Going Local: My Op/ed on Vaccine Mandates and the Portland Police

Since I'm now an official Portland resident, I decided to write an op/ed for my local paper, The Oregonian: "Portland Police Should Not Be Exempt from Vaccine Mandates."

As some of you know, the city of Portland attempted to impose a vaccine mandate on the Portland Police Bureau, but backed off after union officials threatened a wave of vaccinations. In general, Oregon police have been viciously opposed to vaccine mandates in the state. 

My op/ed's argument is simple. Put aside (though we shouldn't) the fact that COVID has been the most lethal killer of police officers over the last year. The same justifications which support a vaccine mandate for teachers or health workers support a mandate for police officers as well. 

Even if we accept that some government employees need not be covered by vaccine rules, the police are the last agency that should be able to claim an exemption. The police are a public-facing agency that interacts with some of the most vulnerable Portlanders in unpredictable settings on a daily basis. Unlike, say, the Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicles agency, which can enforce a mask mandate or shunt unvaccinated customers into online services, the Portland police largely cannot control when and in what contexts they interact with members of the public. They can’t decline to investigate a crime until they’re certain the criminal is wearing a mask. They can’t refuse to interview a witness until they confirm she’s not immune-suppressed.

Moreover, we can't overlook the thuggish nature of the way in which the Police Bureau responded to the prospect of a vaccine mandate. Threats of mass resignation are characteristic of police departments which simply do not accept the fact that they are under civilian control and subject to civilian oversight. The claimed entitlement to flout local authorities is flatly toxic to principles of rule of law and democratic governance.

In terms of feedback I've gotten, it's about what you'd expect. Some praise, some "why do you hate cops" (I want fewer cops to die on the job from a deadly disease, what's your view on that?), some accusations of being a "bootlicker" for BigPharma because I'm not promoting Merck-manufactured ivermectin. 

The most substantive response has been to note a provision in Oregon code which only allows vaccine mandates for certain public officials if pursuant to a state or federal order. The Portland mandate was initially justified under a state vaccine mandate issued for healthcare workers; the nominal cause of the city's retreat was clarifying guidance from the state saying the mandate "probably" didn't capture police officers. A few readers too-cutely suggested that the reason Portland police were in an uproar had nothing to do with resisting a vaccine mandate per se, but was solely because Portland was jumping ahead of the order of operations specified in state code.

This strikes me as, shall we say, implausible. Nonetheless, in my piece, I said if that provision was the only holdup, then the obvious solution is for Gov. Brown to clarify that police officers are included (or issue a separate rule to that effect). If the backlash has nothing to do with a claimed entitlement to resist lawful regulation, then the Police Bureau and Portland officers should have no problem with the Governor's office issuing such a rule. Indeed, they should welcome it since -- to reiterate -- COVID is the single deadliest threat police officers face today.

Of course, we're not naive and so we know the precise scope of Gov. Brown's orders as authorizing sources for Portland's vaccine mandate is not driving the action. Portland police don't like being told what to do -- that's the prime motivator here. But as public servants, they need to get used to it. Whether it stems initially from the city or the state, vaccine mandates for police is the right public policy, and law enforcement shouldn't be able to bully its way to an exemption.

The End of "Shared" "Sacrifice"

My 9/11 story is not particularly special. I was in high school when the news reached us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Initially, I thought that meant some small hobbyist plane had missed an approach and smacked into the side of the building. The reality -- a full passenger jet (soon to be two) deliberately ramming the building and bringing it down -- didn't cross my mind until TVs went on and rumor became visual. Even though I lived outside DC, and so we definitely knew folks who worked at the Pentagon, I don't know of anyone who knew anyone directly who died or was hurt in the attack. We could see the smoke from across the Potomac river though.

In the days that followed, America was famously united. President Bush's approval rating -- in the doldrums due to the bitterly controversial way he became president in the first place -- skyrocketed. Everybody came together. Democrats basically stopped being an opposition party. Some of that was good. Not all of it. There is a difference between refraining from taking easy political potshots at tough but necessary sacrifices, or not exploiting understandable collective depression and angst for political gain, versus wholesale refusal to debate serious and sometimes dangerous steps taken under the guise of "national security". Nonetheless, it was undeniably inspiring to witness how, in the face of crisis, we'd at least try to unite as a nation and we'd dig in our heels and sacrifice to get us through the dark period.

I have heard some folks ask, hypothetically, what would have happened if, at the outset of COVID, Donald Trump had come out aggressively for masks and vaccines and lockdowns -- demanding a shared sacrifice and seriousness of act and purpose that befits the crisis of a global pandemic. The insinuation is that the polarities would flip -- in our hyperpartisan age, we'd see the GOP proudly endorse and embrace all of the things they now liken to tyrannical Nazism, while Democrats would be found angrily denouncing masks and spreading conspiracies about vaccines.

The first part may be true. The second isn't. We might have seen a small uptick in woo-woo Malibu sorts refusing to get vaccinated because it contains "chemicals" or something. But the experience of 9/11 suggests that the overall liberal response would have been to embrace the seriousness of the moment. Democrats wouldn't oppose vaccines just because Trump was promoting them; they wouldn't foster chaos just to stick it to the "other side". As much as lockdowns suck, they wouldn't have riled up public frustration at a necessary health measure and thrown it in Donald Trump's face.

Over two hundred times as many Americans have died from COVID as died on 9/11. If you count "excess deaths" (which includes people who didn't have COVID but whose deaths nonetheless can be attributed to it -- e.g., because a swamped health care system couldn't give them the care they needed), we're probably around a million deaths -- about a 9/11 a day, from the time pandemic started in earnest.

The degree to which "shared sacrifice" permeated the national mythos after 9/11 makes it all the more despicable how resistant so many Americans have been to anything that even approximates a "sacrifice" in response to the pandemic. I put "sacrifice" in quotes because some of the things GOP pols are literally comparing to the Gestapo are almost comical in their triviality. Wear an extra square foot of fabric on your body. Get a safe vaccine for free. I'm not saying nothing about the pandemic is difficult (parents with younger school-aged children, in particular, have taken a beating we should all acknowledge). But so much of the "sacrifice" we've asked for is so minimal, and yet people refuse to do it.

There is no "shared" sacrifice in America. There is half the country which is willing to do what's needed to get us through a crisis, and another half whose only concern is of themselves. The "unity" after 9/11 was a mirage -- it was the former group agreeing to be united in a crisis with the latter group doing what it wanted to do anyway. When the roles reversed, and the first group asked the second to actual sacrifice just a smidgeon to keep America safe, they refused to do it, and threw perhaps the largest and longest temper tantrum this nation has seen in my lifetime.

It was always despicable. In the shadow of 9/11, it's even more so.

How California's Jewish Community Sealed Its Win in the Battle Over the State's Ethnic Studies Program

The California legislature has passed AB 101, a law mandating ethnic studies instruction for all high school graduates starting in 2030. The bill was passed with the strong support of California's Jewish legislative caucus as well as Jewish community leaders throughout the state. This marks a decisive moment in the years-long battle over Ethnic Studies, where Jewish activists successfully rallied to reject an early, antisemitic draft curriculum and instead worked tirelessly to create pathbreaking course plans and curricular resources that ensure antisemitism and Jewish experience takes pride of place in state schools.

Unsurprisingly, the die-hard opponents of the bill -- those who insist that Ethnic Studies must always and ever be antisemitic -- are, well, dying hard. AMCHA, one of the leading groups on the Jewish right trying to muster opposition to Ethnic Studies, lamented in a press release that the law "Open[s] the Door to Antisemitic Curricula". While admitting that the new law actively disavows the antisemitic first draft and urges local school boards not to use it, AMCHA says the bill "does not, and cannot, prohibit a school district from using the antisemitic first draft of the model curriculum" (or other potential antisemitic alternatives).

AMCHA may not even be correct about this: the statement from the California Jewish Legislative Caucus contends that its amendments to the bill "expressly prohibit the use of curriculum that was rejected because of concerns about anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias". And at the very least, the law puts up several hurdles in front of any school board that wishes to adopt out from the state-recommended curriculum -- both in the form of heightened public meeting and deliberation requirements for opt-out districts as well as demonstrate that its proposed alternative does not "reflect or promote, directly or indirectly, any bias, bigotry, or discrimination". To the extent there are potential antisemitic Ethnic Studies courses still under consideration, these provisions -- and the last one in particular -- seem to provide, if not an insurmountable hurdle, then the highest hurdle the California legislature can reasonably impose.

