Harvard has of late become the focus of the Trump administration’s attempts to force the universities to reform themselves. While the fight has moved far beyond anti-Semitism, the failures of university administrators to protect the civil rights of Jewish students, and the transformation of college campuses into breeding grounds for anti-Israel radicalism, were the reasons it began. Jews, therefore, find themselves in the middle of this fight even if they are indifferent to happenings at Harvard.

But have the administration’s efforts gone too far, threatening freedom of speech and risking throwing out the baby of learning with the anti-Semitic bathwater? Peter Berkowitz provides a judicious evaluation:

[S]ome of Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs likely run afoul of Title VI prohibitions on race-based discrimination. That not only entitles but obliges the Trump administration to initiate proceedings, consistent with federal law, to freeze federal funds. Furthermore, government support for universities is not a blank check and academic freedom does not confer a shield of invulnerability. To warrant taxpayer support, universities must earn citizens’ trust and benefit the nation. Too often, though, they undercut the public interest by discriminating based on race, indulging anti-Semitism, politicizing the curriculum, and teaching students to avoid or silence rather than listen to and debate opinions with which they disagree.

Notwithstanding their many and serious faults, [however], America’s elite universities conduct extensive and costly scientific research that fuels America’s global leadership in technology. A substantial portion of the billions in federal funds earmarked for Harvard frozen by the Trump administration supports such scientific research. Consequently, Trump’s Harvard remedy erodes America’s “technological edge.” By operating against Harvard with a sledgehammer, the Trump administration not only breaks its promise to respect free speech but also impairs a core national-security interest.

Yet Berkowitz finds himself unimpressed even by the more reasonable defenders of Harvard—for instance Steven Pinker, a frequent critic of the excesses of the universities:

Pinker underestimates the cumulative damage Harvard has inflicted on itself over many years by sidelining merit, censoring speech, admitting students unprepared to grapple with moral and historical complexity, and hiring and retaining faculty and administrators indifferent or ill-disposed to academic freedom. . . . Harvard is at least as bad as it seems.

Over the weekend, Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal reported about a formal letter, signed by five prominent sheikhs from the Judean city of Hebron and addressed to the Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat. The letter proposed that Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest municipalities, “break out of the Palestinian Authority (PA), establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.” Kaufman spoke with some of the sheikhs, who emphasized their resentment at the PA’s corruption and fecklessness, and their desire for peace.

Responding to these unusual events, Seth Mandel looks back to what he describes as his favorite “‘what if’ moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” involving

a plan for the West Bank drawn up in the late 1980s by the former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens. The point of the plan was to prioritize local Arab Palestinian leadership instead of facilitating the PLO’s top-down governing approach, which was corrupt and authoritarian from the start.

Mandel, however, is somewhat skeptical about whether such a plan can work in 2025:

Yet, . . . while it is almost surely a better idea than anything the PA has or will come up with, the primary obstacle is not the quality of the plan but its feasibility under current conditions. The Arens plan was a “what if” moment because there was no clear-cut governing structure in the West Bank and the PLO, then led by Yasir Arafat, was trying to direct the Palestinian side of the peace process from abroad (Lebanon, then Tunisia). In fact, Arens’s idea was to hold local elections among the Palestinians in order to build a certain amount of democratic legitimacy into the foundation of the Arab side of the conflict.

Whatever becomes of the Hebron proposal, there is an important lesson for Gaza from the ignored Arens plan: it was a mistake, as one sheikh told Kaufman, to bring in Palestinian leaders who had spent decades in Tunisia and Lebanon to rule the West Bank after Oslo. Likewise, Gaza will do best if led by the people there on the ground, not new leaders imported from the West Bank, Qatar, or anywhere else.