Between "One-Sided" and "Equating", Part II

A few days ago there was a dust-up at the Park Slope Food Coop after a member, during a coop meeting, stated that "Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country." Following an outcry, the store's general manager condemned the remark, along with that of a different member who decried "Arab supremacy" in the context of speaking out against October 7 and criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood.

I read that sequence and thought "that's about as satisfactory an outcome as I could hope for." Whatever theoretical or academic justifications one can use to validate either "Jewish supremacism" or "Arab supremacy", if you want to take the temperature down in these sorts of settings you have to clamp down on that sort of thing. If one isn't okay, then the other isn't either. If anything, it is nicely convenient that both phrases were used, as it lets the coop leadership make clear that there position is one of principle, not a backdoor means of showing favoritism to one group at the expense of another.

But I knew my satisfaction would be another's ill-temper, and so it is here. I wasn't surprised, of course, to see that the coop's pro-Palestinian activists were going to the mat for their right to assail "Jewish supremacism." And unfortunately, I also wasn't surprised to see others complain that to condemn the phrase "Arab supremacy" may as well have nullified the condemnation of the phrase "Jewish supremacism".

For coop member Ramon Maislen, who condemned the comments allegedly made by Huarachi last week, Szladek’s email created a false equivalency between the two remarks.

[....] 

Maislen said he believed Szladek’s email “completely minimizes what Jewish people are feeling at the coop.”

“I don’t think there’s much coded language around Arab supremacy that I’m aware of,” Maislen said. “So I think it’s very, very disappointing when you see an email go out after such a mask-off moment for the hatred within the anti-Zionist movement, and to have the general coordinators basically, completely, make it some sort of like equality between the two statements.”

On Thursday, Coop4Unity, an anti-BDS coalition at the coop that Maislen serves as an organizer of, issued a press release calling on [coop General Manager Joe] Szladek to “issue an unequivocal condemnation of antisemitism,” arguing that his previous email created a “false moral equivalence that members say dilutes the gravity of what occurred.”

“In his statement, General Manager Szladek cited a separate member’s use of the phrase ‘Arab supremacy’ — offered in the context of referencing October 7th and the Muslim Brotherhood — and presented it as a parallel offense to the ‘Jewish supremacy’ remark that drew crowd applause,” the release read. “Coop4Unity argues this is a false equivalence that obscures rather than addresses what took place.”

Ah yes, "false equivalency" -- a sin most heinous. Except, that is, when one doesn't do it -- for then one is committing the equally grievous sin of being "one-sided". I wrote on this subject five years ago, and it remains resonant today. But unfortunately, I feel as if things have gotten worse rather than better. 

And -- morality aside -- this is such a dumb hill to die on. Is it really so important that one be able to rail about "Arab supremacy" that you'll risk undermining a condemnation of people going on about "Jewish supremacism"? Take the win! This whole logic is how you get backed into a corner of being mad at people for saying the JDL is bad, when what one should do is be delighted anytime someone says "JDL is bad" and be ecstatic at the opportunity to negatively polarize your constituency against them and their apologists. The Park Slope group had the opportunity to set the polarity of the debate as "mainstream coop members versus people who are livid that they can't hurl 'supremacist' charges at ethnic minorities", and they squandered it. Again, I think the ethics are bad here, but I'm almost madder at the tactical idiocy of it all.

Chicken Soup for the Zionist Infiltrator Soul, Part II

The left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a major ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has unveiled a plan to combat hate and keep Jews and other minorities safe that doesn't rely on policing or traditional securitization measures. This is a project a long time in development by JFREJ, of course, flows from and follows on a larger philosophical skepticism many leftists have towards the police -- arguing that the reliance on guns and fortresses and policing is both ethically suspect and discriminatory against other groups (including Jews of color) for whom the police are not a force for safety but for threat).

The report has quite a few layers, but the basic idea behind it is familiar enough -- invest in cross-community engagement projects that undermine hate at its roots.

The report calls for investment in “intergroup collaborative projects” that would foster connections across lines of difference, overseen by district-based or community-based program managers. 

“From renovating a playground, to operating a soup kitchen, to tenant organizing, to planning a street fair, we should look at many local activities as potential sites of intergroup relationship building,” the report reads.

I'm not hostile to this approach. I think these interventions are, by and large, welcome. I will repeat a point I've made before, which is that in the short-term these proposals cannot replace but must coexist with more traditional securitization measures. Even at their most optimistic, programs like this stop antisemitic violence by shriveling antisemitic attitudes. But they have little to offer in terms of actually materially obstructing someone who does commit to make an attack. Had Temple Israel in Michigan adopted JFREJ's preferred approach a week before the attempted attack on its preschool, the result would have been a lot more dead Jewish preschoolers. (By contrast, the Colleyville case was an example of "all of the above" -- the synagogue both credited "traditional" police collaborations as directly saving lives when it came under attack, and credited its entrenched history of cross-community engagement for redounding in genuine solidarity and support in the attack's aftermath). Where proposals like this are framed as immediate replacements for the police, or worse, are presented as justifications for blaming Jews who do still think more traditional policing measures are necessary, they have the potential to do immense harm rather than good.

But the larger point I want to make is this: if JFREJ is serious about this as the preferred approach for undermining hate, then it has to take aim at "anti-normalization" politics. The latter is a direct threat to the former. One cannot simultaneously talk up the importance of "intergroup relationship building" as a means of undermining hate and then turn around and justify kicking the Israeli vendor out of the food festival because it's colonialist and thievery and an attempt to whitewash Zionist crimes. "Anti-normalization" campaigns are nothing other efforts to strangle potential nodes of cross-community engagement and collaboration, precisely because permitting them to go forward risks muddying up attitudes of uncompromising antagonism and humanizing the enemy population. Indeed, the very example JFREJ offers of collaborating on a soup kitchen together -- that was used by prominent anti-Zionist (and antisemitic) activist David Miller as an example of perfidious Zionist infiltration that must be opposed at all costs!

Of course Israel have sent people in to target that, to deal with that. Particularly through interfaith work … pretending Jews and Muslims working together will be an apolitical way of countering racism. No, it’s a Trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community. We saw it in East London Mosque for example, where East London Mosque unknowingly held this project of making chicken soup with Jewish and Muslim communities coming together. This is an Israel-backed project for normalising Zionism in the Muslim communities.

Again, this isn't to say JFREJ's proposal is bad. It is to say there is an active political movement that actively opposes programs like this from the left. They present these "collaborative projects" as collaborationism; they focus their energy not on extending solidarity but on compulsory abandonment. To the extent these groups still mouth the words of solidarity, it is solidarity not as an offer but as a threat: "'safety through solidarity' -- or else."

My read on JFREJ is that they are not among the anti-normalizers, but also that they are reluctant to present the anti-normalizers as antagonists. They'd rather not talk about anti-normalizers at all; they vastly prefer their enemies to be among the traditional establishment. But to be honest -- that's a them-problem. Not every element of a campaign to combat hate will be as fun for JFREJ as explaining why the police suck. If this proposal is going to be taken seriously, then its proponents have to demonstrate that they're seriously committed to it even when it means calling out problematic figures on their own side of the fence. Does JFREJ have the stones to do that? I'm not sure. We'll see. I think there's a decent chance they get evasive and try to weasel out of taking a stand. But I hope I'm wrong about that, because I do think that their proposal is serious enough that it deserves serious advocates in turn.

