views. That said, I recognized immediately that it was very poor performance art. Frankly, my frustration and anger was more directed at those who had taken responsibility for the preparation of the presidents as much as the presidents themselves.

David Remnick: You are referring to PR people, lawyers in particular, in the way they prepped the president?

Lawrence Summers: Part of the problem was that lawyers who conceptualized congressional testimony as they would conceptualize the deposition. Failed to recognize the public aspect controlled the preparation and established principles that were legalistically accurate but were cosmically unsuited to the moment.

David Remnick: How would you have responded in front of somebody like Congresswoman Stefanik to that crucial question? How would it have been different than the way Claudine Gay responded? How should she have responded?

Lawrence Summers: David, I'm going to stay away from that question for a moment because I think I would not have been in the situation President Gay was.

David Remnick: Why is that?

Lawrence Summers: Because if 35 student groups at Harvard had basically said Israel deserved October 7th. I would have, three hours later, issued a press release saying that this was an entirely repugnant speech that did not reflect the values of the Harvard community and called on them to withdraw that speech. David, it's a real mistake to focus on the words at the Congressional hearing rather than the context that brought us to that moment, and in many ways is still with us on college campuses.

David Remnick: You don't think Representative Stefanik was in any way targeting President Gay?

Lawrence Summers: Of course, she was. Of course, she was being a politician looking to dramatize an event to make a simplistic point. That opening was created by the failure of universities to stand up in a reasonable way for broad values.

David Remnick: Now, as you know, the hearings were followed by something else. Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist, is intent on attacking what he sees as elite left-wing universities and colleges and has been investigating plagiarism instances among faculty and administrators. He went after Claudine Gay. What did you think of that? Because that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back here. That's what led Claudine Gay to have to leave her post.

Lawrence Summers: Look, I think there's an element of ugly malicious persecution in what Christopher Rufo has done. I have condemned Chris Rufo. I have condemned Bill Ackman, who has echoed certain things that are said.

David Remnick: Bill Ackman is a prominent hedge fund manager and a Harvard donor.

Lawrence Summers: Ackman called on people to renounce any financial support of Harvard and I rejected those calls.

David Remnick: How would you compare the congressional testimony and behavior of Claudine Gay when she was president of Harvard, to President Shafik at Columbia who took an entirely different approach to her congressional testimony? Thereby causing a large part of the faculty to be enraged that she somehow cut out to Representative Stefanik and just did everything that she could to not get fired. How do you interpret her approach?

Lawrence Summers: I think there's a middle ground in a lot of this. On the one hand, when Harvard is not willing to answer the question, how many students have been punished? I find it wildly unreasonable. Since it seems to me to be a reasonable question and that it's not invasive of privacy to talk about how many students have received a given kind of punishment. On the other hand, when President Shafik-- and I don't know all the reasons, and I don't know all the considerations-- spoke about individual disciplinary cases of faculty, in a public setting, I found that to be a quite surprising choice.

David Remnick: She seemed to make up her mind in the moment.

Representative Stefanik: Did you confirm he was still the chair?

President Shafik: I need to confirm that with you. I want to-- I need to check.

Representative Stefanik: Well, let me ask you this, will you make the commitment to remove him as chair?

President Shafik: I think that would be-- I think I would, yes.

Lawrence Summers: That was something that I would've been very hesitant about doing. Again, I don't know what the full context of the situation was. In general, it does seem to me that academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism. I think there is a tendency on the part of some to suppose that somehow the fact that there's academic freedom is a reason why presidents and others on university campuses can't be sharply critical of a range of different speech or a range of different faculty activity.

David Remnick: Larry, you've said that Harvard has stepped away from merit and excellence in favor of identity politics. You feel generally speaking that the school has drifted too far to the left. That's your view. That sentiment is also behind a lot of the conservative push in Congress and among people like Christopher Rufo. They want to make this into a hot-button political issue. What I hear you saying, Larry, is that to some extent or maybe to a great extent, you agree with them?

Lawrence Summers: I think it is very regrettable that Ivy League campuses today, you cannot take a course in American history where you are exposed to a narrative about principally the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, and the Revolutionary War period.

David Remnick: You mean to tell me that someone like Jill Lepore, a historian like that, she's not teaching these kinds of things at Harvard?

Lawrence Summers: When I was president, which is before Jill Lepore arrived. At that point, I asked the history department quite explicitly, "Do you offer a course about the American Revolutionary War period?" My successor, Drew Faust said, "In a way, we do, Larry, but I don't think you'll think it responds to your concern. We offer a course on the American revolution, the Haitian revolution, and the Guatemalan revolution in comparative perspective."

David Remnick: I think a lot of people at Harvard would dispute you on this, no?

Lawrence Summers: If you look at the extent of the study of Marx in the curriculum at leading universities, and you look at alternative, more libertarian perspectives there is a vast disproportion that is there. I think if you teach a negative history of our country, I think it has problematic consequences down the road. As I look at what's happening on many campuses this spring, I'm not sure things are moving in the right direction.

David Remnick: Larry Summers, thank you. I appreciate your time.

Lawrence Summers: Thank you.

David Remnick: Larry Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, and he remains a professor there. He also directs a center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

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