Fast forward 250 years and we have the densest ecology of research organizations, think tanks, and scientific societies in the world. But recent events bring attention both to the grandeur of that pillar of our republican experiment – and to its fragility.

In one case, the Trump administration is threatening to sue the Center for American Progress (CAP) because of its report claiming that deployment of the National Guard failed to reduce urban crime. In another, the Administration has vowed (with support from members of Congress) to prohibit funding for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) because of alleged biases in its studies of climate change.

Mistakes happen in the pursuit of knowledge, and even the venerated NAS, once called by the New York Times “the nation’s foremost scientific honorary organization,” is not infallible. That’s why our sprawling advice industry – there are over 2000 think tanks in America, about half within a 10-mile radius of the White House – employs mechanisms to assure research quality and reduce (if not eliminate) threats to objectivity and credibility. At the NAS, where I worked for 17 years, a costly and laborious process of bias and conflict-of-interest review has been in place for decades. Its purpose is to surface the “priors” scientists may bring to their work and, importantly, to assess whether they are nonetheless willing and able to analyze data and participate in the inquiry process as dispassionately as possible. When a report is drafted it undergoes peer review that is considered perhaps the most rigorous in the industry. (For more on the origins and procedures of the NAS, see here.)

These processes are not 100% foolproof. And though it happens rarely, one bad apple is enough to damage the whole barrel’s reputation. Trust in science is actually higher than might be apparent from all the scary headlines, but such incidents can have a corrosive effect. To its credit, the NAS has pulled a chapter from that report while it investigates the charges and explores ways to improve the screening of committee members. Continued pressure from the White House is surely not helpful.

My experience at the hazardous intersection of research and policy has taught me about the delicate weave of substance and process in the fabric of independent inquiry. Even when analysis meets high evidentiary standards, the perception of bias can render the results dead-on-arrival. Unlike the NAS, CAP is a think tank with a known political tilt – its current head was a senior adviser to President Biden and its Board chair was Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff. It’s one of many think tanks (they are spread across the proverbial “aisle”) with a strong advocacy agenda, and it’s not surprising to see it issue a report critical of something dear to President Trump’s agenda. But that doesn’t mean its report is technically flawed, any more than a study by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute that is critical of a Biden-era education policy, for example, is necessarily wrong on the science.

These organizations are part of our evolving culture of inquiry, and most consumers of their work know to take results with grains of salt. (In Washington, many of us live on a high sodium diet.) One thing to check is whether and how they self-police through peer review and other quality controls, and to assess the extent to which they put evidence ahead of advocacy. But today’s atmosphere of transactional partisan extremism trumps civil discourse and chokes any reasonable discussion; the mission of independent inquiry to inform the public gets lost in the cross fire of headlines and litigation. (It’s hard to know if calling up the National Guard was really such a bad idea or if our climate really is being damaged by fossil fuels.)

How think tanks and scientific institutions should be held accountable, especially when they are funded at least in part by taxpayer dollars, is a topic for serious policy analysis. But threatening to kill such organizations when we disagree with their recommendations crosses what should be a red line, from legitimate methodological scrutiny into Soviet-style suppression.

Franklin spins in his grave as people and organizations dedicated to inquiry become fearful and flinching. He famously said, when asked what kind of government had been created, “a republic – if you can keep it.” The sacred value of free inquiry as a protector of our republic is, quite evidently, at great risk.

Here I’m worried about the other IDF, short for Israel Derangement Fetish, an epidemic that afflicts people on all sides of the proverbial aisle. It is an equal-opportunity enemy of the Jewish people, and like many infectious diseases has no known cure or vaccine and crosses borders without regard to fence lines or international treaties.

Two recent events are symptomatic of this recurring psycho-political disorder. One, as explained by David Suissa in the Jewish Journal, concerned the Montreal city council’s plan to “look at the city’s multiple crises and fix their gaze…on Israel. They won’t vote to cut ties with Nigeria, Somalia or Sudan, where genocidal efforts have led to the massacre of hundreds of thousands. They won’t vote to cut ties with Russia, the invaders of Ukraine responsible for the deaths of more than a million… they will ignore China, a ruthless regime that has put a million Muslim Uyghurs in veritable concentration camps. No, the city council will vote to cut ties with only one country – the Jewish one.” David calls this Israel Derangement Syndrome — same idea.

In the end, as David reported in an update, “An amended version was adopted … that expressed solidarity with Palestinians but removed provisions to cut ties with Israel, and held back on calling Israel a genocidal and apartheid state.” Still, the situation is grim, leaving the Jewish community unsure how to feel or react: “Should they be grateful for the amended version, or upset that the motion came up in the first place and put a target on their backs?”

Read David’s full pieces for more on this nightmare of moral and political folly. If you feel rumbling beneath your feet, that’s George Orwell spinning in his grave.

The second example was found in – surprise! – the New York Times. Readers of this Substack know my feelings about Nicholas Kristof’s lapse of journalistic standards and his amplification of a sordid libel originating in one of the most notorious Israel-hating sources in the world. (I’m in good company.) But his most recent Sunday column, about Governor Andy Beshear (Kentucky), started more hopefully, as it brought back fond memories of another Democrat in a deep-red state. Back in the age of antiquity, shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, a respectable essayist, Timothy Egan, wrote about Steve Bullock of Montana, whose “Mountain State secret sauce is something national party leaders should sample during their solstice…” I was moved by Egan’s essay, got to know Bullock, who had been elected as Attorney General and then twice as Governor, and volunteered on his campaign in the 2020 primary race. (Full disclosure: I’d love to see Governor Bullock get back into the fray.)

According to Perplexity, Kristof’s story about Beshear bears “strong conceptual overlap” with Egan’s essay on Bullock 10 years earlier. It is odd that neither Kristof nor his editors remembered that piece or thought to look if the current story had any interesting precedent. Reference checking and sourcing seem to be just so “yesterday” for some Times staff.

But the neglect of textual similarities is not what is the most irksome. It is, rather, Kristof’s insatiable appetite to attack Israel, this time coyly and tacitly expressed between the lines.

In recounting his meeting with Beshear, Kristof lists domestic campaign issues they discussed that could win over progressive voters against the forces of MAGA: things like public investment in education, jobs and economic development, combating the opioid crisis. Beshear’s authentic style and ability to speak to constituents without condescension are wonderfully refreshing. Enough so that I wanted to suspend my suspicions about Kristof and acknowledge with gratitude that this time he was sharing something worth contemplating (and wishing for).

And then the inevitable happened, abruptly ending my short-lived illusion:

“Beshear … has little background in foreign affairs, and in our conversation, he was weakest when I asked him about the Middle East and arms sales to Israel…his answer was earnest but murky” (italics added).

Not hard to guess what Kristof had hoped to hear.

I guess the schedule was tight, else he would surely have asked this potential presidential candidate about US arms sales to Egypt, the erosion of the European alliance, our fragile defense pact with South Korea, the genocide underway in Africa, Iranian nuclear ambitions, the effects of tariffs on the global economic order, drone warfare, and of course the future of the Strait of Hormuz. Little things, maybe, but add them up and they start to matter.

Interviewers need to be selective in the topics they probe, especially with a busy governor trying to solve real problems for the people of his state. Yes, US foreign policy is of concern to many of them, and it would be good to know where Beshear stands. One possibility is that Kristof had those issues on his list of “to-ask-about,” but saw them as lower priority, if not trivial, compared to the real problem, namely US military aid to Israel. A more insidious interpretation, knowing Kristof as we do, is that he believes those other problems are important but to a large extent caused by Israel, in which case his one question was an efficient way to cover a lot of foreign policy ground. The derangement fetish at its most devious.

I have high hopes for Beshear (and others with his experience and disposition), and I’m sorry his “murky” answer was not up to Kristof’s standards of moral and intellectual clarity. Let’s hope Beshear will remain immune from super spreaders of the anti-Israel virus and help restore the Democratic Party to a place of honor and integrity. As for Kristof, I guess the most we can hope is that he has the decency to cover his mouth when he coughs.

Aside from Milbank’s somewhat annoying arrogance – who hired him to represent America in its alleged marital spat with Israel? – there is much factually and logically wrong in his column. At the top of the list is his claim that Netanyahu’s regime “has done more damage to the Jewish State than Hamas or Hezbollah could ever hope to do” (italics added). We’ve seen many examples of “moral inversion” since October 8, 2023, when crowds almost instantly blamed Israel for bringing on itself the worst pogrom since the Shoah and preemptively held it responsible for a retaliation that wouldn’t start for another three weeks. But this one really stretches credulity.

Not sure if I was overreacting to Milbank’s formulation, I asked my daughter, who has lived in Israel for close to a decade, how it sounded to her. Her response: “I assume Milbank knows that what Hamas and Hezbollah (among others) hope to do is eliminate Israel and push its 9 million Jewish and Arab residents into the sea. Is he suggesting that a sitting Prime Minister has succeeded where Hamas left off? Seems so, as elsewhere he claims that the Jewish State is dying.”

Milbank indulges in a kind of language that a wise boss once warned me about: smug, slippery, and oozing with snark, it may bring smiles to people who already agree but will almost surely miss its more important intended receptor sites. Instead of engaging people who might be open to rethinking their position, it will have the perverse effect of shutting down any prospect for listening and learning. I’m just back from a few weeks in Israel, and no, the place is not dying. People are tired, pushing through exhaustion from three years of war and persistent reproach from a diaspora whose hostility had been mounting for decades. But they’re quite alive, getting their kids to school, sending relief workers to Venezuelan earthquake sites, figuring out how to integrate immigrants from northeast India, rebuilding the hard hit neighborhoods of Dimona and Kiryat Shmona, jogging on the beach, volunteering in literacy programs for Arab children, planning new initiatives for civics and democracy education, investing in programs to strengthen Israel-diaspora connectivity, and gearing up for what promises to be an incredibly intense election season. All that and more while they’re still grieving their fallen sons and daughters and protesting for governmental accountability. As I’ve written before, it’s still the “start-up nation,” though R & D also stands for resilience and determination.

But back to Bibi. I again sought Sarah’s input, given her knowledge of Israel’s security situation. “There were certainly errors of judgment that enabled Hamas and Hezbollah to invest billions in tunnels and missiles to fulfill their stated dream of annihilating the ‘Zionist entity.’ But these errors were committed over many years, by several sitting Prime Ministers, and with the tacit support (and sometimes active encouragement) of Israel’s allies in America and Europe. Milbank need only peruse the three decades of Western officials’ public statements arguing that economic investments in Gaza would ensure stability and prevent Hamas’s radicalization.” To which I would add that, while doing that research, Milbank might look for evidence that the mainstream media, especially its more left-leaning commentators, warned about the perils of wishful thinking regarding economic progress as a recipe for peace. I suspect that will be a short and quick search.

It’s become fashionable, though, especially in so-called progressive enclaves of the Jewish community (well represented in Milbank’s hometown of Washington, DC), to single out Bibi and sidestep the possibility of a more widely shared responsibility for the October 7 catastrophe. It’s curious, for example, that players like Iran, Qatar, and Russia (to say nothing of Hamas, with its 1988 Charter calling for Israel’s elimination) don’t receive so much as a footnote in Milbank’s rendering of events and casting of blame. At risk of sounding too angry, let me add that citing Mamdani and his friends’ views on AIPAC is equivalent to quoting David Duke on the role of the NAACP. Adapting the receptor site metaphor to modern technology, “your message is blocked.”

Let me underscore: I think Milbank may mean well, but this imbalance makes it almost certain that whatever good advice he might have misses its targets by miles. Good journalism should challenge incomplete narratives, not perpetuate them. Thus, for example, it would be invaluable to let readers know that eventually there were reasoned arguments about whether Israel’s military response to the massacre had gone too far. Milbank misses the reality of a deeply conflicted public and of a complex divide between the government and the people it supposedly represents. Has he spoken to Israeli leaders about what they would have done? He cites one former general, who just happens to think Israel is becoming an apartheid state. With all respect to General Shimshoni and genuine gratitude for his service, his assessment (in the words of a wise Israeli friend) “is about as reflective of the Israeli mainstream as claims about the inherent sinfulness of America’s founding are in the US.” In any case, anyone who has read about Israel’s military history knows this isn’t the first time generals have held diverse viewpoints. Whatever legitimate substance it might contain, Milbank’s message as written will never reach those most likely to influence the next generation of military strategists and politicians.

