Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Lee Bollinger:

That’s what a great education is all about. Being able to understand that what it is you would believe or like to believe or you feel, really has to be confronted with a very complex world and a complex set of ideas and concepts and information.

Preet Bharara:

We are back this week with Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, and a top legal scholar. Last week we discussed the Supreme Court and affirmative action. This week we talk about the state of higher education in America. Do elite universities really need all that money? Have college admissions become too competitive? And should universities do more to help folks who don’t have college degrees? Lee Bollinger and I talk about all that and more. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

QUESTION & ANSWER:

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet from Crystal, who asks a very simple and basic question, “Why did you want to continue to work as US attorney under the Trump administration?” Well, that’s a good question that I have thought about and I have answered before, but it’s worth taking a look back as I come up on my fifth anniversary of being fired by the former president of the United States.

Preet Bharara:

As you may know and you may appreciate, I did not vote for Donald Trump, I did not support Donald Trump, I was unhappy when he got elected, and I had every expectation that I would leave office because that’s the tradition when a new president comes in, particularly a president of a different party. And I planned my departure starting in November of 2016, but then a peculiar thing happened and Donald Trump asked to meet with me ostensibly to ask me to stay on. And I was a little bit apprehensive about that for a lot of reasons, but I thought I would go meet, see what the request was, and see if it made sense to continue on.

Preet Bharara:

And as I outlined in the very first episode of Stay Tuned, four and a half years ago, I made clear that I thought we had important work still to do in the Southern District that I assumed, and I gave a little speech to this effect and I said, “I assume that one of the reasons you’re asking me to stay on…” maybe this was naive in hindsight, “is that you appreciate and respect the tradition of fierce independence of the Southern District of New York who’s nickname is the Sovereign District of New York, and presuming that you want me to continue in that vein, I would stay in office, because it’s true.” I felt like we had a lot of unfinished business. I felt that we needed some stability in the office when there was a time of great change and transition at the Justice Department.

Preet Bharara:

I also believed that I didn’t answer to the president of the United States, and I’ve said that consistently year after year after year. And by the way, something that I may not have mentioned very often is there was some possibility I thought very remote that Trump was not calling me in to ask me to remain as US attorney, but offer me some other job, maybe some other cabinet official job unlikely, but I thought if he did, I would decline that position. I was not interested in serving in any position in which I was reporting directly to the president of the United States or responsible for carrying out his particular priorities, just the priorities of the American people done with independence and without fear or favor as the Justice Department insists all of its employees do.

Preet Bharara:

And I thought I would have some modicum of distance from the president after that meeting. Because of the particular circumstances and tradition, in my mind, of the Southern District of New York, I thought there was a reasonable possibility I could do that job unfettered and unmolested by a political person sitting in the Oval Office. Well, I was wrong about that, because of course, as you all know, seven weeks into the administration, president Trump, as the sitting president of the United States, called me, I don’t know why, I don’t know what he wanted to talk about, but asserting my understanding of the independence of the office, I refused to call him back. And that seemingly was something of a breaking point, and I was later fired.

Preet Bharara:

So, why did I continue to work as US attorney when Trump was president? Because I thought there was a possibility to remain independent. Within a few weeks, it was clear that was not possible, and I was gone.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in a tweet from Karen, who asks, “Which was better? Dua Lipa’s question or Stephen Colbert’s answer? And have you watched Belfast yet? And back to a question someone once asked you, what profession is most similar to being a lawyer?” Well, first of all, Karen, it’s a compound question, I’ll try to answer them out of order. First, I have not seen Belfast yet, but I intend to. Second, with respect to the question, what profession is most similar to being a lawyer? Well, that’s a hard question to answer, because there are different kinds of lawyers and there are different kinds of reporters and there are different kinds of doctors. And so to compare one profession to another is difficult to do unless you know what kind of specialty you’re talking about, because every lawyer practices differently and there are different disciplines.

