The biggest question for tonight’s debate
Washington Examiner
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Heading into tonight’s debate in Miami, the Republican presidential primary race can be divided into two distinct phases. In the first phase, before April 4, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) had narrowed the gap between him and former President Donald Trump from 34 points in June 2022 to 15 points on March 31.
Then Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on 34 bogus counts of falsifying business records. Since that inflection point, momentum has been with Trump, with each subsequent indictment adding to Trump’s lead.
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We may now have passed a second inflection point: the barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas. Trump has only praised Hezbollah and criticized Israel since the massacre, while DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, onetime New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) have all strongly supported Israel in their desperate time of need. (Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has been more equivocal.)
Israel’s war against Hamas is important in and of itself, and it is an issue of vital international and national security. But it has also revealed the rot that has corroded college campuses. Many people knew Hamas members were remorseless terrorists before Oct. 7 but probably did not know how depraved they were. Likewise, many knew college campuses had become bubbles of far-left ideology but weren’t fully aware of just how pervasive, pernicious, and perverse higher education indoctrination had become.
Sure, everyone knew universities and faculties leaned left — it was impossible not to see that — but watching amassed students voice support for Hamas’s terror and seeing polls showing that 51% of 18- to 24-year-olds agree that “the Hamas killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians in Israel” was “justified by the grievances of Palestinians” was an epiphany.
The nation’s next leader needs a real plan to address the woke virus that has taken over higher education. While most adults are proud to be American, just 36% of Generation Z say the same thing. Higher education has taught the youngest generation that Israel is the real villain, not Hamas, and 40% of zoomers say the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “heroes.”
Self-hatred taught in schools is an existential threat to our nation’s existence and the ideas and principles that made it globally preeminent and admired.
Trump’s big answer is a rehash of his failed Trump University. He has called for the creation of an online “American Academy” to offer “world-class education” to “every American free of charge.” Trump promises this new institution would be “strictly nonpolitical” with “no wokeness” allowed.
It is an unserious idea as an answer to the massive problems in higher education, which need root and branch reform of existing institutions. We won’t fix the problem by adding a Trumpian cherry on top of a dog’s breakfast.
Reforming higher education is complicated and hard and will take far longer than the four years Trump would have in office if he won.
Tonight, each of the candidates should explain to voters what they would do and what they have done to improve universities, moving them away from graduating America haters and toward being institutions producing the confident and competent citizens we need in a world threatened by China, Russia, and Iran — and its proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.