They're Talking About Us

In the latest effort to keep the reward loop for bad faith grandstanding on campus speech and antisemitism churning, right-wing actors are targeting prominent Jewish History professor Derek Penslar, who was tapped to co-chair* Harvard's recently announced taskforce on antisemitism.

I joined many of my colleagues who work in the arena of antisemitism and/or Israel or Jewish Studies in defending Penslar from these attacks. It's not because I necessarily agree with everything Penslar ever wrote (a statement I could make about anyone). Rather, it's because of the obvious true target here, for which Penslar was only a symbol: the broad swath of liberal Jews who are not wild-eyed anti-Zionists, who are not committed to the view that Israel's only role in the world is as demonspawn, but are clear-eyed about its flaws, insistent that the occupation is intolerable, and vocal that the trajectory Israel is on needs to change. For people like us, I think we can borrow from Frantz Fanon's philosophy teacher: "When you hear someone insulting Derek Penslar pay attention; he is talking about you." 

Consider this piece by David Mikics in Tablet, which, while graciously conceding that Penslar is not himself antisemitic, pushes the thesis that Penslar is motivated by making the world safe for people who are.

As a member of the Nexus Task Force, [Penslar] is in fact one of the key academic activists leading the effort to sanction a wide range of anti-Zionist speech and teachings. (The Jewish studies petition defending Penslar’s appointment was organized by Nexus.) Officially, Jonathan Jacoby, the incoming director of Nexus, says that he doesn’t want to erase the IHRA, just supplement it. But evidence suggests that Nexus is already lobbying lawmakers to absolve anti-Zionists from any taint of antisemitism. Nexus recently hired Kevin Rachlin, formerly of J Street, to lead its D.C. office—a hire that suggests Nexus’ origins in the world of the Democratic Party’s top-down campaigns to reconcile its “big donors” with some of the party’s more hateful constituencies.

Again, I appreciate the acknowledgment that Nexus is not "officially" pushing to erase IHRA. But of course we're lying. And how do you know we're lying? Not because of a critical analysis of Nexus' actual offering on antisemitism -- no no no. It's because we're tied to J Street, of course -- and J Street, in turn, is naught but an effort to launder radical anti-Zionist hate into the Democratic mainstream (that this piece came out right at the same time as J Street took its most overt step yet towards reconsolidating towards the Democratic Party center is *chef's kiss*).

But this is the point: trying to nitpick around this or that passage from Penslar's work is missing the broader game. If you're a Jew who's sympathetic to Nexus, if you're a Jew who aligns with J Street, if you're a Jew who thinks that there's sadly purchase to calling the situation in the West Bank "apartheid" -- if you fall into any of these categories, all the insults being lobbed toward Derek Penslar are talking about you. That's the reality of the situation, and we need to pay attention to what's actually happening here.

* The other co-chair is Raffaella Sadun, a professor at Harvard's Business School. It's interesting we've heard essentially nothing about her even as Penslar's every jot and tittle is being scrutinized to death. As best I can tell Sadun's research has nothing to do with Jews or antisemitism; there's little doubt that Penslar is, along traditional dimensions, a much more natural choice to lead this committee. 

To be clear, I don't think that makes Sadun an inappropriate choice to co-chair the committee. Leaving aside the possibility that she's deeply involved in these issues in her non-professional time, I actually think it's probably a good thing to have "lay" representation on these panels -- understanding how antisemitism effects persons who are not stewing in the hot house of Jewish or Israel Studies 24/7. For my part, the Jewish students who've expressed to me the most anxiety over the past few months are the ones who do not self-identify as particularly "involved" Jews -- they're buffeted by cross-winds of being confused and scared and uncertain if they have standing to be confused and/or scared. That isn't to say Sadun falls into that category either; only that a picture of Jewish life at Harvard which only considers the view of the Jews who are most tied into traditionally "Jewish" practices, organizations, or issues would be an incomplete picture.

ZoomZoom Roundup

I just finished my first week teaching over Zoom (undergraduate Constitutional Law). So far, it's going decently well I think -- considerably more interactive than I had anticipated, which is a good thing. But it does take a fair amount of concentration to keep my eyes on the ball for two consecutive hours. Thank god for breakout rooms (just remember to unmute yourself when you bring people back....).

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British voters think Keir Starmer's competence contrasts nicely with Boris Johnson's ineptitude. Amazing what having a leader who isn't a widely-reviled extremist can do for a left-wing party.

