The Wall Street Journal - 26.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, November 26, 2019 |A

Tal Tamr, Syria

T

he sound of Turkish artil-
lery breaks the silence of
the morning in the village
of Umm Kaif, less than 2
miles from Tal Tamr near
the Syrian-Turkish border. Despite
the proclamation of a cease fire last
month, the Turkish army and its
Syrian rebel allies are still clashing
with the Kurdish-dominated Syrian
Democratic Forces, and lately also
the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Kurdish mortars return fire a min-
ute or so after the shelling starts.
Umm Kaif’s defenders burn tires
and oil, creating a cloud of black
smoke intended to obscure the vi-
sion of the Turkish drones. It
doesn’t work. The drones extract a
steep price from the defending
forces.

The road rapidly fills with vehi-
cles as the remaining civilians in
these front-line villages make for
the relative safety of Tal Tamr and
towns farther south. Cars and
trucks overflow with whatever a
family can carry—mattresses, bed-
ding, tables, blankets.
The Turkish assault that began
on Oct. 9 has carved out a 75-mile-
long, 20-mile-deep zone of control
between the towns of Tel Abyad and
Ras al-Ain. The traditionally Chris-

The Kurds vow to defend

themselves—alone if

necessary—against Syria,

Turkey and Russia.

There’s No Safe Space for Ideas on Campus ‘Animal Farms’

M

ost Americans know that
higher education has for sev-
eral decades been in the grip
of a deeply intolerant, fanatical and
uncompromising strain of progressive
activism. Students and sometimes
even faculty members regularly chase
heterodox speakers off campus, de-
mand complete fealty from terrified
campus bureaucracies, and denounce
and destroy each other over the
slightest and most inconsequential
ideological deviations. The environ-
ment isn’t unlike George Orwell’s “An-
imal Farm,” a place where “no one
dared speak his mind, when fierce,
growling dogs roamed everywhere,
and when you had to watch your com-
rades torn to pieces after confessing
to shocking crimes.”
Yet an even more intolerant brand
of campus activism is taking shape.
This rising political philosophy isn’t
merely allergic to dissenting ideas but
is opposed even to ideas about dis-
senting ideas. It’s a bit like the con-
cept of metacognition in reverse:
These activists, gripped by zealotry

and inflexible dogmatism, are taking

pains to avoid even thinking about

thoughts with which they disagree.

Consider a recent controversy at

Washington College in Maryland. Stu-

dents there successfully lobbied to

shut down a campus production of a

play just one day before it was set to

open.

The aggrieved students were upset

that the play, Larry Shue’s “The For-

eigner,” depicts the evil antics of the

Ku Klux Klan. But the play doesn’t

show Klan members in a sympathetic

light—on the contrary, they’re the vil-

lains of the piece, and they get their

comeuppance in the end. Yet students

were deeply upset by the Klan cos-

tumes the actors would wear, so the

play had to go. (The theater depart-

ment was “unable to find a satisfac-

tory compromise” with the student

activists, a campus official dryly

noted.)

Several professors have also

landed in hot water recently simply

for speaking an offensive word while

students were around. At Emory Uni-

versity, law professor Paul Zwier is

facing major sanctions from his

school because, in a few instances, he

said the N-word. Mr. Zwier didn’t di-

rect the word at anyone or anything;

he merely mentioned it, first as part

of a discussion of case law and then

to illustrate a larger point during a

private conversation. Students

claimed Mr. Zwier threatened their

“safety and emotional well-being.”

Another student who heard Mr. Zwier

use the word was reportedly “visibly

shaken” after the experience, as if he

had suffered a near-death experience.

Faculty wanted Mr. Zwier barred

from school events, lest they be

forced to sit near him and risk their

own reputations.

An employee at the University of

North Texas lost her job after refer-

ring to the N-word as an example of

constitutionally protected speech.

Students demanded her firing, claim-

ing that her use of the word proved

she was racist. At Augsburg University

in Minneapolis, a professor uttered

the word while discussing a James

Baldwin text that itself used the word.

That professor was suspended after a

student outcry. A professor at the Uni-

versity of Kansas got booted off the

tenure track after referring to the

word during a class session.

