In March 2023, Jason Arday, a rising star in British academia, became a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge. At 37, he was the youngest Black person ever appointed to a professorship in the university’s history.

Arday’s personal story also attracted widespread attention. He claimed that autism left him unable to speak until he was 11 and unable to read or write until he was 18. Nonetheless, Arday eventually received a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University and continued to rise through the ranks of British higher education.

Soon after starting his position at Cambridge, Arday was accused of plagiarizing portions of his 2015 doctoral thesis. And that was just the beginning. The British press began to comb through his personal story and discovered there were more questionable claims.

This all reached a fever pitch earlier this month, when Arday announced that he would be resigning his position, writing that the intense scrutiny and personal attacks had taken a profound toll on him and his family. Nine days later, Arday was found dead in his home.

To understand what to make of a story of alleged academic plagiarism turned media frenzy turned tragedy, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Atlantic staff writer Tyler Austin Harper, whose recent essay, “The Truths That Failed Jason Arday,” examines what we can learn from Arday’s story.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

You wrote that everyone following this story would do well to engage in some reflection. I don’t think everyone following this story necessarily feels like they should be engaging in some reflection. So I wanted to ask you why you wanted to convey that thought.

I would say blame is not a finite resource and I think there’s plenty of it to go around in this case in particular. I think blame that belongs to conservatives and that belongs to Republicans and that belongs to various kinds of institutions. And that of course belongs to Jason Arday, the man.

I think this is a person who is clearly a serial fabulist, and I think one could fairly say a con artist, who was able to, through an increasingly implausible array of stories about his background — that he was mute until age 11, that he was illiterate till age 18, that he ran 600 miles in six days, a feat which is just 50 miles shy of a world record — flatter the vanities of people at Cambridge University who were very desperate to get a magical minority in the door. And they were so hell bent on their desire to engage in diversity politics that they overlooked what should have been very obvious flaws.

I think it’s also true simultaneously though, that you cannot just blame Arday or liberal institutions for this, and particularly for how this ended. This was, it’s worth noting, an academic scandal that — on the order of academic scandals — is not one that perhaps should be international news, but that’s very much what it became, in no small part because the British press turbocharged it.

If you look at any major British outlet, there were many, many, many, many articles written, each one chronicling every minute of this entire affair. And I think it’s worth noting that it’s hard to imagine that this degree of scrutiny would be applied to an academic scandal if Jason Arday had been white. It’s also hard to imagine that Jason Arday would’ve been hired if he was white. I think people would’ve asked more questions about his implausible claims if they weren’t so predisposed to just try to get him in the door.

What compelled Jason Arday to make up so much of his backstory?

It’s hard to know what’s inside his mind, but one imagines that he correctly understood that a certain kind of elite liberal would be very willing to overlook quite a lot and that [they] would be willing to swallow a whole lot of implausibilities to get him in the door. And I think he understood how the system works.

One of my frustrations with the way discourse of this story has unfolded, particularly after his tragic death, is he is being treated as somebody with no agency. And I think Arday, if you look at what he did, was clearly relatively savvy. He understood that there was a market, that he was being branded as the youngest Black professor in the 800-year history of Cambridge. And he fabricated a story that told people what they wanted to hear.

Not only was he Black coming from rough circumstances, but he was disabled, he was severely autistic, he had this miraculous recovery, also all sorts of medical ailments. He survived a brain tumor, testicular cancer, epilepsy, et cetera. He clearly knew how the game was played. He knew that he could leverage these various identity claims in service of advancement, which is what happened.

The story was not nearly as big in the United States as it was in the UK, understandably. But a lot of people want to place blame for Arday’s death on the British press. American Ibram X. Kendi said [Arday] was “lynched by the media.” Do you think that’s going too far?

I think that’s going way too far. First of all, there are few things I find more grotesque, at least in terms of everyday discourse, than treating lynching as a metaphor, which is something I think you see quite a lot. I think anyone who has seen a hanging tree knows that throwing the term around — “lynching” — for mere journalistic scrutiny is vile beyond measure.

