00:00And joining us now is former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Emeritus Larry Summers.
00:05Larry, good morning from the Asia-Pacific. Thank you for joining us today.
00:09We've seen your posts on social media. Take us through what you're thinking right now and your reaction to this.
00:16This is vicious. It is illegal. It is unwise. And it is very damaging.
00:24Why does it make any sense at all to stop 6,000 enormously talented young people who want to come to the United States to study from having that opportunity?
00:40Why is punishing them the right thing to do?
00:45What due process has attended this action against the university?
00:54The United States won World War II because of people who came to be at American universities.
01:01They invented radar. They invented the atomic bomb and much else.
01:07Why is cutting off that kind of interchange sensible for our economy or for our national security?
01:18If the Trump administration has an objection to something Harvard is doing with respect to foreign students,
01:27let it pursue the specifics of that objection through the processes of law.
01:34But simply throwing 6,000 students out and denying the many thousands of students abroad who have dreamed of coming to study at Harvard that opportunity
01:48because they're angry about a fight on other issues,
01:53that is not the way we do things in a democratic country like the United States.
01:58I am just appalled that we would have an administration that would contemplate actions of this kind.
02:08If I had been a member of an administration where such unlawful orders had come from the White House,
02:16I would have resigned immediately.
02:19But this is part of what they have been doing.
02:25It's blatantly illegal for the President of the United States to intervene in the affairs of an individual taxpayer.
02:32That's what he did with respect to Harvard's tax status.
02:38It's blatantly illegal to pursue civil rights claims against someone without any kind of due process.
02:51Look, I have been sharply critical of Harvard on a whole range of issues.
02:58There is much that needs to be different.
03:01But that does not justify the sledgehammer approach that this administration is taking to what is vital and delicate machinery,
03:17our greatest universities.
03:22I just don't know quite what I'm going to say.
03:24And Larry, I think you make a very good point earlier on that if there is a problem, let's let the law take its course.
03:38Is it clear to you at this point in time what the specific legal violations Harvard may have committed here?
03:46No, and I'm not at all confident and rather doubt that there were any legal violations.
03:55It isn't Harvard's idea that there's privacy associated with student records.
04:03It's federal law that there's privacy protections for students who study at a university like Harvard.
04:12So I suspect that any legal violations being claimed here are pretextual and are pretext not a reflection of reality.
04:24I don't know everything that goes on, so I can't know that for certain.
04:31But Harvard has a clear necessity right now.
04:37Resist and reform.
04:39Resist because this is the stuff of tyranny.
04:45And if an institution like Harvard with a $52 billion endowment, with the staggering of network of alumni that we have,
04:54if it can't resist these kinds of movements towards tyranny,
04:59I don't know what other American institution will be able to do that.
05:04So Harvard must start by resisting.
05:07But God knows, to say that it should resist is not to say that there are not enormous needs for reform in our university.
05:20But not this way and not with these people directing what is happening.
05:26That is law.
05:28That is decency.
05:29Resist, what are you hearing, Larry, from your circle of contacts about what the school's potential next steps are or should be?
05:38Two separate questions, I guess.
05:40I don't know what they'll be.
05:42And just to be clear for all your listeners, I am a professor at Harvard now,
05:47but I do not speak for the university.
05:52I would think that there are legal actions that we can take to block any sanctions being levied immediately on our students.
06:07And I expect that there will be appropriate legal actions taken.
06:16Certainly, I'm uncomfortable living in a country where this kind of effort,
06:24where you single out one university, which the president has condemned on political grounds,
06:33for major punishment, and then you punish it in a way that didn't involve due process
06:42and that doesn't involve any tailoring of the sanction to whatever specific you are concerned about.
06:53That's not the kind of country we want to live in.
06:56The reason we have independent branches of government, an executive branch, a legislative branch,
07:04and in this context, crucial, a judicial branch of government,
07:08is so that the judicial branch of government can stop this.
07:13And in the meantime, will we, I guess, see how the chips fall in while we figure things out?
07:19Professors, students, parents, school officials.
07:22I would imagine are thinking about what they do now.
07:26And from just a practical perspective, existing foreign students at Harvard must transfer is one of the orders.
07:32How does that work practically, Larry?
07:36I hope and trust that it's not going to come to that.
07:40I hope and trust that there will be legal actions that will be taken
07:46that will enable those students, many of whom dreamed for their whole lives
07:54of coming and having the opportunity to study at Harvard
07:58because they saw Harvard as a symbol of what was the best of America.
08:05Clear thinking, understanding the world we live in so as to make it better.
08:13Great, great, not everybody's great, but many people are.
08:18Scholars seeking truth, they dreamed of coming to Harvard.
08:24And I just pray that we as a country, through our judicial branch of government,
08:35find a way of enabling that dream to be lived.
08:41Because if we don't, we are going to be sending a symbol, a signal to the world
08:48that we are no more committed to what is free than the nations we label as our adversaries.
08:57And that would just be an incredible tragedy.
09:01I myself will be prepared to do everything I can to support the many brilliant, America-loving foreign students
09:13who I have the great privilege to work with.
09:20And I just know that so many of my colleagues will be prepared to do that.
09:25And I hope and trust that this will work out.
09:34But I have not seen so ill-conceived and vengeful an action involving universities
09:45in all the time that I have been involved in higher education.
09:51Larry, just very quickly here, what do you think this does to the international reputation of the school?
10:00And do you suspect this will lead overall to a drop in international student applicants to U.S. universities?
10:06I think we are doing our very best as a country to help British higher education, Australian higher education,
10:17New Zealand higher education, higher education in the rest of the world.
10:21We are taking what's been the pride of our country.
10:24It exports vastly more than it imports.
10:28It has contributed so much to our economic strength.
10:35We are destroying it.
10:37And it is a devastating, self-inflicted wound.
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