Preet Bharara:

But if the question was, what profession outside of the law is most similar to lawyers who prosecute and who investigate? I’ve thought about this over the years and I think it’s probably some version of an investigative journalist. Prosecutors and investigators in law enforcement, much like investigative journalists, are out to look for facts, they’re out to look for evidence, they do fact-based reports or fact-based conclusions, they believe in accountability, they expose corruption and wrongdoing and try to bring it to light. They have to engage in inquiry, asking people questions, interviewing them.

Preet Bharara:

There may be a somewhat different style between the way that Bob Woodward asks questions and gets information versus an FBI agent, but it’s not crazy different. In fact, I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was US attorney, I had a Speaker Series. And we would bring very prominent people to come and off-the-record address the staff and the lawyers at the Southern District of New York. We had Justice O’Connor came once, Justice Breyer came once, former Heads of the FBI, Leon Panetta, came once. And most of them were government officials or judges or former prosecutors of some sort. The one exception to that was we had Bob Woodward come, because I thought the prosecutors in my office and also the civil lawyers could learn something about the investigative techniques employed by a legendary journalist like Bob Woodward.

Preet Bharara:

Now the other question you asked, people might not know what you were referring to. Recording artist Dua Lipa asked a question of Stephen Colbert on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert a couple of weeks ago, and the exchange stopped me in my tracks because I thought it was such a beautiful and pointed exchange. And so I tweeted about it immediately and I think I posted a video of it on Twitter as well. Dua Lipa’s question was great. She essentially wanted to know from Stephen Colbert, given how connected he is to his comedy and how much his profession is related to comedy and built on comedy, but at the same time, he’s honest and authentic about the role of faith, his Catholicism plays in his life, she asked the question, “Do your faith and your comedy ever overlap, and does one ever win out?” And the ensuing answer by Stephen Colbert was thoughtful, sensitive, dense, thought-provoking. And obviously the question was excellent, but the answer, Stephen Colbert head out of the park. Here’s some of it if you’ve missed it.

Stephen Colbert:

Someone was asking me earlier, what movie did I really enjoy this year? And I said, “Well, I really liked Belfast, which is Kenneth Branagh’s story of his childhood. And one of the reasons I love it is that I’m Irish-American, and it’s such an Irish movie. And I think this is also a Catholic thing, because it’s funny and it’s sad. And it’s funny about being sad. In the same way, that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it, because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it. And fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness. So if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens, you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity, and find some way to love and laugh with each other.”

Dua Lipa:

Wow. Stephen Colbert, everybody.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in a tweet from Henry, who asks the question, “What is your opinion on the metric system?” Well, that’s pretty random, Henry. I don’t know that I’m an expert on the metric system, I don’t think I could qualify in court as an expert on the metric system. I do use it from time to time, but you know, I have a kind of an opinion about it. I think it’s excellent. I’m a big fan of base 10. Easier to do the math, easier to measure stuff. But the one thing I think about sometimes as a 53-year-old man, who grew up in New Jersey, and way back in fourth, fifth, sixth grade, we had to learn about the metric system and it was sort of new to Americans back then.

Preet Bharara:

And what I remember is teacher after teacher saying, “You got to learn this. You got to learn what a hectare is, you got to learn what a milliliter is, you got to learn all this stuff, because in 20 years, that’s the only units of measurement that will be used in the United States of America.” That was about 40 years ago. It didn’t really happen, it hasn’t really happened in the way that was predicted. In some areas like in the dispensation of drugs as I noticed, both legal and illegal, the metric system is very widely used. When we talked about the price of heroin and cocaine on the street, it was by kilo. But your question calls to mind one of my favorite stories from sixth grade. So bear with me for a second.

Preet Bharara:

We were taking a class, I forget which class it would’ve been, but there was a section on Greek mythology, Roman mythology. And we had to take a quiz one day in the sixth grade class. And the quiz was basically, the teacher set forth a name of a Roman or Greek god or goddess and you had to say what they were the god or goddess of, what they signified. So for example, there would be Athena, there would be Zeus, and you would have to specify the importance of that God to the Romans or to the Greeks.

