Ep 84 | Peter Berkowitz on Liberal Education, Progressive Ideology, and the Israel-Hamas War

Foreign Policy ProvCast

Marc LiVecche joins Providence contributor Keith Pavlischek and the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz on a wide-ranging exploration of Israel's war against Hamas and adjacent themes. Taking place on the leeward side of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, they discuss ongoing antisemitism as it exploded on American college campuses in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks, the decimating effect of progressive ideology on liberal arts education, the IDF's record in its fight in Gaza, and the recent negotiations and ceasefire agreements. They take on question of whether Israel is committing genocide, they discuss American and Israeli successes and failures in the wake of 10/7, and they laud the IDF's extraordinary battlefield successes, including the IDF's extraordinary commitment to necessary, proportionate, and discriminate force. Essays discussed: Peter Berkowitz, David Brooks Misunderstands the Miseducation of Elites Peter Berkowitz, Disregarding Military Necessity to Accuse Israel of War Crimes Marc LiVecche, The End of Auschwitz and Auschwitz and the Duty of Memory Peter Berkowitz ( peterberkowitz.com) the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a columnist for Real Clear Politics. He is the author of many books, including Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995). Keith Pavlischek Keith Pavlischek, contributing editor, is a military affairs expert with a focus on just war theory and the ethics of war. He retired as a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2007 after thirty years of active and reserve service having served in Desert Storm, Bosnia, Iraq, with the U.S. Central Command, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He is the author of John Courtney Murray and the Dilemma of Religious Toleration (1994) and numerous articles, including a chapter on the ethics of asymmetric warfare in the Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics (2015). Marc LiVecche is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence, and a non-resident research scholar at the US Naval War College. He is currently an adjunct instructor in ethics at the US Naval Academy. His most recent book is The Good Kill: Just War and Moral Injury.