harvard was to fight, they want to show how smart they are. he's not backing down. president trump spoils for a fight with harvard with a looming showdown in the courts. the white house says it's all about free speech, but free speech for whom? good evening. this is newsnight, brought to you live every weeknight from broadcasting house with the best insights and interviews.

welcome to our viewers watching around the world on bbc news. well, donald trump has spoken, and intensified his confrontation with harvard, though the president did say he is trying to help the united states' oldest university. a federal judge is due to decide tomorrow whether to make a temporary halt to the administration's block on overseas students attending harvard indefinite. joining us this evening for the newsnight varsity panel. top of his year class, newsnight alumnus gabriel gatehouse, broadcasting royalty and labour peer ayesha hazarika, and brainbox daily telegraph comment editor poppy coburn. so, last week we were reporting on that decision by the us homeland security secretary kristi noem to block harvard from enrolling overseas students. secretary noem said this was about "holding harvard accountable for fostering violence, anti-semitism, and coordinating with the chinese communist party on its campus".

abdullah shahid sial is a harvard university student from pakistan - he says the uncertainty is really difficult. i don't think anyone right now, among the thousands of international students, are certain that they will be able to return for the fall semester, which begins in september. and this uncertainty clouds the minds of, again, these 18, 19 and 20-year-olds who have who are coming to this country, with in most cases without parents. i had never been to the us before. my parents have never been to the us. and i'm not the only story. there are thousands of other stories as well. and they have to deal with stuff, with all of these legal issues, which even lawyers would be scared of putting their feet in. one person who has been outspoken on all of this is the world renowned psychologist from harvard, professor steven pinker. outspoken in criticising the actions of the trump administration. but also outspoken in criticising his own university. so i began by asking

professor pinker whether he had ever experienced anti-semitism at harvard. i read the anti-semitism report. on it like the old anti-semitism where it was genteel, old money, wasp snobbery the new anti-semitism is mostly a spill-over of anti-israel zealotry together with i think some students come from parts of the world where they've never had a due. they may have assimilated some negative stereotypes from other parts of the country. you're saying there is anti-semitism for them in a piece you wrote in the new york times or your language was very strong you talked about how jewish students have felt intimidated by anti-israel protests that have disrupted classes, ceremonies and everyday campus life often met with a confused response by the university, members of the teachings that

you wrote have gratuitously injected her palestinian activism into courses or university programming. that's a damning indictment of your university. it's a big place. it's got three campuses, 13 school, 24th thousand students of 2300 professors. lots can happen without characterising the university as a whole. yes, those incidents have happened for that they should not have happened. we will make sure they don't happen again. it is not true that harvard is as been alleged a bastion of due hatred. that is utterly false. wrong as you say to characterise harvard as a bench during the patching of anti-semitism. your strong language in the new york times is shown with the trump administration is trying to tackle. when they announce their banner and overseas come at the department of homeland security said... harvard campus is creating an unsafe

environment by physically assault individuals, including many jewish students. that's nonsense. there is one incident in which it israeli student got in the faces of palestinian protesters. they did harass them. they are serving community service and anger management for the bears at one incident that gets replayed over and over again. it's not true that it's not a safe campus for jewish students by no means. that is false. what do you think of donald trump personally? you posted on ask that his assault on foreign students at harvard is truly depraved. but then in the new york times you catalogued a series of errors by harvard and then said that many of the universities reforms followed his inauguration and overlapped with his demand for that then you wrote this... if you're standing in a downpour and mr trump tells you to put up an umbrella, you shouldn't refuse

just to spite him. that is true. it is also true that defunding cancer research is a terrible way to fight anti-semitism for the among other things, many of the scientists and trainees are jewish they are seeing their careers go up in smoke, their lab shutdown. in the non-jewish scientists are seeing their careers go up in smoke in order extensively to advance jewish interest. shoes have no interest in us with that they do not want this to happen in their name. it is utterly illegal, inappropriate, it is not the way to fight anti-semitism. -- due. you talked about these funding science would you describe is punitive. how existential threat is that to your university and in deed to the us as a whole? william hague, the former ua foreign secretary who is out chance of oxford university is talking about how removing what he describes us some 40 billion from the

