Josh Shapiro Would Make a Fine VP and Probably Shouldn't Be Picked

There's a job opening for the position of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and a list of possibilities is beginning to emerge. The main names I've seen floated are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

As far as I'm concerned, all of these are fine choices. None of them are blue dog quasi-GOPers. None of them are DSA-adjacent fire breathers. They're all solid, mainline Democrats with a lot to offer. Anecdotally, the name that seems to get the most enthusiasm in my circles is Senator Kelly; a poll of DNC delegates gave a plurality to Shapiro (albeit lagging significantly behind "undecided").

With respect to Shapiro, the case in favor is pretty obvious. He stomped to victory in the keystone key swing state of Pennsylvania in 2022, and remains quite popular in what is still a battleground state. He's generally done a good job a governor, and his out-and-proud Jewishness not only helps dissipates bad faith GOP grandstanding about protecting the Jews, it has also provoked plenty of "show us how you really feel" antisemitism on the part of Republicans whose love for "Jews" is matched only by their hatred for (actual, real-life) Jews. Plus, he provides a model of liberal religiosity which helps challenge the monopoly right-wing conservative Christians have sought to claim over the mantle of faith. It will not surprise you that I like Shapiro a lot, and his was the first name that came to mind for me when I thought of my preferred VP choice.

Unfortunately, Shapiro also seems to be getting the most amount of pushback of any VP contender from the single-issue (anti-)Israel voter crowd, who have tagged Shapiro has having an especially problematic pro-Israel outlook.

The entire dynamic surrounding the Biden-to-Harris switch and how it relates to the burbling pro-Palestinian sentiment amongst many younger Democrats is interesting. Over the past few months we saw quite a few people loudly aver they could never bring themselves to vote for "genocide Joe" because of the way in which he and his administration have enabled Israel's assault in Gaza. The closer we got to election day, the higher stakes this game of chicken became -- will they blink or will they actually usher in Trump 2.0 -- but now that Biden is off the ballot many of these persons seem to be happy to return to the Democratic column. Now, objectively speaking, Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and, minor rhetorical gestures aside, has not meaningfully separated herself from Biden's Israel policy -- if you genuinely believe that the Biden administration's policy regarding Israel is monstrous and unforgivable, Harris, as the second-highest ranking official in that administration, should be tainted too. Practically speaking, though, not having Biden be the name on the ballot has offered people who had perhaps overindulged in self-righteous chest thumping and consequently talked themselves into a corner a face-saving offramp. If they were fully genuine in what they say they believe about the Biden administration's choices being "unforgivable",* they'd be equally indignant about voting for Harris. That they're not suggests there was no small measure of performance going on, but for my part, I'm happy not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome back.

But while this cadre may be willing to let bygones be bygones with Harris, many of them have seemingly decided that Shapiro is going to be the stand-in for the type of pro-Israel Democrat they cannot stand. Part of me recoils at this. Shapiro's positions actually don't seem that far off-line from those of his peers (he enforced an anti-BDS law that also exists in 37 other states?!?), and the effort to try and draw distinctions from how he has spoken of, e.g., antisemitism at pro-Palestine protests compared to how other analogous Democrats have spoken about it feels very thin. To be honest, the congealing anti-Shapiro backlash smacks of a very predictable and unlovely hyperpolicing of Jews-qua-Jews on Israel, whose every jot and tittle on the matter will be pored over with exacting and unforgiving scrutiny in a manner that just isn't imposed upon non-Jews. Non-Jews can have unacceptable positions on Israel, but only Jews become unacceptable for things like "her book has an Israeli in it." Shapiro is getting heightened scrutiny here not because his positions on Israel are significantly different from those of Kelly or Beshear or Cooper, but because he's a very visibly Jewish politician and so is presumed to need greater scrutiny.

That's not good. But even though it's not good, I think that for better or for worse it does give a good reason not to pick Shapiro as Harris' VP. Under circumstances where there are many good choices for the VP candidate, the fact that one in particular runs the risk of cheesing off a substantial contingent of wavering Democratic voters is reason enough not to choose him, regardless of whether the reason he runs that risk is "fair" or not. It'd be different if we were in a situation where there was a dearth of good options, or Shapiro was somehow the obvious best choice, or if the "anti-Shapiro" cadre was declaring itself ready to fight to the death over every remotely plausible mainstream Democratic choice or trying to sabotage any potential VP who wasn't all in on BDS. But we're not in that situation. The other Democratic alternatives to Shapiro are also good. Their positions on Israel are probably not that meaningfully distinct from Shapiro's. If I'm happy with a lot of people, and some people whose votes matter are particularly unhappy with one person, there's little reason not to pick someone that makes us all happy.

Throughout this electoral cycle, people in my position have insisted to fellow progressives that the importance of winning in 2024 is too important to take one's ball and go home the instant things don't go your way. That applies here too, but what it means right now -- when no VP has been picked -- is that it'd be unreasonable for me to die on the hill of picking Josh Shapiro for VP, even if I think he'd be a good pick, and even if I think the rationale upon which people are anti-Shapiro is wrongheaded or even pernicious. I may well be right. But winning in 2024 is more important than vindicating my correctness is. If Shapiro gets picked, I'll happily rally behind him and I hope everyone else does too. But there's no shame in Kamala Harris picking someone else if she thinks they will do a better job uniting the progressive community towards the goal of winning this November.

* On that note, I'll give, if not credit, then at least points for consistency to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is one of the few Democrats who self-consciously declined to endorse Harris following Biden's withdrawal. Agree with it or not, her position was not a performance.

The Israeli Right Wants to End America's Israel Bipartisanship

Bibi spoke before Congress today, giving his usual bluster in the face of growing Democratic discontent over his hard-right governance and naked disregard for Palestinian life and rights. Well over a hundred congressional Democrats boycotted his speech, and even some who attended gave scathing reviews (my favorite comment came from Rep. Jerry Nadler, who bluntly described Netanyahu as "the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago.").

One comment I've heard many times is that Bibi has been recklessly pissing away the historic bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed in Congress to tie himself ever closer to the GOP. This has been occurring since at least the Obama administration and only seems to be accelerating. Why is he taking this step? At the bad place, Abe Silberstein hypothesizes that this is a "calculated" decision, predicated on the notion that Democrats will eventually abandon Israel anyway. I agree it is calculated (which doesn't mean it isn't reckless), but I actually might make an even more controversial point -- Bibi wants to drive Democrats away. The breakdown of the consensus is, for him, a positive good.

The rationale is straightforward. Certainly, in an "ideal" world, both American political parties would support Israel in whatever it does, all the time. But in reality, a bipartisan "consensus" around Israel is going to be inherently moderating -- Democrats prevent it from drifting too far to the right, and Republicans from it drifting too far to the left. It's no accident that in the early 2000s (the apex of the consensus), Democrats and Republicans alike generally coalesced around things like support for two states, veneration of Oslo, and so on. There was, certainly, a lot less in the way of Democratic support for sharp and harsh Israel critique, but you were also less likely to see Republicans openly come out in favor of occupation forever. It was the epitome of a mushy middle.

The problem is that Bibi is not part of the mushy middle, and it is affirmatively bad for him if American politics on Israel sit on moderate, middle ground. A theme I've hit on repeatedly in my writing is that polarization actively benefits extremists, and will be pursued by them, even if it reduces overall levels of popular support for their broadly-defined "camp". Polarization gives more space for extremists to flourish, and Bibi is nothing if not a right-wing extremist.

