Did you know there's a new season of Project Runway All-Stars? I didn't! Did you know we're in the seventh season of All-Stars? I definitely didn't! That's shocking. And what's more shocking is that -- unlike certain past seasons -- the competitors really are all stars! In fact, every single contestant has won a season of Project Runway. Pretty impressive.
And to add an extra dose of freshness: not all of the winners are from the American edition of the show. It also includes winners of Project Runway Canada (Sunny Fong -- already eliminated! -- and Evan Biddell), Australia (Juli Grbac and Christina Exie), Brazil (Cynthia Hayashi), Netherlands (Django Steenbakker), and the UK (Jasper Garvida).
Of course, I can't really tell apart the newbies yet. So let's instead give a brief scouting report on some of our old returning favorites:
Anthony Ryan
Oh, Anthony Ryan. Famous for saying, after surviving testicular cancer, that he's "rocking one now", and more famous around these parts for Laura Bennett telling him that if he didn't stop being so annoying she'd "slap him so hard he'll be rocking none". Anthony Ryan is the one designer on this season with a slight asterisk -- he didn't win his season of Project Runway proper, he won an All-Stars season (and a pretty weak season at that). He also got really lucky that the judges decided to do no eliminations in the first episode, since his "Native American" inspired outfit was clearly the worst to go down the runway.
He came back nicely in episode two, though he clearly hated the blue/orange color palette he was assigned and that disdain somehow was communicated in an otherwise nice outfit. Seriously, it could work really well as a uniform for the UVA flag team -- and somehow, I don't mean that as an insult.
Anya
One of my old favorites, but a controversial winner. She had weak technical skills to begin with, which she covered for via a flowing, drape-y style that doesn't demand much sewing acumen (or so I gather -- it's not like I know how to sow). First thing she says upon coming back this season is that she hasn't done any sowing since her original season of Project Runway -- she works in parts of fashion where she doesn't have to do any of the needlework. Maybe a wise career choice, but it's hard to imagine it will serve her well on the show.
So far, her looks have been ... well, the good news is you always know which piece coming down the runway is Anya's. The bad news is you always know which piece coming down the runway is Anya's. The looks are already getting repetitive, and it doesn't seem likely she has the range to really stretch out.
Dmitry
One of two double-winners on this season (along with Seth Aaron): he won both his "regular" season and an All-Stars season. Kinda makes you wonder what their careers are doing if they nonetheless keep coming back onto the show -- it's not like you see Christian Siriano returning. Anyway, Dmitry is one of my absolute favorites, and was the clear winner of the first episode with a Bohemian-chic velvet look that felt both very sellable and very fashionable. And it was very different from the highly structured looks that we've associated with Dmitry in the past. If you're asking me who I'm rooting for this season, he's probably it.
Irina
Irina seems to have taken a step back since she won her Project Runway season (the ill-fated excursion to Los Angeles -- oh, so very long ago). Remember her newspaper coat? One of the greatest, most iconic looks ever produced on the show. Now? Her first look -- a giant feathered-red coat -- got positive remarks from the judges even though I was on the side of those who thought it made her model look like a giant rooster (also, she said it was inspired by merlot since the Republic of Georgia produces a lot of wine. I don't even drink wine and I know it doesn't come in the color of pasta sauce).
But at least there I could see a valid difference of opinion. Episode two, by contrast -- hooboy is she lucky that Sunny decided to flip a middle finger to the challenge parameters (a completely yellow dress with a tiny blue broach buried in the back does not satisfy the criteria of a colors challenge, buddy). If a Disney princess ever fell into prostitution, that's the look she'd wear. It was one of the tackiest things I've ever seen. Irina has always been excellent technically, but if she doesn't shape up soon she'll be shipping out.
Michelle
Did you know the "Tim Gunn save" was invented for Michelle? It's true! Tim Gunn was so aghast they were going to send her home in Season 11 that he prevailed upon the judges to give her another chance. And that ad hoc intervention became formalized as a the "Tim Gunn save" the next season. Michelle ended up winning the whole show, so the intervention was clearly justified in her case (and I remember thinking that at the time). But I remember feeling like she'd lost some of her edge when she came back to an earlier All-Stars season, and she's been pretty unremarkable thus far.
