Every year, Washington sends millions of dollars to the American University of Beirut (AUB), an institution that for many decades hasn’t lived up to the ideals of tolerance and liberal education on which it was founded. Tamara Berens argues that it is time for the U.S. to end the relationship:

In recent years, the AUB has been accused of providing material aid to Hizballah, a designated terrorist organization at odds with U.S. interests.

The university has an American Studies department with a chair endowed in the memory of the [viciously anti-Israel] Arab-American scholar Edward Said. . . . From 2015 to 2017, Steven Salaita occupied this chair. Salaita had previously made headlines when the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign withdrew his tenure-faculty appointment after he was found to have issued a series of incendiary tweets relating to Israel and the Palestinians, including one that read, “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible to something honorable since 1948.”

Before Salaita, the chair had been held by Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor with a long history of harshly criticizing Israel and American counterterrorism policy who had expressed support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Though private institutions can teach what they want and hire whom they want, the U.S. should not pursue the worthy goal of liberalizing the Middle East by underwriting illiberal universities. . . . If the American University of Beirut has become American in name only, it no longer deserves America’s support.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.