I’ve spoken to Israeli military and political leaders, teachers, cab drivers, barbers, reserve soldiers, and baristas. Although some of the best minds in the country lamented the absence of a clear “day-after” strategy, the overwhelming majority viewed regaining Israel’s deterrence capability as a necessary step toward reviving its citizens’ belief in the essence of the Zionist project. I wish Milbank had been with me on a visit to Kibbutz Kissufim in December 2023. A friend looking at the burned-out ruins of the modest home of a family murdered by Hamas fanatics expressed what was surely on the minds of most Israelis (and, for that matter, Jews and other decent people everywhere): “this is exactly what Zionism was supposed to prevent.” Could any Israeli government have chosen a very different course of action in the months after the attack? Comparisons can be sketchy, but how would the US respond if a hoard of heavily armed Canadians swooped down to rape, murder, and kidnap a few thousand Montana cattle ranchers?

I believe Milbank knows that many, if not most, of the victims of October 7 (and their loved ones) had not been supporters of Bibi. On the contrary, many of them had been regulars at the weekly protests of the proposed judicial reforms in the months prior to the attack, something perhaps too many American Jews don’t know. But I’d gamble heavily that few if any of those courageous defenders of Israeli democracy – with whom Milbank and many of us feel allied – would call even Bibi’s awful domestic agenda more harmful than the genocidal intentions and actions of Hamas and Hezbollah. That’s why the message – that Bibi has done more harm than Hamas and Hezbollah ever hope to do – will deservedly be dead on arrival.

Could and should Israel have been better prepared? Surely. Was the IDF distracted and weakened by the turmoil of Bibi’s judicial reform plan and the protests that followed? Maybe. Did the Gaza retaliation go too far and spoil whatever hope there was for quicker return of the hostages? Arguably. But those are different questions, for which the public, incidentally, is demanding a legitimate inquiry. It won’t be the first time: after the Yom Kippur war (1973), Israel had to own up to its responsibility for not being ready for the surprise attack. I lived in Jerusalem then and don’t recall sane people accusing Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan for causing more damage than the battalions of heavily armed Egyptians crossing the Suez Canal. Milbank could distinguish himself by distinguishing responsibility for poor preparation from responsibility for the evil that necessitates that preparation in the first place.

If it misses its intended receptors, unfortunately Milbank’s rhetoric will land squarely and happily with Israel’s hard-core adversaries. He accuses Israel, and Bibi especially, for “war crimes against Palestinians and relentless warmongering,” a familiar refrain that conveniently skips a relevant counterfactual: according to serious military experts and historians there is no example of a country at war doing more to protect civilian noncombatants. Instead of embracing the heroes of the IDF who took great risks in preventing unwanted casualties, Milbank perpetuates the distorted image of an army gone rogue led by a trigger-happy government and people hell-bent on devastation. By the way, there’s new research showing that more antisemitic and anti-Israel hate speech is posted on the internet after Israel is attacked than when it does the attacking. In other words, the conventional logic that American hostility to Israel is largely a function of imagery coming from Gaza may be off the mark. Think again about the curious timing: the latest volcano of global antisemitism erupted while Israelis were still trying to identify and bury the victims of 10/7. In any case, even a simple acknowledgement that these are complex issues would build confidence that American Jews (and others who love Israel) are here to help and not just here to reproach Israelis for all the mistakes they’re making.

Indeed, Milbank might be surprised to know that constructive support from afar is often welcome. That’s why, for example, Rahm Emanuel’s recent speech at Tel Aviv University was noteworthy: here was a friend whose own family fought and died for Israel’s independence, encouraging his listeners to help us deal with the fraying of relations between America and Israel. It wasn’t couched in threats, like imminent “divorce,” but rather was a heartfelt reminder that there are forces at work (especially in the Democratic party) that require concerted attention. His admonition that military response isn’t the only tool in Israel’s shed found receptors, and he was received in a spirit of communal understanding and guarded agreement. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I’m queasy about some of the policy directions he outlined, but Emanuel boosted my optimism that America will continue to see the moral and political imperative of its connections to the Jewish State.

If Milbank wants a divorce, I’d advise first some good couples therapy. Getting together with Israelis who by nature and tradition hold diverse opinions, to talk through the fraught issues, look for common ground, and remember the deep love and shared values that brought us together in the first place, is at least a step worth trying. Jewish peoplehood depends on it.

Sitting on the terrace of my hotel and looking over the marina at Gordon Beach, I was awed by your decision to validate New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s most recent travesty of journalism and, perhaps unwittingly, give yet more ammunition to those who would like to see Gordon Beach (along with the rest of Tel Aviv) returned to its rightful owners. In the face of so much evidence that should at a minimum raise doubt about the factual basis of Kristof’s screed, you invoke rabbinic authority with apparent indifference to the effects of your words on the Jewish condition generally and the situation here in Israel specifically. Here your analysis will elicit shrugs from a population exhausted from war and accustomed to incessant reproach from outsiders modestly offering “tough love.” But the courageous humanists of Park Slope will surely be grateful for your gift, and from an orthodox rabbi no less! (At least we now know that the Reform movement doesn’t have a complete lock on phony left wing anti-Israel “progressivism.” Let’s hope that Rabbi Amiel Hirsch’s call to action reaches your minyans too.)

How and why you chose to side with Kristof against his critics, including Deborah Lipstadt, one of the most learned writers and thinkers on matters of Israel, Judaism, and antisemitism, is simply incomprehensible. You object to the “mainstream Jewish response,” and take aim in particular at the American Jewish Committee, for “slandering courageous survivors.” But opposition to Kristof’s essay was registered widely and deeply. For example, I refer you to the outrage expressed by conscientious journalists elsewhere, as well as to rebuttals from rabbis, jurists, and canine experts; and from Israelis who may be known for their opposition to their current government and could use help, not harangues, from their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

That sexual violence raises moral questions is indisputable. I suppose we should be grateful to you for that reminder and for including the liturgical lesson. With respect, though, I hope you didn’t mean to suggest that sexual violence is so complicated that we need Talmudic or biblical reasoning to condemn it; or, worse yet, that we might excuse it based on some other theological interpretation of written or oral law or the poetry in prayer books. I imagine there has been spirited discussion in Israel’s many and diverse synagogues over all this, even before you weighed in. And you will perhaps be glad to know that the secular Israeli press and legal system haven'’t exactly been sleeping through the alarms ringing with allegations of IDF abuse. Your input I’m sure is welcome, even if it does come across as a bit self righteous.

In any case, the main question here is about the validity of the claims and not whether, if valid, they violate moral or ethical or religious norms. Kristof has a track record for being unfriendly to Israel, so I’m not surprised he’d go off the rails with the sordid tale of canine rape he heard from some of his “sources.” But I am surprised that you accept his “evidence” as sufficient to indict the alleged perpetrators of those heinous acts and as robust enough to impugn, by innuendo if not in so many words, the whole population and its government. (To estimate how representative of Israel those alleged acts were, by the way, requires statistical analysis well outside Kristof’s intellectual range; that he didn’t even think to ask the question, though, is stunning for its insufferable arrogance).

This egregious lapse in editorial responsibility brings to mind what I’d call the Seinfeld principle, based on this exchange between Jerry and a priest in one of the most memorable episodes of the show:

• Jerry: I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he’s converted to Judaism purely for the jokes.

• Father: And this offends you as a Jewish person?

• Jerry: No, it offends me as a comedian.

Does Kristof’s article offend me as a Jew? Yes, and I make no apology for my apparent lapse into Jewish particularism. But I am as or perhaps even more offended as a former journalist. In my college years I worked at the New York Times, where the masters tried hard to teach me about journalistic integrity and evidentiary standards. My impulses to believe and then report juicy stories of crime and corruption had to be tamed by the rigors of sourcing and fact-checking, requirements that seem to no longer be enforced especially on the opinion pages. (As editor of my campus newspaper I was sometimes guilty of violating those rules when I blasted this or that student or administrator with whom I disagreed on political or ideological grounds; at the Times I had better supervision.)

So yes, Kristof’s self-righteous tone and sloppy reproach of Israel do offend me as a Jew. But his article should offend anyone really, Jewish or not, who believes that a free and credible press run by professionals who aspire to high standards of evidence is a linchpin of our democracy. The Times was for decades the standard bearer, its lapses and imperfections notwithstanding; but with Kristof’s piece it stoops to sensationalism that was once the province of tabloids and is now the fuel powering wildly uncurated social media engines. Today it’s dogs raping Palestinian freedom fighters, tomorrow it will be Jews with horns wrecking the global economy.

Invoking the Seinfeld principle, then, the main objection to Kristof — even for people who may share his discomfort with what Israel is and stands for — should be his egregious failure to apply rules of evidence in making his claims. (Just check his sources!) His enablers and editors who rose to his defense have also abdicated their professional and moral responsibility, and together they have placed at risk one of the real treasures of the American media system.

I expect readers of this letter might ask the obvious follow-up question: did Rabbi Winer’s essay offend me as a Jew? I’ll respond in Jewish fashion, with a question: shouldn’t it?

Thank you for listening.

And then he went off script. After acknowledging the fine decision of his University to admit Jews starting at the turn of the 20^th century, and progress made over the decades since then to educate students on the “experience and identity of Black people in this country,” he called on the audience to “sing” for the “pro-Palestinian student activists who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Not surprisingly, along with what was reported as “long and loud applause” Peterson’s remark prompted local and public backlash, although I suspect he wouldn’t cite those protestations in his next oration on the virtues of protest. In any case, it didn’t take long for attention to shift to Peterson’s right to speak and away from the content of his remarks. Let’s consider both those issues.

As heirs to the liberal tradition, we are often reminded of our obligation to defend people’s right to say even things we abhor. On the other hand, as the former Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley once noted, “just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean it’s right to say.” It is disappointing, to say the least, that someone like Peterson, crowned as a Macarthur “genius” in 2017, would place defenders of barbarous antisemitism, homophobia, and misogyny in the same category with women, Black, and Jewish civil rights heroes. Instead of fulfilling his professional obligation to challenge fashionable narratives, he encouraged more of what I’d call “the incredible lightness of being” unencumbered with evidence. He slid into mud that is usually the province of fanatics on social media, which raises a question much on the minds of many higher education leaders today: if we don’t provide something better than what’s on TikTok and Truth Social, how will we justify charging students $100,000 a year to get a bachelor’s degree?

A related issue is Peterson’s deviation from the approved version of his remarks. Now, one might wonder if such vetting is in itself a violation of academic freedom. That’s a complicated question, although one wouldn’t know it from reading commentators with the absolutist stance. (For a more nuanced discussion, see Jonathan Chait’s recent article in the Atlantic.) Academics are accustomed to having their words and ideas screened: anyone who has submitted an article to a reputable scholarly journal (not to mention to the op-ed pages of our major newspapers) knows something about the three R’s: review, revision, and rejection. Peterson breached his community’s trust: in exchange for a place on the commencement podium, he agreed to have his speech cleared in advance. That’s an implied social contract, which maybe as a historian, not a lawyer or economist, Peterson didn’t understand. Or maybe, like certain others these days who are overwhelmed by their own greatness, he just doesn’t think those rules of conduct apply to people of his rank and stature. (According to some reports, Peterson claimed that university officials knew he would mention pro-Palestinian protests, although he had agreed to remove the word “genocide” to “make it less provocative.” His perhaps extemporaneous remark, which he slipped in post-review, was certainly provocative enough.)

