Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XLII: Russian Meddling in American Elections

Vladimir Putin wants you to know that it might not be (ethnic) Russians behind the attempts to meddle in the U.S. elections. It might have been Ukrainians. Or Tatars.

Or Jews.

Of course Jews.

And of course, people have thoughts on Putin suggesting maybe all this election interference really traces back to the Jews.

There's a bad piece by David Klion trying to defend Putin from charges of antisemitism, which asks why Putin "singled out" Jews alongside Ukrainians and Tatars (the latter two are maybe easy to explain -- they're the two largest ethnic minorities in Russia. Jews are ... not in third place), answers "it's complicated", and then seems to entirely forget to explain what's "complicated" about it in favor of a stirring ode to the advances Jews have made since the era of the Tsars and a list of all of Putin's good Jewish friends.

There's a better piece by Anshel Pfeffer, which seeks to absolve Putin of personal antisemitism while noting that he has long been willing to tolerate it as a useful vector for stirring up anti-Western resentment.

And then there's the best piece by Talia Lavin, who agrees with Pfeffer that Putin generally "launders" antisemitism through allies or (in this case) trolling, but observes that this doesn't actually provide absolution for promoting antisemitism.

Read them in order, and feel yourself getting smarter.

One Great Argument Against Anti-BDS Laws? Who Enforces Them

In the abstract, there are solid arguments for or against anti-BDS laws (so long as they're written narrowly and carefully to avoid impinging on constitutional free speech rights).

In practice, anti-BDS laws are enforced by state bureaucrats. And state bureaucrats -- well, state bureaucrats are often the worst.

Hence, putting said bureaucrats in a position to embarrass the anti-BDS cause with boneheaded applications that create PR disasters -- as we've seen in Texas, Kansas, and most recently Arizona State University -- maybe isn't the best tactical move for people who oppose BDS.

Read the full argument in my new column for the Forward.

Three Black Jews on the Women's March and Farrakhan

All three of these columns are excellent. I'm just linking to them here so they're in a convenient spot (and hopefully give them a bit more attention -- not just for the present controversy but as important voices generally in the Jewish community).

Nylah Burton

Ben Faulding

Elad Nehorai [UPDATE: While Elad is a JOC, he isn't Black. My bad. And while that shouldn't stop you from reading his piece, feel free to swap in Adam Serwer or Stacey Aviva Flint].

Give them all a read.

Danny Davis' Primary Opponent Tackles His Farrakhan Love

Many of you are no doubt aware of the recent controversy where a Women's March leader was cozying up to Louis Farrakhan (you can read my take on it here in Haaretz, or a complimenting one I wrote on this blog). After a lot of foot-dragging, the Women's March leadership has finally issued a statement that says Farrakhan's antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia are not aligned with their values. Does it suffice? This thread gives a taste of my and others' reactions.

But sadly, the Women's March isn't the only progressive entity that just got caught playing footsie with Farrakhan.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) told the Daily Caller (sidenote: who on his staff was dumb enough to let him speak to the Daily Caller?) that Farrakhan was an "outstanding human being", then said he was misquoted, then re-reversed course to say "I don’t have no problems with Farrakhan ... The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question."

Davis actually has a Democratic primary challenger this year in Anthony Clark, and I guess it's not surprising that he'd be the main political figure to jump on this (Davis' colleagues in the Democratic caucus have kept quiet). But while beating an ousting an entrenched incumbent is always hard, it's revealing that Clark thinks that snuggling up to Farrakhan is a valid attack point in a Democratic primary in a plurality-Black district.

(Both Clark and Davis sit on the left-edge of the Democratic Party; Clark's primary pitch is that Davis has become too enmeshed in the establishment and has stopped actually working for the progressive reforms he claims to support).

UPDATE: J Street, which had previously endorsed Davis, is reaching out to his office for comment and may "reconsider" its endorsement.

On the Women's March and Farrakhan

A Women's March leader, Tamika Mallory, attended a speech by Louis Farrakhan, notorious for antisemitic bigotry (which manifested itself in the speech). When called out on it, Mallory doubled-down with a remark ("If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!") that was less of a antisemitic dogwhistle than a bullhorn.

For the most part, the response of the other Women's March leaders has been to defiantly have her back (here's a particularly terrible intercession from Linda Sarsour). At the same time, there's been virtually no public justification as to why the rather obvious antisemitism of Farrakhan should be excused. There's been no effort to defend the things he says about Jews, no attempt to argue that his perspective on Jews is in fact in bounds.

This oddity -- defiant refusal to concede any ground on the antisemitism count, coupled with no attempt to actually rationalize the antisemitic content -- demands explanation. My hypothesis is this:

Leftists don't like thinking about antisemitism in their own ranks. At the same time, they'd never admit this is so. Fortunately, most antisemitism controversies that implicate the left relate to Israel in some fashion, and so they can respond with their favorite chestnut: "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic." On face, this response assures the audience that they do care about antisemitism (the "real" antisemitism), but that the case at hand doesn't count as such (that it never seems to count as such is suspicious in its own right. But leave that aside.).

But Farrakhan's antisemitism isn't really tied to Israel. Which means that the stand-by response won't work. And these leftists are left flummoxed, because they don't really have another thought on antisemitism beyond "criticism of Israel isn't." Forced into a situation where it seems necessary to say something else, they find themselves at a loss. Suddenly, they can't play their get-out-of-talking-about-antisemitism-free card.

And this is revealing. If the problem really was Israel, the Farrakhan case shouldn't present any difficulty. But if the problem is that these leftists just don't want to have to reckon with antisemitism in their community (and Israel is a convenient but ultimately epiphenomenal factor), then Farrakhan presents a huge problem.

We're getting an excellent peek into who falls into which category here.

#NeverAgain Means Constantly Packing Enough Firepower To Bring Down a Tank

Some of you have no doubt seen Rep. Don Young (R-AK)'s suggestion that the Holocaust wouldn't have happened had the Jews been armed.

On twitter, responding to a similar claim, I observed that the Warsaw Uprising (where some Jews did have guns) belies the notion that Jews simply having guns would have meaningfully obstructed the Nazi genocidal machine. To which the reply was -- well, clearly they didn't have enough guns. Which, given that the NRA's response to any gun violence is "there should have been more good guys with guns in the room", isn't that surprising.

Now, in a sense it is right to say that the reason the Warsaw Uprising failed is that the Jews didn't have enough firepower -- that is, enough firepower to singlehandedly defeat a modern state's war apparatus. But I think we should hone in on the precise claim being made here. When the NRA says "we need an armed populace to defend ourselves from potentially genocidal government", it can't be talking about a couple people with handguns in their house or even some AR-15s. The only way this logic works is if they think every social group in America should have at its disposal enough advanced weaponry to take out a tank battalion along with its air support.

That power is, should, and must be vested in states -- which means there is no alternative response to the risk of (domestic) state violence and oppression other than inculcating that state with liberal and rule-of-law values so that it can both have the capacity to defend itself against external threats while not using those capacities to oppress others. This is a far more plausible lesson to draw from the Holocaust compared to a world where we hand out Stingers and Hellfire Missiles as Bar Mitzvah presents.

Today in Middle Eastern Jewry Roundup

For whatever reason, an outsized number of interesting stories about Middle Eastern Jews are currently occupying my browser. I don't have time to write on them individually, so ... roundup!

* * *

A formerly-Islamist, now secular Tunisian political party places a Jewish candidate at the top of its list.

Interesting story of an Iranian Jew-by-choice, currently seeking legal status in America.

Libyan Jews worry that new American agreement restricting importation of ancient artifacts from that country will -- in effect -- ratify the expropriation of their property. This, incidentally, is a great example of "why intersectionality needs to include the Mizrahi case."

A step away from Middle Eastern Jews, but still germane: an interview with the Palestinian Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace.

One Good Essay on "Immigrants Get the Job Done"

American Olympian Mirai Nagasu landed a triple axel at the Olympics. That's a big deal (apparently -- I don't really know a lot about figure skating).

New York Times columnist Bari Weiss reacted to the occasion by tweeting out: "Immigrants: They get the job done."

Problem: Nagasu isn't an immigrant. She was born in the United States.

