A Galaxy FAR, FAR Away Roundup

In my last roundup, I noted that I was going on the law school job market this year -- a process that commences with the charmingly named "meat market" in Washington this fall. The first thing that law schools receive from potential candidates, however, is the "FAR form" -- a one page document that's basically the back of your law professor baseball card: all your key stats, from degrees to teaching interests to publications. The FAR form gets distributed to law schools tomorrow, and once it's out the hiring season has officially kicked off.

Though if you like, this roundup also can be sponsored by this video about Star Wars.

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Lyft is going to buy carbon-offsets for its rides. Nice.

Famed Holocaust and antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt: Trump didn't go far enough in condemning White nationalism.

What happened when a Labour MP tried to intervene with the Israeli government on behalf of sick Palestinian children? She faced a torrent of antisemitic abuse, that's what. Shocking story, but it's the wages of anti-normalization.

I thought this was a really thoughtful discussion between Ken White and Elie Mystal on whether things like the North Carolina gun store billboard targeting "the squad" should be protected as free speech (both -- accurately -- observe at the outset that it is protected; the discussion is about whether that doctrine is correct).

The "Word Crimes" special issue of Israel Studies continues to generate controversy: the editors of the journal issued an apology acknowledging that "the special issue and our decision-making process regarding the publication were flawed", but also defending themselves against some of the more histrionic critiques. The editors of the special issue in turn replied to the journal editor's apology, as well as addressing the wider controversy, here.

In California, locally-assessed fees sometimes make new housing construction cost-prohibitive. Locally-assessed fees are assessed, however, because Prop. 13 took a chainsaw to localities ability to raise revenue via property taxes, and so they have to get creative if they're to bring money in.

RIP Toni Morrison.

But Can Hanlon's Razor Explain This?

You know, it wasn't long ago that if you told me the Texas prison system banned Shakespeare but permitted Mein Kampf, I'd have assumed it was due to some form of incompetence. And not, say, a genuine preference on the part of Texas prison administrators for White supremacist and Nazi literature over literary classics.

Now? Less sure.

“‘Mein Kampf’ is on the approved list because it does not violate our rules,” said a prison official.

 Lovely.

One Eyed Blogger Roundup

Somehow, I scratched my left cornea pretty badly yesterday. Ever managed to get dehydrated simply by your eye tearing up? Now I have!

Anyway, good excuse to clear some stuff off the ol' browser tab:

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Two great columns, one by Adam Serwer and the other by Josh Barro, on the growing conservative embrace of cowardly violence masquerading as toughness.

While we're on the subject, Michelle Goldberg explores the propensity to take angry White voters seriously precisely because they seriously threaten violence if they don't get their way. It might be interesting to tie in this claim to the concerns that at least some segments of the radical campus population do engage politically in this angry, threatening fashion.

Interesting Ha'aretz interview with Jamaica Kincaid -- just your standard-issue Jewish Afro-Caribbean writer residing in Vermont -- after she won Israel's prestigious Dan David Prize.

Buzzfeed profiles atheists living in highly religious societies. It's sobering just how many are in fear of their life.

Donna Minkowitz reflects on how it came to be that "proud self-hating Jew" Gilad Atzmon asked her to blurb his book.

Lauren Post has a piece at the Forward giving the history of antisemitism in the feminist movement. Some of the texts she links to are classics -- including a few I had been intending to read for awhile but hadn't gotten my hands upon.

My old Illinois colleague Suja Thomas in Jotwell reviews some new research on implicit bias and judging. And speaking of new research on implicit bias, remind me to get this book by Jonathan Kahn on the subject when it comes out next fall.

Finally, Heidi Kitrosser has an article in the Minnesota Law Review entitled "Free Speech, Higher Education, and the PC Narrative" which seems well worth reading. If ever there was a term being asked to carry far more weight than it is capable of bearing, it is "PC".