But even taken on its own terms, we should reflect on just how weak AMCHA's objection actually is. Their headline is that the law "opens the door to antisemitic curricula". But that isn't true -- if, as AMCHA puts it in the body of its statement, the problem is that the law doesn't prohibit a district from adopting antisemitic curricula, then there is the inconvenient problem that California school districts already weren't prohibited from adopting such a curriculum. The law doesn't open any doors; at worst, it doesn't fully slam one shut.

Framed that way, though, the opposition to AB 101 becomes even harder to swallow. The choice is between a world where districts are free to adopt antisemitic curricula with minimal restriction, and one where their freedom to do so is at worst highly circumscribed by specific state disapproval, heightened regulatory restrictions, and the placement of the very-much-not antisemitic model Ethnic Studies curriculum as the default offering. Those concerned about antisemitism in California schools obviously should pick door #2, and so it isn't surprising that AMCHA has been very lonely in its crusade against the law.

And as we mark this moment, I want to reflect on how it might demarcate a sea change in how the Jewish community relates to these "identity politics" brouhahas which have sapped so much of our collective energy over the past few years. After a period where it seemed as if reactionary forces could simply mutter "intersectionality" in a foreboding tone and get the entire Jewish press to snap to attention, it was striking to see just how thin the opposition to California's reformed curriculum was. The infamous Tablet article which resorted to outright fabrications (in addition to smearing a one-of-a-kind curricular unit devoted to Mizrahi Jewish history as "crude" and divisive) to make its case was one example. AMCHA's press release blaming  AB 101 for a problem that would be worse in its absence is another. Far from driving the conversation, the efforts to tar any and all Ethnic Studies offerings in California as irretrievably racist or antisemitic had surprisingly little influence on Jewish communal discourse.

One can tell these critics are a bit disoriented. They expected that they would be at the vanguard of a righteous Jewish battle against the evils of Ethnic Studies. Instead, they found themselves mostly alone and entreating against the overwhelming Jewish communal consensus that was positively oriented towards the idea of Ethnic Studies and committed to constructively working through and fixing any flaws. Faced with the possibility that Ethnic Studies was not, contrary to the unfalsifiable hypothesis, immune to reform or alteration to accommodate Jewish voices, the critics were left befuddled and disorganized.

To some extent, I think this might be the story of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values as well. At first, I thought it was an example of prominent mainstream Jews engaging in another round of ridiculous and destructive hyperbole directed at caricatured versions of anti-racist scholarship. And I still think that, but now I want to attach a rider to "mainstream". Increasingly, I think JILV came into being because its progenitors think the "anti-woke" movement is losing ground in mainstream Jewish circles. They can't trust the big name organizations and federations to fight these fights anymore, so they need to go independent. JILV is not a vanguard, it is a rear-guard -- a group of bitter dead-enders who can sense that the tides in Jewish communal life are changing and that the organizational consensus is moving away from reflexive (and often ill-informed) condemnation and towards collaboration and mutually-affirming constructiveness.

As a marker of the change, there are worse symbols than the passage of AB 101 -- a diverse group of Jewish organizations and politicians who put in the work and can take pride in its fruit, standing over largely routed and vanquished opponents who did not notice the sands shifting under their feet.

Mottes, Baileys, Strawmen, and Cherry Groves

If you're aware of all internet traditions, you've undoubtedly heard of by now the idea of the "motte and bailey" style of argument. Basically, a "motte and bailey" occurs when one asserts a bold and controversial claim (the bailey), then, when criticized, recharacterizes one's position as something simple and uncontroversial (the motte). The idea is your true position is the (extreme, perhaps implausible) bailey, but if it ever comes under attack you retreat back to the (reasonable, common-sensical) motte. Then, once the attacking critics are gone, you go back to building up and promoting the bailey.

Here's a good example of the motte-and-bailey play. A few days ago, the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values released a white paper claiming that "critical social justice" and "critical race theory" promote, as a "reliable consequence" of their ideologies, antisemitism. Specifically rejecting as inadequate an approach that "tr[ies] to address specific acts of antisemitism from within the CSJ framework," the paper says flatly that "it is impossible to contain the antisemitism emerging from CSJ without rejecting the imposition of CSJ."  That's the bailey. 

Then, under fire for not actually establishing that CRT or CSJ are in fact, promoters of antisemitism in any consistent fashion, JILV head David Bernstein retreats back to the motte. 

He's fine with CRT, sometimes he even is a CRT-guy himself! When he says "it should be clear to anyone paying attention that Critical Social Justice ideology [including critical race theory] is fueling antisemitism," all he really has a problem with is "standpoint epistemology", defined as the view that "everyone else should defer to whatever ideological claims members of a minority group attach to their definition of racism." The problem isn't with "CRT", just how "some" people have "weaponized" the term in popular discourse.

I’m not arguing that CRT is inherently problematic. I use the the “crit” theoretical lens all the time. It’s really the package of standpoint epistemology that becomes so problematic https://t.co/TLKakPvJ54

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) September 4, 2021

I thought you were quoting me from a different article and in a different context. But please understand I stand by that statement. I don’t suggest it represents CRT theorist but rather the applied popular discourse.

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) September 4, 2021

This is where the discussion belongs: Looking at various factors and trying to make sense of them. I think that’s actively discouraged in current discourse. This is not a criticism of Derrick Bell. It’s a criticism of how these concepts are being weaponized by some.

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) September 4, 2021

That's a classic motte and bailey move. A sweeping claim that CRT/CSJ are dangerous ideologies fueling antisemitism and cannot be reformed from the inside retreats back to the anodyne and uncontroversial "I have no problem with critical race theory -- I like critical race theory -- I just don't think we have to agree with every view asserted by a member of a minority group, as 'some' people say I have to." Are these CRT-but-not-representative-of-CRT views -- asserted to be experiencing "rapid proliferation", "gaining ground and influencing public discourse" -- held by a non-negligible number of people? Listen, "It only took one guy to shoot up a Pittsburgh Shul."

This got me thinking: how often is one man's bailey another man's strawman?

I got on this subject upon being accused myself of engaging in a motte-and-bailey when I denied that the CRT movement, as a whole, promotes the sort of extreme versions of "standpoint epistemology" or what have you that Bernstein is furiously attributing to him. For my part, I claimed that the reason I wasn't defending the position that "everyone else should defer to whatever ideological claims members of a minority group attach to their definition of racism" is that attributing that position to crits is a strawman, and chopping those scarecrows down to size is not actually the same thing as successfully conquering a fort.

Folks will burn an army of strawmen to the ground and then give themselves a medal of honor for having successfully stormed the "bailey". https://t.co/rREs11YozQ

— David Schraub (@schraubd) September 4, 2021

By not defending what I take to be extreme and implausible descriptions of what crits actually believe, I was said to have retreated to the motte from the bailey. My counter is that the crits never occupied the bailey in the first place -- the entire allegation is a strawman.

The related problem of the strawman is the problem of cherry-picking. In any academic discipline (or any pattern of public discourse), there will be some number of people who say and believe truly idiotic things (and a somewhat larger number who say things that sound truly idiotic if stripped from context and set to eerie, dramatic music). So the committed advocate can find, with little trouble, examples of some people actually asserting (or appearing to assert) the terrible, implausible position that is alleged to be a strawman. 

Finding these examples doesn't actually demonstrate that the argument is widespread, or influential, or representative. For the honest interlocutor, the ability to cherry-pick these cases is not a substitute for actual, critical engagement with texts and evidence. There's a very large difference between the inferences we can legitimately draw from some rando assistant professor of media studies at Northwest Kansas Tech having a hot take versus, say, explicitly censorial legislation being passed in multiple states and becoming the centerpiece of a major political party's advocacy. But plenty of advocates are happy to graze from the cherry groves that will undoubtedly abut any argumentative fort -- picking the low-hanging fruit and patting themselves on the back for having successfully conquered the territory.

The terrain of bad argument, in other words, has more than just the motte and the bailey. It has strawmen -- built by the attackers but asserted with earnest fervor to be the actual bailey. And it has cherry groves -- the low-hanging fruit that can be plucked at to pretend a fringe, marginal view is actually an influential and representative one. When attacks on the strawmen and the cherry groves go undefended, the "victor" will claim their targets are engaging in a motte and bailey. But they're not -- they're watching as their interlocutor "attacks" a largely invented and uninteresting foe.

ADL Officially Apologies for Opposing Park51 Mosque

In 2010, the ADL released a statement supporting efforts to ban construction of a mosque and Islamic community center in south Manhattan, claiming it was allegedly insensitive to the victims of 9/11. It was a grotesque incident of ADL-approved religious discrimination, and has been a stain on the organization's legacy ever since.

Today, ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt has officially apologized for his organization's stance: "we were wrong, plain and simple."