There is another ironic twist to this fuss. Many who remained silent or applauded Peterson quickly rose to protest U of M President Grasso’s dissent, which came in the form of an apology on behalf of the university. It brings to mind Winston Churchill’s wry observation that “some people’s idea is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

Finally, on Peterson’s gratuitous reference to the war in Gaza. I’m not trained as a historian, but I believe that history, like most disciplines, has (or used to have) standards of evidence. Peterson violated them in a short phrase about Israel that he packed with glaring errors of omission and commission: there is no mention of the possible “injustice and inhumanity” of the October 7^th attack that triggered the war, no mention of Palestinians and other Arabs who oppose the tyrannous barbarism of Hamas (including its vigilante executions of gays in Gaza), no mention of Israel’s efforts to protect civilian noncombatants (unprecedented in the history of modern warfare), no mention of the criteria used to judge Israel’s actions as “unjust,” no mention of Israel’s success in inoculating against polio more than 90% of Gazans under age 10, and no mention of Jewish students and faculty at Michigan and elsewhere who defended their right to a safe educational environment amid enraged demonstrators calling for dismantling of the Jewish State and global intifada. That would have been a lot to cram into a commencement speech; but if you can’t tell the whole story then you should be extra careful with half-baked ones.

No wonder the University wanted to review Peterson’s speech: maybe they feared that, yet again, factual knowledge might be displaced by trendy slogans, and they wanted to preempt further erosion to the integrity and reputation of their institution. If I were a parent paying big bucks for my child to attend Michigan, I would want to know if Peterson is an outlier (what I want to believe) or if his malpractice is more widespread (what we should all fear). I would ask if and how the university is continuing to facilitate needed self-evaluation of its campus culture. Maybe we should thank Peterson for unintentionally alerting us to these issues? Regardless, we owe the U. Michigan leadership a real debt of gratitude for standing against such moral and intellectual inversions. Only such determination will save our truly great institutions of higher learning.

Those are legitimate questions: any legal move in the direction of accepting that ultimate form of punishment, anywhere, should evoke complex considerations of morality, public acceptance, and consequences. Here I offer some historical context that may illuminate what is sure to be ongoing public debate.

Israel established the death penalty for murder in 1954, with restricted application to acts of treason, genocide, and crimes against humanity. It has been implemented exactly once since then, when Adolph Eichmann was hanged in 1962, even against notable public opposition, after being found guilty of probably the greatest crime against humanity in history. (The only other case of an Israeli execution involved Meir Tobiansky, wrongly accused of treason in 1948 and posthumously exonerated a year later.) I anticipate that mentioning Eichmann will draw groans from people who (like me) don’t like to play “the Shoah card” in describing contemporary acts of violence against the Jewish people, none of which – as horrible as they have been – bear more than an approximate resemblance to the calculated annihilation of half the world’s Jewish population. Still, if “lessons of the Holocaust” are fraught with complexity, sometimes reactions from people learning about the Holocaust can, in fact, be illuminating.

Thus, it’s worth remembering reactions to the evidence about Eichmann and, more specifically, to the ultimate decision to execute him. Although most Israelis at the time supported the decision, it was by no means easy or obvious even for those who had not an ounce of doubt about his guilt, the justification of trying him in Israel, or the significance of his capture in the context of Jewish history and the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty. Opposition, as expressed by Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, for example, no slouches when it came to confronting and denouncing the vile reprimands of people like Hannah Arendt, was founded on a conjunction of moral beliefs and pragmatic concerns. There was, first, the general argument that taking a life, even as punishment for heinous crimes, is unacceptable, about which there was (and is) a robust debate not only in the Talmud and contemporary Jewish texts but in the literature and teachings of all religions. In a famous letter to Prime Minister Ben Gurion, the poet Nelly Sachs (who later won the Nobel Prize for literature) pleaded with him: “Israel is blessed with the words of Abraham: ‘Perhaps ten righteous people will be found there [in Sodom]?’ And I myself know such righteous people, who risked their lives and often even paid the price just to save [others]. These righteous people also worked in the time of Hitler, and the undersigned is one of their survivors. Please do not allow a death sentence for Eichmann. The righteous also worked in Germany, and if only for them there should be a measure of grace.” Grace, indeed, even when it comes to a monster like Eichmann.

On a more pragmatic level, opposition centered on how the execution would be interpreted. Would it convey wrongly the message that the murder of millions could somehow be balanced, if not equated, with the death of one perpetrator, even one with as much responsibility as Eichmann clearly had? Would the rest of the world that looked the other way or abetted the crimes of the Shoah now be absolved of the need to take even partial ownership of the history to which they were front-row bystanders and cheerleaders? And finally, would freeing Eichmann from prison become the rallying cry for people hoping to delegitimize the Jewish state and its legal system? (Ben Gurion and others worried about that possibility; sadly, though, it didn’t take hero-worshiping of a beast like Eichmann to provoke global hatred and the resurgence of antisemitism in its various strains.)

Not easy questions, and I don’t raise them to score points in arguments about the 2026 law. But I do wish that our esteemed punditocracy would take a deep breath before rushing to judgment about its origins, symbolism, and realities. Ditto for those who quickly rush to the Knesset’s defense without more nuance. (I find the argument that victims of terrorism should be accorded special preference in the debate unsatisfying. I am grateful for a legal system that listens to – but is not necessarily swayed entirely by – the understandable emotions of victims.)

In the light of a complicated history dealing with enemies whose determination to annihilate the Jewish people is again on wide public display, I respectfully offer a short guide for the continuing discourse. In the spirit of Passover, here are four questions I find myself asking as I try to untangle my ambivalence:

1) How is this law different from all other death penalty laws? According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2023 a total of 26 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 2,192 prisoners under sentence of death … and five states executed a total of 24 prisoners. As for the situation in Israel’s neighboring countries, the comparison is more stark: according to the World Population Review, 216 people were executed in 2023 in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq, and Yemen combined. Such comparisons do not exonerate Israel for its own potential actions, but ought to be included in critical commentaries for evidentiary context.

2) What is the likelihood that Israel’s law will result in a significantly increased rate of executions? We can’t know that, but my sense is that public dissent will be significant, and likely more pronounced and effective than was the dissent about Eichmann. The fact that two people were executed in the last 78 years, that none of the thousands of imprisoned terrorists were, and that many of those terrorists subsequently freed in prisoner exchanges went on to successful careers as suicide bombers and tunnel excavators, provides some reassurance about the country’s perhaps unique and certainly controversial capacity for self-restraint.

3) Is there ever a moral basis for capital punishment? Maybe the word “ever” in that question is out of place, and the more interesting phrasing would omit it. I lean partly with Buber, Scholem, and Sachs, i.e., my default is to reject the moral basis for capital punishment (hence my discomfort with the new law). On the other hand, I sided with Ben Gurion and President Ben Tzvi in their consideration – and ultimate rejection – of the appeal for a stay of execution, because I believed then that there was both a moral and pragmatic justification for hanging Eichmann. Maybe it’s a matter of scale, and the challenge is to design criteria under which selective applications of the death penalty are at least worth debating. Do terrorists who kill 1200 civilians in a day of orgiastic murder deserve to die? Maybe. In that case, though, we can at least be confident they would be brought before a court of law first.

4) Which raises another interesting question, about Israel taking responsibility for the trial and punishment of alleged terrorists and genocidal maniacs. How would other countries handle the proceedings? The Eichmann episode is again instructive. One of the arguments then, coming even from some American Jews, was that Israel was not the right place; indeed, Arendt and others went so far as to accuse Israel of staging a “show trial.” Maybe Germany or Austria could have put on a fairer judicial proceeding, though I find that implausible at best and morally bankrupt at worst, given the right of Israel as the sovereign home of the Jewish people to manage trials of people accused of attempting (and partly succeeding in) its destruction. In any case, does anyone in their right mind think that Saudi Arabia would have been a good venue to try the 9-11 perpetrators or that Gaza City would be the right place to bring to justice those involved in 10-7? (Ironically, the likelihood that those jurisdictions would enact the death penalty – if not for murdering Jews, then for not helping those doing the murdering – is about 100-fold greater than it would be in Israel).

I’ll close by reasserting a point I mentioned earlier: let’s use the reaction to Israel’s new law to explore preconceptions that might be influencing the tone and substance of public and professional criticism. After all, people who are worried about “implicit bias” in other contexts should be ready, willing, and able to test that possibility here with great authority and credibility. In this week when we celebrate freedom, let’s not get enslaved by false narratives, blanket accusations, and simplistic answers to complicated questions. And for those unwilling or unable to avoid those sins, the good news is that the day of atonement is only five months away.

This semantic knot has worked well in choking off reasonable discourse. It has gained in popularity among real Jew-haters and, even more tragically, among sane people frustrated with policies of the Israeli government but incapable or unwilling to separate policy dissent from existential denial. Civic discourse about policy options hits a dead end when it veers into fundamental delegitimization — a lesson many of us learned, for example, when comrades protesting the Vietnam War called for death to America. For a fresher comparison, dare we deny America’s right to exist because its current government is led by someone we dislike and distrust?

Somehow that nuance is off the table when it comes to Israel. Dissent against Bibi Netanyahu morphs into arguments against the very idea of Jewish sovereignty and self-rule, i.e., Zionism, often marinated in pungent sauces of ethno-nationalism and settler colonialism that are abhorrent even for people who can’t really define what the words mean. Others who are infected with strains of Bibi derangement syndrome, but who genuinely care about Jewish survival, argue that Zionism as a movement – and not only the current Prime Minister – jeopardizes Jewish continuity and that we’d be better off in exile. These attempts to romanticize the diaspora (not yet tempered even by the global resurgence of anti-Jewish violence), lead to a question its proponents aren’t eager to address: where exactly will the nine million Jews who call Israel home go? A protestor on my campus back in 2024 had the answer: we should all go back to Poland (presumably not only from Tel Aviv but from Washington and New York, too, while we’re at it). Is this antisemitism? Seems close enough for discomfort.

In any case, the damning phraseology averts what might be legitimate discussion of Israel’s response to October 7 and the US-Israel attack on Iran. Reasonable people who wish to argue about the tactics and timing of these wars (the stuff of incessant radio and television commentary here) are essentially denied the privilege. After all, how can a country without the right to exist be excused for any military action it undertakes in self-defense? As in the case of the second piece I had the displeasure of reading, from a prominent Reform rabbi, judgment is swift and unequivocal: “Trump and Netanyahu’s [decision was] reckless and deadly…” And she lists the victims in alphabetical order – Iranians before Israelis.

And so, important questions get suffocated in a dense fog of disdain. It’s no wonder many Israelis don’t try to offer their critics needed oxygen, and focus instead on their own survival and renewal, albeit under clouds of growing global loneliness. I sense that many of them would really like to save American and other diaspora Jews from their asphyxiating ignorance, but like the instructions we hear in airplanes, it’s better to put one’s own mask on first. My neighbors in the shelter, exhausted like most people living here, hopefully will preserve their mental health and find the resolve to persevere in the face of persistent and aggressive abandonment. Cafes are starting to serve brunch, bus routes are coming back into service, and parents are lobbying for schools to reopen – good signs that the “start-up nation” remains a leader in R & D: resilience and determination.

Coming back to the angrier of those posts, its language is sadly no longer surprising. Like so much of the genre, the author again indicts Israel with familiar tropes that evoke atrocious examples of extermination and persecution – with the Jews as perpetrators rather than victims. In descending order of indecency, Israel is found guilty of genocide, apartheid, and occupation. The moral and empirical vacuity of the first two charges has been documented by scholars of Jewish and world history. A genocidal regime, for example, wouldn’t encourage people they want to erase to evacuate impending combat zones, wouldn’t send medical supplies and doctors to help the wounded, and wouldn’t hold its army accountable for noncombatant deaths and casualties. A Jewish-run apartheid system wouldn’t promote Arab jurists to seats on the Supreme court, wouldn’t boast a higher rate of Arab enrollment at the Technion than enjoyed by African Americans at MIT, and wouldn’t provide funding for “culturally responsive” reading instruction in Arab schools. Unfortunately, evidence and nuance are denied access by the guardians of simplistic narratives.