More evidence of ideological in-

transigence can be found in the “bias

response teams” that are now regular

features at many universities. One

Michigan State student had a bias re-

port filed against him for watching a

Ben Shapiro video in a dorm. A fac-

ulty member at the University of Ne-

braska-Lincoln was reported for hav-

ing a Trump sticker in his office

window. Another professor was hit

with a bias report after discussing the

infamous Janet Jackson “nipplegate”

controversy. The offended student

said the professor had not couched

the discussion with enough moral

qualifiers.

These incidents don’t represent

the normal campus hysterics to which

we’ve become accustomed. A growing

and strident sect of campus activism

is coming to oppose not merely dif-

fering opinions but even talking

about differing opinions. This is a

new and far more uncompromising

brand of progressive politics, where

even an unsympathetic and progres-

sive depiction of the Ku Klux Klan is

too much to handle.

Administrators are partly to

blame. University leaders have been

far too quick in recent years to yield

ground to political zealots, with the

result that zealots feel that they more

or less run the show on campus. They

aren’t wrong.

But the real responsibility for this

mess belongs to the student activists.

Nobody forced them to become hy-

perpartisan fanatics; they did that on

their own, and they now find them-

selves enmeshed in a silly, thought-

free ideology, the consequences of

which will surely come crashing down

one day soon.

Mr. Payne is an assistant editor

with the College Fix.

By Daniel Payne

Zealous student activists

find ways to punish those

who make them think

uncomfortable thoughts.

The Fighting Continues in Northern Syria

tian (but now largely deserted)

town of Tal Tamr stands in the way

of further Turkish advances.

“Erdogan wants to attack fur-

ther,” says SDF Gen. Mazloum Abdi.

I interviewed the Kurdish com-

mander at an SDF base near the

town of Hasakah. “Everything now

depends on the U.S. and the inter-

national community. If they apply

pressure, the Turks won’t dare at-

tack again.”

The conflict here has metasta-

sized several times since hostilities

began during the Arab Spring of

2011. From the chaos and fragmen-
      tation of the war between the
      Assad regime and various Sunni
      Arab rebel groups came the Islamic
      State. The U.S.-led war against
      ISIS, in turn, enabled the advance
      of Kurdish power in northeastern
      Syria, which has now led to a Turk-
      ish war to reverse Kurdish gains.
      Seven armies of various kinds are
      currently active in the triangle of
      Syrian soil east of the Euphrates
      River.
      When President Trump an-
      nounced the withdrawal of U.S.
      forces from northeast Syria in Octo-
      ber, a Turkish invasion swiftly and
      predictably followed. The Syrian
      Kurds were faced with the choice of
      meeting the Turkish onslaught
      alone, or inviting regime and Rus-
      sian forces into their area. They
      chose the latter course. This ap-
      peared initially likely to herald the
      rapid demise of the Kurdish autono-
      mous authority in Rojava, which
      had been carved starting in
      mid-2012.
      The current reality on the
      ground, however, belies this simple
      picture. The Assad regime is de-
      crepit and lacking in manpower. The

Kurdish-led SDF, meanwhile, re-

mains vigorous and strong. For this

reason the regime has yet to at-

tempt to establish control on the

ground in cities such as Derik, Ha-

sakah and Qamishli, where check-

points and daily security control re-

mains in the hands of the Kurds and

their allies.

In the front-line areas, Mr.

Assad’s troops are poorly equipped,

their uniforms threadbare. I

watched in a village outside Tal

Tamr as a regime medical officer

petitioned representatives of an

American nongovernmental organi-

zation for a long list of basic medi-

cines that he lacked. SDF fighters

report that regime soldiers beg for

food because their rations are so

meager.

Mr. Assad’s forces aren’t the con-

quering army of a powerful state.

Rather, it is a force whose survival

depends on the power of its allies.

In northeast Syria, the real power is

Russia, which is mediating between

the Assad regime and the Kurds,

and between the regime and the

Turks.