Sean
A well-liked winner, though she took it away from fan (and personal) favorite Amanda in Season 11. He's the king of the tassle and fringe, and the judges loved his look from episode two even though Jill and I both thought it looked like his model was sprouting tufts of hair all over her body. Gross. Sean definitely is talented, but I never quite got onto his train as much as some other Project Runway observers (and judges). I'd love to see him expand his range a little bit.
Seth Aaron
Alongside Dmitry, the other 900 pound monster this season. I wasn't actually Seth Aaron's biggest fan on his original season, but I've grown to appreciate him more and more (that he designs for Martha Nussbaum certainly helps!). There's a quiet confidence to him now that I think will carry him well this season, where he already won (and deservedly so) the episode two colors challenge. The thing about Project Runway is that, over the years, there has been a wide range of talent across different seasons, such that some wins have been considerably more impressive than others. I think at this stage, it is fair to say that Seth Aaron sits as one of the stronger victors in Project Runway history, and he'll be a real contender to win this season.
Still rooting for Dmitry though.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Thursday, January 10, 2019
What Are Jews?
Thirty years ago, the great feminist Jewish writer Evelyn Torton Beck wrote that "if the concept ‘Jew’ does not fit the categories we have created, then … we need to rethink our categories."
She was echoing an observation by Albert Memmi, who lamented the "sociologists' lack of imagination" in their insistent efforts to slot "Jews" into a familiar and well-trodden social category schemas.
For it sometimes seems that any answer to the question "what are Jews" doesn't quite work.
Are we a religion? Yes, in part -- but certainly not just that. There are and have always been many Jews, fully recognized as part of the Jewish community, who have no particular religious or spiritual orientation whatsoever. The attempt to delimit Jewishness as "just a religion" almost always is an attempt to degrade or delegitimize Jewishness as a collective identity in favor of an individualistic, atomized spirituality where people "just happen to be Jewish" as they might happen to be Catholic or Protestant.
Are we a race? Surely, at times Jews have been racialized -- most notably by Nazi racial scientists. But why should we so eagerly accept their conclusions? Moreover, the argument that Jews are a "race" doesn't rest easily with acknowledgment of racial diversity within Judaism. Are Black Jews not Black (because their race is Jewish)? Or are they not truly Jewish (because their race is Black)? Or if we accept that there are Black Jews and Latino Jews and Persian Jews, what am I? "Just Jewish"? How come I get the neutral descriptor? What makes my Jewish identity more central than theirs?
Are we an ethnicity? Much of the same issues with "race" seem to apply, and most of the usage of "ethnicity" around Judaism typically is more fine-grained around Ashkenazi versus Sephardic. But even there, it has been observed that these are minhags -- there are a great many African-American Ashkenazi Jews, after all -- so why should Ashkenazi be defined in terms of ethnicity, as opposed to liturgical community?
Are we a "nation"? Clearly we've often defined ourselves that way. But doing so seems to walk straight into a dual loyalty charge -- after all, isn't my nation American? Is there are difference between "Jewish" the nation and "Israel" the nation?
Sometimes I dodge and just say Jews are a "people", which works -- but only because it is so self-consciously vague. What is a "people"? What am I even trying to communicate in describing Jews that way?
Recently, I heard someone say that the best way to describe Jews is as a "civilization". A civilization can include people of an array of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, under a multitude of different political authorities. It might have an associated religion, but it can admit a diverse range of manners of practicing it or living it out. A civilization has distinctive art, culture, history, politics -- and not just one thread of these, but many. There is Jewish art, but not just one style; Jewish history, but not just one narrator; Jewish culture, but not just one form.
Is it a perfect fit? No. But if it doesn't fit, the problem might not be with the Jews, but with the categories which fail to fully account for the Jewish case. And for me, I'd much rather preserve the ambivalent, fuzzy contours of the Jewish civilization than I would attempt to shoehorn Jews into a category that wasn't built for us to occupy.
She was echoing an observation by Albert Memmi, who lamented the "sociologists' lack of imagination" in their insistent efforts to slot "Jews" into a familiar and well-trodden social category schemas.
For it sometimes seems that any answer to the question "what are Jews" doesn't quite work.
Are we a religion? Yes, in part -- but certainly not just that. There are and have always been many Jews, fully recognized as part of the Jewish community, who have no particular religious or spiritual orientation whatsoever. The attempt to delimit Jewishness as "just a religion" almost always is an attempt to degrade or delegitimize Jewishness as a collective identity in favor of an individualistic, atomized spirituality where people "just happen to be Jewish" as they might happen to be Catholic or Protestant.