And then there’s that nasty occupation, always mentioned in critiques of Israeli politics (including in public letters from that rabbi) and blamed for all the problems of the Middle East. It was most stunningly and cruelly evoked starting on October 8, with a “they-had-it-coming” schadenfreude to explain why 1200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds more raped, mutilated, and kidnapped. I am always amazed by this, shall we say, preoccupation with the occupation, which, like much anti-Israelism (mostly from the left), is unburdened with history, logic, or fairness.

The chronology of efforts by founders and elected leaders of Israel to negotiate a solution to what a friend once called the “over-promised land” doesn’t need another rehearsal here. The nagging accusation that Israel is solely or primarily at fault for the failure to establish Palestinian self-rule flies in the face of the endless stream of proposals, rejected with almost perfect automaticity in the most sustained record of intransigence in world history. Did Israel make mistakes in the West Bank? For sure. Is the recent eruption of violence against Arab farmers acceptable? Definitely not. But does anyone know how to remove (or at least loosen) the political, military, demographic, and moral albatross – or think Israel can or should try to do so unilaterally? With the country at war again following two years of trauma, it’s hard to find anyone – regardless of political affiliation – who thinks the time is right for renewed discussion of two-state solutions or peace offerings that might be interpreted as reward for the dastardly deeds of October 7th. Polling data showing that a majority of West Bank Arabs hailed the Hamas butchery are not encouraging.

There are two other problems with the occupation obsession. First, whatever one might think of the post-1967 map and the quality of life for Arabs in the territories, denial of Israel’s right to exist started earlier. The word more accurately refers to the original sin of Zionism, to Jewish presence anywhere “between the river and the sea.” Nakhba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) came into use in 1948, and the PLO charter was ratified in 1964, before the drawing of that famous “green line.” It seems that preoccupation with the occupation ignores the pre-occupation…

Second, most anti-Israel bloggers don’t care for counterfactuals. In their somewhat poignantly imaginary world, they want to believe that if only Israel withdrew from the territories peaceful coexistence would blossom. I admit to harboring that dream, during and at least for a while after the Oslo accords and the Arafat-Rabin handshake on the White House south lawn. And it was surely an inspiring hope behind the painful self-extrication of Jews from Gaza in 2005. After Oslo we got the intifada, and after the Gaza disengagement we watched greenhouses get converted to gun arsenals and billions get invested in a terrorist tunnel system bigger than the London tube: searing reminders of something Amos Oz taught about how reality often turns dreams into disappointment.

And there’s more to the saga of Gaza, where higher education enrollments, economic productivity, infant mortality, and other indicators of well-being significantly improved — after 1967. If Gaza became “the largest open-air prison in the world,” another deceit popular with anti-Israel sloganeers, it happened under self-rule and not under occupation. Throwing homosexuals from rooftops is a technique employed by Hamas, not the IDF. It seems, then, that preoccupation with the occupation ignores not only the pre-occupation but the post-occupation too…

Finally, a chutzpah alert. Israel is home to the longest sustained presence of an indigenous population — Jews — of anywhere in the world. I’m not going to argue that this indigeneity justifies renewed settlement in places like Hebron or Nablus. (As the eminent rabbi and historian Arthur Hertzberg once quipped, “God may have promised the whole land to the Israelites. But he didn’t specify when.”) But I do respectfully suggest that critics of Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria, and, for that matter, Tel Aviv, at least have the decency to look into their own backyards: how can occupiers of places like Manhattan or Pennsylvania or Washington sleep at night knowing how the indigenous populations there were displaced? Maybe if Israelis followed the American fashion trend of “land acknowledgements” in email signatures, badgering about Jewish presence in the Middle East would subside? (More dreams.) Meanwhile, more honesty and less hypocrisy would be nice.

We haven’t had air raid sirens now for about seven hours. I think I’ll go over to Dizengoff Square and have a cappuccino. On the way, I’ll stop at the table with framed photos of the brave American soldiers who lost their lives in the recent war, and join in prayer for their memory.

The latest outrage? In the icy winter of Minnesota, Renee Good is shot dead in her car while trying, in panic, to get away from what Gal Beckerman called “an aggressive, violent, extrajudicial (and masked) paramilitary group exercising brute force.” Minutes later the Director of Homeland Security accuses Good of “stalking,” and labels her a domestic terrorist, implying she is subject to the death penalty without trial. Our Vice President makes it crystal clear: Renee Good’s death is a tragedy of her own making. Her mayor, horrified by what is happening in his city, is castigated for uttering “the F-word” and blamed for the violence: with a Democrat like that in charge, it’s obvious why we need boots on the ground, and if innocent civilians are shot, well, at least we know who’s at fault.

The moral inversion is familiar: raped girls chided for wearing short skirts, Americans on 9-11 advised we “had it coming,” flood survivors reprimanded for not having insurance, Israelis after October 7 scolded for “the occupation,” Iranian freedom-fighters executed as “troublemakers.” I am reminded of biting satire from the 1960s: when a Black highway driver is rear-ended, the cop on the scene asks the white driver who hit him, “how fast was he going when he backed into you?” Jokes work better when they depict truths that are no longer quite as relevant.

According to the Washington Post, Operation Metro Surge has already claimed 3,000 people arrested in cities across America, and there are now upwards of 2,000 Homeland Security personnel in Minneapolis alone. Governor Walz may have overstepped in calling them “Gestapo,” but images of heavily armed troops rounding up civilians, mostly non-white, are terrifying.

Yes, men and women in American uniforms are following orders – sound familiar? – but we need to refocus responsibility on those giving the orders and providing the funding while putting medical science, education, climate research, civil rights, national statistics, public health, and other public goods in a deep freeze.

And there’s no sign of a thaw, even as the majority of good Americans are appalled. When will the ICE melt? When will we put “just” back in “justice?”

Yesterday was the most momentous day in Jewish history since October 7, 2023, which was the worst day in Jewish history since 1945, which capped a 12-year reign of Nazi terror that by most metrics surpassed even the protracted depravity of the Inquisition. And many of our most trusted news organizations seemed choked up. In that group I include Heather Cox Richardson, whose almost daily notes have become a staple in the diet of readers trying to make sense of the strange workings of our fragile democracy. With great disappointment, I found in Heather’s post of this morning not a single syllable on the happenings in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Sharm-El-Sheikh. Instead, she offered 1500 words about a topic that would be, on most days, an interesting reminder of the Trump administration’s bizarre understanding of history, in this case the plan to get “rid of the building built to house the Social Security Administration, along with the murals that champion the government’s role in protecting the equality and security of ordinary people.” I couldn’t help but think that if Heather had been blogging on January 22, 1981, she might have penned an essay about, say, the tax cut under review in President Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget — without any mention that on the day before 52 American hostages were freed from Iran after 444 days of captivity. Come on, Heather. Really? Did news of the Gaza hostage release, which as Matti Friedman so eloquently observed, allowed Israel (and much of the Jewish world) to breathe for the first time in two years, just not seem as significant as the potential take-down of a federal building in Washington?

As Phyllis Chesler noted, the hiccuping in mainstream (“legacy”) media actually began the day before yesterday, when the key issue worrying New York Times editors was how the effects of the war — more precisely, Israel’s conduct of the war — might further strain relations between American voters and Israel. Never miss an opportunity to miss the opportunity to hint, albeit without much subtlety, at Jewish culpability! The next morning, Times readers learned that it was too soon to be grateful for the liberation of the hostages: “With Hamas freeing the last 20 living Israeli hostages and Israel releasing some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, President Trump proclaimed an ‘end’ to the war, but big questions about Gaza’s future remain” (italics added). Worse yet, alert readers detected a sly message embedded: that somehow there is a moral equivalence between the innocents who had been abducted from their bedrooms after seeing their children and parents butchered, and terrorists who had been imprisoned after blowing up passenger buses and were part of a movement whose sole purpose is to murder Jews, in and out of Israel (remember, please, protestors pleading for “globalization” of the intifada).

To her credit, Isabel Kershner did offer Times readers a chance to appreciate the mood, noting how “Israelis basked in a joyous moment of unifying national redemption…” But a moment of national joy is enough, thank you, and before anyone indulges in even a few more moments of relaxed breathing let’s not forget, God forbid, that “With the release from Gaza of the last surviving captives, many Israelis said it was time for the country to heal after years of polarizing war.” On the origins and meanings of said polarization, neither Kershner nor her headline writers provided more than a bumper-sticker version of an issue that Israelis and diaspora Jews know awaits continued consideration. Yes, it’s an important problem. But first can we breathe a bit, please? Can we pamper ourselves for a few hours, or maybe even a week or two, with images of the warm embrace of loved ones after 738 days in the hell of Gazan tunnels? If memory serves, it took France 50 years until President Chirac declared official national responsibility for the deportation of Jews to Hitler’s camps; here in the US we are debating fiercely (again) whether and how to acknowledge the history of slavery. Can we give Israel a short break before demanding that it own up to mistakes made before and after October 7 and mend fissures in its democratic fabric? Ironically, Israel doesn’t operate on world standards in such matters and has, indeed, begun the wrenching process of self-interrogation and public accountability. Not bad for a Jewish democratic state routinely accused of violating both those adjectives.

Again to her credit, Kershner seemed to appreciate Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reference to Ecclesiastes, which Jews read during the holiday of Sukkot, culminating on Simchat Torah (which now bears additional historical significance as the day on the Hebrew calendar of the October 7 massacre). As Bibi put it, “there [is] a time for war and a time for peace … the last two years have been a time of war … the coming years will hopefully be a time for peace — peace inside Israel and peace outside Israel.” Amen to that. But as long as we’re citing Koheleth (the Hebrew name before it was translated to the Greek Ecclesiastes), I would respectfully ask the writers and editors of the Times and so many other “outlets” to consider another teaching from that Wisdom book: “Keep your mouth from being rash, and let not your throat be quick to bring forth speech before God … Just as dreams come with much brooding, so does foolish utterance come with much speech.”

Seems that King Solomon, the assumed author of Koheleth three millennia ago, had wisdom about the effects of speech that today’s journalists and bloggers and social media mavens might find handy. Hearing Christiane Amanpour blather about how the hostages seemed to have been treated better than Gazans (she later apologized), while detecting a thunderous silence from all those protestors and their abetting Congressional caucuses who went on mute now that the alleged “genocide” was paused and only Hamas was continuing to execute suspected Zionist collaborators, make me wonder what will come next in the theater of the absurd that is the stage for thriving global antisemitism. I never liked the spasmodic critique that in responding to the Hamas attack Israel had not fully developed (or published) its long term plan; now, though, given worldwide response to the glorious relief of October 13 that sounds like a great big collective “meh,” I am inclined to start worrying about “the day after.” What can we expect in terms of support for the fragile peace plan and empathy for the national healing that has begun in Israel and will require long term care? ָָIf history is a model, is it unfair to anticipate that, in the event of imperfection in this latest and perhaps most innovative effort to resolve the middle east conflict, Israel will again be blamed and scorned for whatever might go wrong?

I don’t pretend to have answers, though I am reminded of that brilliant line in The West Wing: expect to be stunned but not surprised by world reaction as events unfold. Meanwhile, for today I’ll just say a prayer of thanks that those beautiful young people are home, a prayer of awe to the heroes of the IDF, and a prayer of hope for the future of civilization in an age that has again witnessed unfathomable barbarism.

Since I’ve been having trouble understanding some of my Jewish friends, I was eager to read Ezra Klein’s recent essay in the New York Times, "Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another” (July 20). At first I was put off by unfair criticisms of Israel, some explicit and some tacit, which are too familiar these days. Thanks to insights from an especially close bud, and personal experiences shared by others, I now appreciate that Klein was alerting us to arguments roiling the Jewish community, more than telling us where he stands or where we should. His premise is moving and worth studying:

I’ve watched the experience of rising antisemitism polarize young Jews into two camps. Some have moved closer to Israel, convinced that their elders were right and their standing in the West was more tenuous than they had believed. Some have moved into a deeper alienation, horrified at what is being done in their name and angry at the way their safety has felt compromised by the actions and politics of a state in which they do not live.

Leaving aside what may or may not be Klein’s own views, I’m going to comment on some of the big issues he raises, mostly in the form of questions.

