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Thursday, October 17, 2024

The Nebraska Cornwhisker Scenario (U.S. Senate Edition)


As polling for incumbent Montana Senator Jon Tester (D) looks increasingly grim, it becomes increasingly hard to see how Democrats maintain control of the Senate this election. But because the universe's sadistic screenwriters love a good out-of-nowhere twist, there may be one last shot at reprieve from the most unlikeliest of places: Nebraska.

Something really interesting is happening in Nebraska, where Dan Osborn, who is running as an independent, is leading incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in a couple of new polls. (Fischer is being hurt by among other things her decision to ignore her previous commitment not to run for a third term. Her explanation is that she just hadn’t realized that seniority is a thing in the US Senate.)

Osborn, a former union leader, is pro-choice and anti-billionaire, which are two unacceptable positions in the contemporary GOP caucus, but still the best that can be hoped is that he would be more or less the Nebraska version of Joe Manchin.

He’s promising not to caucus with either party, but that’s not realistic, given that caucusing is how committee assignments are handed out. If the Senate ends up 50 GOP 49 Dem and Osborn, and Harris wins, Osborn will be in a position to essentially hand control of the Senate to the Democrats, which of course will given him enormous negotiating leverage. Assuming Tester loses and the Dems hold all the other genuinely competitive seats, that will in fact be the split, so this is definitely a race to watch closely.

While both campaigns are issuing dueling internal polls showing them ahead, Fischer hasn't led in an independent poll since August; the last independent poll of the race (at the end of September) had Osborn up five.

If Osborn wins, I do think it is most likely he will end up caucusing with Democrats (after extracting some monster concessions) -- partially because it'd be weird to run against a Republican in the general and then caucus as a Republican, partially because that's what all the other recent "Independent" Senators have done. But I do wonder at the possibility that he tries to create some sort of centrist junta to run the show,  like we've seen in some state legislatures (Alaska, New York). It'd probably be Murkowski and Collins on the Republican side, Angus King on the Dem/Independent side -- maybe someone like Bob Casey joins them from the Democrats too? Hard to know the exact personnel.

Obviously, from a Democratic vantage point such a setup would be (a) better than GOP control of the Senate and (b) worse than Democratic control of the Senate. But I'm inclined to think that such a setup would be closer to better for Democrats (though I may be unduly influenced by just how catastrophic full GOP control of the Senate would be). It would probably mean that more ambitious Democratic priorities (including things like DC statehood) would be DOA. But I do think it would mean that a President Harris could get (most of) her cabinet and other major appointees through, which is not something we can take for granted under Republican rule. At the very least, it would enable a semi-functioning government, which is a lot more than we can say if Republicans control the Senate and decide to filibuster absolutely everything.

"... But They're Doing Great" at UW

The University of Washington has just released a joint task force report on antisemitism and Islamophobia on its campus. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but I have looked it over, and it seems to be an excellent and thoughtful report on an obviously touchy subject, for which the authors deserve kudos.*

There's a lot of interesting data to sift through, but there was one chart in particular that stood out to me, and not in a good way.



For those who can't read the chart, it asks a set of affected campus constituencies (e.g., Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims) how they assess the campus climate for themselves and all the other groups. The results were basically that each group said "things are awful for us and ours, but they're doing great!" So, for instance, when Israelis were asked this question, they overwhelmingly reported a hostile campus climate for Israelis and Jews, but generally reported that the campus was comfortable for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims, and Palestinians. Palestinian respondents reported the opposite -- they thought the campus climate was swell for Israelis and Jews, and terrible for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims and Palestinians.

I'll leave aside the first half of the equation ("things are awful for us") for now, though it's bad enough. One could I guess try to contest it if one wanted to, but I see little reason to doubt that the relevant communities are accurately reporting their own experiences in what has almost universally been characterized as a very rough year. But for the latter half of the finding ("... they're doing great") the polarization in responses is especially disturbing. 

The best case explanation I can think of is a failure of empathic imagination. Over many years, I've observed variations of this phenomenon where one's own lived experience of hurt and marginalization is paired with a decided conviction that everybody else is getting life fed to them on a silver platter. This certainly is part of my story around "Us Too-ism" -- everybody else supposedly can get a hostile speaker canceled at the first sign of discomfort, so why not us too? -- but it long predates it. Eight years ago I was writing about circumstances at Oberlin where both Jewish and Black students contrasted tepid community responses to discrimination targeting them with what they saw as "hypervigilant" reactions enjoyed by the other. That post in turn referenced a post almost ten years before that about the "pane of glass" which is obvious to someone standing in one position and invisible to their neighbor looking from a different vantage. We're all able to see the pane of glass standing as an obstacle in front of us, while blind to the pane of glass similarly blocking our neighbor.