Why Should We View the JDL as a "False Equivalency"?

A few weeks ago, there was a protest in front of a New York City synagogue which was hosting a real estate event featuring, in part, properties in Jerusalem. Pro-Palestine protesters, notably, chanted their support for Hamas ("Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here."), the internationally-recognized terrorist organization responsible for (among other crimes) the massacres on October 7. A smaller group of pro-Israel protesters affiliated with the far-right Jewish Defense League chanted their own racist slogans, including "death to Palestine."

The next day, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a statement condemning the pro-Hamas chants: "Chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city." There was some consternation about the supposed delay (of one day), but it appears that time lag occurred because Mamdani was consulting with high-level members of the Jewish community to ensure he got the statement right.

I noticed at the time, though, that the ultimate statement rightfully condemned the pro-Hamas chanting but not the equally appalling that came from the JDL. "We support Hamas here" is a despicable thing to say anywhere, but especially in front of a synagogue. No person of conscience should defend it (it is not surprising that there are several notable left-wing figures who lack any such conscience). But "death to Palestine" is equally rancid and should be equally indefensible. So why was it not included in Mamdani's condemnation?

I suspected at the time that it was left out because some factions of the Jewish community would have denounced its inclusion. Many of these figures would claim that they do not, of course, defend the JDL or chants like "Death to Palestine". But they would present including it in Mamdani's statement as "both-sidesing" or "all lives mattering" or in some other way diluting of the message condemning the pro-Hamas chants. And it seems the reporting bears my intuition out. An earlier draft of the condemnation was going to condemn the Jewish Defense League, but it was removed following protests by Jewish leaders who viewed it as a "false equivalence."

This is rotten. It's not just that complaints about "both sidesing" lack legs when both sides really did chant despicable things. It's also the choice -- and it is a choice -- by certain Jewish leaders to decide that condemnations of pro-Palestine extremists are in some way "diluted" or are less sincere when they come tied to calling out pro-Israel extremists present at the same event. Why should we feel that way? I don't feel that way. In fact, I feel rather ill at the notion that someone might think my equal standing as a Jew is threatened by condemning phrases like "death to Palestine." What does that say about ourselves? What does that say about what we are saying about ourselves, that we make such demands?

This is, I think, the end result of the tremendously destructive road too many Jewish leaders have committed to trotting down, where we have become obsessed with "all lives mattering" or "us too-ism" to the point that anything that even purports to tie Jewish safety to any sort of political universalism or solidarity is presented as an affront. It is not unrelated to the bone-jarringly stupid choice by the ADL (among others) to self-consciously cut itself off from historic allies because antisemitism must be fought alone or not at all. I don't mean to suggest that there are not serious challenges in the relationships Jews have with other communities, historic allies included. But in all of these cases, we are choosing to isolate ourselves. These are not instances where we are being forced out of coalitions or compelled to go alone. We are choosing to believe that the entire concept of allyship is a form of disrespect.

We don't have to think like this. Nobody is forcing us to hear "chants of 'death to Palestine' have no place in our city" and decide it means "Jews are lesser." There's no reason to make that inference, and there are many reasons not to make that inference. And so while at one level I am glad that Mamdani was consulting with and attentive to Jewish community concerns in the wake of the synagogue protest, it is a very bad thing that we've decided our "concerns" compel him not to condemn obviously despicable and indefensible rhetoric from the likes of the JDL. That Jewish leaders -- especially Jewish leaders who do recognize how wretched the JDL is -- think in those terms speaks to rot in our own psyche that we need to address, and quick.

If I Am Only For Myself, Who Will Be For Me?

The first two lines of Hillel's famous maxim read as follows:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, who am I?

It's obviously famous for a reason. The first line endorses some measure of self-regard or at least self-reliance -- we have to advocate for ourselves. The second cabins the first -- if we only care about our personal self-interest, who are we? As in so many things, the best path lies somewhere in the middle.

Hillel's line came to mind for me when I was reading reports of a prominent New York City Rabbi urging his congregants to oppose Zohran Mamdani for mayor. His call was framed in terms of urging Jews to "prioritize their Jewish selves" -- to self-consciously elevate "ahavat yisrael ... over other loves." They should not vote on "affordability, food instability, education, policing, sanitation, taxes – the everyday issues that shape our great city’s life." They must vote in a way that first and foremost "safeguards the Jewish people." Everything else is secondary.

I don't think Mamdani represents the sort of existential threat to the Jewish people that warrants this sort of reaction. This is not the same thing as saying Jews aren't allowed to have concerns over some part of his record. But sermons like this strike me as more than a little histrionic, except for the fact that to me they read like a desperate attempt to spur on a Jewish community which by and large is not reacting hysterically to Mamdani. Again, it isn't so much that Mamdani is being greeted with gushing support (the most recent polling shows that among Jews Cuomo is ahead of Mamdani, but just barely). They're just not converting their various concerns and misgivings into the all-out existential panic this Rabbi would like to see.

But leave all of that aside. My actual quarrel with the Rabbi's sermon is that, as a prescription for political action, it presents an incredibly short-sighted political vision for Jews. For if Jews can legitimately say to various other groups and communities "we hear your concerns (about affordability or policing or Islamophobia or what have you), but we ultimately have to look out for ourselves first"; well, those other communities are equally entitled to reply "and we hear your concerns (about antisemitism), but we ultimately have to look out for ourselves first." And even in New York City, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. So remind me how exactly this will redound to the benefit of Jews?

I raised this same argument six years ago in the context of British elections, where Jews were pleading with non-Jews to not vote for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party given Corbyn's rank antisemitism (and Corbyn, to be clear, is on his best day far more antisemitic than Mamdani is on his worst). Many of these Jewish figures harbored no illusions about the Tories, including that party's own sordid involvement in racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia (and, for that matter, antisemitism). But, they argued, as terrible as Boris Johnson may be, "stopping Corbyn has to be the number one priority for British Jews. And a vote for anyone but the Tory candidates is, ultimately, a vote for Jeremy Corbyn."

Jewish voters who act under this logic, they would say, are by no means endorsing Brexit, which they detest, or xenophobia, which they abhor. They hate these things, genuinely and sincerely. But their hand has been forced. In this moment, they have to look out for Number One. 

I understand this logic. I understand why some Jews might believe that in this moment, we cannot spare the luxury of thinking of others.

I understand it. But it is, ultimately, spectacularly short-sighted. 

To begin, if we accept that British Jews are justified in voting Tory because we are justified looking out for our own existential self-preservation, then we have to accept that non-Jewish minorities are similarly justified in voting Labour in pursuit of their own communal security and safety. We cannot simultaneously say that our vote for the Tories cannot be construed as an endorsement of Conservative xenophobia but their vote for Labour represents tacit approval of Corbynista antisemitism. Maybe both groups feel their hands are tied; trapped between a bad option and a disastrous one. And so we get one letter from the Chief Rabbi, excoriating Jeremy Corbyn as an “unfit” leader, and another competing letter from the Muslim Council of Britain, bemoaning Conservatives open tolerance of Islamophobia. 

But if the Jews reluctantly vote Conservative “in our self-interest” and BAME citizens reluctantly vote Labour “in their self-interest”—well, there are a lot more BAME voters in Britain than there are Jewish voters. So the result would be a massive net gain for Labour. Some pursuit of self-interest. 

