Who's Talking About Including Political Diversity on Campus?

Many people hate DEI (no news there). Many of those same people also are emphatic that universities must do more to prioritize intellectual and political diversity on campus. And in the overlapping diagram, it is taken for granted that the DEI apparatus is apathetic if not antagonistic to the project of promoting political diversity. It's not even something argued for; it is a presupposition that forms part of the foundation explaining why DEI is unjust.

And yet, in my experience, the academic site where one is most likely to see discussion about and concern over political diversity is ... in the DEI space.

We had our first faculty meeting of the year yesterday, which included the various faculty committees getting our formal charges. I'm chairing the law school's DEI committee (we're still allowed to have one, I guess). One thing last year's committee did was commission a "campus climate" survey, and the questions (on feelings of inclusion, prevalence of harassment, etc.) included ones keyed to political differences. The questions regarding how to facilitate a campus environment that's inclusive political diversity emanated primarily out of the DEI committee.

That's not because the rest of the faculty is apathetic to the issue. Rather, most issues in academia -- including important issues, including issues which predominantly occupy the public's attention when they deign to think about academia -- don't get thought of that much by most professors, most of the time, for the simple reason that we only have so much time and there is a lot to think about. So we delegate and we divide labor, and the result is that many important issues are reliant on being "picked up" by a specified office or committee within an academic space. And in my experience, the space that "picks up" the issue of intellectual diversity in general and potential feelings of alienation experience by political minorities in particular are the DEI offices and officers -- a role that is entirely overlooked given the near-universally believed dogma that DEI officers are implacably opposed to intellectual diversity in general and conservatives in particular. 

We saw a version of this in the fallout of the Kyle Duncan incident at Stanford, where DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach took the fall for how she managed student protests at a Federalist Society event. Almost entirely occluded in the hatefest Steinbach endured as a supposed ideological commissar of DEI wokeness was the fact that the Federalist Society had identify Steinbach as one of its few allies on campus; a figure who stood out precisely because she was invested in ensuring that FedSoc could participate fully and equally in campus life. It is hard to imagine a clear illustration of this paradox -- the assumption that DEI is the enemy of political diversity and inclusivity; the reality that the DEI official was one of the most active proponents of political diversity and inclusivity -- than this.

Now, to be sure, the political form of "inclusion" isn't straightforward -- and in particular, it doesn't map on especially well to how we think about "inclusion" vis-a-vis ascriptive identities like race or religion. Ascriptive identities are not typically thought of as being appropriately subjected to normative criticism. A place where significant members of the population took positions of the form "I think it is illegitimate/immoral/wrong/incorrect to be Black" would be failing to be inclusive of racial difference in an obvious way. I imagine virtually all would think the same regarding religion ("It's wrong to be Jewish"); I'd say the same thing about sexual and gender identity (though here of course many conservatives would disagree, and very much want to defend the legitimacy of those who assert "it is wrong to be gay or trans").

By contrast, ideological orientations are defined by content that by definition is properly the subject of ongoing normative contestation. To be conservative (or liberal, or Marxist, or MAGA) is to endorse a cluster of normative positions which others will inevitably judge as right or wrong, correct or incorrect, or legitimate or illegitimate. A university could not function at the most basic level if members are not allowed to make those judgments (what would it even mean to say that the law school's mission is thwarted when its members make normative appraisals of ideological positions?). Unlike "I think it is wrong to be Jewish", statements of the form "I think it is wrong to oppose gay marriage" or "I think it is wrong to abolish qualified immunity" cannot be viewed as inherently problematic in a university space -- those are exactly the sorts of statements we expect to see, and there is no intrinsic foul just because one's peers think you've taken the wrong side of an ideological controversy.