Imagine you're Bibi and you have a choice between two worlds: one where 8 out of 10 Americans support Israel, but they're evenly divided between "left" and "right", and another where only 5 out of 10 Americans are pro-Israel, but 4 of them are conservative. He's going to pick the latter, because in the latter universe the pro-Israel faction is dominated by conservatives, and so will be a far more hospitable environment to his brand of unabashed and unapologetic conservatism. In the first world, the parameters of pro-Israel are set via a balance of liberal and conservative interests. In the second, they're set solely by conservatives -- even as the median position of Americans shifts away from support for Israel, the median position of self-described pro-Israel Americans shifts sharply to the right. 

For that reason, it should not surprise to see Bibi and his allies seemingly doing everything they can to alienate American Democrats even in the face of stalwart support from Joe Biden. Are they spitting in his eye? Yes, and intentionally so. For them, having Democrats as part of the "pro-Israel" camp is more constraining than it is enabling. They'd much rather the parameters of pro-Israel be set solely by the right -- the better to consolidate their own power.

Harris '24

To be honest, I didn't have strong feelings about whether Biden should or shouldn't drop out of the race. But his decision to step down should be seen as an incredible act of selflessness and statesmanship. Joe Biden has had an amazing array of accomplishments as President. But this step was entirely about ensuring that the fascist maniac atop the cult of personality that's become the GOP does not return to the White House in January, and he deserves great praise for that.

The media, it seems clear, is not ready for the circus to leave town. It is bombarding us with calls for an open convention or speed primary or some nonsense about picking Mitt Romney -- anything to maintain the frenzy of Democrats in chaos. But overwhelmingly, the reaction I'm seeing from most Democrats is relief: relief that we have a resolution, and relief that we're in good hands with Harris. Whereas the drumbeat to get Biden out the race, while partially media generated, did reflect at some level of genuine concern from actual Democrats of note following the debate disaster, right now it's going to be very hard to maintain a narrative of Dems in Disarray given the rapidity with which the party coalesced behind Harris. Indeed, virtually all the chatter I've seen about the need to Avoid A Coronation!!! comes from the usual pundit has-beens -- I'm seeing essentially no appetite from any Democrat of note to offer themselves up as an alternative to Harris, and she's rapidly securing endorsements from every sector of the party. Kamala Harris is going to be the nominee, Democrats seem very happy that Harris is going to be the nominee, and I'm excited to rally behind her and return her to the White House.

The next few months won't be easy. For example, we can expect the media's interest in the age of candidates to disappear as rapidly as its interest in classified document security. But Harris is a good woman, a good leader, and a good politician. We can do this. Let's get to it.

The Settlements Gave Us the ICJ Decision

The International Court of Justice has released a long-anticipated advisory opinion regarding the status of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. You can read all of the opinions here, but the top-line conclusion is that the occupation is at this point unlawful, because Israel's actions have made clear that it is not acting in the context of a military occupation at all -- it is acting as if to acquire the underlying territory as part of its own domain. And my overall conclusion is that, while the opinion sprawls and has wide implications, ultimately the vast majority of its conclusions can be laid at the feet of the settlement project. That's what gives the opinion its analytical force, the subject of the main "remedy", and that's what makes it not ultimately a matter of Israel's genuine self-defense and security interests.

To be sure, there is more to the opinion than just an indictment of the settlement project, or even the occupation-qua-occupation. Another aspect sure to get much commentary is the gesture at characterizing Israel's conduct in the West Bank as potentially apartheid -- the opinion was (it seems almost certainly intentionally) ambiguous on this point, and amongst the concurrences one sees both "yes, that's absolutely what it's saying" and "no, we're definitely not saying that". There's also the question of how to apply the ruling to the Gaza Strip -- while nominally covering all of the Palestinian territories, the opinion is primarily focused on the situation in the West Bank, recognizing that Gaza is a different and more complex circumstance for a host of reasons, ranging from Israel's withdrawal in 2005 to the current ongoing war. For the most part, the opinion largely accepts that different analysis will need to be applied there, and so it's fair to bracket that off.

Still, even "just" talking about the illegality of the occupation of the West Bank, the ruling is bombshell enough. Ultimately, the opinion reflects an essential and oft-misunderstood attribute of Israel's relationship with the Palestinian territories: while pro-Israel commentators often treat the language of "occupation" as delegitimizing Israel's activities (cf. Bibi's response to the ruling: "The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land"), in reality occupation is the most plausible justification for Israel's activities in the Palestinian territories. When one is in the midst of military hostilities with another power, one is allowed to have a military presence on their territory, and one is allowed to impose not infinite but substantial restrictions on the local civilian population to account for security necessities, and one is certainly not required to give the civilian nationals of the opposing power citizenship in your country.

But those prerogatives are predicated on the occupation not being permanent; it is not a claim of permanent jurisdictional right over the underlying territory, it is a temporary state of affairs tied to ongoing hostilities with another power. The ruling of the ICJ can be summarized as a conclusion that Israel is no longer acting as if that was the case. The settlement enterprise, in particular, is the smoking gun evidence here: it is not only clearly impermissible under the law of occupation, but it has nothing to do with effectuating military security in the context of an ongoing state of belligerency and everything to do with acting as if the territories in question are part of Israel's normal domestic territory -- the settlers are, in most every respect, treated identically as if they were Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv. Through the settlements, Israel is taking actions that are fundamentally at odds with it treating the West Bank as being under a temporary occupation, and so it cannot claim the protections international law accords to occupying powers to take actions that otherwise would be obvious breaches of principles of sovereignty and Palestinian self-determination.

For my part, I've only had the opportunity to quickly skim the various opinions, and I'm not an international law expert. There were a cluster of judges who sought to distinguish in various ways between the illegality of Israel's conduct in the West Bank (which they find conclusively established) and the inherent illegality of Israel's presence in the West Bank (which they would not reach), and on my quick read they make a valid distinction. The idea, in essence, is that while it is clear enough that what Israel is actually doing in the West Bank cannot be justified via the security framework of a belligerent occupation (indeed, it openly defies this framework) -- the settlement enterprise being the obvious example -- this doesn't mean that it's impossible in concept for Israel to do things in the Palestinian territories that would be consistent with a genuine military occupation. Israel and Palestine are still in a state of belligerency, and in such a context there likely will be causes where actions could be justified under the framework of a (genuine) military occupation. This probably has more salience in Gaza than in the West Bank, and it further ratifies a point I've made earlier -- that as horrible as the happenings are in Gaza, the West Bank if anything represents an easier case of Israeli injustice: the former at least nominally can be fitted into the framework of a military confrontation subject to a national right of self-defense, the latter appears to be a pure unadulterated land grab.

But it's worth emphasizing how little this matters. Several judges chastised the majority for not paying due heed to Israel's genuine security concerns. It's a fair shot, but the payoff is that even being attentive to these concerns would not actually change much (as evidenced by the fact that even the aforementioned "cluster" of judges ended up agreeing with the majority on all or nearly all substantive points). One can wholeheartedly agree that Israel has valid self-defense rights that are operative in the Palestinian territories, and nonetheless conclude "but there are a host of Israeli actions in the West Bank that have nothing to do with security; it's about taking over territory" (indeed, the fact that recognizing the security concerns would have been more or less "free" does, arguably, validate the Israeli suspicion that the ICJ majority genuinely doesn't care about them -- they do not downplay Israel's security needs as a necessary component of their legal analysis, but rather wholly gratuitously).

Once again, the settlements are central to the point: one can wholeheartedly acknowledge that Israel has a raft of genuine security concerns vis-a-vis the Palestinian territories, and still easily come to the conclusion that the settlements evidence an orientation towards those territories that is acquisitive in character. After all, does anyone truly believe that the settlements are a security measure, as opposed to what they manifestly appear to be on face: an effort to establish Israeli civilian control over new swaths of territory? Once in a blue moon one hears the argument (something about setting a "buffer"), but any jurist would be fully justified in dismissing it as specious; and in any event it is a tactic decisively forbidden by the international legal framework that recognizes many other ways in which an occupying power can entrench its security (just not via the transfer of its civilian population into the occupied territory).