The Mamdani syndrome. The New York mayoral candidate is excused by some people because although he “does not use the slogan 'globalize the intifada,' [he] does not condemn those who do…” Would Mamdani and friends also support candidates who don’t use – but don’t condemn – slogans like “White Lives Matter!” and “Jews will not replace us?” And what about the candidate’s other “banally liberal” arguments, that “Israel has a right to exist [thank you] but [only] as a state with equal rights,” and his disapproval of “any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else…”? Do economic inequality and democratic “backsliding” compromise America's right to exist? Is Israel’s policy of preferential admissions for Jews wishing to immigrate so special? Is the support Mamdani enjoys from Brad Lander, Jerry Nadler, and others reminiscent of other times when Jewish loyalty to certain political movements didn’t pan out so well?

The occupation. Klein argues that for many Jews the “vision [of a two-state solution] now lies buried beneath the settlements of the West Bank, the rubble of Gaza, and the expansionist ambitions of Israel’s right-wing government.” In strolling at that gravesite, though, let’s be careful to not trip on another large pile of rubble: accumulated documents chronicling persistent Arab rejection of peace offers and proposals for territorial solutions. After October 7, most rational observers (left, right, center, but not the extremist fringes) agree that this isn’t the best time to revive hope in the old two-state idea (although other options are worth exploring). Is that so hard to understand? Should Israel ignore recent events and take the risk that yet another neighbor will have less than neighborly plans? Maybe “those angry at Netanyahu [do not] want his successor to seek a Palestinian state, or even Palestinian rights,” but it’s not clear who the “those” are and whether their reticence is minimally understandable. Following Fania Oz-Salzberger, one of Bibi’s staunchest opponents, I would ask Mamdani and his followers this “single crucial question… do you support Israel’s right to exist – alongside a peaceful Palestine?”

Expulsion and other bad ideas. I was taken aback, as I’m sure most American Jews are, by "polls [showing that] a majority of Israeli Jews are open to the expulsion of Palestinians…” But the same Ha’aretz article cited by Klein cautions that “a deeper dive into the data reveals a far more complex and divided public opinion…” The authors (writing in a newspaper known for relentless opposition to Netanyahu and all prior governments who didn’t end the occupation) list problems of sampling and item construction that should raise caution flags. And even if some part of the population is “open” to the idea, that’s a far cry from whether the idea is enacted, as it was elsewhere: Jews expelled from Arab and Muslim lands, Greek-Turkish population exchange, eight million ethnic Germans kicked out of Poland after WW2. I’m not advocating for expelling Palestinians, but do the survey data indicate a uniquely Israeli brand of evil? And what about deportation, which under Obama and Biden and now Trump, is more real and more abhorrent than whatever some extremist Israelis may be “open to” but which are not (and never have been) official Israeli policy? (Isn’t deportation another word for expulsion?)

Shifting blame, assessing risks. Klein observes, correctly, that "debates about Israel often circle the same, strangely posed question: Does Israel have the right to exist?” I applaud him for trying to immunize readers from the double-standard virus that infects so much popular discourse: no one seems to be calling for the dismantling of Hungary or Italy, not to mention China, Russia, and God knows how many other countries, because they don’t like their current leaders. But then we’re into rougher terrain: “…Hamas could perpetrate the murders of Oct. 7 only because Israel had … allowed its attention to basic questions of security to lapse.” Why should a lapse in basic security, whether due to hubris, technological and organizational meltdown, or normal balagan [a friendly euphemism for chaos] be enough to ignite a firestorm of unimaginable depravity? It seems that Jews are sentenced to an eternity of high alert because indulgence in even momentary nonchalance can spark (and legitimate) existential calamity. Who is more to blame for October 7, the barbaric perpetrators or the people they massacred? Klein then alerts us to another misconception: “Hamas did not then, and certainly does not now, threaten Israel’s existence.” Wait: do other countries respond only when their existence is at stake, but not when their people and property are “merely” violated? In any case, if there is still any doubt that Hamas (along with Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, maybe even China) seeks to destroy the Jewish State, language in their charter should settle the matter: “Israel will … continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” It seems Israel is blamed for foolishly ignoring the threat and being lulled into a false sense of security, but also for overreacting to what was not a real threat in the first place. Why is Israel the only country in the world to face these damnable “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” criticisms? (Students of antisemitism will recognize the motif: Jews as foolish weaklings, Jews as omnipotent masters.)

Devastation is real. For many Jews – including a growing number in Israel – the legitimate need to respond militarily to the invasion of October 7 no longer justifies carnage at a scale that is increasingly hard to fathom. Reports of devastation and famine are central to the problem Klein has surfaced, namely the erosion of allegiance to Zionism among Jews who keep hearing that Israel perpetrates unconscionable crimes. Regardless of the validity of the casualty numbers thrown around carelessly and maliciously on mainstream and social media (in what Matti Friedman aptly calls a “blizzard of ideological fiction”), and the dispute about who is to blame for the delay in unloading thousands of food trucks (Netanyahu has explaining to do…), there is no denying the magnitude of the suffering, which no Jew, no one for that matter, should brush off. Still, the anguish felt by the overwhelming majority of Israelis, who want the war to end and the remaining hostages freed, is confounded by impolitic pronouncements of politicians and intellectually dishonest scholars who throw around words and phrases like “genocide” and “war crimes” that alienate even Netanyahu’s most ardent opponents. Jewish clergy join the chorus of anger and, in their signaling of high virtue, ignore complexities in the data that should at least temper their effort to make Israel’s choice look obvious. What’s missing from too many of these one-sided critiques is the simple fact that release of the remaining hostages would bring an immediate end to the war. That “simple fact,” though, is not so simple, because ending the war is not enough for Hamas, which demands also the release of thousands of its heroic “freedom fighters” from Israeli jails. If you are unsure how to balance the moral imperative of rescuing civilians from Hamas tunnels against the moral imperative of preventing future tunnels, you are in good company: Israelis cope with that dilemma every day. Infused in these debates are allegations that the IDF could do more to save lives. Maybe, but how many warning leaflets did the Allies distribute to the good citizens of Dresden before fire-bombing their city to smithereens and killing 35,000 people in two days? How much food was trucked in to feed the enemy in the Battle of the Bulge? Did Egypt bring medical supplies to treat injured Israelis in the surprise attack of 1973? The judgment of serious military historians who study such questions is often missing or muted in these discussions.

The company we keep. I was relieved that Klein corresponded with Deborah Lipstadt and shared her wisdom on the dubious distinctions between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, a semantic distraction helpful to people who believe the Jewish people would be better off without the encumbrance of a state (but who seem flummoxed when asked what will happen to the seven million Jews living there today). But Peter Beinart? Klein quotes him as saying “the question is not whether Israel has the right to exist,” a curious bit of sophistry from someone who has been raising exactly that question for years – and answering it in the negative. With respect, quoting Lipstadt and then Beinart on Jewish affairs is like citing Francis Collins and then turning to RFK Jr for insights about vaccines. On the other hand, the fact that Beinart and others of that ilk influence public opinion amplifies the urgency of Klein’s message.

Diagnosis and treatment. Reading Klein brought to mind a quip I heard on a recent visit in Jerusalem: there are only two places in the world unsafe for Jews – Israel and the diaspora. Most American Jews have been comfortable in their dual identities, thanks to the hospitable environment they found in America compared to European and other temporary safe zones. Some have always been troubled (embarrassed?) by the Zionist project; and an increasing number, especially younger ones, struggle between fealty to social justice causes and crass right wing extremism in Israel they neither understand nor abide. That schism is nurtured by demagogues who capitalize on Jewish affinity for universal humanism to sow seeds of doubt about allegiance to Israel. In the spirit of “nothing new under the sun,” we’ve been dealing with betrayal by traditional allies for a long time, with what my friend Mitchell Cohen wryly observes is a “left that doesn’t learn.” After October 7, though, things worsened, with American Jews (and others worldwide) pummeled by waves of antisemitism crashing from right and left. Some Israelis, still digging out of their physical and emotional trauma, apologize that this momentary failure of the Zionist project on October 7 may have compromised the safety of Jews everywhere. Talk about empathy!

What to do? It's always easier to chop down really dumb ideas, such as exile as an alternative to sovereignty, than to come up with good ones. But I’ll offer some guiding principles in hopes of moving the discussion toward practical steps we might take.

I’ll start with three assumptions, admittedly straining for optimism:

1. Most American Jews want the war in Gaza to end – conditional on release of the remaining hostages – but underestimate how many Israelis share that wish. On the other hand, those who advocate for unilateral and unconditional ceasefire tend to overestimate the popularity of that view among Israelis, even those on the hard left. Better information might help correct these misunderstandings.

2. Beyond the specifics of the current war, most American Jews want to connect with Israel, even if they are reticent about self-identifying as Zionists. With some slippage, survey data affirm that for the majority, with variation by age and religious affiliation, identification with Israel grew after October 7. These data are encouraging.

3. Incomplete knowledge of Jewish, Zionist, and middle east history, more than foundational hostility to Jews or Judaism, fuels American Jewish ambivalence about Israel. Among those who lean “banally liberal,” too many are unschooled about the moral grandeur and historical significance of Zionism and Jewish national self-renewal. But at least they’re not opposed to the whole project. (For a crude analogy, the fact that many US college graduates can’t name their two senators doesn’t mean they reject our grand democratic experiment.)

From those assumptions I’ll proceed with my top five recommendations to educators in all disciplines, in and out of schools, including journalists and other “influencers:”

a) Challenge hyperbolic anti-Israel reporting that blurs people’s capacity to know what is going on and contributes to incessant degrading of Israel’s legitimacy;

b) question the bizarre notion that the Jewish People don’t need sovereignty, a fad unburdened by evidence showing why the diaspora (except possibly in America) is not a viable alternative;

c) acknowledge that criticism of Israel‘s government is fair play (God knows it’s the national sport there) – if it’s done honestly, humbly, and with at least a modicum of respect for the democratic ideals of the Zionist project;

d) push back against popular narratives (such as “settler colonialism” as the driving force in establishment of the Jewish state), derived from fanciful utopian visions that indict the West in general and Jews in particular; and

e) reclaim our commitment to evidence, logic, and moral clarity that distinguishes liberal education from the uncurated claptrap and conspiracy mongering of social media.

I thank Ezra Klein for helping advance the cause. We need more journalists, politicians, and scholars joining the fight against the global epidemic of “banal liberalism” generally and its unholy alliance with antisemitism specifically.

The essay appeared coincidentally on the same day that a negotiated deal was announced between the federal government and Columbia University, which would restore some $200M in research funding in exchange for the university’s agreement to revise policies relevant to its problems of campus antisemitism. In a subsequent post I will address whether turning the dial on public support for R&D to treat antisemitism (and other problems in the academy) is likely to do more harm than good.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump’s administration laid off roughly half the employees of the Department of Education, a move touted as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.” It was certainly a significant step: Last week the pressure intensified, with President Trump’s executive order instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing the department. The ultimate goal is clear: to shift the department’s activities to other agencies and kill remaining programs or devolve them to states and local districts. Whether and how this action survives legal challenge — the department was created by Congress and would have to be eliminated by Congress — its intent signals a potential sea change in American education, with damaging and long-lasting consequences.

As one who has been involved in education policy and research for about 40 years, the last 15 of them here at GW, I believe we are experiencing a uniquely daunting set of challenges. I am glad to share in this commentary some personal reflections and perspectives on the current moment, which do not necessarily represent institutional positions of the University. Here I focus on the status of the department as a federal agency, a good starting point to understanding the bigger picture we are facing.

