Name: Are Campus Protests Still About Free Speech?
Uploaded: 2024-08-01T18:06:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Are Campus Protests Still About Free Speech?' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Are Campus Protests Still About Free Speech?' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-01. Transcript available.

Rabbi Wolpe, you were a professor at Harvard, right? You've had a storied
history, and I could
go into a lot of stats, and I'll put those in the beginning of this episode so
people know.
You were working at Harvard?
Yeah, I was a visiting scholar at the Divinity School.
Okay.
Right.
And you left after the October 7th?
I didn't leave Harvard. I left. What happened was, so when I got there, I was a
visiting
scholar at the Divinity School. After October 7th, the president asked me,
would I be a member
of the Anti-Semitism Commission? She was really shaken up. This is Claudine Gay.
Would I help
her understand what happened? Would I give her some books? Would I be part of
the Anti-Semitism
Committee? I said, of course. So I became part of the Anti-Semitism Committee,
and to make
a long story short, it was clear to me that they weren't doing anything.
That Harvard wasn't?
Harvard wasn't doing it, and didn't really intend to do anything, and I think
that the committee
was kind of a cover for it, and so I resigned. I was going to still teach my
class next semester,
and I still did. By the way, the kids were great. They were great, and most of
the students
at Harvard, like students everywhere, just want to get a job, want to finish
their degree,
but not all. But when I resigned, it became a giant public thing, which I did
not expect,
because I think people were so fed up with the idiocies, and the radicalism,
and the just
thoughtlessness of the demonstrations, and also of some of the faculty. And so
we're still, as you
know, we're still fighting this. I mean, there are lawsuits now, and testimony,
and...
I don't even know that.
Oh, yeah. It's an ongoing thing. And all of the universities are trying to
recover. I've never
seen any institution ever lose as much credibility overnight as Harvard. I mean,
Harvard was Harvard.
It's like, I watched a season of this show, Suits. I don't know if you've ever
seen it.
Yeah, I've seen it. My friend used to be in it. She had a list, too, actually.
Oh, really? Yeah, but that doesn't matter.
And it's all about, we only hire from Harvard. Only hire from Harvard. And it's
so funny,
because I'm watching this, and I'm thinking, wait, you have no idea. You would
never say
that now, because their stock has plummeted. Do you mean just amongst Jewish
families who
would send their children there, or do you just mean overall?
Overall. Overall. I mean, there are law firms, major law firms, some of them
not Jewish law firms,
who said, we're not hiring from Harvard because we don't want kids who... Part
of the issue is that
they were not solely anti-Israel, anti-Jewish. They were anti-American, anti-democratic,
anti-Western.
And so they don't want to hire from... I mean, it's all part of the same
complex. Nobody's like,
I really love America. I love freedom. I love capitalism. I just hate the Jews.
That's really rare. Certainly not on the left. Maybe it happens on the right,
not on the left.
Left anti-Semitism is America's bad. Israel's bad. Colonialism is bad. All the
culture they've
created is bad. Everything's bad. Where are the Native Americans?
Exactly. Burned the Israeli flag and the American flag. They were cheering the
Houthis.
The Houthis have on their flag. This is the flag of the Houthis. I am not misquoting
it. You could see
it online. It says, death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews. God
is great.
Dear God.
So... Wow. And they put it in Christmas colors, too.
Yeah, there it is. Oh, there you go. There's that beautiful flag.
Oh my gosh. And that... The Houthis are...
The Houthis are from Yemen. And they were blocking all the shipping in the Straits.
Yeah. And the... And they were cheering them on Harvard's campus. And you think
to yourself,
what are you, crazy? So you're saying on the campus, it became... It didn't
become like a pro-Israel
or pro- or anti-Israel or pro-Palestine or anti... It became all this other
stuff?
It was much bigger. Wow.
Much bigger than that. Yes. So as a result... And the fact that Harvard didn't...
Other places did take
almost immediate action. And guess what? If you tell students, you're not going
to be able to
graduate if you don't stop protesting, they stopped protesting, amazingly
enough. But Harvard didn't
do that. And Columbia didn't do that. And Penn didn't do that. And then also,
there were outside
agitators, too. It wasn't just students. A lot of the people who came onto
campus were from the
community who saw an opportunity to, you know... Yeah. Some people were looking
for something to do,
even. Yeah. I remember somebody sent me... It was an Evite to protest. I was
like... Yeah. This is...
They're doing Evites to it. Did you feel... Sorry, go ahead. I was just going
to say, I said to somebody,
the secret of all this is that they're having the time of their lives. Yeah.
They like... They were
ordering all sorts of... What's a nice way for a rabbi to say this? Sexual
paraphernalia to be brought
into the camps at all the different colleges. Sure. The condoms, other stuff.