Over and over again, we return to the same point: it's all about the settlements. It is the settlements that show Israel doesn't view its occupation as temporary; it is the settlements that demonstrate the unequal treatment of the two civilian populations that reside in the Palestinian territories; it is the settlements that falsify the notion that the deprivation of Palestine's self-determination rights is solely attributable to the regrettable necessities of ongoing military belligerency. The settlements are the problem. Saying that doesn't make figuring out what to do about them any clearer -- if anything, the deep ties the settlement enterprise has to the "regular" Israeli state only accentuates the magnitude of the crisis -- but nonetheless: the settlements are what makes this entire machine run. I don't know what the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would look like if there were no settlements, but it would look different and would and should be treated differently under international law.

There are many facets of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which are "complicated", which raise difficult questions of security versus self-determination, where compelling but seemingly irreconcilable national narratives stand at an impasse. But the settlements are simple. They are not annexes of a military occupation, justified by an ongoing state of belligerency. They are an attempt by Israel to exercise permanent control over territories it acquired by force, in defiance of clear international legal rules that prohibit exactly that. One can quibble around the edges of bits and pieces of the ICJ's ruling. But the core conclusion that the settlement project is not part of a military belligerency but an effort by Israel to establish indefinite control over Palestinian territories under a separate and unequal legal regime is to my mind impossible to gainsay.

The ICJ's decision is a bitter pill for many friends of Israel to swallow. But if there is one bit of solace they can take, it lies once again in recognizing the true significance of occupation -- it presupposes two states, both of which have unquestionable legitimacy and a right to exist in their own sphere, neither of which has the right to displace the other. Israel has no right to settlements in Palestinian territories, but Israel in its pre-1967 borders is neither a settlement nor a colony: it is a validated member of the community of nations, whose existence is exactly as sacrosanct as any other country, Palestine included. In his separate opinion, ICJ President Nawaf Salam observed this reciprocity: the entirety of the international legal framework which governs this opinion, including the notion that Palestine is being unlawfully occupied by Israel, is based on the original UN partition resolution in 1948 which "provided for the creation of two independent states on the territory of Palestine, one Arab and the other Jewish."

It was on the basis of [this] resolution ... that both Israel and Palestine proclaimed their existence.... This resolution forms a whole, whose terms must be read together and inseparably. In other words, neither Israel nor Palestine can claim to derive rights from the resolution while rejecting or ignoring the rights of the other party enshrined in the same text.

Emphasis added. The same commitment to self-determination that validated the creation of a Jewish state in Israel demands acknowledgment of the Palestinians' right to their own state. And vice versa. Those who indulge in nightmarish fantasies of the expulsion and extirpation of Israel-qua-Israel, who see the entirety of Israel as an "occupation" and the entirety of the land as Palestinian by right, are not implementing today's decision, they are flouting it.

The ICJ's opinion is a historic victory for the cause of Palestinian independence. But -- or, in my preference, and -- it continues to insist that the legal grounding for both Palestinian and Israeli liberation depends on, and cannot be separated from, parallel recognition of the other. In this critical -- albeit sure to be overlooked point -- the ICJ's decision is emphatic and unimpeachable in holding that freeing Palestine not only need not, but must not, take the form of replacing, displacing, or otherwise eliminating the state of Israel.

Giving In to Fascism

"We have to fight the impatience with the pace of change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food available. Yes, power outages might have been fewer. Yes, you might have been insulated from the misery of others--but at what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide things were not so bad under the Emperor, you'll be well on your way to inviting it back."

-- Wedge Antilles, "X-Wing: The Krytos Trap" 

I've been reflecting on why it is that so many Americans are so willing to just accept the return of the thuggish brand of fascist authoritarianism embodied by Donald Trump. Of course, the answer for some is "because they're excited about it!" But a substantial portion of persons who are considering voting for Trump, or are going to sit out voting against him, don't seem enthusiastic about it. They bemoan the "incivility", they look askance on the targeting of minorities, they wish politicians would focus on "solving problems" rather than political stunts. They really, truly, don't seem to like the political world Donald Trump has wrought and promises to further entrench. And yet, they seem resigned to, if not accommodating towards, a man who epitomizes crass bluster, chauvinistic bigotry, and theatrical grandstanding. Why?

I always thought the Wedge Antilles quote above (like everything about Wedge) was helpful (though it actually gives Trumpism too much credit -- we don't have less food, or more power outages, or any thing of the sort, under Biden compared to Trump. Overwhelmingly, life is better on most tangible metrics for most regular Americans under Biden than Trump!). With even a little distance, the terribleness of living under Trump fades -- everyone reading this, by definition, survived it -- while the stresses of the present loom larger. Eventually, it all starts blending together: yeah, things weren't great then, but on the other hand, things aren't great now either. What's the difference? Why stress? This, incidentally, is why I deeply and fervently believe that all "both parties are the same!" caterwauling is inherently a handmaiden of fascism. Arendt's core insight that the origins of totalitarianism lie not in people believing lies, but becoming indifferent towards lying (because after all, don't all politicians lie?), looms large here. The two parties are not the same, and pretending like they are is a huge part of the permission structure that lets people accommodate themselves to the likes of Donald Trump.

Another part of the answer is exhaustion. Trumpism requires responsible citizens to be "on" far more frequently than many are used to, locked in a pitched struggle of the highest stakes. As a polity, we literally fought off an insurrection attempt, and by a narrower margin than any would care to admit -- the inability to impose any tangible consequences on the ringleaders, and the soaring political fortunes of the cheerleaders -- bodes exceptionally poorly for the inevitable next attempt. And just a few years after we barely managed to scrape by hanging on to the most basic feature of American democracy -- the winner of the election taking office -- we're faced with having to do that pitched battle all over again? People are tired. They need a break, and Trumpism refuses to give them one. In this context, it is easy -- even, at some level, understandable -- that some would rather just surrender and take their chances. The specter of the loss of democracy feels terrifying, but it's a lot more terrifying if you care about democracy. If you just decide ... not to care anymore -- to resign yourself to the possibility that we'll devolve into a semi-authoritarian quasi-democracy, and preemptively agree that it isn't great but also not the worst thing in the world -- well, isn't that soothing? Isn't that, in its way, a coping mechanism?

One of the mantras of the anti-authoritarian playbook is "don't obey in advance," and while this isn't exactly what's being referred to, it's related. The looming vision of authoritarianism feels so awful, and so terrifying, that we mentally accommodate it in advance -- figure out how we're going to be okay and okay with it. And doing that necessarily and by design eases the path to giving in -- what once may have seemed awful and terrifying, now is merged into the ordinary bumps and travails that afflict all of us in life. It's not that it's good, it's that it's a regular bad, of a kind and category of the bads we're experiencing now, so why subject ourselves to all this extra stress?

And on that note, it has to be said -- and this will be controversial -- that for many of us, life under authoritarianism will go on roughly as normal. This is another point many have harped on: that even under conditions most of us would recognize as dictatorial, people still go to work, have babies, take vacations, hang out with friends, make memories, and so on. Ordinary people live ordinary lives. They may feel that so long as they keep their heads down and don't make waves, they'll be largely left alone -- and more often than not, they'll be right. Even in the most repressive authoritarian states, most people aren't imprisoned, most people aren't executed, most people aren't blacklisted. Most people live a life. The image of the 1984 hellscape does a lot more harm than good.

Now certainly, not everyone fits under the "many" -- there are plenty of people who are most certainly not part of the herrenvolk, who know full well that "keeping their heads down" won't be enough. They are the open and explicit targets of the ascendant authoritarian impulse, and don't have the luxury to play make-believe. For those of us who are not in that category, the question is whether we care enough about our friends and neighbors who are to say "it doesn't matter that I might be able to 'chance it', because democracy is a collective project and they matter to me too."