funding of american scientific research for that william hague said such a gift for your, gift to the uk edits academic institutions. that is true. and it's a gift to china. scientist will follow the opportunities. students have the choice for that they have graduate programme shutdown because they don't have a funding for laboratory research for that my students are of necessity looking elsewhere for the ability to europe, the look in asia. yes, if this is not opposed it will mean a brain drain from the united states, which will be a colossal blunder. what has propelled harvard into the headlines and last week or so is that proposed ban on foreign students enrolling at your university. there is a temporary hold on it from a federal judge. in my experience the foreign students are just unbelievable grateful to be here for that they want to make the most of every second. they

are not the rabble-rousers, troublemakers, radicals, we've got plenty of those in the united states. it's misdirected from the get-go. it is simply an attempt to punish harvey cover to make harvard suffer. you are a professor of psychology. donald trump's action to have an impact on your professional life at cambridge, massachusetts. what is your professional judgment on the psychological makeup of president donald trump? old, i'm not a clinical psychologist, even if i was there is a general professional standard that you don't diagnose people from a distance. just looking at a checklist, i would say this is a malignant narcissist, that's not a professional opinion, that someone in any paper could say. a bit of psychological analysis. gabriel, what is it about harvard university that gets

donald trump? the only answer is harvard stood up to him when some columbia, i think it's quite tempting to see this whole harvard thing through the prism of culture wars, the war against "woke" for the attacks on foreign students, communism, all of that. but i think this has a much longer historical detail. you look at peter teal, the silicon valley investor who in the 1980s took a stanford review and was pushing back against what he saw as a bastion... this is before the world woke. this idea was taken up by curtis garvin who's the in-house philosopher of the maggot movement who called the universities together with the press, he called them the cathedral. this sort of unelected bastion -- maga. needed to be taken on. this attack on the university has

been a long time coming. poppy, the cathedral. you've got conservative minded friends at ivy league universities with do they describe the atmosphere from their viewpoint? i think what trump is put his finger on here, this is his bible, hell get a few legitimate grievances, there was definitely an issue with it a summative at harvard. we started with a hearing so that a definitely a lack of antique dues diversity at harvard not many conservatives are catholics. he's also an opportunist with a pc in this opportunity were harvested up to him and great, i don't like harvard, do we really think trump cares about harvard university? no. this is fairly massive political win. his supporters are like ivy league. he gets a kneecap an institution he doesn't support it may be prevented next elite class at my come through being the next president. probably not a republican one. aisha, it stroke versus travel to vegas

or boston judge, who is good when i showed al? whatever happens donald trump will find a way of winning this. i think it is a combination of a number of things with them i is a bit of residual war on woke. why not? that something to donald trump. i think it is also a war on intellectualism for them epic donald trump firmly is against that mindset you mentioned a lack of diversity of thought for the often universities are those kinds of places. i thought it was really interesting in the interview the fact that what does this mean for the rest of the world? what does this mean for places like us? i think if our institutions are smart, if government is smart we should essentially open up safe and legal roots for very good intellectuals, very good scientist. because of donald trump does not want them we will happily have them. interesting point picked up by a fellow pair william hague who

is now chancellor of oxford university. thanks - for now - to my newsnight varsity panel. well, one person who is strongly sympathetic to president trump on universities is dave rubin, host of the conservative political talk show the rubin report. millions follow him on social media. mr rubin is in hungary to attend a centre right conference on free speech. i caught up with him in budapest earlier and i began by asking mr rubin to outline the trump administration's concerns about free speech in europe. the protections that we americans have around free speech, the first amendment, of course, the bill of rights of the constitution, really offer us the most robust protection to say whatever we want, whether it is critical of the government or it is offensive to a group of people or whatever it might be. now, of course, we have limits to that. you can't point at a specific person and say, you know, to a mob, go get him. you can't make a direct death

