Fareed on What’s Wrong With College Campuses

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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April 26, 2024

Fareed on What's Wrong With College Campuses

"It's difficult to know what to make of the turmoil on college campuses these days—the protests, polarization, intimidation and general bitterness," Fareed writes for CNN Opinion, as universities have been engulfed by angry disagreement over the Gaza war, Israel's policies, and Palestinian rights. "In a revealing article in The Wall Street Journal, higher education reporter Douglas Belkin sets these events against a broader backdrop: the disappearance of a sense of community. He points to research demonstrating that 'College students today are lonelier, less resilient and more disengaged than their predecessors … The university communities they populate are socially fragmented, diminished and less vibrant.'"
 
It's reminiscent of what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam famously described in his 1995 essay "Bowling Alone," which noted that more Americans were bowling, but fewer were bowling together in leagues. Then, TV was the culprit for our isolation and atomization. Today, Fareed writes, the legacy of Covid-19 has eroded social cohesion. College students have always confronted and debated contentious issues, Fareed writes, but today's disagreements feature more vitriol and less openness and introspection.
 
"The [Yale] college campus I went to decades ago was full of political disagreements," Fareed writes. "It was the time of Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, the nuclear freeze movement and divestment from South Africa. Tents and a shantytown were built on the plaza outside the president's office. But we also had long and soul-searching debates about the issues. … College campuses today are still exciting places. … But they have weakened as actual communities, where people mingle, interact and get to know and trust each other. And in this sense, campuses today are not that different from the broader American society of which they are a reflection."

What the $61B Could Mean for Ukraine

Now that President Joe Biden has signed a $61 billion assistance package for Ukraine, the Financial Times' Max Seddon, Christopher Miller, and John Paul Rathbone write that Western defense officials and analysts predict it will help Kyiv blunt an expected Russian offensive this year. (The FT authors and the experts they quote suggest that offensive is likely to rely, as Russia's war effort has of late, on a high quantity of low-tech weapons like artillery shelling, drones, and glide bombs.)
 
The US assistance will flesh out what has recently appeared to be a promising but under-equipped Ukrainian defense, Gabriel Elefteriu writes for Brussels Signal: "Amid major problems and overall setbacks at the front, the Ukrainians have also been having some tactical successes of their own that demonstrate what can be achieved against Russian forces if more Western military support becomes available. For example, the Ukrainian military has recently managed to destroy an S-400 battery in Crimea, apparently with ATACMS missiles secretly provided by the US weeks ago. ... Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have also shot down a Tu-22M3 strategic bomber (a highly-prized Russian asset) at very long range."
 
Arguing the opposite, Ted Snider writes for The American Conservative that Ukraine faces a shortage of manpower, not just weapons. (Kyiv recently revamped its draft rules, lowering the conscription age, seeking to address that problem.) The aid package, Snider contends, "will not provide the promised victory. The one thing it will do is prolong the war and continue the loss of Ukrainian life and land."

China's Plausible Endgame

It's no secret that China wants to change the world by bucking the liberal-democratic, Western-dominated international order that has constrained Beijing from some of its global ambitions. In a Foreign Affairs essay, keen China analyst Elizabeth Economy warns against dismissing that broad aim of Chinese foreign policy.

"Xi's vision is far more formidable than it seems," Economy writes. China's proposals to other countries, like its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, its newer Global Development Initiative, and a model for state control of the internet, "would give power to the many countries that have been frustrated and sidelined by the present order … Beijing's initiatives are backed by a comprehensive, well-resourced, and disciplined operational strategy—one that features outreach to governments and people in seemingly every country. These techniques have gained Beijing newfound support, particularly in some multilateral organizations and from nondemocracies. China is succeeding in making itself an agent of welcome change while portraying the United States as the defender of a status quo that few particularly like."

A Comforting Perspective on the Taiwan Strait

The world is beset by war, from Ukraine to Gaza to Ethiopia. On the bright side, one major flashpoint is currently calm. At the Lowy Institute's Interpreter blog, Denny Roy argued recently that mainland China is unlikely to launch a major invasion of Taiwan anytime soon.
 
Beijing hasn't yet attained the military might that would make seizing the island a fait accompli, Roy writes. The US appears to be committed to defending Taiwan, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping can cement his legacy in other ways, through various big domestic projects besides reunifying with Taiwan. Broadly, Roy argues: "A struggling economy does not make Beijing more likely to launch a war. China's economic malaise appears to have dampened the Chinese public's enthusiasm for a Taiwan campaign. The natural reaction to a lack of strength at home is to be more cautious in foreign affairs, not more aggressive."
 
At the same time, as Michael D. Swaine wrote last month for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington and Beijing remain seriously at odds over Taiwan, macro trends point toward an eventual confrontation, and the matter would trump other dimensions of any US–China rapprochement.

Will TikTok Be the Same?

This week President Joe Biden signed a law that will require TikTok to find a new owner, separating from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, or face a ban in the US. Perhaps the main thing that makes TikTok so … well, addictive … is its algorithm: the formula it uses to surface new videos to users in its seamless, endless stream. Incidentally, The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel writes, the law might strip TikTok of that critically important feature.
 
If TikTok is indeed sold to a different parent company, ByteDance may not be willing or able (under China's rules) to part with its algorithmic secret sauce, Warzel writes: "[R]ecommendation algorithms—in TikTok's case, the code that determines what individual users see on the app and the boogeyman at the center of this particular congressional moral panic—are part of China's export-control list. The country must approve the sale of that technology, and, as one expert told NPR recently, the Chinese government has said unequivocally that it will not do so. TikTok's potential buyer may, in essence, be purchasing a brand, a user base, and a user interface, without its most precious proprietary ingredient."