Month: June 2026

“Versailles is the real deal,” said President Trump when his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron invited him to dinner at the royal palace during this month’s G-7 conference. G-7 leaders praised the US’ latest agreement with Iran as a “breakthrough,” but if anyone thinks the Trump-touted “deal” Vice President Vance negotiated with Iran is “real,” they should have another thing coming — a massive attack.

Vance spent last week defending the deal, which isn’t even a deal but a “memorandum of understanding.” Typically, “MOUs” are “good faith” documents issued to express non-binding notions of future relationships. Upon the signing of this MOU’s official text ahead of schedule on Wednesday, US officials reportedly said it was a “political document” that failed to account for undisclosed backchannel discussions. Even Vance admitted its terms are “very general.”

That’s a generous assessment since many of them are worryingly vague. The Strait of Hormuz, for example, is to be opened, but only for 60 days, after which the Iranians can engage in “dialogue” with other Gulf states to “define the future administration and maritime services” international law nominally prohibits. Iran has suggested this could include resuming its illegal toll regime.

The US will fully unfreeze Iran’s foreign assets, but on terms to be negotiated later and with no enforcement mechanism to ensure Iran doesn’t spend the funds on its depleted military. Iranian oil can flow under US waivers, though existing sanctions will remain in place, also pending later negotiation.

The Iranians will theoretically benefit from “at least $300 billion” in “reconstruction and economic development” for which the US will facilitate “financial transactions.” The MOU is mum on where those funds will come from, though Vance has promised no taxpayer cash will go to Tehran. That could be true. Or not.

American warships will stop blockading Iran’s ports but not withdraw from the region until after a final agreement is reached. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the ships will linger offshore and could return to blockade duty at a moment’s notice.

The MOU includes Lebanon, from which Iran has said it expects Israel to withdraw, possibly, its leaders have suggested, under American compulsion. The Israelis have said they’re not a party to the agreement and will act in self-defense. As they continued to exchange fire with Hezbollah last week, some Israeli hardliners said they are prepared to continue the war on their own.

The MOU creates a new 60-day cease-fire window, which can be extended by mutual agreement for an apparently unlimited time, to discuss the intractable issue at the heart of the US-Iranian conflict: whether or not Iran will become a nuclear power.

The MOU says Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons” and maintain its general nuclear program’s “status quo.” We’ve heard that one before. The mullahs hiding deep underground are the same fanatics who have wanted the bomb for more than 40 years and just killed 40,000 of their own people to stay in power. In any case, the MOU unpromisingly relegates resolution of all relevant nuclear issues to further negotiation.

Assuming all this succeeds, the MOU provides that the final deal will be enforced by a “binding resolution” . . . of the UN Security Council. Home of the brave, indeed.

We can continue negotiations until we are blue in the face, but there is no guarantee that Iran’s leaders, who survived decades of isolation and the massive air war earlier this year, will ever give up their nukes. Even if they do sign a deal “guaranteed” by some toothless UN resolution, their regime has a long history of pocketing any concessions and then renegotiating terms at the last minute, or just ignoring them on the sly, as with Obama’s failed nuclear deal of 2015.

With tough midterms looming less than five months from now and the prospect of what Trump on Wednesday called “economic catastrophe,” the mullahs have every reason just to wait him out.

Iran poses an existential threat. Even after the MOU’s terms were agreed on, into this weekend Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire — prompting Iran to threaten to call off the whole deal, suspend the negotiations before they even began and, on Saturday, to announce that they had closed the Strait of Hormuz again after less than 72 hours of traffic going through.

Nobody knows, moreover, how long it will take the Iranians to get at the near-weapons grade enriched uranium under the rubble of their nuclear facilities.

But the longer diplomacy drags on, the more time they will have to do that and, potentially, emerge fully nuclearized. That’s not a chance we should take, especially when we have the military muscle for the massive attack Trump has repeatedly promised if the mullahs don’t play ball. When they say, “Death to America,” I believe them. And so should you.

City Journal – More university administrations are refusing to cave to student activists’ demands to cancel commencement speakers.

“We are living through a period of extreme narcissism,” comedian and late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien told Harvard University graduates assembled for his commencement address on May 28. O’Brien, a Harvard alumnus, used his platform to poke fun at the Trump administration. But in recent years, laughter has been less common at college commencement addresses, which have become lightning rods for militant and performative activism by students who hijack what should be joyous celebrations. Thankfully, some university administrations are finally pushing back.

