Have Another Thought

Maya Rosen and Joshua Leifer, two Jewish Princeton students who head the campus chapter of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives and supported the failed divestment vote at the University, have penned a column with their thoughts on the matter and their demands of the Jewish community.

There is a lot here that is frustrating -- try to follow their shifting logic on the role "consensus" should play in these sorts of debates -- but what is perhaps most aggravating is their disdain-verging-on-contempt for anyone who disagrees with divestment as a tactic. I've remarked before on the shared incentive the far-left and far-right have to portray Israel debates as being amongst two camps: If you don't support ZOA, you're an anti-Zionist monster. Or, if you don't support BDS, you're in the bag for the most irredentist wing of Likud. This column is a sterling example of the latter -- it goes so far as to say that the failure of Jews to support divestment hinders efforts to "decouple Judaism from right-wing Israeli policies", blaming Jews for ongoing anti-Semitic attitudes on campuses nationwide.

Of course, there are many reasons one could oppose divestment that have nothing to do with favoring right-wing Israeli policies, and are indeed endorsed by sharp critics of those policies. One might be concerned about the association with the global BDS movement, a train which seems to have no brakes. The BDS campaign at its best is cavalier about the validity of Jewish self-determination and liberation, and has often bled into blatant anti-Semitism (in the link above, BDS was the frame for urging the expulsion of all Jewish students from a South African university). Certainly, the tropes put forward in this column -- whereby Jews who oppose BDS are said to be beholden to a "conservative establishment" which insists that "all Jews support [all?] Israeli policies" -- don't exactly inspire confidence that this is a movement that actually respects that polyphonic character of the Jewish community. Or one might recognize that the same capacities which enable Israel to continue its occupation of the West Bank are those which enable it to protect itself from suicide bombers, and that the divestment campaign's studied refusal to recognize the entanglement suggests that they don't think Israel has any valid claim on security at all. Or perhaps they are just sick of the persistent demand to view Israel/Palestine as a quest to find bad guys to scold, and would rather a politics that sought to identify good guys and empower them to do more good.

The divestment advocates say that the debate demonstrated widespread desire amongst Princetonians to take a more proactive stand on this issue; that students hunger to do something to prod the situation in the Middle East closer to justice. And I bet that's true! The 53% which voted no may have various reasons why divestment is off the table, but that doesn't mean there is no proposal that wouldn't garner their support. And of the 47% that voted yes, I'm doubtful that all of them are "BDS or bust." They might have supported that resolution, but it's not the only resolution they'd support.

What we do know is that a majority of Princeton students oppose divestment, and that there is no likely scenario where divestment could be anything but bitterly divisive. So my question them is simple: What's your next thought? Are you seriously trying to say that a divestment resolution is the only arrow in your quiver? Even if you genuinely believe it "is the best way", even if you're absolutely certain that "political and economic pressure are our most effective nonviolent means" for effectuating change (maybe you can take a break and demand reinstatement of our Cuba sanctions), are they really your only thoughts on the matter? Is your only move, when Princetonians reject this particular strategy, to go back to the same well once more?

If divestment is a non-starter, what are some other thoughts we might have? The obvious answer is investment. Instead of cutting ties with the putative bad guys, try to forge new ones with the good guys. Instead of looking for bridges to burn, search for places where bridges are worth building. In Israel and Palestine right now, there are a great many civil society organizations who are committed to creating the conditions for Jewish and Palestinian freedom and self-determination. By far the best of these is OneVoice, a parallel Israeli and Palestinian project "that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution." It's based on the notion that the most important players and most powerful agents of change are the people of Israel and Palestine, the everyday folks who have no interest in dominating or subjugating the other, but just want to live in harmony with their neighbor and work together for a better future. What if Princeton partnered with OneVoice and lent its prestige and brainpower to the cause of democratic empowerment as a means of change (some of us have a sentimental preference for that sort of work over economic coercion).

Or what about TULIP -- Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine? TULIP's goal is to forge connections between Israeli and Palestinians unions as a means of building political momentum towards two states. There was a time when building solidarity amongst labor unions and the working class would have been the first thought of a group with a name like the "Alliance of Jewish Progressives". Alas, we live in different times, and so I guess now it takes some prodding. But again, call me sentimental, but I am a fan of the power of workers to unite around a common interest in economic empowerment, and recognizing that spending precious lives and resources on a fruitless conflict is antithetical to that cause.

What if Ms. Rosen and Mr. Leifer proposed a resolution centered on those parameters: identifying groups in Israel and Palestine that are working to change conditions on the ground such that both sides respect the legitimate national aspirations of the other, suggesting that Princeton should take official steps to partner with and otherwise support these groups, and urging that Princeton take greater steps to invite persons affiliated with those groups to the Princeton campus so that Princetonians could gain a first-hand perspective on their struggle and how they could help? How much of the vote do you think that resolution would get? 65%? 75%? It wouldn't be unanimous -- there are people who really do support right-wing Israeli policies, after all. And there are people who genuinely are "BDS or bust", because their end goal isn't a two-state solution or any solution at all that respects Jewish equality -- they're in the field to annihilate Israel outright.

But I don't think those sort of people are the majority of either the 53% or the 47%. A resolution like this could unify the Princeton campus around a strategy that breaks free from the tired "punish the evildoer" mold. It wouldn't be consistent with BDS fundamentalism -- no strategy which acknowledges that both Israelis and Palestinians have an indispensable contribution to a just resolution of the conflict would be -- but Ms. Rosen and Mr. Leifer claim not to be fundamentalists.

Whether they are or aren't is not something I pretend to know. I do know that Naomi Klein once claimed that BDS was "a tactic, not a dogma," and that this has proven to be one of her less-than-stunningly accurate pronouncements of the past decade. Everything we've seen from the BDS movement indicates that it cannot contemplate other strategies other than BDS; even amongst those adherents who don't sign on to the more maximalist parts of the agenda. BDS squeezes out any and all alternative strategies, but it is especially hostile to those which ask how we can help Israelis and Palestinians work together. For some reason, once people board this particular train, it does not even occur to them that there might be other routes to their goal.

I'm not asking Ms. Rosen or Mr. Leifer to denounce BDS (though of course I'd be happy if they did). All I'm asking is that they think one step further -- that they have another thought after divestment. Rather than assuming that Jews and non-Jews who oppose divestment are denouncing any measure that might further a just two-state solution, they should think a little harder about what other steps they might take that would unify their community and the Princeton community around a salutary goal. To that end, a resolution which specifically endorses organizations like OneVoice and urges Princeton to take additional steps to provide them with institutional support would be an easy winner that would build on the dialogue the first resolution sparked and unite proponents and opponents alike under a positive and constructive banner.

Anyway, it's a thought.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XVII: Vaccines!

Though it is by far the most popular feature of this blog on Tumblr, I really prefer not to do back-to-back segments of my things people blame the Jews for series. I even had to resist putting up a striking example blaming Jews for massacres of Muslims in Myanmar. But my resolve cracked when I saw this post detailing anti-Semitism in the anti-vaccine movement.