threat, that sort of thing. and then we have very, very tight laws around libel and slander. but beyond that, you can say whatever you want. you can be an anonymous troll on twitter/x, and say mean things. and really, it's up to the person on the receiving end of that to figure out what to do with it, whether they are going to be offended or anything else. let me ask you about a very famous case in this country. this is lucy connolly, who last year tweeted the following after learning that three children had been murdered in a knife attack at a taylor swift-themed dance class, in what she wrongly thought was an attack by an immigrant. this is what she tweeted. "mass deportation now. set fire to all the effing hotels full of the bastards for all i care." i should say she rapidly withdrew that tweet. but do you think that there are limits? do you think that it's right that in that case, that is crossing a line? right, so i think calling for mass deportations

or calling to protect your border or have a sovereign nation and things like that, that absolutely falls within the right of free speech. calling for specifically the burning down of a hotel, where someone might be, and i'm doing this in sort of the vaguest sense because i'm not 100% familiar with the full details of the story that you are laying out there, that could potentially be a bit more of a direct call for violence, which again, from a united states perspective, if you are directly calling for violence against someone, you would be in trouble. but i want to be as fake as i can be in this specific case. incitement to violence is basically the line that we have with the first amendment. also, keep in mind that, you know, a lot of people conflate free speech and hate speech. you are allowed to say hateful things. i mean, the supreme court of the united states decided that there is no such thing as hate speech, in fact. you can say really awful things to people and that is just part of life. so if you are saying that there is a presumption in favour of free speech,

let me take you to the united states and to massachusetts, which is a student at tufts university who was lifted off the streets by ice immigration officials for co-authoring an op-ed that was critical of the state of israel. well, i don't know about that case specifically. it's a very famous case. this is what she wrote. it was rumeysha ozturk and in a joint op-ed, she talked about credible accusations against israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of palestinian civilians and plausible genocide. highly contentious claims but not... well, they are nonsensical claims. i defend her right to be able to say it as a citizen of the world. but you know, there's a difference between being a citizen of the united states and being here on a green card or on a student visa or anything else. it is not a right to be a citizen of the united states. let me just clarify, dave rubin, had a us citizen written that op-ed, that's ok. but because it's a student from outside the united

states, that's not ok. well, yes. our secretary of state marco rubio just testified in front of congress about this. you do not have all of the rights guaranteed to you by the united states if you are not a united states citizen, it is as simple as that. if you are going to come here from china or turkey or egypt or anywhere else, to raise havoc on our streets, or to protest or do whatever you want, we can make a decision to decide whether you can stay in this country are not. a regular citizen who was born and raised in the united states, who is protesting and wants to say whatever noxious statements she was saying, of course you could say those things. what about this? this is an article that has been written in the last 48 hours, talking about how israel is committing war crimes, talking about how starving out gaza, the israeli authorities are starving out gaza, and talking about how some of the settlers in the west bank are doing things that is tantamount to genocide.

that was written by ehud olmert in ha'aretz, the former israeli prime minister. would he be lifted off the streets by ice detention officials for writing that? well, first of all, he is not an american citizen. that's right, not an american citizen. yes. so he is the same status as that turkish student. is he going to be lifted off the streets of the united states, if ehud olmert turned up in massachusetts... i see the silly little bbc game you are doing here. i get it, i get it. so he is entitled to say whatever he wants. he can write whatever he wants in ha'aretz, which is a basically unread, crazily far left newspaper in israel, that only propagandists in the west like the bbc use as evidence of something. there is no starvation. there is no genocide, etc, etc, but he is welcome to say those things. but what he has said is pretty similar to what that turkish student said, and she was lifted off the streets. so ehud olmert, also not a us citizen, presumably he would be lifted off the streets