Weiss suggested that "poetic license" was in order, as Nagasu's parents were immigrants. She also questioned what the big deal was.

The answer was that Weiss -- perhaps inadvertently -- stepped on the trope of Asian-Americans as "perpetual foreigners": never really American, always forced to answer the question "no, where are you really from."

From this conversation, internet hell predictably came down (Nagasu's own eventual statement was quite diplomatic. But between the fact that a huge chunk of the internet had already decided that even slightest showing of offense proved one was a deranged threat to American freedom as we know, and the fact that Nagasu almost certainly had no interest in wading into any sort of political controversy while she's, you know, focused on being an Olympian, I think it's easy to overread it).

The vast majority of the comments on l'affaire Weiss were stupid. This essay by Mari Uyehara is a welcome exception. I encourage you to read it.

As for me, my one contribution to the conversation was simple: Had Weiss simply acknowledged that the initial tweet was sloppy and let things lie, there would have been no storm. What made it a big deal was Weiss (and later, her defenders) continually doubling-down on the notion that no sane person could have possibly took exception to the tweet, that it was wholly innocuous, and that anyone who raised any questions about it whatsoever embodies trigger-happy internet "call out culture" that's toxic to free expression and the open discussion of ideas.

In a sense, it was a vindication of an oft-misunderstood maxim of "SJW" culture, which is that if an outgroup says you've done something that wounded them, take a moment to listen. Breathe, keep a level head, and assume that they're saying it not because of some gratuitous desire to take offense, but because there's at least some there there. Had that simple advice been taken, had Weiss simply said "I meant to honor Nagasu's immigrant parents, but I see how the tweet could be construed differently. I'll take it down," a lot of pain and a lot of frankly idiotic commentary could have been avoided.

The Socialist Revolution Will Be Led By the Billionaire Financiers

One of the nice things about antisemitic conspiracy theories encompassing everything (even mutually contradictory things) is that one can blame the Jews for anything.

One of the weirder things about antisemitic conspiracy theories encompassing everything, even mutually contradictory things is that one can somehow manage to knit them all together in a single person.

So it is that NRA chieftain Wayne LaPierre informs a pulsing CPAC crowd that socialism is coming on the backs of ... George Soros. And Michael Bloomberg. And Tom Steyer. (Also, they're all backed by the ghost of Saul Alinsky -- because let's throw in another Jew for good measure).

Soros, as you may recall, grew up under Communist oppression and has devoted a substantial portion of his life to bringing market values to former Eastern bloc states. Bloomberg is perhaps America's most prominent independent political figure, apparently holding down the "Democrats are too liberal but socialism sounds great!" political bloc. Steyer is a run-of-the-mill Democratic Party donor. Each of them made their wealth in ways that are, shall we say, not typically part of the socialist revolutionary gameplan. And none of them have shown the slightest interest in anything but bog-standard liberal (or in Bloomberg's case, Wall Street centrist) political engagement.

No matter. It makes perfect sense to say the billionaires are the heralds of the socialist revolution ... if said billionaires are Jews. That's the logic here. One doesn't need a dogwhistle if one has a bullhorn.

Kucinich: Because Fervent Hatred of Anyone Not Reviled By Mainstream Democrats is its Own Rationale

There are some people who want the Democratic Party to be more progressive. This is generally a good thing. These are the people who, for example, rather quickly ensured that the DNC chieftain race quickly coalesced around two staunchly progressive candidates in Tom Perez and Keith Ellison.

There are some people who want the Democratic Party to simply lash out in a blind fury against "the establishment". These are the people who, for example, went far beyond having a preference between Perez and Ellison and crossed into a groundless and seemingly random fervor insisting that Tom Perez was unacceptably right-wing because something-something-most-progressive-Labor-Secretary-in-recent-memory-is-neoliberal, and swore to dynamite the entire Democratic Party if he won (by the way, Democrats just picked up their 37th special election seat-flip since Trump was elected after swinging a Kentucky state House seat 86 points from its 2016 presidential margin).

The people who endorse Dennis Kucinich -- Dennis Kucinich!, shilling for Assad and Putin when he isn't playing the "Trump is speaking to real American outrage" card* -- over Richard Cordray for the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nomination are definitively in the latter category.

As always, the question isn't whether Cordray is perfect (though one expects the Jill Stein bait-and-switch -- laboring to make a mountain out of a molehill's worth of liberal heresy when the candidate is "establishment" while resolutely ignoring all the ways the "insurgent" is ideologically terrible in her own right -- is coming). But there's very little reason why a Elizabeth Warren-esque former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be so unacceptable as to provoke a turn to a cartoon character like Kucinich (in this way, it's far worse than Perez/Ellison, as at least there the alternative candidate was perfectly fine in his own right). The motive rather seems to be just an undirected form of contrariness towards anyone who establishment Democrats are content with -- if they like him, then he must be unacceptable for ... reasons (probably something to do with neoliberalism). But that's not actually a way of building a progressive movement.

Loomis is too generous in saying it's a problem of progressives not being "smart" (though it is profoundly stupid). Independent of it being bad tactics, it's also bad on the level of ideals. It's difficult to know what to do with that sort of blind self-destructiveness (again, shades of the Stein voters who answered the question "why should I vote for the lesser of two evils" by electing to vote for the middle of three). The best thing that can be said about it is that so far, it hasn't actually had that much influence on actual Democratic voting patterns (which is more than can be said about the Republican Party, which has been entirely consumed by a pure id of reactionary anti-"establishment" ressentiment).

* Researching this post, I rediscovered that Kucinich was one of 12 Democrats to vote against the House resolution of "disapproval" after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) famously exclaimed "you lie!" in the middle of President Obama's State of the Union. So add that to the list.

Ranking Winter Olympic Sports

I love the Olympics -- Summer and Winter. A few of my favorite activities include rooting for Winter Olympians from countries which have no snow, rooting for formerly colonized nations to defeat their colonial overlords, and being a sucker for any good personal drama story.

Also, the some of the events are interesting. Here's the full ranking:

Short Track Speed Skating

Demolition derby on ice. This is a sport I'd totally watch off-season. I haven't gotten the chance to watch the mass start version yet, but it seems particularly ludicrously dangerous and therefore extra delightful. It makes me wish that Olympic sprinting didn't have lanes. A+

Snowboard/Skiing Cross

If you're the sort of person who thinks "NASCAR would be better if they had speed bumps and jumps" (also: hurtling downhill) -- this is for you. Another event with great demolition derby character. But what I really want is for downhill ice cross skating to make it to the Olympics. That's a sport where at the bottom everyone just looks grateful that they've survived the evening. A

Long Track Speed Skating

Like middle-distance running, but more interesting because it's on blades. Something about watching the skaters criss-cross lanes is deeply hypnotic. A-

Slopestyle

The best of the "trick" events, mostly because it most closely approximates a Tony Hawk game (or, to be technical, a Cool Boarders game). I hate to say it, as a die-hard skier, but the snowboard version is more interesting. B+

Skeleton

"Who's ready for death sledding!" We can't call it that. Okay, we'll call it "skeleton." Seriously, if the Summer Olympics is about pitting the world's greatest athletes against each other in head-to-head competition, the Winter Olympics seems to be about finding ever-more creative ways to get Europeans to kill themselves. B+

Biathlon

Nothing will ever top Robin Williams referring to this sport as "Norwegian Drive-by". But of all the long-distance sports -- Winter or Summer -- this one's the best. Not just because it involves gunfire, but because the shooting segments actually allow the race to get shaken up on a dime, adding interest and variety to what otherwise would (literally) be a marathon. B

Luge

I love the camera shots on Luge, which last for approximately a quarter of a second on each turn as an insane German hurtles ball-first down an ice chute (another steal from Robin Williams). B

Figure Skating (individual and pairs)

The marquee event of the Winter Games. It's not that I dislike it, but it's virtually impossible for me to tell the difference between the tricks, so I'm left rooting for falls just to create some visual distance between the competitors. I do appreciate that the area the skaters sit in to wait for scores is officially called the "kiss and cry" area (seriously: I saw it on an official's nametag). B

Ice Hockey

The only sport I can watch regularly outside of the Olympics, which diminishes its Olympic appeal somewhat. Its ranking would shoot way up if the women's game was full-check (it looks like they're using every fiber of self-restraint to avoid laying each other out for sixty consecutive minutes). B