Ask New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose institution chose him as this year’s commencement speaker. Ignoring Haidt’s best-selling books, prize-winning research, and decades of dedication to his calling, angry students—including the executive committee of NYU’s student government—denounced his selection as “deeply unsettling.” As grounds to demand his removal and replacement, detractors cited Haidt’s alleged “anti-LGBTQ” comments, long-standing advocacy against DEI, support for campus viewpoint diversity, and empirical critique of Gen Z digital device use.

They had a reasonable hope of success. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has documented 350 attempts to cancel campus commencement speakers since 1998, many of them successful. So far this year, South Carolina State University, a historically black institution, has canceled a planned commencement address by Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, a candidate for governor in 2026. Students expressed dismay over Evette’s vocal criticism of DEI policies and support for President Donald Trump, who has since endorsed her gubernatorial bid. Two commencement speakers— David Kaganovsky at Drexel and Morton Schapiro at Georgetown’s law school—were forced to withdraw after their support for Israel became public knowledge on campus.

Rutgers University also canceled its scheduled commencement speaker Rami Elghandour, an alumnus who is Chairman and CEO of Arcellx, a biotech company, following complaints about his past online posts accusing Israel of “genocide” amid its war in Gaza. And at Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, author Sharon McMahon’s commencement invitation was canceled following outrage about posts (later deleted) in which she was critical of Kirk in the days after his murder.

In an encouraging sign, however, NYU held firm. Responding to the controversy, a university spokesman described Haidt as “one of the most consequential thinkers of the 21st century.” President Linda Mills, a licensed clinical social worker who has launched a collaborative initiative with Haidt to reduce student reliance on digital devices, said that she is “inspired” and “moved” by his work. At NYU’s commencement on May 14, she proudly introduced Haidt to the assembled crowd and presented him with an honorary doctorate. Some students booed and others walked out, but Haidt delivered his remarks in full—and neither the world nor NYU came to an end.

Fortunately, NYU was not alone this season. At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt survived a cancelation attempt launched against his commencement speech by students aggrieved by his former girlfriend and business partner’s allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Arizona’s Women and Gender Student Council circulated a petition demanding his cancelation, a move supported by numerous other student groups.

But Arizona’s administration avidly backed Schmidt, with President Suresh Garimella praising “his investments in scientific discovery and emerging technologies” and “research that shapes the future.” When Schmidt appeared before the graduating students, he was heavily booed—but apparently for comments promoting AI, which many graduates regard as an obstacle to employment. An arbitration court has since ruled that Schmidt’s ex’s accusations against him were false, and awarded Schmidt $10 million in defamation charges.

Morehouse School of Medicine, another historically black institution not far from censorious South Carolina State, similarly stood by its chosen commencement speaker, Georgia Republican Congressman Richard McCormick. A white alumnus, McCormick faced vocal student opposition due to “statements, views, and policies” that his critics alleged “directly go against our institution’s mission and training.” McCormick’s detractors, who included over a thousand signatories to a petition opposing his selection, singled out as disqualifying factors his opposition to DEI, “gender affirming care,” and illegal immigration.

A Morehouse spokesman said that its administration had heard out student concerns but declared that the school “is a nonpartisan institution, and Dr. McCormick was invited because of his distinction as an alumnus.” Like Haidt, McCormick faced some booing, but more and more colleges seem to be deciding that a speaker’s accomplishments are what should matter.

Showing some backbone is increasingly the wise choice for the controversy-adverse administrators now facing scrutiny from government, media, civil society, donors, alumni concerned with free speech, tuition-paying parents, and students who just want an education. As higher education begins to encounter the long-predicted “enrollment cliff” of fewer students and lower revenues, the spotlight will only intensify. At least in the realm of commencement speakers, the pressure seems to be bearing fruit.

Chronicles – “The University of Florida should not hire Stuart Bell as president,” warned the Manhattan Institute’s director for higher education policy, John Sailer, in a recent op-ed for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Sailer, who last month broke the story of Bell’s unanimous nomination by UF’s presidential search committee as its only choice for the top job, has done yeoman’s work documenting the extensive, and indeed, “award-winning” DEI regime Bell created in his previous job as president of the University of Alabama.