Preet Bharara:

And we finished taking the quiz one day and a sixth grader, I won’t say his last name, maybe he listens to the pod, but his first name was Greg. And Greg came out of the test very concerned. He didn’t think he had done well. And he’s going through the various names of the gods and goddesses asking me and others what our answers were. And I’ll never forget when I asked him what he put down for the goddess Demeter, he said, “God of the metric system, Demeter.” Greg if you’re listening and you haven’t learned it since, the Greek goddess Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and the harvest. But I have always thought of her as the goddess of the metric system.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this. Hey folks, we have a job opening at CAFE. It’s a dual role. We’re looking for a law and politics nerd to be an assistant for me and an operations coordinator for CAFE. The job is based in New York. To learn more and to apply, head to cafe.com/jobs. That’s cafe.com/jobs.

THE INTERVIEW:

Preet Bharara:

Once again, my guest this week is Columbia University president, Lee Bollinger. We continue our conversation about college admissions and what it’s like to lead one of the world’s premier research universities. Here’s part two of my conversation with Lee Bollinger.

Preet Bharara:

So moving away from affirmative action itself, but staying with the issue of diversity, you said something interesting a few minutes ago, that the best classes are ones in which people have differing points of view, diverging points of view, that they’re comfortable sharing and everyone gets smarter as a result of that. Some people will say, that as much as elite universities seem to care about racial diversity or gender diversity, they don’t seem to really care about ideological diversity. And racial diversity doesn’t assure diversity of thought, I don’t have any particular opinion polls in front of me, but I think it’s fairly well known that the percentage of Liberals versus Conservatives is very lopsided at elite universities. And the percentage of people I’m assuming at Columbia and Harvard and Dartmouth and Stanford, and these other places, the percentage of people who voted for Joe Biden, if they voted, is much, much, much higher, maybe even multiples of the number of people who voted for Trump. Is that a problem?

Lee Bollinger:

It is a problem in a certain sense. I mean, I think one has to accept that the proposition you put forward is right. That if you looked at the political views of faculty and students at the say top 20 universities, just… I don’t know, pick whatever group you want, the overwhelming majority would probably be to the left of center. And that is part of the reality. So what does that mean? I think first of all, one has to say, a huge amount of what goes on in the university has nothing to do with politics. So, if you’re trying to understand the elements of a cell, you’re not thinking about what the Republican or Democratic party thinks about that.

Preet Bharara:

Although some people will say that medical research is in the current age quite politicized.

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. I think whether to fund it or what to fund is politicized, but I think if you go across the life sciences, the hard sciences, and physical sciences, I don’t think people in their actual work. And then there are lots of social, so what happens, what people look at. And they’re one of the glorious of the university world is people become scholars in things that nobody else in the world really knows about. And what happened at the Battle of Hastings. And so again, a lot of work all across the institutions on concern with partisan politics.

Lee Bollinger:

Then you have to say the professor, the really great professor, the good professor, knows that you cannot go into a class and try to inculcate a political view. I mean, I bend over backwards in my First Amendment class to really try to present as many viewpoints as I can, conservative view. And you know how it works, Preet. I mean now, I actually take a real pleasure in trying to take positions that are contrary to those I might generally.

Lee Bollinger:

So, I think it’s the rare professor who you can say has violated the norm, that we are not a political institution and not appropriately trying to inculcate political views. Then I think one has to go to sort of the student body, the campus. And I do hear from students who are in the conservative side of the spectrum, that they may feel inhibited in saying what they think because of social pressures and the like. And my view is that’s not good and it’s unfortunate. And every time I have the opportunity at commencement or convocation or in speeches or meetings with students, I try to emphasize the importance of different views and conservative views. And I think universities could do more to make sure that there are conservative voices and positions within their institutions, but I do not think it detracts significantly from the mission and the roles of these great institutions.