Aerials/Big Air

"Ski jumping? That's for pussies. Make them do a few tricks while they're in the air and get back to me." This is the only trick event where I think skiing does better than snowboarding. B

Bobsled

The ranking of Skeleton, Luge, and Bobsled depends heavily on what you prioritize. In terms of raw speed, Bobsled is fastest, then Luge, then Skeleton. But in terms of reckless disregard for one's personal safety, it goes Skeleton, then Luge, then Bobsled. You can obviously see what my preferences are. B-

Curling

The breakout hit of Sochi now feels a little overcooked in Pyeongchang. It's perfectly entertaining, and it's the only Olympic sport I could even vaguely conceive of competing in, but it takes a long time to complete and there are apparently 142 games scheduled over the course of the Olympic Games, which take up valuable TV time that could be used for speed skating. B-

Alpine Skiing

As a skier, I should like this, but once again I can't really tell what makes someone fast or slow so there's not a lot to watch here. Now mass start alpine skiing -- that I could get behind. C+

Halfpipe

The marquee snowboard event (and generally-forgotten skiing event) is also the worst of the lot. To the naked eye, at least, it has less speed, less air, and less interesting tricks. C+

Moguls

All Olympic sports are physically punishing, but moguls is the only one I can't actually watch without feeling my knees twitch in sympathetic pain. As my brother observed: "you'll never see a 30-year old Moguls skier." C+

Ski Jump

It says a lot about the reckless disregard for human safety that characterizes the Winter Olympics that you can take a sport where competitors jump the length of a football field from 35 stories in the air and I can be like "but it's kinda boring?"  C

Nordic (Cross-Country) Skiing

The same problem as distance running, or cycling. Not enough happens for too long. More than any other sport in the games though, competitors earn their "collapse in exhaustion at the finish line" moment. C-

Ice Dancing

"Let's start with figure skating, and then remove all of the most interesting parts of it and ensure that at least one competitor always stays firmly planted on the ground, where it's safe." Why? D

Conservatives No Longer Can Conceive of Non-Partisan Motives, Part II

The Mueller investigation is not going to turn out well for the Trump administration.

One would think that's uncontroversial, given that it's already secured guilty pleas from several Trump associates and indictments against several more. "How bad" is an open question, but "bad" surely isn't.

In the wake of indictments against several Russian nationals for interfering in Election 2016, Democratic Senator Bob Casey (PA) suggested that Mueller not release any final report on his investigation immediately before the 2018 midterms.

Casey said he couldn't make any assumptions about where the Mueller investigation is going in light of indictments issued on Friday. But he added that he would recommend Mueller not release a report on his findings near the midterms, when it would distract from elections or cause people to question the election's integrity.

One can agree with this analysis or disagree. The case for disagreement is that the Russia scandal is a valid and important issue that voters should have full information on when making their choice come 2018. The case for agreement is that Russian interference has already badly frayed our collective faith in the integrity of our democratic system and a last-minute FBI report would only further their goal of sowing chaos.

But Glenn Reynolds reacted to the news somewhat differently:

Weird I thought it was going to be bad for the GOP. https://t.co/Qf7d7kSvaa

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) February 18, 2018

Oy.

But seriously -- remember last year when (talking about the Russia investigation!) I wrote that conservatives can no longer conceive of non-partisan motives? Great example right here. The only possible motivation of anyone talking about the FBI probe into Russian interference in our elections is a partisan one. Hence, if a Democrat -- one in no position to know what Mueller will end up finding, but one who (like the rest of us) already see it ensnaring Trump associates -- says that he doesn't want a bombshell release right before the election, the only possible motive is ... the report will somehow hurt Democrats. The proffered rationale -- "bombshell revelations of foreign electoral interference right before an election where voters are already mistrustful of each other and on edge is a bad idea" -- doesn't even register. It's like the very concept of being a good civic citizen is just beyond comprehension.

Adrien Broner Arrested On Groping Charges

Adrien Broner, once heralded as boxing next big thing but never living up to the moniker, has been arrested after a woman accused him of groping her at an Atlanta mall.

Responding to the charge, the ever-classy Broner wrote on social media: "Just cause I voted for trump don't mean I'm going around grabbing pussies."

Yeah, I'm voting that he did it. Not just because of Broner's prior brushes with the law (though thus far he's escaped having any of his cases go to trial), and not just because he's a notorious asshole (though even in boxing he stands out), and not just because he voted for Trump (of course he did; also, moths to the flame much?). But the sort of person who'd respond to a sexual misconduct allegation with a flip "Just cause I voted for trump don't mean I'm going around grabbing pussies" is exactly the sort of person whom I totally believe would go around "grabbing pussies."

Thankfully, unlike late-stage Floyd Mayweather, who boxing fans like myself had to pay attention to even as he was racking up domestic violence cases of his own because he was the best fighter in the world, Adrien Broner is basically irrelevant at the top echelons of boxing now. So if this ends up torpedoing his next fight (a scheduled scrap with Omar Figueroa Jr.), we won't be missing much.

Nothing Went On At Fresno State

Last year, I blogged about an emergent controversy at Fresno State, where a faculty member alleged that a Middle East Studies search was canceled due to external "Zionist" pressure. Her claims quickly got substantial attention amongst the usual suspects -- JVP put together a condemnatory letter that quickly amassed 500 signatures -- but there was a crucial component to the case that remained missing.

Evidence.

Like, any of it.

The Fresno State administration consistently maintained that the search was suspended due to procedural problems; reporters who contacted the local Jewish community found nobody who had even heard of the search, let alone organized against it. Against that, those crying Zionist sabotage were left stringing together a few stray (and unattributed) comments allegedly made by some skeptical faculty members expressing concern.

So at the end of the day, was there any "there" there?

Fortunately, Northwestern University Law Professor Steve Lubet took the time to made and wade through a FOIA request for the relevant records that could answer that question. And it turns out that the University's denials were completely, absolutely, and 100% justified. The search was canceled because the finalists were all social scientists, but the position was going to be housed in a humanities department which didn't want to add faculty from outside its discipline. It was that mismatch which caused the search to be delayed a year (presumably so the parameters of the position could be realigned with the areas of specialization of the most interested candidates). Not a single document revealed any contact, let alone "pressure", from Zionist or Israel-advocacy organizations -- leading the President of the Faculty Senate to flatly declare (in an internal document) that the original complaining faculty member who made the allegations was simply "lying".

One hopes that puts this matter to bed. But it is fair to question how this "controversy" exploded in the way that it did. I wrote at the time:

Abba Eban once famously quipped that "If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions." So too, it seems, that if JVP circulates a letter saying Fresno State was devoured by a hellmouth and Israel had summoned it, it would amass 500 signatures within the week.

Lubet uses this to coin the term "Occam's BDS razor": the simplest explanation, anytime anything on campus doesn't go precisely the way pro-Palestinian advocates would like, is the interference of nefarious pro-Israel lobbying. We can see how that mentality shook out at Fresno both "vertically" and "horizontally". "Vertically", a few offhand remarks that were critical of the search proceedings got elevated to cases of "harassment". And "horizontally", these few remarks were roped together to form the locus of an imagined conspiracy of intimidation against the entire search. The ease at which these jumps are made is itself illustrative of antisemitism in its structural dimension -- even the tiniest shreds of Jewish public or private discourse immediately metastasize into dark threats of domineering power. Such moves, I have to think, wouldn't fly (or wouldn't fly as easily) were they not so easily slotted into the grooves of antisemitic discourse.

Lubet concludes similarly: the fact that the allegation of Jewish interference was taken as gospel with virtually no evidence whatsoever, coupled with the (perhaps more alarming, though less surprising) fact that none of the bodies which leveled the accusation at Fresno State have shown any interest in even reviewing the documentation showing that the claim was groundless, is properly thought of as a manifestation of antisemitic conspiracy theorizing.

Democracy Remains the Solution to Hillel's Biggest Problems

Hillel International endorsed Kenneth Marcus for the head Civil Rights position at the Department of Education -- mostly because Marcus is a firm opponent of BDS and campus antisemitism more broadly.

