America’s Turkey Problem, and Israel’s

A member of NATO and once a staunch ally of the Jewish state, Turkey has over the past decade repeatedly provoked Israel, becoming the main sponsor and protector of Hamas and backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, while its president is given to vocal expressions of hostility and anti-Semitism. It has also provoked the U.S., most of all by flirting with both Russia and Iran. At the same time, Ankara has fundamental strategic differences with Moscow and with Tehran, and has engaged militarily with the proxies of both. Thus Turkey’s interests in certain ways align with those of America and Israel, as has been seen on occasion in Syria and, more recently, in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Michael Doran argues that Washington has mistakenly driven away Ankara, which has legitimate grievances against U.S. policies, and that the latter should seek to renew the fractured alliance. Dan Schueftan, however, argues that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made such a renewal impossible, and so long as he is in power both Israel and America should treat Turkey as an enemy. (Moderated by Gadi Taub. Video, 77 minutes. In English with Hebrew subtitles.)

Read more at Shomer Saf

More about: Azerbaijan, Israeli Security, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, U.S. Foreign policy

How to Save the Universities

To Peter Berkowitz, the rot in American institutions of higher learning exposed by Tuesday’s hearings resembles a disease that in its early stages was easy to cure but difficult to diagnose, and now is so advanced that it is easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. Recent analyses of these problems have now at last made it to the pages of the New York Times but are, he writes, “tardy by several decades,” and their suggested remedies woefully inadequate:

They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of band-aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs. And they overlook the mainstream media’s complicity in largely ignoring, downplaying, or dismissing repeated warnings extending back a quarter century and more—largely, but not exclusively, from conservatives—that our universities undermine the public interest by attacking free speech, eviscerating due process, and hollowing out and politicizing the curriculum.

The remedy, Berkowitz argues, would be turning universities into places that cultivate, encourage, and teach freedom of thought and speech. But doing so seems unlikely:

Having undermined respect for others and the art of listening by presiding over—or silently acquiescing in—the curtailment of dissenting speech for more than a generation, the current crop of administrators and professors seems ill-suited to fashion and implement free-speech training. Moreover, free speech is best learned not by didactic lectures and seminars but by practicing it in the reasoned consideration of competing ideas with those capable of challenging one’s assumptions and arguments. But where are the professors who can lead such conversations? Which faculty members remain capable of understanding their side of the argument because they understand the other side?

Read more at RealClearPolitics

More about: Academia, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Speech, Israel on campus