I've had a number of people reach out to me about Chris Brunet. I thought I'd put together a statement: Brunet did great work last year exposing academic corruption, including a story published with me on Claudine Gay's plagiarism. I invited him to participate in a short-term training program, the Logos Fellowship, to support his work on academic reform. Regrettably, we had to terminate his participation in the program in May 2024 when he violated, after multiple warnings, a commitment that all participants made and all, but him, honored: to maintain a basic standard of professionalism and mutual respect. He picked fights with friends, posted bizarre material, and required us to clean up a number of interpersonal conflicts. We departed on relatively amicable terms. Subsequently, Brunet appears to have gone down a new path, which he calls "anti-Zionism," but, to me, seems more accurately described as a form of conspiracism. He is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I would not only register my strong disagreement with his position, but reiterate that he arrived at this position after he was let go from our program. He now claims that we "fired" him for his principled stand on "open borders," but this is simply not true: he was never an employee, so it is an exaggeration to say he was "fired," and I certainly do not support "open borders," as anyone who has read my recent work can easily deduce. (Not to mention, Brunet is a Canadian, so it is unclear to which borders he is referring.) Brunet has also attacked two of my Manhattan Institute colleagues, Leor Sapir and Ilya Shapiro, whom, although they do not need it, I would like to defend publicly. Leor earned a PhD from Boston College, did a post-doc at Harvard, and then sacrificed academic opportunities to do pathbreaking work in the fight against transgender medicine. Ilya took on academic orthodoxies, endured a smear campaign by Georgetown Law, and has gone on to do essential work on university reform. Both men have advanced good policy in America—and the insinuation that their work is compromised by their ancestry or support for Israel is totally out of bounds. Let me put my cards on the table: the events of October 7th shocked me and, although we all saw an immediate surge in left-wing antisemitism, particularly on campus, there is also a right-wing variant that has captured certain corners of the internet. Both should be condemned, as I outlined in a recent Substack piece, "Antisemitism, Left and Right." It does not require a complex calculus to conclude that, in terms of both national interest and basic moral reasoning, America should support Israel over Hamas. And one can arrive at the same conclusion from the other direction: the cast of characters who make up the American "anti-Zionist movement"—Hamas supporters, BLM fanatics, Ivy League lunatics, right-wing racialists, and Antifa street militants—are not good people and not good for our country. And let me address this issue in personal terms. I have developed working relationships and meaningful friendships with many American Jews who are outraged by what's happening in America: critical race theory, DEI, transgenderism, the immigration disaster. These are good people, advancing good ideas, for good reasons. I'm proud to have them as colleagues, supporters, and friends, and reject any ideology, left or right, that would seek to reduce them, or any group, to a racial essence and pit them on a scale of oppressor and oppressed. That kind of ideology is a poison for our country. I'm with George Washington, who, in his letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, established America's friendship with the Jews, in beautiful terms: "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy." I genuinely hope Brunet figures it out. He is a smart person and offered a valuable critique of academia. But right now, he's on a dead-end path—and one that is sadly well-trodden.