The problem is that (controversy over BDS aside) Kenneth Marcus also is viewed as weak on sexual assault, favoring a rollback of Obama-era regulations designed to get colleges to clamp down on sexual violence.

This has led to serious controversy within Hillel. Hillel International head Eric Fingerhut refused to rescind his endorsement, but did agree that the organization should "consider" altering its policies regarding endorsements and the need for consultation with Hillel constituent members:

In an email sent to campus Hillel directors Friday, Hillel President and CEO Eric Fingerhut acknowledged that the Hillel staff had raised questions about the Marcus endorsement. He said that Hillel International’s board would consider new procedures by which the organization’s leadership would in the future consult with Hillel staff and students before taking public positions on political issues. He also said that he had meant to endorse Marcus’s work on anti-Semitism only, not his position on the campus sexual assault issue.

At the risk of tooting my own horn, you know what would be a great "procedure" facilitating consultation with Jewish students before Hillel adopts a public policy position? Democracy! If Hillel was a democratic organization, this misstep would have been far less likely to have occurred, and the position Hillel did take would have been far more likely to be in line with the actual preferences of Hillel students.

The thing is, democracies are responsive to their actual constituents in a way that Hillel is not. Given Hillel's institutional setup, it's utterly unsurprising that Fingerhut made his decision based on an issue of high-importance to his donor base while being utterly unaware of a countervailing issue of equal if not greater importance to Hillel's actual constituency. Simply put, Fingerhut is accountable to the former but not the latter. So he's going to be well aware of what matters to the former while being blissfully ignorant about the concerns of the latter. And the result is that he'll blunder into errors like this over and over again.

And one more thing: Maybe it's the case that Hillel students actually do care more about Marcus' work incorporating Jews under DOE regulatory protection than they do his conservative views on sexual violence prevention. If that's the case, then maybe a Democratic Hillel would have also given him an endorsement. But one suspects it would've been done in a more qualified and politically sensitive way. More importantly, in that circumstance the endorsement would carry democratic legitimacy that is lacking when decisions are made by the equivalent of an unelected autocrat. Democratic governance is good because it yields more responsive decision-making, yes, but also because it is simply legitimate in a way that Hillel, right now, cannot claim to be.

"Talking to Minorities? Oooh... That's a Censorship."

Andrew Sullivan is worried about campus life.

If you're thinking that his musings are going to be an uncreative recycling of greatest-hits complaints about out-of-control student lefties utterly unmoored from any actual account of contemporary campus life, well, you'd be mostly right. 

We do get obligatory swipes at "microaggressions", and fury at accused sexual assailants being adjudicated under the exact same standard of proof they'd encounter were they sued in court (and a far more protective standard than they'd be entitled to in the workplace -- which is to say, there is one), and no less than three references to "cultural Marxism," which is always a good signal to turn one's ears off (on a New York Times editor's ambitions to be "intersectional", he writes aghast: "Does she understand that the very word intersectional is a function of neo-Marxist critical race theory?" Does he understand how many Marxists -- "neo-" or otherwise -- would choke to hear that?). 

Thankfully, Sullivan spares us a literal appeal to the First Amendment, but his invocations of its "spirit" appear to collapse "censorship" into "outgroups publicly disliking what I have to say", and delegitimizing their temerity is more or less the core thesis of the argument. Free exchange of ideas indeed.

But I confess that Sullivan did introduce me to one element of PC-culture that was genuinely new to me. These were the "sensitivity readers", by whom Sullivan tells us "Books are censored in advance ... to conform with 'social justice' protocols." 

Goodness, that sounds positively awful! But fortunately, Sullivan provided a link to educate us on the contours of this new threat. And there, we encountered a truly harrowing tale: a young-adult author who ... voluntarily reached out to a readers from a community she was writing about to elicit their reactions on her draft.* Yes, we've finally reached the stage where even speaking to outgroups is a form of "censorship". How indeed could the free exchange of ideas survive such terrors like ... talking to the sort of people you're writing about? (To be fair to Sullivan, there's an element of self-interest in play here: one highly doubts any of his ideas could survive the encounter).

There's something to be said about cultivating a spirit of open inquiry that goes beyond opposing de jure censorship. It should be obvious that "speaking with people different from yourself and modifying your views in the wake of the encounter" has very little to do with that spirit. But the larger problem writers like Sullivan obstinately fail to grasp is that part of open inquiry includes considering whether our positions or ideologies create or perpetuate injustices (whether against socially-identifiable outgroups or anyone else). If censorship can exist beyond the formal power of the state and includes leveraging social power to preemptively prevent certain views from being heard, than there's almost certainly no more committed censor in Sullivan's column than Sullivan himself.

* Admittedly, the article indicates that sometimes "sensitivity readers" are not hired directly by authors but rather provided by the publishing house. I can sympathize with how this may feel like "censorship" to a writer, but in our more sober moments we tend to call it by the more prosaic name of "editing".

What's In Peer Review For Me?

UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge continues to decline peer review requests from law reviews (for friends in different disciplines, law is unique in that nearly all of our scholarly journals are run by law students -- up to and including article selection. A few top journals have started to move towards a "semi-" peer review system where they solicit comments from outside academic reviewers, typically to supplement their own internal deliberations. I give a qualified defense of the law review system here). This is a blast in the past for me, as Bainbridge's initial broadside came against the University of Chicago Law Review shortly after I left that august institution (see my guarded comments here).

Bainbridge has several reasons for not participating, but he devotes an extended amount of time to a discussion of self-interest, featuring an guest appearance from Adam Smith:

Why on earth would I ever want to review an article for them? To be sure, there are things one supposedly does for free for other law schools because they are for the good of the profession. Writing tenure letters springs to mind. Yet, while doing so is for the good of the profession, it can also be personally beneficial. If I write a tenure review letter for your tenure committee, the members of that committee will feel obliged to return the favor when I'm chairing our tenure committee and need outsider reviewers. Professors at other schools read my brilliant tenure review and conclude they should hire me instead of promoting the candidate. I take the job offer to the Dean and she gives me a raise. And so on. But what possible benefit do I get from giving a review to bunch of kids who may or may not end up in law teaching? I'm a rational economic actor. My time is valuable. There are opportunity costs entailed in responding to your request. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." So make it economically rational for me to respond affirmatively.

Actually, this made me think of one reason someone in Bainbridge's position might want to participate in peer review: to influence the window of prestigious legal scholarship in a direction more amenable to his scholarship (and more generally, ideological predilections).

It is a common complaint of conservatives in academia that one barrier to their success is the hammerlock the left-wing majority has over article selection -- supposedly elevating mediocre (but ideologically congenial) leftist scholarship while knocking out good conservative contributions. I don't know if Bainbridge feels this way about the areas he writes in (corporate law), but presumably even shorn of a partisan valence Bainbridge has a vested interest in facilitating a match between scholarship is thinks is actually good and that which deemed "good" via the signal of elite article placement. At the margins, this could help in quite directly (by making his own scholarship more closely resemble that which is considered to be cutting edge), and at the very least it offers a benefit to his ideological school (to the extent he cares about such things). When Bainbridge declines to review articles for top law journals, the reviewer they replace him with may be one with very different views on what makes for a good corporate law piece. The net effect will be to push the contours of well-regarded scholarship in his discipline away from Bainbridge's preferences.

Of course, this sort of analysis is another way of saying that "self-interest" -- defined broadly enough -- can include a whole host of "good for the profession" (or community, or society) values. But that seems to reflect a sociological observation that those most keen on quoting Adam Smith are often those most blind to that sort of "self-interest". If conservatives decline, on grounds of "self-interest", to partake in "selfless" acts of professional courtesy like providing peer reviews, and liberals -- more amenable to doing things for good of the community -- take their place, well, each may reap what they sow, and the corresponding ideological state of "elite" scholarship perhaps shouldn't surprise us.

Anyone Can Be "Not Racist" To Someone (With Bonus Right/Libertarian Intercession!)

After viciously beating an African-American man in an Iowa bar,  Randy Joe Metcalf was convicted of a federal hate crime and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In relevant part, the federal statute says that "[w]hoever . . . willfully causes bodily injury to any person . . . because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person . . . shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, fined in accordance with this title, or both[.]"