This is, of course, a match made in heaven. On the one hand, the anti-vaccination craze is probably the most mainstream-yet-still-absolutely-bonkers conspiracy out there that doesn't, on its face, involve the Jews ("did we land on the moon" is equally crazy but far more fringe; global warming denialism, though based off horrendous science, doesn't rely on quite the same level of tinfoil as do the anti-Vaxxers). On the other hand, given those characteristics of course Jews are going to get roped in sooner or later. Much of the anti-vaccination movement is based on hyperventilation about big pharmaceutical companies, so its obvious that somebody is going to do the whole "greedy Jews" thing ("Just calling out this PAID ZIONIST PHARMA TROLL" who is contributing to "the Judaification of America[, you] are evil scumbags.").

What is more creative is the "special Jewish handshake" theory about how we're getting the real, non-poisonous shots.

Go to Wal-Mart and look at the children in the check out line.... They usually all have blank stares now .... Walk the check outs until you see a kid who is totally engaged with people, smiling, bright and acting intelligently. Ask the mom if she vaccinated her baby, and if hse says yes, ask if she is Jewish.... I never figured out the method, but I can definitely state that somehow, "they" do not get the same shots.

He adds later "You know something like this can be going on with so many Jewish doctors out there."

The point is, anti-vaccination and anti-Semitism are two repulsive tastes that unsurprisingly mix perfectly together. I, for one, look forward to finding my Jewish doctor to give my Jewish baby his or her special Jew shots, and raising another generation of smiley and intelligent scumbags.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XVI: Baltimore

Not the Charm City itself, mind you. Jews are, of course, blamed for the police violence which has led to the latest batch of protests. The link is that Baltimore County (not City -- they're separate jurisdictions) police officers are offered training in Krav Maga, an Israeli-developed martial arts form. If you've watched a movie fight seen and wondered why it didn't end in 15 seconds with a joint break, Krav Maga is for you -- it emphasizes ending physical confrontations quickly by immediately incapacitating the opposition. For this reason, it is purely a "functional" fighting style (it isn't designed for aesthetics or competition, for example). Police and military units sometimes train in Krav Maga because it offers effective means of dispatching armed violent attackers (many Krav Maga scenarios involve, for example, an unarmed person being attacked with a knife).

In any event, the Nation of Islam saw the "Jewish martial art --> political jurisdiction bordering Baltimore City" link and immediately decided that the whole thing was a Mossad/Shin Bet plot. Needless to say, Max Blumenthal jumped all over it too.

Somehow, one gets the feeling that if a police department was trained in Tae Kwon Do, folks wouldn't immediately rush to blame acts of violence on the Koreans. But that's all part of what makes being a Jew so special.

Sleeping in Fear

As we reflect on the Baltimore protests and how they have once again focused our minds on how many Americans simply cannot have confidence that the authorities are there to protect them, rather than oppress them, a local Texas official gets at the heart of the problem in poignant fashion:

"It's a sad when people's greatest fear is their own government," [Bastrop County Judge Paul] Pape said. "Think about the ramification of that. If Americans go to sleep at night worrying whether their own government is going to sell them out before morning, it'd be hard to sleep."

A striking sentiment.

Of course, Pape was talking about local Texas residents convinced that America was about to launch a military takeover of Texas, seeking to " "confiscate guns or implement martial law" under guise of a major military exercise. But, you know, I'm sure this experience of rampant paranoia will attune them to the tribulations of their fellow Americans who have far more rational reasons to view their own government with trepidation.

AAUP: Illinois Board's Rejection of Salaita Violates Academic Freedom

Their media release is here, the full report can be read here. The gist of their position is that, once Salaita had been offered and accepted a tenured position at Illinois, he was effectively a tenured member of the faculty and entitled to due process from "summary dismissal." The board approval was widely known to be pro forma, particularly in circumstances where their approval would come after Salaita would have already begun teaching. Chancellor Wise's invocation of "civility" as a reasonable standard for dismissing a tenured faculty member is vague and unworkable; who decides what is and isn't "civil"? Finally, in the press release, the AAUP Committee Chair emphasized something absolutely correct and worth reiterated:

e. "The issue in the case has never been the content of Salaita’s message. One may consider the contents of his tweets to be juvenile, irresponsible, and even repulsive and still defend Salaita’s right to produce them.”

Having read the release and skimmed the report, I have no objections to anything of substance. The AAUP is right on this issue. One can find Salaita's tweets to be hateful, repugnant, and anti-Semitic, and nonetheless think it has no bearing on the academic freedom issue his case presents. Salaita had for all intents and purposes already been hired by the University of Illinois. It made its bed and it should of had to lie in it, even if we think the appointment itself was a mistake or the result of poor judgment. We can criticize his scholarship, and we can even criticize the decision to hire him in the first place, but academic freedom is a constraint on remedies, and here it means that the remedy of dismissing (or "unhiring") Dr. Salaita in such a belated manner should have been off the table.

The Maryland Exception

The other day, I went to a talk by Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, who was promoting his new book The Law of the Land. The conceit of the book is a telling of the "story" of American law and our constitutional ethos via various state-based vignettes (the first one is about Abraham Lincoln and Illinois, the second about Hugo Black and Alabama, and so on). A major theme of the book and talk is an argument about the endurance of America's geographical divides. The list of states that voted against Lincoln in 1860 bears a striking a resemblance to those which voted against Obama in 2012. Of the four states which were genuinely "purple" in 2012 (decided by less than 5 points), three of them were "north-meets-south" states (Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina). The fourth, Florida, is functionally "north-meets-south" as well, due to its massive population of New York and New Jersey transplants (I've often joked that South Florida is essentially a suburb of Brooklyn).

After the talk, I was able to ask Professor Amar about a state that did not receive a chapter in his book -- my home state of Maryland. Maryland, it seems, is a very stark exception to this tale. It is a southern state -- below the Mason-DIxon line. It was a slave state. It didn't secede, but mostly because it was under Union military occupation. It has a large Black population, which in Southern states had historically been associated with extraordinary racial polarization in voting (that is, in Southern states the more Blacks they were the more conservative Whites voted).

Today, Maryland is not Virginia, or North Carolina, or Ohio. It is among the most liberal states in the country. It is Massachusetts, or Hawaii. If you lived in the beltway suburbs (Montgomery County or Prince George's County) in 2006, there was not a single Republican representing any level of government -- federal, state, or local -- except for the President. I think that remained true until the recent election of Larry Hogan to the Governor's office -- only the second Republican to hold that office since Spiro Agnew (and even with Hogan's election, Democrats maintain a 91-50 edge in the House of Delegates and 33-14 advantage in the State Senate). It is a left-wing state.

Right now, Baltimore is awash in protest, initially sparking by the police killing of Freddie Gray, who succumbed to spinal injuries inflicted while he was in police custody. In some sense, this is just the latest chapter of the ongoing, national unrest that results from the continued exclusion of Blacks from the full fruits of the American dream.

