Degrees of freedom? Harvard’s shakedown dilemma
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.4 • 4.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donald Trump’s mission to bend higher education to his will maintains its sharpest focus on Harvard. Will the venerable university settle—and should it? Our correspondents meet with France’s top general, who believes Russia will threaten Europe sooner than many people think. And a look at how satire changes when politics is beyond parody and its practitioners cannot be shamed.
Impressions courtesy of George Simpson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | At BP, we're not just talking strategy. We're making it happen, growing our upstream business |
| 0:08.4 | with six major new projects in 2025. Four already live. Two more scheduled this year, |
| 0:16.1 | expecting to add 135,000 barrels a day to peak production, helping drive long-term shareholder value. |
| 0:24.4 | For more on our growth plans, visit BP.com forward slash strategy at work. |
| 0:33.2 | The Economist |
| 0:36.6 | The Economist. |
| 0:45.4 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:51.8 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 1:00.8 | Our correspondents sit down with France's top general, |
| 1:05.2 | who has some sobering views about the coming threats to Europe from Russia and how nuclear deterrence fits in. |
| 1:10.3 | And it's really hard to do political satire in what historians will one day call the age of Trump. |
| 1:15.6 | It assumes a reality that's not already parody. |
| 1:19.6 | Our culture correspondent says that these days it's not the usual cast of sniffy liberals who are doing it best. |
| 1:38.3 | But first... |
| 1:52.3 | In October of 2023, soon after the start of war in Gaza, many American students made their views clear from encampments and sit-ins across the country. |
| 1:53.9 | Free, free, Palestine! |
| 1:55.7 | Free, free Palestine! |
| 1:57.5 | Free, free Palestine! |
| 1:59.4 | Free, free Palestine! |
| 2:05.6 | Long story short, that started a broad conversation about campus ideology that's still going. In December of that year, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania |
| 2:10.6 | were grilled at a congressional hearing. |
... |
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