In 8 a.d., Ovid, the poet, the toast of Rome, was suddenly exiled to the remote outpost of Tomis. The reason remains a mystery. Ovid himself said only that his fate was caused by carmen et error — “a poem and a mistake.”

Two millennia later, a new effort to exile Ovid — not from Rome, but from Columbia University’s famed Core Curriculum — could be attributed to the same: carmen et error, where the poem is his Metamorphoses, and the error is that “like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.” So wrote four undergraduate students earlier this month in Columbia’s campus newspaper, the Spectator. They would like a “trigger warning” affixed to Ovid’s masterwork.

It is safe to say that these students (all members of Columbia’s “Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board,” by the by) overreached. Critics have been many and swift and savage. In her weekly Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan pardoned the students on the grounds that “everyone in their 20s has the right to be an idiot.”

But idiocy is notoriously infectious, and it is not obvious that the obvious rebuttals will suffice. For instance, critics have posed the natural reductio question, namely: If Ovid merits a “trigger warning,” doesn’t Shakespeare? Milton? Chaucer? The Bible? (Yes, yes, yes, and it doesn’t have one already?) But appealing to the power of Great Names — Shakespeare! — or repairing to mockery are sufficient responses only as long as a Great Name has the power to inspire awe, or mockery to inspire shame.

One cannot assume either today. The “trigger warning” crowd has placed the past on the defensive. The text must submit to the reader, not the other way around. Or as Columbia’s op-ed writers put it: “Students need to feel safe in the classroom, and that requires a learning environment that recognizes the multiplicity of their identities.”

Notably, Columbia’s administration has played somewhat into this view. On the website for its Core Curriculum, Ovid is advertised as “a particularly modern poet. He knew how to take genres apart, recognizing and exposing their codes and patterns,” writes Classics professor James Uden.  “Then he delighted in reassembling them in surprising ways.” The Metamorphoses is itself “a radical kind of epic poem.” So, to students who have said, “Look how old and primitive and cruel Ovid is! He is nothing like us, which is why we should not read him!” Columbia has responded, “Look how fresh and contemporary and subversive Ovid is! He’s just like us, which is why we should read him!”

In an age in which quashing dissent in political and cultural life is increasingly the norm, Columbia’s response is alarming. Maybe Ovid is old, primitive, and cruel (he’s not, but let’s say so for argument’s sake); he is still different. And that’s increasingly important.

In an introductory essay to St. Athanasius’s De Incarnatione (another very old book), C. S. Lewis made just this argument. “Every age has its own outlook,” wrote Lewis. “It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

Lewis is not suggesting (at least not here) that old books got things more right than new ones — Dante was not omniscient — but simply that they got things right (and wrong) differently: “Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”

Particularly in an age obsessed with “diversity,” such an observation is timely. Even a class of twentysomethings who hail from both Harlem and the Hamptons are likely to exhibit a consensus on a whole swath of fundamental questions. But older writers, not brought up in 21st-century America, won’t. They will think differently. They will use unfamiliar words in unfamiliar constructions; they will combat unfamiliar enemies and call upon unfamiliar friends; they will wrestle with unfamiliar questions and offer unfamiliar answers.

And that unfamiliarity is the point. Reading old books is a way of resisting the cultural and intellectual uniformity that develops when one’s intellectual horizon is one’s own birthdate. A great deal of such uniformity is evident in modern American political and cultural and intellectual life.

Being able to stand outside of it, to offer a detached and learned perspective on our present discontents, is much of the reason for education in the first place. Colleges that seek to turn out original thinkers, persons not bounded by their own time who can offer that substantive critique, are rare. But they remain — as do students up to the challenge.

Any of those students who attend Columbia may want to consider transferring.

The Middle East is in meltdown.

The Syrian civil war is unrestrained. Tens of thousands have died. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are considering direct intervention. Syria’s mayhem threatens to spill into Lebanon, and in Beirut, Iran and Hezbollah wage terrorism against their political opponents.