This was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do one day after the ADL's discriminatory foray into the controversy, but it's never too late to do the right thing. Indeed, it perhaps would have been easy to simply try and forget this ever happened -- let it recede into the background, a bit of embarrassing old news under the ancien régime, but never bring it up again. Yet the ADL decided -- mostly, it seems, of its own accord -- to raise it again (and open themselves up to a wave of "too lates" and "whatabouts..." and this that and the other) by way of apology. That's worthwhile, and worthy of praise.

So -- well done, ADL.

Two notes though:

1) Acknowledging one's wrong and apologizing for it is an important part of teshuvah. Another part, at least if not more essential, is reflecting on what led you astray in the first place so that you don't do it again. I hope the ADL, in recognizing that it was "wrong, plain and simple," is thinking internally about what made it go wrong, and reflecting on what it needs to alter about it self to ensure that it never again indulges naked bigotry again.

2) How many other civil rights organizations can you think of that have released a statement like this, on any topic, admitting any mistake? Surely, the ADL is not the only one that has made errors deserving repentance. But I struggle to think of another prominent organization actually taking ownership of its wrong (at least, a wrong committed with recent memory). It is a dangerous fact about contemporary discourse that we often treat those who apologize for their wrongs worse than those who brashly ignore them and carry forward. This is something we should not do, and before anyone crows about the ADL being so terrible it had to apologize, think about what it says about all the other organizations out there, who have had their own indulgences into racism or antisemitism or misogyny or Islamophobia, who maintain a studious silence -- hoping everyone forgets, hoping it recedes from memory as "old news".

I Read the JILV's Anti-"Critical Social Justice" White Paper So You Don't Have To

The so-called "Jewish Institute for Liberal Values" has released a white paper on the subject of "Critical Social Justice" and how it relates to antisemitism. Several folks I know have been interested in its contents, though none of us wanted to volunteer our email address to JILV and access the paper. Somehow, I drew the short straw on this and got a copy myself.

I believe in leading with a strong thesis statement, so I won't hide the ball. It's bad. It's really bad. It is haphazardly sourced, scarcely engages with any significant thinker who might characterize themselves as engaging in "critical social justice", fails utterly to explain how its examples are manifestations of or even link back to "critical social justice," and indeed, does not give even the slightest indication of what "critical social justice" is. It is a paper that very nearly defies critique because it doesn't actually say anything -- a series of anecdotes purportly united by an undefined theme. It is a sterling example of why I wanted to circulate a letter on the essential need for open, rigorous, and generous inquiry. This white paper is close-minded, analytically slipshod, and crabby in spirit. It is a sign of a deep and frankly dangerous rot in portions of the Jewish community, which have simply lost the ability to think critically on these subjects -- and it is putting the fight against antisemitism at risk.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about the white paper's structure is the way it does "citations". I put the word in quotes because, while the article does have footnotes and hyperlinks, as often as not the linked source has tangential if any relationship to the claim it purports to support. For example, in the introduction the authors tell us that "While there are differing perspectives within CSJ, the more radical and anti-Jewish ideas are not being held in check and there is evidence that the more extreme versions are gaining ground and influencing public discourse." This is an important claim -- both that the allegedly "radical and anti-Jewish ideas" are ascendant within the broader CSJ movement and that these ideas are penetrating the real world. But the hyperlink goes to ... a list of state rules purporting to regulate or ban Critical Race Theory. That has absolutely nothing to do with the claim asserted -- if anything, it shows how the preeminent threat to liberal inquiry in American public life right now is the anti-CRT movement JILV proudly counts itself a part of.

Other citations are similarly thin, irrelevant, or simply wrongheaded. Claiming that CSJ has a "binary nature ... which holds that those who are presumed to be powerful are the cause of suffering of those who are presumed to be powerless," the white paper links to an article by Daniel Ian Rubin, presumably chosen because it has the word "binary" in the title. But Rubin's "binary" isn't one where everyone either simply is powerful/powerless, oppressed/oppressor. The "black/white binary" he speaks of is one where issues of racism are thought of only by reference to African-Americans and White people -- a binary which overlooks groups which clearly stand outside that binary (e.g., Native Americans) or ones who are situated uneasily within it (e.g., Latinos or, for that matter, Jews). Critiquing this binary has been a common theme in many "crit" projects, leading to the emergence of LatCrit, AsianCrit, and others. Rubin himself has called for the development of what he calls "HebCrit" to incorporate the Jewish case. So, on top of the fact that their source has nothing to do with the argument asserted, their citation of someone allegedly pointing out the crits' implacably antisemitic character is a Jewish crit himself!

It doesn't get better. The hyperlink supporting the claim that CSJ's allegedly anti-Enlightenment character "serves to stifle debate, and curtail academic freedom" goes to a catalog entry for a 363-page book on antisemitism comprising over 30 essays on subjects ranging from "Antisemitism and Anti-Capitalism in the Current Economic Crisis" to "A Brief History of Iberian Antisemitism", with no indication of where one might find support for the position stated (a particular problem since none of the essays in the volume appear primarily directed at issues of academic freedom). An example of a "critically informed social work curriculum" points to grainy cell phone images of an unidentified slideshow, making the incontestably accurate point that Jews in the mid-20th century benefited from being able to access various federal programs that other minorities were excluded from. There is virtually no engagement with primary source texts by persons promoting "critical social justice". One could go on.

But the biggest problem with the white paper is that it lacks a clear articulation of what critical social justice even is, making it impossible to tell whether its various anecdotes are in any way related to the concept. Incredibly, nowhere does the white paper actually purport to give a definition of its key term. 

What we get instead is a solitary link to an essay by Helen Pluckrose -- best known for her collaboration with James Lindsay on the "new Sokal hoax", though she's begun to distance herself from Lindsay as the latter has become increasingly open in his antisemitic and White supremacist orientation -- which purports to begin by explaining "What do we Mean by Critical Social Justice". Unfortunately, Pluckrose's essay actually doesn't give a clear account of what "Critical Social Justice" means either. The closest we get a to a concise definition is the following passage:

CSJ holds that knowledge is not objective but is culturally constructed to maintain oppressive power systems. This is believed to be achieved primarily by certain kinds of knowledge being legitimised by powerful forces in society, then being accepted by everyone and perpetuated by ways of talking about things – discourses.

While the manner in which Pluckrose differentiates this outlook from "liberalism" is tendentious at best (it boils down to "liberalism accepts anything that could be considered a reasonable CSJ insight, plus autonomy"), this is specific enough so we can at least track how the JILV's examples do or do not qualify as manifestations of CSJ (that is, flow from the notion that power systems are preserved via the legitimation of certain types of "knowledge" which are broadly accepted and built into the basic way we talk about things).

And applying that definition to JILV's examples, there is virtually no connection between the two whatsoever. The white paper gives seven examples of how CSJ allegedly fuels antisemitism. Start with the first: "the canard of Jewish privilege". Put aside the fact that their illustration of this practice -- the infamous flyers stating "ending White privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege" -- almost certainly emanated from the far-right, and was roundly repudiated by the very left-wing actors the white paper seeks to blame. The bigger question is: what on earth does this have to do with a belief that powerful actors successfully legitimate certain types of "knowledge" in order to prop up oppressive power systems, which is what Pluckrose says CSJ is? There's no attempt to posit a link here.

Go down the list, and the problem repeats. "Erasure of Jewish identity"? "Intersectionality and Antisemitism"? "Marginalizing Jews in Politics"? None of these clearly derive from, or even are claimed to derive from, a belief that power systems are preserved via the elevation and mainstreaming of certain forms of knowledge which become woven into the basic way we think about the world. At root, the JILV paper is most reminiscent of a conspiracy theory -- where others pin all the world's evils on "the Jews" or "the immigrants" or "the communists", for the JILV, anything bad it sees in the world, it attributes to "the crits." It is the explanation of first, middle, and last resort. There isn't need to actually establish that "critical social justice" is responsible for any of the ailments they bring up, because it's viewed as self-evident -- of course it's the Jews' the immigrants' the reds' the crits' fault.

This speaks to a broader decay in the critical thinking abilities (and here I very much mean "critical thinking" in what Pluckrose would describe as its salutary, liberal form -- "looking for flaws of reasoning or unevidenced claims or unwarranted assumptions being made due to an ideologically biased interpretation of a situation") of certain segments of the Jewish community when the topic is "critical social justice", "intersectionality", "critical race theory", or any of the related bugaboos. While I know of no direct study measuring whether "critical social justice" ideologies generate antisemitism, the evidence we do have vis-a-vis the college campus environment strongly militates against the hypothesis. If there was such an effect, we'd expect college majors in areas more likely to have significant "CSJ" material to exhibit more antisemitism than majors which do not. Or alternatively, if our view is that CSJ ideology has completely suffused the collegiate experience, then we'd expect a growth in antisemitic attitudes from when students enter college to when they leave. As per Shenhav-Goldberg & Kopstein's outstanding 2020 paper, neither of these is the case. It is hard to square the theory that CSJ creates antisemites with the reality that heightened exposure to CSJ -- in precisely the forums where critics claim CSJ's power is at its apex -- doesn't seem to have any effect on antisemitism.