Meanwhile, those Brits who are neither Jewish nor members of any other minority group are given no guidance by this approach. There is no particular reason, after all, for why they should favor ameliorating Jewish fears of antisemitism over BAME fears of xenophobia. From their vantage point, these issues effectively cancel out, and they are freed to vote without regard to caring about either antisemitism or Islamophobia. At the very moment where these issues have been foregrounded in the British public imagination in an unprecedented way, insisting upon the primacy of pure self-interest would ensure that this attention would be squandered and rendered moot. 

Of course, all this does not even contemplate the horrible dilemma imposed upon those persons who are both Jewish and BAME—the Afro-Caribbean Jew, for instance. They are truly being torn asunder, told that no matter how they vote they will be betraying a part of their whole self.

And so too here. The argument from self-interest -- aside from ignoring those whose intersecting identities may make them acutely perceive a threat from both Mamdani and Cuomo -- ultimately licenses every other group to not care about Jewish concerns. After all, they have the same license to prioritize their own communal needs and values as we do.

So much of contemporary Jewish discourse is a plea for solidarity, against the pain of feeling dismissed or viewed as extraneous whenever a peer says something to effect of "I'm not happy with how he's alienating Jews, but X Y Z matters more to me." Yet here we see that exact same argument run, and it is a logic that effectively endorses (for the non-Jewish majority) ignoring Jewish concerns.

Indeed, I might daresay that Hillel was, if not wrong, then at least incomplete: If I am only for myself, who will be for me? Aside from me, nobody. And that is a very lonely place to be.

Abstaining on Mamdani

Even after his upset primary win a few weeks ago, there have been some Democrats who have been trying to rally an "independent" candidate to beat Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in the general election. It's an endeavor I view as scurrilous, for the same reason I found third party protest voting in 2024 or 2020 or 2016 scurrilous: Democrats should support the results of the Democratic primary, and certainly should not risk letting in a reactionary because their heart just isn't moved by the Democratic nominee. There may be extraordinary exceptions to this rule, but Zohran Mamdani is not one of them. If Joe Walsh gets it, the rest of us can too.

But to be honest, I view this as a bit of a moot point, because the attempt to rally an anti-Mamdani seems to be sputtering.  As the Wall Street Journal puts it, the anti-Mamdani initiative suffers from missing a few key ingredients, such as "a positive message" and "a candidate" and "enough votes to win." Seems problematic.

This broader fizzling out has, I think, a more specified Jewish parallel. Reports of Jewish loathing of Mamdani are wildly overstated, but there's no doubt many have concerns, and some of those concerns are legitimate. While I think the criticisms of his condemnations of the Colorado and DC attacks are wildly unfair, his statement immediately following 10/7 was genuinely bad, and Jews are allowed to find worrisome his support for BDS and his refusal to denounce the slogan "globalize the intifada."

Yet while there's been a lot of media froth about these issues, my sense is these concerns haven't actually manifested in widespread Jewish backlash to Mamdani. There are concerns, but not panic. And more often than not, it seems, many NYC Jews are just not venturing that loud of an opinion at all, even where they do disagree with Mamdani, on issue areas that in years past we might have really seen a widespread blowup. What's going on?

My mind returns to a post I wrote at the very tail-end of the Obama administration, following his decision to, for the first and only time, abstain from voting on or vetoing an anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution reaffirming that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank were unlawful (you might remember the abstention as the one Tim Walz voted to condemn).

The usual suspects on the right went ballistic about the Obama administration's "betrayal of Israel". And for my part, I was well-familiar with all the arguments against enabling such UN resolutions -- the general bias of the institution, its naked double-standards where Israel was concerned, specific language in the resolution itself that seemed to downplay legitimate Jewish connection to Jerusalem. But my post was about why, in spite of all that, I just could not bring myself to get mad about it.

But I just can't bring myself to be angry. I read the usual suspects falling over themselves in histrionic rage -- Mort Klein ranting that "Obama’s anti-Semitism runs so deep that he also apparently needed to drive one more knife into Israel’s back," Netanyahu saying he "colluded against Israel", David French fulminating against the supposed "50 years of foreign policy" undone by a single abstention -- and I just can't do it. I can't.

The ADL -- which murmurs empty platitudes about the President's right to implement policy when picking avowedly anti-two-stater David Friedman for Ambassador -- suddenly is "incredibly disappointed" that the Obama administration followed consistent American policy in opposition to the settlements? The JFNA -- which (and this was forwarded to me by an AIPAC-attending friend of mine) "has not said ONE THING about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism from Trump and his appointees" -- sure found its voice on this one.

[....]

Will this resolution do any good? I doubt it. It's empty words from a body whose words deservedly carry little credit. Still, much of international diplomacy is the art of using empty words to send messages. Maybe the message here is that breathless hysterics about Obama selling Israel out! over and over and over again won't carry the day forever. Certainly that's a message I can get behind, regardless of whether anyone pays attention to the substance of the resolution.

I just can't take seriously anymore people who simultaneously decry America's policy towards Syria as being naught but words, while breathlessly characterizing one -- one -- abstention on a UN resolution that is consistent with longstanding American policy towards Israel as an act of "aggression". One would think that those "mere words" would pale in comparison to $38 billion in aid America will be giving Israel thanks to Obama's leadership. The UN is not the only entity whose words carry little credit these days. I've completely lost whatever confidence I had in mainline Jewish groups to maintain a sense of proportion and principle when it comes to defending a secure, democratic, Jewish state of Israel.

The UN resolution won't accomplish anything. Perhaps its only tangible impact is that it is felt as a rebuke by the Israeli government. Given their behavior over the past eight years towards the Obama administration and the American Jewish community writ large, I can't even be mad about that. You're not getting everything you want, all the time, from your "friends"? Welcome to the club.

So I abstain on this fight. Why shouldn't I? If I believe -- and I do -- that the settlements are "a" (not "the") obstacle to peace, and I believe -- and I do -- that Israeli settlement on territories in the West Bank should be contingent on a final, negotiated status agreement with the Palestinians, and I believe -- and I do -- that part of any remotely plausible peace plan means that not everyone will get to live on the precise acre of land that they wish, why should I muster up any outrage on this resolution? Because its verbiage isn't perfect? When is it ever? Because the UN is biased? Of course it is, but so what? Because the Netanyahu administration is trying its level best to negotiate a two-state solution and this throws a wrench in their delicate plans? Don't make me laugh.

Fast forward to today, and I think a lot of people are feeling something similar to this. A simple way of putting it would be that the comportment of the Israeli government over the past (at least) 18 months has been so abysmal that it has made many of us considerably more tolerant of anti-Israel criticism than we might have been in years past. Even the criticisms we don't personally agree with, don't seem so far out-of-bounds -- they might not be what we believe, but they're not wildly out of range of what we believe.

But things run deeper than that. Part of what we're seeing is an exhaustion over being asked to go to the mat for an Israeli government that we know -- we know -- would never lift a finger for us in return. They view people like us with the utmost contempt, even as they scream at us to show good Jewish solidarity and back them to the hilt. The post-10/7 story has been Jewish liberals patiently extolling the need to understand military necessity and holding complexity and remembering the hostages, with the Israeli government responding by openly promising to starve out Gazans while selling out the hostages, all to keep the war going as long as possible in order to save Netanyahu's political skin and satisfy the far-right's expansionist agenda of ethnic cleansing. Virtually every narrative of justice that could have been mustered on Israel's behalf in the wake of 10/7 has, by Israel's own hand, been made out to be a cruel joke. Jay Michaelson got it exactly right: they've made us feel like freiers -- suckers, fools, saps.

