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Fareed Zakaria GPS

U.S.-Brokered Deal Brings Hope for peace in the Middle East; Gaza in Ruins After Two Years of Brutal War. Interview With Award- Winning Historian William Dalrymple; Interview With Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired October 12, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:37]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, Israel and Hamas agree to the initial phase of President Trump's 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza. The ceasefire held over the weekend. Will it lead to lasting peace? I'll ask Richard Haass.

Then we get the Palestinian perspective on the deal from the politician Mustafa Barghouti. Also, I'll ask Princeton's president about the White House's extraordinary intrusion into American higher education. And finally, which ancient civilization did the mathematical concept of zero, the decimal system, Arabic numbers, and the idea that the earth orbits around the sun all originate?

Warning, I threw in a red herring in there, but stay tuned to find out the actual answer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

Donald Trump is often called a transactional president, and this week that apt description led to success. The ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Hamas was a transaction and a complicated one at that.

It's worth placing all the caveats that this is only phase one, and it may break down or get stuck if the parties renege on their commitments. But the first phase is in fact a plausible pathway to ending the horrific violence in Gaza and represents a chance well worth taking.

It also reveals five important realities about the Middle East today. First, Israel is in a commanding position of strength. Dan Senor, the Republican analyst and author, noted on GPS last week that the deal was an Israeli plan, or at least an American plan that Israelis could live with. Well, Israel is the power on the ground, and it's become more powerful

in the last two years as it has defeated an array of its enemies abroad. Nothing is going to happen without its consent. As a practical matter, if you want Israel's guns to stop firing, you need a plan that Israel can live with.

Indeed, Israel's rise has been so dramatic that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have begun warily to balance against that strength. Doha seeking military guarantees from Washington and Riyadh signing a mutual defense pact with Pakistan, a nuclear armed nation. Second, you can get concessions from Israel, but it takes political capital and skill. President Trump used both intelligently in getting Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the deal.

Trump has huge political capital with Israelis, and he used it to pressure Netanyahu. He seized the moment when Israel's attack on Hamas operatives in Doha produced lots of blowback in the region, and he took Hamas's partial acceptance of the plan and pretended it was a full embrace, even though the Israelis had begun to balk, forcing the deal to a close.

Third, you see in the negotiations the reality of the new Middle East. Look at who was in the negotiating room for the deal. Egyptians, Turks, Israelis, Qataris and Americans, along with Hamas. The Egyptians are important only in this particular context because of their border with Gaza and the Rafah crossing, which is a key corridor for flooding aid into Gaza. They represent in some ways the old Middle Eastern order, dominated by the large, populous and culturally rich countries like Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The new Middle East is dominated by Israel and the Gulf states.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the rise of Qatar, a tiny, gas rich kingdom with just around 400,000 citizens but a shrewd leadership that is willing to talk to all parties, including Iran and Hamas, which makes them indispensable in any conflict mediation. Where the old Middle East was led by the large states that espoused pan-Arabism and encouraged Palestinian terrorism, the Gulf kingdom searched for modernity, technological advancement, and above all, peace and stability. Turkey is the new wild card, strong but ruled by a willful leader who has flirted with Islamic radicalism.

[10:05:06]

Fourth, the new Middle East is one where the Iranian threat has weakened considerably. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Arab states have worried about an expansionist, ideologically aggressive Iran. But over the last 15 years or so, Iran has been in economic misery and periodically convulsed by political crises from a green movement to widespread protests from the women's movement to divisions within its ruling elite.

Through all of this, Iran faced a series of devastating Israeli attacks on its nuclear scientists, military leaders and nuclear facilities, culminating in the attacks in June, which was so comprehensive as to be almost akin to an invasion. Finally, despite all the violence, extremism and animosity, there is

really no long-term plan that doesn't end with some kind of a two- state solution. The veteran American diplomat Martin Indyk, who was passionately pro-Israel and also in favor of a Palestinian state, wrote an essay in "Foreign Affairs" last year, a few months before his tragic death, titled, "The Strange Resurrection of the Two-State Solution."

He argued in it that decades of abandonment of that objective have only proven that there is no alternative. Every other alternative, continued occupation, one-state expulsion, doesn't really work. So people will eventually reluctantly come back to it. But that will only happen now if President Trump comes to it himself and invests it with his power and energy. His plan makes a small reference to it, but in announcing the ceasefire, he hoped not just for a ceasefire, but for "everlasting peace," quote-unquote.

