The Anti-Anti-Racism Conspiracy in Oregon

This is an infuriating story on many levels:

The principal at The Madeleine School, a private Catholic school in Northeast Portland, summoned Portland police to the campus in late March when the parents of a Black student demanded to know her plan of action after their fourth grade son reported being called a racist slur on the playground.

Just 72 hours later, the school expelled the boy, effective immediately, saying his parents — Moda Health executive Karis Stoudamire-Phillips and renowned jazz musician Mike Phillips, both prominent Black Portlanders with long histories of volunteering both citywide and in Portland’s tight-knit Catholic school community — had violated the school’s code of conduct for parents.

The students accused of hurling the slur denied it, but the boy's account was corroborated by at least one other witness.

There are a couple of different layers here. One is that the Archbishop of Portland has had a tense relationship with the Catholic school community here, stemming from his effort to enforce conservative gender orthodoxy over the objections of many students, parents, and lay leaders. This appears to be part of a broader intrusion of right-wing culture war shibboleths, which helps make more sense of this part of the story:

According to that child’s father, who did not want to be named to protect his child’s privacy, Principal Tresa Rast told him and his wife that she suspected that their son had made up the entire incident and recommended that the child see a therapist so he could be “deprogrammed” from the anti-racist training he’d received while previously attending public school in Portland.

From what I can tell in the article, the child had been attending the Madeleine school since Kindergarten, so it's unclear when he would have been "programmed" by Portland Public Schools at all.

But of course, searching for logic misses the point. Rast appears to have an understanding where "racism" is something entirely made up -- so made up that Black children need to be "programmed" into believing its existence so they can foist false charges upon innocent White children. It isn't hard to draw a line here to the MAGA demand to suppress any and all American history tellings that accurately recount our nation's racial past (and present) -- the entire theory is that all such stories simply are lies concocted to assert control. It is a classic conspiracy theory (which is why Rast could jump to the absurdist notion that the child needed "deprogramming" -- an outrageous claim even if the child had been a regular PPS attendee).

And we also shouldn't lose sight of the fundamental cruelty this politics inevitably inflicts. Here is how the school handled the expulsion of the child:

“It has become clear that the relationship of trust and confidence that is necessary for a collaborative partnership between parent and school officials for the good of your child no longer exists,” Rummell wrote. “Our partnership is hereby immediately terminated as of the end of the day, April 3. This decision is final and from our perspective this matter is now concluded.”

Their son was allowed to return to campus one more time, Stoudamire-Phillips said, to say goodbye to his teachers.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the classroom,” she said. “Teachers from all over the school were coming in to say bye to him. He knows that he is loved by that community. He just doesn’t understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him.”

"He doesn't understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him" Juxtapose that against the brusqueness of his dismissal, of the ripping of this child from a community he had been enmeshed in and valued. It's heart-wrenching. And it emerges from people who prioritize of national kulturkampf demands over the interests and humanity of the children in their care. This, above else, is what characterizes the current MAGA orientation towards so many children -- they pour out hatred and disdain and scorn, because hurting the kids matters less to them than cleaving to their own fantastical tales of resistance to "wokeness".

F-ing Banned Roundup

 Ron DeSantis' botched campaign rollout includes the following hats.

What happened to the letter "F"? I have to assume that some parent filled out a form calling it obscene, and now it's banned in the state of, er, "Lorida".

Anyway, my browser needs clearing, so today you get a roundup.

* * *

Texas Republicans set up a bespoke center at the University of Texas to promote a conservative ideological vision. Texas Republicans also look set to wreck tenure. Turns out the latter poses a recruitment problem for the former.

The Fourth Circuit upholds race-neutral admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia against a challenge that they discriminate against Asian-American applicants. Ilya Somin objects here; I may have my own comments later.

Now that he's running, JTA runs down all the Jewish things you need to know about Ron DeSantis. He loves Israel. Also, his campaign against wokeness has resulted in banning books on the Holocaust, and neo-Nazis are flocking to the state.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) admits she "struggles" with the idea of removing Israeli settlers from the West Bank, suggests they have the right to stay where they are. I've said it before and I'll say it again; one need not like or even fully credit Tlaib's putative commitment to "one state with equal rights for all" to admit that it's clearly better than the many, many politicians whose position is "one state that does not even pretend to provide equal rights for all."

Louisiana Republicans are completely uninterested in hearing from the child rape victims whom they want to force to give birth.

Texas forces a woman with an unviable pregnancy to stay in the hospital until she gives birth to her stillborn fetus (or becomes sick enough to potentially die) by threatening her with criminal prosecution if she tries to leave.

If we don't raise the debt ceiling, it seems we have to triage who gets paid. I've seen many proposals on how to do this. But Kevin Drum raises the possibility that our treasury system isn't built to allow for any "choosing", and so we'd be forced to basically just arbitrarily pay whoever comes to the door first.

Schoolchildren Shouldn't Have To Live Like Jews, Part II

This weekend, Lewis & Clark Law School hosted the 2nd Annual Conference on Law vs. Antisemitism, a conference which (I don't think it's immodest of me to say) I did the lion's share of organizing.

Part of that organization was making sure, at the outset, to contact Lewis & Clark campus security to inform them of the event and have a security plan in place. This included having a security officer on site, requiring registration and check-in, alerting the Portland Police Bureau of the event and having them monitor the chatter of "certain" sites to ensure we weren't going to be a target, and other sundry efforts to address what I called our "elevated risk profile" compared to a standard law school event.

All this, to me, felt very normal and unremarkable. I'm hosting a conference on antisemitism -- of course I need to take extra steps to ensure that it is secured.

The day-of grunt work for the conference was provided by a set of Lewis & Clark law school student volunteers, most if not all of whom were not Jewish. They all did, to be clear, a fantastic job. But I think it is fair to say that for them, this sort of extra security was very much not normal. Which I recognized, and at various points during the run-up, I'd update them on the various security measures we were emplacing, trying to balance between "we're a conference on antisemitism, there's inherently heightened risk" and "but there's no reason to fear, most likely nothing bad will happen, this is all just precautionary." I was aware that my normal is not their normal.