"Trigger Warning" -- That Phrase Apparently Doesn't Mean Anything

Jerry Coyne, writing in The New Republic, inadvertently summarizes what I consider the ur-feature of all writing on "trigger warnings" (this is apparently from last year, but TNR's Facebook feed decided I should read it now). Discussing a call from some students to provide a trigger warning for Ovid’s “Metamorphoses" due to its graphic depiction of sexual assault (a student survivor who expressed concerns about how the material was presented said she felt "dismissed" by her professor), Coyne writes the following sentence:

That professor was clearly wrong to dismiss the student, and perhaps he or she might have mentioned beforehand that there is violence and sexual assault in Ovid, but that’s as far as I’d go.

So, Coyne would go as far as giving advance notice that their might be troublesome material in the selected readings. Or, put another way, we might say he'd "warn" his students about content which might "trigger" them.

But a "trigger warning"? Heaven forfend!

Given what Coyne agrees would have been appropriate, I confess its no longer clear to me what he thinks a "trigger warning" is. But you can be sure that the ensuing 10 paragraphs will explain why -- whatever it is -- it's the beginning of academic fascism the likes of which threaten the very foundations of the American university.

Alice Walker Says No Hebrew Translation of "The Color Purple"

As part of her general boycott of Israel, Alice Walker is refusing to allow her novel "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew (the article sounds like her objection is to the Hebrew language, not the publishing house, though it's a little unclear). Though if it is literally just a problem with the language that Jews and Israelis speak, then I think we've found a topper to this includes any reference to their wildlife.

In all seriousness, Alice Walker's problems with anti-Semitism -- going well beyond "criticizing Israel" -- are nothing new. I mean, even Michael Lerner regretted invited her to speak, saying she was offensive and put-downish towards the Jewish people as a whole. Lerner's note that Walker was utterly dismissive of Jewish history accords with my own reading of her, and is doubly ironic given her prior arrogant assertion that "Jews who know their own history" agree with her.

But this does demonstrate with renewed vividness the connection between Walker's famous sentiment ("No one is your friend who demands your silence"), and her later remark regarding Israel that "when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet." Walker, of course, feels that Israel is primarily fear-inducing to "the people of the world" (most Jews excluded, naturally), and so she would rather not engage in discourse with them -- preferring them to be silenced as others determine their fate.

Alice Walker is no friend of Jews. There's nothing new to that statement, but it bears repeating. It's tragic when someone looked up to by so many turns so viciously, but it can't be ignored.

Exodus Origins: The Making and Unmaking of a Myth

There is a Jewish proverb about a man who had been spreading malicious lies about one of his neighbors. Feeling guilty about it, he went to his Rabbi and asked what he could do for penance. The Rabbi told him:

"Take three pillows outside, and tear them open so the feathers are cast to the wind."

The man did so, and returned to the Rabbi. The Rabbi then instructed him to go out and collect all the feathers.

"But that's impossible! The feathers have been scattered; it would be impossible to track them all down."

The Rabbi nodded sadly, and remarked that this is the danger of telling lies -- even if one feels genuinely guilty and wishes to recant, it is unlikely that they every can be truly returned to their box.

Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi has taken to delivering a speech where he purports to tell the true story behind Leon Uris' famous novel Exodus. Khalidi claims that the novel was "commissioned" by "Edward Gottleib ... one of the founders of the modern public relations industry" and "father of the American iteration of Zionism." Gottlieb hired Uris to write the book and sent him off to Israel to do so.

By all appearances, Khalidi's claim is a complete fabrication. Martin Kramer thoroughly breaks it down -- indeed, I have to say I've rarely read a more systematic rib-cracking than the one Kramer delivers to Khalidi on this point. The supposed connection between Gottlieb (who was, at most, a middling figure in the public relations industry and had little to do with the broader American Zionist movement) and Uris can now be found in several books, including one published by the University of California Press. My guess is that Khalidi was relying on these sources when making his claim. But all the claims trace back to a 1985 (several decades after Exodus was published) PR advice book which recounts the story in similar terms, as an anecdote to aspiring young PR professionals.