Nonetheless, has become an article of faith that CSJ and its cousins simply must contribute to antisemitism. Anyone who denies it is willfully blind, or beholden to ideological blinkers, and is in any event has placed themselves in opposition to "the fight against antisemitism" (because, again, it is simply a truism for this crowd that "the fight against antisemitism" is the fight against "critical social justice"). It is dogma -- the hypothesis cannot be falsified.

This is catastrophically dangerous to the fight against antisemitism. If you care about antisemitism, it is tremendously important to understand accurately what causes antisemitism -- not what you assume causes it, not what it would be politically convenient to believe causes it, but what actually causes it. If we devote huge chunks of our communal energy toward fighting "critical social justice", and it turns out "critical social justice" has little to do with rising antisemitism, then we've just wasted a ton of time and effort! To be sure, if what one actually cares about is not fighting antisemitism but fighting critical social justice, then it's not a waste at all -- it's mission accomplished. But then it's that campaign that's your actual mission. And the decision to continue to prioritize it as mission #1 necessarily means the fight against antisemitism goes on the backburner.

One final irony has to be mentioned. The JILV white paper is, as I've said, mostly reminiscent of a conspiracy. It sees "crits" behind every rock, branch, and tree, with little to no effort to explain why the parade of horribles it identifies is connected to the "critical social justice" theory it deplores. However, to the extent the JILV white paper has any cohesive methodology behind it at all that isn't just a conspiracy theory, that methodology is ... critical social justice.

Now, let's be clear: by and large, the JILV paper is nothing more than the latest instantiation of a longstanding trend, where reactionaries define the lefty term of the day ("intersectionality", "critical race theory", now "critical social justice") as "anything bad from a vaguely left-of-center orientation that has some sort of identity politics kick to it." There's really nothing more that ties it all together than that.

But if we were to try to do so, the JILV claim can be reconstructed as something like the following: there is a widespread ideology, which has become dominant if not taken-for-granted in many segments of our society, whose precepts are largely insulated from interrogation but act to exclude, marginalize, or otherwise injure Jews. So, for example, the idea of "Jewish Whiteness" is asserted to be simply taken as a given in many circles, and in doing so that idea naturalizes a bunch of presumptions about Jewish power and privilege and control that are both untrue and prejudicial. And precisely because these views are so embedded into the conventional wisdom, they're largely immune from challenge -- trying to critique them renders one a complaining gadfly at best, a pariah figure at worst. So we can see how this set of assumptions in how we talk about the world (about Jews, Whiteness, power, whatever) acts to significantly curtail Jewish equality and discourage Jewish political participation even without any official actor ever issuing some sort of formal decree effectuating a de jure antisemitic exclusion.

Which fits, to a T, what Pluckrose says critical social justice is.

Most of the JILV's complaints fit this model. They are alleging that some way of speaking about Jews (as privileged, as White, as powerful) has become so effectively hegemonic that it squeezes out Jewish counter-narratives and so perpetuates antisemitic oppression. Or, put differently, "certain kinds of knowledge about Jews (or power, or Whiteness), is legitimised by powerful forces in society, then accepted by everyone and further perpetuated by ways of talking about things," which acts to maintain an "oppressive antisemitic power system." 

Overwhelmingly, Jewish "critics" of critical race theory, or critical social justice, or what have you, actually seem to want "critical race theory, but for Jews". That's not a bad thing to want, if the people who wanted it weren't so infuriatingly blind to what their methodology actually is. They are pointing to a mechanisms of antisemitic marginalization that do not make sense under a classical liberal vantage.

 Nobody is legally forbidding Jews from advocating for their peoplehood or contesting their Whiteness or anything of the sort -- that sort of legal censorship right now is very much the domain of anti-CRT forces. The claim is that a way of speaking about Jews functionally silences Jews in public deliberation -- we're "marginalized", "ostracized", "ignored", accused of "oversensitivity" or "bad faith" (the liberal would call all of this "losing in the marketplace of ideas"). And the claim that the remedy (or a goodly part of it, anyway), is committing to take Jewish testimony seriously on the subject of antisemitism -- to credit what we say about ourselves over what others are saying about us -- likewise owes far more to "critical social justice" than it does to classical liberal models (Pluckrose indicts what she labels "positionality", the view that knowledge is "tied to identity and one’s perceived position in society in relation to power").

Sometimes I think these claims about Jewish marginalization and its proper remedy are off target, sometimes I think they're pointing to very real concerns -- but let's be clear about what they are. They are not complaints that can be made sense of within a classical liberal frame. They are a Jewish iteration of "critical social justice". And if one thinks that any of these claims have legs -- and I do -- then there is no way to resolve them except by developing a robust, vibrant, and rigorous CRT-style language that can account for the Jewish case. The JILV white paper doesn't understand that -- but then, it doesn't understand a lot of things.

A Tale of (the Private Schools of) Two Cities

Within a day of one another, the New York Times and the City Journal released articles on anti-racism curricula in the private schools of two cities, New York and DC (respectively).

It really is amazing to behold the difference. The Times has some genuine indicators of just bizarre behavior in the schools it profiles (e.g., refusing to allow Glenn Loury to speak because his views might "confuse and/or enflame students"). The City Journal, by contrast, mostly captures very normal things it seeks to put under grainy, menacing lighting (High schools are assigning Ibram X. Kendi's books! Administrators are attending DEI training sessions!).

I'm not really sure what explains the difference. It might be just the baseline chasm in quality one would expect from the NYT versus the City Journal (notably, the Times' article is by an actual journalist, while the City Journal's piece is written by an activist with the right-wing National Association of Scholars). Or it might be a difference in the private school cultures that exist in New York versus DC.

My baseline bias, having grown up in outside DC, is a pre-existing disdain for the local private school ecosystem there. Even as a kid, my view was that if you lived in Montgomery County -- which had a superb public school system -- I struggled to think of a reason to attend private schools that wasn't just pure snobbish status-flexing. But if the City Journal (despite its best efforts) is to be believed, schools like Sidwell and Georgetown Day are actually doing a decent job. Nothing will ever be perfect, but I cannot be horrified that students are recommended Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.* Of course, it's also the case that the private schools aren't doing anything that the public schools can't. That's not a bad thing -- one would hope that solid anti-racist education is scalable to all sorts of schools -- unless you're using it as a selling point for why Maddie and Connor simply must go to private school, $50,000 price tag be damned!

Which brings us to New York. I have never lived in New York, and my exposure to New York private schools comes primarily through, well, sensationalist stories in the New York Times. It's hard to know from afar whether these stories are out-of-context snipes at the foibles of the elites versus whether the culture at these schools truly is just nuts. I can imagine the former, but to the extent it is the latter, I can imagine the problem being the extension into "anti-racist education" of the pathologies of conspicuous consumption. New York private school parents believe that with enough money one can purchase easy solutions to any personal problem. They view racism -- or more accurately, the possibility that their children will be, or be seen as, lacking in how they relate to racism -- as a problem, and so they also believe that they can solve that problem by chucking money at it. Indeed, any solution that doesn't look like the sort of thing that costs a truckload of money will be seen as inadequate. It has to be ostentatious for it to count.

An ostentatiously bespoke anti-racism curriculum with elements that are both conspicuously resource-intensive and often a little absurd in practice is like a school cafeteria that serves only genuine Marseilles bouillabaisse on Thursdays. It stands out as something "normal schools" can't do, which ends up being the only thing that recommends it. And if normal schools say they don't want to do it, what you're doing is nuts -- well, that shows how unrefined and gauche their palettes are. Of course they don't know good anti-racism when they see it -- they're a public school. 

As in all things, the exclusivity is the merit. Just like the best steak can only be found at a fine (expensive) steakhouse, the best "anti-racism" is of the sort that you could only possibly find at an elite private school in New York (to say it aloud underscores how ridiculous it is). And notice how different this is from what the DC schools are said to be doing.  Any school can do have a piddling "recommended reading list"; it takes a truly elite institution to be able to invite a prominent Brown University faculty member to give a lecture and then pull the offer because he's a bad fit.

In any event, my view on anti-racist education continues to be that 90% of it is a subject-specific synonym for "good education." Most of the time, that means I sniff at right-wing panics on the subject where basic elements of good pedagogy like "assign interesting readings" or "don't be a gratuitous jerk to your students" are presented as "cultural Marxism".  Occasionally, it means sniffing instead at overly self-satisfied performances of anti-racism that substitute presentation for substance. It would not at all surprise me if some posh New York private schools fell into the latter category. 