Because they were
like... They were basically camping out for... And they're college students.
Yeah. They think it's
a rave almost to some. Yeah. It is kind of a rave. I know. So anyway. Watch
next year. There are new...
There's like protest raves. Yeah. It could easily happen. Did you feel like the
students had a right
to get out there and voice their thoughts? Yeah. I didn't have it. I don't know
anyone who was
reasonable, had a problem with the students protesting. Yeah. I disagreed with
a lot of
what they said, but protesting was fine. The things that I objected to were,
one, when they broke the
rules basically by interrupting classrooms, by interrupting people at the
library, by those
incidents where people were pushed or shoved or whatever. And also, I have to
say, when a kid
walks by and he has a head covering, a kippah, and you know he's Jewish and you
call him a baby killer,
that's not really... If I were the head of the university, I would say, look,
we have limits on
the way we speak to other students. And you can't do that. But it's tricky
because college is supposed
to be the place where you can say whatever you want. Yeah, I remember we got
out in protest.
They were having the girls' soccer team when I went to LSU. They were having
them take
different, like new... Something new had just come on the weightlifting and
athletic market with
creatine, some advanced form of creatine. And they were having all the girls
take it. And some of my
friends were on there. But we got out in protest. It was ridiculous. But next
thing you know,
the news was there. It was like, we don't even know exactly what we're doing.
But yeah,
college was a time where you could do that sort of thing. Right. Exactly.
A lot of backers, financial backers of the institutions also pulled their
finances, right?
Yes. Oh, a lot of them did. And that was another example. So like, I would hear
that people got
upset. Why are the Jews pulling their money? And I would explain to them, it's
not the Jews
pulling their money. What you call someone who gives money when they like what
a place is doing
and takes it away when they don't is a donor. Yeah. Donors do that all over the
world. It's only
when the donor is Jewish that people go, oh, look, look at the Jews doing that.
And that was part of
a preset prejudice that people had before that happened. I mean, these guys who
were pulling
their money, they also were people who originally were giving money to higher
education. That's a good
thing to do. Good point.
I think that that's very admirable. That's the only reason they were pulling it
is because first
they were giving it. Yeah. Um, there are a lot of rich people who don't give
anything to anyone.
So I, uh, it's a really good point. I didn't think about that. I mean, I agree.
If, if you,
if a, if a school is doing something that you don't support, if you're a donor
to it, you certainly
have, I support your podcast and you get up tomorrow and you say something that
I really object when I
come to you and I say, look, I'm not going to support your podcast anymore. You
might be upset,
but it would make perfect sense. Yeah. I have to be an understanding about it.
Right. Yeah. Robert Kraft,
and Mark Rowan from Penn and Bill Ackman from Harvard. Um, and all of them also
felt like this
is a way to draw attention to. And then they said, we're going to give to
universities that do protect
students. It's not like they weren't going to give to universities. We're going
to give to different
ones. So you don't think it was that people were protesting, um, one way or the
other about the
conflict. It was more about how they were doing it and what the school was
allowing.
So it's complicated. I would say this, that was a big part of it, what the
school was allowing and
how they were doing it. Then there were two parts to the conflict. And here,
some of your listeners
might agree with me, some of them not, but I'll, I'll at least tell you what I
think. If you're
protesting the war and you think Israel shouldn't be fighting the war, shouldn't
be fighting the war
that way, or you think they're being indiscriminate and they're bombing,
whatever. I may disagree
with you, but I totally get that. That is, I mean, that's as legitimate a
protest as you could have.
As soon as you say, therefore, Israel shouldn't exist, that shades into anti-Semitism.
Yeah.
Because look, I, I, I went to the encampments and I talked to the kids, the
ones that would talk to
me, a lot of them wouldn't. And I said to them, Assad in Syria killed a half a
million people.
The Chinese are putting the Uyghurs into concentration camps. The Myanmar is
killing
the Rohingya. Millions of people were sent in refugee camps in, in Sudan. There's
slavery
in Mar, literal slavery in Mauritania and North Korea. I don't see you
protesting any of those
things. I see you protesting when the Jews do it, but not any of those other
things. And not only that,
Germany started two world wars. I never heard a protest. There shouldn't be a
Germany. The only
country I have ever heard people say shouldn't exist happens to be the only
country in the world
where Jews have a country. None of the 50 Muslim countries ever, ever, ever I
heard shouldn't exist.
Wow. And not only that, but if there wasn't a 3000 year history of persecution
of Jews
that just happens to also coincide with the fact that that's the one country
that shouldn't exist,
I would also be a little less suspicious, but put all of that together. And I
would say that's an
anti-Semitic protest. There's enough proof of evidence for you to say that.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
I never, I hadn't thought about a lot of that stuff.