Was the British press scrutiny far too intense? Yes. Do I think it was racist in the sense that I have a hard time imagining there would be this much scrutiny on a white academic who did the same thing? Yes, I think you can absolutely say that. To me, there is a question about, “Okay, what is the line between appropriate journalistic scrutiny and obsession?”

But I also think it’s worth noting, to be fair to the British press, that they’re responding to the way in which he was marketed to them nationally. He was marketed by Cambridge as the youngest Black professor in the 800-year history of this very venerable institution. To some extent, when you brand someone that way, when you film BBC specials with a closeup on his Black hands nestled in the white ones of the head of the Faculty of Education, I think some degree of scrutiny is warranted.

I think it was excessive. But at the same time, Jason Arday was a public figure. I think that is fair to say. His memoir is poised to make a splash. And he took this position that made him a minor academic celebrity. And again, I think it’s very fair to ask whether the degree of attention on what is ultimately an academic scandal in which no one was hurt was far too much. But the idea that we would place the blame on the media rather than on Simon and Schuster, who clearly overlooked obvious inconsistencies in his story, and on Cambridge — I find that absurd.

I think we need to blame the people who put him on the mountaintop rather than the people who ripped him down, even as I think some of those people putting attention on him were unscrupulous.

In your piece at the Atlantic, I thought you bravely related your own experience to that of Jason Arday. Did that come naturally to you or did you have to hold your breath?

Look, I am a Black guy who has been the beneficiary of various kinds of DEI and affirmative action initiatives. And I certainly have encountered a certain kind of white liberal who is very eager to metaphorically grasp my Black hands in their white ones and stare lovingly into my eyes like the Cambridge Faculty of Education person did. So I had some degree of sympathy with him.

I find those kinds of encounters revolting. But I also can understand from Arday’s point of view, coming from a relatively disadvantaged background, he’s the children of immigrants. Then you have all of these people paying attention to you, showering you in accolades — and I think fetishizing you, but it probably didn’t seem that way to him. And you tell a small lie, and maybe that small lie then becomes a bigger lie and then a bigger lie and a bigger lie and a bigger lie.

What he did was wrong, but I can imagine the kind of incentive structure he saw laid out before him. And it’s not hard to see that he made a decision that could in some sense be understood as yes, self-serving, but also giving people what they wanted.

Do you think we’ll learn anything from it?

No. I think people have retreated into their camps. I think progressives are blaming the media for doing what I’ve seen thrown around as a digital lynching. I think conservatives are blaming academic institutions or Jason Arday or just gleefully basking in the glow of having torn this guy down a peg. I haven’t seen a single lesson really learned.

I’ve seen a lot of blame being apportioned. I don’t think there’s much reflection about whether or not these policies are good or bad — the kind of policies or the kinds of extremist versions of affirmative action that go well beyond the spirit of what most people understand as affirmative action.

Whether those kinds of initiatives are good, whether the press scrutiny was fair. I don’t see a lot of self-reflection. I see a lot of blame. And even as I’m wanting to say that there’s lots of people to blame, I also think we should be a little more self-critical.

My first impulse on learning of the Jason Arday affair was to find it somewhat amusing, I will be honest. Here was this guy who managed to tell all of these obvious lies and these very, very smart people believed them hook, line, and sinker. It was objectively funny, but it became unfunny very quickly. And so I think, like I said in the piece, we could all stand to do some reflection about how we ended up in this situation, how Jason Arday ended up in this situation. But will that reflection happen? I highly doubt it.

Democratic socialists keep winning primary elections, and Democratic voters are trending in the same direction: Recent polling suggests that a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults now identify as democratic socialists. Most recently, Abdul El-Sayed, who does not identify as a democratic socialist but was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supports policies like Medicare-for-all, won a fiercely fought Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. 

As democratic socialists gain ground in Democratic politics, President Donald Trump and Republicans have attempted to conflate democratic socialism with communism (though allegations of “communism” are hardly new territory for Trump). At the same time, recent reporting has pointed out that, in fact, there are some members within the Democratic Socialists of America who openly identify as communists.

