Hoover Daily Report | October 7, 2025

Today, Barry Strauss documents the ways in which Israel’s own history, stretching back millennia, can inform how it handles relations with its neighbors and its continuing campaign to punish those responsible for the October 7 attacks. Contributors to the Middle East and Islamic World Working Group argue Israel has done America huge favors with its post–October 7 campaigns around the Middle East. And Eugene Volokh and Larry Diamond explore the state of free speech in America: one compares it with free speech in the UK and the other focuses on freedom of expression on Stanford’s campus.

Hoover Daily Report | October 7, 2025

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
- Welcome to the Hoover Daily report.
Ideas Advancing Freedom. It'sTuesday, October 7th, 2025.
- Today, Barry Straussdocuments the ways in which
Israel's own history.
Stretching back millennia can inform
how it handles relationswith its neighbors,
and its continuing campaignto punish those responsible
for the October 7th attacks.

(00:20):
Contributors to the Middle East
and Islamic World WorkingGroup argue Israel has done
America huge favors with itspost-OC October 7th campaigns
around the Middle East and Eugene Vick
and Larry Diamond explore the state
of free speech in America.
One compares it with free speech in the uk
and the other focuses on freedom
of expression on Stanford's campus
- Israel versus Empire writing.

(00:42):
In Hoover's new SubstackFreedom frequency senior fellow
Barry Strauss says,
Israelis must recall the roletheir past plays in their
foreign relations as they markthe tragic second anniversary
of the brutal attack byHamas on October 7th, 2023.
He reflects on the disunityfelt within Israel in the months
leading up to the attack

(01:02):
and how the nation came togethernot only to confront Hamas,
but to earn a stunning militaryvictory over the Islamic
Republic of Iran last summer.
It's a historical aberration
that the Iranian governmentdespises Israel so much.
Straus writes, as the twopeoples have been friends
for large parts of their history,
but will this unity hold Strausrecalls the Times chronicled

(01:24):
in his new book, Jews versus Rome,
when Jews were no longer united
and thus were crushed by Roman legions.
That era and its lessons are not
as distant as they mightseem. Strauss argues
- America's debt to Israelwriting in the Wall Street
Journal Rule Mark directcontributor to Hoover's Middle East
and the Islamic world working group
and co-author Ray Taki arguethat the US should be grateful

(01:47):
to Israel for theirefforts since the attacks
of October 7th in eliminatingor degrading so many groups
and states that were hostileto American interests,
they write that Israelhas removed Hamas' ability
to maneuver as a gorilla.
Force neutered the capacityof Hezbollah in Beirut,
overseeing the topplingof Bashar Assad in Syria,
and completely decimatedthe military leadership

(02:10):
and air power of Iran all inthe span of the past two years.
Not all of Israel's enemies are Americas.
They write, but enough of them are
to do more than wish it well.
- From Brandenburg to Britain,
rethinking free speech in thedigital era with Eric Heza
on the latest episode
of Free Speech Unmutedsenior fellow Eugene Vick

(02:30):
and co-host Jane BambBauer speak with Eric Hines
of Queen Mary University of London, about
how the digital age hastransformed the meaning
and limits of free expression.
The discussion ranges fromBritain's recent Lucy Connolly
case involving online incitement
and hate speech to the philosophical
and legal contrast between theAmerican Brandenburg standard
and Britain's moreinterventionist approach.

(02:52):
Heza argues that democraciesmust rethink free speech in an
era dominated by opaquepowerful platforms like Twitter
and Facebook where risk, harm
and accountability are far harder
to define than in the past.
They debate whether governments
or tech companies shouldbear responsibility
for regulating speech online
and what freedom really meanswhen algorithms not citizens

(03:13):
shape public discourse.
- The crisis of freedom
of expression in the UnitedStates writing in the Stanford
Daily senior fellow Larry Diamondsays, the state of freedom
of expression in America hasbeen on the wane for years.
Well before theassassination of Charlie Kirk
and the temporary suspension
of Jimmy Kimmel broughtthis issue wider scrutiny on

(03:34):
Stanford's campus.
The impact has been felt for years
with activists shoutingdown the 2023 visit
of a federal judge to thecampus preventing him from
continuing with a talk withthe Campus Federalist Society.
In the wake of the October 7th attacks,
Jews on campus documented countless times
where they were shouteddown, physically impeded,

(03:55):
and intimidated by pro Gaza demonstrators.
But Diamond says the remedy cannot include
any sort of censorship.
Instead, we need more speech,better speech, education,
and thoughtful engagement.
We need to promote intellectual diversity
and political pluralism,
and our report insisted wemust strive to create a culture
where disagreement can beexpressed without devolving into

(04:17):
personal animus, politicalintolerance, or social exclusion.
- Arkansas makes case for benefits
of education savings accounts.
On the latest episode ofthe Education Exchange,
senior fellow Paul E. Petersonspeaks with Patrick J. Wolf
of the University of Arkansasabout wolf's research into
how education savings accounts impacted

(04:37):
education in that state.
He tells Peterson that
after two years access to theseaccounts is producing signs
of academic improvementin the pupils whose
households utilize them.
The average student whosehousehold subscribed
to an education savings accountin Arkansas last year scored
in the 57th percentile in math
and the 59th percentile inEnglish language, putting them

(04:58):
above the nationalaverage in both subjects,
households in Arkansas canuse the account funds to pay
for private school tuition,tutoring, supplies,
subsidized transportation,and other education costs.
- Featured Hoover publication, 50 Years
of the Shadow Open Market Committee,
a retrospective on itsrole in monetary policy.
50 years of the ShadowOpen Market Committee.

(05:21):
A retrospective on its rolein monetary policy is a deep
dive into the 50 year history
of the Shadow OpenMarket Committee, a group
of private academic economists that acts
as the Federal reserve'soutside watchdogs,
providing candid, economicallygrounded critiques
of the Fed's conduct of policy.
The volume based on a two daysymposium held at the Hoover

(05:42):
Institution, October 13th, the 14th, 2024,
examines the evolutionof the Fed's monetary
and credit policies andcritical issues it faces today.
- That's your HooverDaily report for Tuesday,
October 7th, 2025.
Each weekday, we bringyou research, analysis,
and commentary focused on publicpolicy, national security,

(06:03):
and the ideas shaping Americansociety and government.
The Hoover Institution atStanford University is grounded in
constitutional principleswith a commitment
to sustaining the safeguardsof the American way of life.
Thank you for listening.
For links to all the articles
and interviews mentionedtoday, visit hoover.org/hdr.