◼ At least Claudine Gay wasn’t caught plagiarizing someone embarrassing, such as Neil Kinnock.
◼ On January 2, after weeks of serious allegations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned from her position as president of Harvard University. Her tenure was justifiably the shortest on record. Gay was transparently guilty of multiple instances of plagiarism—as part of its attempted damage control, Harvard permitted her to “amend” some of her earlier publications, a remedy it does not allow its errant undergraduates—and the light shone upon her academic misconduct also revealed the curious meagerness of her scholarship, a mere eleven publications over her career. But of course Gay’s academic record came under scrutiny in the first place owing to her repulsive testimony before Congress in early December. Addressing the issue of campus antisemitism, she said that calls to murder Jews and extinguish Israel were to be protected speech on campus, “depending on context”: a type of free-speech absolutism Harvard notoriously does not practice across the board. Her defenders cry foul, saying the outsider identity of her enemies and her own status as a black woman matter more than her misdeeds. Her detractors understand that defenses of this kind show the depth of the rot in academia.
◼ In mid December, commanding majorities of both the Ohio house and senate approved a bill to ban “gender affirming” care for minors and to require student-athletes to compete with their chromosomal equivalents. On December 29, Governor Mike DeWine vetoed the bill. His rationale was strained. His veto statement accepted the premises of transgender activists, dubbing these treatments a matter of life or death. Yet he also professed to agree with the legislature that body-altering surgery should not be performed on minors. He asserted that families, not the government, ought to handle medical decisions in this sensitive area. Yet he has had no similar reservations about banning flavored menthol cigarettes, even for adults. The Ohio legislature should override this disappointing veto, which demonstrates that gender-confused youths aren’t the only ones confused about gender.
◼ While campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley committed a political gaffe that revealed something less than flattering about her character and mettle as a politician. Asked at a town hall by a voter what she, the former governor of South Carolina, believed to have been the cause of the Civil War, she produced a word salad for the next 45 seconds, pointedly avoiding the word “slavery.” In the past, she has forthrightly identified the centrality of slavery to the conflict; on this occasion, she appears to have hesitated in fear of a primary audience that she failed to respect enough to level with. She later blamed the question on a Democratic “plant,” which compounded her mistake: Candidates should be able to answer easy questions whatever their source.
Editor’s Note: Was slavery the only commanding issue of The Civil War, The War Between the States as some would call it? Some would it was, others would disagree. Both, in my opinion, would be correct but I also see the destruction of slavery in the United States was paramount in reaching the ideals of our original Constitution. While the Civil War decided the issue of slavery, it also destroyed the original constitutions goal of individual freedom.
◼ Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows has refused to allow Donald Trump onto the ballot. She has rejected nonpartisan attempts to reverse her decision. Acting as judge, jury, and executioner on Article 3 of the 14th Amendment—a constitutional provision barring from office those who have engaged in insurrection—Bellows followed the example of the Colorado supreme court. Even if Bellows has the authority, an assertion challenged by some scholars, it’s a dangerous power requiring prudent application. Much like the Colorado court, Bellows broadly interprets “insurrection” and “engaged in.” Post-decision, Bellows touted Maine’s commitment to voting rights, despite having just excluded a primary candidate favored by Republicans. The fundamental problem with the decisions by Maine and Colorado is a legal misunderstanding that challenges the core of self-government.
◼ Trump may rage about the deep state, but he wants the FBI portion of the deep state to have state-of-the-art facilities. “The FBI Headquarters should not be moved to a far away location, but should stay right where it is, in a new and spectacular building,” Trump proclaimed on Truth Social. For years, the General Services Administration had been looking for a new site for the headquarters, narrowing the list of options to Springfield, Va., and Greenbelt or Landover, Md. In early November, the GSA announced that it had picked Greenbelt—a surprise, as a panel of career GSA and FBI officials had unanimously recommended Springfield. The GSA employee who overruled the panel? Nina M. Albert, a former vice president of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Guess who owns the land for the site in Greenbelt? The WMATA. A broad coalition, including FBI director Christopher Wray and Virginia politicians from both parties, called Albert’s decision “irrevocably undermined and tainted.” The inspector general of the Department of Justice is investigating. The FBI is the last agency we should want built on a foundation of corruption.
◼ Following reports that members of the armed services participated in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered an independent study into possible extremism in the ranks. The results, from the Institute for Defense Analyses, are now in. There is little cause for concern. The IDA found fewer than 100 verified cases of politically motivated extremist violence per year in recent years. There was no preponderantly right-wing tilt to the cases it did find. Moreover, according to publicly available charges, fewer than ten active service members have been implicated in the riot—ten more than there should have been but, as a percentage of all service members, no higher than that of the general population. Whatever fears Austin may have had that the U.S. military has become a hotbed of right-wing radicalism have proved unfounded. He might consider ending the Biden administration’s effort—with DEI trainings, assignments of Ibram X. Kendi books to young officers, and more—to make it a hotbed of left-wing radicalism.