When it comes to whether "Jews are indigenous to Israel", I'm less interested in the tiresome Twitter brouhaha than I am in this really thoughtful essay on the subject in Tikkun Magazine.

Long interview with Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe on occasion of his retirement. Come for the stories of him growing up in Shanghai as a Jewish refugee, stay for the tale of how the Supreme Court Justices determined whether movies were "obscene".

A very interesting article by Roseanna Summers in the Yale Law Journal asking what everyday people think counts as "consent".

I'd much rather focus on Zach Banner than on DeSean Jackson, if it's all the same to you.

We could have beaten coronavirus, but unfortunately one of our two political parties has turned into a death cult. July is going to be rough.

Word is that Washington's football team soon won't be named after a racial slur.

Ma Vector Roundup

I'm on the job hunt this fall, and "Ma Vector" is my official unofficial callsign (it's a long story).

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Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei apparently flees to Germany from Japan in an asylum bid. He had been under intense pressure to throw matches in order to avoid facing an Israeli competitor, Sagi Muki, in international tournaments (Muki just became the first Israeli to win a world championship). Mollaei will apparently be eligible to compete in the 2020 Olympics on the "refugee" team.

New York Republicans remove antisemitic video; replace it with antisemitic text.

Contra The Young Turks, and with all due respect to John Delaney, the reason John Delaney "peaked at 2%" starts and ends with "who on earth is John Delaney?"

Several Chinese undergraduate students at Arizona State were denied entry to the United States and deported back to China. This follows on the heels of a Palestinian student at Harvard also being denied entry, reportedly due to political comments by some of his Facebook friends.

Antisemitic beliefs are taking hold in the Evangelical Christian community.

Trump's efforts to gain the support of Jewish voters don't seem to be working -- probably because he doesn't understand what motivates Jewish voters.

Boris Johnson's net approvals as PM are at -6%. Jeremy Corbyn's net approvals are -59%.

WPSA and Personal Troll Roundup

I presented my "White Jews: An Intersectional Approach" paper at the Western Political Science Association (intersectionality section) yesterday. It went quite well! I've now presented the paper to political theorists, to Jewish Studies folks, and to intersectionalists. If you haven't read it yet, I think it's pretty good.

But the prize for biggest professional accomplishment this week goes to the discovery that someone has created a website dedicated solely to informing the world that "David Schraub the UCLA Law Professor is a Disgusting Zionist Punk."  That's how you know you've made it. I may not have the highest quality trolls ("UCLA"?), but at least they're mine. (I can't say I recommend reading the entire screed on the website, but it's worth browsing for a few laughs).

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The African Muslim immigrant who saved a dozen Jews during the 2015 terrorist attack on a Paris kosher supermarket quietly arrived at the funeral of the elderly Holocaust survivor who was stabbed and burned to death in her apartment in an antisemitic hate crime. "I want to tell the Jews of France, you are not isolated. You are not abandoned. This is your country."

Jews and Muslims in America actually agree on quite a lot! And alignment increases alongside devoutness (more devout Jews and more devout Muslims share more in common), as well as contact (the more Jews and Muslims interact with each other, the more likely they are to perceive the two faiths as being similar in nature).

A former police officer turned criminal defense attorney discusses the Stephon Clark shooting, the way police are acculturated to fear (especially fear Black men), and the way poor instructions (e.g., "show me your hands" when your hands are holding a cellphone) can place innocent people in impossible situations.

Russian airline allegedly "deports" U.S. citizens of Indian descent back to India during a layover in Moscow. Great -- another reason for Trump to love the Russians.

Jewish News (UK) publishes an interview with Jeremy Corbyn. It's rare to see a conversation this long between two parties who so evidently loathe one another (it's really, really apparent in the interview).

Harvard Hillel is hosting a "liberation seder" focusing specifically on the ongoing injustices faced by Palestinians under occupation. The organizers worked closely with Jewish groups already affiliated with Hillel to ensure that it did not run afoul of the partnership guidelines. I'm all for this -- I have mixed feelings about the guidelines, but it's important to establish decisively that they will not be applied ad hoc to prohibit any criticism of Israel that's deemed too "sharp" in character. (Harvard Hillel has actually been consistently good on this issue -- refusing to allow the guidelines to metastasize to block, say, a program which has nothing to do with BDS because one participant backs the movement).

Sephardic Chief Rabbi in Israel may face criminal charges for likening a Black child born to White parents to a "monkey."