Moscow would prefer to see Da-

mascus re-exert control over all of

Syria. But Russia’s considerations

are complex. It also wants to widen

the wedge between Turkey and the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But Moscow has no special animus

toward the Syrian Kurds, and sees

no benefit in a renewed and bloody

conflict between Mr. Assad’s forces

and the SDF.

“The Russians are mediating,”

says Gen. Mazloum, the Kurdish

commander. “They are trying to in-

duce us to move closer to the re-

gime by using Turkey as a threat.”

That is, Moscow is trying methodi-

cally to induce Kurdish acquies-

cence to a growing role for the

Assad regime east of the Euphrates

by threatening to permit a further

Turkish assault on Kurdish popula-

tion centers if the Kurds prove re-

calcitrant.

Gen. Mazloum is having none of

it. “If the regime insists on a return

to 2011, there will be a conflict,” he

says, meaning the situation as it

was before the emergence of the

Kurdish autonomous authority. “We

hope they don’t insist.”

In Brussels last week, Turkish

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu

told U.S. Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo that the Oct. 17 cease-fire

agreement has “yet to be fulfilled,”

by which he meant that SDF forces

are still present in the area. Else-

where, the foreign minister said

that, “If we do not achieve any re-

sult, as we had started the opera-

tion before...wewilldowhatever

is necessary in northern Syria.”

The Kurds remains defiant. “If

the Turks attack again, we will

fight. And depend on our forces. We

know it will be hard. But we’ll

fight,” says Gen. Mazloum.

It may be a long time before dis-

placed people from Umm Kaif, Ras

al-Ain, Tal Tamr and the other bor-

der towns can return to their

homes. Normal life remains a dis-

tant dream here. Syria’s civil war,

now in its ninth year, is far from

over.

Mr. Spyer is director of the Mid-

dle East Center for Reporting and

Analysis and a research fellow at

the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy

and Security and at the Middle East

Forum. He is author of “Days of the

Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the

Syria and Iraq Wars.”

By Jonathan Spyer

JONATHAN SPYER

A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter in Qamishli on Nov. 19.

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I Never Should Have Gotten Involved With the MOB

W

riter Martin Amis, the son of
novelist Kingsley Amis, said
it is somewhat disreputable
to be in the same business as your fa-
ther. “Being a hereditary novelist is a
freaky thing, and people do find it a
bit creepy,” Martin said.
I’m a hereditary landlord and can
say the reaction is much the same. I
inherited four apartment buildings
from my father, and now own six. I
own walk-up apartment buildings in
an inner-ring Cleveland suburb, and
I used to own an office building in an
outer suburb. I’m essentially Queens-
era Trump, but Midwestern and so
more civil.
Real estate is strictly nonfiction:
eviction notices, water leaks and
noise complaints like: “They’re liter-
ally stomping in the apartment above
me. I’m having palpitations right
now! If I die, it’s on your head.”
These delightful exchanges are
outweighed by the boom in the multi-

family residential market. Demand

for retail and office buildings, how-

ever, isn’t quite as high. I sold my of-

fice building three years ago. “You’re

lucky you got out of your office build-

ing when you did,” a commercial real-

estate broker told me recently.

My building was a medical office

building, or MOB. That’s what com-

mercial real-estate brokers call it.

Healthcare Trust of America Inc., a

real-estate investment trust, is the

biggest owner of MOBs, with 24-mil-

lion square feet of gross leasable area.

I had one structure: a three-story,

1970s-era medical office building next

to a Pizza Hut, Burger King and Bos-

ton Market. Every time I went to the

medical building I felt crappy.

My MOB was filled with dentists,

massage therapists, chiropractors

and doctors—pediatrics, gastroenter-

ology, internal medicine. I ran a

30,000 square-foot mini-hospital. A

hazardous-waste company picked up

surgical needles. The HVAC filters

were hospital-grade so the patients

wouldn’t breathe anything but the

purest air. Most of the windows

didn’t open—on purpose. It wasn’t a

cheerful environment. One chiroprac-

tor said he banked on harsh winters:

“I need snowstorms for people to pull

their backs shoveling.”

I was 63 when I bought the MOB.