Are we a race? Surely, at times Jews have been racialized -- most notably by Nazi racial scientists. But why should we so eagerly accept their conclusions? Moreover, the argument that Jews are a "race" doesn't rest easily with acknowledgment of racial diversity within Judaism. Are Black Jews not Black (because their race is Jewish)? Or are they not truly Jewish (because their race is Black)? Or if we accept that there are Black Jews and Latino Jews and Persian Jews, what am I? "Just Jewish"? How come I get the neutral descriptor? What makes my Jewish identity more central than theirs?
Are we an ethnicity? Much of the same issues with "race" seem to apply, and most of the usage of "ethnicity" around Judaism typically is more fine-grained around Ashkenazi versus Sephardic. But even there, it has been observed that these are minhags -- there are a great many African-American Ashkenazi Jews, after all -- so why should Ashkenazi be defined in terms of ethnicity, as opposed to liturgical community?
Are we a "nation"? Clearly we've often defined ourselves that way. But doing so seems to walk straight into a dual loyalty charge -- after all, isn't my nation American? Is there are difference between "Jewish" the nation and "Israel" the nation?
Sometimes I dodge and just say Jews are a "people", which works -- but only because it is so self-consciously vague. What is a "people"? What am I even trying to communicate in describing Jews that way?
Recently, I heard someone say that the best way to describe Jews is as a "civilization". A civilization can include people of an array of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, under a multitude of different political authorities. It might have an associated religion, but it can admit a diverse range of manners of practicing it or living it out. A civilization has distinctive art, culture, history, politics -- and not just one thread of these, but many. There is Jewish art, but not just one style; Jewish history, but not just one narrator; Jewish culture, but not just one form.
Is it a perfect fit? No. But if it doesn't fit, the problem might not be with the Jews, but with the categories which fail to fully account for the Jewish case. And for me, I'd much rather preserve the ambivalent, fuzzy contours of the Jewish civilization than I would attempt to shoehorn Jews into a category that wasn't built for us to occupy.
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
It Wasn't a Bomb Roundup
Unbelievably, this package -- which randomly arrived at the offices of The Jewish Daily Forward for me (I do not work at the Forward, for the record) -- didn't contain a bomb. The truth was actually weirder -- it was (eight copies of) a pamphlet on Jews, marijuana, and prostitution, given to "strengthin [sic] you and your friends."
What a weird world we live in sometimes.
* * *
The Tarrant County, Texas GOP prepares to vote on whether to remove a party official for that most heinous crime of ... being Muslim. Tarrant County is not some tiny speck -- it's where Fort Worth is.
Two Black men have turned up dead in the house of a prominent California Democratic Party donor -- another man who was hired to do drugs and sexual activity shares his story.
Carly Pildis has an insightful column on how to tighten synagogue security while recognizing that a police presence won't necessarily make all congregants feel safe (picking up on a conversation Bentley Addison helped start last November).
Tema Smith has a good essay in the Forward on the history of Jewish Whiteness in America.
Andrew Silow-Carroll does an excellent job parsing the issue of Rep. Rashida Tlaib's "dual loyalty" insinuation from a few days ago.
An ADL staffer reports on a recent interfaith trip he organized with African-American pastors to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Though I think the term "Third Narrative" has already been taken.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the outcome of a significant sexual harassment investigation involving a Michigan State political scientist (though -- lawyer's tic -- the article is incorrect to say that the "preponderance of the evidence" standard used in the investigation wouldn't be used in court. "Preponderance of the evidence" is the normal standard used in non-criminal judicial proceeding).
Senator Kamala Harris comes out in favor of legalizing marijuana and expunging the convictions of non-violent offenders.
And, to complete the "not a bomb" circuit, a Berkeley man was arrested after leaving a fake bomb laced with antisemitic slurs on the UC-Berkeley campus
Tuesday, January 08, 2019
No Matter How Dumb the Internet Is, Laura Loomer Can Make It Dumber
Some of you might have noticed, a few days ago, that the "translate" option was no longer appearing for Hebrew-language tweets on Twitter. It was a bit frustrating, but I figured it was a glitch and didn't think any more of it. Some time in the past few days functionality was restored, with Twitter confirming it was a bug that had been resolved.
