In 2015, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) banned “issues-oriented” advertising of a political or religious nature from its buses, trains, and stations. Following this policy, the WMATA recently rejected a Christmas-themed advertisement submitted by the Catholic archdiocese, which has responded by challenging the policy in court. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

The ad, which was to be displayed on the side of WMATA buses, depicted the three shepherds against a starry night and urged commuters to “find the perfect gift” for the season—i.e., faith and service to the poor. According to the complaint, the transit authority rejected the ad soon after it was submitted, and subsequently refused to meet representatives of the archdiocese hoping to make their case.

The WMATA claims that its policy is non-discriminatory and therefore constitutional. All forms of political and religious expression are restricted in theory. But the archdiocese makes a strong case that the policy has been applied in “arbitrary and unreasonable” fashion. Since the ban was promulgated, for example, the WMATA has accepted ads for yoga, which is based on Hindu spirituality, as well as the Salvation Army, which is a Protestant Christian organization. Commercial ads pegged to the “holiday season” would also presumably survive WMATA scrutiny, even though the “season” in question refers to Christian and Jewish holy days.

No government authority should exercise such broad and unaccountable discretion when it comes to restricting First Amendment rights, even if the policy were applied uniformly. As it is, the policy prevents political, civil-society, commercial, and religious groups of all stripes from making their pitch, so to speak, in the nation’s capital, home base for all three branches of the U.S. government.

The cultural impact of the policy is equally deplorable. Years ago, the late [Catholic theologian and intellectual] Richard John Neuhaus and other social conservatives raised the alarm about the “naked public square”—democracies shorn of Judeo-Christianity and the public moral culture essential to sustaining freedom. The naked public square flies in the face of an American constitutional tradition that invites religious symbols and ideas while maintaining the basic secularity of the state.

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.