The conference went very well, and without any problems or disruptions of any sort. As is the case, 99% of the time. The vast majority of cases where a synagogue brings in extra guards to watch over high holiday services, nothing bad happens. We just had a great event. So I felt kind of bad, forcing all these student volunteers to deal with the anxiety of all those extra security precautions. My normal shouldn't have to be their normal.

After Uvalde, I wrote a deliberately provocative post titled "Schoolchildren Shouldn't Have to Live Like Jews." The basic thrust of the post was to argue that all the various ways Jews have enhanced local security, "hardened the target", etc. etc., are not good models for how to protect schoolchildren from mass shootings. That they're normal for us -- a beleaguered, regularly threatened minority group -- should not make them normal for everyone. 

Less than a year later, in the wake of yet another school shooting, this time in Nashville, I couldn't help but return to the same thought. I mourn for the families, not just for their immediate loss, but for the extra wave of grief they will endure upon realizing just how little the American people care about them. But the fact is that when the only response to a shooting is "more guns" -- taking the firefight as inevitable and just hoping it occurs earlier in the process -- we're tacitly (or not so tacitly) conceding that "we're not going to fix it". It is taken for granted that to have your children in public schools is to run the risk of having them gunned down -- a price that too many politicians treat as one families are agreeing to pay, as opposed to being coerced into accepting (witness Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett's blithe response when asked how to "protect people like your little girl": "Well, we home school her.").

It doesn't have to be like this. Our normal shouldn't have to be their normal.

California Jewish Community Continues To Win the Ethnic Studies Controversy

A few years ago, I was heavily quoted in a great Haaretz article titled "How California's Jewish Community Won the Battle Over the State's Ethnic Studies Program". While I had at that point left California, I had previously been heavily involved in the Jewish community efforts to ensure that the ethnic studies curriculum not only did not discriminate against Jews, but also told the full, robust Jewish story as part of the California educational experience. Despite the efforts by some to fear-monger Those efforts were broadly successful, making the California Ethnic Studies battle one of the Jewish community's great victories.

The implementation of the ethnic studies mandate has not been without friction, not the least because some districts are not adopting the model curriculum the Jewish community worked so hard to develop. I haven't been following the ins and outs as closely now that I've left the state, but I still do hear some things. And to the end, I want to share an email I recently received from the San Francisco Bay Area JCRC, addressing "rumors" regarding ethnic studies in the Mountain View Los Altos High School District (MVLA).

The rumors circulating about the ethnic studies program at Mountain View Los Altos High School District (MVLA) have become a cause of concern in the Jewish community. We are in regular communication with district leadership and have made a formal request to review classroom teaching materials. Based on publicly available information, we have so far seen no evidence of antisemitic or anti-Israel content.

The controversy over this curriculum is causing great division in the district, and we have received numerous emails and calls of concern. Unfortunately, the tone of the conversation is hurting families and educators and we are calling on concerned community members to stop reaching out to the district directly and to allow JCRC to continue our work with district leadership. We reject public attacks on the district as counterproductive to our community’s aims at this time.

The email goes on to clarify that, apparently contrary to certain rumors, the ethnic studies curriculum in MVLA does include discussions of antisemitism and Jewish experience and is not currently tied to the so-called "liberated ethnic studies" curriculum. At this point, the email suggests:

Objections to MVLA’s curriculum appear to be ideologically-based, with some questioning the inclusion of concepts such as systems of power and oppression, concepts that are included in the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. While segments of our community may object to teaching these concepts, these concerns are not related to Jewish identity, antisemitism, or Israel, and should not be conflated with anti-Jewish bias.

Why do I flag this email? Because I think it helpfully highlights several trends and activities worth underscoring.

First, it is illustrative of how the institutional California Jewish community has been consistently excellent on this issue -- vigorously advocating for Jewish communal rights, while refusing to give into or endorse fear-mongering or conspiratorial nonsense. They deserve tremendous applause for this -- you and I know full well that is not something that can be taken for granted.

Second, it is laudatory that the statement correctly distinguishes between mere ideological opposition to teaching about things like "systems of power and oppression", and having leveled a colorable claim of antisemitism. Political disagreement with certain frameworks used in ethnic studies is not tantamount to identifying actual antisemitic content. This is not to say that such concepts cannot be deployed in antisemitic ways. But frequently right-wing Jewish critics of ethnic studies skip past that step and simply assert that the existence of these concepts is inherently antisemitic without any need to show actual, particularized antisemitic content (for my part, I have no idea how one could possibly understand antisemitism without conceptualizing it as a "system of oppression"). 

Third, it highlights how counterproductive ill-informed rabble-rousing around these issues are. It is almost certain that the success of the Bay Area JCRC and affiliated groups in creating a healthy ethnic studies framework for the Jewish community is in no small part attributable to the direct relationships and consultations its had with MVLA officials. Those relationships and consultations are strained when a bunch of yahoos bombard the school board with whatever the latest misleading Tablet Magazine screed is. Even in cases of genuine antisemitism, this approach often is wildly counterproductive and harms those it purports to "protect". 

Much like the folks who decided the best way to support Berkeley Jewish students was to drive a Hitler billboard truck onto campus, these interventions are not ultimately about trying to improve the climate for Jews. They're accelerationism -- trying to increase the temperature in a bid to hasten the crisis point where things boil over. Just as the last thing that the Berkeley Hitler truck purveyors want is a world in which Jews feel comfortable at Berkeley (if Jews are comfortable at Berkeley, then a heaping pile of right-wing narratives attacking higher education go kaput), the last thing the rabble rousers want in Mountain View is for ethnic studies to be able to comfortably incorporate Jewish perspectives (if it does, the whole narrative that ethnic studies is and must ever be antisemitic falls away).

It is, to reiterate, fantastic that California's Jewish community has not, by and large, fallen into these traps. Good behavior deserves plaudits, and I applaud the Bay Area JCRC for the tremendous, superb work they've done on the ethnic studies issue for years now.

The Ministerial Exception and Neutral Rules after Carson v. Makin

States like to give money to things. They like to fund schools, or recycling campaigns, or building repairs, or sports programs. And sometimes, religious entities are among organizations who conduct the program the state is funding -- they run the school, or the recycling campaign, or the the building, or the sports program. In such scenario, there are constitutionally-speaking three possibilities:

1. The state is prohibited from giving the money to the religious entity. Funding the religious organization is an Establishment Clause violation.
2. The state is required to give the money to the religious entity. Refusing to fund the religious organization, when other comparable organizations are funded, is a Free Exercise violation.
3. The state can choose whether to give the money to the religious entity. There is "play in the joints" between the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause issues, and states can choose how they want to resolve that tension.