Straightforward, right? Oh you sweet, naive child. Let Laura Loomer educate you:
Straightforward, right? Oh you sweet, naive child. Let Laura Loomer educate you:
Twitter didn't seem to care about informing users as to why they decided to stop translating Hebrew tweets, as their decision was casually implemented without an announcement. Jewish, Israeli, and Hebrew speaking Twitter users were not informed of Twitter’s decision to stop translating Hebrew, which effectively cut off all Israeli twitter users and Hebrew speakers from the non Hebrew twitter sphere.Could they have not informed users in advance because ... it was a bug? Loomer sees through you.
A bug that only affects Hebrew? Nice excuse, but Chinese was translating perfectly fine. The only language affected was Hebrew. You know, than language of the Jews.
Funny how Twitter has no problem with Farrakhan calling Jews actual bugs, but they are so quick to blame their removal of Hebrew on a make believe "bug".
Sounds like bias to me!I just -- it's probably because I'm emotionally exhausted today, but I can't stop laughing at this. "Twitter says it had a 'bug', but did it object to Louis Farrakhan calling Jews 'bugs'? Checkmate, Twitter!"
Apparently reporting on Twitter's removal of Hebrew translation makes me a "conspiracy theorist".Apparently, just because you find the idea of Twitter having bugs to be outlandishly improbable compared to a secret plot to exclude the Jews (that was silently implemented and then withdrawn within the space of a few weeks), that makes you some sort of "conspiracy theorist." What is the world coming to?
I'm Very Tired and Cranky: S.1/BDS Edition
I didn't want to write this. I really really didn't. I've been swamped the past few days dealing with Rep. Rashida Tlaib telling people who backed an anti-BDS law that "they forgot which country they represent", then explaining why that's an antisemitic dual loyalty trope even when applied to non-Jews like Marco Rubio, then excoriating the AJC for literally making its own dual loyalty accusation against Tlaib as some sort of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I racist retort to Tlaib's tweet, and finally just throwing up my hands and saying we should probably just avoid tropes of "loyalty" and whatnot in this entire discourse, because none of y'all can be trusted.
And because this is the internet and this involves Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I was doing all this while dodging a surrounding milieu of commentary that was as dumb as you could possibly imagine.
In particular: Nobody involved in this controversy seems to have the foggiest understanding of what Senator Rubio's bill (designated "S.1") is even doing. When they're not engaged in outlandish hyperbole about it "banning criticism of Israel", they're outright mistaking it for completely different bills about BDS. And to the extent their arguments do touch on something that is within striking distance of an actual public controversy, they're almost universally awful.
That's right: this is a rant post. Feel free to skip it. I'm venting.
Longtime observers of "anti-BDS" laws may recognize that there are two very different "versions" of these laws which have been the subject of legal controversy recently. One is the federal "Israel Anti-Boycott Act", or IABA. This would (for the most part) update the Export Administration Act's preexisting ban on boycotting Israel as part of an effort to comply with a boycott demand by a foreign country to also include international governmental organizations (i.e., the EU and UN). I wrote critically about that proposed law here. Notably, neither the current law nor the IABA would prohibit, penalize, or restrict individuals or companies from boycotting Israel based on their own conscientious ideological choice -- it only covers boycotts which are done at the behest of a foreign power.
The second are state-level laws which generally prohibit the state from investing in or contracting with entities which, themselves, boycott Israel. Such laws include the recently struck down Kansas and Arizona laws, as well as the Texas law that was recently challenged by a speech pathologist who could not (she maintains) renew her contract with a local school district because she boycotts Israel. These laws do target "conscientious" boycott decisions -- not by prohibiting the choice, but by declaring that the government won't contract with bodies that make that choice. I've written critically about these laws here and here.
So which of these categories does Senator Rubio's S.1 fall into? Neither. His bill -- or rather, Title IV of his bill (the other three titles cover defense authorizations for Israel and Jordan, and tightened sanctions on Syria) -- does one thing: it states that state anti-BDS laws (of the second-type, above) are not preempted by federal law.