But perhaps not. For as Adam Serwer notes, "Baltimore is no Ferguson, Missouri." Baltimore is a city with "a black mayor, black police commissioner, and a police force evenly divided between black and white officers." This is an exception too; Baltimore "is one of very few cities that burned despite substantial black representation in the city government and police force." For Serwer, this gives lie to the notion "that harmony can be achieved by elevating a few blacks to positions of power within a system that leaves so many impoverished. American cities cannot avoid unrest by simply placing black people at the helm, as long as progress for so many is ephemeral. An unjust system remains unjust no matter the ethnicity of its caretakers."

This is, indeed, a bitter pill, and a noteworthy one. Process-oriented liberals (and not all liberals, to be sure, are process-oriented) have sought to channel racial justice into a narrative of democratic inclusion -- the harm stems from being excluded from the levers of political power and self-determination, the solution is to create conditions of political equality and representation. Yet even as Maryland and Baltimore are in many ways exceptions to the rule where such equality is nowhere to be found, they are not exceptions to the social malfunctions and disasters which provoke the current unrest.

Of course, the conservative response to all of this is simple: Blacks should stop being Democrats. What have liberal politics done for you? What has a Black President done for you? Jump over to our side of the fence! The easy retort, of course, is that locales where Republicans are dominant political players are hardly paragons of racial virtue either -- if anything, they're worse than Maryland, but the best you can say is that it is a non-factor. The bigger problem, though, is that the small-d democratic solution -- self-determination, pick your own leaders -- doesn't seem to be sufficient either. It is a bedrock principle of respecting a group that you respect their choices on how to self-govern, even when one might disagree, even when they seem to be off the mark. The self-governance is the critical consideration; anything else has to answer the charge that it is domination in disguise. Yet Baltimore isn't a situation where the process failed. It's a situation where the substance failed.

I think it is to our nation's credit that we are starting to look seriously at the substance of things -- that substantively speaking too many people view Black lives as expendable and substantively speaking too many people don't care what happens in their neighborhoods. But it is a challenge because when it comes to racial justice people are very uncomfortable thinking in terms of substance. Procedural, representational justice is (conceptually easy), and one could argue that Maryland and Baltimore already achieved that. But debates over substance can be significantly murkier and far more intractable. I'm hopeful, and I believe, that Baltimore and Maryland have the right foundations to tackle these hard questions in a way that makes us an exception -- an exceptional leader in resolving these problems right.

The Road Not Taken: J Street and the Brandi Maxxxx Strategy

As you may know, my strategic advice for J Street and like orgs over the past couple years has been to seize the center. Stress that the emphatically pro two-state, pro-Israel, pro-peace solution bears far more in common with what the more established center groups like AIPAC and the AJC do than the unrelenting Greater Israelism of their right-wing counterparts at ZOA or the ECI. You might also know that they are not taking my advice, instead "defining itself as an outright opponent of the Jewish establishment rather than as its dissenting adjunct."

This Bloomberg article, detailing efforts by AIPAC to forestall putatively "pro-Israel" amendments to the Iran bill by Seante Republicans, struck me as a perfect opportunity to exploit this strategy -- except, of course, my advice is moot. Even still, I thought I'd at least roll through the path not taken. I call it "The Brandi Maxxxx Strategy."

For those of you who don't know, Brandi Maxxxx is a bit character in the TV show Parks and Recreation where she is Pawnee's local porn star. It is either a great compliment or great insult to Mara Marini, who plays Brandi, that on first view I genuinely was unsure if they got a regular actress to play the role or if they brought in a real porn star to do some cameos (as best I can tell, Marini has done no porn). In any event, one of the running jokes of the series is that Brandi not only looks a lot like Leslie Knope (even portraying her in a video), but is always declaring just how similar they are. "And just like Leslie, I know what it’s like to be the only woman in a room full of men." "What Leslie and I do is obviously art."

This, of course, drives Leslie bonkers. But the reason it does so is simple -- she's not wrong. Leslie really does believe that we shouldn't censor expression simply because some deem it obscene. Leslie really does value strong women in workplaces dominated by men. Leslie's feminist credentials are such that she'd never slut-shame Brandi for her choice of profession. Basically, while she doesn't like the tone or the emphasis, Leslie can't actually disagree with the content of what Brandi's saying. And so it is that the understanding of Brandi as being "just like Leslie" is cemented in the public mind.

J Street could do the same thing. "Like AIPAC, we are appalled that extreme conservatives would try to sink the Iran bill in defiance of Israel's best interest." "J Street and the AJC are in agreement that groups which promote a one-state solution can in no way shape or form declare themselves to be pro-Israel." These statements are entirely accurate, which would make it quite difficult for the mainline groups to disavow them (if they did, it would give J Street a far cleaner shot at claiming the mantle of the only pro-two states group on the political map). And suddenly, our understanding of the "pro-Israel" community isn't "AIPAC", it's "AIPAC + J Street."

Why should we care about perceptions? Well, perception has a funny way of calcifying into reality. Imagine a straight-down the center Jewish Israel supporter -- the most mainstream of mainstream. He's probably an AIPAC guy, but he's willing to work with other groups. If the media drum is that AIPAC is always fighting with J Street but is basically aligned with ZOA, he'll be inclined to feel friendly towards them and their positions. But if the media narrative is reversed, his perspective will reverse as well. Everything we know about group identification suggests that who we perceive as ideological compatriots does far more to channel our ultimate policy positions than the reverse. Someone who perceives J Street as basically aligned with the pro-Israel movement will also look more favorably on J Street's policy objectives.

Indeed, talking in this way is probably the best thing J Street could do to break the media narrative of the group as functionally an opponent of Israel in the United States. If there is one thing I've learned from observing politics and political coverage, it's that the media can only for so long resist a narrative presented as fait accompli before reporting it straight. This is true for claims far more outlandish than "J Street holds mainstream pro-Israel positions." If Paul Ryan keeps on saying -- as if it was the most natural thing in the world -- that he's devoted to the needs of the poor, the media will start reporting that as at least a rebuttable presumption that others must argue against. The trick is that the presentation can't take the form of an argument or apology -- it has to be cast as the obvious way things are. It's not "actually, J Street and AIPAC are aligned on this issue." It's "as usual, J Street and AIPAC are aligned on this issue."

Of course, it is fair to argue that at some point a group is so obviously distant from one's own priors that it does no good to try and "seize" it. If AIPAC genuinely wasn't interesting in peace in the middle east or the perpetuation of Israel as a Jewish democratic state, then tying J Street to them would do more to cripple the latter than to enhance its credibility. But I don't think that objection holds here. It strikes me as wrong to say that AIPAC is in fact so distant -- as evidenced by the fact that they keep on saying and doing things that J Street could quite honestly note makes them "just like J Street." One can doubt their sincerity, but I've found that the best response to that possibility isn't to call them liars but to simply treat them as if they were sincere. A debate on honesty nearly always dissolves into an irresolvable mush. But if AIPAC is forced to disavow, over and over, statements that simply assert that "it favors a two-state solution", that would be better proof of their insincerity than any raw allegation could be.