Today, in Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court took a big step towards Door #2. The Court struck down a Maine program which (for certain rural areas lacking public schools) funded private schools, but only if those schools are non-sectarian. If Maine is offering parents funds to send their kids to private schools generally, it cannot withhold those funds if the parents elect to send their children to a religious academy. Religious schools must be eligible for generally-available funding on the same basis as any other "comparable" private school.

In making this ruling, the Court distinguished (and significantly narrowed) an older case, Locke v. Davey, where the Court upheld a program which excluded ministerial training from an otherwise generally available scholarship program. The Carson Court said Locke was limited only to circumstances where the school was specifically training ministers; not "religious education" more broadly.

This got me thinking, however, about what options are still available to a state like Maine which is perhaps leery about sending its tax dollars to directly support religious education. Carson does not directly say "states must fund religious education" after all. It merely says that states must allow religious schools to obtain funding when they would otherwise be eligible based on the general criteria the state uses for assigning funds.

So imagine the following rule: "No school shall be funded unless each of its employees is fully subject to anti-discrimination rules." The state, it is fair to say, has a strong interest in ensuring that the subjects of its funding abide by and are protected by anti-discrimination rules. Still, anti-discrimination law contains certain exemptions, one of which is known as the "ministerial exemption" -- ministers are not subject to anti-discrimination protections. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the Court expanded who counts as a minister beyond the proverbial priest or Rabbi to include many teachers at religious institutions -- these teachers now cannot sue if they are the victims of discriminatory conduct. Religious schools are relatively likely to have such "ministers" on the payroll, so they would run afoul of the neutral rule, and would not be eligible for state funding.

Whether this gambit will work depends a lot on how it is phrased and the degree to which courts are willing to accept it as a neutral rule (which, in turn, may relate to whether there are other schools whose eligibility for state funds would be limited by the rule for reasons having nothing to do with religion). But -- on about an hour's worth of thought -- it seems like a plausible argument.

Schoolchildren Shouldn't Have To Live Like Jews

In the wake of the Uvalde massacre, the internet is replete with proposals on how to avoid or at least mitigate the risks of yet another school shooting. Some in the Jewish community have suggested adopting some of the measures we have taken to keep our schools, centers, and synagogues safe -- things like controlled entry, on-site security, and other forms of "hardening the target".

Some of these suggestions might be good ideas, and most are being made with the best of intentions. But I feel like they overlooking something very important.

Growing up Jewish, these sorts of security interventions are so normal one can almost forget how abnormal they are. Of course there is a noticeable police presence during high holiday services. Of course someone has to check you in at the door before you're allowed to even enter the synagogue. Of course there is onerous keycard entry requirements if you want to access the building for a evening Torah study session. It is jarring to encounter the freedom of places that don't have that sort of security because they don't operate with the background presupposition that someone could be trying to kill their patrons at any moment.

Because these interventions are so normalized, we forget that having to impose these sorts of security measures is bad. These measures make Jewish life worse -- less open and more stressful, less accessible and more cloistered. Does anybody think that the ideal synagogue experience is like this? They may nonetheless be necessary because of the dangers Jews face -- but that's just it: they are reflective of Jews being a persecuted minority who are regularly targeted with violent threats and assaults. What does it mean to cross-apply them to the context of public elementary schools? It's saying that every 5 - 11 year old in America is as vulnerable as a member of the minority group that is, per capita, the most common target of hate crimes in the country! That's terrible! That should be seen as a catastrophe! If that is indeed the state of being a student in America, that is an appalling failure!

The title of this post is deliberately provocative. Jews should not have to live like this either. We should be able to live our communal life open and without fear, not looking over our shoulders for the next active shooter. But we've resigned ourselves to an inability to eliminate the root cause of our problem, antisemitism. We can't do it on our own, and broader society is not interested in investing the effort to make the project a success. So stuck with the reality of persistent violent antisemitism, at least over the medium term, these measures are suboptimal ameliorations of the consequences of our continued marginalization.

If schoolchildren are in the same boat, that must mean we've reached the same conclusion for them: as a polity, we just have given up on our ability to actually eliminate the threat to schoolchildren. We cannot be bothered to make the social and political investments necessary so that the status of schoolchildren is not analogous to that of a persecuted minority regularly targeted by violent threats. We have resigned ourselves to that level of vulnerability for our children, and now just seek to ameliorate the effects. That is appalling. It is appalling that Jews are forced to accept this; and it is a perverse form of justice that this quiescence be extended to every family with minor children.

I do not claim that the experiences of the Jewish community cannot be helpful in building out better security for public schools, in this decidedly suboptimal world where we have apparently decided to just accept this terrible vulnerability as a baseline. But we should not lose sight of the fact that if our experiences are even analogous -- what a striking indictment that is of our society. People should not have to live like this.

Well-Trained, Courageous Police Won't Stop Another Uvalde

There's a lot of chatter right now about reports that police waited quite a long time before police entered in force the Texas elementary school where a shooter had murdered nearly two dozen people. Much of that chatter is of a very typical brand of Twitter discourse of the "what good are cops, what were they waiting for, they're cowards, even in a situation like this they won't risk they're lives" variety.

I think that at least some of this criticism, though not all of it, is probably unfair. But more to the point: it is because I think that some of this criticism is probably unfair that I am very confident police responses are not going to stop another Uvalde. 

Here's the blunt truth: a school shooter, who does not care about his own life and hopes to kill as many other people as possible, has (to put it extremely bloodlessly) flexibility that those trying to stop him do not. To take one example: the gunman can, whenever he wants, enter any room he wants firing entirely indiscriminately. The police, by contrast, cannot simply enter any room they want firing indiscriminately; nor would we want them to. It's not a matter of courage, or numbers; it is a structural imbalance that favors the gunman over those trying to stop him.

