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As Kasky put it, you open up the door on any day, and either there is an invisible virus that could make you incredibly sick, or the threat of gun violence. “Parkland was a formative shock for my generation. And then Covid comes and completely pulls the curtain aside and shows us there have been no inner machinations to help us if everything comes to a boiling point.” Our conversation reinforced what I already hear from Gen Z — that it’s clear to many of our younger citizens that our institutions, and the older adults who run them, aren’t going to save them.

There is evidence, too, that Covid’s emotional toll has been particularly hard for young adults. The American Psychological Association does a regular survey called Stress in America, and in October 2020, the APA was already sounding the alarm:

“I think I’ve watched teens become more cynical, and raise more pointed questions than ever about the decisions adults make, which of course plays to one of the true strengths of adolescents. They are designed to question authority, and they are built to point out painful realities.”

In the course of those cases and confrontations, I’ve learned that the issue of campus protest is remarkably complex and that campus culture is at least as important as law and policy in setting the boundaries of debate.

There is profound confusion on campus right now around the distinctions between free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness. At the same time, some schools also seem confused about their fundamental academic mission

Does the university believe it should be neutral toward campus activism — protecting it as an exercise of the students’ constitutional rights and academic freedoms, but not cooperating with student activists to advance shared goals — or does it incorporate activism as part of the educational process itself, including by coordinating with the protesters and encouraging their activism?

Foreign policy can make a mockery of moral certitude. You’re trying to master a landscape of anarchy policed by violence, where ideological differences make American polarization look like genial neighborliness, where even a superpower’s ability to impose its will dissolves with distance, where any grand project requires alliances with tyranny and worse.

This seems clear when you consider the dilemmas of the past

It’s why the “good war” of World War II involved a partnership with a monster in Moscow and the subjection of half of Europe to totalitarian oppression.

Thanks to social media, gaining widespread public attention for oneself and one’s favored causes has never been easier.

This has incentivized a lot of performative outrage that sometimes manifests itself in acts of protest, from environmental activists throwing soup on paintings in European museums to pro-Palestinian demonstrators halting traffic in major cities by sitting down en masse in the middle of roadways.

I don’t think they do much to advance the aims of the activists. In fact, I think they often backfire, generating ill-will among ordinary citizens inconvenienced by the protest. (As for the activists hoping to fight climate change by destroying works of art, I don’t even grasp what they think they’re doing with their lives.)

Blame spread, accountability avoided.And the net result was year after year of stasis, the initial injustice made all the worse by a collective unwillingness to acknowledge it, let alone address it.

Mr, now Lord, Cameron said the government was “deeply sorry” after a public inquiry unequivocally blamed the British Army for one of the most controversial days in Northern Ireland's history, when 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead and 15 others were wounded.For 38 years, so many had waited for those words.Obfuscation, delay and denials until finally the truth emerged.

So you can be secretary of state, of all things, and still be misled?“It’s incredible. Most serious questions should be asked of Whitehall departments