Meeting Day Roundup

Today was a big meeting day for me (I was basically continuously talking with people from 10 AM to 3:45 PM -- lunch included). But it was fun! The conversations were nice and very productive. I met somebody new, got mentored by my adviser and mentored two undergraduate advisees. All in all, a good day.

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My friend Sarah Levin explains why, as a Mizrahi Jewish women, she did not feel comfortable marching with the Women's March this year. Particularly given how the debate over the Women's March has often been perceived to break down as "White Jewish women" versus "Middle Eastern/POC women", Sarah's perspective regarding Mizrahi erasure is an important one that needs consideration.

In the course of defending excluding all Israelis from the country, the Malaysian Prime Minister also explains why he so frequently indulges in naked antisemitism: "when I say only the 'Zionists,' people don’t understand. What they do understand is the word 'yahudi' or 'Jews.'" Oh, I bet they do.

Orin Kerr flags a Third Circuit which raises an interesting qualified immunity question: how long after the release of an opinion does the legal holding of that opinion become "clearly established". My instinctive view is "immediately" (or, at least, immediately after the mandate issues). But that may well be colored by my view that qualified immunity is basically a set of special privileges given to government officials to break the law that aren't extended to everyday citizens.

Buzzfeed publishes a report (apparently originally printed in a Swiss magazine) claiming that two Jewish political operatives were originally behind the campaign to vilify George Soros; a JTA article expresses skepticism about the timeline.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) apologizes for a 2012 tweet where she accused Israel having "hypnotized the world" to blind global actors to the Jewish state's "evil". The apology was proximately prompted by this column from Bari Weiss, explaining the antisemitic provenance behind the "hypnotized" language; Weiss thanked Omar for her apology and extended an open invitation to her to write on the issue in the New York Times op-ed section.