At some point, one just doesn't want to do it anymore. What's the point? Again, it's not that we don't have reasonable concerns. But after the 50th iteration of having a reasonable concern about someone's 10/7 tweet transmogrified by right-wing extremists into "hell yeah, we should cut all of Columbia's funding and deport the students to South Sudan!", one eventually learns to keep quiet.

So that's what I think we're seeing. Partially, it's a greater tolerance for sharper criticisms of Israel than might have been accepted in year's past. But partially, it's just a decision to abstain -- to withdraw from the one-sided bargain where American Jews serve as Israel's defense attorney and Israel thanks us by spitting in our food and calling us suckers. Enough is enough.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXIV: Zohran Mamdani

A disproportionate chunk of oxygen surrounding Zohran Mamdani's decisive victory in the NYC mayoral Democratic primary has been taken up by the question "is he antisemitic?" The main hinge points for the charge, aside from a generic linkage to his sharp criticisms of Israel, are his support for the BDS movement and his refusal to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada" (some have wrongly suggested that Mamdani himself uses the phrase, but that doesn't appear to be true). 

Predictably, things have spiraled out of control -- for what's it worth, I do think Jews are permitted to object both to Mamdani's BDS support and his apologia for "globalize the intifada", but the possibility of reasonable objections has been obliterated thanks to a glut of hysterics urging Jews to flee the city or, perhaps, the country.

In any event, while it does seem like Mamdani did not win NYC's Jewish vote this cycle, it's undeniable that he has a non-trivial amount of Jewish supporters. Some would point to these supporters (cynically or not) as a bulwark against the antisemitism charge. And others, well, others would see Mamdani's entire rise as part of Soros-led plot dating back to Mamdani's teenage years.

The above linked article is by Asra Nomani, and I encourage you to read it because it is a good example of what I've called Potemkin expertise. It rattles off a dizzying array of facts and numbers and connections to create the illusion of being deeply-researched, but it's actually the written equivalent of a corkboard with red string connecting names with wild abandon. It is unsurprising to anyone with a familiarity with this sort of "it's all connected!" raving that George Soros will be at the center of it, and so too here. But the short version is that Soros funded a range of post-9/11 initiatives that pushed back on racial and religious targeting of Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Americans, and these projects should actually be seen as a systematic attempt to create a "red-green-blue spider's web" that will take over American politics in pursuit of a Islamist-socialism.

There are people who have called Islamophobia "the new antisemitism"; a maneuver I generally hate because it wrongly suggests the "old" antisemitism has gone away when it clearly hasn't. That said, it is clear that certain aspects of Islamophobia move to very familiar beats vis-a-vis antisemitism, and that's illustrated almost too neatly here, where utterly mundane Muslim political mobilization against discrimination is recast as a devious plot to destroy America (with the shadowy Jewish financier at the center of course).

On that note, I have to give an honorable mention to Inez Stepman who, as one wag put it, basically "reinvented antisemitism from first principles" in her description of Mamdani.

A man "essentially from nowhere", an "elite class global citizen with no loyalty to a place or its people"  -- boy, does that ever sound familiar. New York hasn't had a Jewish mayor since Bloomberg, but if antisemites were missing the chance to pull out the old hits they've found a new mark with Mamdani.

Please Do Not Destroy (Portland)

Now that I've lived in Portland for a few years, it is time to buckle down and complete my local politics journey from angry ignorant voter to angry informed voter.

Portland has a new city council -- literally, we only just switched to a city council form of government this past election cycle -- and it's definitely still finding its sea legs. Our election system is a bit convoluted, dividing the city into four geographic districts (I'm in District 4, which encompasses Portland's west side) represented by three councilors each. 

The voting system is, as far as I understand it, designed to promote some measure of ideological pluralism via multi-winner ranked choice voting, leading to a city council that is (mostly by design) divided into a center-left and left bloc. The latter includes several DSA or DSA-aligned politicians, including one of my three councilors, Mitch Green (the other two District 4 councilors are Olivia Clark and Eric Zimmerman, who are part of the center-left bloc). My pre-election post last year gave a bit of a hint as to the wild-west character of our first council election, but I'm pretty sure I ended up ranking all three of the figures who eventually were elected (I know I ranked Clark first). With respect to Green in particular, the DSA endorsement gave me pause (as I noted), but he had gotten enough praise from enough of a diverse base for me to think he earned a shot.

Unfortunately, now that everyone's in office, there have definitely been some actions that have given me pause. The first was when Green threatened Portland State University's budget unless it altered disciplinary decisions meted out to pro-Palestinian protesters. Obviously as an academic I'm especially sensitive right now to politicians holding university budgets hostage in order to get them to change their self-governance practices, what with the outright war Trump has declared on American academia and the existential threat his actions pose to university independence and academic freedom. That Green saw those actions and thought not "that's repulsive!" but rather "that's inspirational!" is deeply worrying to me. To be clear: government should not be leveraging the power of the purse to get universities to punish pro-Palestinian protesters more harshly or more leniently. From the get-go, this sort of conduct by Green smacks of someone who is far too comfortable utilizing MAGA-style authoritarian tools so long as it meets his preferred ideological objectives.

More recently, a huge controversy is starting to brew after the council, in a 7-5 vote (with the left/DSA bloc, including Green, in the majority), decided to reject the Portland Children's Levy grant package and instead extend funding to preexisting grantees for another year.

The council’s June 4 vote is the first time the PCL, established in 2002, had its selections rejected en masse. The consequence is that 36 nonprofits expecting $17.4 million in funding to begin flowing July 1 won’t receive that money for at least a year.

That’s an extraordinary move by the newly elected 12-member body, who cited concerns about equity and racial justice as a reason for rejecting two years of work by program staff, a group of volunteer scorers, and a community council set up to help guide funding priorities. It’s the latest signal of the council’s appetite to reassess long-standing city funding practices, and has left members of the PCL Allocation Committee seething.

The opposing councilors cited "doubts about the fairness of the PCL’s scoring process, citing anecdotal examples of organizations, some of which are Black-led, that were not recommended for funding," but the PCL experts explained that many minority-led or -focused organizations received funding and the non-recommendees lost out because they badly underperformed on transparent metrics. As the Oregonian noted in its editorial (which called the vote "the most reckless" decision the council has made in its short tenure), the putative arguments against the PCL's recommendations were mutually inconsistent and seemed nakedly pretextual, with a thin veneer of "anti-racism" used to mask an uninformed council protecting politically well-connected but underperforming legacy organizations. It smacks of cronyism, and it's gross. And while the blowback has led some unidentified councilors to express "regret" over "unintentional consequences" (they're not "unintentional"; it was very clear what the council voted to do), they do not as of now seem inclined to reverse their decision. It is reminiscent, again, of the games the Trump administration is playing with its various grants -- overriding expert judgment to reallocate spoils to its special favorites.