This doesn't mean there isn't any space to consider how persons who take ideologically dissident positions in a given space can or should be "included". One thing we can (and I think should) say is that healthy respect for intellectual pluralism means we should be tolerant of a wide range of positions on publicly contested issues, even those we disagree with, and generally relate to such positions via the "normal" processes of respectful dialogue, debate, and consideration. Some think we shouldn't abolish qualified immunity, others we should, but even if "abolish qualified immunity" is the consensus position on campus, we should still be willing to think about the issue critically and debate it in a manner that respects the divergent views. Cultivating that sort of respect for ideological plurality seems very healthy, and hopefully can alleviate some feelings of exclusion conservative students might face. But notice that this isn't how I think we envision what "inclusion" looks like for ascriptive identities -- I do not think our goal with respect to antisemitism should be "some people think Jews are okay, and some don't, but the important thing is that we make sure that persons with all range of views on 'are Jews okay' are able to openly debate and discuss the issue." The sorts of interventions that make sense along the axis of ideological orientation are ill-equipped to address racial or religious (or, I think, sex/gender) identity.

So the issue is not straightforward, and the people who act like it is are selling you a bill of goods. The issue of inclusivity towards political diversity on campus is a complex one and one that requires serious thought. But overwhelmingly, the people who are thinking about it in a serious and systematic way -- not as rabble-rousers, not as part of a bad-faith gotcha game trying to sabotage the university -- are found in DEI offices. And I wish they got more credit for the hard work they're putting in.

The Stanford Anti-Semitism Experiment, Part 3

Stanford's student council has unanimously passed its resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Now, one can always be skeptical of these resolutions -- as a student in the UK noted, they can come off as box-checking rather than a genuine attempt to grapple with the injustice -- but on my read of the text it is strong enough. The decision to not just mandate yearly anti-Semitism training, but enlist the ADL to assist in the project, is particularly welcome. The decision to recognize "the collective rights to self-determination of the Jewish people that are no different than any other people" is also very good.

There was nothing in there that directly or indirectly tackled the blood libel or the propensity to promulgate such conspiracies, which is a shame given that this apparently holds appeal to at least one Stanford professor, but I suppose that was a long-shot. While there was no specific mention of the comments by a Stanford senator earlier regarding the legitimacy of debating "Jewish power", he had already been censured by the senate and the resolution preserves the language he objected to condemning "the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions."

The Stanford Anti-Semitism Experiment, Part 2

Last week, I wrote on a Stanford student senator who, during a debate over a proposed resolution condemning anti-Semitism, argued that it was not anti-Semitic to contend that "Jews control[] the media, economy, government and other societal institutions." That episode has mostly wrapped up as the Senator has dropped his re-election bid, though it remains to be seen whether the student Senate can pass a resolution on anti-Semitism that is acceptable to the Jewish community on campus.

And on that score, they may have a new datapoint to consider -- this time on the faculty side of things. David Palumbo-Liu is a comparative literature professor whom I've run across before -- this Huffington Post article where he attributed Palestinian stabbings of Israelis to "an on-going campaign to desecrate and destroy holy sites that anchor non-Jewish peoples to their faiths", including an alleged conspiracy to replace the al-Aqsa Mosque with a new Jewish Temple. That was enough for me to recognize that we had a hack conspiracy theorist on our hands, and I didn't think much more of it.

Anyway, this past week in a Salon article,  Palumbo-Liu went even further. In suggesting alternative media sources readers should rely upon for accurate Mideast reporting (because the mainstream media is biased, as we know), he endorsed  Alison Weir "If Americans Knew" organization. For those of you who don't know, IAK is a group that has, among other things, argued that Jews really did ritually murder Christian children to drink their blood during Passover. Weir has also justified anti-Semitism by saying that the Jewish "race" has been "an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself," regularly appeared on neo-Nazi and white supremacist media programs, and, most recently, objected to the Merrick Garland nomination on account of Judge Garland's Jewish faith. IAK's anti-Semitism has been sufficiently overt to garner condemnation not just from the Anti-Defamation League, but also by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation (more on that in a moment).

After public outcry, Palumbo-Liu removed the reference to IAK from his article with the following message:

While the organization If Americans Knew, which was previously listed here, provides much useful information from reliable, neutral sources, I disagree with many of the public comments of its director. I have removed the original reference to prevent any confusion.)