If that sounds technical, it is. Rubio's law doesn't itself impose any penalty or restriction on persons engaging in BDS. All it says is that if a state passes a law limiting its own investment or contracting to entities which disavow BDS, such a law wouldn't be deemed to conflict with any federal statute (preemption hasn't been a major feature of debates over BDS bills, but presumably Rubio is worried about Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council). If no states pass these laws, then Rubio's bill does nothing. If a state does pass a law, Rubio's bill still doesn't shield the state from having to defend its enactment against a First Amendment challenge. The state laws which Rubio's bill would declare non-preempted either are constitutional or they're not, but that question is utterly non-germane to Rubio's bill. And likewise, the validity of these state laws is entirely separate from the IABA and whether it is a wise or permissible alteration to the existing anti-boycott framework of the Export Administration Act -- Rubio's bill doesn't even touch on that subject.
But if we do move to the subject of the state laws and their constitutionality -- boy, are we ever getting a blast of Twitter School of Law. On the anti-side: There's the basic version that says these laws "allow punishment for Americans who protest Israel", which, no they don't -- they just hold that the state won't invest or contract with you if you boycott Israel. Why is it the case that every single intervention in these debates that at all requires any adjustment in how one registers one's objections to Israeli policy is perceived as tantamount to banning discussion outright? Don't answer that -- I know exactly why.
Then you get the more advanced play that the state can't claim its own ideological right to "boycott the boycotters" because "the Constitution is designed to protect American citizens from the government, and not the other way around", which sounds great until you think about it for a quarter-second and realize how strange it would be to apply to the government in its capacity as an employer and contractor, where it repeatedly and necessarily will be making non-viewpoint neutral choices on a daily basis. First Amendment law has recognized this since at least Pickering v. Board of Education:
Moving to the "pro" side, first you have to hack through article after article talking about the IABA and how it is only a minor update to the EAA and har-de-har don't Sanders and Tlaib realize we've had a law like this for years -- you're talking about a different bill!
Then you get the folks who say "well, these are just anti-discrimination laws" and ask what your position was on Masterpiece Cakeshop. The problem with that argument (other than the obvious "wait -- what was Rubio's position on Masterpiece Cakeshop?") is that these laws -- despite my advice -- are not being written as anti-discrimination laws. Indeed, Rubio's bill -- which only applies to boycotts which are taken "for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel" -- wouldn't even apply to a straightforward discrimination case where someone who refused to transact with an Israeli national simply because "I hate Israelis." If these are anti-discrimination provisions, then just write them that way: "we won't contract with any party which refuses to stipulate that they don't discriminate on basis of [inter alia] national origin." They're not written that way in part because these laws are, by design, meant to encompass activity that is not in of itself discriminatory (ex: the genuinely "nonpartisan" boycotter who refuses to do business with any party that she deems violates human rights -- Israel included as one of many).
Those who cite Rumsfeld v. FAIR (upholding a federal law requiring universities which accept federal money to allow military recruiters equal access to campus facilities) are at least in the right ballpark -- it is an "unconstitutional conditions" case -- but it hardly disposes of the controversy here. FAIR relied heavily on the notion that the decision to exclude recruiters from campus is not itself inherently "expressive" (I'd also note that the government's interest in insuring its own agents have access to a facility they are, in part, funding seems especially strong and isn't present in the anti-BDS law cases). But a boycott is much more inherently expressive, and since -- unlike the law in FAIR (and again, against my recommendations) -- the state laws are explicit that they are quite purposefully targeting the expressive aspects of the boycott, not the conduct per se (again: Rubio's bill doesn't even cover a generic refusal to do business with Israelis) -- it sits on far less stable footing.
All of which is to say: the law here is not fully settled and is complex, and we could stand for a much more careful conversation about how government speech versus individual liberty versus non-discrimination intersect in cases like these. But we're not having it, and nobody wants to have it.
And I'm just really tired, all of the sudden.
And because this is the internet and this involves Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I was doing all this while dodging a surrounding milieu of commentary that was as dumb as you could possibly imagine.
In particular: Nobody involved in this controversy seems to have the foggiest understanding of what Senator Rubio's bill (designated "S.1") is even doing. When they're not engaged in outlandish hyperbole about it "banning criticism of Israel", they're outright mistaking it for completely different bills about BDS. And to the extent their arguments do touch on something that is within striking distance of an actual public controversy, they're almost universally awful.
That's right: this is a rant post. Feel free to skip it. I'm venting.