◼ Is it possible to care about events beyond America’s border and still be concerned about what is happening here? Tucker Carlson, in an ever more unhinged disposition in the months following his ouster from Fox News, says no. Carlson has accused those on “the right” (his air quotes) who have paid attention to the Israel–Hamas war, such as Ben Shapiro, of doing so to the exclusion of domestic concerns. “They don’t care about the country at all,” Carlson claimed. Shapiro refuted this accusation, noting that he has devoted much attention to the immigration crisis and other issues that Carlson cited. Shapiro was, if anything, too polite. Carlson has himself provided extensive coverage of other countries, even hosting shows from Hungary and Argentina. If he objects to caring about Israel in particular, he ought to say so.
◼ Aleksei Navalny has been transferred to IK-3, a prison colony in the Arctic. Navalny is a Russian opposition leader. IK-3 is known as “Polar Wolf.” It was founded as part of the Soviet Gulag in 1961. Polar Wolf is one of the most hellish places on earth. One person who was released from it in 2018 gave this testimony: “In the winter, prisoners would be hastily assembled in the courtyard in light clothing. They were held in formation and not allowed to clap or rub their hands together. They had to stand for 30 or 40 minutes without moving when it was minus 45 degrees Celsius or colder. If one person moved, the whole group was doused with water.” We will see whether Navalny survives Polar Wolf. He has already survived a murder attempt by poison. We can already see that Vladimir Putin—said to be loved by “his people”—is afraid of opposition.
◼ “It’s quite clear that on October 7 a good number—we don’t know what the number is, but a good number—of the Israelis who were killed were not killed by Hamas; they were killed by the IDF” (that is, the Israel Defense Forces). So said John Mearsheimer, the celebrated “realist” scholar of international relations at the University of Chicago. The video in which he made this statement is being circulated, triumphantly, by foes of Israel, which is understandable. To reiterate: It is “quite clear,” according to Mearsheimer, that Israeli soldiers killed “a good number” of their countrymen on October 7. Unless he offers compelling evidence, we will have to conclude that this realist has become a fantasist, and of a sinister kind.
◼ For weeks, U.S. naval assets and those of its allies in the Red Sea have engaged in defensive operations designed to protect international shipping from the Houthi militia group in Yemen. A lot of good those operations have done. In concert with a seemingly endless series of rocket and drone attacks, the Houthis’ campaign of piracy in the Gulf of Aden has all but closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal to international commerce. The Houthis’ successes have encouraged them to be even more brazen. Over the weekend, American officials announced that U.S. helicopters attacked and destroyed several “Iranian-backed Houthi small boats” as they closed in on a Maersk container ship. That modest intervention is unlikely to restore deterrence in the region, nor will it preserve the integrity of international shipping lanes. In response to this latest attack, Maersk announced it was once again diverting its ships from Houthi-controlled Yemen, this time indefinitely. At some point, the Biden administration will be compelled to take this threat to international commerce seriously. Until then, many more dangerous interactions between this terrorist outfit and Western naval powers are in store.
◼ In an 8–7 decision, Israel’s supreme court struck down the judicial-reform law that had sparked massive protests last year against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The legislation—much pared down in its final form—had pushed forward only a token change to Israel’s Basic Law: It abrogated the power to strike down laws duly passed by the Knesset that the court deemed merely “unreasonable.” Now, the court has claimed the power to supervise even this reform to the country’s governing framework. Israel’s political leaders have signaled that they will put off any challenge to the court until after the conclusion of the war with Hamas. That is a wise and statesmanlike plan. The question, however, of the judiciary’s power over the legislature is not going away.
◼ On January 2, Saleh al-Arouri, the commander of Hamas’s military arm, was killed by an Israeli drone in a suburb of Beirut. Al-Arouri, who has been described as an architect of the October 7 attack, is the most senior member of Hamas to have been killed during the current war. Hamas and Hezbollah have pledged retaliation. Israel, already on high alert in the north, is bracing its defenses. Hamas’s leaders have called the strike a “blatant crime.” Perhaps they meant that as a compliment?
◼ How much ominous news about China can you stand? First, a former senior intelligence official who until recently read classified reporting, told the Wall Street Journal, “We have no real insight into leadership plans and intentions in China at all.” Then the Journal delivered a separate scoop about how the Chinese government wanted to use artificial intelligence to enhance its ability to analyze all of the data that it has stolen from U.S. institutions over the years. The New York Times offered its own deeply reported piece about the rise of China’s Ministry of State Security, adding its own details about how that spy agency intended to use artificial intelligence and indicating that Beijing’s spies seek to create a program that would compile instant dossiers on every person of interest in the area and analyze their behavior patterns. Atop all this, China is building the ultimate Orwellian surveillance state, which makes it tough for U.S. and allied case officers to meet, initiate contact with, recruit, and collect information from Chinese government officials. National newspapers shouldn’t be better at learning about it than U.S. intelligence agencies.