Yet even for those who do seem to be squarely in the realm of the targets, I would bet that there is more denialism than one might expect. I suspect that many German Jews in the early 1930s, while certainly not thrilled at the rise of Hitler, assumed that "he isn't talking about us." He's looking for the rabble-rousers, the radicals, the resistance. We're just regular people; we're not troubling anyone. And so long as we don't trouble anyone, why would anyone trouble us? Once again, there's that notion that we can just make ourselves "fine" by just deciding that we will be fine. It's a lie -- the security we thought we had turns into an icy lump of fear in our gut the moment that the newly-empowered fascist state turns its eye in our direction -- but pretending it's true lets us temporarily paper over the gnawing anxiety of the present.

So this is part of what we're fighting against -- the notion that it's exhausting and scary and immiserating to fight, and if we just give in and stop resisting we can stop feeling this way, is intoxicating. It'd be so easy to just give up. How do we turn back that tide? I'm not sure. But it needs to happen.

"Us Too-ism" Turns Off the Normies

You may have heard that a group of Columbia University administrators were sacked after someone posted screenshots of text messages where they were snarking at a panel on campus antisemitism they were in the audience for.

When that story broke, I was (and largely remain) of two minds on this. On the one hand, all of us have snarky texts that ripped out of context probably look pretty bad -- this sort of policing really doesn't end well for anyone. On the other hand, university administrators have a pretty grim reputation right now of treating antisemitism claims as trivial annoyances by bad faith actors, and these messages fit into that paradigm. There's a fundamental trust problem: many Jews do not trust that Columbia administrators are interested in seriously tackling antisemitism, and see these texts as verifying that disdainful dismissal; many academics do not trust Columbia's leadership to respond to antisemitism complaints with anything but reflexive brute force, and see this response as yet more kowtowing to an unappeasable media feeding frenzy. Both camps, in all honesty, have reasons for their mistrust.

But that's not what I what to concentrate on here, exactly. Rather, I want to take stock of one response in particular -- that of Kevin Drum. I'm a longtime fan of Drum's writing, which I think is a good exemplar of reasonably thoughtful and well-informed center-left "normie" politics. Seeing how he was responding to Israel's Gaza campaign was a good barometer of what people not in the hothouse of terminally-online left politics were thinking; in particular, it suggested that the belief that the current Israeli government is a fundamentally bad actor is not one confined to the "usual suspects" on the far-left.

In any event, one component of the Columbia controversy was the claim that the administrators themselves indulged in an antisemitic "trope" -- the suggestion that the panelists were hyping up instances of antisemitism as a "fundraising" opportunity allegedly feeding into claims about Jewish greed and/or perfidy. To this, Drum gave the textual equivalent of a giant eyeroll. He explained that he's long been suspicious of the word "tropes", which he said "in practice [is] used exclusively to imply someone has said something vaguely offensive without having the receipts." And this case, for him, fell squarely into that category:

I took a look at these text messages a couple of weeks ago and came away believing there wasn't much there. Since then the entire text conversation has been released, but it doesn't change things. During a panel discussion about antisemitism, the three deans in question shared private texts that you could fairly describe as snarky or irreverent. But that's about it.

To the Columbia administration, however, which was under siege from outraged alumni demanding that the three deans (plus a fourth) be fired immediately, the texts conveyed "a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community."

This is precisely backward. What the deans did was fail to show unconditional earnestness and obeisance toward every last grievance lodged by a particular community, no matter how ridiculous or overstated. This is apparently the price of admission to progressive society these days.

This whole thing is bonkers. The grievances of specific communities deserve to be given fair consideration, but they don't automatically demand absolute deference. In this case, the deans privately exhibited moderate skepticism toward a few of the claims from the panelists, some of it expressed a little bit caustically. None of it could reasonably be called antisemitic, and at most they deserve a verbal reprimand. Instead they're all out of jobs.

Drum thinks that antisemitism allegations here are thin gruel. Maybe you disagree. But one argument I've often heard, as against the claim that Columbia is overreacting here, is to say in essence "maybe so, but that ship has sailed -- every other group gets this sort of response when they claim to be the victims of discrimination, so it's only right that we the Jews do too." It's a version of what I've termed "us too-ism", and I've already outlined many of its pitfalls, not the least of which is the fact that the perception of what "every other group gets" is often not matched by reality. 

But Drum's reaction illuminates yet another problem: for many of the people who do perceive that this is what colleges "normally" do, they don't view that as a good thing. They view it as a bad, toxic practice they at best generally roll their eyes at. Indeed, I suspect most of the "normie" center-leftish Jewish commentators take that general perspective: when we're not talking about antisemitism, they view this sort of heavy-handed administrative response as indicative of wokeness gone wild, which is why when we are talking about antisemitism they defend similar behavior not on its own merits but rather via the us-too bank shot of "well, it's what everyone else gets." The problem is that when non-Jewish normies see this happening, they don't think "aha -- now the chickens have come home to roost, for the Jews also get to claim this bounty!" They think "oh great, yet another instance of overzealous activists peddling a grievance scoring one for cancel culture," and just slot Jews and anti-antisemitism politics into their mental category of "minorities who face some genuine discrimination but are taking things too far."

Again, all of this is aside from whether Drum is right "on the merits" to dismiss the antisemitism angle here. The point, rather, is to emphasize yet another problem with the "us too" argument -- more often than not, its reception outside the Jewish community is not going to be "well, fair is fair"; it's going to be to associate Jews with whatever malformed and exaggerated perception of identity politics gone wild already prevails within the broader public. It still might be a hit worth taking if one genuinely can defend the practices and arguments in question on their own merits, without relying on the crutch of what other groups are imagined to get. But if one's main basis for trying to draw blood is simply the "us too" entitlement, then it's definitely a fool's errand.

The Corbynification of the GOP Continues

Just before the 2022 midterms, I wrote a column in Haaretz about the Corbynification of the U.S. Republican Party. For all the harping and wailing about the imminent rise of Corbyn-style politics amongst Democrats, it really was the GOP that displayed all of the worst qualities of Corbynism. In fact, I had been drawing Trump/Corbyn parallels as early as 2015! But seriously -- check out the overlap:

• Penchant for conspiracism? Check.
• Motivated by an endless abyss of grievance politics? Check.
• Base comprised of extremely online bigoted trolls? Check.
• Blind adoration of the One True Leader? Check.
• Major antisemitism problem? Check.

With the one unfortunate divergence that the American GOP is capable of winning elections, the commonalities are astounding.

Anyway, today's Labour Party has ousted Corbyn and is poised to absolutely curb-stomp the Conservative Party into oblivion, a result that could not fill me with more ecstatic delight. Meanwhile, a sitting Republican Congressman -- Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) -- just posted and deleted an antisemitic image ... one of the very same ones that Corbyn promoted and became a keynote example of his antisemitic bent.

Nothing like watching history's rhyming rhythm. Though the little trading places thing we're doing with the UK -- they get sensible center-left government, we get resurgent mainstream antisemitism and rule by the divine right of kings -- isn't exactly making for the greatest of July 4th celebrations.

Losing Your Chevrons

Somewhere, an environmentalist wished upon a star: "I hate big oil. It's a blight on the universe. If only Chevron would disappear forever!" and a monkey's paw curled once.

I was steeling myself to write about Loper Bright and my official welcome on behalf of the Con Law professoriate to the Admin Law professors joining the "burn all your lecture notes and start from scratch club", and then Trump v. United States came down. Even though the latter is a more immediate big deal and is closer to my expertise wheelhouse (I've fielded far more inquiries from former students asking "what is going on!" with respect to the Trump decision than any ruling in my entire career, Dobbs included), I really don't have all that much to say at this moment. That may change -- in fact, it almost certainly will, as I try to work this blog post into an essay -- but for now I'm going to lay off and just write what I planned to write about the demise of Chevron.