Lee Bollinger:

I do think there are some disciplines, fields can become captured by a particular, very powerful viewpoints. I mean, there’s a movement now and there has been for a decade or two to try to say, maybe free market economics, maybe classical economics is itself an ideological construct and should be countered by a different set of propositions about how to structure an economy. And I mean, there are debates like that happening all the time, and they should happen. So, I’m all in favor of constantly looking at your premises, at your preconceptions about what are important questions, about are you getting the different points of view? But I think universities are really pretty good as institutions in being self-critical.

Preet Bharara:

As I mentioned at the outset, I wanted to ask you about some general critiques of higher education in this country. And one of those comes very powerfully from Michael Sandel, who obviously works at an elite university, some of his best friends work at elite universities, that’s how he made his career, how he’s made his living, how he’s made his reputation, but he does suggest that in a country where significant percentage of people don’t go to college, I think it’s something like two thirds, do we valorize college too much? Do we cause a rift and a divide between those who go to college and those who don’t? Is there a certain elitist attitude that causes people to feel in a very real way disenfranchised? Here’s a quote from Sandel, which is pretty aggressive. And I just wonder what your reaction to it is. He says, “One of the most galling features of meritocratic hubris is its credentialism.” What do you make of that?

Lee Bollinger:

Well, I have enormous regard for Michael Sandel, and I certainly see and feel the validity of the thesis. I do think that sort of competition, the level of competition, the degree to which there is status connected to what institution you’re associated with, what institution you get into, what institution you are a professor of, whether you go to college or not, I do think that there is an almost pathetic quality to a lot of this. And we clearly see excesses of it all the time, have for many decades, people always think that it’s worse today than it was five years ago, 10 years ago. And I never know the answer to that exactly, because that always seemed to me pretty bad 20 years ago. So, I do think that’s a very serious critique and worthy of a mind like Michael Sandel’s to raise it.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, it’s an odd question to ask you, because obviously universities are good and they’re terrific. And we’ll talk about one of the things you’ve been talking about recently called the Fourth Purpose Initiative, and maybe this is a problem or an issue better addressed by policymakers. I don’t know if you think there’s any role for universities themselves to figure out a way to de-emphasize the necessity of universities so that a large swath of the American population feels like they matter too.

Lee Bollinger:

Yes, it’s an interesting question. I do think about this quite a bit. Universities are always at risk of becoming too isolated, too privileged. I believe deeply in universities. And I think American universities are part of the pride and glory of the country. I mean, I think there’s just so much to value and respecting them. Like anybody and like any institution, there are bad sides to them and problems. And I do think that going back to your very first question about the Ivory Tower critique, I do think that this is a constant risk.

Lee Bollinger:

So, what’s a concrete thing to say about this? In the past decade, it’s become clear to me that universities should start to think of themselves as having the responsibility to take whatever knowledge they have, and they have a lot, and to try to share that more broadly than with the small number of people whom you can select to come in and have the unique experience of living in this community. I mean, we’re talking about a few thousand people, several thousand, but less than say 10,000 undergraduates who come to these top universities. And then even the larger universities, we’re still talking about tens of thousand not millions of people who really could benefit from some kind of advance in knowledge.

Lee Bollinger:

And with the new technologies and the internet and the ability to do what we’re doing right now, and more broadly, maybe universities should really try to think about how they can share knowledge more broadly. Of course, you end up also in discussions like this, having conversations of maybe we’re not very good at it. I remember many years ago somebody saying, “Universities really need to fix the K–8 problem, or the K-12 problem.” And the truth is I’m not so sure we’re great at K-12 education, we do a particular kind, but you always have to be not arrogant about what you can fix, but we still can try when we think about how we can help educate people who are not just those who come through our gates.