That would require more than a transaction. It would require a vision. The fruits of that vision, genuine and lasting peace would echo through history and would constitute a prize much larger even than the one awarded by the Nobel Committee every October.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

It's been two years since the horrific October 7th terror attack on Israel by Hamas. And then, after a long war by Israel in Gaza, we have a ceasefire and a glimmer of possibilities of a lasting peace. Tomorrow is the deadline for the 47 remaining October 7th hostages to be returned to Israel, 20 of them believed to be living. President Trump will travel to Egypt to sign the ceasefire agreement tomorrow.

Joining me now to talk about all of this and more is Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has worked on Middle East policy with four different presidents.

Welcome, Richard. We've all seen the hopeful signs. We all understand that this first phase, which seems very technical, might well happen tomorrow. But I want to ask you to look ahead and tell us where does the -- what's the principal obstacle you foresee in this moving forward to something bigger?

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, Fareed, as you say and as your statement made clear, it's an important achievement. People deserve credit for it. One set of obstacles is whether it lasts. I can imagine, for example, certain members of Hamas disagreeing with the -- with the ceasefire, using some force and Israel then being tempted to retaliate.

So ceasefires historically have a way of unraveling. But let's put that aside. Let's say the hostage exchange, you know, for prisoners happens. The ceasefire is in place. You have an Israeli pullback of sorts. You have aid going in. I think the real challenges come after that, one is I simply don't think you'll ever be able to fully disarm Hamas, much less monitor it. There will always be arms hidden away. You can monitor a ceasefire, but not disarmament. Getting a stabilization force in place is a big lift because this is

not peacekeeping. This is going to be a much more demanding environment. Economic reconstruction. Given the rubble on the ground, that could be the stuff of not just weeks or months, but probably years or decades. Getting a functioning governance up is going to take a lot.

And let me just make one larger point. In any negotiation, Fareed, and you know this, you need people on both sides who are willing and able to make compromises to make peace. And I think on both sides of this, both the Israeli side as well as the Palestinian side, that's a big question mark. Will you have those willing to make peace?

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Will you have those able to make peace? We'll probably going to have an election in Israel that will determine some of that. We've got to have a whole real reconstitution of Palestinian political leadership. It's got to move to another generation. And then last and you mentioned it, what is the administration prepared to do? It's one thing to get a breakthrough, something qualitatively different to now change gears and think long term.

And Fareed, just give you one last issue. Sorry to go on so long. One of the things not mentioned in the agreement is settlements. So is this administration prepared to push back if and when this or the next Israeli government decides to build new settlements or expand existing ones? There's so many things that have to be decided here.

ZAKARIA: Yes, you mentioned the difficulty of the parties abiding by this agreement. Let's focus in on Israel because, again, it is the power on the ground. How do you see the divisions within Israel, both within the Cabinet where Bibi Netanyahu has these extreme right-wing characters, but also in the country? How does that play in, you know, making sure or derailing this agreement?

HAASS: Look, Israel is a fundamentally divided country. People are obviously going to be thrilled for good reason, to have the hostages come back. The scenes of celebration, I think, will be beyond emotional. But where we go from here, there are those in Israel in and out of this government, who don't want there to be a Palestinian state, want Israelis to continue expanding their settlements in the West Bank, want to resettle parts of Gaza.

They don't want a moderate or Palestinian leadership to emerge that they can work with. Others, however, want to see peace, but are very skeptical after the horrific events of October 7th. So I think what you're going to need and what comes to mind, Fareed, and you'll remember this, is the equivalent of maybe something like Anwar Sadat.

I think you're going to need some demonstration symbolically and in terms of actions by Palestinians and Arabs to reshape Israeli public opinion, to persuade them that now the Palestinians are willing to make peace and live side by side in peace with Israel. And that remains to be seen. But absent that, I don't see a consensus emerging in Israel to make significant compromises. ZAKARIA: And finally, Richard, on the -- on the big prize, which is

Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel in return for an American security guarantee. Was the Saudi decision to seek that guarantee from Pakistan rather than America, at least in the short term, a sign that they believe the price they need for a -- for normalization with Israel, which is credible pathway to a Palestinian state is not -- is not likely in the short term.

HAASS: I'm not so sure. I think for more, Fareed, in something you've written about, this is a hedge against uncertainty about the United States. This is, if you will, a sign of a post-American world where the Saudis and others are distributing their security portfolio. So they're leaning a little bit on Pakistan.