My short version take is this: in many, many cases, we'll see little difference between before and after. This prediction, however, should not be confused with sanguinity. Rather, it is a recognition that judges are human, with the normal assortment of human interests, talents, and vices. 

In most deep-weeds administrative law cases, where judges neither know nor care about the difference between, say, nitrogen oxide and nitrous oxide, they aren't going to actually do a deep dive review of the law from scratch. These issues are hard enough for a team of subject-matter experts with Ph.Ds in the hard sciences grinding away for months. For a judge with a J.D. from Hofstra who last took a statistics class in 11th grade? Forget about it. In practice, no matter what the doctrine purports to demand or what they claim to be doing on the opinion pages, judges will end up deferring to reasonable agency interpretations of the law unless they're howlingly off-base -- which, of course, is why we ended up with Chevron in the first place. Any objective observer of courts sees this sort of thing from judges all the time -- there are all sorts of cases where nominal "de novo" review is the furthest thing from, because judges simply find the topic boring, repetitive, or impenetrable (you can usually spot these cases by their use of the phrase "after careful review ....").

This will be what happens for many if not most cases on obscure rules in unremarkable issue areas. What will change is in those administrative rules on hot button issues of high-salience. Here, Loper Bright doesn't make judges any smarter, but does give them a green light to start substituting their judgment for expert agencies who at least have some measure of accountability to the political process. In other words, Loper Bright won't universally result in the substitution of inexpert judicial policymaking for the judgments of administrative agencies; rather, it will result in that substitution on an ad hoc and arbitrary basis whenever the judge who happens to be draw the case has an idiosyncratic or ideological hobbyhorse to ride. The administrative state will be able to carry on, with a cutaway for partisan judges to meddle more openly whenever partisan proclivities instigate an urge.

So there's your consolation about the end of Chevron. Feeling better? I thought so.

Bow(man)ing Out

As you've no doubt seen, George Latimer has ousted incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for New York's 16th congressional district. The margin -- approximately 58-41 -- is similar to Bowman's own primary victory over longtime district Rep. Eliot Engel in 2020 (that was a 55-41 victory).

Of course, we all know the cardinal rule about ousting incumbents in primaries: My challenge is an authentic expression of popular rebellion, your challenge is an astroturfed manipulation by special interest and rabble-rousers.

The reality is that one shouldn't read too much into this result. I think it tells us a lot less about the state of "Israel politics" in the Democratic Party than anybody would like to admit. Yes, AIPAC dumped a truckload of money into this race. But Bowman made plenty of missteps that made him vulnerable; first and foremost being seemingly completely uninterested in connecting with his district once lines were redrawn after the census. Part of what haunted Engel was the sense he had grown distant from his district, but Bowman quickly fell victim to the same sentiment (particularly in contrast to Latimer, who had extremely deep connections and a reputation as an outstanding retail politician). When your closing rally cry is a promise to show "AIPAC the power of the motherfucking South Bronx", and none of your district actually includes the South Bronx, that's not awesome.

All of which raises the question of how much difference AIPAC's money actually made. A colleague of mine described their intervention as "feasting on a corpse", and while I think that's exaggerated, there's little question that AIPAC knows how to pick its spots and is happy to claim credit for backing a winning horse. AIPAC's backing might have given him some extra oomph, but Latimer was already an unusually high-profile challenger given his long run in Westchester politics. Right now, both sides have an incentive to talk up AIPAC's influence -- Camp AIPAC to gain the aura of deterrence, Team Bowman to provide a face-saving excuse -- but for my part I'm doubtful that AIPAC's dollars made much of a difference (or at the very least, the diminishing returns after the first infusion accelerated rapidly). As obnoxious as the glut of money sloshing around American politics might be, it just isn't the case that a truckload of money can simply buy a congressional seat (ask David Trone, or Carrick Flynn). Bowman may have been outspent, but he had plenty of resources (tangible or not) in his corner; he was hardly hung out to dry. And meanwhile, as much as AIPAC wants to crow that "pro-Israel = good politics", it remains the case that most of its advertising in Democratic primaries studiously avoids talking about Israel, suggesting it isn't as confident in its message as its bluster suggests. 

In fact, I'm mostly tired of how the Israel thing completely overwhelms and distorts how we talk about all the relevant players here. Bowman's 2020 victory over Engel was framed as an ousting of a "moderate", but that label almost exclusively played on Engel's pro-Israel voting record -- in reality, he was a reliable progressive vote through his entire multi-decade tenure in office. And Bowman, too, is disserved when people act like the only thing he did in office was yell about Israel. He was a passionate voice for the interests of working class Americans and that passion was an inspiration to many. I have no desire to dance on his grave, any more than Engel's. And, for what it's worth, I suspect Latimer too will be a generally reliable liberal voice in Congress (indeed, my understanding is that New York progressives generally had warm feelings towards Latimer up until the ugliness of this race). The real moral of this story is that while in highly-activated online circles Israel (pro- or anti-) might matter uber alles, that's not what's happening on the ground.

These posts aren't what anyone enjoys reading -- people want to crow at a Squad member being laid low or they want to fulminate over AIPAC bulldozing American democracy. But the reality is that most of the political dynamics in play here are considerably more prosaic. If Cori Bush loses her primary in a few weeks, the same will be true -- she's also facing a strong challenger and she also has had some bad headlines dragging her. And likewise, there's a reason why AIPAC has largely left folks like AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Summer Lee alone -- they haven't shown the same vulnerabilities. There's no unified narrative, save perhaps that there is a lot more political diversity amongst even committed, partisan Democrats right now than there is amongst Republicans.*

* Yet even these stories can be overstated. The linked article uses, as one of its examples of "moderates" prevailing in Democratic primaries, my own congressional district where Janelle Bynum beat 2022 nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner. Yet I highly doubt that this result has much of anything to do with Bynum's "moderation". McLeod-Skinner was badly damaged by stories that she was abusive towards staff, but more importantly she ousted an incumbent Democrat in 2022 and then lost the seat to a Republican, which I think for many Democrats was an unforgivable failure. There are times when it's worthwhile to dislodge a rooted Democratic incumbent, but if you do it in a swing district you damn well better close the show, and McLeod-Skinner didn't. McLeod-Skinner's track record, coupled with Bynum's own history having defeated the Republican incumbent in a local race before, were I suspect far more decisive than notions that Bynum cut a distinctively "moderate" profile (I think she, like Latimer, will be a decidedly "normal" Democratic representative in Congress).

"I'm Not Owned! I'm Not Owned!" Originalists Continue To Insist as They Slowly Shrink and Transform into a Corn Cob

The Supreme Court today reversed the Fifth Circuit and upheld a federal statute prohibiting persons under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms against a Second Amendment challenge. The case, United States v. Rahimi, had quickly become a tentpole example of the disaster show unleashed by the landmark Bruen decision, which tossed out the "heightened scrutiny" review uniformly used by lower courts to adjudicate Second Amendment challenges in favor of a "historical analogue" test that immediately proved almost entirely unworkable. The majority in Rahimi appears to have significantly retreated from Bruen, underscoring that Bruen does not demand a "clone" law but merely something "analogous" that existed at the time of the framing (here, the relevant analogy was "surety" laws, which required "individuals suspected of future misbehavior to post a bond").

The Court's decision was 8-1, with only Justice Thomas (the author of Bruen) dissenting. This isn't too surprising -- most legal observers thought after watching oral argument that the Fifth Circuit's opinion was destined to be reversed. The stance that the "cartoonishly violent" domestic abuser at the center of Rahimi had a Second Amendment right to remain armed and dangerous was predictably something that most of the Justices wanted to race away from as fast as possible.