And so, perhaps, at UW. The Jewish and Israeli students feel lonely and isolated. They look over at the encampments and the teach-ins and the flag-wavings and think "how lucky they have it -- clearly, the community has their backs when they cry out." The Muslim and Arab and Palestinians students, meanwhile, feel hyperscrutinized and overpoliced. They observe the congressional hearings and the discipline meted out to protesters and think "how lucky they have it -- look how responsive the powers-that-be are to them when they claim injury!" Both groups feel as if they're walking on eggshells, both feel that the tremendous stress and strain they are under is being ignored. In concept, this shared vulnerability could be a vector for solidarity and compassion -- these feelings are commonalities, not distinctions. But the problem is this shared vulnerability isn't perceived as shared at all, but rather unique, and that further entrenches the feeling of loneliness.

And this, as I said, is what I'd consider the best case scenario. Another explanation for the polarized responses is that we're seeing, not a failure of imagination, but a motivated refusal to acknowledge the vulnerability of the "other side", in favor of a constructed image where their power can be contrasted with our weakness. I would not be the first to observe that there is a strand of contemporary politics that aggressively valorizes weakness and vulnerability as its own justification for political solidarity. Though sometimes identified with the identity politics left, there's actually no intrinsic political cadence to this -- the right makes this move all the time. Who can forget when Breitbart, playing off investigations into "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma", created an entire subsection of his website dedicated to resisting the overawing power of "Big Peace"(!)? And of course, the contemporary right contains no shortage of claims that it stands against the elites, the powerful, the globalist cabal -- all attempts to claim the mantle of weakness against the evils of strength.

The true cynic would point to this politics to explain why each group is so emphatic about its own vulnerability -- it wants to stay on the right side of the empathy line. As I said, I don't think one needs to go that far -- I think it is more than likely that each group is accurately recounting its own experiences about itself. The point is, though, that where vulnerability (or at least the perception thereof) is a political resource, it can become a strategic imperative to deny it to one's competitors. Acknowledging that a given community -- Jews and Israelis, or Palestinians and Muslims -- are in a vulnerable state means acknowledging them as valid subjects of empathic concern and legitimating some flow of solidaristic political resources in that direction. Denying that acknowledgment can obstruct that flow, and better maintain an asymmetry in who is worthy of care and concern. Even in circumstances where antagonism isn't that overt, where resources of care and concern are assumed to be scarce, there still will be the temptation to withhold that acknowledgment and try to direct the flow to oneself.

The reason why this is worse that the first explanation is that it isn't something that can be resolved just by expanded imaginative capacities. Again, it speaks to a motivated refusal to recognize the aforementioned joint vulnerability. It's not just ignorance, there are reasons behind it. The work of overcoming this refusal to extend empathy means, in a very real sense, insisting on sharing a political resource that feels very much in short supply with a group that may in important respects feel like a rival. That is not an easy task, least of all in present climates.

Which is the true explanation? To be honest, I suspect there's a little of column A and a little of column B. That does give me a little hope, because I still believe -- justifiably or not -- that there are enough people who won't run away from their expanded empathic imagination such that, once they're peeled away from their more fundamentalist fellows, a new core of solidarity can emerge. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. But I don't see much of an alternative.

* I also read a critique of the report issued by a small group of Jewish UW stakeholders (I actually read the critique before the original document). I'm not a member of the UW community myself, and so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But to be perfectly honest I found the critique to be churlish, even petty, clearly partisan in its motivation, and ultimately not at all compelling. 

The overall theme of the critique was a contention that the report was intentionally suppressive of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian Jewish viewpoints and so generated skewed conclusions. That contention was extremely weakly supported -- it seemed to me that the critics came in spoiling for a fight and made a series of tendentious or stretched inferences to justify picking one. For example, a single passing mention of the IHRA antisemitism definition (which the report said it "took into consideration along with other definitions", and then never mentioned again) inspired a veritable temper tantrum by the critics and a demand that the university instead adopt the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism as its preferred definition (ironic, since JDA at its inception insisted that it should not be used as a definition of antisemitism in official proceedings!). It also lambastes the report for "attacks" on DEI work, but there is no such attack -- the report actually recommends incorporating antisemitism education and training into existing DEI structures. One can contest the mechanisms through which that incorporation would occur, but this is not an "attack" in any sense -- so where on earth is this defensiveness coming from other than preloaded beliefs that reports such as this are presumptively part of an anti-DEI crusade?