if he popped up in the us? well, if he was here on vacation and just said something, he would be allowed to do it but there's a difference between being here on vacation and being on a student visa. ehud olmert and anyone, just like you or anyone else, is entitled to say whatever they want. whether he says that if he is here on a visa, it depends how he would be here in the united states as to whether he would be able to say whatever he wants, right? that goes for anyone coming from any country. dave rubin, thank you for talking to newsnight. any time. gabriel, why is free-speech such an energising mission of this presidency? i mean, you know, the trump administration, the modern movement, believe -- maga movement, agreed that under previous administrations, people couldn't say what they wanted to say, they had their

careers ruined through local or whatever, this is a politically energising issue for them. for me, i realise that dave rubin doesn't represent the trump administration, but what he is essentially saying is a fundamental shift, what he is describing is a fundamental shift in american values where this used to be a country that stood for freedom of speech, not just in america but everywhere, now they're saying freedom of speech only applies to american citizens in america, and anyone else can, you know, go hang. personally as a journalist, i don't know how you feel, poppy, i would worry about going to america and reporting saying something, i would be in a visa, i would be on and i visa, would i be thrown out of the country, i don't know. poppy, are you worried? i would have to push back a little bit what you are saying. they are really

obsessed with places like britain, south americans but i think particularly native americans, when i was out for one of the first things people would say to me is because of my accent, i'm so sorry, britain is evolved into a police state. that's a big exaggeration but they have a point in terms that america has more encoded liberal speech values than we do, we don't have free-speech encoded into law, and market us. it's always been the case but now they can see like the lucy connolly case, all the stories on social media coming out of the get a perception that, ok, the uk is not a liberal country any more, thank goodness we are. and i here is the first amendment to the united states constitution that guarantees free-speech, as we heard from david rubin who was a champion of free speech, their limits, and he suggest maybe that lucy connolly tweet

is where you rich lane if it is underneath the constitution because as an incitement to violence. what's so interesting about the lucy cullen connolly case, it is people just wanting to project where the bias is on free speech, if she just said the despicable racist thing she tweets on a regular basis, that's fine, that's her right, she may hate people, muslim person like me, that the colour of my skin, that's her right. but when she says to go burn down hotels were people like me, brown skinned people, anyone else might become that's were she crosses the line and even he was acknowledging, you can say you're hateful, horrible things, but if you then go when we are in the middle of a tinderbox situation where half the country is about to erupt into violence and you literally incite violence as people are committing acts of violence, i don't understand

why people are so confused about this case. and america has just lost its mind. the idea that this country is not a free country is completely and utterly ludicrous. that woman was inciting violence. she is free to think her horrible, horrible racist thoughts, that is fine. what she isn't allowed to do is go and incite violence. i must come to poppy. poppy, many of your writers have taken up the case of lucy connolly, saying she should never be jailed, i'm thinking of alison pearson who has followed this with great interest. do you think it's significant that dave rubin who is a great trump bite champion of free speech is saying that the lucy connolly tweet may have reached that line across that line? the us perception of what incitement is is quite different from uk law, their threshold is really much higher which is why we talk about the shouting fire in a crowd. he is saying they might've reached

that threshold. with all due respect to dave rubin, he is wrong. even if you say something horrible in the uk about going after a democratic politician unless you can directly prove cause and effect, i'm not defending with this woman is saying that our legislative systems are different and that affects our politics plays out. gabriel, lucy, saying dave rubin is maybe not right about lucy connolly being up against the constitution. i'm not an expert on us law, so you may be right on that. i think there's a lot of politics going on right here. what's his name, former fbi guy, james comey. the death threats. the death threat that was 8647. donald trump is my son saying you are inciting my father's murder. there's a lot of propaganda, hyperbole going on. but what this comes down to is whose point of view do we

