"Terry Gross: One of Trump's justifications for canceling government contracts is that he accused Harvard as being a breeding ground - I'm quoting here - "breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination." How do you interpret that?" Noah Feldman: "Well, first thing I would say is that it's wrong. You know, it's always hard to understand exactly what is meant when you're being maligned, but, you know, you know the feeling. You know the idea that even a dog knows the difference between being tripped over and being kicked? Well, that's someone kicking us. One piece of relevant background here is that Harvard was one of the parties in the Supreme Court case - the SFFA case - in which the Supreme Court, for the first time in nearly 50 years, overturned the idea that racial diversity was a permissible rationale to use in college admissions. And the Trump administration, in all of its rhetoric, has been referring, subsequently, to the perfectly lawful use of diversity as it existed from 1978 and really before then, until just, you know, a year or so ago as, quote-unquote, "discrimination." I think that's the rhetorical move there. And Harvard is no more a breeding ground for that point of view than all of the other universities in the country, essentially all, which used exactly the same admissions procedures. It's just that it's easier for Trump to make headlines by attacking Harvard over that." Terry Gross: "That's probably part of the reason why many other universities are worried right now." Noah Feldman: "There are a lot of reasons for universities to be concerned. If Trump can go after the oldest university in the United States, one of the most significant in terms of its endowment and its academic legacy and its prestige, then he can really go after any similar university. And so all universities, I think, have very, very good reason to be concerned because going after a university is one of the things in the playbook of someone who's trying to erode democratic values and who wants to be at least dictatorial, if not a dictator. Universities are a place for the preservation of free expression, free ideas and free beliefs. They've always been that. And so in any country where someone is trying to break that norm of freedom, the universities are a very important target, and that's been true historically.""