Will the crisis over antisemitism at American colleges prove to be Axel Springer’s finest hour? The German newspaper publisher has certainly had its share of fine hours. One of them came when it built its corporate headquarters snug up against the free side of the Berlin Wall that divided East and West Germany. Another came in 1967, when the press baron himself articulated four principles to which his journalists would be held.

They still stand as among the finest and clearest principles ever laid down by a newspaper magnate. They include the “unreserved advocacy of the peaceful restoration of German unity in freedom”; the “rejection of all forms of political totalitarianism”; the “promotion of the free social market economy”; and the “reconciliation between Jews and Germans, including support for the vital rights of the state of Israel.”*

Bravo, we say, and never more ardently than today, when our greatest universities are riddled with hatred and their own leaders are having trouble articulating their core beliefs. Axel Springer gets into it because of a spat that has erupted, pitting the billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who has emerged as a leader against campus antisemitism and plagiarism, and an editor at Business Insider, which is owned by Axel Springer.

Business Insider accused Mr. Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, of plagiarism. Her infractions, which she has acknowledged, strike us as small beer, but the idea seems to be to embarrass Mr. Ackman after he had called for the removal as president of Harvard of Claudine Gay for not only plagiarism but for having, as he put in on X, “catalyzed an explosion of antisemitism and hate on campus that is unprecedented in Harvard’s history.”

Mr. Ackman, in turn, questions BI’s motives, tweeting that the “Editor of the Investigative group of Business Insider who is leading the attack on my wife is John Cook. He is a known anti-Zionist. My wife is Israeli. That might explain why he was willing to lead this attack . . .” BI’s global editor-in-chief on Sunday said he stands by  the story. Axel Springer said it would review the matter and make its finding transparent.

What rivets us about this is not the allegations of plagiarism or the hard-ball nature of the fight that has erupted, a humdinger though it is. It’s rather the possibility that we’re going to see, in Axel Springer the company, a major institution stand on the principles it laid down for its employees. Will those principles, which Axel Springer himself outlined in 1967, apply to the Axel Springer company’s American properties and employees?

This came up in October 2021, not long after Axel Springer bought Politico for more than a billion spondulix. Springer’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that the company would expect the American website to hew to Axel Springer’s principles, including support for Israel’s right to exist. Mr. Döpfner called it a “German duty,” though it’s hard to see the logic of confining it to Germany.

“These values are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company,” Mr. Döpfner was quoted by the Journal as saying. People with a fundamental problem with any of these principles, the Journal reports him as saying, “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly.” He said he expected Politico and Axel Springer’s other American titles would embody his vision of unbiased, nonpartisan reporting.

That contrasted with, as the Journal paraphrased it, “activist journalism,” which, it relays Mr. Döpfner as saying, was “enhancing societal polarization in the U.S. and elsewhere.” And here we are. We often remark in these columns on the propensity of history to play tricks. Wouldn’t it be something if America’s own way forward were lit up by a German publishing company from the heart of the country it did so much to unify.

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* Our summary of the principles draws from an account on AxelSpringer.com.