In terms of historical evidence, this is a very thin reed. And it stands alone: Gottlieb's name does not show up in Uris' papers, he is unknown to either of Uris' biographers, there is no contemporaneous evidence or documentation relating any connection between Gottlieb and Uris whatsoever. The author of the 1985 anecdote says that it was recounted to him by Gottlieb himself, but -- given the time lag, lack of corroboration, and the tendency for PR professionals to perhaps slightly exaggerate while self-promoting -- he admits that he cannot vouch for its accuracy. In fact, Gottlieb's chief assistant on matters related to Israel claims to have no knowledge of such a link between her boss and Uris, and firmly concludes that none exists. The odds that this story is true, in sum, is almost infinitesimally small.

So Khalidi is engaging in abysmal history to weave a typical narrative of Zionist perfidy and malignancy, and now it has been debunked. Which is good. And Khalidi is a trained historian, so that makes his terrible methodology all the more scandalous. But unfortunately, the genie probably still won't be returned to the bottle.

True historical research -- digging up primary source documents and interviewing surviving subjects -- is hard work, and work I personally find breathtakingly boring. It's one reason why going into the field of History never interested me. I know what good historical methodology is, but I don't practice it -- I'm reliant on actual historians to do their job right the first time. I assume that when someone like Khalidi tells a tale like this, that he got his information via true historical exploration (or at least relies on others who did) -- not simply taking a trade paperback at face value. The problem, though, is that every time such a story -- even if false -- is recounted by people with impressive-sounding Columbia University titles or prestigious university presses -- it provides another secondary source which the average person (myself included) generally relies upon in order to understand history.

Real Posts Mean a Real Roundup

Hey, I wrote three actual posts today, so back off! 

 

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Jon Chait blows the lid off Matt Yglesias' absurdly vague smear re: the meaning of Goldstone's past collaboration with South Africa's apartheid regime.

Feel good story about Gaza surfers.

Proponents of an anti-Israel boycott sure are attracted to conspiracy (see also). 

Margaret Atwood and Amitov Ghosh had a lovely acceptance speech for their joint receipt of the Dan David Prize.

Arizona just passed a bill targeting ethnic studies courses, on the grounds that they may promote "ethnic solidarity" (which is "just like the old South", according to the state schools chief, who perhaps is a few years short of schooling himself).

You know what happens when you allow gay marriage? Gays get married.

Once again, for many conservatives qualities associated with American Jews make one automatically an inauthentic American.

In related news, John Cole is collecting the latest additions to the constitutional qualifications for a SCOTUS justice.

Exceptionalism

Writer Amitav Ghosh, explaining why he is not boycotting a literary award associated with Israel's Tel Aviv University.

I would like to state clearly that I do not believe in embargoes and boycotts where they concern matters of culture and learning. On the contrary I believe very strongly that it is important to defend the notion that institutions of culture and learning must, in principle, be regarded as autonomous of the state. Or else every writer in America and Britain, and everyone who teaches in a British or American university, would necessarily be implicated in the Iraq war, and by extension, in Israel’s actions in Gaza and Palestine. Similarly every Indian writer and academic would also be complicit in the actions of the Indian government in areas of conflict. And if we don’t defend this principle how will we defend the rights of dissent of those who are employed in universities – especially, for instance, in times of war, when reasons of state can be cited to create an explicit complicity?
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I do not see how it is possible to make the case that Israel is so different, so exceptional, that it requires the severing of connections with even the more liberal, more critically-minded members of that society. Is it really possible to argue that there is in that country such a unique and excessive malevolence that it contaminates every aspect of civil society, including private foundations and universities? Let me remind you of something that Sari Nusseibeh once said:

"If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals... If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach."

I have always felt that exceptionalism has been a major problem for the rest of the world in relation to both the US as well as Israel. How then can I now take an exceptionalist position myself?

Mr. Ghosh also objects to the boycott on tactical grounds, linking to this Gush Shalom piece. See also Margaret Atwood's response to the same request (she also is not boycotting).

H/T: Norm Geras.

Othello as a Legal Thriller

Move over John Grisham. William Shakespeare's Othello is the real king of the legal thriller genre -- or so Richard McAdams argued in his summer WIP talk.