Lee Bollinger:

And I think universities are steadily doing that, and I think there will be more and more of it. I have no doubt that the universities as we know them today will continue in their current form for many decades to come. I do not think that what happened to newspapers will happen to universities. And we can talk about that more. And by that I mean really undermined in their business model by the internet. But I do think that this idea of spreading, sharing knowledge of being more democratic in your kind of mission and reach is a powerful idea for modern universities.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Lee Bollinger after this. You said something that made me remember a thing that’s always baffled me, and I’ve never had the opportunity to ask a university president this question. And we have been bombarded since I was a child with all these surveys that say fourth graders in America are behind their Japanese and Chinese and other counterparts in math and science and reading and everything else. And so apparently, our students are just terrible throughout grade school and in high school and schools in other countries we should be envious of. And then you get to the university level and we’re without peer. How can that be?

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. First of all, just for what it’s worth, I think the criticism of K-12 public education and America’s criticism is overstated. And again, talking about arrogance, the just sort of casual way in which people think they can just reform K-12 and fix it, is distasteful to me. So I think it’s better than what the common perception is and people are very dedicated as teachers, underappreciated but dedicated, and we should do more for public education, no question about that, but we do have a better higher education system than I think we do K-12 system. And that’s unfortunate.

Preet Bharara:

You spoke of business models before, what’s the size of Columbia University’s endowment?

Lee Bollinger:

It’s in the 13 billion.

Preet Bharara:

Do you need that much? People ask that question. Do you need that much?

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. So when you compare Columbia’s with the institutions we compete with, our endowment’s a fraction.

Preet Bharara:

Let me withdraw and rephrase the question. Do these elite universities, putting aside intramural competition within the Ivy League and elsewhere, do elite institutions need endowments in the range of the GDP of countries?

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. So, let’s start again from the proposition that American higher education is an enormous success story for America. And if you take my belief and share it, that they’re really filled with integrity, that is faculty really teach each generation that comes through. I mean, I teach myself, I know what it’s like to be dedicated to students. And I think there is very, very powerful motivation to do original work and scholarship. And I think students are very serious about their education, I think on the whole they are very happy with the education they receive. These are institutions that do what they are meant to do and contribute to society through the advance knowledge and in other ways that you mentioned, I call the Fourth Purpose of Universities. So I think they really are a success.

Lee Bollinger:

The endowments are for permanence. They only take four or 5% per year of an endowment on the belief that you are operating an institution that will last not just for 10 or 50 years, but for hundreds of years. And in order to do that, in order to do what you do, which is to discover new knowledge and teach younger people, you will need that. Endowments only really provide a fraction, big fraction but only a fraction, of the cost of doing what we do. And a lot of it is dedicated to financial aid for students. And I know this is very much on your mind is the cost of higher education and the endowments look big and so on.

Lee Bollinger:

Well, a lot of that money goes to providing need-blind financial aid to all students who come into Columbia College, or it goes into making medical school loan-free and tuition-free. And it goes into supporting students and their needs. Also, supports research. If we think that brain disease is one of the primary problems we will face as a world in the years ahead, given with the increase in life expectancy, we’re going to have epidemics of brain disorders and Alzheimer’s and so on. So, it takes a lot of money to build the machines, to buy the machines, to have the research that can help solve these big human problems of disease and so on.

Lee Bollinger:

So, the answer is they look like big numbers, they are big numbers by certain comparisons, but given what they are supporting, I don’t think they are out of line with what we would expect or should expect.

Preet Bharara:

So, as listeners to this podcast know, I myself I’m in a household with three children, one who’s a junior in college, another who’s a freshman in college, and the third is a junior in high school. So, my last few years have been very much focused on the tremendous amount… and I thought it was bad in my day, the tremendous amount of stress and anxiety felt by all people of an age where they’re planning to go to college.