What do I make of all of this? Well, right now I'd be very disinclined to rank Green again. But -- rhetoric about being an "angry" voter aside -- I'm not as upset as you might think with the council. These people won a chance to govern Portland, fair and square. If they end up doing a bad job and making bad choices, the remedy is to vote them out. But I don't view it as some existential catastrophe that they were given a shot in the first place. As obnoxious as these decisions are, they are not going to destroy Portland. We live, we learn, and hopefully we elect new people.

The subtext here is the DSA's Zohran Mamdani getting the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. He's not a complete shoo-in -- won't make that mistake again -- but he's the heavy favorite. I've seen people suggest that his socialist ideas are pie-in-the-sky fantasies that will never work and will be terribly destructive to the people of New York. For me, I have no strong opinions about city-owned grocery stores. Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't. But I am reasonably sure that New York City will not be irreparably damaged by his mayorship. Maybe his ideas will work, maybe they won't. I don't view it as an existential catastrophe that we'll find out.

Don't Rank Cuomo, and Other Less Important Thoughts

The Democratic primary for the NYC mayoral race is today. The front-runner has been former Governor Andrew Cuomo, but he's facing a stiff challenge from a surging Zohran Mamdani, who's aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.

I don't live in New York, obviously. But I've been casually following the race, and I do have some thoughts.

1) Don't rank Cuomo. That's the mantra of nearly all the progressives in the race, and it is correct. It's not just that Cuomo is a sex pest (though, dayenu). He was also an awful governor who actively sabotaged Democratic prospects in New York in order to promote his own presidential ambitions -- and yet was so manifestly incompetent he ended up wrecking his presidential ambitions too! Personally mendacious, hostile to his own party, and piss-poor political instincts? No. Get this guy out of here. And honestly, "don't rank Cuomo" is, far and away, the most important thought.

2) David endorses Lander. Not that it matters, but if I had a vote in New York I'd probably rank Brad Lander first. I always liked him. And with ranked choice voting, I could do it without worrying that I was tossing my vote away and/or involuntarily supporting Cuomo.

3) The NYT's cowardly Cuomo quasi-endorsement is nauseating. The NYT recently said it would stop issuing endorsements in local races (why?). But that makes this editorial, where it twisted itself in knots to not-expressly-say it is endorsing Cuomo while effectively endorsing Cuomo because Mamdani is just too lefty and scary, the most spineless thing I've seen in opinion journalism since everything the Washington Post has done over the past 8 months.

4) I'd rank Mamdani. But... I think there is a lot to like about Mamdani. He's clearly better than Cuomo (see #1, above). And I don't think he's antisemitic. But people are allowed to not like his evasive defense of the phrase "globalize the intifada". His response to that question is a reasonable source of criticism, and he can take those lumps.

5) It's not cheating when they don't roll over. On that note, one of the single most annoying habits of the Bernie/DSA wing of the left is how they act as if it's cheating when more centrist candidates don't just roll over and let them win. "The DNC conspired to defeat Bernie Sanders and coronate Joe Biden" -- no it didn't. Biden ran a campaign and beat Sanders, fair and square. That's how democracy works. In any given race, I hope my preferred candidate or faction wins, but I don't expect the opponent to not try (see also: Democrats are responsible for MAGAism because Barack Obama inexcusably refused to just concede the 2012 race to Mitt Romney). We're already seeing similar moaning about how "the Democratic establishment" apparently moved heaven and earth to anoint Cuomo and defeat Mamdani. Again, I think Cuomo is scum, and there are absolutely things he's done in his campaign which aren't kosher. But yes, the left-wing of the Democratic Party is going to have to actually win races where their opponents show up -- it's not going to have things handed to them. Grow up. 

6) If Mamdani does win, he should get a chance to govern. That's the perquisite of winning, and he deserves a fair shot. And I'm still curious how DSA domestic policies will play out if implemented (though I still wish we had gotten a test-run a bit further from spotlight in Buffalo). That said, the fact that he won't have a perfectly pliant city council and agreeable municipal bureaucracy putting his policies on a glide path is not sabotage, it's city politics. Much like having to actually win an election against an opposition that's actively campaigning, one is not being sabotaged when one faces the same basic set of obstacles and frictions that are inherent features of local governance in a large city with diverse stakeholders

Did You Hear? CUNY Branches Cancel Hillel Yom Ha'atzmaut Events

Two branches of the City University of New York system -- Kingsborough and Baruch -- have apparently canceled Israeli Independence Day events sponsored by local Hillel chapters, citing security risks. In the case of Baruch, administrators reportedly offered alternative venues to the Hillel chapter (which were declined), at Kingsborough, by contrast, the administration reportedly refused to make any arrangements to enable the event to go forward.

CUNY is a public university, so this raises the usual First Amendment problems. While every case is different, there are some clear overlaps between this case (in particular, the citation to "security" concerns) and the cancellation of pro-Palestinian speakers and events justified on similar logic (for example, at USC). This, of course, represents a golden opportunity for people to lob dueling hypocrisy charges at one another ("You were aghast when this happened at USC, but I don't hear you complaining now!" "Yeah, well you were apologizing for this when it happened at USC, but you're aghast now!"). I'm sure that will be a grand old time for everyone.

I do want to make one note on the relative coverage and penetration of this story compared to other free speech debacles related to Israel and Palestine on campus. I haven't seen this story covered outside of the Jewish press. That doesn't mean it won't be later, and I'm not generally a fan of the "...but you'll never see this reported in the mainstream media!" genre of commentary. In part, that's because I think there's massive selection bias in what we claim is over- or under-covered; in part, it's because I think virtually everyone massively overestimates how many stories break through to mass public consciousness at all. In reality, I think different stories gain traction in different media domains, such that a story which might tear through one sort of social or ideological circle might make barely a ripple in another.

That said, in many of the circles I reside in, there is essentially no knowledge that there are any cases of academic censorship of "pro-Israel" voices on campus at all. To be clear, I'm not saying that there are not numerous cases of academic freedom violations targeting pro-Palestinian speakers -- there are a slew of them. But the notion that this is a Palestine exception to academic freedom, rather than something which unfortunately happens in a host of other cases and contexts (including, in the right-slash-wrong environments, to pro-Israel speakers), speaks less to the reality of academic freedom and more to an epistemology of which cases get attention and which don't. There are many academics for whom the Steven Salaitas are known, while the Melissa Landas are not. In other domains and registers, there are different gaps.

Ultimately, it's a variant on "they would say it about Jews, they'd say it about other groups too." The claims of injustice are not wrong, but the claims of uniqueness very often are. How many times have we heard variations on "can you imagine if there was a mob of people harassing and making racist remarks towards any other minority group -- how would universities respond to that?" (As we saw at UCLA, the answer apparently is "they'd sit back and let said mob kick the crap out of their targets"). And at the same time, we've also heard plenty of iterations of "if a university dared cancel a pro-Israel event, it'd be on the front-page of every newspaper for the next month" (so far, no headlines).

So I'll all say is that, if you're of the bent that there's no meaningful suppression of pro-Israel speech in campus environments, and your informational ecosystem (other than me, I guess) didn't alert you to this cancellation at CUNY, you should consider how the former belief might be correlated with the latter lacuna. Other people might have different gaps, and they should contemplate what generates them as well.

Four Thoughts on the CUNY Law Affair

Yes, I've heard about "that" graduation speech at CUNY Law. I'm not interested in parsing it; I have better things to do with my time. But I do want to share four thoughts about some of the broader issues in play and the (expectedly less-than-stellar) metacommentary.