I don't think they need a whole lot in the way of movement towards a Palestinian state. And they may actually get enough to normalize with Israel, but that doesn't necessarily satisfy their core security concerns because the Iranian threat is down. But as you know, the Iranian threat is not gone forever.

ZAKARIA: We always get smarter talking to you, Richard. Thank you.

When we come back, we'll talk about whether there is a viable Palestinian political leadership that could serve as an alternative to Hamas. I'll ask a veteran Palestinian politician just that question, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:21]

ZAKARIA: Two years ago, less than 24 hours after the October 7th attacks, Mustafa Barghouti, a physician who's worked on Palestinian politics for decades, joined our show from Ramallah. He gave me his reaction to that terrible day from the Palestinian viewpoint.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, GENERAL SECRETARY, PALESTINIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE: There is one way to stop any violence, and that is to end the Israeli occupation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: And now, with a new deal that could end the acute misery of the Palestinian people in Gaza, we brought him back to talk about prospects for peace, alternatives to Hamas, and much else.

Welcome, Dr. Barghouti. So let me ask you first, do you think that we are closer to what you were hoping for, which was the end of the occupation?

BARGHOUTI: Yes, probably we are, but it's a long way. It's a long way because the destruction that Netanyahu has caused is just beyond description. You have to remember that Israel killed in this terrible war and injured more than 250,000 Palestinians. This is 11 percent of the population of -- of Gaza. If you apply that to the United States of America, you would be talking about 33 million people killed or injured. It's horrible.

They destroyed 92 percent of people's homes. They destroyed most schools, all -- many clinics, 94 percent of our hospitals. The destruction is beyond belief.

[10:20:00]

They threw more than 200,000 tons of explosives so that is 10 times more powerful than each of the nuclear bombs that were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But many things have changed. First of all, they failed in imposing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people of Gaza. That is very, very important because it means that those who were dreaming about eliminating Palestinian presence on the land of Palestine have failed and forever the idea of ethnic cleansing will never happen again, will never be back again, I hope.

Second, I think now Palestine is back to the stage. I mean, when Netanyahu, as you remember in September 23, he appeared on the U.N. eliminating West Bank and Gaza and claiming he will annex them to Israel. Now he is forced to see the reality, which is that Palestine and Palestinian issue is back on the table everywhere in the world. Normalization failed and it could not substitute the right of the Palestinian people to have their own land and to have independence.

And finally, instead of normalization, Israel got the biggest isolation in its history. Israel is so isolated now to the level that Trump had to interfere to try to help Israel get out of this isolation that is going on worldwide, even inside the United States, where you can see yourself that the American public has shifted, has moved. Now they understand more than ever the plight of the Palestinian people and their need to be free.

ZAKARIA: So, Mustafa, would you not say that President Trump deserves some credit for some of the positive things you are describing because he has ruled out annexation? He has in the 20-point plan said -- encouraged Palestinians to stay in Gaza, talks about the rebuilding of it. And so many of the things as you, I think, correctly say that either Netanyahu or parts of his government were clearly trying to encourage, you know, Palestinians to leave the annexation of the West Bank are fairly categorically ruled out in the Trump plan? And for Trump, who is seen as the most ardent supporter of Bibi Netanyahu, to rule these things out, that's real progress for the Palestinians.

BARGHOUTI: Nobody can deny that President Trump was instrumental in forcing Netanyahu to accept this deal. That's for sure. But we shouldn't also forget that at one point of time, Mr. Trump himself encouraged ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from Gaza, talking about riviera. I'm glad he changed his mind and he left out this terrible idea of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people. But his plan that he proposed did not include up until now the right of self- determination of the Palestinian people.

It did not include ending the terrible Israeli occupation of both West Bank and Gaza. Yes, he said no to annexation of the West Bank. That's good. But he didn't say that Israeli occupation must end. And that's, I think, what he should say. He should also say that Palestinian people, like every other people in this world, deserve freedom, deserve the right of self-determination without conditions.

Unconditionally they deserve the right of self-determination and the right to be free and the right of a state of their own. If somebody should be thanked at this moment, it's the people of Gaza, the heroic people in Gaza, who showed steadfastness in a way that is indescribable. We all now pay so much respect to these people who suffered for two years bombardment after bombardment, destruction.

Many of these families have lost everybody. Many of these families are left with no homes, with no belongings, with nothing. But when you see what they've done in the last 36 hours, half a million people going back to Gaza and saying that they will never accept any alternative place to their homeland, that creates huge amount of respect I think worldwide.

