At the start of a 1983 collection of his essays, Irving Kristol—the so-called “godfather of neoconservatism”—cited an epigraph by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “Everything that passes for politics today will be unmasked as religion tomorrow.” Matthew Continetti argues that Kristol’s belief in the theological roots of politics, a belief summed up by this quotation, animated much of his thinking. To Kristol, whose essays on Jews and Judaism are among the less well-known of his many writings, the “rabbinic” impulse, with its emphasis on law and tradition, was politically superior to the utopianism of what he termed “gnosticism.” In this light, Continetti goes on to discuss the relevance of Kristol’s political theology to today’s political debates. (Interview by Devorah Goldman and Daniel Wiser, Jr. Audio, 46 minutes.)

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.