The evidence surrounding the "because of" race element of the crime against Metcalf was substantial (and -- fair warning -- quite graphic). During the night of the attack (and into the following day), witnesses heard or saw Metcalf:

• Brag about burning crosses in front of an African-American family's home.
• Tell the bar owner "I hate fucking niggers."
• Show off a tattoo of a swastika to said bar owner and another bar patron while saying "that's what I'm about."
• Call the friends of the African-American man whom he'd later attack "nigger lovers" and "nigger loving cunts."
• Exclaim, in the course of attacking the man, "fucking nigger!" and "die nigger!"
• Tell a friend the following day that "the nigger got what he had coming to him."

What was Metcalf's main factual defense at trial?

That he wasn't racist. And indeed, the man with the swastika tattoo who savagely beat a man while hurtling racial slurs called seven witnesses who were prepared to testify that he was in no way a racist.

Un(?)surprisingly, the jury didn't buy it, and voted to convict. And the Eighth Circuit just affirmed that conviction, so it looks like Metcalf will spending quite some time in prison.

That was all I initially planned to write. But while rereading the case for this post, I came across another interesting tidbit: Metcalf had some powerful right-wing/libertarian allies filing amicus briefs on his behalf. The Cato Institute, the Reason Institute, The Individual Rights Foundation (an arm of the David Horowitz Freedom Center), the Center for Equal Opportunity, and two right-wing appointees to the United States Civil Rights Commission (Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow) all interceded to argue that the relevant provision of the federal hate crimes statute is unconstitutional as in excess of Congress' enforcement power under the 13th Amendment (I've read all the briefs, though it seems only the Cato Institute's is publicly available).

Now to be clear, even repulsive White supremacists have rights, and I don't think it's an endorsement of White supremacy to file an amicus brief in a White supremacist's criminal case. But it is worth tracing the precise argument these groups felt so passionately about that they'd intercede on behalf of a guy like Randy Joe Metcalf. 

Part of their argument is that the 13th Amendment only permits barring so-called "badges and incidents" of slavery (such as being targeted for physical assault on basis on one's race) when it is necessary to prevent the literal reimposition of slavery. Since, amici argue, there is no realistic change of literal slavery reemerging, it is no longer (if it ever was?) necessary for the federal government to ban racially-motivated assaults in order to pursue the constitutional ends of abolishing slavery (if you think they've been emboldened by Shelby County, you're right).

The other half of the argument is that hate crimes prosecutions, in particular, are a dangerous tool to give to the federal government because they're more susceptible to public outrage and thus "double jeopardy" prosecutions. This is a highly revealing argument. The double jeopardy clause doesn't apply when the federal government prosecutes its own criminal law (even after a completed state prosecution covering the same incident). The amici argue that the federal law here exceeds Congress' constitutional authority; but if that's the case the double jeopardy complaint is superfluous -- the law's just unconstitutional in its own right. So what's the point of bringing up double jeopardy?

The point is one of policy, or more accurately, of worldview. The argument is that "hate crimes" are particularly likely to arouse public anger and legal response, and that therefore we're more likely to see zealous prosecution (up to and including using these federal laws to get a "second bite at the apple" in the event an initial state prosecution fails). In doing so, the Cato Institute and its cohort wish to evoke a particular vision of civil rights laws -- wherein they're mainly a tool of oppression and governmental overreach and so must be highly limited and closely watched. They present a world where the government can hardly resist the pleas of minority communities for justice in the case of racist crimes; where the main problem when it comes to race in our society is too much zealousness in protecting outgroups. Who will think of the poor White supremacist, reviled by all and protected by none (except, of course, a President who thinks some among his number are "good people")?

It was difficult to swallow this logic in 2013, when Shelby County was decided. In 2018, it would be laughable save for the fact that it appears to be virtually indestructible. Just as for some people there's no amount of evidence that could establish someone to be racist, for some organizations there's no amount of evidence that could establish racism as an actual, non-trivial problem in American society.

In Conclusion, I Don't Understand Why Jews Keep Voting Democratic

Republican Congressman invites Holocaust denier to the State of the Union.

Holocaust denier (and former head of the American Nazi Party) to be Republican congressional nominee in Chicago.

Republican Sheriff (and Trump pardon recipient) Joe Arpaio gives repeated interviews with antisemitic publication, then gives the same "I didn't know who they were excuse" twice in four years.

Yep, it sure is strange why Jews keep supporting the Democratic Party by crushing margins, year after year.

Zioness Has a "Manifesto"

Zioness -- a campaign for progressive Zionists launched in the wake of the Chicago Dyke March fiasco -- has a "manifesto". This perhaps offers an opportunity for me to share my thoughts on Zioness, which I've been observing since its initial inception and towards which I maintain a wary but not wholly antagonistic posture.

Some people think that Zioness is just a false flag operation -- people who don't actually care about progressivism at all trying to infiltrate and kick-up-dust within progressive communities. There are several bases for this assertion. First, critics point out the links between Zioness' leadership and the Lawfare Project, which tends to take a relatively conservative line on Israel advocacy issues.  Hence, they suggest that Zioness is really just a stalking horse for Lawfare's right-wing agenda. Second, some have claimed that Zioness has taken a confrontational posture towards the progressive groups it marches with that, it is alleged, is designed to provoke and sow division. This, the argument goes, militates against the interpretation that all they really want is inclusion.

These arguments don't quite track for me, however. On the first point, there are, for better or for worse, plenty of Jews with non-progressive (even conservative) views on Israel who genuinely care about and support things like reproductive access, gay rights, economic redistribution, and other pillars of the progressive community. I'd be entirely unsurprised if the leaders of the Lawfare Project fit that profile. Call them inconsistent if you like, but I think there is little evidence to suggest they're lying about the cluster of beliefs they hold. And indeed, at least in the social media feed I've been pleasantly surprised at how Zioness has seemed to genuinely pick up and promote progressive causes in a way that feels organic and heartfelt. Groups or commenters that ignore, say, women's rights six days a week and then parachute in to say "what about women in Saudi Arabia?" whenever someone says a bad word about Israel are a dime a dozen. But Zioness has not actually been doing this -- it has promoted progressive causes in ways and in contexts where there is no clear reason to do it other than that they believe in it.

On the second, there's probably something to the claim that Zioness takes on a defiant tone that can be read as hostile. There's also probably something to the claim that people being open and unapologetic about their Zionism in spaces like this will be automatically read as "confrontational." Both of these interpretations, I think, make sense given the genealogy of Zioness as reaction to the expulsion of several Jewish marchers from the Chicago Dyke March for simply holding a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it -- an act which was taken to be sufficient proof of being an outside agitator who wasn't part of the progressive community. One lesson one can take from CDM is that being subdued in one's Jewishness, and adopting a go-along-get-along stance, isn't going to save you -- in fact, it isn't even going to protect you from accusations of tossing "Zionism" in everyone's face. Another lesson is the need to avoid the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic where Zionists are told not to be open in their Zionism when engaging in progressive causes (because it's distracting and making it "about us") and then, when progressive activists seek to define Zionists out of the camp it's justified (because where were all the Zionists during all these other campaigns?). So it doesn't surprise that the new tactic will be out-and-proud, taking a more aggressive and less conciliatory stance.

To be clear: this sort of confrontational, disruptive presence is very definitively not my preference. It flies in the face of all my own political instincts. But I've written about how certain modalities of organizing and protesting serve as markers for progressive orientation -- the medium very much being part of the message -- and as much as I hate it there might come a point where it's necessary for more mainstream Jewish groups to pivot towards more confrontational methods of political advocacy that "code" as progressive. Put another way, there's something a bit odd about folks from the IfNotNow wing of Jewish political action complaining that another group is behaving in a disruptive and confrontational manner, and doesn't seem interested in quietly and unobtrusively talking things out without making a big stink in public. To the extent Zioness is confrontational in demanding inclusion, that's wholly consistent with, not in opposition to, speaking in progressive shibboleths.

So those are reasons why I don't join the antagonistic camp. Yet I remain wary. And the main reason is that Zioness utterly refuses to even try to think through what progressive commitments mean with respect to Israel.

If we return to the manifesto, for example, it's pretty vague on what Zioness actually wants to achieve in the world. Indeed, it tries to hold that vagueness out as a virtue: "We will not define your progressivism or your Zionism." But the fact of the matter is it gives very little guidance regarding what it means, in practice, to "dismantle institutionalized racism in our government and our society." What does that commit us to? What policies are and aren't compatible with that ambition?