But that's exactly why all this talk of "hardening the target" or bringing even more cops with more guns is so clearly not a viable response. Putting aside (though we shouldn't) the problem that this "solution" is basically to convert our schools into fire traps or prisons. Once a shooter is on site with a gun and a disregard for human life, they have a built-in advantage that no amount of police presence can fully reverse. Sometimes their rampage will be stopped earlier, other times later, but it's all mostly a matter of luck. Short of turning schools into bunkers, the idea that the "right" security measures can stop a man who doesn't care about his own life and can freely and easily access high-powered weaponry without breaking a sweat is nonsense. 

I have no idea whether the Texas police who were on site during the Uvalde shooting responded with ideal tactics. And, as awful as it is to say, if a shooting is ongoing, there really isn't much replacement for bringing it to an end other than armed officers. But if a shooting is ongoing, we've already failed in the most relevant respects. If the goal is to prevent these shootings from occurring outright, not to shrug our shoulders and say "it could have been worse", armed police are not going to do much good -- and it has nothing to do with courage, or armament, or tactics, or temperament.

The (Non-)Prevalence Problem of CRT

Years ago, I remember reading a famous paradox concerning how Americans viewed the subject of foreign aid. If you asked them "should the US spend more or less on foreign aid," most Americans would answer "less" -- they thought we spent way too much money on the issue. But when you asked them to estimate how much the United States spent on foreign aid each year, they gave an answer that was an order of magnitude higher than what we actually spent. And worst of all, if you asked them how much they thought we should spend on foreign aid, their answer was still far higher than what we actually did spend -- and remember, this is from people who thought their position was that we needed to cut foreign aid!

At one level, this confluence mostly just shows that most people are innumerate. But taking it somewhat at face value, there is a nettlesome political puzzle here. What does one do if people say they want to adopt position X, but actually advocate for moving away from X, because they are under the misapprehension that the status quo is on the far side of X and thus believe that moving away from X actually means moving towards it?

This is a problem with some folks who've joined up on the "anti-Critical Race Theory" crusade. Of course, there are plenty of people who make no bones about their position -- they think CRT is a Globalist Marxist Socialist Communist Soros Triple Parenthesis plot, and they want to destroy it. But others at least purport to believe that Critical Race Theory should be taught, it just shouldn't be the only thing that is taught. For instance, David Bernstein of the "Jewish Institute for Liberal Values", a prominent anti-CRT voice in the Jewish community, took the position that any school which teaches a "traditional" narrative about civil rights should also teach a CRT perspective.

I absolutely believe any school that teaches a traditional narrative should teach a CRT based approach as well. I don’t know if there are more schools in the traditional category.

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) January 30, 2022

Now here's the thing. If your opinion is that every school should teach both a "traditional" and "CRT" style approach to civil rights, you are advocating for a position that is way to the left of the status quo. The vast majority of primary and secondary schools in the United States do not teach "CRT" at all. In some small number, you might get a CRT-influenced approach in conjunction with more traditional accounts. The number of students who are only being exposed to CRT, and no other perspective, is absolutely negligible. Objectively speaking, if your view is "students should hear both traditional and CRT views", you should be pushing for far more inclusion of CRT into public school curricula than is present in the status quo.

In other words, the entirety of the barrier to getting to the world Bernstein claims he wants to see comes from folks like the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, who's trying to get the University of Wisconsin to rescind its hiring of respected scholar Jennifer Mnookin as Dean because Mnookin (this is a direct quote) "supports critical race theory being taught on campus". It's Texas passing laws limiting what can be taught in the classroom with the express goal of seeking to "abolish" CRT. It's Florida with a veritable cavalcade of legislation seeking to target and suppress "woke" ideologies.

Yet Bernstein, like the ill-informed respondent on foreign aid, has adopted a politics that sprints off in the exact opposite direction from where he claims he wants to go, because he has a wildly off-base assessment of how common Critical Race Theory is. He thinks CRT is everywhere, so getting to a position of even-handedness means pushing back against CRT's hegemony, even if it means making common cause with some unsavory actors. The reality is that CRT is still relatively obscure for most Americans, and so getting to evenhandedness would mean a more aggressive deployment of CRT into the American educational curriculum than would be dreamed by even the philosophy's most fervent supporters. 

Is he actually that ignorant about the true (non-)prevalence of CRT in the American educational system? I think he probably isn't; but there is something to be said for a certain type of elite who forgets the world exists more than 10 miles beyond Brooklyn and so confuses what is commonplace in a Williamsburg coffeeshop with the national status quo. A little of column B, a little (a lot) of column B, I'd wager. 

A Tale of (the Private Schools of) Two Cities

Within a day of one another, the New York Times and the City Journal released articles on anti-racism curricula in the private schools of two cities, New York and DC (respectively).

It really is amazing to behold the difference. The Times has some genuine indicators of just bizarre behavior in the schools it profiles (e.g., refusing to allow Glenn Loury to speak because his views might "confuse and/or enflame students"). The City Journal, by contrast, mostly captures very normal things it seeks to put under grainy, menacing lighting (High schools are assigning Ibram X. Kendi's books! Administrators are attending DEI training sessions!).

I'm not really sure what explains the difference. It might be just the baseline chasm in quality one would expect from the NYT versus the City Journal (notably, the Times' article is by an actual journalist, while the City Journal's piece is written by an activist with the right-wing National Association of Scholars). Or it might be a difference in the private school cultures that exist in New York versus DC.

My baseline bias, having grown up in outside DC, is a pre-existing disdain for the local private school ecosystem there. Even as a kid, my view was that if you lived in Montgomery County -- which had a superb public school system -- I struggled to think of a reason to attend private schools that wasn't just pure snobbish status-flexing. But if the City Journal (despite its best efforts) is to be believed, schools like Sidwell and Georgetown Day are actually doing a decent job. Nothing will ever be perfect, but I cannot be horrified that students are recommended Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.* Of course, it's also the case that the private schools aren't doing anything that the public schools can't. That's not a bad thing -- one would hope that solid anti-racist education is scalable to all sorts of schools -- unless you're using it as a selling point for why Maddie and Connor simply must go to private school, $50,000 price tag be damned!