On Twitter, that played out like this:

I disagree with many comments made by Alison Weir of IAK. I do not believe she represents all of what IAK does.

— David Palumbo-Liu (@palumboliu) April 12, 2016

Shorter @palumboliu : If you discount the "Jews drink Christian blood at passover" thing, IAK is well worth reading!https://t.co/FhuzKM7fpc

— David Schraub (@schraubd) April 12, 2016

Does Palumbo-Liu agree that IAK has engaged in anti-Semitism? Sure doesn't seem like it. There's no condemnation here at all: I "disagree" with my girlfriend regarding the merits of the movie Gran Torino, and in any event Palumbo-Liu can't even bring himself to say what it is he so blandly "disagrees" with. Certainly, he makes it clear that whatever "disagreements" he might have with IAK does not negate the reliability of the group as a whole. Who's to let a little blood libel disturb our credibility judgments?

There honestly isn't that much more to say on this event directly: A Stanford Professor thinks that an organization nearly-universally regarded as anti-Semitic is an important resource for persons looking for an accurate perspective on Israel, and Salon in turn thinks that an academic with those views provides a worthy contribution to its readers. That's depressing, but pretty straightforward.

But there are two more points I want to make. The first regards the role of the JVP condemnation of Weir in all of this. As I noted at the time, the JVP condemnation of Weir was itself quite mealy-mouthed (and they haven't been able to hold to it with consistency, either). They did seem to think, though, that their credibility as an organization that virtually never calls anything anti-Semitic would mean that their normal allies would give them credence here. This hypothesis was falsified rather quickly, and this event proves the point yet further. As soon as JVP strays from its box as the Jews who reassure non-Jews that they're totally not anti-Semitic -- that is, as soon as they do try to label anything anti-Semitic -- they become just as unreliable and uncredible as any other Jewish group. Palumbo-Liu, after all, had also listed JVP as another one of the organizations worth listening to -- but not, apparently, worth listening to when they call someone that Palumbo-Liu likes anti-Semitic.

Which moves me to the next point. Palumbo-Liu, I have no doubt, thinks he has reliable instincts on anti-Semitism. As usual, I don't quite understand the foundation of that sentiment, but what I'm curious about here -- and this is a serious question -- is whether there is anything that would falsify that proposition to him? Clearly, "supporting things most Jews deem anti-Semitic" wouldn't do it. And apparently, "supporting organizations even groups like Jewish Voice for Peace label anti-Semitic" won't cut it either. So what would? My suspicion is that the answer is: "nothing". David Palumbo-Liu's stance as a reliable arbiter of what is and is not anti-Semitic is axiomatic -- unchallengeable by anyone or anything (no doubt if we try, it's just another Zionist Jewish smear).

Professor Palumbo-Liu might be past helping in terms of accurately appraising the reliability of his own instincts. But we -- the collective we, including the Salons and the Nations and the Huffington Posts that publish him -- still can make that assessment. We can still look at him and his revealed instincts and ask ourselves: Is this guy credible? Is the perspective he's offering one worth sharing? Is his contribution one grounded in assessments and appraisals that are considered, fair-minded, egalitarian, and respectful?

We can still do that. And, in turn, the way we answer those questions reveals something about ourselves -- our own instincts, our own sensibilities, and, ultimately, our own credibility.

The Stanford Anti-Semitism Experiment

The Stanford student council is in the process of considering a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. During its deliberations, one senator, Gabriel Knight, objected to language that would have identified claims that "Jews [control] the media, economy, government and other societal institutions" as a form of anti-Semitism. He contended that this was "not anti-Semitism":

“[The clause] says: ‘Jews controlling the media, economy, government and other societal institutions’ [is] a feature of anti-Semitism that we theoretically shouldn’t challenge,” Knight said. “I think that that’s kind of irresponsible foraying into another politically contentious conversation. Questioning these potential power dynamics, I think, is not anti-Semitism. I think it’s a very valid discussion.”