The Department of Education was created in the final days of the Carter administration in 1979, amid partisan debate. Key Democrats, including Joseph Califano and Albert Shanker, opposed the idea of separating the “E” from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but the plan survived. It was neither the first nor, obviously, the last time the existence of a federal education agency was the subject of heated controversy. Just one year after President Andrew Johnson signed the first bill establishing the department, its status was downgraded to “Office” in 1867. But that “office” played an important role over the next century, tasked mainly with “collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and territories…including at schools for newly emancipated African American children…”

Its reincarnation in 1979 seemed short-lived. President Ronald Reagan vowed to abolish it, but in the wake of arguably the most powerful report of the genre in U.S. policy history — which declared that we were “A Nation at Risk” — the agency survived. Since then, it has ably and nobly led the country’s efforts to enhance educational opportunities and life chances for disadvantaged youth, hold states and localities accountable for the provision of educational resources to students with special needs, enforce federal civil rights laws, manage the financial aid system that opens doors to millions of college-bound students and provide reliable data on the condition of teaching and learning across our system of public education.

The department’s 2025 budget request was $82 billion and historically has been in the range of 2 percent of the total federal budget. The federal share of funding for K-12 schools is about 14 percent, with the remainder covered by states and local governments. In addition, the department has been responsible for managing approximately $1.5 trillion in student loans.

Given that so much of education is managed and financed at the state and local level anyway, why is the effort to kill the federal role so wrong? As I’ve written elsewhere, just when data pointed to the disastrous effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on average student performance, came news of a calamitous drop in U.S. scores on international tests, with depressing evidence of widening gaps between majority and minority students. This downturn is largely due to the pandemic, following a half-century of progress during which time the federal role grew substantially. It is simply disingenuous to argue that recorded gains in achievement for all students and the shrinking of gaps would have been greater without sustained national investment. There are imperfections in the operation of our bulky bureaucracy, but what signal is sent by having the federal government withdraw just when the national will is needed to rebound from the recent decline? Perhaps most importantly, we need to ask about one of the federal government’s principal responsibilities, namely enforcing civil rights laws: Will we be better off ceding that task back to states and districts? Will “states’ rights” become “national wrongs,” again?

At the practical level, the Trump plan seems to involve complex logistical and programmatic shuffling without any proof of increased efficiency. For example, will the Department of Health and Human Services be ready to manage the Title I program for disadvantaged youth? Similarly, there’s no evidence that the Small Business Administration, with little or no experience in tuition assistance, will do a better job managing loans that determine the future of millions of students and their families. Another terrible loss will be felt by researchers — but also policymakers at all levels — if programs such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered worldwide as the gold standard in educational measurement, are eliminated or transferred to an agency with no expertise in the workings of our school system. Ironically, the administration’s rationale for closing the agency is that our school system is underperforming — an allegation based on their interpretation of data collected by the department they want to eliminate.

While these plans are implemented and litigated, and thousands of dedicated public servants are subjected to insulting accusations, my optimism derives from the dedication and accomplishments of our community. To my colleagues in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, thank you for your amazing research and unflagging engagement with current and future educators. You model the meaning of “making a difference” in the lives of children and adults, for whom investment in education is the most significant determinant of improved life chances. We adapted as a community during the pandemic, and we can again demonstrate our steadfast will by focusing on our work, buoying our students and supporting one another. Likewise, the GW administration, trustees, alumni, donors and friends are demonstrating abiding commitment, standing with our GSEHD faculty, staff and students and reaffirming the mission of education as a public good. As the largest educational institution in the nation’s capital, with a globally distinguished school of education, our obligation now is to combine knowledge, hope, resilience, and yes, even some optimism, as we pursue continued excellence in all our endeavors.

Confronting the Holocaust

April 17, 2014

When I was a boy of about 10, we lived in Queens, NY, and my family subscribed to a

newspaper that was delivered daily, thrown to our front stoop by a kid on a bike

with a big basket. It was called the Long Island Press, and not surprisingly it doesn’t

exist any more, at least as a real newspaper. In my home it was a needed

supplement to that other paper we always read, the New York Times. The Times, of

course, modestly claimed to contain “all the news fit to print,” but the Press,

essentially, printed all the rest of the news that fit...along with many items of rather

more local interest.

In the funnies section of the Sunday paper the Press once ran a kind of contest, an

early version of a lottery actually, which enticed readers to enter 7 digits into the

blank circles of a rotary dial phone – young folks here today who don’t know what

that is should see me later – clip it out, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on the

envelope, and mail it in (again, my sympathies to those of you who seem puzzled

about such arcane terms as stamps, envelopes, and the US Mail), and take their

chance to win a big prize: maybe a lifetime subscription to the Long Island Press, or

better yet a new rotary dial phone. Anyway, I don’t remember the details of what

one could actually win; it’s been more than 50 years.

But I do remember my father’s entry. He carefully wrote, in his best European

penmanship, 4-1-1-1-9-4-5.

He showed me his entry before putting it in the envelope and carefully addressing it

to the Press office in Jamaica. As he sealed the envelope I detected something

special in his eyes, a glint suggesting perhaps his sense of irony knowing that the

odds of winning were infinitesimal (he was a wise man who knew something about

probability) but suggesting also that somehow he deserved to win because of what

that number meant. I was impressed, and curious.

“Dad, how’d you come up with those numbers? Isn’t 4-1-1 the number for

information? I would have put 1-0-4-1-9-5-2, my birthday.”

“Funny you mention that,” said Dad. “I actually did put in my birthday. Sort of.”

Now I was really puzzled, because I knew Dad’s birthday was November 2 (by the

way, the date of the Balfour Declaration, one of the main legal foundations for the

establishment of the State of Israel).

He explained: April 11, 1945 was essentially his second birth. On that day

American troops came to Buchenwald, the concentration camp just up the road from

the lovely town of Weimar, where Otto Feuer had been an inmate for the previous 4

years.

The title for my talk this morning, “Confronting the Holocaust,” is therefore not new

to me. In a way I have been confronting the Holocaust for most of my life. But let

me be more precise, right from the start: I never really confronted the Holocaust

itself. Yes, I confronted memories, images, literature, personal stories – interspersed

in a quite normal and happy middle class Queens childhood – but never the real

thing. That’s perhaps obvious, the fact that having been born in New York, 7 years

after the camps of Europe were liberated, I never experienced barbed wire,

quarries, or teenagers trampled by SS jackboots. Still, it’s worth noting the

distinction – between confronting the Holocaust and confronting knowledge about

it. It’s a reminder that the blurring of truth, even when unintended or innocent,

risks blaspheming or trivializing memory rather than honoring it.

Worse yet, the blurring of truth can sometimes be the most painful to the very

people who deserve most to be remembered truthfully and respectfully. Here’s an

example of what I mean.

One of the more controversial topics of post-war psychology, associated

ignominiously with a distinguished professor named Bruno Bettelheim, was so-called

“survivor syndrome,” a somewhat vague concept that attributed various

personality problems like moodiness or depression to one’s prior experiences in

concentration camp. As intuitively appealing as this sort of model was – after all,

how could the trauma of deprivation, torture, starvation, and constant fear of death

not affect one’s personality? – it was fundamentally flawed and to a large extent

debunked. Most of the stresses of everyday life are quite evenly distributed among

survivors and non-survivors and, if anything, some survivors may actually have

developed especially good coping skills. (They would have gladly been spared the

training program.) I don’t have the data, but my hunch is that substance abuse and

alcoholism, for example, are markedly lower among survivors than in the general

population. If survivors were so disproportionately disabled, as the “syndrome”

literature suggested, now that most of them are dying of old age one would expect to

observe a noticeable dip in the incidence of depression and other problems. For

what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem that sales of Prozac are suffering...

In any case, my point is simply this: survivors who so courageously rebuilt their

lives shouldn’t have to endure silly and insulting suggestions that they are somehow

unable to manage or are having trouble adapting to normal life. They did need help

with shelter, employment, and education; but suggesting that they were, in general,

psychologically damaged goods, caused substantial hurt and in a way gave Hitler a

small posthumous victory.

From survivor-syndrome, a myth perpetuated in movies like The Pawnbroker,

starring the great Rod Steiger, it didn’t take long for the predictable sequel: there

emerged in the 1970s a related and similarly half-baked theory, namely “child-of-

survivor syndrome.” Again, the intuition was appealing: kids who grew up in

homes with parents who had survived – and who were therefore psychologically

traumatized and maladaptive – must be more prone to various psychological and

social ills than other kids. It was tempting, I must admit, to blame Hitler for my

mischief-making in elementary school, my awkwardness with girls in high school,

my devotion and attachment to my family, my on-again off-again religious

observance, and my anxieties about writing a dissertation in graduate school.

Except that most of my friends who had similar issues couldn’t use my convenient

excuse.

There is comfort in simplistic excuses: a rabbi once told my father that he survived

because God wanted him to. That sounded nice, except Dad wondered why God

didn’t also choose to help the others in the camp. I remembered this story when a

wise Italian Catholic psychiatrist challenged my excuse-making. He told me that

most of what I thought were unique problems caused by my parents’ suffering

sounded a lot like the problems he had growing up in South Philadelphia. Does that

mean that what my parents went through wasn’t special or unique? Does it mean

that I didn’t have my own issues? Certainly not. But simplistic judgments about

how and where personality is shaped, like simplistic attributions of survival to God’s

will, don’t honor the memory of the survivors (or their children) whose situations

may indeed warrant special attention and respect.

At times deviations from truth are less psychologically driven and more politically

motivated. One of the more amazing examples concerns the now almost

commonplace belief that 11 million people were victims of the Holocaust. I am

grateful to my friend and colleague, Walter Reich, for reminding us of this distortion,

during a recent visit to Temple Micah, my synagogue up in Northwest DC. Where

did that number come from? More precisely, where did the additional 5 million

come from? Maybe this little slip, too, started with good intentions. It seems that an

aide to President Jimmy Carter urged him to use the larger number in the executive

order establishing the US Holocaust Memorial Council, as a way to include non-

Jewish victims. It’s a complicated story, to be sure, and the Council deserves, after

all, our collective gratitude for the design and construction of our US Holocaust

Memorial Museum, truly one of the greatest of the genre in the world.

Still, there’s this nagging problem of the Executive Order: the number – 11 million –

apparently originated with Simon Wiesenthal – yes, the Nazi hunter — talk about

irony! — who wanted to universalize the Holocaust in order to evoke non-Jewish

sympathies and who admitted, later, to having made up the number out of thin air.

(If I were a non-Jew I would be deeply insulted by the suggestion that 6 million

Jewish dead are not enough to evoke my sympathies.) Wiesenthal had a complex

and somewhat twisted relationship with Jews and survivors, including people like

Elie Wiesel, which I won’t go into today. Nor will I speculate about President

Carter’s political motivations. But I will say emphatically that the perpetuation of

this distortion has confounded the reputation of the Council, given comfort and

ammunition to Holocaust deniers, and has caused an apparently permanent

misunderstanding in the public mind about the nature of Hitler’s war against the

Jews and about his near success in their systematic destruction.

I need to clarify what I mean here. Death is surely a universal phenomenon –

whether one dies in the line of duty or in a gas chamber doesn’t change the outcome

(to the best of our knowledge). But the cause of death does make a difference and

does matter. Remember that on September 11, 2001 roughly 3000 Americans were

killed by terror; that year 10 times as many died in automobile accidents. You see

my point, I’m sure. Similarly, as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz eloquently

summarized, “the murder of the Jews of Europe is in a class by itself – not because of

the numbers, but because of the ideology behind it, which placed the elimination of

an entire people and their culture from the earth as one of its primary goals. It was

unique because Nazi propaganda focused so intently on the Jews as an almost

supernatural cause of evil, and the German war machine remained devoted to killing

Jews up to the very last day of the war, long after it was clear that that war was lost.”

Thinking about this episode I’m reminded of a famous scene from the Seinfeld show.

Jerry is complaining to a priest that a comedian friend has converted to Judaism just

to be able to tell Jewish jokes. The priest asks if Jerry is offended by this as a Jew.

And Jerry says, “no, I’m offended as a comedian."

Fudging the data – converting 6 million to 11 million – offends Jewish victims and

offends history.