But the real fun, for me, came in reading the concurring opinions. Two of them, authored by the liberal Justices Kagan and Jackson, are dedicated to making the obvious point that Bruen has been an absolute trainwreck. The conservative concurrences, by contrast, are a spectacle of chest-thumping paeons to originalism as the one true standard of constitutional jurisprudence, distinguished most essentially by the fact that it is not results-oriented and prevents judges from tailoring the outcome of cases to meet their ideological preferences.

Us legal progressives have to enjoy the small things these days, and if ever there have been clearer examples of protesting-too-much in a judicial opinion, I'm not sure I've seen it. It could not be clearer that the outcome in Rahimi dictated the reasoning. It could not be clearer that the contemporary social policy consequences are basically the entirety of what drives the otherwise arbitrary inquiry into how "analogous" is analogous enough (and, for what it's worth, such policy arguments also took center stage in the conservative arguments marshalled to strike down the law -- it's policy all the way down). The ferocity through which Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch in particular extol originalism's virtues in their opinions reek of desperation. Bruen was a classic instance of this Court taking a huge theoretical swing in service of an abstract political ideology and leaving the mess for later. Unfortunately for them, the mess piled up quicker than they anticipated, and now they're left in the humiliating position of having to act like the ensuing disaster wasn't one of their own making.

I will give some credit to Justice Barrett for grappling with a few of the critical questions here. She correctly notes that the historical test does not mean that contemporary legislatures are limited to "an updated model of a historical counterpart" in crafting gun legislation, because "historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold." Within the general class of domains where there is historical evidence states were permitted to implement restrictions on the right to bear arms, the legislature should get significant deference in determining how it wants to instantiate those restrictions -- the flipside of Bruen's general admonition that policy judgments have no role to play in Second Amendment adjudication.

The other essential point Barrett makes is critiquing the assumption "that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate, thereby adopting a 'use it or lose it' view of legislative authority." We can group legislative action -- at the founding or at any other time -- into three broad buckets: (1) laws the legislature passed and which they believed  were constitutional (2) laws they did not pass because they thought they'd be unconstitutional, and (3) laws they did not pass, but not because they believed they were unconstitutional (one hopes the fourth category -- laws that were passed even though the legislature believed they were unconstitutional -- is close to a null set). The third category is an utterly mundane one: the legislature doesn't enact legislation for a whole host of reasons, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with any constitutional worries -- anything from "we think this is bad policy" to "we didn't consider this at all". 

Unless we think that founding-era Americans enacted every single possible gun law that they thought was constitutionally-permissible -- legislating to the utmost limits of their constitutional authority -- there will be entries in both the second and third categories. But to modern eyes, these two buckets will be largely observationally equivalent -- the lack of a historical precedent could mean that laws of this sort were thought to be unconstitutional, or they could mean they weren't passed for the myriad range of other reasons laws don't get passed. Bruen basically papers over this problem by pretending the last bucket doesn't exist, but in doing so it curb-stomps its own historical test. As for me, I don't have a good answer regarding how to disaggregate the two buckets, but doing so is essential to actually applying the historical test Bruen purports to impose. I'll give one cheer to Justice Barrett for at least recognizing the problem, but I suspect that this is yet another reason why Bruen's nebulous and vexing character is going to be intractable and will remain how it's begun: an incoherent mess of law office history cloaking bog-standard ideological policy judgments.

Israel Threatens New Settlements in Retaliation for Palestine Recognition

CNN ran this story a few days ago, detailing statements from some Israeli government officials promising expansion of West Bank settlements in response to the decision by several European nations to recognize Palestine as a state.

Israel’s government says it is looking to “strengthen” Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank after several countries unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Office said all of the proposals for strengthening settlements in what Israel biblically refers to as Judea and Samaria would be voted on at the next Security Cabinet meeting.

Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia have each recognized an independent Palestinian state in recent weeks, a move motivated at least in part by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open refusal to commit to a two-state solution.

[....] 

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in May that Israel should approve 10,000 settlements in the West Bank, establish a new settlement for every country that recognizes a state of Palestine, and cancel travel permits for Palestinian Authority officials.

At the top level, this is another data point for an already-complete illustration showing that the Israeli government has quite a few far-right expansionist extremists in positions of alarming power and influence. Not new, but still essential to flag.

But there is another point worth mentioning, which also is not especially novel but does need to be pointed out. It is common to argue that Israel's brutal, hyper-aggressive assault on Gaza is persisting because other nations (particularly, but not exclusively, the United States) haven't taken sufficient punitive action against Israel to punish it for its misdeeds. Diplomacy is a function of carrots and sticks, and we've left the "stick" part out of our repertoire for too long. Had we utilized sticks more robustly, then maybe much of the current crisis could have been averted or at least ameliorated.

Perhaps. But as the above story illuminates, it's not necessarily the case that diplomatic "sticks" always serve to bring their targets to heel, or even arrest their bad behavior. Sometimes, particularly over the short-term, they can instead accelerate it. For obvious reasons, states have a very strong incentive to not give the impression that hostile action (or actions they perceive as hostile) against them will yield positive results. To the extent Israel doesn't want other countries to recognize Palestine, it's very predictable that its next move in the game will be to take actions that suggest "doing this has led to X Y Z bad consequences you don't want to see repeated." Countries that feel isolated or as if they can only rely on themselves often are more aggressive or reckless than those enmeshed in thick webs of relation, precisely because they believe that even a single mistake or miscalculation could be their ruination. As awful as it can seem to feel complicit in another nation's bad behavior because one is seemingly continually coaxing and pleading and appeasing rather than just putting a foot down and saying "no", the latter approach often runs the risk of being triggering terrible backlash with devastating immediate consequences.

This isn't to say sticks are never warranted at all. Sometimes the stick-like action is important enough for its own sake to absorb the immediate negative reaction. More broadly, the stick-wielders also have good reasons to communicate that where a given actor crosses certain redlines, they'll endure consequences they won't enjoy.

All of which is to say that diplomacy is a delicate dance, and there are more moving parts than many would care to admit. Sometimes it's worth swallowing an immediate bad consequence to set a broader precedent or to secure a long-term goal. But sometimes there are good reasons to think that the stakes of the immediate backlash demand swallowing one's pride and continuing to take what to an outsider may seem to be a maddeningly light-touch approach. The fact is that in all diplomatic relationships there are multiple players in the game, and it is rare that anyone -- even a hegemon like the United States -- can simply fiat someone else into compliance (I thought this old post from Cheryl Rofer on the term "deterrence," and how the term purports to "transfers agency to the deterrer" while obscuring that the "deterred" has agency too and won't necessarily react how you want them to, raised similar points).

Am I saying recognizing Palestine is a circumstance where countries should have backed off to avoid the Israeli reaction? No -- in fact, I think there are some very good reasons why here it was reasonable for the countries in question to bite the cost and go through with recognition. Again, sometimes absorbing the immediate backlash is worth it. But we should be clear-eyed about the trade that may have been made: recognition of Palestine for increased and accelerated settlement activity in the West Bank.

Is it fair that this is a "trade"? No. But diplomacy isn't about what's fair. And the broader lesson is one that's important to remember -- regarding Israeli and Palestinian actors alike. Too often, too many of us are seduced by the notion that it is possible to simply bludgeon the bad guy into obedience. The reality is that often, the project of avoiding the worst outcomes means making nice and doing nice things to actors who are doing, have done, and will continue doing all sorts of unlovely activities. If you can't accept that, you might want to find a different field to commentate on.

Carleton Reunion Protest Report

I attended my college reunion this week (my 16th, my wife's 15th). It was, as always, a lot of fun to see old friends and old professors and old hangouts. 

