When Tabia Lee was hired as the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at a California community college, she was excited at the opportunity to defend the goals and values that had animated her career in education until then. She realized something was deeply wrong when she—an African American—was accused by a colleague of “whitespeaking, whitesplaining, and supporting white supremacy” for suggesting a plan to make meetings more effective. Another unpleasant surprise came after meeting with Jewish students, who approached her with fairly modest requests. When Lee relayed the requests to her superiors, she was told of an unwritten policy of ignoring them on the grounds that “Jews are white oppressors.”

In an eye-opening conversation, Lee takes the economist Glenn Loury on a journey into the bizarre world of DEI, and explains how DEI bureaucracies don’t simply ignore anti-Semitism but foster it—contributing to the present campus crisis. (Video, 53 minutes. Audio is also available at the link below and on the usual podcast platforms.)

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”