* I actually read CRT: An Introduction in high school, though not because it was assigned -- I came across the topic indirectly in a debate round, and purchased and read it of my own initiative. Remember: if you don't assign critical race theory in high school where it can be read under adult supervision, your kids will just read it on their own in some back library alley, and come to who-knows-what conclusions!

First Day of School!

Term at Lewis & Clark starts tomorrow, though my first class is on Tuesday. It's simultaneously not a big deal -- I've taught Constitutional Law before, including last semester, and also a very big deal! It's my first class as a tenure-track professor! This is the first class of the rest of my life!

(Also, I've completely revamped my syllabus, so while the material isn't new the order and organization is. So there are some potential surprises in store).

I'm teaching Tuesday/Thursday at 8:30 AM --haze the new guy, I guess. But I can't even be mad about that, because it's my first class as a tenure-track professor!

The Roberts Court as Trump's Marshall Court

Earlier today, the Supreme Court declined to stay a Texas district court ruling which compelled the Biden administration to preserve a Trump-era policy requiring that immigrants stay in Mexico while awaiting their immigration court dates. The lower court decision, by one of the most extreme right-wing judges in the country not named Reed O'Connor, is a cacophony of results-oriented judicial activism along virtually every dimension -- from standing to the universal injunction to of course the merits. It should never have been handed down and, given the Supreme Court's aggressive use of the "shadow docket" to stay lower court rulings enjoining Trump-era immigration policies left and right (well, mostly right), it should have been stayed by the Supreme Court before it ever went into effect.

Of course, that's not what happened, and the turnabout from the last four years is stark and obvious (Steve Vladeck is right -- this passage has held up). Insisting that the federal government is legally obliged to prohibit migrants from remaining in the U.S. while the court cases is pending is akin, as Matthew Segal put it, to "Korematsu, except the Executive Branch tries to end internment and the Judicial Branch says no you have to do it" (I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really want a lower court to cite Korematsu v. United States as "aff'd sub nom. Trump v. Hawaii"). It is abundantly obvious that the recent aggressive use of the shadow docket has nothing to do with any legal standards (particularly not the one's purportedly governing emergency relief), and everything to do with derailing liberal decisions (whether those decisions are from lower court judges or from democratically-elected officials). As much as right-wing apologists bemoaned "TrumpLaw" -- the judiciary allegedly holding up Trump-era policies to particularly and unreasonably tight scrutiny -- this was always the real TrumpLaw: the Court swinging into action to protect Trump's most grotesque excesses in a way they'd never contemplate doing even for utterly normal Democratic laws under attack by out-of-control conservative activists.

Yet, even though I saw it coming, this particular instance of the Court nakedly swerving course in service of Trumpist ends hit me very hard. Obviously, that's in part because of the impact on those victimized -- the Court serving as a thuggish enforcer of Trumpist "the cruelty is the point" policies. But I'm finding it professionally depressing as well, and I'm curious if any other law professors are feeling the same way.

One of the more widely-taught lessons of the early Supreme Court is how Chief Justice John Marshall, a staunch Federalist, wielded massive influence over American government decades past when the Federalist political party ceased to be a significant political force. Even though they had been soundly defeated at the ballot box, Federalist ideology continued through Marshall to play a major role in determining the contours of how the American republic develop in the early 19th century.

There is a very good chance that the Roberts Court will be the new, Trumpist Marshall Court. Even as Trump is defeated, his policies and his "the cruelty is the point" politics will live on through his allies on the Supreme Court (not to mention those sprinkled across the lower courts), gnarling the development of American politics in a crabbed, reactionary direction in defiance of the manifest will of majorities of the American people. 

And -- unlike the Marshall Court -- these decisions have virtually nothing to do with law, and so they cannot be defeated by good legal training. Hence my professional depression. I fear the skills I teach will have no bearing on how the law develops, because the current trajectory of the law's development has nothing to do with law and everything to do with expanding and enhancing Trumpism's toxic legacy even after the people successfully removed him from office.

The Rhetoric of Good and Bad Speech

Imagine you're a judge, deciding a First Amendment case involving speech that you know many (though not all) people find offensive or even hateful. You conclude, however, that the challenged restriction on the speech is unconstitutional, and now you're writing your opinion. In terms of how you frame the speech in question, you have two main choices:

(1) You can emphasize the "good" of the speech -- why it may be valuable, or challenging, or part of an important American tradition; or

(2) You can emphasize the "bad" of the speech -- how it is legitimately offensive, or injurious, or hateful.

Which is the more effective rhetorical move in persuading an audience which, for the most part, views the speech as some form of horrible?

The former seems like the obvious play: by explaining why this speech serves a valuable function in society and by locating it in a grand social tradition, one validates the decision to give it constitutional protection. We appeal to the audience's better angels, and basically tell them that while they don't have to like the speech, it's not unadulterated awfulness.

But the latter has something to say for it too: by emphasizing the negative aspects of the speech, one shores up the notion that it truly is being protected because that's the position obligated by the law. A casual reader of the first type of opinion might suspect that the speech is being protected because the judge is sympathetic to it (look how she waxes lyrical about its virtues!). The reader of the second opinion, by contrast, can be pretty sure that the judge has no extrinsic sympathy for the speech, which then suggests that the ruling really must be compelled by the law (otherwise why would the judge do it?). This, of course, is the hypothesis I explore in my Sadomasochistic Judging article.

When Will a Show Get Today's Students Right?

I'm watching The Chair, because I'm an academic so of course I am (the Sandra Oh top billing isn't necessary, but it's nice). Most of the commentary I've seen on the show has come from academics, who give it the usual lovingly mixed reviews one expects when one's own profession is placed on the big- or small-screen (lawyers do this so often we've given up). The offices are absurdly big. There are no contingent faculty. Nobody is teaching an oversubscribed first year writing class. The old White men of the department would have gone to grad school in the late 70s and 80s -- they are far less likely to be scandalized by the teaching of sex in a novel than they are to be a little too enthusiastic about it. Being a department chair is less of an "honor" and more of a "massive headache someone has foisted upon them unwillingly." And so on.

But I want to ask a different question, and one not limited to The Chair: when will one of these shows stop doing today's students dirty?

The Chair isn't even the worst offender here -- that would be the current(?) season of Billions -- but it is certainly in the family. Hollywood has gone all in on a very specific caricature of the modern Gen-Z student: a bunch of whiny, self-indulgent and self-righteous identity activists who willfully take things out of context in order preserve a posture of angry, confrontational grievance. Every class includes some student yelling out "when are we going to talk about patriarchy!?" in a tremendously sanctimonious voice, to murmurs of agreement meant to evoke the incipient formation of a mob. Rallies feature speeches and chants that are pulled straight from a tumblr thread and any challenge is derided as verbal bullying or silencing.

It sounds familiar because it's the portrait of today's student one gets from reading any Free Beacon article. As always, it's not entirely coming from nowhere -- no caricature does -- but it's already grown intensely tiresome. I've said before how little it tracks my own experience with Berkeley students (a place where one might expect such a caricature would be most accurate). It's the epitome of a cold take that still thinks it's hot -- story after story of student boots stomping on Erika Christakis' face, forever.

Is there any show set at a college that doesn't fit this template these days (putting aside those going with the far older template of "college students are engaged in one giant party/orgy/frat rush") -- one that actually tries to deal with and present today's students as actually thoughtful, considerate, nuanced individuals -- at least normally? The closest I can think of -- and I haven't seen the most recent season -- might be Dear White People, which is not perfect on this front either, but certainly is putting forward a far more genuine effort. Beyond that? I'm drawing a blank.

Thinking of Refugees First

A not-so-modest proposal:

The next time the United States commences a large-scale military incursion into another nation (and let's be realistic, that will happen again -- perhaps because it will be genuinely necessary, perhaps because we never do learn our lessons), someone in Congress should attach a rider to the authorization bill that preemptively opens up America's immigration process for persons fleeing from that country in the wake of the hostilities. The longer we're there, the more migrants we agree to accept -- as a pre-commitment, not a slapdash farce as we race out the door.

It probably won't pass -- hubris is a hell of a drug -- but at the very least when Congress votes to begin a war members should be forced to think about what happens when it ends.

For the GOP, It's Trolling All the Way Down

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), responding to the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, asks what he calls a "serious question": "Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?"

Biden can justifiably take his share of lumps for the Afghanistan pullout. We can talk about how Trump set the wheels in motion, we can talk about how the military leadership screwed the pooch, but Biden is President right now and so the ultimate buck stops with him. But saying he's mentally incapacitated and needs to be involuntarily removed from office? Seriously?

