Some of you might have heard about the recent congressional hearing with top U.S. university presidents about antisemitism on campus. It went so badly that the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned this weekend. Her comments were seen as too soft in condemning calls for a genocide against Jews. 

Schools and universities are facing an incredibly difficult situation, as we’ve written. Cancel culture reigns, aiming to punish rather than to understand. And from the increasingly liberal orthodoxy of many universities to conservative book-banning, the bedrock American commitment to free speech is under threat.

Yet there is another way. Today’s editorial looks at how to reset the free speech conversation on campus. And we wrote here about a “Friendsgiving” among Jews and Muslims at Carnegie Mellon University. An official for a Cleveland-area school district recently told the Monitor that “taking the time to actually listen and absorb and immerse ourselves into different cultures … has been really exciting.” In our greatest challenges are often our greatest opportunities for growth, if we are inclined to accept them.