I worry that J Street is being infected by the lone wolf fetish one sees so often on the left, wherein one is so committed to viewing oneself as a solo Jeremiah standing up to the powers that be that one affirmatively resists taking steps to actually win the political game. Trying to win risks losing, whereas if one never makes the effort there's no real loss, only the comforting warmth of "I told you so." I have long worried that J Street is more committed to its self-image as the bold truthsayers in an otherwise blind pro-Israel community than it is to actually getting effective policy work done. It's a weakness activists can't afford to have.

And that brings me back to the Bloomberg article, and the missed opportunity it evinces. If you're worried about Jewish pro-Israel support bleeding from the Democratic Party, you couldn't ask for a better frame than "J Street and AIPAC versus the Senate GOP." That's like an early Chanukkah present. But seizing that opportunity to isolate the putatively pro-Israel far-right requires presenting the center and left as a united front. By instead separating itself out from the middle of the community, it is losing a valuable opportunity to reclaim the norm of what it means to be pro-Israel.

Are My Opinions Best?

I imagine most of us have at some point in our lives been told "you just think your opinions are best!" It's meant to imply that we're close-minded or arrogant. But on face, it's a very weird objection, isn't it? Of course I think my opinions are best! If I thought someone else's opinions were best, I'd adopt those opinions. Consider the following statement: "I believe X, but Jan believes Y. I think Jan has the better opinion on the matter, actually, but I still believe X." That seems awfully strange.

Thinking that, though, made me wonder if there are scenarios where that isn't true. The example I came up with was my versus Stephen Hawking's opinions on physics. I have certain beliefs about how the physical world works, as does Dr. Hawking, and I'm pretty confident his are better than mine. Does that mean I've just tacitly adopted his opinions on the matter? I don't think so, for a few reasons: First, I can't even coherently explain what his opinions are -- they're way beyond my understanding of physics. I don't think I can claim to hold an opinion that I don't actually know or understand the substance of. Second, related to the first, I still basically act in accordance to my own primitive understanding of how the physical world will behave. So in that sense, I'm still adhering more to my opinions than anyone else's. And finally, I'm using Dr. Hawking as a prominent stand in for "really smart physicist", but presumably many smart physicists disagree with one another, and I don't necessarily share Dr. Hawking's view when it is in disagreement with other prominent physicists. Even where two well-credentialed physicists take mutually contradictory positions, I still think that both of them have "better" opinions on physics than mine -- but it wouldn't make sense to say I'm adopting mutually-contradictory positions.

I don't know if this goes anywhere interesting (it feels like the sort of question epistemologists have resolved six ways to Sunday), but it was on the brain for the past few days so I thought I'd share. I would note that it seems to have greater relevance to the salience of "moral facts" (if such things exist) than it does physical facts. We're okay with people accepting that the best physical explanations may simply be beyond the reasoning capacities of the average person because we don't expect everyday people to do complex physics. But we do expect people to do moral reasoning accurately. So if we're in a world where there are moral facts, but average people are incapable of understanding what those facts are (knowing only that their primitive efforts at moral reasoning are obviously nothing close to reliable, and that while there exists a small class of persons who can do this sort of reasoning more effectively, they aren't in so much agreement so as to allow for us to simply substitute their views for our own), that seems to leave us in a dangerous place.

It All Hangs Together

I'm not going to say you shouldn't read Liel Leibovitz's latest Tablet Mag column "We Are All Racists Now." But maybe you don't have time. You're a busy guy. So I'll do you a favor and summarize the argument. Ready?

The White House just opened a gender-neutral bathroom, probably because it thinks trans-bias is more dangerous than Iran because presidential administrations should only do one thing at a time. And that one thing obviously shouldn't be transgender rights, because gay marriage is becoming more popular. The administration claims it has something to do with "safety", which shares a root with the word "safe", as in "safe spaces", man aren't those ridiculous? Kids these days. Anyway, by announcing support for transgender rights, he's just taking the easy way out by riding the wave of popular support for gay marriage, rather than doing something hard like taking on banks. Or doing a different foreign policy. You see, transgender rights are part of the culture war, and Obama wants to call anyone who disagrees with him a gay basher or a racist. Oppose his Iran plan, and he'll point to his unisex bathroom and say you hate ... gays? What would have happened if congressional Democrats systematically tried to undermine Reagan's foreign policy? We don't know because they didn't try! I guess that settles that.

Yet despite this cunning and perfectly comprehensible retort, some people still think some attacks on Obama are racist. Once upon a time liberals favored open discourse, but now they use that discourse to call things racist that I don't think are racist, and that's offensive triggering silencing censorship for some reason, rather than just counterspeech that makes me sad. All of this will be bad for the Jews, because if there's one group that would benefit from "-ism" claims being preemptively dismissed as a form of censorship, it's the Jews. In conclusion, "we're all racists now." The end.

Seriously, it's like if someone promised Liel that they'd take a shot for every inane trope he was able to string together without a segue. Please, go ahead and read the column and tell me where I'm being remotely unfair.

Amnesty Rejects Resolution To Combat Anti-Semitism

A proposed resolution asking Amnesty International UK to confront rising anti-Semitism Failed on a 461-468 vote. It was the only proposed resolution at the Amnesty conference that was not passed. You can read the text of the proposed resolution here, suffice to say it does not appear remotely controversial. Well, except for the part where opposing anti-Semitism is inherently controversial. Even in the private sphere, Jews still lose.

Still, I have to say that a part of me is shocked by this outcome. A resolution demanding action on anti-Semitism before a human rights group in the UK ... and it only failed by seven votes? Frankly, that's far better than I had any right to expect.

My friend Yair Rosenberg suggests that "It's going to be hard for Amnesty International to claim to stand for universal human rights after this." Oh, I'm sure they'll manage somehow.

Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy: The UNC Case

At the tail end of 2013, I published a very short essay in the Florida International University Law Review entitled Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy. The goal of the essay was to disentangle two oft-conflated concepts, both of which are intuitively important and both of which express exceptionally important academic values.

The first of these is "academic freedom": the right of persons within the academic community to forward any idea -- no matter how outlandish, offensive, or controversial -- without facing formal sanction or punishment. The second is "academic legitimacy": the belief that ideas presented in academic concepts should generally be good, interesting, well-reasoned, or thought-provoking, and that correspondingly where the academic community forwards poorly-reasoned or outlandish ideas, something has malfunctioned. "Academic legitimacy" does not entail agreement; there are many ideas which are perfectly "legitimate" -- in the sense of being thoughts that usefully forward an intellectual discussion -- that many people disagree with.

If, for example, a geology professor brought in a flat-earther to speak, we would presumably think that they had failed in an important scholarly aspect by acting as if flat-earthism was even "in-bounds" as something worth presenting in an academic context. This isn't (just) because we think flat-earthism is "wrong", it's because it is not a useful contributor to a reasonable conversation about geology. And this belief would hold even as academic freedom constrained the remedy -- we could not fire or otherwise discipline the professor. Holding this distinction is critical on both sides of the equation: Saying something is academically illegitimate (even if correct) does not justify abridging their academic freedom, but alleging that something is academically illegitimate does not constitute a violation of academic freedom (even if incorrect).