Well, not seriously, but perfectly expectedly coming from someone like Rick Scott. Yet not everyone agrees with me on that score. CNN reporter Ryan Nobles, for example, says that such a call is "startling" coming from Scott: "Scott is a major Biden critic, but not a flamethrower."

For my part, I'm startled that Nobles, who watches politics for a living, is startled. As Brian Beutler notes. Rick Scott tried to overturn the election -- this isn't even the first time this year he's spuriously decided that Joe Biden cannot be allowed to serve as President because he doesn't like him. What could be less startling?

That Rick Scott is trolling is utterly unsurprising, because trolling is all the GOP is capable of at this point. To be clear, I don't think Scott actually thinks Biden is mentally incapacitated. That's not what's happening here. Rather, it's "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" directed at the calls to invoke the 25th following Trump's encouragement of the January 6 insurrection. Those were serious, this is not, but that's the point: the fundamental unseriousness of Scott's call is meant to make the entire discourse unseriousness -- the sort of thing only trolls do -- and so retroactively make the suggestion that the 25th might have to be invoked to stop Trump from literally destroying American democracy the stuff of trolls too. Tit-for-tat, both sides do it. 

The same logic applies to the resonance with the "sleepy Joe" narrative Trump ran on in 2020 (and the parallel claim that Kamala Harris would be the true power behind the throne): it's meant to be absurd, smirking, winking, because in doing so it suggests that everything is absurd, smirking, and winking -- even that which should be deadly serious. That was Trump's genius as a political actor, and the GOP is nothing if not Donald Trump's party. What Sartre said of the antisemite applies to Rick Scott, and virtually the entire Republican Party, as well:

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

Perhaps Nobles is surprise because he views Rick Scott as falling pretty far down the line of the GOP troll depth chart. He might be right -- the competition is stiff -- but that only illustrates just how deep the GOP's bench is on that axis. Rick Scott doesn't stand out as a GOP troll, but that's only because among the GOP trolling has become so normalized being a troll doesn't stand out anymore. 

In short: when it comes to frivolous, unserious taunting, the GOP is trolls all the way down. A political reporter like Ryan Nobles should have figured that out by now.

UPDATE: Paul Campos makes essentially the same point.

The Squad and the Afghan Interpreters Bill

For obvious reasons, the past few days have seen a lot of people making hay over the fact that "the Squad" voted against a recent bill which, among other things, funded an emergency visa program for Afghan interpreters to come to the United States. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Jamal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) were the only Democrats to vote against the law, joined by five Republicans (Chip Roy (R-TX), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Bob Good (R-VA), Tom McClintock, (R-CA), and Ralph Norman (R-SC)).

I imagine it is probable that the Squad voted against the bill to make some sort of statement against the increased appropriations for Capitol security (which was the primary purpose of the law), not because of anything to do with the Afghan interpreters. That doesn't mean I feel especial sympathy for them taking bad press today -- they were clearly engaging a protest vote and, well, live by political theater, die by political theater -- but I am curious what exact point they were trying to make. Was it a "defund the police" bit -- opposing responding to the January 6 insurrection by funneling more money into security programs? Or else what?

In the meantime, I get the idea that America couldn't stay in Afghanistan forever even as the exact moment we left would always be wrenching. But the absolute least America can do for the people we're leaving behind -- not just the interpreters, but basically anyone associated with and friendly towards the American presence -- is to ensure our doors are open to Afghan refugees. Remonstrations about leaving or about having stayed too long can have their moment, but they need to take a back seat to a far more urgent need.

Nine Angry Dems

Nine moderate Democrats are trying to tank Joe Biden's strategy for passing his signature social policy package by demanding it be decoupled from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Their reasons are not exactly compelling, and they have a lot less leverage than normal in circumstances like this because they don't have a cost-free "...or we walk" option (doing that would imperil the infrastructure bill they very much do support).

Notably, while this letter is identified with the party "moderates", it doesn't include some of the more high-profile members of the "moderate" wing of the party -- folks like Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, or Lauren Underwood. Indeed, nine names is a rather infirm showing. So who are the Dems that did sign on? Are they "usual suspect" sorts, or surprises? Here's the list:

• Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey
• Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia
• Filemon Vela of Texas
• Jared Golden of Maine
• Henry Cuellar of Texas
• Vicente Gonzalez of Texas
• Ed Case of Hawaii
• Jim Costa of California
• Kurt Schrader of Oregon

Rep. Gottheimer is at the helm of the "Problem Starters Solvers Caucus," and this sort of letter has his fingerprints all over it -- the only signatories who aren't part of the cause are Reps. Vela and Case (though again it's perhaps more notably how few PSC members signed (not even a third, by my count). Case has always been far too moderate for the deep blue hue of Hawaii; I don't know too much about Vela (or Rep. Gonzalez). Bourdeaux is a freshman congresswoman and a rare R-to-D House flip in 2020; she represents a swingy district but I still expect better. Reps. Golden and Schrader broke from the Democratic Caucus to vote against the American Rescue Plan Act because it was too generous to too many Americans -- they've already proven themselves capable of being chaos muppets. Rep. Cuellar is one of the worst Democrats in the House -- I sincerely hope he meets the same second-times-the-charm fate as Dan Lipinski and gets ousted by Jessica Cisneros in their rematch. Jim Costa likewise seems to be completely taking his seat for granted in California -- but hey, maybe he won't have a seat anymore after redistricting!

So basically, of all the people on this letter, the only one who maybe I care about listening to is Bourdeaux -- possibly Vela too, but I doubt it. In all, though, this is a stupid push on behalf of bad politics, and the Democratic leadership should tactfully but firmly tell them to suck on a root.

Sympathy for the Devil

I've never been (and still am not) a police abolitionist. I've also never felt any particular way about police officers -- neither lionizing them nor deploring them. If anything, my main feeling towards cops has been to be intimidated by them, though that sentiment is based more on certain idiosyncratic personal neuroses than any political instinct.

However, I've noticed recently an interesting trajectory in my own thoughts on the subject of policing that seems counter-intuitive, and so I wonder if it resonates with anyone else. To wit:

As I grow more sympathetic to police officers in controversial situations ("it's a hard job", "what would you have them do in this situation", etc.), I also grow more inclined toward abolitionism.

This certainly runs counter to the prevailing narrative, where abolitionism pairs up with ACAB views towards individual officers. So how come it's working differently for me?

As best I can tell, here's what's happening. When I read a story about egregious police misconduct -- the sort that would make me endorse the view "that guy's just a plain old bastard" --it doesn't on its own suggest a problem with policing as a concept. If the problem is that some people are bastards, the solution is to remove the bastards. When a nasty sort of person commits a murder in Oregon, that doesn't indicate that the very idea of "Oregon" is a failure. Bad people can do bad things in all sorts of systems without demonstrating that said systems are irredeemably flawed. Thinking of the problem in terms of individual moral failings leads me in a reformist, not abolitionist, direction -- ensuring that bad officers are punished, that systems of accountability are made more robust, that officers are given the proper training so that when they do bad things, it is obviously because they chose it rather than that they were thrown into a situation nobody told them how to handle, and so on. Even widespread instances of police misbehavior or ego tripping, such as the refusal to vaccinate, can resolve down to "then fire the bad actors en masse and replace them with better people--good riddance!"

But increasingly, one sees stories where policing injures, humiliates, even kills, vulnerable civilians in circumstances where I'm not sure the conduct can be reduced to or even characterized as a particular police officer being a plain old bastard. These are circumstances where I can imagine even someone who is, in some sense, perfectly public-spirited and who fully intends to serve and protect can nonetheless be the vector of terrible injustices upon innocent Americans. That's the hallmark of a systemic problem. It's one thing if a system generates injustices when bad people abuse it. It's another when a system generates injustice even when good people are doing their best.

The fact is, our system of policing regularly places officers in fraught situations with regular Americans; scenarios that are fast-moving, have murky expectations, and carry undertones of threats (especially given the absurd proliferation of firearms among the American populace). The police are simultaneously the violent arm of state enforcement and the enforcer of first resort for ordinary public disputes and missteps (imagine telling a Martian that the same agency has both "solve murders" and "stop drivers from turning right on red" in its portfolio!), and that will often put even decidedly non-bastard sorts in exceptionally difficult or precarious circumstances. That's not a problem that can be fixed by better training or better hiring, because it's not a matter of officers failing to do their jobs. It's a matter of the very contours of the job, as we've constructed it.