First, CUNY's board of trustees has come out with a statement averring that "Hate speech ... should not be confused with free speech" and declaring that the graduation remarks fall into the latter category. Face palm. In the context of a public university, which CUNY is, "hate speech" most certainly is free speech, and retains all constitutional protections assigned to the latter. It astounds me that we still see statements like this on controversies like this when the constitutional rules are so clear. There is absolutely no cause to argue that the speaker's remarks are anything other than speech protected by the First Amendment, no matter how hateful one does or does not deem them to be.

Second, CUNY Law, probably more than any law school in the country (including Berkeley), is a citadel of the hard left. Its student body and, to a slightly lesser extent, faculty is very much self-selected to fit within this well-to-the-left-of-the-Democratic-Party-median mold. Is that a problem? This raises the classic question of diversity within institutions versus diversity across institutions -- it's okay, or perhaps even valuable, that there exist some law schools that are self-consciously hard left in orientation, so long as it is one option on a larger menu. Maybe CUNY Law is just the Regent University or Liberty University Law School of the left. You want a self-consciously conservative Christian experience, you go to Liberty. You want a self-consciously left-wing activist experience, you go to CUNY. Other schools offer different choices. There is a long and proud tradition of the "liberal" education that tries to draw from as wide a range of views and perspectives as possible; but there's an equally long and proud tradition of an education that is intentionally imbricated within a deep and specific intellectual and ideological framework (a religious college is the most prominent example). At the very least, it is not self-evident that we think the latter sort of initiative is always wrong -- at least so long as the prospective law school applicant has other choices.

Is this actually good? Does it matter that CUNY is a public law school? Does it matter that it's a public law school in a generally liberal city? Does it matter that, even in the context of a generally liberal city, CUNY Law is far off to the left of the mainstream? Open questions, as far as I'm concerned.

Third, CUNY Law's Jewish Law Student Association has strongly come out in defense of the graduate speaker and against the public backlash. This is in accord with the CUNY JLSA's larger orientation on issues like this (anti-Zionist, pro-BDS, and so on), and it seems reasonably clear that it represents the consensus view of Jewish students at CUNY Law (which again, is a very particular and self-selecting bunch). Given this, it is fair to note that there is something very odd about people racing to "protect" Jewish students from "antisemitism" that the students themselves not only don't identify as antisemitic, but actively support. Who exactly is being helped here?

One could answer that by referencing the potential Jewish students who would be interested in a CUNY Law experience but are deterred or forced out because they do find the environment to be unbearable (I am aware of at least some Jewish students leaving CUNY Law, or not applying in the first place, for precisely that reason).* In such a situation, the rump remainder of Jewish students who are perfectly happy with that environment will be all that remains, but the resultant "consensus" is not really properly characterized as innocent. Again, this could be reframed as a diversity-within-versus-across-institutions issue, though: maybe it's good that there is one school where anti-Zionist Jews are the dominant Jewish faction; so long as the Zionist Jewish majority has other options. Or maybe not. I do think the core puzzle of "opposing antisemitism" at a given institution over and against the objection of the Jews who are actually present there is at the very least an oddity that people need to wrestle with.

Fourth, many people are contending that the harshly critical response to the speaker constitutes "Islamophobia." For any individual remark or "criticism", that will of course depend on its content. But insofar as we're talking about, e.g., Rep. Ritchie Torres ("Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech at a law school graduation. Anti-Israel derangement syndrome at work.") or Mayor Eric Adams ("I was proud to offer a different message at this year’s CUNY law commencement ceremony — one that celebrates the progress of our city and country, and one that honors those who fight to keep us safe and protect our freedoms.... We cannot allow words of negativity and divisiveness to be the only ones our students hear."), it's really hard to warrant the charge of Islamophobia unless you're willing to endorse a (dare I say it?) IHRA-style understanding of what "discrimination" is.

There's little in the way of evidence that Adams or Torres object to what the speaker said because she's a Muslim (and would have been fine with it if she was Christian). And one can of course already hear the classic retorts, remixed: "Criticism of anti-Israelism is not Islamophobia!" "Don't conflate opposition to Israel with Islam!" Given that, the warrant for the Islamophobia claim, it seems, has to be some version or combination of arguments like (a) taken as a whole, the intensity and vitriol of the blowback are disproportionate to a degree that they can be held to function in practice as a form of anti-Muslim hostility; and/or (b) pro-Palestinian sentiments are sufficiently tied to many Muslims sense of religious identity so as to make attempts at silencing or degrading said views tantamount to silencing an important facet of this speaker's Muslim identity; and/or (c) public "criticism" of this sort is part of a pattern or practice of social conditions which practically speaking operate as policing mechanisms that limit Muslim public participation and license their anti-Muslim harassment and discrimination.

Those arguments may well have purchase. But they're exactly the sorts of arguments which, in the context of IHRA and related debates over antisemitism, are alleged to be "censorial", "conflating", "chilling", and otherwise inappropriate in their alleged failure to distinguish between "criticism of Israel" (whether warranted or not) and "antisemitism." Here, the same failure could be alleged: failing to distinguish between "criticism of anti-Israel" (whether warranted or not) and "Islamophobia". And that alleged "failure" could similarly be met with a rejoinder that this too-pat response overlooks the realities of the situation and the practical impact this sort of speech and conduct has a means of impeding the equal public status and standing of Muslims, just as that rejoinder is leveled in the antisemitism case.

To be clear: this is a classic "everyone is a hypocrite" complaint. The anti-IHRA people, when the topic is Islamophobia, are happy to make claims that in the antisemitism context they'd label "chilling", "silencing", or "conflating". And the pro-IHRA people just as suddenly are unwilling to accept logic like this to the extent that it might require seriously reckoning with the prospect that their own speech or conduct can be labeled Islamophobic. If we understand why this speaker could interpret the backlash as Islamophobic, we should be able to understand how Jewish speakers might interpret certain vitriolically anti-Israel speech as antisemitic, and vice versa. For my part, I've long held that it's entirely possible for "dueling" discrimination charges to both be at least in part justified (see this post, and pages 161-63 of "The Epistemic Dimension of Antisemitism" for discussion), and so -- without commenting on the merits of either charge in this case -- it is fully possible in concept both that the way the speaker spoke was antisemitic AND that the way the broader community responded to the speech was Islamophobic (or that neither claim is sustainable, or that only one is).

* When I was on the job market, I did submit an application to CUNY Law in a year where they were looking to hire a constitutional law professor. I did not receive an interview, and, in retrospect, I think CUNY Law would have been a very uncomfortable place for me given my identity and the research that I engage in.

Why Does Anyone Want To Be Mayor of New York?

As a public Max Rose fan, I was happy to see he's apparently bouncing back from his 2020 re-election defeat and pursuing a run for mayor of New York City. The re-election defeat was disappointing, but it should not be a career-ender -- along with Joe Cunningham (SC) and maybe Kendra Horn (OK), Rose's 2018 win was probably among the biggest upsets of the last midterm and was always going to be difficult turf to hold onto once the blue wave inevitably receded. So I'm glad he's getting back on the horse, though I suspect it will be a crowded field and (to the extent anybody cares what I, a non-New York, thinks) I'd want to give everyone a chance to make their case.