In my article, I note that what is and isn't "academically legitimate" will be contested, and offer several examples of potential speakers whom we might debate over. These ranged from BDS activists and the Black Panthers to David Horowitz and Gilad Atzmon. On this blog, I've applied this idea to two recent controversies: the hiring and unhiring of Steven Salaita by the University of Illinois, and the hosting of a talk at NYU law school by anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr..

In Professor Salaita's case, I argued that while academic freedom principles may demand that we object to his "unhiring", this in no way should entail sanctioning some of the horrific anti-Semitic comments he made on Twitter. Too many people were combining these cases, saying that he should be reinstated and that his comments were perfectly innocuous, and grouping both under the mantle of "academic freedom". But only the former part is -- the question about whether his comments were benign "criticism of Israel" or repulsive anti-Semitism is an academic legitimacy question -- it has no bearing on the academic freedom issue. Likewise, with NYU "academic freedom" means that whichever member(s) of the NYU community invited Kennedy ought not be punished or disciplined, and should not have been prospectively barred from issuing the invitation. Nonetheless, I think most of us feel that something went wrong when the invitation was extended. A member of a university the caliber of NYU should not think that anti-vaccination conspiracies are a legitimate topic of debate. Put simply, NYU community members should do better than that in picking their speakers.

All of this leads up to a recent editorial in the Daily Tarheel, the University of North Carolina's student newspaper, which has been getting far more negative attention than I think it deserves, primarily based on the same conflation I observed in my article. The editorial takes note of two recent speeches given at UNC and Duke by David Horowitz and Mitt Romney, respectively, who were invited by the local College Republican chapters. The editorial makes it absolutely clear that it does not support a ban on their speeches. Rather, it suggests that both speakers had "little intellectual heft to back up their cultural prominence," and did little "to promote serious discussions about controversial issues." In Horowitz's case, this was due to their appraisal of Horowitz as basically a racist hatemonger. In Romney's case, the criticism was more specific -- he was speaking on foreign policy, an arena in which he has no special background or expertise, and his talk was allegedly just a litany of partisan talking points rather than anything of significant substance. The editors suggested that the host of the event, Duke Professor and former Bush administration national security official Peter Feaver, would have actually provided an interesting and intellectually sophisticated (and, I'd add given his background, conservative) foreign policy address.

Since the editorial explicitly did not call for any ban, oversight, disciplinary action, or any other restriction on the groups which invited Horowitz and Romney (and in fact affirmed their right to speak on campus), theirs was an academic legitimacy critique, not an academic freedom one. Like the criticisms of NYU following the anti-vaccination presentation, the editorial urges that College Republicans do a better job picking speakers that will significantly advance scholarly debate. I'll tip my hand here and say that I agree with them in the case of Horowitz and disagree with respect to Romney, and I'll go into more detail on that in a moment (specifically, on why the case of a prominent politician's political speeches is in fact a debatable case).

But there were many, many people -- my friend Yair Rosenberg, Popehat, a Texas Supreme Court Justice, among others -- who contended that the editorial pressed for a "ban" on conservative speakers, or "pre-approval", or was an "Orwellian" attack on free speech. And they're wrong. And they're badly misreading the argument. The column does not endorse, and in fact specifically rejects, any abridgment of anybody's free speech rights in the course of its critique of the speaker-selection.

One response I got from some quarters upon making this observation was quite straightforward: the UNC editors are lying. They say they respect the free speech rights of the speakers, but they don't mean it -- if given the chance, they'd support prohibiting them outright. For starters, this is no way to have a discussion -- assuming that one's interlocutor is lying so as to avoid the awful possibility that they actually don't disagree with you. There's also nothing in their argument that suggests an internal inconsistency -- the position they're forwarding, that groups are free to select whatever speakers they want at their discretion but they should in the exercise of that discretion select intellectually serious people, is theoretically perfectly intelligible (even if we disagree over who is or isn't intellectually serious). Finally, the fact that they specifically recommend a different Republican (Feaver) as an example of someone who would be intellectually serious is evidence that their position is not simply a fig-leaf for banning speech they disagree with.

A few people tried to buttress this inference of insincerity by referencing other malign movements on college campuses that do explicitly call for censorship of "hate speech" or "triggering" ideas. But the presence of such forces makes it more imperative that we disaggregate those students who respond to disagreeable speech in the right way -- by arguing that it is bad speech and urging that it be replaced with better speech, while forswearing illegitimate instruments like formal speech restrictions.

Another argument I heard a lot was that even urging a group like the College Republicans to "voluntarily" recalibrate their assessment of what sorts of speakers are worthwhile is a form of censorship. Some people tied this argument to the aforementioned presumption that the "voluntary" part was a fiction, but many seemed to honestly believe that arguing in opposition to the College Republicans appraisals, and asking them appraise differently (better), was in of itself a form of censorship. This argument is nothing short of bizarre. Unless one offers an open-mic night or selects speakers by lot, the decision to invite a particular speaker obviously entails an appraisal of their quality. That's presumably why Mitt Romney the politician was invited instead of Mitt the audiovisual specialist -- the former is the sort of person who would give an interesting, informative, and intellectually stimulating talk. The latter would be unlikely to. The editorial is a claim that the group's appraisal was flawed, and they should try to improve it. Now, maybe that's wrong -- in fact I think it is, at least with respect to Romney -- but it's not a form of censorship.

Indeed, this position might the most dangerous from the standpoint of encouraging people to dissent by disagreeing, rather than by resort to actual censorship. When some folks try to promote censorship and say we should ban the speech we don't like, the common (and correct) response is to tell them that's the wrong remedy. The right remedy is to argue that the speech is wrong and try and persuade their fellows to adopt a different, better position. We might, of course, disagree on which positions are right, but that's the terrain in which the debate should be hashed out. But if people do exactly that and are told it is in fact tantamount to censorship, that's suggestive that the objection actually isn't to formal efforts to "ban" disagreeable speech, but to the speech being challenged at all.

Finally, some folks argued that the real problem was that the editorial was one-sided -- that it viewed only conservative speakers, and even a very mainstream conservative like Mitt Romney, as academically illegitimate. The allegation is that the student editors, in appraising what sorts of speakers say intellectually serious things, are biased. They mistake "conservative" for "unserious". Under this view, we might say that it's not the College Republicans who need to reassess what they consider to be academically legitimate, but the editors of the Daily Tarheel.

Importantly, while this argument may have force, it's not a censorship argument. It is a line-drawing argument. If the invited speaker had been, say, a Klan Wizard, nobody would be saying "they're biased -- they only criticized inviting Klansmen!" That we all agree that it would be perfectly proper to criticize a group that invited a Klansman, and to suggest that (notwithstanding their right to extend such invitations) they should exercise their discretion in a more thoughtful fashion the next time around, is evidence that we don't actually believe in the second objection ("persuasion efforts = censorship") and our problem here is a substantive one -- we think that (at least) Mitt Romney is not the sort of speaker who should be objected to as academically illegitimate, and we think the best explanation for why someone would think he is so objectionable is a mind clouded by political bias.

