The Obama administration has revamped a program designed to lure foreign fighters away from extremist groups like the Islamic State, focusing on a series of new advertisements and social media posts that seek to appeal to emotion rather than logic. Money for the program, which is managed by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tripled this year, to $16 million, after administration officials concluded that past efforts that had attempted to scare potential militants away from the extremist groups were not working.

What propels Islamist terrorism and attacks against France is more than an academic debate: The answer shapes policy toward blunting the threat. So it is no inconsequential matter in a culture under attack, and one that so cherishes its intellectual debates, that France’s two leading scholars of radical Islam — former friends — have turned bitter rivals over their differing views.

Brett Bruen highlighted initiatives he and colleagues undertook at the University of Tikrit in 2009 to counter extremism in Iraq. [...] The example was meant to demonstrate how undervalued centers of learning are in wars of ideas and to advocate for U.S. public diplomacy strategies that leverage inherent American advantages in academic English and entrepreneurship.