ZAKARIA: A final question, and I have very little time, but I just want to get a sense. Are you optimistic that this can turn into something bigger?

BARGHOUTI: Yes. I'm optimistic because of the heroism and steadfastness of the people, but also because of the great solidarity we have seen worldwide. We so much appreciate the positions of the people in Europe, in the United States, who demonstrated and are still demonstrating, demanding freedom for the Palestinian people.

[10:25:05]

Of course, that gives us a lot of hope and gives us a lot of hope that we Palestinians eventually will be free. You know, I was in South Africa recently, and the leaders of South Africa, they have told me that even in the best time of struggle against Apartheid, they've never seen this level of international global involvement in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

This gives me a lot of courage and especially the change in the United States itself, especially among the younger generation and especially among the young Jewish generation, who see that Palestinians also deserve to be freed -- to be free and deserve their rights.

ZAKARIA: Mustafa Barghouti, pleasure to have you on.

And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:16]

ZAKARIA: The game of chess, the concept of zero, the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, these ideas and innovations have their origins not in ancient Greece, or the pharaohs Egypt, or renaissance Italy. According to a new book, they come from India, which was a crucial engine of trade and cultural transmission in the ancient world, one that's been overlooked in the intervening centuries. The book is "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World." The author is the great historian William Dalrymple, who joins me now.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, AUTHOR, "THE GOLDEN ROAD": Thank you, Fareed. It's very nice to be back. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: So, what you're sort of recovering here is a history of enormous Indian influence throughout Asia. I mean, it feels like India was the cultural superpower of Asia in the period you were describing.

DALRYMPLE: I think that's clearly the case. Over half the world lives in countries today, which either now or once were dominated by Indian religions or Indian philosophies. Indian ideas like Buddhism, not only conquered all of Southeast Asia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, but China itself. And no, there was no comparable Chinese idea that comes back and conquers India.

ZAKARIA: As India has risen again and rises even further, I'm wondering what thoughts you have about that, because the world you describe India is spreading its influence a lot through culture, through trade --

DALRYMPLE: Correct.

ZAKARIA: -- not through conquest.

DALRYMPLE: That's the really attractive thing at the center of this whole story is that many other religions were spread by the colonialism or by outright conquest. India's empire is an empire of the spirit. The fact that you have the modern Indonesian airline Garuda, named after the vehicle of Vishnu in Hindu mythology. The fact that the largest Hindu temple in the world is not in India, but in Cambodia, at Angkor Wat. The fact that the largest Buddhist monument in the world is in Borobudur in Java. These are a long way from India.

And there's a whole period of history from about 200 BCE to 1200 A.D., when Sanskrit has the same role in Asia that, you know, medieval Latin had throughout Europe in the middle ages, or what French was as the international language of diplomacy in the 19th century. The fact that all Tolstoy's characters are speaking to each other in French. If you were in 10th century Java, or if you were in Afghanistan in the seventh century, you'd be speaking Sanskrit.

If you were a courtly, civilized ambassador moving from country to country, or if you were a scholar and the stories you would tell are the great Indian epics, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana. These stories were incredibly international. When you go to Sumatra or you go to Thailand, you see the stories of Lord Rama on the walls of their temples.

Now, that isn't an accident that they traveled. These things were enormously influential. And behind that there's a whole world of Indian mathematics and science and economics, which are totally forgotten. In the west, we call our numbers Arabic numbers, because that's where the west got them from. But the Arabs got them from the Indians, and they called them Hindu numbers.

Still, if you if you go to Egypt, people talk about Hindu numbers and somehow -- and I don't quite understand how it's just dropped out that all these things originated in India. And once you put it together, it's a very impressive list.

ZAKARIA: Now, India, right now has a Hindu nationalist government that has made a particular project of the idea of recovering kind of original India, because I think it's fair to say they regard the entire thousand years almost of, you know, Muslim conquerors that came in, then British conquerors that came in as being kind of almost foreign history. So is the book, you know, viewed by them as a -- as a, you know, kind of a talisman?

DALRYMPLE: Well, I think one of the problems is that because this has been tied up with sort of militant and muscular nationalism, it's often sort of spun off away from facts and more to do with patriotism than reality. But you don't have to make any of this stuff up, though, because the real story is actually so extraordinary.

No one outside India knows, for example, this extraordinary, mathematician Brahmagupta, who came up with the idea of zero. And thanks to him, we have place value tens, hundreds, thousands. We have binary, we have algebra, we have algorithms.

