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A Harvard Faculty member holds a sign as he exits Harvard Yard after a rally was held against President Donald Trump's attacks on Harvard University at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 17, 2025.

How Harvard Can Reform Itself

It can start by ending tenure

byGil Troy

Harvard University and its president Alan Garber are caught between an angry Donald Trump and a harder place—namely, the university’s own sense of itself as the nation’s leading research and teaching university. In the face of Trump’s cut-off of over $2 billion in Federal funding as a consequence of the university’s ostensible failure to obey U.S. Civil Rights law, Harvard has decided not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” as Garber proclaimed on April 11. But Trump’s bullying is often hard to resist because he picks well-deserved, unpopular targets. Harvard’s embrace of the Academic Intifada, rife with Jew-hatred and educational malpractice through professorial propagandizing, combined with a decades-long drift from merit-based hiring, is at the root of the university’s problems, and of the low public standing of elite universities. As America’s leading college president, while working to preserve his institution’s autonomy, Garber should kickstart creative educational reform from within, by ending tenure.

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China Can’t Go It Alone

Assertions that America is at a disadvantage in a trade war with China take official bluster at face value while overlooking the profound structural weaknesses of the Chinese economy. The only trade partner capable of helping China out of the fix in which it now finds itself is the U.S., which means a win for Donald Trump is likely.

byHenry Gao

On April 2, President Donald J. Trump announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs on nearly every country, ranging from 10 to 49 percent. Just a week later, the tariffs were suspended for all but one country: China. Beijing has responded in kind, matching each U.S. tariff hike step for step. After the initial 34 percent U.S. tariff, China imposed an equivalent countermeasure, prompting Trump to raise the rate to 84 percent, which Beijing matched once again. This tit-for-tat exchange culminated in the United States raising tariffs to 125 percent on April 10, with China immediately mirroring the increase the following day. When combined with existing tariffs, Chinese imports now face potential duties as high as 170 percent. China is eager to broadcast its resolve to stand firm against U.S. pressure. To that end, it has launched a coordinated propaganda campaign emphasizing that it holds the stronger hand in the trade war....

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Why the Right Is Drawn to Hungary

How the struggle between undemocratic liberalism and ‘illiberal democracy’ came to define Western politics

byGadi Taub

The Edgelords

The self-styled dissident podcasters’ takes are mere repackaged establishment wisdom

byLee Smith

Donald Trump holds up a chart of "reciprocal tariffs" while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. Touting the event as Liberation Day, Trump is expected to announce additional tariffs targeting goods imported to the U.S.

What You Need to Know About Trump’s Tariffs

It’s about China

byPark MacDougald

Why Are Israelis So Happy?

In a world of globalized alienation, secular and religious Israelis alike remain proudly connected to their story as a people, through rituals as old as the Passover Seder and as new as the letters soldiers write before they go into battle

byNatan Sharansky and Gil Troy

The Edgelords

The self-styled dissident podcasters’ takes are mere repackaged establishment wisdom

byLee Smith

What You Need to Know About Trump’s Tariffs

It’s about China

byPark MacDougald

The ‘Realists’ Try and Fail—for Now—to Steal MAGA’s Skinsuit

A controversial Koch-backed appointment is retracted, ostensibly over Middle East issues. But the battle is really about China.

byLee Smith

On Wednesday, a Donald Trump administration official waiting for his background check to be completed was removed from a top post in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence before he officially began. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a foreign policy expert at the Charles Koch-backed Defense Priorities, was set to become the agency’s No. 3 official, deputy director for mission integration (DDMI). Among other duties, the DDMI is responsible for preparing the presidential daily briefing (PDB), the U.S. intelligence community’s most important and most sensitive document, produced specifically for America’s No. 1 customer for intelligence. Even before Davis’ appointment was made public, it raised serious concerns among Trump insiders, including former intelligence officials who served during the president’s first term. The issue, as they explained to Tablet, was not just Davis’ lack of experience in intelligence matters but also his idiosyncratic foreign policy views, which are at odds with Trump’s on virtually every key issue—including China, Iran, Russia, Hamas and pro-Hamas campus protesters.

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What Really Matters

Trump, China, and the Tariff Wars

This week, Walter and Jeremy discuss the U.S. cutting off intelligence sharing with Ukraine, shutting down American consulates overseas, TSMC’s $100 billion investment in Arizona, and Trump’s on again, off again tariffs on U.S. allies and enemies

March 7, 2025

Rootless

How Universities Lost Their Way, With Cary Nelson

The academic and writer joins Liel to discuss how universities abandoned free inquiry, how antisemitism took root on campus, and what can be done to restore intellectual integrity

March 20, 2025

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