Alarm bells went off across the conservative commentariat, with criticism of Bell’s nomination appearing in these pages, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Signal, the National Association of Scholars’ newsletter, and in statements from Florida Senator Rick Scott, Florida Congressman Greg Steube, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, and Florida state university system Board of Governors chairman Alan Levine, among others.

In a live interview with Salem News Channel host Josh Hammer—Bell’s only interview since he received the search committee’s nomination—the would-be UF president came off as shifty, evasive, and unconvincing. Hammer quickly posted that he was “less than fully impressed” by Bell, casting doubt on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s quick and possibly knee-jerk endorsement of him in an X post as a “great candidate” who enjoys “my full support.”

Even the Chronicle of Higher Education, a left-leaning industry publication for college and university professionals, acknowledged Bell’s overpoweringly strong commitment to DEI by describing his policies at Alabama—many of which would now likely be illegal under federal law and both Florida and Alabama state laws—as “robust and successful.”

If there is any remaining doubt that Bell is a horrible choice to lead UF, faculty and alumni at the University of Alabama are beginning to speak out about their experiences with his leadership. In a statement to 1819, a state news source named for the year in which Alabama entered the Union, a current faculty member who asked to remain anonymous recalled participating in two search committees to hire professors during Bell’s tenure that began with “a presentation by DEI personnel” including “calls for special consideration of candidates that were racial or sexual behavior minorities.”

“We were to submit three candidates without any ranking,” the faculty member said. “If none of the three submitted candidates were among those ‘special’ folks, we were to submit a fourth named candidate that was, along with recommendations on what it would take to move the person up to the top three.”

A department chairman currently serving in Alabama’s College of Arts and Sciences told 1819 that after Bell arrived as president in 2015, DEI “efforts were redoubled” and characterized by “hypocrisy.” “One notable policy” identified by the source included a scheme to hire “diversity postdocs,” short-term professional residencies open to recent Ph.D. recipients. “The university would advertise diversity postdoc positions … that were open only to applicants from ‘underrepresented groups,’” the source alleged, claiming that “those hired for these positions would be automatically transitioned onto tenure-track positions,” full-time and potentially career-long professorships normally filled after a lengthy open application process and job search. As the source elaborated, “this was, in effect, a way to discriminate on the basis of race and sex in hiring tenure-track faculty, without ‘officially’ discriminating in hiring.”

Bell’s choices for senior administrative personnel have also raised concern. Dr. Earl Tilford, an Alabama undergraduate alumnus and retired history professor who authored a book on the university’s 1960s civil rights struggle, told 1819 that Bell “initiated the influx of DEI programs and allowed radical faculty to prosper.” Tilford further claimed that Bell “inserted three solidly woke faculty into leadership positions in the provost office before leaving office,” and thereby made it difficult “to diminish the grasp DEI already had on faculty, curriculum, and programs” after Alabama’s state legislature outlawed DEI programs in 2024.

As identified in a recent Daily Signal article by Scott Yenor, a Claremont Institute fellow and former DeSantis higher education advisor, these hires included G. Christine Taylor, whom Bell engaged in 2017 to serve as Alabama’s inaugural vice president and vice provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Taylor, who still holds her job under what appears to be a cosmetically altered title to conform to current law, focused her academic research prior to taking on a series of DEI posts on the intersection of race and gender in media leadership, examining what Yenor calls “the supposed barriers that black women face entering the broadcast industry.”

Alongside Taylor serves Tiffany Sippial, hired by Bell in 2023 to lead Alabama’s honors college and promoted in 2025 to associate provost for undergraduate education. Her magnum opus, a book titled Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840-1920, claims to demonstrate what its publisher’s website calls “the central role the debate about prostitution played in defining republican ideals in independent Cuba.” Move over, José Martí.

Alabama Graduate School dean Susan Carvalho, whose undoubtedly page-turning book about Latin American fiction explores how “female protagonists challenge the spatial barriers erected by capitalist hegemony,” was appointed by Bell in 2016 and stayed in the job for 10 years, only stepping down to retire this summer. Chapman Greer, a business professor who presided over Alabama’s faculty senate in 2021, suggested in a meeting reported in the campus newspaper in that year that she was privy to “indirect” efforts that she could not publicly discuss aimed at “making sure that the integrity of what we teach does not get touched if at all possible” by anti-DEI state legislation. Two years later, she was promoted to associate provost of general education.

