The headlines about absurd protests and pseudo-scandals on American campuses, and the often craven responses to them by college administrators, give the sense that academia is imploding. An adumbration of this latest crisis can be found in the end of Lawrence Summers’ tenure as president of Harvard in 2006. Summers found himself in hot water because he transgressed taboos about race and gender and also, writes Edward Alexander, about Israel:

In September 2002, [after Cornel West had accused him of racism, Summers] gave a speech to the Harvard community deploring the upsurge of anti-Semitism in many parts of the globe. He included synagogue bombings, physical assaults on Jews, desecration of Jewish holy places, and denial of the right of “the Jewish state to exist.” But his most immediate concern was that “at Harvard and . . . universities across the country” faculty-initiated petitions were calling “for the university to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested.” This brought an avalanche of attacks on Summers from Israel-hating professors throughout this country and also the United Kingdom. . . .

Once Summers had failed the litmus test of contemporary liberalism called “the Palestinian cause,” he was already in great danger. Questioning “gender” doctrine was his third strike, not his second; and calling the BDS movement what it most assuredly is—anti-Semitic—was the only “heresy” he did not recant. . . . Matthew Arnold was prescient when he wrote (about Oxford, England’s Harvard): “there are our young barbarians, all at play.” Summers would eventually find out that in this game, as in others, three strikes and you’re out.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.