But really, my main reaction when I read Rose's announcement was to wonder why anyone would want the job of New York City mayor? From my vantage point, the mayor of New York appears to the official home base of political no-win situations. There are a million-and-one interest groups, a barely functioning bureaucracy, all the challenges facing any urban center (but bigger, because New York), all with just enough influence to be blamed but not enough to actually hold responsibility.

I mean, look at de Blasio. I remember when he first ran for the post, he had a progressive-populist left (remember when the NYPD literally turned their backs on him? That'd be progressive gold if it happened in 2019 instead!). Now, six years into his term, everybody hates him. He almost impresses in the degree to which he's forged a cross-city, cross-ideology, cross-everything coalition united around the core conceit of despising Bill de Blasio (the pandemic isn't helping things, but this dynamic predates that). De Blasio's predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, was rich enough that essentially nothing mattered about his tenure, but it certainly didn't end up helping him one whit when he ran for President this year. And before that we have of course Rudy Giuliani, who managed to take a gift-wrapped political present as "America's mayor" and parlay it into perhaps the most embarrassing presidential campaign of my lifetime (and following that ... well, we all know where that story goes). Who on earth looks at that history and thinks "me next!"?

To be clear: I'm glad that there still are talented figures who want the job. It'd be far worse if they didn't; a place like New York needs and deserves smart, ambitious politicians who are willing to tackle the myriad problems it faces as the biggest city in America. And there's an alternate universe where mayor of New York is considered a real prize.

But boy oh boy, count me as glad I'm not one of the candidates for the job. Whoever ends up emerging out the other side as the next mayor of the Big Apple, wish them luck, because I'll bet they need it.

How Endangered is Yvette Clarke?

Last week, we asked how endangered long-time NYC Rep. Eliot Engel (D) was in his Democratic primary later this month (incidentally, Engel's primary challenger, Jamaal Bowman, just picked up an endorsement from Bernie Sanders). Today, we ask the same question of Engel's neighboring incumbent, Rep. Yvette Clarke, who represents parts of Brooklyn. Like Engel, Clarke has a relatively progressive voting record, while (also like Engel) still generally associated with the establishment wing of the party. And like Engel, she faces a vigorous challenge later this month.

In the 2018 primary, the nation's eyes were riveted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's upset victory over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary. This overshadowed Yvette Clarke's own narrow escape -- she turned back a challenge from community activist Adem Bunkeddeko with just 52% of the vote. Bunkeddeko is back for a rematch this cycle, but this time he's got company: Isiah James, a Democratic Socialist, and city councilor Chaim Deutsch, who is a conservative Democrat closely tied to the Orthodox Jewish community.  James and Bunkeddeko are running to her left, while Deutsch is tackling her from the right.

So how much trouble is Clarke in?

On the one hand, it is very often the case that a primary challenger who narrowly loses to the incumbent on their first try is able to close the deal on the second, as they become a more familiar figure and gain the attention of lower-information voters. Such was the case for Marie Newman against Dan Lipinski earlier this year, as well as Donna Edwards ousting Albert Wynn back in the youthful days of this blog. There was some indication that Clarke was caught napping last time around, and has kicked her campaign into gear this cycle. But coronavirus and lockdowns are throwing all normal campaigns for a loop, and to the extent Clarke needs to run from behind, she might not be able to do it.

On the other hand, unlike in Engel's race, here the field of challengers hasn't consolidated down. James and Bunkeddeko still may split the anti-establishment vote. And while James' candidacy appears to be sputtering out a bit, Bunkeddeko thus far hasn't received the high-profile endorsements that Jamaal Bowman has managed to pull down -- indicating that his challenge is potentially seen as less viable than Bowman's.

Yet while the conventional wisdom is that fractured fields help incumbents, that may not be the case here given how Deutsch is running his campaign. While Clarke is not a conservative Democrat, she has historically polled well in the Orthodox Jewish portions of her district where Deutsch's base resides -- this area almost certainly gave her the margin of victory in 2018. The way Deutsch is running his campaign -- actively touting endorsements from the NYPD and decrying "looters in the streets" -- seems ill-suited to actually winning a 2020 Democratic primary, but his laser-like focus on the portions of the district where Clarke has historically over-performed could suppress her numbers enough to allow Bunkeddeko to pull through.

This race has flown further under the radar than Engel's, but I think there's a solid chance the incumbent gets unseated. New York is shaping to have another eventful primary.

Performing Solidarity Anxiety in the Jewish Community

The other day, prominent Hasidic Jewish representatives published a defense of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The letter emphasized their community's generally strong relationship with de Blasio as well as their commitment to observing social distancing protocols. It expressed a desire to "disavow the attacks and derogatory language against our mayor, from people from outside the community and from reckless people among us."

De Blasio had come under fire after tweeting a message to the "Jewish community" lambasting the failure to adhere to social distancing requirements after a large Hasidic funeral drew crowds in the city streets. This message was viewed as unduly singling out Jews in general and Hasidic Jews in particular as violators of social distancing requirements, when in reality this was an isolated incident which one could find parallels among New Yorkers of all stripes. Until this letter, the hostile response to de Blasio was one of the great unifiers in the Jewish community -- which made it all the more striking that the defense of de Blasio came from the segment of the community that the rest of us were nominally trying to stand up for. What's going on?

Well, many things, in all likelihood. But one thing I suspect we're seeing is a form of solidarity anxiety -- the desire to be (and be seen as) an ally to a given community without possessing the sort of deep connections to it that generate knowledge regarding what would actually be seen as allyship.  In these circumstances, one grasps onto high profile events or causes that seem like an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity, but in doing so one often imputes assumptions or stereotypes regarding what one imagines the interests of the group to be that are at best oversimplified and at worst flat wrong. Something like this, I think, is at work in the recent finding that White Democrats were more likely to be "bothered" that the Democratic nominee was a White man than non-White Democrats. It's important to White Democrats that they present themselves as allies to People of Color, and expressing concern about nominating a White guy seems like a decent way to effectuate such a presentation -- even as, it turns out, non-White Democrats aren't especially motivated by the question.*

Among Jews, there was already some tension among non-Ultra Orthodox Jews facing accusations that they were insufficiently concerned with street violence faced by their Ultra Orthodox peers in New York City (ironically, not all but certainly some of those accusations were also being leveled by non-Orthodox actors who themselves were seeking to perform a sort of solidarity anxiety -- often by wrongfully assuming aggressive attacks on "Black antisemitism" were the way the ultra-Orthodox wished solidarity to be expressed). I think that background is germane to how the broader Jewish community responded to this case -- it was an opportunity to get loud and be clear in support of their Hasidic fellows.

In particular, I don't think it was wrong for non-Hasidic Jews to view de Blasio as having done something worthy of condemnation. But I think there was a race to a further assumption that de Blasio was in general viewed as a disliked or hostile figure among the Hasidic community such that piling on him would be viewed as inherently solidaristic. Turns out, not so much.

* Though I do think there is one possible wrinkle I'd be curious to look into: whether non-White Democrats -- regardless of whether they personally are unruffled by the nominee being a White man, look any more or less favorably at White Democrats who purport to be similarly unconcerned. The most straight-forward hypothesis is that it'd have at worst no effect -- after all, the White Democrats are taking the same position they are. But I can imagine a line of thinking where even if they themselves are unperturbed by the nominee being White POCs might find it suspicious for White people to too readily agree -- because, for example, certain racial dispositions that the POCs feel comfortable in assuming in their own case can't be taken for granted among White actors.

