When Alice in Wonderland meets Palestine

My mother used to tell a story about how when she was in college, she believed that she had a professor who liked her so much that her papers were never checked but just given an “A” automatically. Of course, that’s a better problem than a teacher automatically failing a student without looking at their work, but it bothered her all the same.

To prove it, one day she submitted a paper having inserted a full type-written page from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” in the middle. The teacher didn’t look, and my mother got an A.

I learned from this experience, and from my parents in general,...