Longtime observers of "anti-BDS" laws may recognize that there are two very different "versions" of these laws which have been the subject of legal controversy recently. One is the federal "Israel Anti-Boycott Act", or IABA. This would (for the most part) update the Export Administration Act's preexisting ban on boycotting Israel as part of an effort to comply with a boycott demand by a foreign country to also include international governmental organizations (i.e., the EU and UN). I wrote critically about that proposed law here. Notably, neither the current law nor the IABA would prohibit, penalize, or restrict individuals or companies from boycotting Israel based on their own conscientious ideological choice -- it only covers boycotts which are done at the behest of a foreign power.
The second are state-level laws which generally prohibit the state from investing in or contracting with entities which, themselves, boycott Israel. Such laws include the recently struck down Kansas and Arizona laws, as well as the Texas law that was recently challenged by a speech pathologist who could not (she maintains) renew her contract with a local school district because she boycotts Israel. These laws do target "conscientious" boycott decisions -- not by prohibiting the choice, but by declaring that the government won't contract with bodies that make that choice. I've written critically about these laws here and here.
So which of these categories does Senator Rubio's S.1 fall into? Neither. His bill -- or rather, Title IV of his bill (the other three titles cover defense authorizations for Israel and Jordan, and tightened sanctions on Syria) -- does one thing: it states that state anti-BDS laws (of the second-type, above) are not preempted by federal law.
If that sounds technical, it is. Rubio's law doesn't itself impose any penalty or restriction on persons engaging in BDS. All it says is that if a state passes a law limiting its own investment or contracting to entities which disavow BDS, such a law wouldn't be deemed to conflict with any federal statute (preemption hasn't been a major feature of debates over BDS bills, but presumably Rubio is worried about Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council). If no states pass these laws, then Rubio's bill does nothing. If a state does pass a law, Rubio's bill still doesn't shield the state from having to defend its enactment against a First Amendment challenge. The state laws which Rubio's bill would declare non-preempted either are constitutional or they're not, but that question is utterly non-germane to Rubio's bill. And likewise, the validity of these state laws is entirely separate from the IABA and whether it is a wise or permissible alteration to the existing anti-boycott framework of the Export Administration Act -- Rubio's bill doesn't even touch on that subject.
But if we do move to the subject of the state laws and their constitutionality -- boy, are we ever getting a blast of Twitter School of Law. On the anti-side: There's the basic version that says these laws "allow punishment for Americans who protest Israel", which, no they don't -- they just hold that the state won't invest or contract with you if you boycott Israel. Why is it the case that every single intervention in these debates that at all requires any adjustment in how one registers one's objections to Israeli policy is perceived as tantamount to banning discussion outright? Don't answer that -- I know exactly why.
Then you get the more advanced play that the state can't claim its own ideological right to "boycott the boycotters" because "the Constitution is designed to protect American citizens from the government, and not the other way around", which sounds great until you think about it for a quarter-second and realize how strange it would be to apply to the government in its capacity as an employer and contractor, where it repeatedly and necessarily will be making non-viewpoint neutral choices on a daily basis. First Amendment law has recognized this since at least Pickering v. Board of Education:
[I]t cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.This doesn't mean that the state can impose any condition it wants on the speech of its employees -- if the phrase "arrive a balance" wasn't a dead giveaway, the sentence immediately prior to that passage in Pickering--"[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected"--is clear enough. But there is a balancing test, and it should be obvious that there are absolutely scenarios where the government can and should limit its contracting decisions (ex: the state can't ban racist speech, but it absolutely can fire a police officer who engages in racist speech, because the state has a strong interest as an employer to not let its employees talk that way).
Moving to the "pro" side, first you have to hack through article after article talking about the IABA and how it is only a minor update to the EAA and har-de-har don't Sanders and Tlaib realize we've had a law like this for years -- you're talking about a different bill!
Then you get the folks who say "well, these are just anti-discrimination laws" and ask what your position was on Masterpiece Cakeshop. The problem with that argument (other than the obvious "wait -- what was Rubio's position on Masterpiece Cakeshop?") is that these laws -- despite my advice -- are not being written as anti-discrimination laws. Indeed, Rubio's bill -- which only applies to boycotts which are taken "for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel" -- wouldn't even apply to a straightforward discrimination case where someone who refused to transact with an Israeli national simply because "I hate Israelis." If these are anti-discrimination provisions, then just write them that way: "we won't contract with any party which refuses to stipulate that they don't discriminate on basis of [inter alia] national origin." They're not written that way in part because these laws are, by design, meant to encompass activity that is not in of itself discriminatory (ex: the genuinely "nonpartisan" boycotter who refuses to do business with any party that she deems violates human rights -- Israel included as one of many).
