The Classicist: Higher Education And The Media: Institutions In Decline

Israel dominates the daily news in this 2026 midterm election year—almost always in a boring, fatiguing, negative light. Tens of thousands of innocents may be slaughtered, ethnically cleansed, butchered, and tortured by the world’s dictators, yet an overwhelming and obsessive abhorrence is reserved for tiny, democratic Israel.

Last week, when I gave a talk at the Naval Postgraduate School, almost all the students were against a pure military draft but a few students favored a national service draft. I’ve given the talk a number of times, but that was the first time, if I recall correctly, that the issue of a national service draft had come up.

On the latest episode of GoodFellows, senior fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson are joined by their former Hoover colleague Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, currently serving as Director of the National Institutes of Health.