“The ethnic-studies movement,” writes Jonathan Marks, “brings together left-wing ‘scholar-activists’ seeking to advance left-wing causes.” Recently, the California State University (CSU) system mandated that each of it 500,000 of its students take at least one ethnic-studies course. Marks comments:

Governor Newsom vetoed a bill to require ethnic studies at California high schools amid disagreements about the model curriculum. Among other things, Jewish groups have criticized multiple drafts for minimizing or even fostering anti-Semitism.

[A]ssociations under the ethnic-studies umbrella, including the Association for Asian American Studies, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association have endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. There was even a BDS unit in the first draft of the model curriculum. That unit has since been removed, but it was useful to help everyone understand the enterprise’s spirit.

But what if everyone had to take a course in the field? Then the professorate could rail against predatory capitalism and get paid to do it.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”