Eveie Wilpon

New reporting from the @FreeBeacon tied to a @EdWorkforceCmte report released yesterday highlights something far more serious than messaging coordination. Emails show American universities operating in Doha being told to “be aligned” in their communications — tied to expectations from the Qatar Foundation, a Qatari government-linked entity. No strings should come with the purse strings. That’s not partnership. That’s influence. And it calls into question whether foreign funding is shaping not just communications, but institutional decision-making. We’ve already seen concerns raised on U.S. campuses, including at Northwestern, about conditions tied to Qatari funding. So this isn’t isolated. The questions are 1. what influence is being exerted? and 2. What safeguards are actually in place? Academic independence cannot coexist with externally directed messaging or control. If funding comes with expectations of alignment, it compromises the integrity of the institution. And it raises a broader question: What role is foreign funding playing across American academic institutions — and where else beyond education is this same influence shaping outcomes? That demands scrutiny, oversight, and transparency. @EdWorkforceCmte @StateDept @SenRubio Article: freebeacon.com/campus/informa… Report: edworkforce.house.gov/news/documents…

This report is worth reading in full.

Reading through this report from the House Education & Workforce Committee having just spoken with my middle schooler’s administration about a wholly unnecessary, entirely inappropriate school-wide assembly on Palestine — one that left Jewish students perceiving it as an FU to all the Jewish students. Because of course. What’s being documented at the university level — administrative failure, ideological capture, lack of enforcement — doesn’t stay there. It flows down. And what’s tolerated in K–12 feeds right back up into higher ed. We keep pretending these are isolated incidents. They’re not. We keep pretending lack of accountability is acceptable. It’s not. We keep pretending nothing needs to change. It does. Report: edworkforce.house.gov/news/documents…

Some build the future. Others protest the produce aisle.

Source documenting the interview and related material: navik12tracker.substack.com/p/california-t…

None of this predetermines the outcome of any review. But it does mean the issue is no longer simply political debate. There is now a documented public record of classroom conduct that may carry administrative, statutory, and professional implications.

Two California public-school teachers appeared on TRT World — a broadcaster that has registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as operating on behalf of the Turkish government. That alone raises serious questions. And should be investigated. Another significant issue is what happened in the interview: both teachers publicly described their classroom practices on the record, raising distinct but parallel legal concerns. This is no longer just a political debate. It may have legal implications.

@ProfDBernstein If only “Needless to say, trespass, vandalism, and hostage-taking are not protected by the First Amendment” were actually needless to say. Apparently it needs repeating — often.

@NYCMayor He was the leader of an organization guilty of trespass, vandalism, and holding two Columbia employees hostage, as well as more generally terrorizing Jewish students. Needless to say, trespass, vandalism, and hostage-taking are not protected by the First Amendment.

For Mahmoud Khalil, this past year has been marked by profound hardship—and by profound courage. A year ago, Mahmoud was walking home through our city after sharing an iftar with his wife Noor when he was detained by federal agents, flown to Louisiana, and then held in an ICE facility for months. In that time, he was forced to miss the birth of his first child. All of this for exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine. And yet, even in the face of that cruelty, there has also been beauty. New Yorkers raising their voices in solidarity. A city refusing to look away. Mahmoud won his freedom, and a father was finally reunited with his child. Last night, as we marked the one year anniversary of his detention, Rama and I were honored to welcome Mahmoud, Noor, and their son Deen to Gracie Mansion to break our fast together. Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City.

Enough said. Enough is enough

The warning was never hypothetical.

A vehicle rams into a synagogue during school hours. Who was inside? Staff? Teachers? Students?Preschoolers? Community members? What kind of person chooses that place and that moment? And why?

This issue is no longer hypothetical. Families are now suing California officials over allegations that antisemitism has been allowed to persist in K-12 schools across the state. The question of responsibility is now being tested in court. edsource.org/2026/frustrate…

What does it say about the state of our country when a sitting governor and presidential hopeful calculates that normalizing antisemitic libels is politically advantageous? CAIR — an organization with suggested ties to terrorist groups — applauds the rhetoric. That endorsement alone should give Americans pause. This is the same organization that fought AB715, California’s law requiring transparency and accountability around antisemitism in K-12 education. Americans should be asking serious questions about the incentives and alliances that perpetuate such hate and disinformation.

The offensive with Iran is far bigger than the slogans in the streets suggest. And far more consequential. As always, in the simple but deeply clarifying way only he can, @havivrettiggur lays out the multifaceted geopolitics at play — dynamics far more nuanced, strategic, and significant than the “Hands off Iran” or reflexive anti-Israel crowd can comprehend. It reminded me of a moment in a high school classroom a few days after 10/7. A student asked his teacher a remarkably astute question: whether the attack might be connected to the push for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It was exactly the kind of geopolitical curiosity we should want students to develop. Instead of engaging the question, the teacher — who touts both a law degree and a doctorate — quickly shut the student down, misrepresenting and miscontextualizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s line about violence as the voice of the oppressed. Not surprising from a teacher whose intellectual lens for the world rarely extends beyond the inequities of class, race, and gender. It’s the same myopia. It was a missed opportunity to teach the richness and complexity of critical thinking rather than the ease and simplicity of virtue signaling. This inappropriate, ethnocentric, and entirely wrong framework for interpreting global events leaves America weaker, our strategic thinking poorer, and our kids less prepared to live in and shape a complex world. Read Haviv’s piece: thefp.com/p/this-isnt-is…

Case in point

An axis of aggressors aboard and too many troubling echos of it at home.