To help us understand what communism actually is and its history in the United States, Today Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Maurice Isserman, a history professor at Hamilton College. Isserman has written extensively about the history of communism in the United States, including in his latest book is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

Define communism for me. 

Communism began as a split off from the socialist movement. It was inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. And it is in favor of a total transformation of capitalist society with the government — the state — owning and operating what communists would call the means of production: factories, transportation, and so forth. It also believes in one-party rule. So for 75 years or so, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed no competing parties to exist within that country.

There have been communists in the United States of America before. What is their history in this country? 

The American Communist Party was founded in 1919, right after the First World War.

And it was, again, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It seemed to point to a way out. The Bolsheviks came to power, remained in power. And so communists or would-be communists in the United States, in Europe, elsewhere said, “Well, if they can do it, we can do it too.” So an American Communist Party was founded in 1919 — small, isolated, mostly immigrants, but it gained strength in the course of the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Why did they gain strength during the Great Depression? 

Because capitalism seemed to be failing and communism seemed to be the wave of the future. The other factor leading to the increase in communist influence was that fascism was rising in Italy, in the 1920s, in Germany, in the early 1930s. And it seemed as if there was a stark choice facing the world: either fascism or communism. And many people in the 1930s said, “Well, let’s support the communists to beat back the threat of fascism.”

Did elected communists get anything done in the United States?

Well, there were very few elected communists. In the 1940s, there were two communist members of the New York City Council, but that was about it in terms of open communists being elected to office. Their influence was seen more behind the scenes in the labor movement, in organizing the big new industrial unions of the 1930s, and organizing so-called front groups, anti-fascist groups, anti-racist groups, and so forth. And the party was never huge. At its height at the end of the 30s, it had perhaps 75,000 members in a country then with a population of 130 million. Its influence extended beyond its own membership, but it was still very much a minor party — growing, but minor.

Why did communism fail in the United States of America? 

One reason was that it was repressed by the government pretty much throughout its existence — in the first Red Scare immediately after the First World War, and then again in the second Red Scare, which we commonly refer to as the McCarthy era in the late ’40s and through the 1950s. Communists were sent to jail for advocacy, for simply saying that they favored communism.  

But it also failed because of its rather slavish obedience to the dictates of Soviet leaders. When the Soviet foreign policy changed from anti-fascism and anti-Hitlerism in the mid- to late ’30s to a kind of de facto alliance with Hitler from 1939 to 1941, the American Communist Party obediently followed that line. Then Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and the Soviet Union swung back to anti-fascism. Well, [the American Communist Party] made that turn too. But all of those turns gave the communists a reputation as an organization that did not really exist to serve American interests, but rather to serve Soviet interests.

We know from reporting that’s been done that there are people within the DSA who identify as communists. Can you help us understand who these folks are within the organization and what they actually believe?

There are a number of left-wing factions. There’s a group called Red Star. There’s another one called the Marxist Unity Group. There are three or four of them that work in coalition. They’re rivals, but they also work in coalition to control, by a narrow margin, the national leadership. One of the members of Red Star is a co-chair of the organization. 

These people make no bones about their belief. They’re not secret communists infiltrating. They describe themselves as being inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution or being inspired by Maoist China, or they call themselves Marxist-Leninist. So they’re quite open about it, and that comes out of a different political tradition, an antithetical tradition to democratic socialism. 

They have a different ultimate strategy in mind, which is not to work within the Democratic Party as AOC is committed to do, as Zohran Mandami is committed to do, but rather they want to split and start an independent revolutionary socialist party, which will run against both Democrats and Republicans, which is a strategy that has been tried an infinite number of times in the past by various groups of leftists.

Is this a Red Scare, or is there something to be scared about here?

