Can Harvard Tough it Out?

Talking Feds

Harry Litman

Election, Government, January 6, Politics, Merrick Garland, Law, Harry Litman, Trump, News, Legal

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harry talks with Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and one of the country’s leading constitutional scholars. After a brief discussion about his new book, “Who Am I To Judge,” the two dive in to the law and politics of the Trump administration assault on elite universities, in particular Harvard and Columbia. Tushnet explains why he thinks that the Administrations’ broad-gauged demands are unconstitutional on several grounds, including a somewhat underdeveloped principle in the law of fit between Government objection and proposed remedy, i.e. here that the administration is stating concerns about antisemitism to justify an extremely broad range of demanded changes. Tushnet describes the fervent opposition on campus and in the Harvard alumni community to the Administration’s demands, and lays out Harvard's overall strategic thinking in the short, medium, and long terms. The two then turn to the very different response from Columbia, including discussion of the Administration’s apparent consideration of a very novel approach to continuing supervision of the university under the model previous Departments of Justice have employed for corrupt police departments.

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Transcript

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0:43.9	Wondery, UK. That's audible.com slash Wondery, UK.
0:53.8	Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep-dive discussions with national figures about the most
1:03.1	fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host,
1:10.8	Harry Littman. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another
1:14.4	talking feds one-on-one. A lot in the news these last few days involving universities and not
1:22.9	just any universities, Columbia University and now especially Harvard University. And Harvard is the
1:32.0	roosting place until recently, until he retired, of the professor we're really lucky to talk to
1:39.6	today. The William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard, where he specializes in, or
1:47.7	specialized he's retired now in constitutional law and theory.
1:52.7	He's the author of a recent important book that I hope we can talk to him about if there is a
1:58.9	vacancy in the Supreme Court that argues pretty
2:01.9	provocatively and against the thrust of most opinion on maybe both sides of the aisle now,
2:10.4	that all this focus on theories of constitutional interpretation, be it originalism or others,
	...

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