RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Graff is professor of English and history at Ohio State University.

Universities have always engaged in relentless self-promotion. But the relationship between rhetoric and reality has become ever more tenuous, and the line separating honest aspiration from fabrication fainter.

The Ohio State University, where I teach, is a particularly dramatic example of this devolution. Not that it is alone—since its claims to uniqueness are based on imitating others.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the university’s slogan, “Do Something Big,” morphed into “Do Something Great.” The urging of the former was deemed too ambiguous.

“Vision 2020: Access, affordability and excellence” is the tagline of the new president, Michael Drake. (He is an ophthalmologist.) This translates into freezing in-state tuition, increasing efforts to privatize major assets, offering small grants to undergraduates, and creating “economies and efficiencies.” Those most often mentioned are purchasing toilet paper from one vendor and doing color-copying double-sided. Not mentioned are substantial staffing reductions, nor the overabundant and overpaid administrators whose reduction is promised but not realized. Staff and faculty salary increases continue at lower than national and peer-institution averages.

Mr. Meyers writes on photography for the Journal. His photo book “Outer Boroughs: New York Beyond Manhattan” was published earlier this year by Damiani.

An exhibition about Soviet photography and film showcases astounding artistic accomplishments that served a vile end.

‘The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film” at the Jewish Museum has several rooms of stunning photography from the 1920s and ’30s, and if you do not know the history of Russia in the 20th century, you will leave the exhibition at the Jewish Museum buoyed. If you do know the history of the “Evil Empire” you can only weep that such artistic accomplishment served such a vile end.
Nowhere is this dichotomy more intense than in Soviets, the room devoted to portraiture. Georgy Zelma’s “Three Generations in Yakutsk” (1929), Max Penson’s “Untitled (Turkmen in Telpeks)” (late 1930s) and Georgy Petrusov’s “Asiatic Sailor” (c. 1935-36) are arresting pictures of ethnic minorities—and also agitprop disseminated to remind Russians of the peoples they dominated and to show the captives’ gratitude. “The Poet Anna Akhmatova” (1924) was taken by Moisei Nappelbaum, the dean of Russian portraitists. She is shown in profile like a patrician in a Renaissance painting, with her aquiline nose and her soulful expression offset by her stylish headgear and her left hand clutching at her beads. It is a fabulous image and, like most of the works in the exhibition, a wonderful print, but who can look at it without thinking of Akhmatova, the greatest Russian lyric poet since Pushkin, decades later standing with other women outside a St. Petersburg prison in the snow and cold, hoping for glimpses of their loved ones? Akhmatova’s son, a hero of World War II, was arrested because Stalin feared heroes were most likely to challenge him. Her first husband had been executed in 1921.

The oddest moment in the second GOP debate was when the first thing Donald Trump did was to launch an assault on Sen. Rand Paul, who was standing about three miles away at the end of the podiums: “Well, first of all, Rand Paul shouldn’t even be on this stage. He’s number 11, he’s got 1% in the polls, and how he got up here, there’s far too many people anyway.” Ummm, what was that all about?

Since that Sept. 16 debate, as measured by the RealClearPolitics polling average, Mr. Trump has lost about a quarter of his support, down to 23% from 30% on the eve of the debate. In this week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, he is at 21%.

It’s not going to get better. The Trump numbers are going to drift sideways, or fall.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump tweeted that getting his business out of Atlantic City before the casinos collapsed was “great timing.” The moment has come for the timing master to recognize it’s Atlantic City all over again. For his phenomenal presidential campaign, it’s time to go.

President Obama gave Raúl Castro the expected gift of a handshake photo-op this week, conferring legitimacy on the 56-year-old dictatorship with a bilateral meeting. But could Mr. Obama’s courtship of the Castros be so passionate that he’d even abstain from an anti-U.S. resolution at the United Nations?

That’s the recent scoop from the Associated Press, which reported that the Obama Administration is debating whether to let the U.N. condemn the U.S. trade embargo without a peep of protest. What a stunning turn that would be. Cuba and its pals roll out the condemnation every year in the General Assembly, and the U.S. routinely votes against it.

For the U.S. to abstain now would essentially endorse a denunciation of America by an assembly that includes some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. This goes well beyond Mr. Obama’s famous “apology” tours for alleged past U.S. sins. He would be apologizing for a law currently on the books that has been supported by members of both parties for years and that Mr. Obama has taken an oath to uphold and enforce.

Archive of messages turned over to officials begins weeks into the start of her tenure.

WASHINGTON—About two months of emails from the start of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state are missing, and federal officials haven’t been able to recover them.

An archive of records that Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential front-runner, turned over to the State Department doesn’t begin until March 18, 2009, though she took office as secretary of state in late January of that year. The missing emails raise more questions about her stewardship of official documents during her tenure and whether there is a complete record of the early diplomatic efforts of President Barack Obama’s administration.

The potential significance of the missing emails, which Mrs. Clinton’s aides acknowledge and say she no longer can retrieve, came to light last week when a chain of online correspondence between her and former Gen. David Petraeus was found on Defense Department servers. Those messages, which included work-related personnel matters, dated to the period missing from Mrs. Clinton’s records.