Some Nuanced Thoughts on Protecting Jews via Police

NBC News, which as a mainstream media source Is Not Covering Violence Against Jews(tm), has an interesting article up discussing how the Jewish community in New York is assessing calls to increase police presence in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods as a means of combating rising antisemitic violence:

Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, or JFREJ, a left-wing "movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation" based in New York City, said deployment of more police would be an understandable reaction — and one that would worry her.

"Of course, we all need to feel safe. That's fundamental, and there is no arguing with that," Sasson said. "But how do we get there?"

Sasson said that her group is multiracial, as is the Jewish community at large, and that many Jewish people wouldn't feel safer with a greater police presence.  

"Right now, the tools we have for safety [are] more police and more guns," Sasson said, "but the question for me is how can we build other tools?" 

Those tools, according to Sasson and JFREJ, include making sure the Jewish community is in a coalition with other targeted communities, having a better system for reporting violence that doesn't rely so heavily on police, creating community-led transformative justice projects and implementing non-punitive and restorative-oriented approaches to violence. 

Sasson acknowledged that the vision is a long-term one, and she does not discount the desire for more police from people living in fear after "the whole holiday was marked by attacks." [emphasis added -- DS]

This is good, and I dare say snaps my long streak wherein everything I've ever read from JFREJ is neither bad nor good but "meh" (Mazel Tov!). The reason I like it is because:

(a) It does not disparage those Jews who desire police protection in the immediate term, or suggest that it reflects a failure of solidarity on their part to desire this solution;

 (b) It acknowledges that viable alternatives to police protection need to be built -- that is, they do not exist now -- and that this construction project is has a long-term time horizon attached to it.

Those twin acknowledgments are, I think necessary if the critique of "more police" is to have ethical traction. Without them, the objection to more policing sounds like a demand that Jews place our lives in the hand of vague feel-good bromides about "community building" or some such that have all the practical bite of a consciousness-raising bed-in project -- and if we don't accede to the demand we're basically giving into our inner-fascists. I think Sasson is read properly in tandem with Eric Ward:

"You can't tell a community that is being physically assaulted that they can't increase law enforcement response but then offer them nothing in response," Ward said. 

Still, Ward, who has studied anti-Semitism extensively, acknowledged that it's not that simple. 

"We know increased policing brings increased racial profiling," he said, adding that high police presence to protect Jews "is likely to be seen as feeding into black and Jewish tension."

Ward is, I think, making the same point as Sasson, just with the opposite emphasis. Telling Jews "how dare you ask for more police" when there isn't any practical, immediate-term alternative isn't going to be received well, and reasonably so. That's true even though, as Ward also points out, there are real costs to the "increased policing" proposal -- including costs along the very dimension its nominally supposed to help (tamping down on intra-group tensions and hostility). There's legitimate space to critique the "more police" response -- but it has to come with enough humility to acknowledge that there's ample reason to be skeptical of the existence of viable alternatives in the short-term.

Ultimately, my view on this is basically that of Batya Ungar-Sargon: Whatever my intuitions are on the wisdom of this strategy, I should defer to the people on the ground. Of course, the people on the ground will themselves often have divergent takes. But one suspects the consensus that will emerge will lie somewhere in between "abolish the NYPD" and "send in the National Guard."

"And Never Rat on Your Friends!": NYC Sexual Harassment Edition

If you've ever taken a company- or university-mandated sexual harassment seminar, you probably remember those multiple-choice quizlets they always hand out. The option set usually comes with one or two reasonable-sounding answers, one answer which the facilitator drummed into you is the wrong answer, and then one answer that's just flat bonkers. For example:

[New York City] councilmembers were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they were “asked what they should do if they overheard a chief of staff making sexually inappropriate comments in an elevator” that “visibly upset” a female staffer.... According to multiple city councilmembers present, [Ruben Diaz Sr.] interrupted the presentation to scream, “I’m not gonna rat my people out! This place is full of rats!”

Oooookay. And Diaz is not even close to a first-time offender here.

Sadly, he's also not a complete nobody. Diaz is running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jose Serrano in a deep-blue district. You'd think a guy who campaigned with Ted Cruz and talked about how much he liked Donald Trump would be toxic in New York City, but for whatever reason Diaz seems to have strong local backing in his corner of the Bronx. We'll see if it translates to an entire congressional district though -- Serrano, for his part, is a member of the House Progressive Caucus and sports an A "progressive punch" rating, so it's hard to see the district as a whole voting for a self-described "conservative" like Diaz.

Today in Academic Freedom

Yesterday, I published a column in Ha'aretz on Berkeley's response to the Ben Shapiro speech. I noted that, since the Berkeley administration actually did exactly what it should have done in ensuring that Shapiro's juridical right to speak was protected, and since the Berkeley community largely followed through and responded to his speech through perfectly legitimate means (counterspeech, non-violent protest, flyers, questioning), perhaps we could now move on the substantive merits of what signal it sends when Ben Shapiro is invited at all.

It's been a banner couple of days for academic freedom, after all. For example:

* Harvard administrators overruled its own History Department's decision to admit Michelle Jones, a woman who rose to prominence for conducting top-level historical research while incarcerated in Indiana, to their graduate school. Reportedly, the decision was motivated in part by what conservative media outlets would say if Harvard admitted "a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority."

* Harvard also withdrew a fellowship offer previously extended to Chelsea Manning, this time in response to furious objections from conservatives in the intelligence community who deem Manning a "traitor." Manning was convicted of leaking classified information, and had her sentence commuted after serving seven years in prison. Corey Lewandowski, who assaulted a reporter, and Sean Spicer, who epitomized the "post-truth" ethos of the Trump administration, remain fellows in good standing.

* The University of Maryland is investigating the termination of a Jewish professor, Melissa Landa, from the College of Education. Landa contends that her relationship with her colleagues soured after she began organizing against antisemitic comments by (now-former) Oberlin Professor Joy Karega (Karega was eventually terminated after spreading several antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media; Landa is an Oberlin alum). Several of Landa's students have released an open letter criticizing her termination, describing her as an "ally" and "one of the few professors who is an expert in helping students examine their own biases."

* A lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was suspended after tweeting that he enjoys teaching "future dead cops." The New York City Police Union wants him fired, but New York Times columnist Bari Weiss wrote a lengthy essay explaining that, while the lecturer's views were offensive and reprehensible, it is important both for CUNY students and police officers to be exposed to ideas that discomfort them and respond via counterspeech rather than demand censorship [error: column not found].

* The University of North Carolina's board of governors shut down a civil rights center at UNC Law School which ruffled conservative feathers by litigating desegregation and environmental impact suits. I had already written about this controversy here, noting the incredibly ad hoc justifications given for what was obviously a political power play ("we just think law schools should focus less on practical training and more on esoteric, Ivory Tower theorizing!").

So that's where we stand. One suspects that some of these cases will gain great notoriety within certain political factions while others will be wholly ignored; switch the factions and you no doubt switch the cases that matter. As we've long since learned, academic freedom has a lot of fair weather friends. But as these examples indicate, the assault on academic freedom does emanate from a single source. You either defend the norms which let a university function, or you don't.