In a May 6 press briefing, Rob Malley—the White House’s top envoy to Iran—indicated that Washington might abandon sanctions on Tehran for its support of terrorism and its human-rights violations in exchange for its agreeing to abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Richard Goldberg and Mark Dubowitz explain:

[During the original nuclear negotiations], then-President Barack Obama made one important promise: no matter what, the United States would retain the right to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic to stop the flow of money to its missile program, sponsorship of terrorism, and abuse of human rights.

According to Malley’s interpretation of the JCPOA, the entities provided sanctions relief under the 2015 deal did not just receive “nuclear sanctions” relief. They were given blanket immunity to finance terrorism, missile proliferation [in violation of international law], and human-rights abuses in perpetuity. Any attempt to impose terrorism sanctions on an Iranian bank that is actively financing terrorism, for example, would be a violation of the JCPOA, according to Malley, if that terror bank was initially granted nuclear sanctions relief in 2015.

That is most certainly a shift in U.S. policy—toward Tehran. . . . The danger of a policy that grants Tehran’s largest banks and companies full immunity from terrorism and missile sanctions is on full display today in Israel. Giving a green light to terror and missile finance will vastly expand the terror budget for terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon—putting Israel in even greater danger.

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?