Christians, Kurds and Yazidis in the shelters are being attacked by Muslims with increasing frequency and ferocity.

“I fled from the Iranian secret service because I thought that in Germany I could finally live my faith without persecution. But in the refugee shelter, I cannot admit that I am a Christian, or I would face threats… They treat me like an animal. They threaten to kill me.” — An Iranian Christian in a German refugee shelter.

“We have to dispense with the illusion that all of those who are coming here are human rights activists. … We are getting reports of threats of aggression, including threats of beheading, by Sunnis against Shiites, but Yazidis and Christians are the most impacted. Those Christian converts who do not hide their faith stand a 100% probability of being attacked and mobbed.” — Max Klingberg, director of the Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights.

“We are observing that Salafists are appearing at the shelters disguised as volunteers and helpers, deliberately seeking contact with refugees to invite them to their mosques to recruit them to their cause.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of German intelligence.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, where he was a Military Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

If anyone is expecting any liberalization from Rouhani, please note that he is an even more trusted regime insider than Khatami.

The main reason there will not be a less aggressive foreign policy is that Iran’s Presidency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which negotiated the nuclear deal, have no power over the Islamic Republic’s military, police, and intelligence agencies. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the Office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei control all decisions in these arenas.

Unfortunately, there has been no diminution of influence or resolve among Iran’s hard-liners, who control all of these institutions.

The military and theocratic cliques who dominate the regime will take full advantage of any opportunities created by the nuclear deal quickly and brutally to crush any attempt by Iranian reformers to expand political freedom or social reforms.

Are you expecting a new Iran? The most optimistic scenario by supporters of the nuclear deal with Iran is that the pact will bring about better relations between Tehran and Washington.

The increasingly erratic conduct of one of Africa’s more despotic rulers, as well as his tilt toward China, is raising serious concerns about the future of a vital American intelligence-gathering base that plays a central role in targeting al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants in countries such as Yemen and Syria.

It will be the first time a head of state has been ordered to appear before a British court since King Charles I of England in 1649, who was subsequently beheaded for treason.

The increasingly erratic conduct of one of Africa’s more despotic rulers is raising serious concerns about the future of a vital American intelligence-gathering base that plays a central role in targeting al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) militants in countries such as Yemen and Syria.

Since coming to power 1999, President Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, has emerged as a vital ally of the United States, in spite of his despotic style of government and mounting criticism over his country’s lamentable record on human rights.

The ongoing crisis of Syrian refugees in the Balkans, Greece, and Hungary in recent weeks has obscured and bumped from the headlines Europe’s greatest immigration challenge — which is coming from Libya.

The problem of people fleeing Syria is bound to subside, both because Russia’s new presence along the Mediterranean coast will bar or discourage departure, and because Germany and the pope have encouraged European countries to welcome the refugees. The “allocation” of immigrants will ebb and the ones already on the old continent will be settled.

But there has been no progress in Libya, the place from which hundreds of millions of poor Africans might want to depart and attempt to land in rich Europe. In contrast, Syria might “export” only a tiny fraction of those numbers. In Libya, it’s impossible to think that any European country could successfully try to put boots on the ground, as the Russians are doing in Syria. Nor is it possible to think of settling millions (not thousands, like those from Syria so far) of Africans on the old continent. It would cripple any country, and it would forever impoverish and bleed to death Africa by depriving the region of its most daring, entrepreneurial, and intelligent people.

The flow of refugees from Libya in recent days has dwindled only because of the start of bad autumn weather. But it is set to start over in the spring, putting the weakening economic and social fabric of Italy and Europe under stress again.

Putin asserts it is difficult to defeat ISIS without the current Syrian government. Whether that government is a puppet of Iran and Russia, is currently irrelevant. Putin is correct. Syria could act as a magnet to draw in ISIS fighters, and a kill box within which to defeat them, or at least eliminate a not insignificant number of their fighters.
Putin has doubled down on Syria in recent days. No news there. He has had bases in that beleaguered nation for years. He is in a good position to weaken ISIS in the process – to a far greater degree than the US has been willing to do.
Speaking of which, Obama, not having learned anything from his many foreign policy misadventures in the region, has decided to invest in Syrian “rebels” who somehow have become virtuous patriots – instead of merely another assemblage of Jihadists, former mujahideen, current members of the various Al Qaeda franchises, and to be clear, NOT friends of democracy or freedom fighters. Obama just doesn’t get it. There are no freedom fighters or prodemocracy plays in that region. It is a war of the roses based upon religion, anti-West sensibilities, adherence to Sharia, tribal power skirmishes, and territorial control. The old saw ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is both tired, misrepresentative of the landscape, and a dangerous game for amateurs to play.
Syria is an important place – geographically and geopolitically. Putin knows this. More importantly, Assad is his ally. Putin – spy master, politician, businessman, diplomat, quasi-dictator, martial artist, energy expert, possible assassin, and global force to be reckoned with – recognizes the importance of supporting your allies. We could learn something from him, as we continue to abandon our friends, and give benefits to our enemies. Reputations matter. Consider this….If you had to select a second for a street fight, would you pick Putin or Obama? A sad reality, but who does the world trust more? Not who does the world use more, or misuse more, or abuse more, but trust or fear more.