As Yair Rosenberg points out, the reaction by the Stanford community has been markedly better than the muted hand-wringing we've seen at other campuses when faced with anti-Semitism controversies. There have been widespread public outrage, calls for Senator Knight to resign (or lose re-election), a rescission of endorsement from the Stanford newspaper, and a powerful editorial by Winston Shi in the Stanford Daily unequivocally condemning anti-Semitism that is well worth a read.*

I want to write on this event, though, because I think it keenly illustrates some thoughts I've had about the intersection of Jews and "whiteness" as a concept. Were I to try and reconstruct what Sen. Knight was thinking when he said those words (perhaps overgenerously, but I think it's a good thing to at least try to consider the views of others in their strongest light). it would go something like the following:

It is standard practice in opposing racism and white supremacy to note the power and significant control white people have over entities like the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions. So how can it be that the same argument made all the time with respect to white people generally -- and acknowledged to be valid and progressive in that case -- suddenly becomes a form of bigotry when applied to a particular class of white people (i.e., the Jews)? Indeed, we frequently see white people try to deny they possess this power and instead take on the role of the victim; how is this any different.

From the Jewish perspective, by contrast, the argument runs thusly:

It is a standard form of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish bigotry to argue that Jews have power and control over entities like the media, economy, government, and other social institutions. So why should such claims suddenly cease to be anti-Semitic simply because they cloak themselves in the garb of "anti-racism" or "progressivism"? Indeed, historically speaking there is no oddity in such a connection; anti-Semitism of this form has not just occasionally but frequently manifested precisely in this way -- leftist self-identification and all.

Hopefully this example at least illuminates the sense of talking past one another that was evident in this debate. Senator Knight sees himself as talking about Jews the same way he talks about any other similarly situated group. It is implausible, he thinks, that his motivations suddenly shifted from licit to illicit in the Jewish case, when he's making the same exact same argument he's always made. And meanwhile, from the Jewish vantage point, Senator Knight is talking about Jews the same way anti-Semites have always talked about Jews. It is implausible, we think, that the political valence of the remarks shifted from illicit to licit simply because Senator Knight thinks of himself as an egalitarian, non-prejudiced sort.

That said, I think there is more to be said here than simply dueling narratives talking past one another. What we need to do instead is look at the intersection of "Jew" and "white" as categories, seeing how placing them in relationship with one another creates something unique and hard to spot if one simply takes them in isolation. 

The conflict between the narratives laid out above, of course, rests on the idea of Jews as a class of white people. There are quite a few things we could say about this directly -- the complex racination of even European Ashkenazi Jews, the difficulties presented by the existence of Jews of color, the complicated case posed by Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. I'll leave those important issues aside for now, and instead accept the more modest point that the image of the Jew, in the relevant public imaginary, is taken to be a white person.

In theory, that shouldn't tell us that much about the standing of the Jew qua Jew. Jews who are white would enjoy white privilege, to be sure, but that wouldn't translate into a Jewish privilege, any more than Sen. Knight's status as a man (with male privilege) translates into a "black privilege". In the latter case, the absurdity is evident -- the fact that some black people have privilege along other dimensions of their identity (they are blacks who have privilege) does not create a distinct "black privilege". Indeed, we would probably recognize that blackness significantly modulates an "unmarked" (read: white) male privilege.

Yet for Jews, it seems things are different. The whiteness of Jews doesn't yield the unremarkable kyriarchical observation (that people are privileged along certain axes and subordinated along others). The prototypical whiteness of Jews goes further -- it assimilates the Jewishness. This is how, in Senator Knight's narrative, we can make the jump from being able to talk about the power and influence held by whites qua whites to justify the same discourse regarding Jews qua Jews.

