Donald Trump issued a burst of decrees during his first week in power. One of them has prohibited the diversity, equity, inclusion – the opposite quotas or discrimination, whatever the term you like to use, but that does not apply to private entities, Unless you register in any private entity, a university like mine, Stanford, which obtains federal funds, will be subject to it. And it’s going to be delicate, but I hope he also tries to make this decree.
My point is that we have had certain things in the news very quickly. The University of Columbia, just at the beginning of the new spring semester, had a class offered by a Jewish professor on the history of Israel and Judaism in the Middle East, and it was invaded by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. We don’t know who they were. They had a mask, of course, and they disturbed class because that was what taught by (a) the Jewish person and there were Jewish students there, and they disturbed him. And now we are told that Columbia University is in the shadow of suspicion that they are anti -Semites to tell you the truth.
They now look at these people. I would recommend all these people, it’s not Joe Biden. If you are under a student visa and you have disrupted or burst into a classroom, and you, what, you have committed a crime, or that the university suspends you, then I think it is very likely that The State Department examines your student visa.
It came because at New York University last year, during the final, no less – the same type of protest invaded the library and disturbed everything and New York University suspended these pro -Palestinians , I should not say Pro -Palestinian, pro -demonstrators for a year. So what will they do if some of them are on foreign student visas?
My point is the following, all these elite students of these elite universities speak of a big game, but when – they have never faced any consequences. If Donald Trump and if these universities are afraid of Donald Trump and that they tighten, I think you will see the deterrence start to work to discourage other demonstrations, because something we know about all these young students, they are careerists and they are used to being pampered, whether they are Americans or foreigners. And if some of them have to return to their beloved Palestine, Syria or Egypt, they will be very unhappy. And if some of these children of the elite are suspended or loaded with crimes, and it is in their file, they will be very unhappy.
I would like to finish very quickly with another thing that appeared linked to education. There is a wonderful interview with Marc Andreessen, the Wall Street entrepreneur, but above all a technician. And it was he who created Netscape. He is several billion with his partner, Ben Horowitz.
He gave a long interview to a columnist from the New York Times, Ross Douthat, but here is what interests me – at one point, we asked him, what made you change? Why did you approve Donald Trump? And he said, among other things, they tried to control our industry. In other words, he said, we could face taxes.
We could even cope with the regulations, but they wanted to choose winners or losers and deny us to create, to express ourselves. But here is the point. He said, and we looked at the students that we were embarking on these elite universities, the people ofi, the radical, and we realized from what they said of us, their employers, they wanted to destroy us.
This should, it should be taken very seriously by the University of Stanford, by UC Berkeley, by the USC, by the UCLA, by Caltech, all these universities which feed the Silicon Valley. These people are very tired that your graduates enter there and they are not very well prepared. The entrance exams were watered down.
Four years ago without SAT requirement, four years without comparison of GPA, the quality of graduates that people from Silicon Valley as the rental Andreessen takes place like that and activism and the obsoion take place like that. And if I had to distill all this interview, it would be something like, in Silicon Valley, we no longer really respect the Stanford brand or the UCLA brand or the Berkeley brand because these people are not very good in what they Have used being excellent, and they don’t like the people who hire them, and the people who hire them are us. So we will see big changes, and it has been expected for a long time.
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