Today in Academic Freedom

Yesterday, I published a column in Ha'aretz on Berkeley's response to the Ben Shapiro speech. I noted that, since the Berkeley administration actually did exactly what it should have done in ensuring that Shapiro's juridical right to speak was protected, and since the Berkeley community largely followed through and responded to his speech through perfectly legitimate means (counterspeech, non-violent protest, flyers, questioning), perhaps we could now move on the substantive merits of what signal it sends when Ben Shapiro is invited at all.

It's been a banner couple of days for academic freedom, after all. For example:

* Harvard administrators overruled its own History Department's decision to admit Michelle Jones, a woman who rose to prominence for conducting top-level historical research while incarcerated in Indiana, to their graduate school. Reportedly, the decision was motivated in part by what conservative media outlets would say if Harvard admitted "a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority."

* Harvard also withdrew a fellowship offer previously extended to Chelsea Manning, this time in response to furious objections from conservatives in the intelligence community who deem Manning a "traitor." Manning was convicted of leaking classified information, and had her sentence commuted after serving seven years in prison. Corey Lewandowski, who assaulted a reporter, and Sean Spicer, who epitomized the "post-truth" ethos of the Trump administration, remain fellows in good standing.

* The University of Maryland is investigating the termination of a Jewish professor, Melissa Landa, from the College of Education. Landa contends that her relationship with her colleagues soured after she began organizing against antisemitic comments by (now-former) Oberlin Professor Joy Karega (Karega was eventually terminated after spreading several antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media; Landa is an Oberlin alum). Several of Landa's students have released an open letter criticizing her termination, describing her as an "ally" and "one of the few professors who is an expert in helping students examine their own biases."

* A lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was suspended after tweeting that he enjoys teaching "future dead cops." The New York City Police Union wants him fired, but New York Times columnist Bari Weiss wrote a lengthy essay explaining that, while the lecturer's views were offensive and reprehensible, it is important both for CUNY students and police officers to be exposed to ideas that discomfort them and respond via counterspeech rather than demand censorship [error: column not found].

* The University of North Carolina's board of governors shut down a civil rights center at UNC Law School which ruffled conservative feathers by litigating desegregation and environmental impact suits. I had already written about this controversy here, noting the incredibly ad hoc justifications given for what was obviously a political power play ("we just think law schools should focus less on practical training and more on esoteric, Ivory Tower theorizing!").

So that's where we stand. One suspects that some of these cases will gain great notoriety within certain political factions while others will be wholly ignored; switch the factions and you no doubt switch the cases that matter. As we've long since learned, academic freedom has a lot of fair weather friends. But as these examples indicate, the assault on academic freedom does emanate from a single source. You either defend the norms which let a university function, or you don't. 

Rate that Apology, Part 4: Something Smells at Harvard Edition

At an event hosting former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a Harvard Law student stood up and asked her why she was so "smelly." Given the historical usage of the smelly, odorous Jew as a trope in anti-Semitic discourse (and the inappropriateness of asking such a question at an academic event), the student (who remains anonymous) has been roundly condemned by (among others) Dean Martha Minow, the Jewish Law Students Association, and the Middle East Law Students Association. Now the student has offered the following apology:

“I am writing to apologize, as sincerely as I can via this limited form of communication, to anyone who may have felt offended by the comments I made last week. To be very clear, as there seems to be some confusion, I would never, ever, ever call anyone, under any circumstances, a “smelly Jew”. Such a comment is utterly repugnant, and I am absolutely horrified that some readers have been led to believe that I would ever say such a thing. With regards to what I actually did say, I can see now, after speaking with the authors of this article and many other members of the Jewish community at HLS, how my words could have been interpreted as a reference to an anti-Semitic stereotype, one that I was entirely unaware of prior to the publication of this article. I want to be very clear that it was never my intention to invoke a hateful stereotype, but I recognize now that, regardless of my intention, words have power, and it troubles me deeply to know that I have caused some members of the Jewish community such pain with my words. To those people I say, please reach out. Give me an opportunity to make it right. I will assure you, as I have already assured many, that had I known it was even possible that some listeners might interpret my comments as anti-Semitic, there is absolutely no chance that I would have uttered them. I trust that those that know me and have engaged with me on a personal level will not find this at all difficult to believe. Many members of the Jewish community—some of whom hold strong differences of opinion with me—have reached out to me on their own to let me know that they did not interpret my words as anti-Semitic, because they know me well enough to know that that is not at all consistent with who I am as a person. I want to thank them and any others who have given me the benefit of the doubt, and I am writing this note in the hopes that more of you will do the same. I say this, however, fully cognizant of the fact that no amount of writing can serve as a substitute for genuine human interaction. So please, if there remains any doubt at all, do take me up on my offer above and reach out so that I can make this right to you on a more personal level.”