My wife was into it. “This building will

be a good challenge and you’ll learn

something,” she said. The selling price

was $1.325 million—significant money

by my standards. Looking back, I

might have been better off learning

Spanish at Cleveland State University.

But I thought I had at least one more

real-estate transaction in me.

I hung oil paintings in the building

lobby. A friend had painted them.

They were scenes of hollyhocks and

pansies, and swans in a lagoon.

Soothing and calming pastorals, just

like what is up in the hallways at the

Cleveland Clinic—the point of refer-

ence for MOB brokers in Ohio. A doc-

tor-tenant texted me: “If you can put

that up, how about painting my

wall?” So we painted his wall. That

doctor was picky. His vanity plates

read “DDS MD.” The real-estate bro-

ker had warned me: “Doctors are the

worst tenants because they think

they’re God.”

The medical employees loved to

complain about the temperature. The

air-conditioning bill for my building

was about $2,500 a month in the

summer. That’s some air. Also, I paid

the snowplow guy an extra $125 per

push for salt because I didn’t want

any of the infirm visitors falling in

the parking lot. Don’t forget the ele-

vator guy and the security company,

and we had a phone line to the eleva-

tor in case anybody got stuck in

there. One day the elevator went out

completely. That was bad. There was

only one elevator in the building.

“How are my elderly patients go-

ing to get to the third floor?” a doc-

tor asked.

“They aren’t,” I replied. And they

didn’t.

My company, Acorn Management,

is a sole proprietorship, although my

older son, a lawyer, is now in business

with me. I started Acorn Management

when I was in my 20s and lived on

Oak Road in Cleveland Heights. My

dad thought I was nuts going with

“Acorn.” This was before Silver Lake-

this and Iron Mountain-that.

For my MOB, Acorn hired an assis-

tant, who was in charge of installing

air filters, replacing the rooftop

floodlights with energy-saving LED

lamps, and dealing with late payers.

Who knew doctors—just like the bar-

tenders and hairdressers at my apart-

ment buildings—would be late with

their rent? Pediatricians were the

worst.

Some people probably think build-

ings are just there, like trees. But ev-

ery Dollar General Store, Burger King,

medical office building and car lot in

the world is owned by somebody. I

took a risk on that medical office

building; I wasn’t sure the doctors

would re-sign their leases. Indepen-

dent doctors were moving into hospi-

tal-run buildings.

I sold the MOB after two years,

when a national commercial real-es-

tate brokerage cold-called me from

San Diego. I sold to an out-of-towner

and made some money to boot. Now

I never go by the medical building. I

only bought it because I couldn’t find

an apartment building at a reason-

able price.

Now I realize what I need is pa-

tience, not patients.

Mr. Stratton is the author of the

blog Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real

Estate.

By Bert Stratton

Owning a medical office

building proved too much

to handle for this simple

residential landlord.

John Simon, who died Sunday at

94, writing in the New Criterion,

November 2018:

The good critic notes details that

might escape a lay viewer, in addi-

tion to pinpointing implications

and providing explications for what

is not immediately apparent. He or

she shows how a work fits into the

history of its art form, and how it

reflects and comments on its social

context. If it is of performing art,

he or she evaluates writers, direc-

tors,andactors....

But there is something else, too,

and it is supreme. We also read a

critic for the writing, as we read

for their writing practitioners of

other art forms: fiction, poetry, es-

say, drama. This is scarcely less

important than the critic’s yea or

nay: Kenneth Tynan, with his wit

and elegance, his way with words

and paragraphs, is vastly preferable

to most of his more plodding col-

leagues, however dedicated—and, if

you will, empathetic—they may be.

“The critic is a man who knows the

way, but cannot drive the car,”

Tynan has said. As oversimplifica-

tions go, not a bad epigram....

Criticism should also be compre-

hensible, which is to say not writ-

ten by Frenchmen with esoteric

theories and befuddling jargon. And

it should not present itself as writ-

ten on Mosaic tablets by the likes

of Harold Bloom. Above all, it

should not be the voice of a pub-

lisher or editor or anybody else,

but independently the critic’s own.

Notable&Quotable: John Simon