Most tellingly, Zioness doesn't seem willing to grapple with the fact that progressivism requires certain things out of Zionism. One can believe (and I do) that Zionism and progressivism are compatible while observing the should-be-obvious fact that not all iterations or implementations of Zionism are progressive or consistent with progressivism. Being a progressive Zionist imposes certain obligations with respect to Israel as much as anywhere else; a fact that Zioness seems resolutely uninterested in contending with (and here the link to the Lawfare Project really may do some important explanatory work). So while it claims that it wants to mobilize "progressive Zionists," that term doesn't actually encompass any set of "Zionist" beliefs about Israel so long as the holder is also pro-choice. The progressive Zionist community is already existent in organizations like Ameinu, Partners for a Progressive Israel, and J Street (to name a few), and all of these understand that progressive mobilization around Israel can't be agnostic on matters of Israeli policy or even the best understanding of Zionism. If, as I've often argued, caring about Israel means having opinions about it, these groups care a lot about Israel -- but that manifests precisely because they have particular concepts of what they want Israel to be and an active desire for it to live out a progressive credo.

So ultimately, I remain wary. I've already got a progressive Zionist community that I'm comfortable with; it works through the organizations I've just mentioned and they seem to do it better than Zioness is currently capable of. And while I can't fully join the critique of Zioness for behaving in a confrontational, stand-up-and-notice-me sort of way since that mode of social activism is increasingly de rigueur on the left, I don't like it and I don't have any interest in joining it.

Cleveland Indians Phasing Out "Chief Wahoo"

The Cleveland Indians' nakedly racist mascot, "Chief Wahoo", is being phased out of the team uniforms. About time. Frankly, while of course plenty of people have been complaining about the racist caricature that is Chief Wahoo for a long time, I've always been a bit surprised that the Indians largely managed to avoid a Redskins-style boycott over it.

Back to Bitter (Israeli/Palestinian Polling Edition)

I've seen this poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research floating around the internet. Depending on their desired narrative, the pull-story has either been that both Israelis and Palestinians have dipped below majority support for a two-state solution or that Israelis and Palestinians still prefer a two-state solution over any other outcome (interesting side-bar: the one demographic that is overwhelmingly in support of a two-state solution? Israeli Arabs).

My view on polling Israeli and Palestinian attitudes has always been that we have to take the bitter polls with the sweet and the sweet polls with the bitter. By that I mean we shouldn't contort polls so that they fit our narrative agenda, whether that agenda is a positive view of the parties willingness to compromise or a cynical view that says that one side or the other simply "will never accept" this or that red line.

Under that framework, though, I consider this poll to be quite negative -- and, because of a peculiar methodological decision -- far more negative than it lets on, and in fact may be quite terrifying.

Take a look at this image, from the poll memo:



Just looking at that pie chart, you'd think that the pollsters asked respondents to choose among several potential "solutions" to the conflict: two-state, one-state with equal rights, one-state with only rights for one's own ethnic group ("apartheid"), and one-state where the other ethnic group has been removed (expulsion/transfer). And we'd see that a plurality (albeit a sub-majority plurality) picked the two-state solution, with smaller numbers divided across the other options.

But that's not actually what the pollsters did. Here's their explanation:

The findings show a high level of overlap: in other words, a single respondent often supported more than one of the three alternative options. In the following analysis we sought to identify a “core constituency” for each alternative option: i.e., the greatest number of respondents who would support the most desirable response – for the purposes of this analysis, the two-state solution – even if they support other responses, since policymakers can count on their support for two states. We then quantified the greatest number who supported the second-best option, but who would not support the two-state solution, and so on for the third and least desirable options.

To explain how this was done - in the first stage of the analysis, respondents who support a two-state solution are removed from the constituencies that support any of the other alternatives. In a second stage, those who support a one-state solution are removed from the constituencies that support either or both of the remaining two alternatives, apartheid and expulsion. In the final stage, we separate the remaining two groups by removing those who support apartheid from the constituency that supports expulsion. 

What does this mean in practice? Imagine three respondents to the poll. The first, Avi, says he supports a two-state solution and would not endorse any other outcome. The second, Batem, says he prefers a two-state solution over all others, but he would be okay with his ethnic group expelling the other side and ruling the land solo. The third, Chaya, says she prefers a one-state solution where members of the other ethnic group have been expelled, but she would be okay with a two-state solution outcome.

Not only would all three respondents "count" for the 46% two-state solution figure, but neither Batem nor Chaya would count for the one-state-via-expulsion solution, even though Chaya actually prefers that outcome to a two-state solution. In other words, it's not that 46% of Israelis and Palestinians prefer a two-state solution, it's that 46% of Israelis and Palestinians would accept a two-state solution even though some of them would actually prefer an outcome that's considerably more radical.

By the same token, the poll suggests that 17% of Palestinians and 14% of Israelis would back expelling their counterparts and just keeping the entire land for themselves. But that figure only includes those respondents who are only okay with the expulsion solution. It doesn't include people like Batem, who would back that outcome (albeit as a second-best solution) or even people like Chaya, who prefer that outcome (but are willing to accede to others). The percentage of persons who at least are willing to countenance -- or even prefer -- an expulsion scenario is almost assuredly higher than the figures given.

The pollsters justify this methodological move because they want to encompass the maximum number of people who would back the most "moderate" solution (a two-state). That strikes me as a little dodgy, but fair enough. Still, there's no question that -- insofar as it is being used to reflect the current political temperament amongst Israelis and Palestinians -- it massively overstates practical support for a two-state solution and undersells the support for more radical scenarios.

And what's most frustrating is that the pollsters don't even give us (as far as I see) the underlying figures to let us make apples-to-apples comparisons. I can understand why one wants a measurement of all those who'd at least be willing to support a two-state solution (even if they'd also back other outcomes). But then I'd want to compare that figure to how many persons are at least willing support those other outcomes (the possibility that more persons right now are at least willing to back expulsion -- or, more terrifyingly, prefer the expulsion outcome -- than desire a two-state solution or even a one-democratic-state outcome is left entirely on the table given that data that the pollsters made available).

Ultimately, then, the way this poll is being presented is more than a little shady in order to cast a far rosier picture on Israeli and Palestinian attitudes towards the peace process than I think is warranted. If this isn't quite as bad as those JVP maps (because at least they're explaining their methodology, albeit in a way that makes it clear how they're loading the deck), it's close.

West on Sex, Law, and Consent

I just wanted to flag this outstanding essay by Georgetown Law Professor Robin West: "Sex, Law, and Consent" (published in The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice, Franklin Miller & Alan Wertheimer, eds.). It's about a decade old now, but it is incredibly resonant with ongoing debates, and deserves to be recirculated.

The thrust of the piece is a defense of "consent" as a demarcation between criminal and non-criminal sexual acts, coupled with a critique of "consent" as automatically delineating the difference between "good" (non-harmful, valorous, laudatory) and "bad" sex.  West's argument is framed as a critique of certain radical feminist and queer theorists who have attacked the importance of consent -- either because it understates the background coercive conditions and inequalities of power which often render "consent" constructed or empty (RadFem) or because it nullifies the radical transgressive power of sexuality which is hot precisely because it plays upon these inequalities of power (queer theoretics).

West suggests that both of these critiques are ill-advised because they don't take sufficient account of the subjective experience of harm that is distinctive to nonconsensual sex (i.e., rape). There is, West suggests, a difference between agreeing to an exploitative contract and being robbed -- both might be problems, and the former may actually in aggregate contribute more to the broader spectrum of injustice than the latter, but nonetheless the subjective experience of signing a contract under exploitative conditions is not the same as being held up at gunpoint, and people don't experience it as such, and people don't expect the state to respond to them in the same way. The way we stop exploitative contracting isn't by expanding the definition of theft and robbery to encompass it. That they both represent wrongs doesn't mean they should be collapsed into the same category of social injustice.

