As Russian and Syrian jets pummel Aleppo, making a deliberate effort to target civilians, John Kerry insists that yet more negotiations with Moscow can somehow bring an end to the fighting, American generals have told Congress that they are reluctant to go along with Kerry’s plan to share intelligence with Russia, and the president remains silent. Frederic Hof writes:

With defenseless civilians in the bullseye, there is no prospect for diplomatic progress in Syria; and the Assad regime and Russia make Islamic State look hesitant by comparison when it comes to mass homicide. . . .

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, won the Pulitzer Prize for a . . . volume about 20th-century mass murder and how American presidents either measured up to the challenge or skulked away. For it is only presidential leadership that can convert mass indifference to pointed resolve. It is the lack of such leadership in this administration that gives birth to diplomatic long shots that benefit neither from useful leverage nor from a unified executive-branch position. The administration even went out of its way to sink preemptively a piece of sanctions legislation aimed at mitigating civilian slaughter in Syria, one that certainly would have gotten the attention of Kerry’s Russian counterpart. . . .

A careful consideration of military options is not pleasant work for any American president. Yet in this case it must be done. Yes, the Russian presence in Syria—about to mark its first anniversary—complicates things. No, no one is calling for invasion, occupation, or violent regime change. Unless, however, the Assad regime’s free ride for mass murder is brought to a screeching halt—and soon—there may be hell to pay, and not just by Syrians.

The Vladimir Putins of the world may not always draw the correct conclusions from their perceptions of weakness, but they inevitably draw conclusions that can create danger—and not just in Syria. President Obama should . . . demand of his defense secretary options for exacting a price from a murderous, cowardly regime currently convinced it can do with absolute impunity as it pleases to children and their parents, where and when it wants.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.