Now, even though this is not a "censorship" problem, this sort of behavior would still be worrisome. We should worry about ideological self-segregation and biased appraisals of discomforting evidence. Everything we know about motivated cognition suggests this is a real phenomenon. It is a different sort of problem than one centered on "free speech" or "censorship", and so framing the debate in those terms is misleading at best. But that does not mean this hypothesis isn't worth considering, just that even if proven it would not demonstrate any free speech failing on the part of the students (which, of course, is the core of the critique -- political bias is a much more mundane sort of failure than brute censorship justified by an Orwellian invocation of free speech).

Before we go running off with this sweeping conclusion of unchecked political bias, though, it's worth taking stock of the evidence. The opinion piece cites a grand total of three cases. One of them (Horowitz) I think some of the column's critics (e.g., Yair) agree could be validly indicted as academically illegitimate. Moreover, we know that the newspaper does not actually object to having any conservative speak -- it specifically said it believed that Professor Feaver would have been excellent. Basically, what we know is that the editors found two conservative speakers unserious, one (potential) conservative speaker serious, and zero liberal speakers either serious or unserious. I'm not exactly a crack social scientist, but even I know better than to draw a robust conclusion from an n of 3. Given such a small sample size, breaking down what it would mean to demonstrate a lack of bias only illuminates the absurdity. Instead of a 1-0 scoreboard, would writing a single column critiquing two liberal speakers (thus tying the game at 1-1) count? One tweeter claimed that the alleged failure of the paper to condemn Bill Bradley's 2000 commencement address was evidence of the double-standard. A compelling argument ... except that the current editors of the Tarheel were all of 5 years old when that happened.

By far the most compelling argument supporting the "political bias" position is that their critique incorporated Mitt Romney -- not a David Duke, not even a David Horowitz, not an extremist or fringe figure of any sort, but a perfectly mainstream member of the Republican Party. As I mentioned, this is the point where I get off the Tarheel's train, but even here I don't think their position is transparently ludicrous nor solely attributable to ideological blinders. To explain why, indulge me in one more story.

When I was an undergraduate, I almost never attended talks delivered by politicians. This was not because I was politically incurious (I started this blog even before I entered Carleton). And it wasn't because I was averse to hearing competing viewpoints -- the first publication I wrote for was Carleton's conservative outlet (the Carleton Observer), and for quite some time I was a co-panelist on KRLX's political debate talkshow (a 2v2 conservative versus liberal format). Rather, I didn't attend because I found such talks to be breathtakingly boring. The claims and arguments presented were not intellectually rigorous, they were sophists, purveyors of partisan drivel designed to rev up a crowd or score cheap points. I never felt like I was learning anything useful from them about the best policies on the topic d'jour. They were, in short, intellectually unserious. And so I thought it was a waste of time to listen to them. I'd have rather we brought in real thinkers -- conservative or liberal. And whether they showed up or not, I certainly read them on my own time (my senior thesis was predominantly inspired by a major conservative legal theorist, Michael McConnell).

Now some of this is tempermental to me -- there is a reason why, despite my keen interest in political issues, I chose an academic route while elected office has never held the slightest appeal. I never joined and had no affiliation with the Carleton Democrats for precisely this reason -- party speech, organization, and activism was to me a paradigmatic example of doing political debate poorly, and I wanted no part of it. I know I'm not the only person who thinks like this -- whose first instinct upon seeing that a politician (of whichever party) is speaking is to roll their eyes. This is often true for people I nominally agree with as well as those I don't.

The Daily Tarheel did not argue that Mitt Romney was inherently incredible or that someone with his politics is obviously unserious. Its argument was twofold: first, that Romney has no particular foreign policy expertise, and two, that the speech he actually gave was pure political pageantry that contributed nothing to any serious foreign policy understanding. The latter part, no doubt, is not unique to Mr. Romney or persons of his party -- most politicians speak like that most of the time. It's their job. But in academic environments maybe we should expect more of ourselves, and look to people who can provide more than a grandstand.

The counterargument to this -- and what I ultimately find persuasive -- is that someone with Mr. Romney's background is "interesting" no matter what substantive views he presents, simply because it is useful to know what major politicians or world leaders think (even if, depressingly, the answer is "they think in terms of cute soundbites and platitudes"). Mitt Romney is meaningfully distinct from other persons who talk in terms of cute soundbites and platitudes, because he's Mitt Romney -- former presidential candidate and influential Republican. That, for me, is sufficient to render his talk academically legitimate -- it is a useful part of an interesting intellectual discussion simply because there are important intellectual discussions to be had about what major world leaders and politicians are saying about important issues. But the opposing position outlined above is one that I would have had a lot of sympathy for as an undergraduate, and not for any partisan reason. I don't think we do ourselves a favor when we pretend that political talking points packaged for a 30 second TV clip represent the best we can do in terms of policy reasoning.

I phrased this last issue as a motivated cognition story, and I should add that I think that's still very likely to be in play here. For example, motivated cognition may make liberals more likely to think that a Romney speech is pure useless talking point, while a Obama speech is perhaps a mix of interesting information and partisan drivel. That's obviously worth watching out for, and it's important. It reflects a serious problem across all of public deliberation that extends way beyond the editorial staff of one college newspaper.

But this debate has been framed in terms of censorship, in terms of free speech, in terms of banning thoughts that we don't like. And that is a misreading of the editorial and grossly unfair to its authors. These persons were quite clear that they had no quarrel with the academic freedom rights of the College Republicans or the persons they chose to invite. They criticized their intellectual contributions and suggested that other speakers would be more beneficial participants in the debate. They may be wrong on the merits. But they framed the debate along the right dimensions, and conflating a substantive line-drawing disagreement with the fight against censorship is a dangerous mistake to make.

Extra-Diverse Democrats, Part II

Back when we were still in the throes of the 2008 Democratic primary, I predicted that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton would add additional "diversity" to their ticket if nominated (that is, both would select a White male VP).

The reason is that there is a very predictable media narrative that will form if two members of politically underrepresented groups appear on the Democratic ticket. One person is ground-breaking and history-making. Two people, by contrast, is an "affirmative action" choice and proof the Democrats are in thrall to "interest groups." If Obama picks a woman, it will undoubtedly be cast as "appeasing" women's groups who were ready to see Clinton break the ultimate glass ceiling. If Clinton picks a Black running mate, same thing, except replace NOW with the NAACP. This is what Derrick Bell calls the unspoken limit on affirmative action. Even if at first the diversity is applauded, at some point folks will start getting uncomfortable with too many women or people of color.

It's hard to say I was vindicated, given the n of 1. But I think the reasoning holds up, particularly given Wayne LaPierre's comments on Hillary Clinton's presidential run: "Eight Years Of One Demographically Symbolic President Is Enough."

Pre-Doctoral Roundup

Berkeley, California has been the fifth city I've lived in over the past five years (in order: Chicago, Champaign, Minneapolis, Washington, Berkeley). That city per year streak comes to a close, as Jill and I are sticking around in Berkeley for at least a few more years yet. I'm enrolling in Berkeley's Political Science Ph.D. program. Moreover, the law school is extending my fellowship (and funding) for at least one more year -- which (in addition to making graduate school considerably less impoverishing than it would otherwise be) means that I can keep my connection to the law community even as I embark on this new adventure.

