Shortly after his release from the gulag in 1986, Natan Sharansky—who had been imprisoned for requesting to leave the Soviet Union for Israel—traveled to the U.S., where he met the late Senator John McCain for the first time. Sharansky recalls that first meeting, which, he says, formed a lasting mutual affinity:

“I understand why you refused to be released on the USSR’s terms two years ago,” [McCain] told me then, referring to a deal I had rejected, to the shock and consternation of many Western supporters. Many couldn’t understand why I refused to request an early release from prison for health reasons. After all, the Soviet authorities had secretly promised their American counterparts that they would grant such a request.

McCain, who experienced the horrors of captivity and dictatorship at first hand, understood what they couldn’t. He knew how such a request would have been presented by the Soviet authorities, how they would have used it to claim that I, their critic, accepted their authority to control my fate. He knew how it would have been used to break the spirit of other dissidents.

McCain understood my reasons because he himself had made the same choice. When the North Vietnamese government offered to release him ahead of other POWs, he declined, despite the atrocious conditions in which he was held. Some values, he knew, stood above survival and comfort.

McCain’s first-hand knowledge of these realities and truths shone through his endeavors throughout his long and illustrious political career. He never stopped supporting dissidents who suffered under dictatorial regimes, and he never forgot that some things should take precedence over considerations of Realpolitik and party lines. . . .

The American people lost a man of rare integrity this week, and I lost a very dear comrade-in-arms. May his legacy live on.

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.