Perhaps the most serious allegation contained in the critique is its speculation that the report authors skewed their focus groups toward pro-Israel identifying students. This is a very grave charge, but the critics give absolutely no concrete evidence to support it. Literally their only basis for making this claim was that "one focus group was held at UW Hillel (an organization with standards of partnership that explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel)." That and that alone was sufficient for the critics to assert with confidence that "We know" (we know!) "that whatever steps were taken were not sufficient" to ensure proper representational diversity.

This is absurd on a multitude of levels. First, the critic's position apparently is that an attempt to connect with the UW Jewish community should have a blanket policy of refusal to work with Hillel (again, their complaint is that one focus group was held there), which is an absolutely wild claim to make and utterly incompatible with actually trying to get a deep cross-section of the UW Jewish community. Second, it's simply false to say Hillel's partnership standards "explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel." The partnership standards aren't directed at students qua students to begin with, and they are a fair flight more specific than targeting those who are merely "critical of the state of Israel" -- an especially important distinction because the UW report is actually very good about recognizing the heterogeneity of Jewish views on Israel and expressly disaggregating those who are "critical of Israel" from those who are outright "anti-Israel" (in the sense of wanting Israel to cease its existence). At most, only the latter would find Hillel an exclusionary space, but the numbers suggest that this cadre is a small (though not non-existent) minority amongst Jewish students. 

Finally, and most damningly, the report clearly did speak to and incorporate the views of the anti-Israel minority. How do we know? Because the report (to its credit!) specifically delved into and devoted an entire section to experiences of marginalization by anti-Zionist Jews -- something one does not see every time one of these reports emerges but is absolutely appropriate given the subject matter. The report even says it included comments from "self-identified anti Zionist/anti-Israel Jews in proportion to their representation in the random sample of quotes provided to the task force co-chairs (18%)" -- that 18% figure is either equal to or if anything higher than (the report was fuzzy on this) the proportion of anti-Israel Jews in the UW Jewish community. Despite all of this effort, none of it is given any mention whatsoever in the critics' document. Perhaps they missed it. But it I think decisively belies the unsupported assertion that the report deliberately ignored the diversity of Jewish views on Israel at UW.

Ultimately, as someone who periodically does consulting work with university leaders on issues of antisemitism, I found this critique tremendously disheartening and frustrating. The report seemed unusually attentive to the diversity of views amongst Jews on matters relating to Israel, and seemed like a good faith attempt to accurately communicate the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. That even an effort like this was met with a response like that -- the near-reflexive at this point fuming about Zionist hegemony and suppression of dissident voices etc. etc. is, to be honest, a substantial deterrent in continuing that work forward. There's just no pleasing some people.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Draw the Lines


Slowly but steadily, there are increasing sanctions on Israeli actors responsible for implementing human rights violations in occupied Palestinian territories. The UK just announced new sanctions against West Bank outposts. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel that if it doesn't increase the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip, military aid might be cut off. And in one of the more symbolically (if probably not tangibly) impactful moves, Canada revoked the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund* due in part to its activities in the occupied West Bank.

Given the ubiquity in the diaspora Jewish imagination of JNF's little blue boxes, the Canadian decision was a bombshell, and the Canadian Jewish community is reportedly aghast, and claiming that it is being unfairly targeted by a biased organization. I'm not a Canadian lawyer, and so I won't comment on the underlying legal issues. Speaking broadly though, JNF's historical importance does not and should not give it any immunity to violate Canadian non-profit laws or to funnel "charitable" donations to projects that violate Canadian policy, which absolutely can include projects that retrench Israel's occupation of the West Bank and which stymie the project of Palestinian statehood. Blue box or no, there is no right to leverage Canada's tax code to flout Canada's foreign policy priorities regarding Israel and Palestine.

The one thing that does give me pause is the claim that the Canadian tax authorities have refused to tell JNF exactly which activities are out of compliance or how to get back into compliance. That seems troublesome. JNF absolutely should be given clear guidance about what it the tax authorities deem to be compliant and non-compliant activities, at which point JNF can decide whether it wants to come into compliance or not (and the public can decide whether the rules are or are not reasonable). Draw the lines clearly about what is and is not permissible, and let the chips fall where they may -- but secret rules smack of punitive targeting. Other than that, though, my general view is that it is up to Jewish charities to stay in compliance with the law, and it is entirely reasonable for the law to declare that aiding the occupation is not a charitable endeavor.

* The article on this story did give me one blast from the past moment. It extensively quoted Corey Balsam, head of Independent Jewish Voices, praising the decision to revoke JNF's charitable status. That name rang a bell -- Corey Balsam was who I cited in my White Jews: An Intersectional Approach paper arguing that even non-White Jews were functionally "whitened" by virtue of being Jewish. He made that argument in a graduate school thesis paper, so seeing his name pop up again was a fun "where are they now" moment.