It will be a bit odd to move over to the demand-side of the education marketplace. But I'm excited to get started, and excited to continue my involvement in the Berkeley community.

* * *

Why "Ashkenormativity" Isn't a Thing. I did not expect this post to be good, and was pleasantly surprised. Not sure I'm ultimately persuaded, but very thought-provoking.

I get the technical objection Justin McBrayer is raising here, but I think "facts are things subject to proof, opinions are matters of pure belief" works as a rough-and-ready distinction suitable for elementary school students. And as one of those darned millennial skeptics of the existence of moral facts, I am obviously dubious that such a belief is responsibility for all the ills of Kids These Days.

My former colleague (and longtime electricity market expert) Bud Earley lays out two views on how distributed generation will effect electric utilities.

Interesting article on how various civil rights centered groups view the ongoing debates over standardized testing. This is, as the article notes, one of the few areas where the mainstream left really is pretty fractured.

Did Hillary Clinton steal Hadassah's logo? Spoiler: No! "H" with a red and blue color scheme is not as original as one might think.

A prominent activist on behalf of undocumented immigrants who warned he would be killed if deported back to Mexico, was killed after being deported back to Mexico. This sort of scenario was, by far, the worst part about clerking. There were many circumstances where I felt pretty confident that a regular person -- not always a saint, but not a monster either -- would be killed if sent back to their home country. But under the laws of the United States and the precedents of the 8th Circuit, their asylum claims were doomed to fail. And so I issued recommendations that I basically knew meant that regular people would be violently killed. It is something that everyone who touches our immigration system has to deal with.

Legitimizing the Anti-Vax Movement

The New York University law school recently hosted an event featuring promiennt anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy Jr.. Many folks are upset that this position would be given a platform at an august institution like NYU. And I'm inclined to agree, but this also lets me reiterate the point I made in my Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy mini-article.

The objection to Kennedy speaking is not an "academic freedom" problem, so long as everyone agrees that whichever member of the NYU community that invited Kennedy has the right to extend such an invitation. The objection is that believing like the anti-vaccination movement is within the bounds of legitimate academic discourse is suggestive of a severe academic or intellectual failing. Academic freedom is a constraint on how we can remedy such a failing -- we cannot cancel the speech or discipline the organizer. But it is perfectly fair game to argue that treating the anti-vaccination like even a credible (much less correct) participant in public debate is nonetheless wrongful, and that NYU's intellectual community malfunctioned in an important way when it thought otherwise.

And that, after all, is the real objection isn't it? We don't hear flat-earthers on college campuses not because they're banned, and neither (just) because they're "disagreeable" in some sense, but because there is widespread intersubjective in the academic community that such views are not worthy of scholarly attention, and a professor who did think that such a view was even thought-provoking would seem to be making an obvious misstep (even if he had the "academic freedom" to do just that). And so it should be for this. It's not that anyone thinks NYU endorses Kennedy's opinion. It may well think he is seriously mistaken. But hosting him suggests that his position is "in bounds", the sort of thing that scholars debate over. And it shouldn't be -- any more than "scientific" creationism or Holocaust denial should be.

Too Serious For Discussion

My stance on recognizing Turkey's genocide of the Armenians at the turn of the 20th century is pretty straight-forward: do it. Turkey is embarrassing itself far more by throwing a temper tantrum anytime anyone acknowledges historical fact than it would be if it actually decided to reckon with its past in an honest and forthright manner. Turkey needs to grow up, and all of us have an obligation to the truth. This isn't a tough call.

So for the most part, Turkey's latest fit over this issue -- stemming from Pope Francis' commemoration of the genocide -- is not particularly interesting. I note it here only to add to a growing collection I've noticed regarding how people use "moral seriousness" as a defensive move against moral critique:

“I don’t support the word genocide being used by a great religious figure who has many followers,” said Mucahit Yucedal, 25. “Genocide is a serious allegation.”

Now genocide is a serious allegation. But that, on its own, is no reason for Pope Francis to keep silent. If anything, it is more imperative that the Pope break through the silence that has emerged around this issue so that the victims can be properly remembered. But it is and remains interesting how people routinely argue that because an allegation is "serious", it should not be made at all.

"...Because It's a Democracy."

There are horrible things happened at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, which is currently under attack from ISIS forces. Prior to ISIS, Yarmouk had suffered attacks from the current Syrian government headed by Bashar Assad.

As these brutal atrocities unfold, a few folks have argued that the relative silence when Palestinians die this way, as oppose to at Israel's hand, exposes a double-standard. Now we should be clear that, as the above links demonstrate, there are plenty of folks paying attention to what's going on in Yarmouk -- particularly among organs of the Palestinian government itself. But it is fair to say that Yarmouk does not seem to be drawing the eye of the external "solidarity" sorts here in the West. Aren't they hypocritical? Against that view, Batya Ungar-Sargon trots out the familiar chestnut that supposedly explains away the problem: Israel is a democratic state. Of course it is held to a higher standard than ISIS. Do we really want it not to be?

There clearly is something to this, and so I don't want this to be read as a full-throated dissent. But there are several problems with this analysis, and a lot of it has to do with who the supposedly hypocritical critics are.

First of all, it is not the case that there are not other democratic states that do wrong towards local ethnic others or minorities. Even in the Middle East one has Turkey, and after the Arab Spring there are other states in the Middle East that have at least something of a democratic character who do not come in for the same sorts of criticism.

Second of all, it is worth asking why being a "democratic state" should matter at all? At the extremes, this risks a sticky slope problem, whereby precisely because Israel is relatively good on issues of human and minority rights (compared to, say, ISIS, or Iran, or Syria), it gets treated worse among some sectors. But putting that aside, the argument alleges that we justly expect more from Israel, as a democratic state, than we do of roving thug gangs like ISIS. "People don’t get outraged at terrorists because that's what terrorists do: commit terror," as Ungar-Sargon puts it. And those of us with a particular stake in Israel's behavior -- because we are Jewish, or Zionist, for example -- have a particular and specific interest in having a country we care about conform its conduct to standards we can be proud of.

What's notable about this argument is who it is focused on. It is perpetrator-perspective logic -- it focuses on the alleged wrongdoer, not the victims. And there is a place for that, certainly, particularly where we very much care about the supposed perpetrator and want it to reform. This explains why I write a lot more about Israel's wrongs (and rights) than those of, say, Gabon or Bulgaria. I have a personal connection to Israel that is relatively unique, and so it makes perfect sense for me to talk about it more. It's the old caring equally problem.

But not everyone has that relation to the Palestinian situation. Some folks are concerned about this not because Israel is the alleged perpetrator, but because Palestinians are the victims. For them, it shouldn't much matter whether the victimizers are folks we should "hold to a higher standard" or not. It's the "Palestine Solidarity Committee", for example, not the "Make Israel Live Up To Its Values Committee". In short, if you care about Palestinians qua Palestinians; not as a vector for being critical of Israel, then the "it's a democracy" excuse falls by the wayside.

