E156: Ivy League antisemitism, macro, SaaS recovery, Gemini, Figma deal delay + big Friedberg update

**Jason** (0:00)
Sacks, how are you doing with your Tucker afterglow? It was an amazing episode. The feedback's been great. It's the number one episode of the year after Vivek, I think, and trending to be maybe a million views on YouTube. So how's the afterglow?

**David Sacks** (0:14)
Yeah, I did notice there's one particular clip that's going viral where he calls you stupid.

**Jason** (0:20)
Yes, there's that one.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:23)
I thought Tucker was incredible. I found him so intellectually interesting.
And it's not always the case that great moderators and interviewers make great guests, but he is so intellectually curious and has unique points of view that you want to hear them out. And his style of talking, I find also, like, very easy to listen to. I thought he was really impressive, really, really impressive. You don't have to agree with everything he says, quite honestly, and some people probably won't, but I found him really compelling.

**Jason** (0:55)
I don't agree with half of the stuff he said, or maybe a third, but I, too, enjoyed it very much.
I thought he was great. Sacks, I got to, you know, as the person people believe has Trump derangement syndrome, thank you for your tweet, or the person people consider, like, the far left, they're like, why aren't you pushing back? Why aren't you pushing back? And this has become a MAGA takeover. You had Jared Kushner, he didn't get pushed back. You didn't get pushed back to Tucker. You know, one of the things we're trying to do here, I'm speaking for myself, is to let people talk. Let them put out their position.
And if you do that, and we did that with the presidential candidates, exceptionally, I think, then you can decide for yourself. And yes, we'll ask a hard question here or there, or maybe, you know, push them a little bit, but we don't want to make it uncomfortable to come here and make it like they come here and we take the 10 worst things about the person or the 10 criticisms and run through them. You can get that on cable news. You can get that on either side of the aisle. What I want to do is let them talk and then actually interesting things come up.

**David Sacks** (1:52)
Why do you always get this feedback?

**Jason** (1:54)
Because people perceive me, because you say I have Trump Derangement Syndrome, as the token left guy.
That's all. And I'm a moderate and I try to keep saying that, but people keep wanting to say I'm like far left.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:03)
I just want folks to realize that we're going to go and have more guests, especially if we can learn from those folks.
And especially if hearing them out can expand how we think about what's going on in the world. So get over it and it's about learning and being curious.

**Jason** (2:19)
Hard conversations will be the norm here on the pod.
We're going to have any guests we damn well please. And some people will choose to not ask hard questions. I will choose to ask hard questions, but I won't hijack the show. And so please don't email me and tell me I didn't do my job fighting for the left or whatever. That's not my job. I'm going to ask a hard question when I want to on the show, but I'm not going to hijack the show with 20

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:42)
Bravo to you.

**David Sacks** (2:43)
I suspect you're getting a lot of pressure from the private equity wives.

**Jason** (2:46)
Yes.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:47)
I mean, what a great moment.

**Jason** (2:50)
What a great moment.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:51)
People on SSRIs, Jason, are blowing up your inbox.

**Jason** (3:12)
Well, the conversation that everybody's going wild with, so let's just get into it, is these college anti-Semitism hearings. On Tuesday, the House Education Committee spoke with the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT, and they faced a lot of tough questions. Many of the videos went viral. And I guess the part that specifically went most viral was the presidents of these organizations refusing to specify whether or not the calls for mass murder of a particular group, genocide of students were or were not against the codes of conduct against bullying and harassment at places like Harvard, Claudine Gay, specifically was asked over and over again whether chance of intifada were violations of Harvard's code of conduct. She didn't give a great answer. I'm just curious, Sacks, obviously you're Jewish, you went to the Ivy League, passionate about free speech.
And you've talked about surplus elite politics. He is. What's your take here? Should students be allowed to march around campus chanting from the river to the sea?