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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Well, the opening weeks of the Trump

administration seemed to have followed a mantra from Facebook's earlier years.

Move fast and break things. And break them into a thousand pieces before anyone will notice.

Last week, we woke up to Elon Musk, bragging that he was feeding a congressionally authorized

agency with a 40-plus billion dollar budget into, and I quote, a wood chipper.

Breaking things at warp speed is very much the point now.

Many of the most draconian measures have been justified as emergency actions to root out DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

These are typically programs put in place by large companies or institutions or government agencies

to encourage more diverse workplaces.

But the administration characterizes DEI as discrimination, and broadly is the root of so

much of what ails this nation. The temporary freeze of trillions of dollars in federal grants since rescinded

was described as an anti-DEI measure, and the tragic plane crash in Washington, the president also

suggested, might well be the result

of yes, DEI. To understand what's happening here and why, I sat down the other day with

Jolani Cobb. Jolani Cobb is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, and he's a historian

and the dean of Columbia University's journalism school.

Jelani, barely two or three weeks in office,

Donald Trump has gone after academia, journalism, and diversity.

So you're a dean, you're a journalist, and guess what?

So how you hold it up?

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