New Rule: Don't Go to College | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

And finally, new rule. As an Ivy League graduate who knows the value of a liberal education, I have one piece of advice for the youth of America. Don't go to college. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS) And if you absolutely have to go, don't go to an elite college, because as recent events have shown, it just makes you stupid. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) There are few, if any, positives to come out of what happened in Israel. But one of them is opening America's eyes to how higher education has become indoctrination into a stew of bad ideas. Among them, the simplistic notion that the world is a binary place where everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed. In the case of Israel, oppressors being babies and bubbes. The same students who will tell you that words are violence and silence is violence were very supportive when Hamas terrorists went on a rape and murder rampage worthy of the Vikings. They knew where to point the fingers, at the murdered, and then it was off to ethics class. (CHUCKLING) -Now-- -(APPLAUSE) Now I recognize that a certain amount of foolishness is expected of college kids. But, mixing Jägermeister and tomato juice isn't the same as siding with terrorists. (CHUCKLING) Thirty-four student groups at Harvard signed a letter that said the apartheid regime is the only one to blame, proving they don't know what constitutes apartheid. They don't know much of anything, actually. But it doesn't deter them from having an opinion. They've convinced themselves Israel is the most repressive regime in history because they have no knowledge of history, or even a desire to know it. And actual history doesn't come up in their intersectionality of politics and gender queer identities class. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) Now to be fair, at least five of the student groups have rescinded what they signed, saying they didn't read the letter closely. (CHUCKLING) And they promised not to make that mistake again after they graduate and start running the world. (LAUGHTER) -But-- -(APPLAUSE) I actually believe them, that they didn't read the letter closely. I think they scanned it, said it was blaming Israel, and went back to surfing TikTok. (CHUCKLING) Because college life today is a day spa combined with a North Korean re-education camp. To daycare center with a meal plan, except that toddlers can fire the adults. The fact that college presidents, who usually love to speak out about anything, couldn't find their voice to condemn the worst attacks since the Holocaust says a lot about who really controls colleges. And why, if ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) It's not that colleges didn't always have professors with radical beliefs. I know, I used to sell them weed. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) But the reason why despising Israel became pretty much a requirement of the American left is colleges. Elite colleges, the mouth of the river, from which this and all manner of radical left, illiberal-- yes, illiberal, nonsense flows. Supporting all-Black, that is, segregated dorms, segregated graduation ceremonies and orientation programs, which occur on hundreds of campuses, is illiberal. So is the racism against Asian applicants, and chasing speakers off of campus. (SCOFFS) When the First Amendment watchdog group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression began ranking colleges, based on their commitment to free speech and inquiry, Harvard came in dead last. There's only one set of acceptable opinions on campus, and it's policed hard. The old dorm room bull sessions. (CHUCKLES) It's less risky shooting the shit in scientology. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) John-- John Stewart Mill wrote that, To which today's college students respond, "He and his are cis pronouns..." (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) "...that commit violence against queer and BIPOC communities, so who cares what Jon Stewart Mill says, whoever he is. (CHUCKLING) "Oh, and Thomas Jefferson was a slave holder. He might have done some other stuff, but it wasn't on the test." (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) Elite schools should no longer be called elite. Just stay expensive. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) Which may be why they breed a particular brand of detestable graduate. A personality type that does not emerge from Chico State. (LAUGHTER) Sure, they occasionally turn out someone decent. But for every Barack Obama, there are two Josh Hawleys. (CHUCKLING) The former debate team jerk-off who had no friends, that no one likes today, and yet somehow manages to win a statewide popularity contest. Box-checking brown-nosers who don't actually believe anything, except that tricking stupid people's fun. -That's-- -(APPLAUSE) That's why it is so repulsive when they pander for votes from Mama June and the flat-earthers, because... (SCOFFS) "They just hate elitists." Yeah. Look at these truck-driving he-men from the tool aisle at Sam's Club. Vivek Ramaswamy, Yale and Harvard. Ron DeSantis, Yale and Harvard. Ted Cruz, Princeton and Harvard. Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, Bill O'Reilly, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, most of the Supreme Court. There's a special magic that links Harvard-types and being utterly face-punchable. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) And some, I assume, are good people. (LAUGHTER) And while it may seem like these men, men like these, and the kids who signed the Harvard letter have nothing in common, actually, I think they do. They all came out of an asshole factory. -So-- -(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) So... (CHUCKLES) To the older folks, I say, college today is not the college you remember. And to the younger people, I say, don't, don't do it. You don't need four years and a lifetime of crippling debt to learn to hate America, when you can just watch five minutes of Selling Sunset. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) If your parents have 300 grand they absolutely need to flush down the toilet, put it in crypto, or buy a van, go to a National Park and feed yourself to a bear. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE) Because any legacy dipshit can go to Penn, but a bear, that's hard to get into.