In fact, the word algorithm is named after the man who translated Brahmagupta's work into Arabic, al-Khwarizmi. And the word algebra comes from the nickname of his book of translation, which was called al-Jabr.

[10:35:03]

ZAKARIA: When you look at India today, complicated country, also had gone through many centuries of British rule, before that Mughal rule, and before that the Delhi Sultanate.

DALRYMPLE: Yes.

ZAKARIA: How much do you think this past influences India today?

DALRYMPLE: I think there are things which run through it. For example, India's ability with mathematics. If you go and look at what people -- Islamic scholars were writing about India in 12th century Spain, they say Indians were the masters of mathematics, that no one has such a facility for numbers in mathematics. And go to Silicon Valley and people will tell you the same story today.

And I think it's an important story to tell, because I don't think many people in the west realize the speed with which India is growing and gathering pace. Last year, India overtook Great Britain to become the fourth economic power in the world. It will overtake both Japan and Germany in the next five years.

So, the question by the end of the century, we don't know whether it's going to be America, China or India, but it's certainly going to be those three at the top of the -- at the top of the pecking order. And we should know more about Indian history and India's enormous influence in the world, because it's going to become, whether you like it or not, an extremely important and influential country, and is already becoming so now.

ZAKARIA: And now we do because we have this amazing book, William Dalrymple, "The Golden Road," which really is -- and these beautiful photographs inside.

DALRYMPLE: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Also, your podcast which I -- which I love. I'm a big fan.

DALRYMPLE: Empire pod. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Always a pleasure.

DALRYMPLE: Thank you, Fareed. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll talk to the president of Princeton University about Donald Trump's attacks on higher education in America.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:41:11]

ZAKARIA: Last week, the Trump administration sent out letters that appear to mark an extraordinary intrusion into what I've called one of America's greatest strengths, it's higher education system. The correspondents told nine of America's top colleges and universities that if they agreed to run their institutions in line with a certain political agenda set out by Donald Trump, they would get expanded access to federal funding. This is part of the administration's aggressive campaign against American universities, freezing federal funding, clamping down on DEI initiatives, and restricting access for international students.

I spoke with the president of Princeton University, Chris Eisgruber, about it all. He has a new book out, "Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: President Eisgruber, a pleasure to have you on.

CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER, PRESIDENT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me.

ZAKARIA: So, what do you make of this new compact that the administration is presenting to a bunch of universities, which basically says you need to teach more certain subjects, hire more conservative scholars, cap the number of international students you have, freeze tuition?

EISGRUBER: Yes, I think that proposal represents a deepening of the crisis that I just described. It's a compact and a proposal that I would not sign, and I think is deeply worrisome. It is an example of using federal funds to try to control what it is that universities are doing or teaching. There are plenty of principles in it, I should say, that taken at their abstract level I would agree with. But when the government starts trying to achieve those ends by making the availability of sponsored research funding dependent on whether or not universities are faithful to the government's position, that's a huge problem. It's going to erode the quality of the research, and it's going to erode academic freedom.

ZAKARIA: So, the argument that the Trump administration, and I think many others would make, is the problem is there is -- there was already a crisis in American higher education. That American higher education had become, you know, overwhelmingly one sided politically and that politics does seep into the teaching of every subject.

And I mean, the complaints over the last 10 or 15 years come from very, you know, well-meaning left of center people that, you know, if you look at the hiring processes, they did become incredibly skewed toward DEI criteria. A straight white man teaching political history or teaching some, you know, very traditional subject was, you know, mostly overlooked and rarely hired. And instead, you had, you know, scholars who both were of a certain, you know, fit the DEI bill, and also studied subjects that were in some way or the other like that.

EISGRUBER: So, Fareed, I disagree with the characterization. The last three historians that we tenured in American political history are Michael Blaakman, Peter Wirzbicki, and Matthew Karp. They all teach American political history. They're all white men. They're hired without regard to what their political viewpoints are. And I don't know those political viewpoints.

They're hired, moreover, pursuant to a process that demands excellence at a level that is the highest in the university's history. So, I actually think there's a relentless emphasis on excellence right now that equals or exceeds the standards in the -- in the past.

ZAKARIA: There is a widespread perception that, you know, there has been a kind of craziness that has happened at these universities.

[10:45:00]

Reading in the newspapers about this visiting professor who has been appointed at Harvard Law School, who is going to teach RuPaul's drag race. And, you know, is himself or herself in drag. And, you know, and this is obviously one example, but there is a sense that you are teaching increasingly weird and obscure subjects that are very left wing.

