For decades, Sudan has not only been a safe haven for terrorists and an ally of such unsavory regimes as Iran and Qatar, it has also suffered from poverty, a bloody civil war, and a despotic Islamist regime. Its recent decision to make peace with Israel follows on the heels of—and flows from—the end of this long period of misrule. Jonathan Schanzer comments:

For the United States, the story of Sudan . . . is another diplomatic victory for the Trump administration and its “outside in” approach to negotiating peace with peripheral Arab states while de-prioritizing the demands of the intransigent Palestinian leadership. But there is more to celebrate. This was a victory for American foreign policy. Under American sanctions, Sudan was an international pariah. It was blocked from the U.S.-led banking system and shunned by the West for nearly 30 years. With the limited remaining resources, Omar al-Bashir’s government fed itself first, while casting the population into poverty.

Having reached their limit, the Sudanese people took matters into their own hands and won back their country. In other words, the Sudanese people earned their [removal from the state sponsors of terrorism list], and the United States did the right thing by removing the sanctions. In so doing, the United States sent an important message to the people of other countries ruled by war criminals and terrorists: you will be rewarded for winning your freedom.

Equally important was the lesson learned at home. Democrats and Republicans, while differing on the margins, did not accommodate Sudan until it truly turned a corner. There were no grand bargains involving billions of dollars in sanctions relief. There was no appeasement. We upheld our principles and won. And we did so without firing a shot.

Here’s looking at you, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

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?