Reviewing Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings—a new collection, edited by Kenneth Hart Green, that includes several heretofore unpublished or untranslated essays—Steven Lenzner explains the 13th-century rabbi and philosopher’s impact on his 20th-century student:

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is the only author on whom Strauss wrote in each decade of his life; he was the one, above all, to whom Strauss always returned. . . . In fact, studying these writings leads the reader to the opinion that, to the extent one can employ such a label for a thinker of Strauss’s rank, he was a “Maimonidean.”. . .

Why was Maimonides of such singular importance to Leo Strauss? Let me note his most important debt: it was in and through his study of (and writing on) [Maimonides’ philosophical magnum opus], the Guide of the Perplexed, that Strauss made his great rediscovery of the art of esoteric writing, by which philosophers communicate their serious thoughts only to the most intelligent and careful readers. . . .

But it was not simply the art of writing that Strauss learned from Maimonides. The medieval philosopher also served as Strauss’s chief guide in navigating the problem that the art of writing serves to ameliorate—namely, the theologico-political problem. That problem is a special version of the more general one of the relationship of philosophy to the political community, the “city.” The city demands unquestioning allegiance to its way of life; philosophy questions everything—not least, the authoritative opinions to which the city demands allegiance. This political problem became the theologico-political problem due to the introduction (as Maimonides notes) of authoritative revealed texts that also demand the unquestioning allegiance of adherents, but in a manner that sets up an additional tension, a third party with pretensions to challenge the claims of both philosophy and city.

So Strauss learned from Maimonides how to navigate a minefield denser than the one faced by the classical philosophers, albeit with the same end in mind: to promote philosophy while giving political society and revelation their due.

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.