Finally, the other reason why this apologia sometimes rankles, though, is because it feels very disingenuous. After all, many of those being accused of hypocrisy do not really believe that Israel is a democracy, or even a valid state at all. They do not speak or act as if they are trying to get a basically liberal state to live up to its stated commitments. They think the liberal commitments are an outright lie and the entire endeavor is fundamentally brutal. In short, while I see a very substantial difference between Israel and ISIS, they don't share that perspective -- hence the popularity of the #JSIL hashtag which explicitly draws the equivalence. For people who have long spoken about Israel as thought it were an ISIS-type organization -- engaged in the rhetoric of demonization and apocalyptic violence -- silence when an actual ISIS comes along can't be chalked up to understanding of the distinction.

All of this goes back to a point I've stressed for a long time, which is that the trouble is not and never has been with people "critical of Israel" in some generic sense. It has always been particular criticisms made in particular ways in particular contexts. The complaint here isn't being leveled at persons who criticize Israel in the context of it being a liberal democracy. It's being leveled at those who have sought to portray Israel as the Fourth Reich. Those people genuinely have something to answer for -- but then, for those people it has always been less about "Palestinian solidarity" and more about beating up on the Jews.

Having My Back

Here’s a message I got recently: “Anybody who helps or even protects the enemy Jew is a traitor. This is not a biased opinion, but an objective matter of fact. On the matter of enemies and traitors we must be clear where we stand. The punishment is DEATH.”

As a Jew, I'm grateful to anyone who takes time out of their life to be an advocate against anti-Semitism and in favor of Jewish equality. But I'm particularly grateful to those who do so in circumstances where such an act puts them in quite real physical peril. So I just want to say thank you to Siavosh Derakhti, a Swedish Muslim who founded "Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia" (formerly "Young Muslims Against Anti-Semitism"). As the above quote makes clear, this is not a risk-free action on his part. So it is worth noting, and it is worth praising.

A Hack at the Times of Israel

A piece supposedly penned by an Australian Jewish leader which called for mass murder of Palestinians supposedly justified by Talmudic laws has been pulled by the Times of Israel, and the putative author has announced that "I didn't write that shit!" He is contending that the TOI website was hacked to put up the inflammatory piece under his name.

I'm assuming for sake of argument that this was a hack. Obviously it might not -- this would hardly be the first time someone penned something awful then yelled "hacks!" to get out of trouble -- but given the supposed authors' prior work (which is not remotely similar to this column) and his non-religious background that makes a discourse on Talmudic ethics unlikely ("I am a secular atheist ffs."), most people seem to be in agreement that he was not in fact the actual author.

That said, folks are wondering if TOI has a quality control issue. This is the second time that the TOI has been embroiled in a "call for genocide" controversy; the first involved a program whereby certain contributors could post their columns without any editorial oversight. This one is different since apparently the author, wasn't, but some are contending it still raises questions because presumably somebody on the TOI staff had to approve the column before it was posted (this was the reform that was imposed after the last controversy). I would point out, though, that whether that's true depends on the nature of the hack -- it is possible that somebody just impersonated Bornstein to gain access to his credentials, but it is also possible that a hacker was able to unilaterally put up a post without any actual staffer's permission.

All of that being said -- what a terrible, terrible thing to do. Outside of actual violence, it's difficult to imagine something more awful. Not only did the perpetrator damage -- perhaps irreversibly -- an innocent man's reputation. Not only did they give the impression that views such as this were mainstream in Jewish institutions. But they brought more hate into the world. The world is a terrible place, often, and often it is because people do tragically believe awful things about their fellow humans. We have enough of that in reality to not bring in extra just to prove a point. It is a terrible thing that was done here, and I hope the perpetrator is caught. And I hope that there are legal remedies against them, because they deserve to be punished severely for all the people who they hurt.

8th Circuit Releases Gay Marriage Panel

It won't really matter, because the Supreme Court will have the last word soon enough, but the 8th Circuit has released its panel assignment for the pending challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, and North Dakota. The trio hearing the case will be Judges Roger Wollman, Lavenski Smith, and Duane Benton.

The best thing you can say about this panel, if you favor same-sex marriage rights, is that it isn't the worse panel one could draw from the 8th Circuit. Judge Gruender isn't on it, for instance, nor is Judge Colloton or Chief Judge Riley. That said, I think it is very unlikely that this panel will produce anything but a 3-0 decision upholding the bans (unless the Supreme Court instructs otherwise).

All three judges are Republican appointees -- not surprising, since the GOP has an 8-3 advantage amongst active judges. Judge Wollman, a Reagan appointee, is probably the most moderate of the three, while Judge Benton (G.W. Bush) is the most conservative. Judge Smith (G.W. Bush) is in the middle, and has shown a bit of an iconoclastic in discrimination cases in the past. That said, Judge Smith is rumored to have his eye on a Supreme Court nomination if a seat opens up during a Republican administration. And in any event, it would take a more than a bit of iconoclasm for Judge Smith to side with the plaintiffs here, given his voting record and general social conservatism. Basically, while I can imagine a world in which Judge Wollman and/or Smith voted to strike down gay marriage bans, neither seems particularly likely to do so and both of them doing it at the same time seems like a real stretch.

So the 8th Circuit will likely join the minority camp on this issue, and we can only hope that the Supreme Court will correct the error.

California Court Upholds Yoga

A California appellate court unanimously upheld the teaching of Yoga courses in public schools, rejecting challenges that it was actually a form of Hinduism and thereby an Establishment Clause violation. I think this decision is exactly right and the opinion is well-reasoned and persuasive. While it is true that Yoga seems to have some religious roots, that is true of a great many elements of secular society. Religious concepts and ideals often percolate into surrounding society and become important for entirely non-sectarian reasons. This is why my public high school can teach the King James Bible in its English courses (as a piece of literature, not theology) -- the KJV is very important to our literary heritage in ways that extend beyond any religious or theological teaching. Other entities which have religious roots but no ongoing religious component include the days of the week (who do you think "Thursday" is named after?) and the sport of lacrosse. In this context, the court found that the Yoga courses in the school had no religious component, but were entirely secularized teachings focusing on mindfulness, flexibility, stress-relief, and other like concerns.

However, in my ongoing and futile crusade to police non-lawyers from too-eagerly making pronouncements about matters of law, I will cry foul on Jezebel's coverage of the decision -- particularly the following line:

The family plans to appeal the decision because simply opting out of ritualized prayers to the sun god yoga isn’t good enough.

No, no, no, no, no. The Yoga program is constitutional because its non-religious, not because it is non-compulsory. If it was religious, the existence of an opt-out provision would not and should not save it (as the court itself observes in a footnote). The reasons why should be immediately obvious if we substitute in a prayer event -- the Church/State harm wouldn't be resolved via an announcement that "all the people who don't love Christ, feel free to conspicuously refrain from participation". This is something the Supreme Court has be quite emphatic about, and rightly so. So while I appreciate the sense that the parents in this action are being hyper-sensitive (or perhaps more likely, concern-trolling), this is not actually a valid response to the claim (and again, the court here explicitly stated that the voluntary nature of the program was not a factor in its decision).