It’s definitely a Red Scare. Trump and his allies don’t have a lot going for them in this election cycle. They’ve got an unwinnable war going on. They’ve got gasoline prices skyrocketing. Trump is even underwater on immigration, his signature issue. So what do you do in that situation? You create a boogeyman, or try to. And the difference is that most Americans under the age of 45 have no memory whatsoever of the existence of the Soviet Union as a threat to the United States. 

When you launch a Red Scare in 1919, well, there’s communist Russia. When you launch a Red Scare in the 1940s and ’’50s, well, there’s the Soviet Union. There’s a real threat. I mean, they have missiles and so forth. 

Who’s supposed to be the foreign threat today controlling the actions of these American communists? Cuba? Cuba can’t even keep the lights on for its own people. It doesn’t have missiles. It’s not going to invade the United States or its allies. So I think this is an attempt to launch a Red Scare using DSA as kind of a boogeyman. But DSA, again, is not one thing. It has the ‘left wing of the possible’ Democratic socialists, who I would say include such figures as Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And then it has, unfortunately, some would-be Bolsheviks, so it’s really a question of which DSA is going to prevail in the long run. 

Which one do you think will prevail in the long run?

I’m a historian. I’m very good at predicting the past, and I’m terrible at predicting the future.

Last week, the Trump administration announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal would allow the kingdom to develop nuclear power using American technology and could eventually pave the way for uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. But the agreement must first undergo congressional review — and survive President Donald Trump’s social media feed.

When the Trump administration announced its agreement, it made no mention of the possibility of normalizing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But that omission and the possibility that Saudi Arabia could eventually enrich uranium alarmed Israelis — and Trump quickly threw in both conditions in a Truth Social post.

The chaos around the agreement comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington, DC, this week to meet with Trump. The Saudi deal — as well as growing friction over differences on the goals and trajectory of the renewed US war with Iran and frustration in Washington over Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon — will undoubtedly be topics.

Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswame spoke with Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, about the relationship between the two countries and its leaders ahead of Netanyahu’s visit. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What are we expecting from the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump?

I suspect this will be among the most tense meetings that they have had because there are a number of issues on the table where President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are on different pages. The issue that they used to be on the same page about was Iran, and I don’t think that is the case anymore. 

As we’ve seen the Iran war unfold, the Israeli view is still the view that they had at the outset of the war, which is that this is necessary to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, with its ballistic missiles, with its proxies. And ultimately what the Israelis wanted to see, and what they still want to see, is a different regime in Iran. President Trump may still share those goals, but it’s pretty clear that, as the war has not gone the way he anticipated, he’s looking for an exit strategy and his main focus is the Strait of Hormuz, which is not something that the Israelis care about at all. 

I think at this point, when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives at the White House, he’s probably going to try to convince the president that the original goal should be on the table, that the US and Israel should keep going, and President Trump seems to have a different view of things.

And now we have this new deal with Saudi Arabia. Was Israel taken by surprise by the deal? 

It absolutely took Israel by surprise. When the deal was announced on Wednesday, it was a deal to provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear power and nuclear infrastructure. There was no mention of Israel. There was no mention of normalization. There was no mention of anything outside of the bounds of a nuclear agreement. 

President Trump on Thursday put out his Truth Social where he said that the deal is absolutely contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. And what’s curious about that is that when the deal was announced, there was no mention of it, and the deal was actually signed. So either the president is intending to change the terms of the deal after it’s been signed, or he’s willing to back out of it if this new condition is not met. 

Or, and I suspect that this is the actual answer, he will secure some sort of commitment from the Saudis to examine joining the Abraham Accords at some point down the road when Israel has met a number of conditions and there’s been progress toward a Palestinian state. And if that is how it unfolds, it will leave the Israelis behind. And I think this comes as a pretty big shock to [Israel] given that President Trump’s previous policy was that a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia would involve normalization.

Was Netanyahu himself surprised by this deal? 

I think he must have been surprised by this deal. It is true that Trump and Netanyahu have seemed to have had a very cushy relationship, not only during this term, but during President Trump’s first term as well. But it’s not a relationship of equals.