Which brings us to New York. I have never lived in New York, and my exposure to New York private schools comes primarily through, well, sensationalist stories in the New York Times. It's hard to know from afar whether these stories are out-of-context snipes at the foibles of the elites versus whether the culture at these schools truly is just nuts. I can imagine the former, but to the extent it is the latter, I can imagine the problem being the extension into "anti-racist education" of the pathologies of conspicuous consumption. New York private school parents believe that with enough money one can purchase easy solutions to any personal problem. They view racism -- or more accurately, the possibility that their children will be, or be seen as, lacking in how they relate to racism -- as a problem, and so they also believe that they can solve that problem by chucking money at it. Indeed, any solution that doesn't look like the sort of thing that costs a truckload of money will be seen as inadequate. It has to be ostentatious for it to count.

An ostentatiously bespoke anti-racism curriculum with elements that are both conspicuously resource-intensive and often a little absurd in practice is like a school cafeteria that serves only genuine Marseilles bouillabaisse on Thursdays. It stands out as something "normal schools" can't do, which ends up being the only thing that recommends it. And if normal schools say they don't want to do it, what you're doing is nuts -- well, that shows how unrefined and gauche their palettes are. Of course they don't know good anti-racism when they see it -- they're a public school. 

As in all things, the exclusivity is the merit. Just like the best steak can only be found at a fine (expensive) steakhouse, the best "anti-racism" is of the sort that you could only possibly find at an elite private school in New York (to say it aloud underscores how ridiculous it is). And notice how different this is from what the DC schools are said to be doing.  Any school can do have a piddling "recommended reading list"; it takes a truly elite institution to be able to invite a prominent Brown University faculty member to give a lecture and then pull the offer because he's a bad fit.

In any event, my view on anti-racist education continues to be that 90% of it is a subject-specific synonym for "good education." Most of the time, that means I sniff at right-wing panics on the subject where basic elements of good pedagogy like "assign interesting readings" or "don't be a gratuitous jerk to your students" are presented as "cultural Marxism".  Occasionally, it means sniffing instead at overly self-satisfied performances of anti-racism that substitute presentation for substance. It would not at all surprise me if some posh New York private schools fell into the latter category. 

* I actually read CRT: An Introduction in high school, though not because it was assigned -- I came across the topic indirectly in a debate round, and purchased and read it of my own initiative. Remember: if you don't assign critical race theory in high school where it can be read under adult supervision, your kids will just read it on their own in some back library alley, and come to who-knows-what conclusions!

The Antisemitic Quote That Wasn't in California's Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

A few years ago, back in 2019, there was a significant controversy over California's draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). Basically, it was a hodgepodge of far-left jargon that barely talked about Jews or antisemitism but sure had some things to say about Zionism and BDS. This did not make the Jewish community happy, as one might expect, and -- led by Mizrahi and Middle Eastern Jewish activists who were particularly galled to be erased from the course given their significant numbers in the state of California -- they rallied an impressive array of allies and community members to demand changes (full disclosure: I was among those who submitting comments on the initial draft urging significant modifications). Luckily, the education powers-that-be in California were actually quite receptive, and the text was sent back for substantial revisions.

Fast forward to today. The ESMC is on its third draft, and many of the Jewish community's suggestions have found their way into the curriculum. The current ESMC draft cites surging rates of hate crimes against Jews, and that we are the most common victims of religious-based hate crimes in southern California. It has an excellent unit focusing on Mizrahi and Middle Eastern Jews -- one of the first I've seen dedicated to this subject -- that specifically characterizes Jews as indigenous to the Middle East. It includes passages from a range of Jewish luminaries including Ruth Wisse, Julius Lester, and Angela Buchdahl. It speaks on how, while Jews have found America to be a land of opportunity, especially after World War II, our successes stand side-by-side with the continued reality of antisemitism -- especially for Jews who have resisted assimilation into dominant American culture. 

Like any work done by committee, one can pick at this or that bit of rhetoric or focus. Still, on the whole, leaders in the Jewish community, such as Tye Gregory of the San Francisco JCRC (and formerly of the LGBT rights group A Wider Bridge) are celebrating it for what it is: a success story. It is a testament to what we in the Jewish community can accomplish via constructive engagement and participation, and proof positive that we can be included in a positive and affirming way in an Ethnic Studies curriculum.

Unfortunately, for certain pockets in our community, this very success is a threat. There are some in the Jewish community who are have made much of the threat posed by Ethnic Studies and other leftist academic ideas, and who have gained a great following and acclamation from fear-mongering about it. Unlike those who have recognized problems in the field but have sought to engage and improve things, these persons are invested in the notion that things like Ethnic Studies are inherently antisemitic, inherently anti-Jewish, and inherently incapable of reform. The original draft of the California ESMC was an omen of how the American left was inexorably falling under the shadow of "Corbynization". For them, and for that narrative, the revised ESMC presented a large problem. What does one do when one's favored ogre appears to have turned over a new leaf?

The answer, if a widely cited Tablet Magazine article by Emily Benedek published earlier this week is any indicator, is simply to lie about it.

Much of the article simply presents generic complaints about "critical race theory" or rehashes content from the initial draft which had already been removed, in order to suggest that the curriculum continued to explicitly demonize Zionism and Israel. Plenty of credulous readers bought the message -- Bari Weiss, for example, linked to the article with a searing indictment of American Jewish leadership: 

"California's schools are mandating the erasure of Jews and the acceptance of anti-Zionism. I blame every single American Jewish leader who didn't bang on about this every single day. Every single one."

The problem? The current draft does not, as best I can tell, even mention the word Zionism or anti-Zionism. It's not present. And the reason it isn't present is because of a bevy of American Jewish leaders who did successfully bang the drum on this and now are having their hard work erased. Nice work.

But the reason why Benedek focuses on the old drafts becomes clearer when you look at what she has to say about the current one. In one of the few passages that speaks on this subject, Benedek writes that in the new draft

[t]wo lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma,  teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The first claim is simply a lie, and a lie that generated a furious reaction from the Mizrahi Jewish advocacy group Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA). JIMENA had invested extensive time and energy into helping develop the ESMC's Mizrahi Jewish unit, and they were not pleased to see their efforts so cavalierly misrepresented. They were doubly-displeased that Benedek didn't even deign to reach out to them to learn about the unit they helped construct. They have asked Tablet to issue a correction, but so far the magazine does not appear to have obliged.

