A Student Journalist Explains the Protests at Yale

In December, the presidents of three universities were summoned to Congress for hearings about whether a climate of antisemitism exists on campuses. Politicians like Elise Stefanik made headlines, and two of the presidents, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay, were soon out of their posts. The Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote an essay for the London Review of Books about the reverberations of those events. “Folks were out to get Claudine Gay from the get-go,” he thinks, “and were going to use any openings with which to do that”—for reasons that had little to do with protecting Jews. Kennedy tells David Remnick about a lawsuit against Harvard that would equate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, and render a range of thinkers (including many Jews) unteachable. And “this,” Kennedy asserts, “is very dangerous.” This segment is part of the New Yorker Radio Hour’s episode devoted to the protests and the speech issues that college campuses have raised.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the Presidential candidacy of the anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and explore the ways his run for the White House as an independent might spoil the election for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. “He’s not a serious threat in terms of being able to win,” says Jane Mayer, “but he is potentially a serious threat in being able to spoil this election for one side or the other.”This week’s reading: “Is 2024 Doomed to Repeat 1968 or 2020—or Both?” by Susan B. Glasser “Trump Is Turning Victimhood Into His Legal Strategy,” by Eric Lach “Donald Trump’s Sleepy, Sleazy Criminal Trial,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The New Yorker staff writer David Kirkpatrick joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson from office, just seven months after her colleagues forced out Kevin McCarthy. Kirkpatrick explains why Greene’s likely doomed effort is potentially lucrative for her, and walks through the ways in which her strategy is influenced by her predecessors. This week’s reading: How Marjorie Taylor Greene Raises Money by Attacking Other Republicans, by David KirkpatrickTo discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

Brad Raffensperger, who holds the usually low-profile office of secretary of state in Georgia, became famous after he recorded a phone call with Donald Trump. Shortly after the 2020 election, Trump demanded that Georgia officials “find 11,780 votes” so that he could win the state. The recorded phone conversation is a linchpin in the Fulton County racketeering case against Trump. Refusing that demand, Raffensperger—a lifelong Republican—received death threats from enraged Trumpists, and the state senate still wants to investigate him for it. But the politician tells David Remnick that he hasn’t lost faith in his party. He believes he can convince election deniers of the fairness of Georgia’s methods. And, by the way, that story line on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about the Georgia crime of giving a person water while they wait in line to vote? Raffensperger has a suggestion for Larry David. 

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss Donald Trump’s argument for Presidential immunity with former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal. Will the Supreme Court deliver Trump a legal victory in his fight against prosecution by the Justice Department ahead of the November election?This week’s reading: “King Donald’s Day at the Supreme Court,” by Susan B. Glasser “What Harvey Weinstein’s Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump’s Trial,” by Ronan Farrow “Donald Trump Is Being Ritually Humiliated in Court,” by Eric Lach “The G.O.P.’s Election-Integrity Trap,” by Antonia Hitchens To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Anika Arora Seth, the editor-in-chief and president of the Yale Daily News, joins Tyler Foggatt to share what it has been like covering campus protests since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Seth explains both the global and university-specific forces at play that led to the arrest of forty-seven protesters on Yale’s campus this week, and lays out how the university has responded to concerns over students’ safety during the protests. To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

Both anecdotally and in research, anxiety and depression among young people—often associated with self-harm—have risen sharply over the last decade. There seems little doubt that Gen Z is suffering in real ways. But there is not a consensus on the cause or causes, nor how to address them. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes that enough evidence has accumulated to convict a suspect. Smartphones and social media, Haidt says, have caused a “great rewiring” in those born after 1995. The argument has hit a nerve: his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” was No. 1 on the New York *Times* hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. Speaking with David Remnick, Haidt is quick to differentiate social-media apps—with their constant stream of notifications, and their emphasis on performance—from technology writ large; mental health was not affected, he says, for millennials, who grew up earlier in the evolution of the Internet. Haidt, who earlier wrote about an excessive emphasis on safety in the book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” feels that our priorities when it comes to child safety are exactly wrong. “We’re overprotecting in [the real world], and I’m saying, lighten up, let your kids out! And we’re underprotecting in another, and I’m saying, don’t let your kids spend nine hours a day on the Internet talking with strange men. It’s just not a good idea.” To social scientists who have asserted that the evidence Haidt marshals does not prove a causative link between social media and depression, “I keep asking for alternative theories,” he says. “You don’t think it’s the smartphones and social media—what is it? . . . You can give me whatever theory you want about trends in American society, but nobody can explain why it happened so suddenly in 2012 and 2013—not just here but in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Northern Europe. I’m waiting,” he adds sarcastically, “for someone to find a chemical.” The good news, Haidt says, is there are achievable ways to limit the harm.Note: In his conversation with David Remnick, Jonathan Haidt misstated some information about a working paper that studies unhappiness across nations. The authors are David G. Blanchflower, Alex Bryson, and Xiaowei Xu, and it includes data on thirty-four countries. 

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos talk with the NPR reporter Andrea Bernstein about what has happened inside the courthouse during Donald Trump’s first week on trial. Plus, how the historic trial may factor into the 2024 race and whether President Biden should be talking about it on the campaign trail.“This idea of the old ‘Teflon Don’ is just finished,” Evan Osnos says. “The guy is now a creature of the court.”This week’s reading: “Donald Trump’s Trial of the Century,” by Eric Lach “The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th—and Trump,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin “Biden Is the Most Pro-Labor President Since F.D.R. Will It Matter in November?,” by Eyal Press “Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?,” by Susan B. Glasser To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Ronan Farrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and contributing writer to The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the impact of rulings made this week by Judge Juan Merchan in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, where he faces thirty-four felony counts for falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels around the time of the 2016 election. Farrow explains why two other hush-money payments, made to former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, are central to the Manhattan District Attorney’s case. As Farrow explains, “the coverup is ultimately a much, much bigger story than any of the underlying things being covered up would have been.”This week’s reading: Inside the Hush-Money Payments That May Decide Trump’s Legal Fate, by Ronan Farrow The National Enquirer, a Trump Rumor, and Another Secret Payment to Buy Silence, by Ronan Farrow Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System for Concealing Infidelity, by Ronan Farrow To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

Texas has multiple abortion laws, with both criminal and civil penalties for providers. They contain language that may allow for exceptions to save the life or “major bodily function” of a pregnant patient, but many doctors have been reluctant to even try interpreting these laws; at least one pregnant woman has been denied cancer treatment. The reporter Stephania Taladrid tells David Remnick about how two lawmakers worked together in a rare bipartisan effort to clarify the limited medical circumstances in which abortion is allowed. “If lawmakers created specific exemptions,” Taladrid explains, “then doctors who got sued could show that the treatment that they had offered their patients was compliant with the language of the law.” Taladrid spoke with the state representatives Ann Johnson, a Democrat, and Bryan Hughes, a conservative Republican, about their unlikely collaboration. Johnson told her that she put together a list of thirteen conditions that might qualify for a special exemption, but only two of them—premature ruptures and ectopic pregnancy—were cited in the final bill. Still, the unusual bipartisan action is cause for hope among reproductive-rights advocates that some of the extreme climate around abortion bans may be lessening.