On Wednesday, giving in only partially to pressure from the Trump administration, the Turkish government transferred the American pastor Andrew Brunson—held for two years on fictitious charges of terrorism—from prison to house arrest. Brunson fell victim to the mass detentions in the wake of the abortive coup two years ago. But he is not the only prisoner Washington should concern itself with, argue Henri Barkey and Eric Edelman: three Turkish nationals employed by the U.S. State Department have also been detained:

[Such] “foreign-service nationals” . . . form the backbone of U.S. diplomatic efforts abroad. No American embassy or consulate could operate without them. The three men have been detained in Turkey on bogus charges. Two are in jail, and one is under house arrest. As with tens of thousands of others imprisoned by the Turkish authorities in recent years, the charges against them are the product of paranoid conspiracy theories that beggar the imagination. . . .

The unwillingness of Washington to apply public pressure on Turkey to release these State Department employees sends an alarming message to the other local staff in Turkey: they are all subject to intimidation and pressure from Turkish authorities, and their employer doesn’t have their back. In effect, Turkish intelligence now has leverage over part of U.S. operations, shattering diplomatic conventions. Many of these local employees have resigned. Worse, the Turks’ actions may be copied by other authoritarian states that notice the U.S. government’s indifference.

It is quite possible that Erdogan will release Brunson [since] Turkey may soon need help from the United States, a NATO ally, if its ailing economy slides into a meltdown. Brunson’s release would be welcome, but it would also present a danger that the U.S. government would consider the matter of unjustified detentions resolved—condemning [the foreign-service employees] to years in Turkish jails.

Congress has an opportunity to play an important role here. A new U.S. ambassador to Turkey is likely to be nominated soon. The Senate should use the confirmation process to hold the administration accountable for the safety and security of all State Department employees. . . . A U.S. failure to show that it stands by its people will cripple the State Department’s ability to represent America overseas. Either foreign-service nationals are on the U.S. team, or they are not.

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.