Going in, I was curious about how much protest activity there might be (reunion is a huge event at Carleton, to the point that other schools send observers to see how we do it). Despite being on campus these past few months, I've actually been relatively insulated from major protest events: Lewis & Clark has been a lot quieter than other Portland campuses -- compare Portland State (where the library was absolutely trashed) or Reed (where a Jewish student was hit with a rock) -- and what protest activity has occurred centered on the undergraduate campus. I knew Carleton had an encampment at one point, but hadn't heard anything else about it, and my general rule of thumb on this subject has been "no headlines = good news."

 

Anyway, the answer to my question of how much protest activity would be found at reunion was "some, but not too much." There were a few alumni wearing pro-Palestine t-shirts -- I probably saw 3 or 4 over the course of the weekend. The major action item seemed to be a pledge to withhold donations "until divestment". I saw a handful of buttons to that effect, but it didn't seem to be very effective (relatively early in the weekend the reunion organizers announced that my wife's class had already blown past its fundraising target). On the last day, about a dozen alumni protested in front of a campus center, which to me just honestly looked boring -- standing in a line on a hot day chanting the same few phrases in unison? Subject matter aside, it's clear that protests just aren't for me. But it didn't really disrupt anything or cause any problems, so they can say what they want. And that was my general take on the whole weekend as well: there was a visible pro-Palestine presence, as was their right. It was a pretty small sliver of the overall attendance, and didn't materially impact the weekend. I won't go so far as to say one wouldn't even have noticed them without being on the lookout, but it was not some overwhelmingly or inescapable presence by any means.

As it happens, one my favorite professors at Carleton is an expert on protest politics, so it was fun to pick her brain as to what had happened on campus over the course of the year. Her take was that the student protesters, while "enthusiastic", were not especially good at protesting and lacked any robust theory of change. The encampment was mostly let alone and neither caused nor was subjected to significant trouble. The biggest "event" came when a group of about two dozen students decided to stage a sit-in inside a campus administrative building. The college responded to that by locking and evacuating the building, but a sympathetic faculty member arrived to ostentatiously unlock the building and allow the protesters inside. The administration set a deadline for the students to leave or face disciplinary action; about half left, half didn't, and the latter were put on disciplinary probation.

In terms of what the protesters were asking for, some of the major demands were (1) divestment and (2) termination of a scholarship program supporting students studying in Israel. The latter was never going to happen. The former was, in my professor's estimation, "ill-formed", mostly because Carleton has little, if any, direct investments in arms manufacturers of any sort and so the protesters were left trying to fit round pegs into square holes. As with most colleges, Carleton's endowment is primarily in funds with relatively opaque portfolios, so it's unknown who have holdings in, and it took some serious stretches to find problems with the known companies. For example, they found one company Carleton is invested in that sells, among other things, some form of air traffic management software that can have military applications and which has sales in the Middle East. The sales figures aren't further broken down by country, nor are civilian and military uses disaggregated, but by assuming that all the Middle East sales are to Israel and all the Israel sales are military, voila -- Carleton is killing kids. The level of attenuation made it hard for the college to take this seriously as an actual demand as opposed to a slogan, and so the divestment call also seems likely to be a non-starter.

I also read over how the Carleton administration had responded to campus protests over the course of the academic year. Again, the overall impression was that things were handled quite well -- there was no significant signs I saw of violence or aggressive police responses. One thing in particular that the college President did that I thought was extremely effective was that she maintained lines of open communication with the protesters, but was emphatic that these meetings and discussions were not some sort of "concession" to be extracted:

The reason I have made a point of offering meetings up front, before any sit-in or impasse, is to establish that I see communication as a given, not a negotiating tactic. I was, and am, willing to meet with you — not as a result of threats or demands, but because you are deeply committed Carleton students whose views are important to the institution and to me. 

This, to me, is exactly correct. On the one hand, it is a very bad thing when college decisions are made simply by reference to whomever is yelling the loudest. At other schools where encampments and protests had been successfully "de-escalated" by promises that the college would hear and listen to various pro-Palestine pitches, there was some measure of frustration by Jewish students who did not feel like they were given the solicitude and avenues of access and basically wondered whether the only way they could get a hearing would be to occupy a building. That's a toxic dynamic. At the same time, it is part of the Carleton President's job to listen to and be attentive to student concerns. The President should hear what the protesters are saying not because she is forced to, but because that's part of her job description. The submission is not, or should not be, the point.

The final thought that pinged around my head related to the "no donations until divestment" campaign.  Again, it does not seem like this is making a material dent in Carleton's donations. Nonetheless, we are of course seeing many cases of donors publicly withdrawing contributions to various colleges and universities unless and until they adopt or alter this or that campus policy -- consider Bill Ackman and Harvard as an especially high-profile example. These initiatives I find a bit difficult. At one level, donors of course aren't obligated to give anybody money; if something about Harvard or Carleton or wherever renders it a place they're not comfortable supporting, that's their business. On the other hand, amongst academics it is generally viewed as a very bad thing when a university does in fact alter a policy or practice due to donor demands -- they shouldn't bow to outside pressure (and I think that this belief in institutional independence is at least somewhat severable from underlying opinions about the substantive merits of the underlying demands). So we're left in this weird space where we all agree that donors are absolutely entitled to withdraw their contributions in protest, but we also think that said protests should systematically fail.

In any event, on the whole I was pleased with how things played out at Carleton, and I'm glad that most stakeholders for the most part have comported themselves in a manner that allowed for that happy and peaceable outcome.

From Scarsdale To Dearborn, Enough with the Dogwhistles Already

Incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is facing a tough primary challenge from fellow Democrat George Latimer. Much of the heat in the primary has centered around Israel (Bowman is a harsh critic; Latimer has AIPAC backing), and in that context Latimer claimed in a public debate that Bowman's constituency is not the local residents of New York, but rather "Dearborn, Michigan" (and "San Francisco, California"). Dearborn is well-known for its large Arab and Muslim population, and so Bowman quickly called him out for the racist "dog-whistle".

I, of course, immediately harkened back to not-so-fond memories of Antone Melton-Meaux's 2020 primary challenge to Ilhan Omar,* where Omar's campaign sent out a mailer highlighting her challenger's donor support, singling out one from the heavily Jewish suburb of "Scarsdale, New York" (all of the named donors in Omar's mailer were also Jewish). This, too, was pounced on by Omar's opponents and said to be an antisemitic dog-whistle.

Latimer's defenders say he was merely highlighting Bowman's lack of local support. Omar's defenders likewise contended she was being unjustly smeared as a critic of Israel.

So, is this sort of attack a dog-whistle? Quick -- everybody switch sides!

In all seriousness, if you condemned the Omar campaign for its "Scarsdale mailer" you don't get to give Latimer a pass on this. And likewise, if you poo-pooed the Scarsdale mailer as a ginned up controversy over nothing you can sit right down in your high dudgeon over the Dearborn remark.

(My answer: Both instances were shady and both politicians deserved to be called out on it.)

* I'm bemused to rediscover that my blogpost on this controversy was titled "I Have To Talk About Omar and Melton-Meaux, Don't I?", which really captures a certain mood, doesn't it?

The Redemption of Noa Argamani

The Israeli military announced today that it had successfully rescued four hostages from Hamas captivity, including Noa Argamani. Argamani was a particularly high-profile hostage because video of her abduction was one of the first pieces of footage Hamas released after October 7, showing her pleading with her captors "don't kill me!" as she was taken from the Nova music festival massacre and separated from her boyfriend (whose whereabouts remain unknown).

The Israeli operation which freed Argamani and her compatriots also reportedly killed approximately two hundred Palestinians, according to Hamas figures. These, as always, do not distinguish between civilian and military casualties; we can safely assume there is plenty of both (it is apparent that there was a significant military presence guarding the hostages).