The second claim relates to sections of the curriculum which discuss how Jewish racial identity is malleable and how some Jews have conditional White privilege. The intersection of Jewishness and Whiteness is an area I'd like to think I know a little about, and what the ESMC is saying is true -- and more than true, important for understanding how antisemitism continues to operate. As the ESMC notes, "conditional" whiteness is always revocable, particularly when Jews refuse to assimilate or insist on maintaining ourselves as a distinctive people. Recognizing that, and recognizing how Jewish racial status is malleable such that Jews can sometimes be treated as "White" and other times not, is essential if students are to understand how Jews who look like me can and do face continued antisemitic oppression even as in other contexts we might be able to access some of the prerogatives of Whiteness. To be Jewish in America is to be allowed to attend the all-White schools in the segregated south while simultaneously being targeted by the KKK as the ultimate threat to the White race. In short, our whiteness, and access to the privileges thereof, is inconsistent and shifting -- or, we might say, conditional. 

Yet for the ESMC's effort to present this nuanced position in good faith, Benedek echoes other critics in accusing it of being tantamount to Nazi propaganda. No good deed, indeed. 

But that isn't the worst of it. Having struggled to point to anything concrete in the current (as opposed  to older, abandoned) drafts of the ESMC that is antisemitic, Benedek finally appears to identify a whopper of an example in this paragraph:

As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

That last quote is quite shocking, and if it were presented approvingly in the ESMC it'd be worthy of condemnation. And precisely because it was so shocking, I went in search of it, wanting to see if there was any context or explanation that might justify it. But my efforts stymied by a more fundamental problem: 

The quote isn't there.

I, along with several other readers, searched high and low for much of the day trying to find where this quote was. It did not appear to be anywhere in the ESMC. And we couldn't find it on google either, so we couldn't even figure out the initial source. Finally, Benedek gave us a clue: She cited line 11180 of the ESMC's "Appendix A", offering sample lesson plans for various units. A bit strange to see it located in an appendix, since it was cited as a case where offensive material was taken out of the "appendices and footnotes [and] ....moved back in" to the main text, but at least we now knew where to look.

Except, it wasn't there either. Line 11180 is part of a string citation to additional handouts and materials that might be consulted. That line specifically was a cite to Ameen Rihani's essay  (published in the 1920s) "Deserts of Fact and Fancy," though it didn't quote any passages from it. But while the quote wasn't in the ESMC itself, maybe it could be found inside Rihani's essay? No again. The words are not present in Rihani's essay either. So what on earth was Benedik talking about?

After several hours of sleuthing, we finally figured it out. The words were not in the ESMC. And they weren't in the "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" article cited in the ESMC. Rather, the material appeared in a different article, not cited or referenced anywhere in the ESMC, that happened to be printed in the same volume as "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" -- albeit 30 pages away. There, finally, we'd uncovered the big offense of the ESMC third draft.

If it wasn't so unethical, it'd be hilarious. Over eleven thousand lines deep into one of the appendices, someone -- no doubt frantically searching for something to hang their hat on in order to continue portraying the revised ESMC as an antisemitic document -- clicks on the alternate link provided for the "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" article (since the first is behind a paywall; if one read it on the original site, incidentally, it's clear that the quote is not present) and then, finding nothing of note in the essay itself, decides to browse through the entire newsletter it appeared in before finding a completely unrelated article with offensive material. Is that offensive material quoted in the ESMC? No. Is it contained in an article cited by the ESMC? No again. Who cares! Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Of course, there's virtually no chance that any actual student would ever come across the quote. It is not, contra Benedek, part of the curriculum, nor is it included in the resources cited in the curriculum. And if there are K-12 students who not only actually look up the fourth entry on the additional readings list, but also proceed to read all the other articles which share a volume with the suggested supplements, then frankly I tip my cap to the Ethnic Studies Curriculum for developing such voracious overachievers.

But the fact that one had to dig so deep into the weeds to find something objectionable in (or more accurately, not in) the ESMC is, in its perverted way, another testament to just how well the Jewish community did in securing necessary reforms. We should be taking a victory lap. And we should be taking down the names of those who would rather see anything else than a world where Jews are, in fact, fairly included and treated in Ethnic Studies.

Nazi Saluting Students Won't Get Punished

The Baraboo (Wisconsin) School District has so decided, contending that it "cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved" and that any proposed discipline would violate the First Amendment.

I don't want to get into the merits of either these justifications. Hearts are notoriously hard to read (itself a good reason not to hinge our approach to discrimination on the fickle organ), and I'd have to do more research to feel confident appraising the merits of the First Amendment question (on the one hand, presumably the school's power is limited in cases of off-campus speech like this, on the other hand, remember "Bong Hits for Jesus"?).

All I want to say now is something I've said before: They would say it about Jews; they'd say it about others too. Sometimes one hears claims to the effect that "nobody would ever tolerate such-and-such behavior if it was targeting Jews", as a claimed contrast to cases where social actors are tolerating some form of bigoted behavior which targets another group. It's an ugly bit of victim-competition which attempts to cast Jews as having yet more unearned privileges and advantages that set them apart from the truly marginalized.

But, as we see here, people do target Jews with hateful acts, and other people do let them get away with it. The myth that -- alone amongst the oppressions -- any hostile act towards Jews (and -- the implication often goes -- many acts that aren't really hostile at all) is met with immediate and overwhelming punitive firepower is just that: a myth. It isn't reflected in reality, and it shouldn't be relied upon.

How To Infuriate With Scales

The University of Chicago Law School's grading scale goes from 155 to 186.

For awhile, it was 55 to 86, but employers kept assuming that our tip-top students were actually getting middle-to-low Bs. So they added a "1" to it, on the theory that completely opaque is better than affirmatively misleading.

Of course, within that 155 to 186 range, we still break up grades into the traditional As, Bs and Cs (180 - 186 is an A, 174 - 179 is a B, and so on). So the actual choice of numbers in the scale is pretty much arbitrary -- as the casual introduction of the "1" aptly demonstrates.

I was thinking about this while reading a story of a Florida teacher who was, the headline tells us, "fired for refusing to give students credit for homework not turned in". District policy was to give a 50 for unsubmitted homework; the teacher instead gave such assignments a zero, and so she was terminated.

