In an extraordinary speech last Thursday, President Obama endorsed using the 1967 boundaries as the baseline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. He is the first American president to do so! [He also prodded Arab governments to carry out the democratic reforms their citizens have demanded in the so-called ?Arab Spring.?] In the 1967 war, Israel?s victory over Egypt and other Arab neighbors expanded its control over territories in the West Bank and Gaza, over the Golan Heights and over East Jerusalem.

Pitzer College, a small liberal arts college in Southern California, will inaugurate this fall a department in secular studies. Classes taught by professors from the other departments of the college will include, ?God, Darwin and Design in America,? ?Anxiety in the Age of Reason,? and ?Bible as Literature.? This new department is based on the premise that studying nonbelief is as valid as studying belief. Among other things, this department will also study the growing waves of secularization in Western Europe and in Canada. The head of the department is Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion, who describes himself as ?culturally Jewish, but agnostic-atheist on questions of deep mystery.?

With the death of Osama Bin Laden and what some are calling the ?Arab Spring,? a new Middle East is emerging. Its parameters are far from clear but there are some discernible characteristics. Most of them are rather troublesome.

The present administration in Washington is against school vouchers and even permitted the very popular and demonstrably effective voucher program in the District of Columbia to die. But Obama resurrected that program as a part of the deal he struck with the Republican Party over the 2011 budget. What evidence is there that vouchers serve students well and give parents a valid option for educating their children?