During one of the funnier scenes from the campus protests last year, students camping out (against university rules) on the quad of their university demanded they be brought food (or, as they termed it, “humanitarian aid”) lest they be forced to walk to a nearby cafeteria. Such incidents are a reminder that, despite the deadly ideals motivating them, the demonstrators were acting more like children, believing they could get their way about events in the Middle East by standing around and yelling. And that, writes Rita Koganzon, may be at the heart of the problem:

Universities don’t openly describe students as children, but that is how they treat them. This was highlighted in the spring, when so many pro-Palestinian student protesters—most of them legal adults—faced minimal consequences for even flagrant violations of their universities’ policies. (Some were arrested—but those charges were often dropped.) American universities’ relative generosity to their students may seem appealing, . . . but it has a dark side, in the form of increased control of student life.

If universities today won’t hold students responsible for their bad behavior, they also won’t leave them alone when they do nothing wrong. Administrators send out position statements after major national and international political events to convey the approved response, micromanage campus parties and social events, dictate scripts for sexual interactions, extract allegiance to boutique theories of power, and herd undergraduates into mandatory dormitories where their daily lives can be more comprehensively monitored and shaped.

A result of this combination of increased lenience and increased control is a kind of simulacrum of adult independence that in reality infantilizes students and protects them from responsibility—for both their good choices and their bad ones.

Considering the current state of Israel-Arab relations, Ghaith al-Omari writes

First and foremost, no ceasefire will be possible without the release of Israeli hostages and commitments to disarm Hamas and remove it from power. The final say on these matters rests with Hamas commanders on the ground in Gaza, who have been largely impervious to foreign pressure so far. At minimum, however, the United States should insist that Qatari and Egyptian mediators push Hamas’s external leadership to accept these conditions publicly, which could increase pressure on the group’s Gaza leadership.

Washington should also demand a clear, public position from key Arab states regarding disarmament. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas endorsed this position in a June letter to Saudi Arabia and France, giving Arab states Palestinian cover for endorsing it themselves.

Some Arab states have already indicated a willingness to play a significant role, but they will have little incentive to commit resources and personnel to Gaza unless Israel (1) provides guarantees that it will not occupy the Strip indefinitely, and (2) removes its veto on a PA role in Gaza’s future, even if only symbolic at first. Arab officials are also seeking assurances that any role they play in Gaza will be in the context of a wider effort to reach a two-state solution.

On the other hand, Washington must remain mindful that current conditions between Israel and the Palestinians are not remotely conducive to . . . implementing a two-state solution.