The story is meant to be a lesson about participation-award style administrators and overly entitled post-millennial brats expecting credit even where they didn't do any work. As the teacher put it, "we have a nation of kids that are expecting to get paid and live their life just for showing up and it's not real."

But I read the story and just thought "aren't they just making a 50 a 0?"

The thing about the traditional 0 - 100 grading scale is that pretty much nobody uses the entire scale. As are (roughly) 90 - 100, Bs 80 - 89, Cs 70 - 79, Ds 60  - 69, and Fs -- a failing grade -- are anything below that, but for all intents and purposes 50 - 59. The bottom half of the scale is pretty much never used (save for something like right/wrong multiple choice tests -- but even those are frequently curved up). I don't think I've ever given a grade between 1 and 49 in my entire life.

So, in effect, the district's policy is simply formalizing what is probably already the functional practice: a grading scale of 50 - 100, where 50 is the lowest grade (reserved for, say, not turning in the assignment at all, or otherwise completely bombing it). Making 50 the bottom of the scale isn't any different (and doesn't represent any more coddling) than placing the bottom at 55, or 155.

Indeed, I think the formal 50 - 100 scale is just better. Assuming I'm right that the bottom half of the 0 - 100 scale is never used except for zeros in the case of simply not doing the assignment, then the primary function of that scale is to massively overweight not turning an assignment (getting a 0) as compared to failing it for another reason (which, presumably, would earn you between a 50 and a 59). It's the equivalent of a five letter grade difference. Whether that's appropriate or not is a normative question, and while I don't think it is beyond argument my instinct is to treat failing grades roughly alike. There is a difference between simply not turning in an assignment and turning in a failing quality assignment, but for me that difference exists inside the bandwidth of a normal F grade (it's the difference between, say, a 50 and 58).

But I doubt that the normative dispute is actually driving anything. I'd wager that all the sense of outrage here is an artifact of the perceived scale -- the idea that students are still getting "credit" for undone work -- which is based on the misapprehension that the numbers on the scale translate into some sort of objective percentage. The advantage of a 155 to 186 scale is that it doesn't delude anyone into thinking it represents anything but an a set of more-or-less arbitrary markers denoting cut-offs between As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs.

Likewise, if the district announced it was switching to a 0 - 50 grading scale (where 0 - 9 is an F, 10 - 19 is a D ... etc.), I doubt anyone would care -- even though it was mathematically doing the exact same thing as having a 50 - 100 scale. Ditto if the scale was 25 - 75, or if it was 0 - 100 but every 20 points represented a different grade (so 80 - 100 was an A, 60 - 79 a B ....). None of those are actually different from one another, and none, I think, would provoke any sort of outrage.

Of course, things are probably not quite that neat (especially if the district hasn't abolished below-50 grades outright). Still, I wonder if the teacher -- so aggrieved at being forced to "give credit" for incomplete work -- actually understands that the real issue here isn't about objective "credit", but about arbitrary scales. I don't want to say she doesn't -- I don't have enough information to conclude that -- but the story as presented doesn't make me wholly confident that she does either.

A New Environment Roundup

We're closing the political theory term with a unit on ecologism/environmentalism. In honor of that, a roundup that includes nothing on that topic whatsoever:

* * *

C. Thi Nguyen explains how echo chambers are like cults. The problem isn't lack of competing information per se, the problem is that the echo chamber has built-in narratives for why alternative information sources aren't trustworthy and can be discounted.

Eric Ward is interviewed by Tikkun on the subject of identity politics.

We often talk about a "free speech crisis" on liberal college campuses. But there are a slew of avowedly right-wing (generally Christian) universities that barely pretend to allow for a diversity of opinions on campus.

ICE's Philadelphia office seems out of control.

Two British intellectuals (one whom served on the Chakrabarti inquiry, no less) give a history of antisemitism on the British left -- one that by no means starts with Jeremy Corbyn.

As teachers walk out in Kentucky in a push for higher wages, Governor Matt Bevin (R) blames them for exposing children to drugs, sexual assault, and violence. You'd think if teachers were that important -- not just responsible for educating youth, but also the sole bulwark against them being physically and sexually abused -- they'd be worth paying more.

"I'm in a Book -- No, Not Because of That!" Roundup

The political theory class moves onto its feminism unit. I thought about recommending my students read Kate Manne's fantastic book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny -- after all, I'm in it! Upon reflection, telling my students that I'm "in" a book about misogyny may be a bad idea unless I provide considerably more context about the nature of my inclusion (I was discussant when she presented a chapter of the book at a Berkeley workshop; she was also generous enough to cite to my "Playing with Cards" article).

* * *

New Voices (a periodical promoting young Jewish writers) has a piece on Mizrahi Jews trying to find space for their stories in generally-Ashkenazi-dominated campus Jewish spaces.

Study: Middle School students (of all races) prefer teachers of color. Suggestive that implicit biases aren't as prevalent among tweens and young teens? Or that teachers of color who manage to overcome racialized barriers and mistrust to reach and keep their positions are particularly talented?

Oregon judge suspended after, among other things, putting up a picture of Hitler in his courthouse's "Hall of Heroes" (he also refused to marry same-sex couples, tried to use his judicial status to intimidate a youth soccer referee, and allowed a felon whose case he was adjudicating to handle a firearm in his presence).

BDS activists in Spain are suing an anti-BDS watchdog for "intimidation" stemming from the latter's successful legal efforts to overturn BDS ordinances passed in various Spanish municipalities. A judge is allowing the lawsuit to proceed. While there's something unnerving about a suit claiming that the counterparty winning discrimination suits constitutes a form of "discrimination", I try not to jump to conclusions about the meaning of pre-trial rulings in foreign legal cultures, because I have no idea what the relevant legal standards of review are in (in this case) Spain. So grain of salt.

Trump Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo is deeply tied to anti-Muslim bigots. There's a special place in hypocrisy hell for those in the Jewish community who went all-in on Tamika Mallory for her ties to Louis Farrakhan last week who back Pompeo this week (RJC, looking at you).

Professors in the Geography Department at the University of British Columbia successfully pressure their own students to cancel a gala that would've been held at the campus Hillel space. The gala would not (to my knowledge) have been Israel (or Jewish-related). Hey, I remember when we went through this at Brown!

What's Going On in Lancaster?

