Why didn’t university presidents universally and unequivocally condemn Hamas? You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that out. Most university presidents are not selected for their scholarship or moral character. Most rose to their positions because they had their fingers on the political pulse of their respective institutions. They knew what they should, and shouldn’t, say to satisfy their colleagues.

Sasse argued that such colleagues “have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to ‘provide context’ and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother.” But speaking of “moral confusion” may give them too much credit. Allan Bloom’s influential thesis from The Closing of the American Mind, that universities are plagued by relativism, is no longer quite accurate. Universities are now beholden to the ideology of racialist Manichean schoolmarms.