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The Glenn Show

Rajiv Sethi – Will Trump Destroy Elite Universities?

The Glenn Show

Glenn Loury

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.82.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

Video Links

0:00 Columbia’s $221 million-deal with the Trump administration

4:11 Rajiv: The charges about antisemitism at Columbia are mostly pretextual

13:34 How is Columbia’s resolution monitor going to assess merit in admissions?

25:31 What really matters in college admissions?

29:47 Why Brown’s agreement differs from Columbia’s

34:16 Rajiv: If the Trump administration wants to destroy universities, it has the resources to do it

40:07 Is Columbia’s Middle East Studies department cooked?

43:15 Free speech is dying in universities and flourishing on podcasts (and Substack)

50:19 Is a full-scale antisemitic backlash on the way?

55:25 The question of genocide

59:45 The Gaza War’s historical legacy

Recorded August 1, 2025

Links and Readings

Rajiv’s post, “The Columbia Deal” at Imperfect Information

Rashid Khalidi’s open letter announcing the withdrawal of his course

Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017

Roland Fryer’s WSJ piece, “DEI Is Worth Saving from Its Excesses”

Glenn’s new book, Self-Censorship

Colin Wright’s WSJ piece, “Cornell University Discriminated against Me”

Dave Smith and Douglas Murray on the Joe Rogan Experience

Green Beret vet Tony Aguilar on the Tucker Carlson Show

Israeli journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps speaks with The Daily about starvation in Gaza

Avi Shlaim’s book, Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine

Omer Bartov’s NYT piece, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”



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Transcript

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0:00.0

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Glenn Show at glenlawry.substack.com.

0:06.6

As a subscriber, you will receive new episodes on Mondays instead of Fridays and get access to ticket pre-sales to live events, monthly Q&As with Glenn Laurie and John McWhorter, exclusive content, and other benefits.

0:21.8

Thank you.

0:23.3

Hello, everybody.

0:24.1

This is Glenn Lowry, host of the Glenn Show, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Brown University

0:31.5

and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

0:35.7

And I am with my good friend and colleague and collaborator,

0:40.7

Rajiv Setti.

0:42.2

Rajiv Setti is a professor of economics at Barnard College of Columbia University and author of the

0:50.2

newsletter that's published at Substat called Imperfect Information.

0:55.6

And he is a source of interesting commentary on economics and other matters.

1:01.4

And being a faculty member at Columbia University,

1:04.6

I thought it would be useful to hear from him about what's going on there

1:09.3

in the university's contestation with the U.S. government

1:14.4

over questions of anti-Semitism and related matters.

1:20.6

So welcome, Rachi.

1:22.6

Oh, thank you.

1:23.3

Glad to be black.

1:25.2

So this is in the news now, a $200 million kind of compact with the federal

1:37.1

government. Have you studied the agreement and what's your original, your initial reaction?

1:44.6

So yes, I have looked at the agreement.

1:46.9

It's very short, you know, it's available online for folks who want to look at it.

...

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