agree with, and if we don't agree with your point of view, is absolutely wrong and it needs to be shut down, and you can argue that the beginning of this kind of turf war, people on the left and progressives did that and now it's the right are seeing it as a payback time. but it's payback on steroids, and it is becoming so self-defeating, and quite frankly, a lot of people are losing their minds. i think that's very interesting, that marrying that is happening, the left do something, the right mirrors it, it goes up a notch and... can we admit that pretty much nobody cares about free speech, and it's used cynically on both sides. the right has overacted some time particularly in the us, when people say they love free-speech, they love free-speech when... is not a neutral value. let's turn to another huge issue for the world - and for the trump administration - cryptocurrency. a few hours ago in las vegas, vice president jd vance - a bit of a tech bro -

was hailing it as a transformative force. krista crypto is a hedge for what ever party is in control, it's a hedge against skyrocketing inflation which has eroded the real savings rate of americans over the last four years, and as you all know well, it's a hedge against the private sector that is increasingly willing to discriminate against consumers on the basis of their basic beliefs including their politics. so, great opportunities to create wealth for the world and for individuals. and that new york real estate dynasty are not missing a trick. bloomberg are reporting that the trump family have made $700 million with a series of ventures. in september 2024, they announced their involvement in world liberty financial. three days before the trump inauguration in january, there was the launch of the trump meme coin, and in march 2025 the trump family launched new stablecoin - usd1.

gabriel, is this a case of donald trump taking the united states to a brave new economic frontier, or lining his pockets? well, i actually think it's a bit of both, right? there are elements of crypto that are basically a kind of drift, a scam, all these kind of weird meme coins and except fluctuate in value. this is money, make a quick buck kind of scheme. on the other hand, the crypto currencies come out of a very, very serious discussion that began in the early 90s at the start of the internet about the dangers that computer technology and the internet would pose to freedom, still talking about freedom here. and these people who basically invented crypto currency starting in the 90s saw the rise of commuter technology in the hand of

governments and corporations could lead to a totalitarian dystopia. on the other hand, a lot of these people were kind of crypto anarchists, crypto anarchists and narco capitalists who were hyper libertarians, they thought so long as the technology was free and allowed to thrive without regulation, it would allow for this kind of hyper libertarian future, and that is kind of the ideological spin on this. poppy what do you think of my very carefully thought out essay question, donald trump riding the wave of a new revolution or lining his pockets. some of the people around him are true believers, like the brookdale, he was one of the oh geez thinking up crypto currency before it was even if that, when it comes to the trump family you can tell what they really think about crypto by asking what were they thinking about it in 2016, trump was actually oppositional towards bitcoin, they were against it.

he basically gets introduced to some of the silicon valley people who have schemed themselves, how do we buy political influence, where's the money? there is no more money than in big government. let's essentially buy trunk, let's invest into this meme coin, let's invest into the world liberty corn, it's a way of corrupting the office of the presidency on a level that we have literally never seen before in the most amazing thing is he seems to be getting away with it. hasn't touched him in the polls, whatsoever, he is just taking that qatari jet, hasn't touched him in the polls whatsoever, it's bad. i issue, it's interesting poppy mentioned that, the $400 million qatari jet for donald trump from the qatari word family -- royal family, what do you think he's up to in this area? it just feels like he is a post-protocol president. you're absolutely right, it doesn't matter what he does in terms of ripping up every rule book, filling in his boots, his entire family using the white house to enrich themselves and

get involved in every branch going, it doesn't seem to matter because in a way that's what their brand is. their brand is not, oh, let's be in the noble pursuit of public service. their brand, they are almost influencers. they are branded, how can we just get as much money as we can, how can we endorse every product coming along? and it won't matter until it suddenly does matter. when the scales fall from everyone's eyes, everyone is going to be like, oh, right, there it all was. briefly. briefly. on the one hand, the slogan for this movement is maga, make america great again. the real essence of what you are both saying it i agree with this... thank you mr gabriel, i'm really sorry. heidi is back tomorrow, but until then, good night. laughter.

i'm helluva humphrey in washington and this is bbc world news america. the un says 'hordes of hungry people' stormed a warehouse in gaza - there are reports at least two people died in the crush. russia's foreign minister accuses germany of prolonging the war in ukraine - after germany and ukraine said they would work together to build long range missiles.

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