We’ve seen President Trump — particularly over the past few months, I think in response to criticism here in the United States over the role that Israel and the role that the prime minister may have had in convincing President Trump to go to war — repeatedly talk about the fact that he is in charge, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to do what he says, that he is the decider and Prime Minister Netanyahu is not. 

I do think they have a good relationship, but President Trump, at least publicly, seems to be signaling that he is in charge and he wants everybody to know that. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu undoubtedly is feeling some stress in this relationship. And when he shows up here tomorrow, he’s going to do whatever he can to try and repair any rifts that there are.

Israel wanted this war, but hates this deal that the president may very likely complete with Saudi Arabia. Did they miscalculate somewhere in here? 

I think the Israelis have miscalculated in a number of ways. And the biggest is that consistently since 2017 or 2018, you hear Israeli officials, political officials, security officials, even ordinary Israelis, talk routinely about President Trump being the best friend that Israel has ever had and exhibiting a faith in President Trump that he will never do anything that will hang Israel out to dry. 

And a lot of what they’ve done has proceeded on that assumption. And even though everybody is aware of President Trump’s transactional nature, even though everybody is aware that he is relatively volatile, that he slips on policy issues all the time, the Israelis had this faith that they would always be an exception to that rule. And I think what we’re seeing is that they’re not necessarily an exception to that rule. 

And it’s important to stress that when it comes to this Saudi nuclear deal, the problem for the Israelis is not just that it was signed without any hint of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia being part of the deal itself. It may open the door for countries that have signed more restrictive agreements in the region, like the UAE, to do the same. And ultimately, all of this is a bet that the trajectory of Saudi Arabia is going to continue, that it’s going to continue modernizing, continue becoming more moderate and pragmatic, and continue improving relations with Israel. 

If that’s not the case, once you’ve handed the Saudis a nuclear program, that’s irreversible. People shouldn’t forget that Iran’s nuclear program started off as a civilian nuclear program that the United States provided for it under the days of the Shah. So for Israelis, the normalization part of this is absolutely worrisome, but the deal itself is problematic too. And I think that’s where the Israelis are feeling panicked.

Last week, House Democrats voted on an amendment that would have cut $3.3 billion in annual US military aid to Israel from a State Department funding bill. The amendment was brought to the floor by Rep. Thomas Massie, an outgoing Republican from Kentucky. It failed 314-104, but 103 Democrats — nearly half of the House Democratic caucus — supported it, signaling a significant shift in the party’s longstanding support for aid to Israel.

In 2024, a similar vote came up in the House to cut military aid to Israel. Then, just 37 House Democrats voted for the measure. Now, two years later, 103 House Democrats voted to cut funding. That shift in support was accelerated after the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which has killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians. The debate is also playing out in Democratic primaries across the country. In New York and Colorado, Democratic socialist candidates who have sharply criticized Israel and opposed continued US military aid recently won House primaries.

Historically, Jewish Americans have overwhelmingly identified with and voted for the Democratic Party, while Democratic lawmakers have generally supported Israel and US military assistance to the country. In 2016, the Obama administration signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel, committing the US to seek $38 billion in military assistance for fiscal years 2019 through 2028. Congress must vote to approve this funding, so the shift in Democratic support of Israel could have real consequences.

There is still a very strong support for Israel among many House Democrats, but the shifting views are notable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opposed the Massie amendment, arguing that it was overly broad and could jeopardize humanitarian assistance. But in a letter addressed to his House colleagues he also called for a “major reset” in US policy toward what he described as Israel’s “far-right Netanyahu government.”

Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents Illinois’s 10th Congressional District, and remains a strong supporter of Israel.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

Can you walk us through last week’s vote? You voted against the measure to cut aid to Israel, and a lot of your colleagues obviously did not. How did that play out for you?

Growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, and for the last 65 years, I fundamentally believe that the US-Israel relationship is important. I also believe that the aspiration for peace in the Middle East, not just between Israelis and Palestinians, but broadly throughout the region, is something that is in the United States’s interest and the interest of the people in the region. So this is not a new issue to me, and it’s something I thought long and hard about. 