Those who cite Rumsfeld v. FAIR (upholding a federal law requiring universities which accept federal money to allow military recruiters equal access to campus facilities) are at least in the right ballpark -- it is an "unconstitutional conditions" case -- but it hardly disposes of the controversy here. FAIR relied heavily on the notion that the decision to exclude recruiters from campus is not itself inherently "expressive" (I'd also note that the government's interest in insuring its own agents have access to a facility they are, in part, funding seems especially strong and isn't present in the anti-BDS law cases). But a boycott is much more inherently expressive, and since -- unlike the law in FAIR (and again, against my recommendations) -- the state laws are explicit that they are quite purposefully targeting the expressive aspects of the boycott, not the conduct per se (again: Rubio's bill doesn't even cover a generic refusal to do business with Israelis) -- it sits on far less stable footing.
All of which is to say: the law here is not fully settled and is complex, and we could stand for a much more careful conversation about how government speech versus individual liberty versus non-discrimination intersect in cases like these. But we're not having it, and nobody wants to have it.
And I'm just really tired, all of the sudden.
Sunday, January 06, 2019
End of the Year Roundup
I know what you're thinking: It's not the "end of the year". The end of the year was almost a week ago!
But Blogger thinks you're wrong. If you look at the right-hand column of archived posts, it counts anything written from the week of December 30 through January 6 as being written in 2018.
And there's more: In both 2016 and 2017, I apparently wrote exactly 229 post. This post? This one right here? This should be post number ... 230.
That's right: an overtime victory for 2018's productivity.
* * *
Israel has officially announced it will seek $250 billion dollars in compensation from other Middle Eastern countries who expelled their Jewish populations in the wake of Israel's independence.
Good to see D.C. statehood get more traction in the House.
Five Jewish teenagers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the stone-throwing death of a Palestinian woman. Cases of Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians tripled in 2018.
This feels like something the Joker would do: colorful balloons carry explosives sent from Gaza into Israel (the bomb was safely defused with no injuries).
Meanwhile, here in Berkeley, a man has been arrested after bringing a fake bomb covered with antisemitic writing into our campus police department.
Tyler Cowen: speech regulation policies on private media platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) can be scalable, efficient, and consistent -- pick two. Put differently: a small website can efficiently manage a consistent moderation policy. But a large website (like Twitter) must either invest tremendous sums into moderation (far more than is cost-effective) or settle for a patchwork and inconsistently applied system that's largely ineffective and makes everyone angry.
UPDATE: Oh dang -- joke's on me! Apparently, today counts as the first day of 2019. Which means that 2018 -- like 2017 and 2016 -- will go down as having exactly 229 posts written.
That's kind of cool in its own right. I guess.
But Blogger thinks you're wrong. If you look at the right-hand column of archived posts, it counts anything written from the week of December 30 through January 6 as being written in 2018.
And there's more: In both 2016 and 2017, I apparently wrote exactly 229 post. This post? This one right here? This should be post number ... 230.
That's right: an overtime victory for 2018's productivity.
* * *
Israel has officially announced it will seek $250 billion dollars in compensation from other Middle Eastern countries who expelled their Jewish populations in the wake of Israel's independence.
Good to see D.C. statehood get more traction in the House.
Five Jewish teenagers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the stone-throwing death of a Palestinian woman. Cases of Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians tripled in 2018.
This feels like something the Joker would do: colorful balloons carry explosives sent from Gaza into Israel (the bomb was safely defused with no injuries).
Meanwhile, here in Berkeley, a man has been arrested after bringing a fake bomb covered with antisemitic writing into our campus police department.
Tyler Cowen: speech regulation policies on private media platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) can be scalable, efficient, and consistent -- pick two. Put differently: a small website can efficiently manage a consistent moderation policy. But a large website (like Twitter) must either invest tremendous sums into moderation (far more than is cost-effective) or settle for a patchwork and inconsistently applied system that's largely ineffective and makes everyone angry.
UPDATE: Oh dang -- joke's on me! Apparently, today counts as the first day of 2019. Which means that 2018 -- like 2017 and 2016 -- will go down as having exactly 229 posts written.
That's kind of cool in its own right. I guess.