If some efforts to confront the Holocaust result in errors of commission, subtle

omissions can be as damaging. I mentioned earlier the New York Times, so I’ll come

back to it with a sad reminder: even this newspaper of record, probably still the

most reliable source of journalistic information in the world, found it difficult to

confront – and cope with – the Holocaust. As the historian Laurel Leff showed in her

2005 book, Buried by the Times, “the Times consistently placed major stories about

the Nazi treatment of European Jews on back pages ... and the story of the

Holocaust—articles that focused on the discrimination, deportation, and destruction

of the Jews—made the Times front page just 26 times [in 12 years], and only in six

of those stories were Jews identified ... as the primary victims." Would more Jews

have been saved if the Times had put more news of the camps on the front page?

Would the American government have been moved to swifter military action? We

will never know.

I began my talk with a suggestion that my own confrontation with the Holocaust has

really been second-hand. Indeed, I believe that because I live in America, the

Holocaust will ALWAYS be a matter of history, not personal memory or experience.

But other Americans – and here I’m not talking about survivors who came here and,

like my father, embraced their new home and loved the amazing “second life” it

enabled – did have direct and personal and unique experience. Maybe the editors of

the New York Times were overburdened by political and psychological baggage; not

so the brave young men and women who answered the call, put on their uniforms,

laced up their boots, packed their bags, and went to war. Many of them did have

direct contact with the first remnants of the Holocaust, and what they saw, when

they entered and then worked in the camps they liberated, has surely remained

etched in their memory forever.

If you have reason to be in Germany, I encourage you to go to Weimar, a charming

and picturesque town that was home to great humanists like Goethe and Schiller, a

favored musical center for Franz Liszt, the place where the Bauhaus architecture

movement began. You can take the #6 bus, marked “Buchenwald,” and in 20

minutes you’ll be at the entrance to the concentration camp. The iron lettering

above the main gate establishes that “work liberates.” Go to the building that has

been converted into a small museum, and watch the videos. You’ll see authentic

newsreel footage, taken by the liberating US army. And you’ll get to meet my father,

Otto Feuer, in April 1945, as he thanks the American people and the American army

for coming to save him and so many others.

On this day of remembrance I am honored to be with friends in the US military, and I

join my father, of blessed memory, in thanking you.

If the murder of George Floyd sparked a needed national reawakening about racial injustice, then the eruption of protests against Israel after Oct. 7 sounded the alarm on resurgent antisemitism, horrifying in its own right and symptomatic of other problems besetting the academy…

… As the dean of an education school (and past president of the National Academy of Education), I ask myself if our field is especially culpable for the current crisis — and, regardless, if we can lead the way toward alleviating it. My answers, respectively, are “probably not” and “hopefully yes.”

For more, please access the full essay here: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/schools-of-education-have-a-role-to-play-in-addressing-campus-antisemitism/.

• “… when bad things happen at our most distinguished universities, it harms not only their standing but the public perception of education in general and the sense of vulnerability among Jewish students everywhere. This ‘reputation externality’ is costly: scenes of presidents waffling on whether genocide of Jews is morally acceptable speech (it’s all about context…) cast a shadow over the majority, who, as at GW, showed moral clarity and administrative acumen.”

• “ … How much of the protestors’ rhetoric is antisemitic rather than ‘just’ anti-Israel? I don’t want to offend colleagues who pose the question innocently, though I respectfully suggest that calls for cleansing Palestine of Jews ‘between the river and the sea’ are not merely critiques of Netanyahu’s government but rather poorly camouflaged expressions of opposition to the legitimacy of any government in the ‘Zionist entity.’

• “Asked to explain what may be causing … [a] perceived erosion of public trust in the academy, I have offered a greatly oversimplified answer in the form of questions to myself and my colleagues: Have we abdicated our professional and moral responsibility by allowing narrative to displace evidence? Have we forgotten that what distinguishes liberal education from the random diffusion of uncurated claptrap is the culture of disciplined inquiry? As we have understandably sought to welcome an ever more diverse set of perspectives into our scholarly tent, have we become unwilling to test each other’s hypotheses, respectfully, with facts and logic? I suspect those questions will provoke heated reactions, but I hope they can be channeled into civil discussion. Here is a bit of elaboration that might help.”

Where to start? With the November election, which left just about everyone somewhere between distraught and exuberant depending on political leanings, came familiar rumblings that the US Department of Education might be sentenced to the political guillotine, and, if so, what will happen to funding for disadvantaged youth, financial aid, students with disabilities, national assessment, data collection, civil rights, and many other essential programs. Then, as we had to contemplate the symbolic and practical meaning of federal withdrawal – just when data were pointing to the disastrous effects of COVID on average student performance – came news of a calamitous drop in US scores on international tests with even more depressing evidence of widening gaps between majority and minority students.

In the wake of the pandemic, it would have been bizarre had the international assessments not registered decline – we had already seen the effects on NAEP after years of modest gains – but still our showing on comparative tests was hard to swallow. And the fact that similar declines were suffered by most other industrialized democracies offered only faint comfort, although not for those of us dispirited by the sudden inversion of trends in human progress worldwide. How well those scores predict valued outcomes, say the competitiveness of our economy or our quality of life, is debatable, and gloomy scenarios are again worth seasoning with chunky grains of salt.

In any case, it’s worth remembering why the last major push to dismantle the Department failed, circa 1983: even the most ardent dreamers of a reduced federal role had to square their ideology with evidence (imperfect as it might have been) that we were a Nation at Risk – and that this was not a good time for our government to signal abdication from its national responsibilities. (For a terrific recap of the political machinations leading to the establishment of the Department, see here.) Whether lessons from 40 years ago, and what we’ve learned from wandering over the rocky terrain of education policy since then, will be applied in 2025 remains to be seen. What is clear, though, is that decent people everywhere know it will take concerted political will to get us back on track.

For many of us, the phrase political will seems to have been overtaken by political willfulness, as zealots of left and right uphold their extremist traditions and blame convenient scapegoats for our real and imagined woes. Even if you’re not moved by declining achievement scores, surely the smog of anger and the rising tides of tribal polarization that drown out rational discourse – in education and more generally – must give pause. At risk of pushing the idiom, the ideological climate is proving as deadly as the meteorological kind, and the storms are spreading. It’s bad enough that prospective K-12 teachers anticipate active-shooter training as an early part of in-service professional development; on top of that they can look forward to attending local school board meetings if they want to experience rhetorical (and even physical) violence among parents, legislators, principals, and peers fighting the latest culture wars. In higher education, protests staged by handfuls of students and faculty joined by mobs of local agitators – disproportionately congregated in the nation’s most selective institutions – cast a shadow over the whole academy. (In the New York Times alone, there were 1100 mentions of “campus protest” in the year following October 7, 2023, an average of about 35 per month or more than one a day; much of the coverage centered on places like Columbia and Harvard, where many Times readers and writers got their education.)

We are now half-way through the academic year, and it’s not clear what to anticipate or how we will cope. With certification of the electoral college and inauguration coming soon, installation of a new executive branch cabinet that promises to be, well, challenging to say the least, and geopolitical unrest in much of the world, who is not feeling unsettled? As an amateur historian of American education, I get some consolation, but only a little, by remembering our storied past, aptly called “a grand experiment.” It is a saga of expectations and disappointments, innovation and stagnation, noble hopes and dreams deferred, great progress and frustrating regression. One lesson is that in times of unrest, public attention spasmodically turns to the schools, for their alleged culpability and for their role in reversing wickedly complex economic and social trends. Both sides of that equation are shaky: whether it’s about economic productivity or national security or life expectancy, education makes a difference – but is neither the sole determinant of individual and social well-being nor likely to be able to fix things alone. (I elaborate on that theme in my recent book, which calls on schools to play a role – albeit in a drama that needs a sizable cast.)

What to do?

For those who believe in “evidence-informed” decision making, the good news is we have knowledge and experience to help us think about what’s happening and, perhaps more importantly, help us restore at least a bit of rational optimism.

But optimism is not an excuse for complacency and complicity. We have the professional and patriotic obligation to confront the demagogues who have again arisen to attack the essence of liberal education. I may suffer from a bad case of confirmation bias, but my sense is that good people everywhere are on the case, demonstrating the resilience of American political culture and community, a dogged determination to repair the world (or at least their parts of it), and a possibly unique capacity for introspection and engagement as core requirements for progress.

I italicize those words on purpose. For with our willingness to confront the forces we deem hazardous to our collective future must come an acknowledgement that we bear some responsibility for our fragile present, and that we had better look into ourselves as we push back against those “others.” We need to resist the temptation to fortify the membranes of our bubbles, discredit and demean the opposition, and insist on preserving a comfortable status quo. Is it just linguistic coincidence that complicity, complacency, and comfort all start with the same three letters?

To complicate things further, here lies what might be called a paradox of humility. Honest and open-minded people who are willing to acknowledge their own flawed thinking, who know the value of hearing others’ viewpoints, are perhaps also the most likely to be aware of their personal limitations. Even morally upright citizens may legitimately conclude that they can have only negligible impact, and that it’s therefore naïve to expect them, qua individuals, to invest the resources needed to make a real difference. (I am reminded of the small statue of Don Quixote on our mantle that my dad would point to when he heard me seething, understandably, about this or that injustice in the world…) As the great political economist Mancur Olson argued some 60 years ago, the cost of organizing collective action can be a nontrivial obstacle to its implementation.

But “can be” is not the same as “is.” It is emotionally damaging and empirically wrong to lose hope in the prospect of human collective response to the complex challenges we face. This was, in grossly simplified terms, the insight of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, who challenged the relentlessly dismal predictions stemming from the theory of the “tragedy of the commons;” and is an enduring lesson of the great 20^th century economist and activist Albert Hirschman, who bristled against the inevitability of “exit” in the face of social and economic decline. I believe that as scholars of pedagogy we are especially well positioned to lead in the needed collective response, and that as rational decision makers we should welcome possibilities for partnership to reinforce our resolve.

From rhetoric to action: the role of education schools

At risk of stating the obvious, universities with an abiding commitment to serve the “public good” must assert and reaffirm their allegiance to norms and principles of liberal education. If we are to be faithful to the vision and hopes abridged in our mission statements, we must seize the current moment and invest what we can in educational excellence and in the pursuit of egalitarian, democratic, pluralist principles enshrined in our young republic’s founding documents.

To do that well, we can take advantage of our education schools, home to faculty, students, and staff with the expertise, experience, and passions that are essential to the cause. Who better than we to re-calibrate the teaching of difficult history, to demonstrate the value of pedagogy oriented toward analytical thought, to convene our intellectually and demographically diverse colleagues for civic exchange and scientific discovery, to revive trust in objective inquiry as essential to moral democracy, to take the lead in reviving the liberal academic enterprise?

And just think of the counterfactual: what message would we be sending by under-investing in the people and projects of our complex ecology of university-based education programs? If the symbolic effect of closing the Department of Education is disturbing – especially at a time of national anxiety over the quality of schools and schooling – then by analogy we must consider the damage that would result from institutions stepping back from their role in preparing future educators and education researchers. What better gift to the enemies of liberal education than our surrender?

Yes, this may sound self-serving, just more special pleading, another argument against the temptation for short-term savings that risk ruinous long-term consequences. But you don’t have to be a die-hard believer in the magic of markets to acknowledge that sometimes self-interest coincides with the common good. So, my role as dean of an education school should not automatically disqualify me from touting our comparative intellectual advantages. Nor does it require me to stodgily defend an aging status quo, either. This is not the time to dig our heels into the muddy turf of all our existing programs and insist that what we’ve been doing is all we should be doing. On the contrary, it means rising to the occasion and making sometimes tough decisions, based on review of available data; it means experimenting with “best bets” for innovation in the content and form of our work; it means evaluating our efforts and adjusting to evidence of imperfection or failure (to paraphrase from Bill Gates, “innovation without evaluation is just another fad.”)

Leading education schools across the country (including ours at GW!) have been engaged in that assignment for some time, propelled and circumscribed simultaneously by exogenous changes in “demand” for our products – some “structural” but most the result of the pandemic and other (hopefully unique) circumstances – and the reality of reduced resources. (News of budget woes – here and here, for example – is troubling, to say the least.) To quit now would be analogous to turning back, fatigued, after swimming half-way across the English Channel. We have come a long way and many of us have had to implement painful program and staff cuts. From my local experience and discussions with fellow deans, I’ll go out on a limb and project that many education-school faculty and staff today are feeling depleted, if not exhausted, but are energized by a vision of leadership and progress. To borrow the familiar adage, we have shown how to not let a crisis go to waste. Now we must stay the course on our journey of rebound, reform, and reimagination.