Jordan is overwhelmed by a refugee crisis of staggering proportions. Iraq teeters on the brink of collapse. Its government remains divided and weak. Unsupported by America, the Sunni tribes are wedged between the jackboot of Iran and the horrors of ISIS.

Yemen is a Mad Max battleground between Saudi Arabia and Iranian-supported Houthi rebels (and nationalists, separatists, and al-Qaeda).

But while the operative cause of this disaster is authoritarianism and the rot of political Islam, President Obama’s strategy is certainly catalyzing the catastrophe. And now, thanks to his delusion, the chaos is about to get a thermonuclear injection. Just read what one Gulf leader currently visiting Washington told the New York Times: “We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research.”

The Saudis have made themselves clear. As I explained in February, Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear capability will lead to reciprocal action by the Saudi government. After all, Saudi Arabia’s long-term financial support for Pakistan’s nuclear program has never been just about Islamic beneficence. Instead, that funding was a down payment for future opportunity.

This speaks to the great failing of President Obama’s Middle East policy: its narrow focus.

President Obama believes rapprochement with Iran is fostered by his tangible support for the more moderate elements of that regime. But he neglects two undeniable facts. First, Iran’s policy toward the United States is shaped not only by deep mistrust but also by outright hatred. To be sure, President Obama has forged trust with more-moderates like Foreign Minister Zarif and President Rouhani. Yet he has neglected the simultaneous need to deter regime hard-liners who hate America and hold great influence over the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Today, those hard-liners are empowered by President Obama’s strategic hesitation.

Don’t believe me? Just look at what they’re doing.

Two weeks ago, Iran seized a Marshall Islands–flagged cargo ship. Last week, an Iranian general said, “We welcome war with the Americans.” This week, the Iranians sent a cargo ship to Yemen to test whether Obama would prevent them from supplying the Houthi rebels. Yesterday, the Iranians fired on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Navy’s response? To send an unarmed plane that arrived too late to do anything. As CNN noted, “The Pentagon recently stopped escorting commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, and it’s not clear if those operations will resume.”

Of course, Iran’s growing hostility was entirely predictable. It’s why I argued a couple of months back that President Obama needed to send another carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf.

Instead, the Obama administration chose to ignore reality. And it still does so. Take John Kerry’s patently ludicrous defense on Tuesday of the Russian-brokered WMD deal with Assad. In return for avoiding U.S. retaliation for his August 2013 massacre at Ghouta, the deal required Assad to surrender his chemical weapons. He hasn’t. Instead, as the Obama administration is well aware, the agreement has not prevented Assad from continuing to burn the lungs of Syrian children. Still, to Kerry, it’s a victory. As he put it, “We have seen what happens when Russia and the United States work together.”

These failures — so brutal and so unambiguous — are the tombstone of U.S. credibility and of our ability to stall the Middle East’s descent into chaos. Iran knows it, and so do our allies. And this, in essence, is why Saudi Arabia will go nuclear. American guarantees are no longer reliable. While President Obama doubles down on vacuous words, others are choosing nuclear weapons.

Scientists have the first proof that a “brand new” way of combating cancer, using genetically modified viruses to attack tumour cells, can benefit patients, paving the way for a “wave” of new potential treatments over the next decade.

Specialists at the NHS Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) confirmed that melanoma skin cancer patients treated with a modified herpes virus (the virus that causes cold sores) had improved survival – a world first.

In some patients, the improvements were striking. Although all had aggressive, inoperable malignant melanoma, those treated with the virus therapy – known as T-VEC – at an earlier stage survived on average 20 months longer than patients given an alternative.

In other patients results were more modest, but the study represents a landmark: it is the first, large, randomised trial of a so-called oncolytic virus to show success.

Cancer scientists predict it will be the first of many in the coming years – adding a new weapon to our arsenal of cancer treatments.

