Last week in Paris, I rushed into print, so to speak, a post about the Halloween fest at the president's house at the University of Pennsylvania. This was the party where a student came dressed as a suicide bomber, and many attendees thought it was just hilarious. I do know the president, Amy Gutmann, and--though I was surprised that she allowed the young man to stay--I was quite rough on her. Frankly, I had, well, not exactly regret, but some anxieties about my rush to judgment. Did I, for example, really know all of the circumstances surrounding this grotesque occasion? Then, Michael Walzer, who has been for decades my moral compass and shares my commitments to the Jewish people and to Israel (and shares also my contempt for terror), called me and reminded me that whatever differences I have with Amy are not about these matters. Presidents do not these days move freely around their own campuses. Or, more to the point, they don't speak or react freely to provocations. And there are provocations waiting for them around every bush. Amy was much too gentle with Saad Saadi (who is not, as I mistakenly wrote, a Muslim). She should have thrown him out of the president's residence as soon as she saw him. But I can muster in my head the fuss that would have started and, since university presidents are always putting out fires, why she did not instinctively do that. It is the college and university environment that makes certain offenses tolerable. And others not. Or their "political correctness" and "incorrectness" that make the difference. My guess is that a white kid dressed as a "black mammy" wouldn't have been welcomed in the president's house. Was it Prince Harry who wore an SS uniform to a masked ball and, rightly, was punished by the public? I'd like to know what Amy thinks of this sorry story two weeks later. And here's another take on the episode by Professor Richard Landes, published in The Augean Stables, November 7, 2006.