Why do Jews seems particularly vulnerable to this particular elision? Here is where taking seriously the Jewish narrative becomes important. Part of the historical discursive pattern of anti-Semitism is the notion of Jewish hyperpower -- that we are dominant, tyrannical, world-controlling figures. Anti-Semitism isn't just people who hate Jews, it's people who think they're oppressed by Jews -- who place Jews into the role of the oppressor class (there is a reason why anti-Semitism has been often called "the socialism of fools"). It is easy to see how a concept like "whiteness" -- bound up as it is in its own history of dominance and power -- would intersect with this particular anti-Semitic stereotype in a particularly pernicious way. What emerges is an inversion of the general kyriarchical framework -- instead of seeing Jewishness as being a source of disadvantage distinct from privileges yielded by whiteness (indeed, one that likely modulates -- though does not erase -- "white privilege"), Jewishness is taken to accentuate the privilege. Jews are not just white, they are the paradigm or epitome of whiteness.

From here, we are in a position to respond to the first narrative directly. Why is it the case that the "same argument" deployed against "other whites" becomes invalid as against white Jews? Well, in part, its because as argued above it isn't quite the same -- there is a jump being made here. But more importantly, the argument is different because intersecting the categories of "Jew" and "white" creates a social position that is not, in fact, assimilable into "white" as a simple category (this is the basic insight of intersectionality). It is not surprising that the impact would be different (and it helps to adopt the progressive standpoint of thinking that more matters here than subjective ill-intent), nor is it surprising that we'd miss certain important elements if we are not attuned to the basic Jewish narrative about what arguments like these mean.

So what lessons can we glean? Well, for starters, concepts like intersectionality are actually really useful tools for a full understanding of issues of oppression and discrimination given our complex and multi-layered identities. Beyond that, though, is the importance of recognizing the value of perspective, of not assuming that one already knows what one needs to know about the group one is talking about. The problems in Sen. Knight's statements are clear enough once one takes the Jewish vantage point seriously, and moreover, I'd like to say they tell us something important about the other related concepts in play here as well (like "whiteness" or "privilege"). There is a useful epistemic humility worth developing regarding our intuitions regarding outgroups whose perspectives are simultaneously often not aired and often not viewed as needing to be aired in ordered to have a conversation about them (I won't quote Christine Littleton or George Yancy again, but, you know, here they are). That's true across the board, but it is perhaps worth special emphasis with respect to Jews because Jews are often particularly (and wrongly) assumed to have already been heard -- if not overheard -- in the dominant discursive strains.

In a sense, these are not anything remarkable to persons versed in current progressive understandings of discrimination and inequality. Do intersectional analysis. Take seriously the perspective of the other. And so on. But I think we are getting a glimpse of why these seemingly unremarkable concepts -- which one would think would be, if not second nature, then at least readily recognizable by your average contemporary progressive advocate -- seem to have trouble penetrating in the Jewish case. The particular cocktail of anti-Semitic stereotypes -- whether by luck or design -- seems mixed precisely to immunize it from these otherwise powerful critical counters. That's unfortunate. But there isn't much to be done about it except to insist, with as much vigor and clarity as we can, upon making the connections.

* With respect to Shi's editorial, I do have to digress and observe again -- since this is important to say when prompted by one's allies as much as one's adversaries -- that "hate speech" and "free speech" is a false binary. On the one hand, hate speech is a form of (hateful) free speech. And on the other hand, that something is free speech does not immunize it from condemnation; the response to Sen. Knight's comments -- including Shi's editorial and the calls for Knight to resign or be voted out of office -- are exactly the sorts of challenging counterspeech that one would hope would constitute the response to free-yet-vile speech.

McConnell Leaves the Bench

And adding insult to injury, he's not rejoining us at Chicago. He's stepping down to take up a post at Stanford University.

Chicago, I have to point out, is looking for a new Dean. A couple of students mentioned McConnell's name, but I didn't think he would go anywhere from the bench after having been so recently confirmed. Apparently he got wanderlust faster than any of us thought.

This also, incidentally, probably decreases to nil the chances that I won't try to clerk for some crazy raging leftist.