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And I feel it’s never been worse. At the same time that universities keep reducing the number of tests that they require. I think so many universities are no longer requiring the SAT or the ACT, there was something that in my day was called the Achievement Test. I think it was later called the SAT II. I think that’s been virtually discontinued, AP exam seem to be out. So I guess I have a couple of questions. One is, do you when you think about the admissions process at the undergraduate level, consider it all or figure out how to address the issue of this remarkable competitiveness among high school students?

Lee Bollinger:

Yes. So, people think about this a great deal. And there is a lot of concern about it. I mean, everything from mental health services to supports of various kinds from administrative staff and faculty and other students, and the like. And then the admissions process itself in trying to downplay the… Not get into this feeding of this kind of frenzy and real sense of anxiety about it. Of course, we are simply a part of a society, and going back to the Sandel critique, you have this kind of wave of sense of your identity being tied up in what institution you happen to be connected to. And I mean, I’ve spoken to this at various times, but I’m just a small voice in the scale of what we’re talking about.

Lee Bollinger:

I think one of the things you’re really asking about, Preet, is, if you don’t have standardized test scores anymore that you’re taking into account, and there is a kind of movement in that direction, not complete but a movement, what are you going to rely on? And I thought the standardized test scores were part of the way to equalize opportunities so that—

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. You have asked the question of yourself that I intended to ask.

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. And what are we going to rely on? And to what extent is this going to be just a kind of vague arbitrary kind of set of decisions? I think there is a feeling that the standardized test scores were given too much weight, and this is a counter reaction to it, that they were unfair in the way they’re constructed. I don’t have a strong view about this. I mean, I know the competing values and I see the trends. I myself would not eliminate standardized tests, I would always try to make them fair and fair and so on. Grades continue to be very important. Of course, you have to adjust grades for difficulty and…

Preet Bharara:

But that’s very hard to do.

Lee Bollinger:

It is.

Preet Bharara:

And my lay opinion, which is meaningless because it’s based on anecdote not research, and I understand all the flaws with the standardized tests. I happen to be very good at standardized tests, my children also. And that’s a function of a lot of things, including privilege. But if you take away the standardized tests, there are people who will be advantaged by the mere fact that they attend a school that is known to the universities and that is known to be rigorous in a particular way, and will benefit from that. Because weighting people within a school is one thing, weighting a 4.0 at one public school in Minnesota versus a private school right outside of Cambridge, is very difficult. So, is that a well-placed concern that the selection of high school will then play an outsized role in admission to an elite university?

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. I mean, I think it is a concern, but I do think about the following. I mean, goes back… I think I said at some point in talking about affirmative action. Admissions officers are unbelievably knowledgeable. I mean, I don’t spend a lot of time at this point in my career and the role that I have in the admissions process any place, because I’m just removed from it. But every time I have, and that’s been many times over the course of my many decades now in the university world, and when I’ve been with these admissions people, I am just dazzled by how much they know about high schools and lives of students all across the country, not just the elite ones, let’s say, or the exclusive ones, or the ones that we know who are maybe very, very good, they know what’s going on in high schools that I would never guess that they would. They know the courses, what are difficult, and so on.

Lee Bollinger:

And they try to adjust, they would say, for the opportunities that you have. So, we’re not going to take students just because we know that the program they had was very rigorous, when another student just didn’t have that opportunity. We’re going to look at sort of what they did with the opportunities in life and what they show about their educational interests and their drive and their character and so on. I really, really respect them enormously and would argue that people should take comfort in their good faith and the depth of their knowledge and expertise.

Lee Bollinger:

But I share the concerns, it’s an incredibly important process. It is one of the thing, put aside the kind of hypercompetitive elitist identity forming the dimension of it, it’s a very, very public good. Who is admitted to universities and colleges? Is a public good. And we need to approach it that way and be as fair and so on as we possibly can. And that means looking at if we move away from standardized tests, to what extent will that disadvantage people who should have a better shot in life? Those are important questions.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a question I’ve been dying to ask you, because I know you’ve addressed this issue in other places. So, I feel that there’s a lot of conflation of ideas in the public discourse. People say things are autocratic or totalitarian or authoritarian. Sometimes I’ve seen people talk about something called bottom-up authoritarianism. I don’t understand exactly how that works. Is it really the case that we have a tolerance problem in the United States? I know you have written extensively about the First Amendment. In the very few minutes we have remaining, it’s unfair to ask you about your First Amendment theory, but address the issue of tolerance in the country and how that word doesn’t come up as often as fascism and some other words that I think are less fitting.