My social media was ablaze today with reports that a Jewish family had "fled" their home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania over false reports by Fox and Breitbart that they were responsible for the canceling of a school Christmas play. Local news also reports their children had been harassed by classmates due to the report. But the ADL investigated and said that the family had simply left on a previously scheduled vacation, and that the claims that they "fled" are a panic-inducing fiction. What's going on?

Unfortunately, the original local story is behind a paywall so I can't read it. My suspicion is that the real story is something like the following:

1. The children experienced some harassment over the false reports that their family was responsible for canceling the play (this part of the original reporting does not appear to be in dispute, though the ADL does not address it).
2. The family had a previously-scheduled vacation, and expressed some sentiment to the effect of it being nice to have some time away to allow things to cool down.
3. Overzealous journalists took #2 and elevated/amplified it until it became the overblown claim that the family had "fled" town.

Of course, that's speculation on my part. Without access to the original story or more robust follow-up reporting, we won't know.

How To Turn #IStandWithAhmed Into an Anti-Obama Attack

The big viral story of the day is a Muslim teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, who built a homemade clock, took it to school to show his teachers his engineering prowess, and was promptly arrested for bringing a "bomb". The case smacks of racial profiling and Ahmed's heartbreaking statement vowing "never to take an invention to school again" has really hit home the emotional and practical depths of his treatment. The President has joined the chorus of condemnations and invited Ahmed to the White House., and Kevin Drum wonders if this might be something so obviously outrageous that even Republicans have to follow suit.

Even conservatives can't really defend what happened here. On the other hand, they can hardly agree with Obama, can they? What to do?

Please. This is easy. First of all, the statement of Irving's mayor (previously most-well-known for engaging in hysterical Islamophobia in an attempt to ban religious mediation), or that of the school district, is the perfect conservative response: no direct attacks on Ahmed, but stressing the importance of public safety and reporting suspicious threats, and congratulating authorities on being "vigilant" towards any "threats". It's basically how Republicans react to cases of police brutality when they can't gin up a decades-old theft conviction or an embarrassing Facebook photo mugging for the camera: vague indication that it sucks for the victim, overridden by the importance of trusting and deferring to the authorities.

But honestly, that's still only scratching the surface. The real opportunity comes from that invitation for Ahmed and his clock to come to the White House. Because when he arrives, obviously the Secret Service is going to check his bag, because that's what they do. And then somebody -- my prediction is Breitbart -- will crow about the naked hypocrisy of Obama condemning a local school district from taking the same precautions that his own security detail demands.

That's how you go pro in anti-Obama hackery.

UPDATE: BOOM! I called it:

#IStandWithAhmed Didn't s.o. mail battery-powered socks to VP Gore once? Secret Service saw a bomb and attempted a controlled demolition.

— Richard5832 (@richard5832) September 16, 2015

California Court Upholds Yoga

A California appellate court unanimously upheld the teaching of Yoga courses in public schools, rejecting challenges that it was actually a form of Hinduism and thereby an Establishment Clause violation. I think this decision is exactly right and the opinion is well-reasoned and persuasive. While it is true that Yoga seems to have some religious roots, that is true of a great many elements of secular society. Religious concepts and ideals often percolate into surrounding society and become important for entirely non-sectarian reasons. This is why my public high school can teach the King James Bible in its English courses (as a piece of literature, not theology) -- the KJV is very important to our literary heritage in ways that extend beyond any religious or theological teaching. Other entities which have religious roots but no ongoing religious component include the days of the week (who do you think "Thursday" is named after?) and the sport of lacrosse. In this context, the court found that the Yoga courses in the school had no religious component, but were entirely secularized teachings focusing on mindfulness, flexibility, stress-relief, and other like concerns.

However, in my ongoing and futile crusade to police non-lawyers from too-eagerly making pronouncements about matters of law, I will cry foul on Jezebel's coverage of the decision -- particularly the following line:

The family plans to appeal the decision because simply opting out of ritualized prayers to the sun god yoga isn’t good enough.

No, no, no, no, no. The Yoga program is constitutional because its non-religious, not because it is non-compulsory. If it was religious, the existence of an opt-out provision would not and should not save it (as the court itself observes in a footnote). The reasons why should be immediately obvious if we substitute in a prayer event -- the Church/State harm wouldn't be resolved via an announcement that "all the people who don't love Christ, feel free to conspicuously refrain from participation". This is something the Supreme Court has be quite emphatic about, and rightly so. So while I appreciate the sense that the parents in this action are being hyper-sensitive (or perhaps more likely, concern-trolling), this is not actually a valid response to the claim (and again, the court here explicitly stated that the voluntary nature of the program was not a factor in its decision).

We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do!

Oklahoma City apparently bans wearing clothing that is not supportive of their state's college sports teams.

On the list of banned items, non-Oklahoma college dress falls directly in between gang symbol haircuts and "satanic cult dress, witchcraft and related symbols."

Uf-da.

Didn't You See Me Winking?

Louisiana has recently passed a voucher plan which would allow state educational funds to be used to send kids to religious schools. Louisiana conservatives saw that and said "sounds great". That is, until they realized Islam is a religion:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools …

'I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,' Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that 'religious' meant 'Christian.'

Via.

I have to go through this every time someone mistakenly says that "religious" Americans or "people of faith" believe that, say, abortion is murder. Maybe your religion does, but mine (Judaism) doesn't. In any event, as much as the casual desire to discriminate against Muslims is repulsive, the chain of "logic" Rep. Hodges brought to the table -- it apparently not even occurring to her that there exist non-Christian religions -- is hilarious.

Watch Dogs

Will Smith is raising his daughter to take ownership of her body. Stuyvesant High School is teaching its female charges that powerful men are always watching and leering at teenage women who should be ashamed of their dirty, slutty bodies. I have little else to say except the women they talk to are very impressive in articulating the problems with the high school's enforcement of its dress code, and Phoebe -- as an alum of the school -- has an excellent perspective of her own.

In marginally related news, I was all set to archly ask: if participants in the sport of pole dancing are so concerned about shedding their activity's racy reputation, why are they all in bikinis? But to my impressed surprise, one of the women had an answer, and it wasn't "so people pay attention to us" (it was that they need exposed skin to stick to the poles for some of their tricks).