Yet at the same time, West argues, that sex may be consensual (and therefore, in her view, not properly subjected to criminal sanction) should not exhaust our moral vocabulary when speaking of sex. Sex can be fully consensual and yet still harmful. Sex can be fully consensual and desired and yet still harmful. Ironically, we're more likely to speak of the harms of consensual sex in the case where it is mutually desired, as when we're lecturing a teenager that sure, they might want to have sex, but there's always the risk of an unexpected pregnancy or a disease that can derail a promising career or trap one in a life trajectory one very much does not desire. Yet this all obscures a different but still important case of consensual but undesired sex. Even here, West is appropriately circumspect -- we consent to things we don't desire all the time (West gives the example of consenting to see a movie one does not actually wish to see, because one's partner or children wish to). This isn't necessarily a terrible thing in isolation, but it can be, if it becomes pervasive or occupies the entirety of one's sexual being (if one's entire life of movie-watching is one that is wholly about what others desire, with no regard to what you yourself would like to see, that's a pretty crappy cinematic life irrespective of whether all the choices are "consensual"). In those cases, one is being harmed in a very real way -- internalizing (as West points out, quite literally) the notion that one's body is solely for others pleasure and that one's own desires are immaterial -- even though it's also a very distinctive way from that which comes through nonconsensual sex.

The point, then, is to avoid the Charybdis of calling it all rape, because consent is an effectively meaningless concept (or, on the other side, all sexy transgressive power play because consent is a fictive projection of repressed sexual desire) and the Scylla of saying that none of it matters because it was all consensual. As we move from the unambiguously criminal actions of a Harvey Weinstein to the more complex case of an Aziz Ansari, the failure to make these distinctions becomes more and more of an obstacle to pushing the conversation forward. People read about the Ansari case and say "you want to throw him in jail for that?" or "was it really non-consensual?" But that's a product of a crimped imagination whereby a broad range of moral questions get collapsed into a legal (criminal) question which gets collapsed into a "consensual" question -- and there's much more to be said than that. What happened to Grace, in her telling, may not be something that should result in Ansari being incarcerated, but it also isn't the equivalent of Grace agreeing to see a movie she has no interest in because her partner wants to watch it (let alone the equivalent of an actively desired encounter which, in the aftermath, turns out to have negative consequences).

Anyway, when I started writing this post I meant it to be a single paragraph of consisting of "read West's essay", and I've gone on much longer than that. So I'll just let it rest here -- but you should definitely read her piece.

"Like Giving Zizek To a First-Year" Roundup

Next week is the first substantive meeting of the "Intro to Political Theory" class I'm GSIing. It's mostly made up of first- and second-year students. The professor's initial reading assignment includes excerpts from Zizek and Gramsci. I'm prepared to be absolutely despised.

* * *

An LSU professor fired (against the advice of a faculty committee who reviewed her case) for using profanity in the classroom has lost a First Amendment suit against the university. I can't comment on the legal issues involved, but I can say that I fully agree with the AAUP's decision to censure LSU (in part) over the termination (the ruling does not effect the AAUP censuring decision).

The best piece I've read on liberal opposition to Ken Marcus taking up a civil rights position at the Department of Education. Tl;dr: It's not about BDS, it's about him being a conservative who isn't trusted to enforce the priorities of the civil rights community.

Why do Republicans need 60 votes to pass a budget? Because they used reconciliation to slam through a giant tax cut for the rich. Priorities, priorities.

RIP, Julius Lester.

Jewish convert discovers that her conversion means her old leftist buddies assume she's now all-in for apartheid. Welcome to the club!

A bank executive actually will go to prison for fraud (relating to the collapse of Nebraska bank TierOne).

Not-Bad Takes on Aziz and Grace

You probably missed it -- it didn't exactly get much traction -- but an essay came out the other day where a woman detailed what she termed a "sexual assault" by Aziz Ansari on their first date. It has spawned a legion of takes, many of them terrible. But some of them are pretty good! So in lieu of substantive commentary, I thought I'd just link to the essays I found not-bad (or better!).

KatyKatiKate: "Not That Bad."

Danielle Tcholakian, Nylon: "On Aziz Ansari And Rape Culture’s Generation Gap: Why can’t we hear each other?"

Anna North, Vox: "The Aziz Ansari story is ordinary. That’s why we have to talk about it."

Jill Filipovic, The Guardian: "The poorly reported Aziz Ansari exposé was a missed opportunity."

Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason: "Aziz Ansari and the Limits of 'He Should Know Better.'"

Hyejin Shim, Medium: "Consenting to Normal."

Taking Rural To School: The Carleton/Minnesota Case

MinnPost has an interesting article detailing the various programs and practices Minnesota private schools (including my beloved Carleton College) use to bring more students from rural communities to campus.

One thing I think the article does a good job of emphasizing is that attracting rural students, specifically, means being attentive to particular range of problems, concerns, or obstacles which transcend a simple, naked, "we're open to everyone" outlook. Obviously, scholarships are helpful -- and some schools have scholarship programs specifically open to students from rural backgrounds.

But another issue that is pointed out in the article goes to recruitment: when sending admissions representatives on recruiting trips around the country, it's obviously more efficient to visit densely populated sub/urban areas (particularly in relatively wealthy high-performing school districts) that are likely to yield more applicants. Hence, rural students may be less likely to hear about (say) Carleton or get information as to why they should attend or how it will be financially possible to attend. This is a structural disadvantage students from rural communities might face, and so it is incumbent on college admissions offices to take proactive steps to counteract it. Likewise, rural school districts may lack the range of extracurricular activities or programs that are found in their suburban counterparts, and so figuring out who are the true "stars" coming out of rural districts may require more work than simply an apples-to-apples comparison of applicant profiles. And for some schools (particularly those which are not themselves nestled in rural communities), there might also be some attention to mitigating the effects of culture shock -- the delicate balancing between wanting to expand horizons while also respecting that adjustment to new and different communities is something that requires work and support.

All of this is to say, to the extent a school like Carleton desires geographic diversity -- and it does, and it should -- it will have to take specific steps to make itself available and accessible to that community. Tailored scholarship programs, extra attention to non-traditional recruiting, and holistic appraisals of applications are just some of the ways Carleton might take these steps.

There's one last thing worth remarking on. Frequently, when talking about "affirmative action" programs, we hear a stock refrain about the "rural White kid from a small town in South Dakota -- what about him?"  As this article makes clear, the myth that colleges don't care about diversity when it comes to rural kids is just that -- a myth. But there's a bigger issue here. The implication of this critique is that concern for rural students is something competitive with, and antagonistic to, affirmative action programs which seek to increase enrollment of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. In reality, they're two peas in a pod.

The strategies discussed in this article include scholarships that are just "for" rural kids (I wouldn't have been able to access them), specific efforts to recruit from these communities, and even certain types of "weighting" when assessing their application (why should their two extracurricular activities be more impressive than my seven?). These are no different in form than how racial affirmative action works. In neither case is the strategy simply a facial neutrality where we tally up GPAs and standardized test scores and rank accordingly. It isn't even a simple reduction of the entire program to class -- scholarships for people (regardless of race or location) below a certain income. Rather, both the race and the geography case involve taking specific actions that are tailored to, and sometimes restricted to, the particular underrepresented community.

Yet I think this article will elicit very few complaints about "special privileges", or the need for "location-blindness", or odes to the lost meritocracy of yore. I suspect most people will read this article and think these are salutary efforts to improve educational accessibility for a community that is often-overlooked in higher education.

For the record: it's the latter reaction that's the right one. While I myself come from the suburbs, and thus did not receive any of the scholarship money or specialized recruitment or tailored review of my application, I still consider myself a beneficiary of these programs. Why? Well, most obviously, I'm engaged to a fellow Carl who comes from what the article calls "Greater Minnesota" -- that turned out to be a great benefit for me. And of course, one of the many virtues of a truly great liberal arts education is getting to meet and learn from people who hail from a variety of different backgrounds.

My life and learning is better than it otherwise would have been because I got to meet and become friends with people from rural communities. It's also better than it otherwise would have been because I got to meet and become friends with people from lots of other communities, many of which were quite distant (spatially and otherwise) from where I grew up in the DC suburbs. Carleton's efforts to promote this sort of diversity are part of what makes it strong -- in all cases, not just some.