So yeah--that's where I'm moving. The more cases I see where a terrible injury inflicted on a civilian pairs up with a genuine "... but look at it from the officer's point of view", the more skeptical I grow of policing as a system, because if these problems persist even in cases where there isn't any obvious individual failing on the part of the officer then it suggests a problem that lies deeper than individual-level reforms could reach. It's very much not All Cops Are Bastards, and much more It Doesn't Matter If Any Cops Are Bastards. Do I stand alone on this?

Hardcore Democratic Partisan Voters =/= Hardcore Progressive Voters

Imagine a legislative district that which was 100% comprised of Democratic voters -- and more specifically, partisan Democratic voters who are guaranteed to vote Democratic in the general election. There is no chance any of them would ever vote for a Republican -- they are committed Democratic partisans. In an open seat primary race, what intra-Democratic ideological position on a scale from left to center (i.e., from AOC to Kyrsten Sinema) would be most likely to win?

One might think that this is exactly the sort of district an AOC-type is most likely to win. Voters who are committed Democratic partisans would prefer the left-most candidate who is still within the broader spectrum of Democratic positions. The more firmly Democratic you are on the axis of partisanship, the more firmly progressive you are on the axis of ideology. Put differently, Democratic partisanship can be recast as "unwillingness to vote GOP". The further away you are from the GOP ideologically, the less likely you are to vote for them; so if we encounter a population that would never contemplate voting GOP, it stands to reason that the explanation why is that they are ideologically most distant from the GOP -- i.e., the most progressive voters. It's possible that such Democrats might vote strategically in races where electability is a concern -- choosing a more moderate option than they'd prefer in order to ensure they prevail in the general. But where electability is no barrier (as in our hypothetical 100% Democratic partisan district), their ideal-world preference would be the candidate representing the Democratic Party's left flank.

But there is actually a lot of evidence that this isn't necessarily true. Consider Chryl Laird and Ismail White's book Steadfast Democrats, seeking to explain why the African-American community so overwhelmingly affiliates with the Democratic Party -- circa 90% support for Democratic candidates in national elections. One answer would be "because they have overwhelmingly progressive political views". But, while it is likely the case that the Black American community nets out towards being more progressive than the White American community, there still are plenty of moderate and conservative African-American voters -- many if not most of whom also consistently vote Democratic. They are steadfast Democrats for reasons that don't map on perfectly to ideology.

For these voters, partisanship does not necessarily translate into preferring the most progressive available option even in a Democratic primary (so one is choosing among Democrats) where the winner is effectively guaranteed to win the general (so one's choice isn't an electability trade-off). Such voters are both consistent Democrats and might prefer a Joe Biden sort to a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren sort (or a Shontel Brown sort to a Nina Turner sort) on the basis of ideological preference. And (as committed partisans), such voters are especially likely to recoil from campaigns that appear to be antagonistic to the Democratic Party -- there's a reason why this was far and away the most powerful vector of attack for Brown against Turner, or Biden against Sanders for that matter.

To take a striking example: while Black voters in general are more likely to identify as "liberal" than White voters, Black Democrats are considerably less likely to identify as "liberal" than White Democrats are. 55% of White Democrats describe themselves as liberal, compared to just 29% of Black Democrats (almost identical to the 25% of Black Democrats who characterized themselves as conservative). How can this be? One way of thinking about it as follows: If you're a White liberal, you're almost certainly a Democrat, if you're a White conservative you're almost certainly a Republican, and if you're a White moderate you could be either (or a swing voter). By contrast, if you're a Black liberal, you're almost certainly a Democrat, if you're a Black moderate, you're still almost certainly a Democrat, and if you're a Black conservative, it's still pretty darn likely you're a Democrat. So if you're trying to appeal to the "steadfast Democratic" constituency of African-American voters, that means appealing to a cadre that is probably quite diverse in ideological orientation -- including liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

I think this analysis also tracks onto Jewish votes, though I'm less familiar with scholarship on the topic. Jews are famously also one of the most steadfast Democratic demographics behind African-Americans, regularly voting Democrat at rates around ~70%. And, while on net Jews again are certainly more liberal than the average American, Jewish Democrats don't necessarily cluster onto the left-edge of the Democratic Party. For Jews, too, the fact that we're an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc does not necessarily mean that the best way to appeal to us as a candidate is to be as progressive as possible  within the broad spectrum of Democratic Party opinion -- even in circumstances where "electability" is a non-issue.

It is notable to me how groups which seek to crack Jewish communal attachment to the Democratic Party often sound very similar in rhetoric to "Blexit" type organizations on the right. They'll typically speak of how they were "raised Democrat", how it was part of their "mother's milk", how for a long time it was "unthinkable" to even contemplate voting Republican -- all lines which speak to a connection between Jews and Democrats which is as much cultural as ideological. To be sure, such appeals will only have limited success given that there are only so many Jewish conservatives and because the "cultural" reasons which bind Jews and Democrats together remain quite solid. But it is notable nonetheless.

Why does this matter? Well, it suggests that the Democratic Party's base -- defined as its most loyal, committed supporters (of whom both African-American and Jewish voters certainly qualify) -- is more ideologically heterodox than one might think at first glance. They're certainly considerably more liberal than the country writ large, but it's not necessarily the case that they're thirsting for the most progressive possible option only to be thwarted by a party apparatus that takes them for granted. It's entirely possible, and I'd say likely, that their preferred Democrats are liberal Democrats who still maintain some distance from edge of the Democratic Party spectrum -- so not a Kyrsten Sinema, but not an AOC either. More like a nice, comfortable Chris Van Hollen.

It's Not the Positions, It's the Atmosphere: On What To Learn from the OH-11

I feel a bit sheepish even writing a post on the proper takeaways from the OH-11 race, where Shontel Brown upset insurgent darling Nina Turner to win a Democratic primary and (in effect) a House seat. It seems everyone and their mother is doing a bit on this, and there's no especial reason to listen to mine.

But whatever -- either you read me or you don't. The obvious lesson to learn from the OH-11, which I endorse but which you hardly need me to tell you, is "if you're running as a Democrat, don't compare voting for the Democrats to eating shit." Democrats tend to like Democrats! You can't win a Democratic primary running against the Democratic Party.

In addition, I do think there are some naïve views on whether "Establishment : insurgent :: moderate : progressive." Turner is certainly a flag-bearer of the insurgent wing of the party, and there's no doubt Nina Turner's policy views are on the left side of the Democratic Party. But it's not altogether clear to me that Shontel Brown, though definitely favored by the establishment, is a "moderate" in any normal sense of the term. Just how far apart are they on policy? The establishment/insurgent divide very often is more about affective disposition to the Democratic Party as a brand than it is about major policy divides. You can trace it back at least to the Howard Dean campaign -- Dean was considerably more conservative than most of his competitors on most issues, but his campaign surged on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq War, an issue where he effectively was railing against the party apparatus selling out. His base wasn't attracted to him because he was more progressive, they liked him because he channeled their own feelings of frustration that the Democratic Party circa 2003 was failing at its job.

One thing I might suggest, then, is that Democratic voters are entirely willing to vote for candidates with strong progressive policy agendas -- so long as they aren't actively antagonistic to the Democratic Party as an institution. Even as the race slipped away from Turner, there was little evidence that Cleveland voters were turning against Medicare for All.

This, I think, also has some resonance for some Jewish-specific takeaways. David Klion did a fascinating interview Daniel Marans on this subject (this post also had an interesting perspective, though it's anonymous so I can't verify the content), but I'll add a few more thoughts.

The main one will surprise you: Nina Turner actually opened the campaign with perfectly reasonable and acceptable views on Israel. Seriously -- read the questionnaire she filled out on the subject. Everything she wrote was entirely in-bounds for your typical Jewish Democrat. So how did it become so widely assumed that she was and would be in Congress an anti-Israel zealot?

The answer is it's less about her, and more about those around her. Turner might have had perfectly fine views on the subject, but the people who most enthusiastically supported Turner were people who it was clear were itching for a fight with Israel and, often, with the Jewish community in general. It's not the positions, it's the atmosphere -- so much of what surrounds Turner is toxic. When an unremarkable picture of Shontel Brown with a Rabbi is boosted throughout the pro-Turner social media space as proof that Brown is "pro-apartheid", Jews definitely noticed. There was a distinctive swath of pro-Turner backers who seemed to delight in sidling up to Jews and smirking -- "when we win, your reign is over." A vote against Turner wasn't really a vote against her policies, even on Israel; it was a vote against empowering the political coalition that was rallying behind Turner.

