From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks very much for listening. If you're not already a subscriber, please do sign up at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, and please do leave us a nice

review. This week, as millions of students wait to hear the outcome of their application to college,

we're going to take a look at the state of American universities. With rising concern about free speech

on campus and the growing dominance of progressive zealots in faculties and student common rooms,

what can be done to tackle the intolerant hegemony of the left? It seems to be a feature of so

much American higher education. What wider role should universities be playing in modern society?

Are we harnessing sufficiently academic and scientific research to meet the nation's needs?

How do our universities stay competitive in an environment

of growing global competition? I'm going to be talking this week about these and other topics

with my guest, the president of the University of Chicago, Paul Alivasatos. Professor Alivisatos

is a distinguished scientist, a chemist who has done pioneering work in the development of nanomaterials,

among many other fields.

He became the 14th president of the University of Chicago in 2021, and he's vowed to maintain

the university's reputation for free expression. We're glad to hear that, and of course academic

excellence. He is, as it happens, an alumnus of the university, having studied chemistry as an

undergraduate. Before his current appointment, he served as provost at UC Berkeley. Must have been a somewhat different climate in every sense of the term. And Paul Alavasatos joins me now. Professor Alvasatis, thanks very much for joining Free Expression. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor to be with you. So you took over as president of the university, I think, just a year, a year and a half ago. Was it something? It's almost a year and a half now. Yeah. Interestingly, you were also, you were an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. She had many, many distinguished positions, a very distinguished scientist, also in administration roles, including at Cal Berkeley. Coming back to the university from your undergraduate

years, how has it changed? What were the main impressions in your first year and a half about how

the University of Chicago has evolved in the last 40 years? Well, first of all, it's just a joy for me to be back.

And what changed my life was my undergraduate education, which at the time, built on core curriculum, emphasized

how to know not what to know. And that, I think, served me throughout my life in such a deep

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