Among several Democratic politicians emerging as potential candidates for the 2020 presidential primary is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. Gabbard has already made clear her ideas about foreign policy, which combine strict noninterventionism with a tough stance toward Islamist terror. But, notes Noah Rothman, her approach brings with it “support for some of the world’s most atrocious and bloody authoritarian regimes,” namely those of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. Could this unlikely combination gain traction in her party?

Gabbard traveled to Damascus in January of last year—long after the Assad regime was credibly implicated in some of the worst humanitarian atrocities of this century—where she met with the Syrian dictator. . . . In April 2017, Gabbard . . . suggested that the Assad regime was not responsible for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in which over 70 were killed and hundreds more seriously injured. When the Trump administration responded with a limited cruise-missile strike on Syrian targets, Gabbard accused the White House of acting in service to the objectives of al-Qaeda and of having been swayed by “war hawks” who seek to escalate America’s “illegal regime-change war to overthrow the Syrian government.” Even as evidence of Assad’s culpability for the attack mounted, Gabbard held fast to her skepticism. . . .

Gabbard’s advocacy on behalf of the genocidal despot in Syria invariably aligned her with Assad’s chief patron, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. . . . Gabbard’s conspicuous adoption of the Putinist line on Syria places her outside the mainstream of her party, but it once yielded admiration from Donald Trump’s brain trust. . . . As is often the case, the quasi-isolationist views of the “America First” wing of the GOP align with those of the left’s appeasement caucus.

But that caucus has lost much of its influence over the Democratic party in the age of Trump. Those on the left who could once be counted on to endorse a more humble and conciliatory approach to Russo-American relations have abandoned that perennial campaign plank, leaving Gabbard out on a limb. Maybe Gabbard thinks she can command the fealty of that forsaken Democratic constituency in a presidential campaign, and she might. But it’s more likely that Gabbard will stand as a painful reminder to voters about what Democratic stewardship of Russian-American relations and crises like the Syrian civil war looks like. That’s the last thing Democrats want.

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.