Teaching an art-history survey course this fall, a professor at Hamline University—a small liberal-arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota—dedicated a class session to Islamic art. That day, the professor showed students two medieval paintings of Mohammad, both by Muslim artists, and discussed the various Muslim attitudes toward such depictions. The president of the campus Muslim Students Association soon complained of Islamophobia, and Hamline administrators then announced that the instructor had been dismissed. Jonathan Zimmerman writes:

One Hamline faculty member—just one—publicly defended the professor, writing an essay for the [student newspaper] that pleaded for a historically informed discussion of the paintings. Two days later, the paper removed the essay from its website. And the day after that, in a message to all university employees, Hamline’s President Fayneese S. Miller and Associate Vice-President of Inclusive Excellence David Everett declared that “respect for the observant Muslims in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”

How about non-observant Muslims, and everyone else in the class? They get no respect. Nor does academic freedom, which was established to protect faculty against precisely the kind of attacks that sank the Hamline professor.

In dismissing its professor, Hamline claimed to be striking a blow for “inclusive excellence,” to quote David Everett’s grimly Orwellian title. But it actually reinforced ugly stereotypes of Muslims as intolerant, small-minded, and provincial. And it excluded the views of anybody else—including many Muslims—who might see the world differently from the offended students. That’s not excellence; it’s cowardice.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?