Two days after October 7, I quoted Noa's father Jacob saying the following:

Let us make peace with our neighbors, in any way possible. I want there to be peace; I want my daughter to come back. Enough with the wars. They too have casualties, they too have captives, and they have mothers who weep. We are two peoples to one Father. Let’s make real peace.

That quote came at the bottom of a post titled "What Will You Say 'No' To?" It was a warning to Israel supporters that they needed to decide, then and there, what sort of response or retaliation would not be justified in the wake of Hamas' attack, citing specifically Yoav Gallant's threat to starve out Gaza's population. There's plenty that Israel justifiably could do in response to Hamas' attack, but what would we not support Israel doing? What is too far? What must be taken off the table?

Was it not unfair to level that demand mere days after October 7? Maybe it was, though if Jacob Argamani could think along the above lines, then I'd argue so could anyone. Unfair or not, however, I said that we had to think about those questions then, because 

we just witnessed in real-time a catastrophic failure to grapple seriously with this question on the part of those who've pledge to stand with Palestinians and Palestine. Suddenly forced to decide whether, in the wake of occupation and besiegement, a Palestinian response of "a systemic campaign of house-to-house kidnappings, rapes, and executions" is a valid one, we saw far, far too many individuals unable to say "no" (or at least, say it with any level of decisiveness). This failure stems directly from the tempting broth that assures us that, if the provocation is severe enough and the injury severe enough, no amount of "response" could ever be disproportionate. And so we see that, if you refuse to let yourself think that anything could be "too far", there's no end to the depths of hell you may find yourself apologizing for.

Eight months later, that post is deeply embittering to read. None of this had to happen. Most obviously, October 7 didn't have to happen and the hostages didn't need to be taken. Yet even now, writers like Adam Shatz cannot help themselves in describing the "exuberance" over October 7 as a "prison breakout," "a daring assault on Israeli bases that devolved into hideous massacres" (it did not "devolve" into anything; the sowing of terror and death amongst Israel's civilian population was the primary tactical goal of the operation -- there is essentially no evidence that the primary or even significant targets of Hamas' operation were military bases). Likewise, the warnings to the Israelis that their righteous fury over October 7 did not license the imposition of an indiscriminate siege and turning the entire Gaza Strip into a free-fire zone fell on deaf ears, and now the entire nation is on trial for genocide.

Nobody paid heed, and nobody has seemed to have learned anything. In the months that followed October 7, there were innumerable opportunities to turn off this path, with plenty of blame to go around for why we didn't, but the main culprit is simple: both Israel and Hamas want this war to keep going. Obviously there are some conditions where they'll accept peace; but those conditions are quite far apart, and so for the most part they're both happy to keep the war going rather than deal with the fallout of an actual deal. 

So now tens of thousands of people are dead, and for what? Noa Argamani is home, but Noa Argamani started at home! Noa Argamani being home was the world on October 6! We're back to where we began, except with unfathomable death and destruction and trauma for uncountable numbers of people.

I'm happy and relieved and overjoyed that Noa Argamani has returned home -- the redemption of Noa Argamani is an unqualified and unadulterated good. But that joy is tempered by the fact that none of this had to happen at all. We could have lived in a different world.

A Jewish Studies Purge at UC-Irvine?

There's a brewing controversy bubbling up at UC-Irvine, where Jewish students are protesting the decision to terminate the contract of a popular lecturer who had been teaching a class on Jewish Texts under the auspices of the campus' Center for Jewish Studies. The lecturer, Daniel Levine, is a Rabbi affiliated with the campus Hillel chapter. There are two open letters currently circulating in support of Levine and condemning his termination, you can read them here and here.

There are a lot of moving parts here, and situations like this almost always have lots of little nooks and nuances that can be hard for an outsider like myself to spot. But here's my best attempt to summarize what appears to be going on.

The Center for Jewish Studies is not an independent department at Irvine. It is run as a minor out of Irvine's humanities division and is specifically overseen by the Department of History. Levine is not a permanent member of the faculty, but he was by all accounts a popular teacher who was well-liked and respected by the campus' Jewish community. The official rationale for his non-renewal is that two new tenure-track hires with interests in Jewish Studies mean that his course can be taken over by permanent faculty members, offered every other year. The Jewish students counter that the new faculty members' specific subject-matter expertise does not seem tailored to the Jewish Texts course; further, they believe that Rabbi Levine would have been able to maintain teaching the class on a yearly (rather than biannual) basis.

But there's a bigger issue lurking. Among the demands of UC-Irvine pro-Palestine protesters has been for the university to cut ties with "Zionist" organizations and individuals. The chair of Irvine's history department, Susan Morrissey, is part of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine group which has endorsed these demands. The suspicion amongst the Jewish students is that Rabbi Levine was ousted from his position as a backdoor means of instantiating these demands. This fear is amplified by the fact that both of the new hires appear to be, at the very least, very sharp critics of Israel -- one was a leader of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, and both are signatories to a letter written three weeks after the October 7 attack demanding (among other things) "the end of all U.S. funding to Israel immediately." In essence, the students believe that Morrissey effectively instituted a purge -- replacing a Jewish Studies lecturer who was embedded in the campus Jewish community but (or perhaps, and therefore) was tainted by his association with Hillel and "Zionism" with alternatives who would be less effective in serving the Jewish community (and the community of students interested in the Jewish Studies minor) but were more ideologically congenial and aligned with the political demands of Prof. Morrissey and the pro-Palestine protesters.

None of the above is incontestable. The public explanations from the powers-that-be at Irvine might be entirely on the level. It is far from uncommon that the sorts of considerations that drive faculty hiring and teaching assignments (particularly at a large research university) do not align with what undergraduates believe or expect should motivate who ends up in the classroom. Other than the tidbits identified above, I have no specific knowledge regarding either of the two new tenure-track hires at Irvine; they may be able to cover Levine's class with aplomb. And certainly, there is nothing intrinsically odd about replacing an external part-time lecturer with a tenure-line faculty where possible.

Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear that the Jewish Studies contingent at Irvine has ample reason for both mistrust and discontent. From their vantage, they're losing a great teacher and community member with inadequate replacement, for reasons that seem inscrutable, in a context where their very discipline and their broader standing in the Irvine community seem to be threatened by powerful forces, including the very campus leaders who made the decision at issue here. When a powerful university actor says they support doing a thing (here, cutting ties with the "Zionists"), and then that actor does something that is to say the least compatible with that thing (terminating Levine's appointment), observers are entitled to infer that the thing happened for the reasons that the actor publicly articulated. That isn't dispositive, but its certainly probative, and nobody can or should fault the students for not buying that Morrissey is acting for neutral and purely professional reasons.

In essence, Morrissey put herself in a position where she lost the presumption of trust that might normally accord to decisionmakers in her role. No matter what the "truth" is (which may be unknowable), we have a situation where deep damage has been done to the Jewish Studies minor and the relationship between its overseers and the community it purports to serve. It is clear that, to say the least, the Jewish Studies community does not feel as if the powers-that-be who made the decision to terminate Levine and who are guiding the new direction of the Jewish Studies minor are receptive and responsive to the views of the most-affected stakeholders (maybe if they occupied someone's office? But alas, the hypocrisy trap....).

In any event, at minimum, the Jewish Studies students and the broader Jewish community at Irvine are entitled to more receptivity from Professor Morrissey; to believe that her orientation towards them is not one of hostility and that she views them as a stakeholder to be engaged with, not an obstacle to be overcome. If she cannot restore that relationship of trust, then it may indeed be better if the Center for Jewish Studies be moved into a different portfolio, with leadership that can do the job that she cannot.