EISGRUBER: Look, I think our humanities faculty -- and again, I'm just going to talk about the university I know best and that I lead. But our humanities faculty at Princeton is spectacularly good, stronger than it was when I was an undergraduate student, and it was fabulously good at that time, and broad in the range of subjects that it -- that it considered.

But you can also take courses of a kind that weren't around when I was a student. I was an undergraduate physics major. I knew while I was a student that I was going to go on and study constitutional law. I was taking a variety of courses.

Fareed, I'm not sure I was ever assigned a book by a black author during my time at Princeton. I certainly never read James Baldwin, for example. And that was a deficit in the education that I was receiving at Princeton at the time. So now there are -- there are broader range.

And let me just say something about the example. I have no idea. I don't -- I don't know what they're teaching in the Harvard Law School. I don't know about the course you mentioned about the drag --

ZAKARIA: The name of the professor, or at least the pseudonym is LaWhore Vagistan or something.

EISGRUBER: Well, I believe you about it. And look at universities, and I think this is really important, part of our model is we bring talented people to the campus, and we turn them loose. And we have lots of interesting courses going on and lots of courses that I might disagree with, or I might say, you know, if I was teaching a course or if I was designing the entire curriculum for my university, I might or might not design this course.

And I actually think the idea that at some point you're going to take a course that seems a bit wacky to people outside the university, that can be OK and that can be inspirational for students. That course may or may not turn out to be a good course for the students, I don't know. But I think the fact that people have freedom to teach it, that's critical to our country and it's critical to the quality of our universities.

ZAKARIA: Chris Eisgruber, pleasure to have you on, sir.

EISGRUBER: Fareed, thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:44]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. Next month, world leaders will gather in Brazil for the COP30 Climate Summit on a symbolic anniversary. It has been 10 years since the adoption of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement. This was a moment when nearly 200 countries pledged to dramatically cut emissions and limit global warming. Delegates cheered and embraced as then U.N. secretary general Ban Ki- moon declared, history will remember this day.

Fast forward a decade and much of that euphoria has faded. A recent report by the Stockholm Environment Institute finds that governments are planning to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with the Paris Agreement's targets of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The clearest sign of this climate backlash is, of course, in Washington. In his first term, President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement. In his second, he has dismantled key provisions of former president Joe Biden's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Last month at the U.N., Trump warned the world --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: As the climate writer David Wallace-Wells points out in a "New York Times" essay, there has been a collapse of the global consensus on this issue. In the 10 years since Paris, he argues, the world has seen a pandemic, two major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and global inflation spikes.

Climate action was once seen as an urgent moral necessity. Now it's been sidelined by affordability concerns, high energy prices, and a populist backlash. You can see this in Canada, where the first action of Prime Minister Mark Carney's liberal government this year was to scrap a carbon tax on fuel. Even in Europe, once the world's green standard bearer, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, may skip the upcoming COP summit, while France's President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly tried to pause EU climate goals.

But paradoxically, as the political enthusiasm around climate policy retreats, the green economy has begun to thrive. Market economics is now doing what moral appeals could not. Renewables like wind and solar are cheaper than ever. And according to a report by energy think tank Ember, in the first six months of this year, renewables generated more global electricity than coal for the first time on record.

And as the U.S. retreats from clean energy, China has taken the lead. While still the world's largest polluter, it is going all in on renewables. The Global Energy Monitor finds that Beijing is building 74 percent of all new solar and wind projects globally, compared with under 6 percent for the U.S.

The old three pillars of China's export economy, clothing, household appliances, and furniture are being replaced by what it calls its new three, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and solar.

[10:55:02]

According to a report by Johns Hopkins University, Chinese firms have invested at least $220 billion since 2022 in global clean manufacturing across 54 countries. The report notes that in real dollars, that's more than America once spent on the Marshall plan, which helped rebuild Europe after World War II.

This surge in Chinese green technology is driving an energy revolution in many developing nations. Pakistan, for example, has moved from a costly and unpredictable strategy of importing liquefied natural gas to prioritizing the much cheaper solar power. Around the world, governments are looking for ways to reduce exposure to volatile global markets, produce more power at home, and tap into the cheapest sources available. And increasingly, those are clean ones.

A decade after Paris, the world's political urgency around climate may have dimmed. But market forces, falling technology costs, and new alliances are driving many countries toward a cleaner future. The west, however, is no longer leading the fight. It is watching from the sidelines now as China moves to center stage.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program. I will see you next week.

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