American Political Commentary, in a Nutshell

Here's Scott Lemieux:

The heuristic the typical voter uses to resign responsibility is to assign it to whoever controls the White House. This is often wrong. But it’s better than the heuristic used by the typical political reporter or pundit, “no matter who controls what, the Democratic Party is fully responsible.” And of course, there’s the particularly dumb lefty variant, “when Republicans I spent a year before the election assuring you were basically harmless pass terrible legislation with zero Democratic votes, that proves the Democrat Party secretly favors it.”

Sounds about right.

What's a One Point Dip Among Friends?

Is it just me, or am I rightfully a bit skeeved out by this Erik Loomis post on "which demographic has Trump best held his support"?

Since his inauguration, Trump’s support in every polled demographic has fallen. That includes groups where he had massive support (his own voters, evangelicals) and where he had very low support (Hillary voters, African-Americans). But there is only one group where his approval has fallen by a mere 1 point. What do you think that is? Christians? The wealthy? The South? Nope, nope, and nope.

It’s Jews.

Of course, Trump had low Jewish support initially. But those Jewish voters who care only about an aggressive, expansionist Israel love Donald Trump. If you were Jewish and a Trump supporter in 2016, you are still a Trump supporter. Which says a remarkable amount about a particular type of politics that makes you a stickier Trump supporter than literally every other demographic group in the nation.

And yet, among all religious groups, Jews still have the lowest overall Trump support, at 30 percent, although Trump now has a lower approval rating among atheists/agnostics, which he did not a year ago.

Loomis is drawing from this NYT article detailing how much Trump's approvals have dropped off across various demographic groups between inauguration day and today. These range from a 12 point drop for Democratic men and a 10 point drop amongst Latinos to a 3 point drop amongst Blacks and a 1 point drop with Jews.

One bit of context that is missing is that Jews were one of the few demographic groups that moved left from 2012 to 2016. Obama got 69% of the Jewish vote in 2012, versus 70% for Clinton in 2016. That's not a huge shift, obviously, but given that the country as a whole lurched right (most groups -- including Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and women -- gave Clinton smaller margins than Obama), it stands out. So one way of interpreting this data is that "NeverTrump" GOP or Independent Jews actually walked the walk in 2016 -- they disapproved of Trump and actually voted against Trump when it counted. Put another way, the Jews most likely to have been "soft" Trump supporters were already were turned off on him by election day, whereas other groups' "soft" supporters only turned against him later.

To be clear, there's nothing in Loomis' post that's inaccurate. We could say that writing a whole post on Jewish support for Trump dipping "only" 1 point seems like a weird thing to focus on given the extremely low baseline of support Trump had with Jews to begin with (although, as Loomis notes, some other groups where Trump also began with very low support rates saw those rates dip by much greater amounts). We could also question how much narrative weight should be put upon the difference between a 1 point drop amongst Jews versus a 3 point drop amongst Blacks (if we're comparing groups that began with low baselines of support). Indeed, since the demographic "voted Trump in 2016" also saw only a modest 3 point dip, maybe the real lesson here is "If you were [a Trump voter in 2016], you are probably still a Trump supporter" -- full stop.

But really, my discomfort stems from what to reads as a weirdly triumphant tone, as if Loomis is eager to have proven something particularly diseased about the Jews -- the one group whose Trump flunkies are sticking to Trump more than any other group in the nation.

Maybe I'm reading into it. But Loomis sure sounds excited to put "Jews" and "Trump diehards" in the same conversation, doesn't he?

Things People Blame the Jews For, Part XLI/Rate That Apology, Part 7: Puerto Rican Power Edition

It's a double-header!

As many of you know, Puerto Rico continues to suffer in the wake of a debilitating hurricane last year, with almost half of the island still lacking electricity. Island residents are justifiably angry at the lackluster federal response to their plight.

So why have repair efforts taken so long? Maybe it's because they're basically a colonized territory lacking full voting rights and so equal status as Americans. Maybe it's good old-fashioned racism (maybe explanations #1 and #2 are not mutually exclusive).

Or maybe, as an op-ed published in Puerto Rico's largest paper posited, it's the revenge of "the Jew":

Monday’s column by Wilda Rodriguez in the newspaper El Nuevo Día, titled “What Does ‘The Jew’ Want From The Colony?”, claimed that “Wall Street types” dictate U.S. policy, and that “Congress will do what ‘the Jew’ wants, as the vulgar prototype of true power is called.” 

“No offense to people of that religion,” she added. 

She went on to claim that Wall Street and “the Jew” are punishing Puerto Rico in order to get the island to pay its $70 billion debts.

I'm glad she added the "no offense" caveat. Who knows how it might have been interpreted otherwise?

Anyway, before I got to this Rodriguez issued an ... well, let's decide whether we'll call it an apology:

“I’m profoundly sorry that some have interpreted one of my pieces as anti-Semitism,” she wrote. “My career as a writer has been clear, and prejudice and racial and religious hostility have never been a part of it. I can understand the strong reaction that some of have had to the mere usage of the word ‘Jew.’ My intention was not to offend, but to provoke a public discussion. With that clear, I ask for forgiveness from those of good faith that were hurt by my political allusion. I have not and never will intend to offend them.”

Call me crazy, but I'm not convinced that the "mere usage of the word 'Jew'" was what set people off here. Had she written the sentence "At the age of 13, a Jew undergoes a Bar or Bat Mitzvah and becomes a full adult member of his or her community," I dare say everybody would be cool. I'd say the objection is 25% to the invocation of "the Jew" as a general archetype, and 75% to the content of that archetype being unbridled financial greed and power.

But hey -- public discussion provoked!

Grade: 2.5/10

The Issue is (Jewish) Power

Andrew Mark Bennett has a searing piece in the Forward detailing Jewish Voice for Peace's antisemitic obsession with Jewish power. One striking aspect of it is that it self-consciously does not focus on BDS. JVP has plenty of other sins that can be hung on its head, and Bennett does a good job detailing many of them.

Let me put it this way: reading this article made me want a cigarette. And I don't smoke. That's how good it felt.

Many People Are The Real Threat To Free Speech, Part 2

Last Fall, I noted that while we basically only hear about "threats to free speech" on campus when the alleged perpetrators are liberal, attempts to shut down distasteful speech are quite bipartisan in flavor. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Aaron Hanlon collects some right wing instances of speech suppression on campus -- including the striking statistic (drawn from FIRE) that, while campus liberals are more likely to try to disrupt or shutdown speakers, conservatives are more likely to succeed in doing so. This doesn't really surprise me -- on the one hand, there are more liberals than conservatives on campus, and on the other hand, if there's one thing conservatives are really good at, it's working the refs.

Again, the moral of this story isn't to simply flip things on their heads -- conservatives are the only threat to free speech, and liberals are as pure as driven snow. The right lesson is, to reiterate, that threats to free speech come from all sides of the political spectrum, and that genuine commitment to the principles of free expression -- as opposed to opportunistically crying "free speech!" only to swiftly abandon it once it ceases to be politically convenient -- is actually a rare beast.

Lacking God's Time

Jelani Cobb has a great profile of Wayne A. I. Frederick, the President of Howard University, and the difficult dynamic even elite HBCUs face as they seek to navigate Trump-dominated political waters.

Cobb does a great job giving historical context to an ongoing dilemma HBCU leaders often face between directly challenging White supremacist power structures in America versus accommodating White leaders who control desperately-needed resources and access. It grates -- obviously it grates -- for students on these campuses to see their President, say, appear in a photo-op with President Trump, or to watch as Betsy DeVos uses their campus as a backdrop to prattle on about "school choice", or (in a particularly extreme example) to hear that Lee "Willie Horton" Atwater may join the university's  board. Such moves are, to say the least, way out of step with the prevailing sentiment of the campus community.

On the other hand, "Pragmatic" leaders often consider the putative conciliation to be its own form of power. What could be more revolutionary than extracting money and support from inside the belly of the beast?  Yes, it might be ideal to not have to make such compromises. But, Cobb quotes Frederick as saying: "People think we’re doing God’s work, on God’s time, with God’s money. The problem is, we don’t have access to the latter two."

The paradox of being an HBCU leadership position is that "pragmatists are in the business of producing new generations of fierce idealists." It's a difficult issue, without clear answers. But Cobb's piece is well worth a read to begin unpacking it, at the very least.