Lessons from education as a field of study

Although often treated as the unwanted sibling of the behavioral and social sciences, education enjoys a remarkable track record of high-quality research and methodological rigor built on rich theoretical foundations. Here I mention two themes, which will be familiar to philosophers and practitioners of teaching and learning, which I hope might anchor our discussions and actions.

I used to think …

“Positionality,” the practice of acknowledging prior experience, dispositions, and values that may affect the design and interpretation of research, is de rigeur in various academic circles. Critics may cringe at the intrusion of personality and identity in the workings of science, but when used judiciously it can flag hidden biases and other threats to objectivity. In that spirit, I suggest we work with our colleagues across the disciplines to encourage introspection and humility. For inspiration, I recommend an anthology called I Used To Think…And Now I Think, in which education researchers reflected on how their minds changed in response to evidence. Edited by a distinguished political scientist of education (a friend who passed away recently), the short book is a model for scholars and teachers who have the courage to update their “priors” based on new findings and interpretations. My friendly amendment is to retitle the rubric as “now I [still] THINK,” the triple-entendre to suggest it is okay to change one’s positions, or hold on to them, if the choice is based on rational deliberation. As argued in this masterful history of the United States, evidence and inquiry were themes of the American revolution, so this should not be a big ask.

Balancing the “what and how”

A fundamental question is whether we are supposed to emphasize “what to think” or “how to think.” It was a central theme in the doctrine of academic freedom issued by the American Association of University Professors in 1915. I used to think (!) teaching in the US was relatively less prone to indoctrination than in other countries, but thanks to my colleague Jon Zimmerman of the University of Pennsylvania I now think that was probably too charitable. In any case, I lean toward equipping students with habits of mind to help them reach (or revise) their own resolutions of complex questions, with minimal interference from teachers, administrators, school board members, media moguls, partisan operatives, self-righteous pundits, and religious authoritarians. I’m not suggesting that teachers (or administrators) purify themselves of values or feign total neutrality, which would be a disservice to the ideals of civic engagement in our messy and argumentative pluralist democracy. Finding the right blend of moral clarity and objective inquiry requires deft handling: for guidance, I turn to work by scholars and practitioners of the social studies and humanities. If members of our academic community – across our diverse disciplines – voluntarily applied an imagined scale of neutrality and indoctrination to their work, we might dispel the perception that our institutions are trapped in grips of ideological fervor at the expense of rigorous evidentiary inquiry.

From theory to practice

Just as schools alone cannot “save democracy,” so too no single university or college of education should be tasked with the broad agenda of repair. Cognizant of incentives and disincentives that constrain rational action, I am encouraged by possibilities to join forces with like-minded institutions and initiatives. Here I will mention just three.

AAU education school deans

Founded in 1900, the American Association of Universities currently has 71 members with significant research programs that produce over 600,000 degrees (undergraduate and graduate) and that employ close to 900,000 people. Deans of education schools in AAU institutions meet regularly to learn from one another and think together about their role as “influencers” in the broader enterprise of teacher preparation and education research. (There were some 1.5 million students in education programs in 2020, or roughly eight percent of the total postsecondary student population, enrolled in over 2100 programs. At a recent gathering, topics ranged from campus climate to academic freedom to the future of diversity to the advent of artificial intelligence – among the most pressing issues we face. Whether such deliberations will make a difference depends, of course, on the deans’ commitment to participate, on the support they receive from their home institutions, and on the willingness of colleagues across the disciplines to engage. One goal should be to leverage the reputation and accomplishments of the AAU in meetings with government and other leaders: the next meeting is planned for Washington, DC (to be co-hosted by GW and the University of Pennsylvania).

Penn Washington

A new initiative aims to enhance the role of universities in preserving and reinforcing the nation’s democratic values. Its most recent project, entitled “Penn Project on Rebuilding Government-Higher Education Relations,” addressed “the growing distrust between Congress and higher education institutions … and devising strategies for future enhancement.” I was honored to be among the invited participants from major colleges and universities, media outlets, foundations, and the private sector, for discussions of trends in college pricing, academic freedom, and the future of liberal academic values. With a picture-window view of the Capitol literally across the street from the meeting room, the symbolism was sharp: what are the most promising strategies to uphold the centuries-long tradition of academic-government engagement? Our deliberations put evidence ahead of advocacy, and the mood was cautiously optimistic about how such projects might advance the cause of liberal education in the near and more distant future.

Democracy and education

We will soon announce officially the launch of a new multi-year initiative, housed at GW, to advance research-informed strategies for improved civics education in schools and other settings. The project is intended as a collaborative hub for education leaders, foundations, think tanks, scientific societies, and institutions of higher learning. Its principal goal is continued attention to the dual roles of education as producer of “human capital” and “social capital,” the former signifying attention to workforce skills and the economy and the latter reflecting renewed public interest in education to foster knowledge and dispositions needed in pluralist democracies. The concept of “hub” emphasizes that good leadership includes building coalitions needed to sustain progress in our grand experiment; and it means connecting education to social justice, political economy, and the physical environment. Both through its process – balanced deliberations focused on empirical evidence and professional experience – and its products – briefing papers, research agendas, public workshops – the initiative will shine new light on promising innovations and on the need for diligence in reinforcing foundations of democratic education. (Stay tuned for more information about this project in the months ahead.)

Happy New Year

As we prepare to bid farewell to a terribly stressful year and welcome what we hope will be better days ahead, I’ll paraphrase a familiar joke: pessimists may be worried about 2025 … while optimists are starting to worry about 2026. My advice is that we “worry efficiently,” that we find a healthy balance between anxiety over observed trends and confidence in our ability to fix them. I remember a walk I took near Reagan Airport a few days after 9-11. The eerie quiet of parked planes brought tears. Then a passerby in military garb patted my shoulder and said, “don’t worry, we’ll be back.”

This isn’t the first time our educational values have been placed at risk. We’ll be back.

Best wishes to you and your loved ones for a year of peace, freedom, and good health.

In keeping with one of our traditions, I want our graduates and all our assembled guests to acknowledge our wonderful faculty.  If my colleagues behind me will rise for a moment… THANK YOU!!

Graduates, a bit of data for you to keep handy. You are about to join a very special group: according to the US Census bureau, about 10% of the 24 million Americans aged 25 and older hold master’s degrees. WOW… nice going!

AND – get this – just TWO percent have doctoral degrees!  Doctoral candidates, please stand so we can give you a special round of bravos!

To all of you, welcome to the club, in which membership is based on intellectual achievement and, as you know from your time in higher education, great tolerance for bureaucracy!

OK, onto “other business,” as it often says on meeting agendas. Here’s a bit of understatement: you’ve completed this chapter of your academic careers in difficult times, what with biological catastrophe of COVID, political and economic disruption, long overdue racial reawakening, climate and environmental disasters, and global violence and suffering at a scale and intensity not seen in decades.

Those are not just “outside” events, either. They affect us in our daily lives, as we dress the kids for school and care for our loved ones at home; in some cases, the problems are literally in our backyards and university yards.

And if that’s not enough, you’ve had to endure a dean with his corny jokes and attempts to reduce everything to baseball.

Watching you navigate your professional aspirations amid what we economists would call these “exogenous shocks” has been truly inspiring, and for that inspiration I know my faculty and staff colleagues here salute and thank you.

On this theme of navigation, by which I mean keeping our eyes on a hopefully sunny future while we cope with clouds of ugliness and suffering that surround us, a few reflections. I am drawn to one of America’s great scholars of education and racial justice, Professor James Banks, who reminded us through autobiography of what he called “the citizenship education dilemma.” From his childhood in segregated Marianna, Arkansas, Banks recalls the tension: education on the inside aimed at motivating democratic values, competing with realities on the outside that inherently contradict those values.

From Jim (and John Dewey and others) we learn that education is a lived experience, not a delivery service. Put differently, the three R’s of education are relevance, relevance, relevance.

It’s hard to turn theories and slogans into practice. But we must keep aspiring: as you all know, one of our guiding principles here in GSEHD is to connect what we do in our classrooms and clinics and boardrooms to the world around us.

But that path from aspiration to reality is full of obstacles. To help us navigate, then, we need a “moral compass,” by which I mean a set of rules or norms that help us make sense of a chaotic world and give us the courage and clarity to keep moving.

Bringing this into the modern digital era, we need to think of our compass as a functioning GPS – showing routes to guide us through uncertain terrain, warning us of hazards, estimating arrival time.

And just as a good GPS is programmed with dynamic evidence about the condition of roads and the behavior of other drivers, our moral GPS – as educators – has an equally vital role: it must enable us to formulate, test, and amend our narratives with data. We may imagine we’re on a smooth and scenic route, but we need to deal with dangerous potholes, reckless drivers, and other surprises.

In other words, our GPS must encourage us to challenge ourselves (and others) with objective truth. That’s the American way. As the great writer Jill Lepore noted in her history of the United States, our revolution was not only about liberal governance, but as significantly about the virtues of inquiry. We declared a grand aspiration, that “these truths are self-evident…” With those words we enshrined evidence, fact-finding, and healthy argumentation as pillars of our great republic.

I wish I had the wiring diagram for that GPS. Meanwhile, I’ll settle for what I hope won’t be a cop-out. For me the process – the pursuit of knowledge and the respect for evidence even when it seems to contradict our deeply held beliefs – can be more interesting and more valuable than the product.

What might help us in that process? Again, no quick answers, but rather I’ll share a few nuggets of inspiration borrowed from others, some wisdom that I try to remember as I navigate through risky and uncertain choices:

1)  If you see something, or hear something, say something. That’s a good bit of advice that we hear from our friends in homeland security, and it is worth applying in other contexts: Is someone you know advocating violence or preaching hate or otherwise violating basic human decency? Are words causing emotional pain or inciting physical harm? Call it out, demand the evidence, fight ignorance with facts. Your moral compass, your GPS, should be programmed to steer you from the greatest threat to civilized society – the complicity of silence.

2)  I used to think and now I think. That was the title for a volume of papers edited by the late Richard Elmore, in which scholars were asked to describe if and how ideas they once held dear were changed by new evidence. Try it on your own or with your friends. What have you learned that gives you an even slightly different outlook on things? If nothing else, it will promote humility, something in short supply these days.

3)  Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Voltaire was onto something, and his advice was validated by scientists of rationality centuries later. Celebrate progress by perpetuating it; don’t scoff at small gains that are not yet “at scale.” As the rabbis taught in the 2^nd century, to save one soul is to save the universe. Pursue noble dreams – even if they are hard to catch and you only get part way there.

4)  Speaking of dreams, I borrow from Amos Oz, the great Israeli novelist and peace activist: Everything that is born of a dream is destined to feel like a slight disappointment… the only way to keep a dream perfect … is to never try to live it out. Want a good example? Think of our namesake, President George Washington, and his promise to the Jewish community of Newport, RI, back in 1790, that “the US gives to bigotry no sanction…” Now there is a dream we all need to keep going after!

5)  Finally, on that business of inquiry and evidence, I’ll paraphrase Vaclav Havel, the great Czech statesman and dissident, a leader who knew tyranny and fought it: Keep the company of those who seek the truth – run from those who say they have found it.

I’ll close with a joke you’ve heard me use before. What’s the difference between optimists and pessimists? The pessimists just have more data! Maybe so, but here today I see solid evidence that validates my optimism. I see a racial, ethnic, gender, religious, national, and chronological mosaic that is the essence of the American experiment. You are the data that give us hope. Especially in these challenging times, I can’t thank you enough for providing me and my colleagues the evidence we need to bolster confidence in our collective future. Thank you for your contribution to GW – we are a better place because of you. Please keep in touch as you chase your dreams; please keep making a difference. And as Lester Holt reminds us every night, “take care of yourselves – and each other.”