Lee Bollinger:

Yeah. So I think we definitely do have a tolerance problem. You do have to look at America through this lens of it’s always going to look chaotic and highly different opinions and divisions and so on and so on. But that’s also part of the strength of the society. Very much a free speech kind of view. But I think the starting point always has to be that… And I said this before and it’s right at the beginning of the Supreme Court decisions about the First Amendment. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., you know all this, well, he says, “Why should we have free speech?” Well, I mean, protect people we disagree with? Well, he said, “It’s not logical.” I mean, he doesn’t say it in these words, but freedom of speech, tolerance of dissent, of disagreement, and so on, is counterintuitive.

Lee Bollinger:

I mean, he says, “Persecution for the expression of opinions you believe fraught with death is perfectly logical.” You have to overcome that. That’s what a great education is all about. Being able to understand that what it is you would believe or like to believe or you feel, really has to be confronted with a very complex world and a complex set of ideas and concepts and information. And you must become disposed. As a matter of character and intellectual outlook, you must be ready for that and capable of it. That is not easy to get and it’s not natural. We aren’t born with it, we’re born intolerant in a sense.

Lee Bollinger:

And so, America is constantly, like any society, but America is constantly… it’s an ebb and flow. You look back over the century of free speech, we’ve only had a century of it. I mean, in terms of Supreme Court cases and as we understand it today, you look back over it and there are periods of deep censorship and suppression and intolerance, and then there’s kind of a surge of openness. And right now I think we’re in one of those surges of a sort of sensorial mind, and we come very close to a very authoritarian autocratic way of approaching the world, and barely saved ourselves in for the moment, but yes, this is a perennial problem, a serious one, and especially serious now, but not easy.

Preet Bharara:

Lee Bollinger, Mr. President, thank you for spending the time and indulging in the double session with me. Believe it or not, even though we had all this time, I have about 30 questions and topics that I couldn’t get to. So, you’ll have to come back.

Lee Bollinger:

Well, maybe we’ll do it again.

Preet Bharara:

That would be terrific. Thanks again.

Lee Bollinger:

I really appreciate it very much, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

I’d like to end this week by sharing with you a weekly audio note that I recorded for CAFE Insiders earlier this month, it’s called Touching the Face of God. The note, which related to the tragedy of the Challenger space shuttle explosion, seemed to resonate with Insiders. And I hope it also does with the wider CAFE community. Here it is.

Preet Bharara:

Dear listener, this week’s note is not about politics, the law, or some current event, it’s about a historical footnote that moved me this past week. Maybe you know the background story, I certainly didn’t. So I thought I’d share it. I happened upon it last Friday evening, just before dinner. I was reminded by someone that it was January 28th and that this was the anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. On that date in 1986, on live television, the Challenger exploded in mid-air on its ascent. The blast killed all seven crew members, including school teacher, Christa McAuliffe.

Preet Bharara:

I was a senior in high school, but I wasn’t in class for some reason, maybe I was sick, maybe I was playing hooky, I don’t remember. I watched the launch at home in my bedroom, on my black and white RCA television set. Like everyone else, I was beyond shocked. Maybe I shrieked, maybe I cried, I don’t remember. The feeling of loss was very heavy in the country. As it happens, President Ronald Reagan was supposed to report on the State of the Union that night, but the State of the Union was sad and pained and grief-stricken. It was not the time for politics.