This isn't, to be clear, just guilt-by-association. It is fair to think that Turner will be most susceptible to influence by her most enthusiastic supporters -- to the extent many of these supporters seemed to enjoy antagonizing the Jewish community, Jews are entitled to waylay that at the pass. But the disjuncture where perfectly acceptable policy positions become irrelevant in the face of broader coalitional associations is something seen this on several other occasions. How many times has Ayanna Pressley been lumped in with the rest of the squad as an anti-Israel fanatic, even though her positions on Israel are manifestly different and more mainstream than even AOC's, let alone Omar or Tlaib? Hell, look at Sanders himself -- he wrote a very, very good piece for Jewish Currents that I think clearly fell within the Jewish Democratic mainstream, but he's demonized because of who supports him.

In many ways, I view this Jewish-specific angle as a subspecies of the broader "don't hate the Democratic Party if you want to win a Democratic Party primary" takeaway. While in 2016 Sanders could perhaps be accused of being a less-than-enthusiastic team player once he lost the primary, few could argue that he didn't go all out for Joe Biden in 2020. The reality is that Sanders largely doesn't share the "burn the party to the ground" outlook that many of his most zealous supporters do. But the fact is Sanders still surrounded himself with those people and became the standard-bearer for those people, and so it was understood that a Sanders victory would represent a victory for those people and an empowerment of those people. Those people are the atmosphere, and they're choking the underlying political positions' chances at flourishing.

As Marans put it:

Over the past five years, Turner developed an intense following among left-wing activists while saying a lot of things that alienated rank-and-file Democrats. That gave her a false sense of confidence.... There’s a hanger-on problem in the left political subculture—you have a lot of Bernieworld people who end up filling not just volunteer positions, but consulting gigs and major campaign roles. When left-wing candidates aren’t willing to confront uncomfortable truths about the things they’ve said and done in the past, because the people around them keep them insulated, then they’re going to keep losing.

As far as I'm concerned, there's good news and bad news here for the Democratic Party left. The good news is that it remains very possible to elect more candidates with squad-like views into Congress. Democratic voters aren't necessarily averse to the policy per se; they're averse to the affective hostility towards other Democrats. So keep the policies -- run fifty candidates who respond to the Jewish Insider's Israel questionnaire exactly as Nina Turner did -- just don't run candidates who have histories of publicly declaring how much they loathe Democrats who are broadly popular with most Democrats. What could be simpler? Nowhere was this more evident than in the Markey/Kennedy race, where Markey managed to do the not-actually-impossible and straddle the "establishment/insurgent" divide by enthusiastically promoting progressive policy priorities without ever suggesting broader antipathy to the Democratic Party. I absolutely endorse Max Berger's suggestion that progressive Democrats should present themselves as more-Democratic-than-thou.

But that underscores the bad news, which is that squad-like candidates are likely to find their early and enthusiastic support from persons who want nothing more than to be tossed some red meat about how corrupt the Democratic Party establishment is. And when that's your base, it's really hard to shake them off, even though their presence is a huge thorn in the side of most Democrats. The anti-Democratic Party Democrat message can get a very committed base of support, but it isn't scalable.

Making Non-Oppressive Speech Unspeakable

I have a thought (sketched below), which I'm curious as to your views. Specifically, is this thought an at all interesting or novel thought (obviously even if it is either/both it would still need to be fleshed out in much more detail/rigor)? So please read the below and let me know if I'm on to anything.

I recently reread Rae Langton's legendary "Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts" article, and it got me thinking about a case I'm not sure has been fully discussed (related to but also different from what Langton is talking about): one where structural oppression (misogyny, racism, antisemitism) causes an illocutionary misfire by making it impossible (or at least far more difficult) to express an "innocent" thought (one that, in of itself, presents a legitimate argument that does not depend on or appeal to misogyny, racism, antisemitism, etc.) without it actually being misogynistic/racist/antisemitic/what have you.

Some examples to illustrate the problem:

(a) Tim is a defense attorney, representing a client who is charged with sexual assault. He client admits that he had sexual contact with the accuser, but insists that she expressly consented and that she's falsely accusing him now. Tim wants to make this defense, without in any way imputing that women generally lie about sexual assault or that the accuser is lying because she's a woman. Nonetheless, he knows that making this argument will, despite his best efforts, be heard by many as making such a claim; and worse, he knows his defense is more likely to be taken up by a jury precisely because it "appeals" (again, in spite of his own intentions) to this misogyny.

(b) Paula is a politician. She believes that most social ills on the planet -- from Colombia to Colorado to Gaza to Georgia -- are attributable a global class of ultra-rich capitalists, who promote a system that profits them while immiserating others. By "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" she does not in any way mean Jews; she does not argue that Jews are especially likely to be part of this class or that this class has any particular connection to Jews. Nonetheless, she knows that talking about the "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" will be heard by many to talking about Jews (especially when, as will be periodically be the case, when the proximate subject of her ire does happen to be Jewish), and worse, she knows that her political pitch is more likely to be taken up by the public precisely because it "appeals" to this antisemitism.

In both cases, Tim and Paula have an intention regarding what they want their speech to do (or more accurately, not do) -- they want it to not subordinate women/Jews, make accusations against women/Jews, denigrate women/Jews, and so on. In both cases, their speech plausibly will defy their intent and "do" what it's supposed to not do anyway. In both cases, it would be difficult if not impossible to avoid having the speech taken up in the way they do not desire (note that merely disclaiming -- "Just to be clear, when I make this argument I am not talking about 'women'/'Jews'" -- probably wouldn't work: if anything, it sounds like protesting-too-much; it may make the problem worse). In both cases, all of this happens despite the fact that we could not say that the actual intended thought (this accuser is being untruthful; there are rich people who bolster a global unjust system) is one that should be out-of-bounds per se. And in both cases, the unavoidable-undesired misfire actually aids in the direct desired end result -- the unintended misogyny makes it more likely the jury will conclude that this woman was lying about her claim; the unintended antisemitism makes it more likely that the citizenry will believe that the global system is controlled by an elite global ultra-wealthy class.

Notice how this problem eludes some normal attempts to resolve it. We already mentioned that one can't just disclaim the bad intent. Here are a few more possible resolutions that I don't think work: 

(a) Sometimes people dismiss cases like what I'm talking about by claiming, in essence, that because there's no bad intent and because the literal content is innocent, any inference of misogyny/antisemitism is invented or made in bad faith -- "you're just hearing things that aren't there." But that's not quite right -- while it's true that the inference of bad intent may be mistaken, the listeners are in fact hearing something real -- they're aware of and identifying the likely reasons for the idea being taken up by the audience. That's not invented! Likewise, telling the putatively aggrieved group to grow a thicker skin misses the mark -- the problem isn't really with how *they* understand the speech, but with how the speech is taken up in society writ large; their negative reaction is based on accurately identifying the illocutionary misfire that's in process. Even if the speaker was trying not to say anything about Jews, and even if the Jews agreed that the speaker was indeed not trying to speak of Jews, neither of those facts would do anything to affect whether non-Jews were taking up the speech to be about Jews. 

(b) On the other side, we can't reduce the problem to being "unintentionally" misogynist/antisemitic. The problem runs deeper -- it's that certain innocent ideas which it may well be *important* to express become impossible to express without triggering the misogyny/antisemitism problem. It becomes "unspeakable" to critique an international elite of ultra-rich individuals without attacking Jews. One hears glimmers of this in the frustration some people have surrounding "trope" discourse -- *everything* is a trope, they say, and this ends up indiscriminately capturing innocent arguments. And they're right! But they're wrong to infer that this is because of bad faith or seeing things that aren't there. It rather suggests that the ubiquity of structural oppression renders legitimate arguments in certain domains unspeakable insofar as they are intended to be spoken sans a hook with the oppression. Which seems like a serious problem. 

(c) Sometimes people frame this serious problem by saying something like "claims of racism/misogyny/antisemitism" are silencing. But that isn't actually what's happening here -- it's not the claim but the reality of racism/misogyny/antisemitism that's doing the "silencing" (that is, by converting the "innocent" statement so that, against the speaker's intention, it is publicly understood to mean something else and the speaker's actual thought becomes unexpressable). One thing misogyny does is that it makes it so that certain (typically negative) talk that is not meant to be about women-as-a-class is publicly understood to be -- and is accepted as -- indeed about women-as-a-class. It is because there are powerful misogynist narratives about women lying about sexual assault that an attempt to specifically claim this-woman-Jane-Smith-is-lying-about-this-incident unavoidably becomes imbricated with the broader misogynistic narrative, whether the speaker wants it to or not (and whether Jane Smith the individual IS being untruthful about this incident or not).

So: am I thinking a remotely interesting thought here?

Moving Into Port(land)

The movers come tomorrow and Wednesday, and then on Thursday we depart again -- this time for Portland. Knock on wood, we will be there for a long, long time (though ideally not in this apartment -- not that there's anything wrong with it, but we do plan to buy a house in a year or so).

Doubt I'll be blogging much, if at all, until we're settled in. Enjoy the rest of the Olympics!