After establishing the identity—agreed upon by the majority of scholars—between King Ahasuerus in the book of Esther and the Persian ruler known to the Greeks as Xerxes (both variants of the original Persian Khshayarsha), Mitchell First seeks extra-biblical evidence of the book’s other characters:

The Greek historians Herodotus and Ctesias refer to Xerxes’ wife as Amestris. Although some slight linguistic connection between the name Amestris and the name Vashti . . . seems possible, a stronger connection exists between the Greek Amestris and the Hebrew Esther.

The -is at the end [of Amestris] is just a Greek suffix added to turn the foreign name into a proper Greek [feminine noun]. The name . . . is based around the consonants m, s t, and r; the name as recorded in the Megillah is based around the consonants s, t, and r. Very likely, this is not coincidence; perhaps her Persian name was composed of the consonants m, s t, and r and the m was not preserved in the Hebrew. . . .

[Both] Herodotus and Ctesias depict Amestris as cruel. It should be noted, however, that many scholars today doubt the stories told by the Greek historians about their enemies, the Persians; those concerning royal Persian women are particularly suspect.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.