Such appointments will matter at UF, where the provost’s office and at least four deanships are currently held by interim appointees. Among many other powers and responsibilities, the university’s new president will presumably appoint permanent administrators in those roles. Given his track record, let us hope Stuart Bell is not the man who will do it.

New York Post – “Safe to Pee.” That was just one wacky woke initiative Stuart R. Bell oversaw as president of the University of Alabama, in this case to prevent “discrimination against gender variant people in public restrooms.”

Earlier this month, a search committee at the University of Florida—the flagship institution of the state where Gov. Ron DeSantis says “woke goes to die”— unanimously recommended Bell as the sole candidate to be UF’s next president. DeSantis almost immediately endorsed him as a “great selection” who enjoys his “full support.”

Say it ain’t so, Ron! The critics are out, and so is the déjà-vu.

Less than a year ago, UF picked former University of Michigan president Santa J. Ono to take the top job in Gainesville. Ono, who was poised to make $3 million a year at UF – almost twice his Michigan salary – claimed a sudden conversion from his DEI-saturated past. Not everybody was fooled. After sailing through the search committee and UF’s Board of Trustees, the Florida State University System’s Board of Governors nixed his candidacy in a 10-6 vote.

The stakes are higher now. UF’s rebuffed trustees whined about Ono’s rejection, alleging the Board of Governors overstepped its role despite state constitutional language suggesting otherwise. Now they seem to want to try again with Bell, who implemented DEI policies at Alabama.

As soon as he became president, the university launched a DEI-infused program building on an earlier commitment to “diversity as part of its educational mission.” This included race-based recruitment programs for students and faculty, which are now illegal.

In 2017, Bell hired G. Christine Taylor, a DEI guru, as Alabama’s new vice president and associate provost for DEI, a job paying nearly $300,000. Taylor was joined by 30 other DEI personnel, including DEI deans in six of Alabama’s nine colleges, at an estimated payroll cost of $2 million per year. The university boasted that 36% of undergraduate courses were “diversity-related” and hosted what Bell said were “over 70 student organizations which have diversity and inclusion as a focus.”

Between 2016 and 2021, whites in Alabama’s student body fell by 10% while the percentage of blacks and Hispanics nearly doubled. In 2022, Alabama won an award for DEI excellence.

Under Bell, Alabama renamed campus buildings that honored distinguished whites in favor of blacks, an action some have alleged violated a state law on the preservation of public monuments.

The university opened a dedicated “Intercultural Diversity Center,” a “Hate & Bias Hotline” for denunciations of alleged discriminatory conduct, and, yes, the “Safe to Pee” initiative, which appears designed to make sure biological men can freely urinate in campus ladies’ rooms.

What happened to reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, you might ask? Among national universities, Alabama’s US News & World Report ranking tumbled from 88th place when Bell arrived in 2015 to 169th when he left in 2025. Some achievement!

After Alabama’s legislature banned DEI in universities in 2024, Bell appears to have kept many of his policies and personnel in place but renamed them, a common ruse in academic institutions. In a statement no longer available on Alabama’s website, Bell promised that nothing would change.

Taylor retained her lucrative job under a new title, “Vice President and Associate Vice Provost Opportunity, Connections and Success.” Alabama’s Intercultural Diversity Center became simply its “Intercultural Center.” Who knows where men masquerading as women can pee?

Bell is heavily championed by UF’s Board of Trustees chairman Morteza “Mori” Hosseini, an Iranian immigrant and state-level Republican donor who also championed Ono. Bell’s “academic achievements and experience at a flagship state university makes [sic] him the obvious choice to lead UF going forward,” Hosseini dubiously said in a press release.

Authorities are taking notice. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wants to know why UF’s interim president, Donald Landry, has a $2 million payoff if he is not hired permanently. Landry spent his year on campus promoting institutional neutrality, campus free speech, and the elimination of DEI—all things

Floridians voted for.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, whose department can suspend federal funds to universities on civil rights grounds, posted that “UF deserves a president who will continue to drive [anti-DEI] reforms.” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, whose office has sued universities for civil rights violations, posted a potentially ominous “Uh oh” when the UF story first broke.

Florida Board of Governors chairman Alan Levine has asked whether Hosseini overstepped his authority in the selection process. If DeSantis has any regard for his legacy and political future, he should scrap this boondoggle now and tell Stuart Bell not to pee on our legs and tell us it’s raining.