The art of the deal: Most presidents, the Hudson Institute’s Mike Watson writes, “implement only a handful of initiatives at a time that usually only become public knowledge once they have matured.” Not Trump. “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach,” he wrote in Art of the Deal. “I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”
By conventional standards, then, Trump’s foreign policy approach is earning poor marks. The Ukraine war is still underway, Moscow and Beijing are moving closer together, the Middle East has not calmed, and new trade deals have yet to materialize. “Obviously there are a few dangers with Trump’s approach,” and “some of these criticisms have a point,” writes Watson. “But there are also opportunities for breakthroughs.”
“For example, allowing Israel to impose costs on Hamas for holding hostages, and perhaps even wipe out the terrorist group, is good and helps establish credibility for further negotiations. On Monday, Trump said about Iran, ‘I think they’re tapping us along,’ and the aircraft carriers and heavy bombers surging to the Middle East remind Tehran that the price for defying America can be high.”
Japan’s negotiators, meanwhile, “visited Washington this week, and while Tokyo is not eager to cave on trade, it was generally responsive to Trump’s concerns in his first term and should be again this time around. Squeezing Tehran won’t be easy, but its empire is in tatters, and it remains more vulnerable than China or Russia.”
“During his first term, Trump pulled off a largely successful juggling act. He did not get the breakthrough that he wanted with Russia or tame Iran, but he made important progress on China. Since then, America’s adversaries have grown stronger, the world has gotten more dangerous, and he can’t afford to drop as many balls.”
READ MORE: Trump’s Art of the Diplomatic Deal
Architects of anti-Semitism: The Journal of Architectural Education, the field’s premier scholarly journal, used to write on topics like the “nuances through which water and design mix” and the “relationship between stories and architecture.” Its expression of left-wing politics mostly centered on climate change. Then, Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, and the journal pivoted to the Middle East—making clear in doing so that it was on the side of the terrorists.
Last year, the journal’s editorial board—made up of professors from Princeton, Barnard, MIT, and Cooper Union—unanimously approved a different topic for a fall 2025 issue: The “ongoing Israeli genocide campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.” The board issued a call for essay submissions that was littered with anti-Semitic rhetoric, our Jessica Schwalb reports, including a justification of the Oct. 7 attacks as “the rupture of settler containment” and a reference to “the tunnel as a route of militants’ fight and prisoners’ flight.”
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, which represents every top architectural college in the United States and publishes the journal, raised concerns but approved the issue anyway. Then, after Donald Trump’s election, the association’s board canceled it—”not because it disagreed with the content but because of threats from both the Trump administration and at least two governors.” The journal’s entire editorial board resigned in response.
“The ordeal reflects the proliferation of anti-Semitic activism seen in higher education in the wake of Oct. 7—even in fields unrelated to international conflict like architecture,” writes Schwalb. “It also shows how a pledge to address that activism from state and federal regulators has impacted academic leaders’ decision making.”
Away from the Beacon:
- Harvard takes another blow: Amid its ongoing funding review, the Trump administration is pressing the university to turn over records on the foreign donations it receives, which the administration says are “incomplete and inaccurate.” The move is the “first step to ensure Harvard is not being manipulated by, or doing the bidding of, foreign entities,” Linda McMahon said.
- Mahmoud Khalil has a friend in the Washington Post, which published an essayfrom the detained Columbia protest leader in which he compares his situation to Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
- Joe Biden’s standard pitch for a speaking gig “is $300,000—25% below Barack Obama’s $400,000 asking price upon leaving office in 2017,” a source familiar told the New York Post. Old Joe’s representatives at CAA are apparently having trouble finding takers. We can’t imagine why.