Tom Massie doesn’t believe any of that. His intentions with this amendment were anything but pure. It was hastily crafted and poorly written. And one of the biggest issues with it is not only does it [not] address this 10-year memorandum of understanding, something negotiated by President Obama eight years ago, but there are also two years left on the MOU. 

It was a messaging bill and nothing more, and it was a negative message. I voted no because I think if we’re going to move toward peace, we need to do so in a constructive way. A lot of my colleagues were saying we need to send a message to the Netanyahu government.

“I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark.”

I’ve been extremely critical of this government, their failure to address the settler violence in the West Bank, the failure to plan for a day-after in Gaza following what was a horrific war. If we’re going to move towards peace, if we’re going to find a path where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side and the region can have the peace they deserve. Because we’re not just talking about Israelis and Palestinians; there’s progress being made between Lebanon and Israel in giving Lebanon, the people of Lebanon, the liberty and freedom they all deserve. 

Can I ask you if you still take money from AIPAC? And if so, how much?

I appreciate the support I get from people who care about the issues that I advocate for. So people who are pro-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship are likely to support me because I’m pro-US-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship. I’m also pro-addressing gun safety and reducing gun violence in this country. So I get the support of those groups. The support I get doesn’t determine my positions. I think my positions determine who supports me. 

Has your position on Israel shifted at all since October 7th, or at any point in your political career? And if so, can you tell us how?

So my position hasn’t changed because I’ve always been committed to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and finding a path where both can live together, which I believe ultimately is two states: a Jewish democratic state of Israel, and a Palestinian state living side by side. My frustration with the current Israeli government has grown and continues to grow. Every conversation I have with them, whether it’s the US ambassador to Israel, whom I’ve had the privilege of working with many times, or my meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’ve had an engagement with the prime minister going back now for almost 30 years. But in the last several years, every single conversation I have with them talks about the need to address settler violence, the need to get humanitarian aid.

One of the things that I am proud of and will say loudly and proudly is that immediately after October 7th, as the war began, my team and I worked hard to push for humanitarian aid into Gaza to do everything we could to make sure that the civilians who were always caught in the middle of any war wouldn’t suffer more than they did. And the suffering was horrific. And I did challenge Israel when they made what I’ll call ill-conceived, ill-advised, in some cases illegal decisions to deprive humanitarian relief from entering Gaza. We pushed hard, and we worked with the Egyptians to get the Rafah crossing open. We pushed the Israelis to open the Karam Shalom crossing. And to not just get aid to those crossings, but get aid into and across the territories within Gaza.

Why are you so optimistic about the situation? 

I am always going to be optimistic. I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark. And let’s separate the issue for folks living in the region and the folks living here. And for the Israelis and Palestinians, these are two peoples who are totally traumatized — traumatized not just over the last couple of years, but for decades. So I recognize the trauma that Israelis have and are experiencing, and I recognize the trauma that the Palestinians have and are experiencing. And that’s part of what I feel is my obligation: to hold onto that optimism and speak to a better future and work to try to find ways to bring the parties on both sides of the issue together to make the hard choices and take the risk to get to a path to peace.

So the reason I’m holding onto optimism — and it’s not 24/7; I have my moments when I am down and where I feel like the hill we’re climbing is just too steep — is you take a deep breath and you dig deep, and you say, I can’t give up on hoping and working towards peace because otherwise peace is never going to happen. And I want to find people who are like-minded.

And that is not just on the Israeli side of the equation. We have to find people on the Palestinian side, and for those on the Palestinian side, we have to find Israelis. And I meet, and I spend time with them on a regular basis. They come to my office. When I’m in the region, I talk to them. We have to strengthen and empower those voices who believe that peace will only come when the Israelis see the Palestinians as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and the Palestinians see the Israeli as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and recognize that until they get there, there’s no future for either side. We’ve got to have a path where both are pointing in the same direction.