In recent weeks, as the Iranian regime crushed nationwide protests, shut down the internet, and killed thousands of demonstrators, U.S. college campuses were nearly silent. This after months of maximalist activism over Israel and Gaza. The contrast is not subtle. 

The near-total silence on the same campuses speaks louder than any protest.

This disparity is often described as hypocrisy. That is true, but incomplete. What we are seeing is a deeper structural failure—one with real consequences for Jews, for Muslims, and for the future of pluralistic democracy itself.

The West is bad at protecting and amplifying the Muslim allies it most needs.

Iran’s protesters are not abstractions. They are millions of people—women, students, workers—risking imprisonment or death to oppose a theocratic regime. Their ability to communicate with the outside world depends on smuggled technology, encrypted networks, and extraordinary personal courage. Yet they receive a fraction of the sustained attention lavished on conflicts where outrage is safer, performative, and institutionally rewarded.

That same pattern repeats closer to home. When dissidents confront Islamist ideology directly, the cost of clarity rises sharply. 

Consider Salman Rushdie, nearly killed decades after a fatwa was issued against him—attacked in the United States, blinded in one eye for the crime of writing a novel. One must wonder whether his recent statement that he is “over” the........

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