Daily Archives: 15 August 2025

Not Entirely Sufficient

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Harvard University and the Federal government apparently are nearing a deal that would pressure Harvard to abide by federal regulations around merit-based hiring and admissions as well as protecting students’ civil rights in return for a $500 million payment to “workforce and vocational programs.”

Pressure only, though, no overt, absolute requirement.

The administration wouldn’t appoint a monitor to oversee Harvard’s compliance with the deal. The university would pledge to continue to abide….

That’s a serious weakness in the supposed deal. Harvard’s management team already isn’t abiding by those regulations, and it already isn’t protecting its students’ civil rights—much less better reducing the school’s antisemitic bigotry and its pro-terrorist stance. Since it’s not doing, it can’t be continuing.

An addition to this deal is needed: Harvard should be required to put up a cash bond, say $500 million, for 10 years against its performance of its pledge. At the end of those 10 years, should the university actually have abided, the principal would be returned, and the accrued earnings on the principal paid to those workforce and vocational programs.

Blinken Misunderstands

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Ex-Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants a Palestinian state to be recognized, but his way and on his schedule, not those of France, UK, and Canada. I won’t go into those latter three’s offers, which individually and together amount to nothing more than Israel’s abject surrender.

Blinken, on the other hand, has centered his view on the idea that an Israeli occupation of Gaza

would perpetuate the misery of innocent Palestinians and be a recipe for an enduring insurgency that bleeds Israel militarily and morally.

Blinken’s position here, though, proceeds from a false premise, and given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s publicly stated position on the matter, I have a hard time believing Blinken is unaware of the falsity of his premise. It’s either that, or he thinks Netanyahu is lying.

The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu does not want to occupy Gaza. He has said—and he’s right about this—that it’s necessary for Israel to control by its physical presence all of Gaza in order to finish destroying Hamas and driving the remnants out of the strip. Following that, Israel would withdraw completely in favor of Arab governance of Gaza via a body assembled and operated by a collection of Arab states. That’s an Israeli occupation in name only, with a clearly stated and publicly measurable milestone for Israel leaving. That’s not occupation in the sense that Russia wants for Ukraine or that the People’s Republic of China wants for the Republic of China.

An extension of that offer from Netanyahu is this: he’s saying it’s time for the Arab nations of the Middle East to put up or shut up. Those nations’ leaderships must accept and honor their own responsibilities and do the things, with their own resources, necessary to govern Gaza and restore the residents to safety, prosperity, and the liberty of determining their futures themselves. With this, there would be no need for a “Palestinian state,” which is an idea that failed with the collapse of the Oslo Accords decades ago and has continued to fail ever since.

I claim that a good start to this process would be for the Arab members of the Abraham Accords to put up.