Preet Bharara:

So instead, Reagan delivered a short address to console the country. And it was near perfect for the moment. He spoke to the families of the crew who were mourning, he spoke to the school children of America, who witnessed a school teacher die, and he spoke to all citizens who wondered what the future of space exploration might be. Reagan said, “The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we’ll continue to follow them.” He said, “We’ll continue our quest in space, nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue.” But it is the final line of his address that is best remembered, “We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them, this morning.”

Ronald Reagan:

As they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

Preet Bharara:

I remember that line as well as I remember the explosion. My main extracurricular activity in high school was speech. I was a student of it and a practitioner of it. And that perfect line stayed with me. It stayed with a lot of people. I may have wondered if the words were Reagan’s or speech writer, Peggy Noonan’s, but it sounded to many like a literary reference, but there was no Google back then and I didn’t bother to find out. Fast forward to last Friday, I had a little time. And so, I searched the web for the origin of the surly bonds of earth. I learned the story. And if you don’t know it, it’s really something.

Preet Bharara:

The final 12 words of Reagan’s Challenger speech are indeed borrowed from a sonnet, but not by Shakespeare or any other famous poet. The phrases come from a poem called High Flight. It was written in 1941 by a man named John Gillespie Magee. Magee was all of 19 years old when he put those words to paper. Born of an American father and an English mother who were missionaries in China, Magee came to the United States in 1939, he won a scholarship to Yale, but in 1940, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force to become a pilot.

Preet Bharara:

He was deployed to England for combat duty in July of 1941. It was while serving in World War II, even before the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, that Magee wrote High Flight. It is a beautiful poem. It is not about death, at least not overtly, rather it is about the rush of human flight, which in 1941 was a fairly recent venture. It was after all, only 38 years after Kitty Hawk. Magee writes of sun-split clouds and footless halls of air. Magee loved the skies. He loved the skies as future astronauts would, he loved the skies as sailors loved the sea. This is the full poem.

Preet Bharara:

“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of, wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence. Hovering there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, where never lark, or even eagle, flew. And while with silent lifting mind, I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

Preet Bharara:

Magee sent the poem to his parents. He would never know the impact it would have, because it was never published in his lifetime. You see, tragedy would strike Magee as it later struck the shuttle crew. A few months after he wrote the poem, on December 11th, 1941, still only 19, he collided with another plane mid-air over England. History does indeed rhyme, just like a sonnet. Perhaps he knew he was going to die, or he knew the risk of it. Perhaps his poem was not just about flight.

Preet Bharara:

I learned something else. Decades after pilot officer John Gillespie Magee himself slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God, the poem he penned still resonates, it still rates, and it has found life as an inspiration to pilots and astronauts all over the world. It is inscribed in full on the space shuttle Challenger Memorial. It is the official poem of the Royal Canadian Air Force. It was taken into space by astronaut Michael Collins on his Gemini 10 mission. It appears on many headstones in the Arlington National Cemetery. And it has been set to music by among other artists, John Denver, who recorded the song Flight (The Higher We Fly) in 1983. I may have been late to it, but I’m glad I finally came to learn the story of the poem and the pilot.

Preet Bharara:

My best, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

As a postscript, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for all the thoughtful and moving responses we’ve received from readers and listeners since the initial publication of this note to CAFE Insiders. We got a lot of them. One of the respondents was none other than Yvonne Magee, who was sister-in-law to John Magee. She wrote to us, “It was pure joy to hear the poem again, and to listen to the podcast. For the first time, someone got all the facts right. It brought a tear to my eye and a warm glow to my heart to hear the podcast.” Thank you very much for those kind words, Yvonne.

Preet Bharara:

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that we heard from several folks who fondly recall a time when local TV stations across the country would sign off from the evening with a short film produced by the Air Force, accompanied by a reading of Magee’s poem, High Flight. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. So write to me at letters@cafe.com.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Lee Bollinger. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me, @PreetBharara with the #AskPreet. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Preet Bharara:

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is, Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the CAFE team is, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh, and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.