So we'll start with the positive -- the whole "words have power" thing, and the acknowledgment that subjective intent is not the be-all end-all of offensive speech. I suppose apologizing "to anyone who may have felt offended" is better than "I apologize if you were offended" but still not as good as "I apologize for my offensive remarks." I'm interested in the line at the end where he says that "no amount of writing can serve as a substitute for genuine human interaction." I think that's right, and I think there is something to be said for offering to interact with concerned students on a personal level. However, there were some reports that the student asked the "smelly" question as a means of protesting Livni's presence without dignifying it with an actual substantive question. Such genuine human interaction.

In any event, though, this apology to my ears is missing one very simple thing. Orlando Battista famously wrote that "an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." So what was the error here? If it was the use of the word "smelly", I actually believe the student when he says he was unaware of the anti-Semitic cadence of the term, would not have used it had he known about it, and will not do so in the future. In that sense, you could say he has corrected his error.

But the thing is, I don't think the error was in using the term "smelly". The fact that he wrongfully thought that calling Livni "smelly" would not be anti-Semitic shows that his instincts regarding what is and is not anti-Semitic are not as reliable as he had thought they were. That was his error -- he was speaking confidently about Jews and Jewish institutions without really knowing about them. The apology should have had two more lines:

I will assure you, as I have already assured many, that had I known it was even possible that some listeners might interpret my comments as anti-Semitic, there is absolutely no chance that I would have uttered them. However, I have now learned that my intuitions regarding what is and is not anti-Semitic are not as robust as I had thought. Clearly, this is an area I need to learn more about and one in which I need to reassess the reliability of my own intuitions and assessments, and I resolve to do so immediately.

This would correct the genuine error, which is not in my view a simple matter of verbiage. What was revealed in this event was that this student didn't know as much as he thought he did about Jews -- about our history, our experiences, and our oppression. That revelation should have more wide-reaching ramifications than simply dropping the word "smelly." Doing that is cheap grace, it costs the student nothing, and so I have no doubt he's glad to do it. Reassessing some of his more tightly-held attitudes about Jews and Jewish institutions? That's costly grace; something I've looked for in cases like these yet rarely found. But that would represent a genuine apology.

Grade: 5.5/10

Back Home

Thanksgiving at my place! Everyone's invited (not really).

Meanwhile, a club shut down a pre-paid party for Harvard and Yale alums because too many Black people were on the guest list.

On the Cheapness of a Harvard Honor

James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates both have great posts on the burgeoning controversy over Harvard honoring Marty Peretz, who has a history of saying some pretty nakedly bigoted things. Coates' point, that one can be a bigot and a great journalist is particularly well-taken (regardless of whether Peretz qualifies as a great journalist or not):

The notion that we must choose between the two, that one mitigates the other, that good people don't do deplorable things, that deplorable people don't do great things, emanates from our own inability to understand that bigotry is not strictly the preserve of orcs.

Not Harvard's finest hour, to be sure.

Homeless to Harvard

I saw a movie about a girl who went from being homeless to going to Harvard (based on a true story). As I recall, the girl had trouble adjusting and ended up transferring to a school in NYC. They buried that fact in the epilogue, as if it was an embarrassment -- ruining the fairy tale ending they'd put out (it turns out the school was Columbia, so hardly a step down anyway). I disagree. Being smart enough to go to Harvard (from any background, much less that one) is a victory in of itself. There is no failure in struggling to adopt to that cultural shock; and there is no reason why one can't be every bit as successful coming out of any other school in the nation, so long as you work hard and show the passion and intelligence that got you accepted in the first place.

So that's when I think when I read another story about a girl who is going from homeless to Harvard. I wish her all the best, and hope that she thrives in Cambridge. But I also want her to remember that no matter what happens, she has already shown herself capable of great things.

Martha Minow New Harvard Dean

Obviously, my congratulations to the good great professor and scholar.

Unger-neath the Cork Tree

Also interesting: this article on Roberto Unger -- one of the key figures in Critical Legal Studies -- in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fun/demoralizing fact: at the age of 22 (i.e., my age), he was already an assistant professor at Harvard Law School.

At 22, I was already rejected by Harvard Law School. The parallels are astounding!

But it is a really neat article, and reinforces my somewhat dormant desire to actually read some of his work.

Interesting Figure

James Russell, a top authority on Armenia at Harvard University, is an interesting fellow.