The method – known as viral immunotherapy – works by launching a “two-pronged attack” on cancer cells. The virus is genetically modified so that it can’t replicate in healthy cells – meaning it homes in on cancer cells.

It multiplies inside the cancer cells, bursting them from within. At the same time, other genetic modifications to the virus mean it stimulates the body’s own immune response to attack and destroy tumours.

Other forms of immunotherapy – the stimulation of the body’s own immune system to fight cancer – using antibodies rather viruses, have been developed into successful drugs. It is hoped that T-VEC could be used in combination with these.

Findings from trials of T-VEC, which is manufactured by the American pharmaceutical company Amgen, have already been submitted to drugs regulators in Europe and the USA.

Viral immunotherapies are also being investigated for use against advanced head and neck cancers, bladder cancers and liver cancers.

Kevin Harrington, UK trial leader and professor of biological cancer therapies at the ICR and an honorary consultant at the Royal Marsden, said he hoped the treatment could be available for routine use within a year in many countries, although it would need to pass the UK’s own regulatory approval before it could be prescribed here.

“I hope, having worked for two decades in this field, that it really is the start of something really exciting,” said Professor Harrington. “We hope this is the first of a wave of indications for these sorts of [cancer fighting] agents that we will see coming through in the next decade or so.”

Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the ICR said: “We may normally think of viruses as the enemies of mankind, but it’s their very ability to specifically infect and kill human cells that can make them such promising cancer treatments.”

The study, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, included 436 patients, all of whom had aggressive, inoperable malignant melanoma. More than 16 per cent of patients were responding to treatment after six months, compared to 2.1 per cent who were given a control treatment.

Some patients were still responding to treatment after three years.Alan Melcher, professor of clinical oncology and biotherapy at the University of Leeds, and an expert in oncolytic viruses, said the field had accelerated quickly in recent years.

“They were first developed to go in and kill cancer cells but leave other cells unharmed. What’s become clear is that these viruses may do that but what is probably more important, is that they work by stimulating an immune response against cancer,” he said.

“The field has moved very quickly clinically. Immunotherapy looks promising and big pharmaceutical companies are now involved. Amgem have bought this virus and the reality is, when the big companies get involved things move a lot more quickly.”

Dr Hayley Frend, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said the potential for viruses in future cancer treatments was “exciting”.

“Previous studies have shown T-VEC could benefit some people with advanced skin cancer but this is the first study to prove an increase in survival. The next step will be to understand why only some patients respond to T-VEC, in order to help better identify which patients might benefit from it,” she said.

Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, and is becoming more widespread as a result of increased exposure to the sun in younger generations who have benefitted from easier access to sunnier climates on holiday. Survival chances are good if the cancer – indicated by the appearance of a new mole on the skin – is caught early.

However, if left alone, the tumour can become inoperable, and 2,000 people still die from melanoma in the UK every year.

Persistently increasing wage inequality, polarization of the wage distribution, and stagnating real wages for low skill workers are some of the most salient features of modern labor markets, but are difficult to reconcile with the theoretical literature on economic growth. To better understand the mechanisms driving these phenomena, we construct an endogenous growth model of directed technical change with automation (the introduction of machines which replace low-skill labor and complement high-skill labor) and horizontal innovation (the introduction of new products, which increases demand for both types of labor). The economy endogenously follows three phases: First, both low-skill wages and automation are low, while income inequality and the labor share are constant. Second, increases in low-skill wages stimulate investment in automation, which depresses the growth rate of future low-skill wages (potentially to negative), and reduces the total labor share. Finally, the share of automated products stabilizes and low-skill wages grow at a positive but lower rate than high-skill wages. Adding middle skill workers allows the model to generate a phase of wage polarization after one of uniform increase in income inequality. We show that this framework can quantitatively account for the evolution of the skill premium, the skill ratio and the labor share in the US since the 1960s