Egregious Professor Roundup

I got an email from an academic in Italy addressed to "Egregious Professor David Schraub." Apparently, that's a common issue because "egregio" has a meaning closer to "excellent" in Italian. Nonetheless, I kind of want to change my Twitter handle to "Egregious Professor."

* * *

This is a from last year, but Jacob Levy gives a qualified defense of "safe spaces" in the academic context that is really fantastic, and well-worth a read.

Fifteen Jewish extremists arrested in Israel for threatening Arabs, including the notorious Bentzi Gopstein.

The Montana Republican Party is the sort of place where, if you bodyslam a reporter, you'll have to fend off criticism -- from those who say you should have shot him.

Kevin Williamson has an interesting piece on the pathologies of poor White communities. I don't necessarily endorse it, but it is a rare example of someone taking the way we talk about poor Black communities and earnestly applying those same standards to Trump-backing Whites.

Bezalel Smotrich is a dick in every single possible aspect, so his remarks on the "me too" campaign are entirely on-brand.

Remember how I said "Not Knowing "Zio" is a Slur is an Indictment, Not a Defense"? Yeah, same thing applies to not knowing that portraying George Soros as tentacle-monster encircling the globe is antisemitic.

Jewish Lessons From a Teach-In

Syracuse University Professors Zachary Braiterman recounts his experiences volunteering to provide a perspective on antisemitism at a "teach-in" organized in response to the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally. It's thoughtful, nuanced, and recounts a mostly (though not entirely) positive experience. The most important thing it emphasizes is that -- to reiterate -- influence is wielded by the people in the room. If you're worried that discretely Jewish experiences of and vulnerabilities to the rising tide of far-right extremism are not being fully or fairly aired, then put yourself in a position where you're airing them.

The way that Zachary got on this panel was straight-forward: he volunteered. None of the organizers asked him about Zionism; nobody put him through an "are you a good Jew or a bad Jew" battery of questions. That isn't to say that such things never happen, but here they didn't. And when it turned out that the original date for the teach-in was to be Rosh Hashana, the fact that Zachary was in the room meant that he was well-positioned to facilitate a change of date while there was still time to do so.

Again, the experience wasn't entirely seamless. While Zachary relates that his talk resolutely did not speak about Zionism or anti-Zionism, an audience member took it upon herself to try to draw a link between Zionism and American militancy. But the fact that someone like Zachary was on the panel meant that he was the one who got to address that question. Again, what benefits we see from being in the room.

In some respects, Zachary's account reminds me of the experiences I relayed in this post (only even more positive). At the root, his experience and mine are hopeful accounts of what happens when  you insist on being in the room and actually show up. I don't pretend like every story traces such a happy arc. But it remains possible, and so I remain optimistic.

Liberal Academia Fails Again

A new study by Kyle Dodson of UC-Merced finds that, while student-student interactions have a politically polarizing effect (liberals push further left, conservatives move farther right), student-faculty interactions tend to moderate students (liberals and conservatives each move closer to the center). Obviously, something has gone awry in the liberal academy's indoctrination machine.

In all seriousness, while I'm not surprised by this finding, I do think it is worth kvelling over a little bit. Group polarization is a well-established phenomenon, and most professors are left-of-center, so one might expect that student engagement with professors would push left-wing students further left. That this doesn't happen even granted the political composition of the professoriate speaks very well of our professionalism and sense of intellectual mission.

With regard to political views, academic engagement promoted moderation. "[T]he results indicate -- in contrast to the concerns of many conservative commentators -- that academic involvement generally moderates attitudes," Dodson writes. "While conservative students do become more liberal as a result of academic involvement, liberals become more conservative as a result of their academic involvement. Indeed it appears that a critical engagement with a diverse set of ideas -- a hallmark of the college experience -- challenges students to re-evaluate the strength of their political convictions."

I'm not a fan of moderation for moderation's sake, but I'm a big fan of getting people to reassess their political priors and consider the validity of views-not-their-own. So go us!

Many People Are The Real Threat To Free Speech

Right-wing hecklers shouted down and ultimately forced the cancellation of talk by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra at Whittier College. The hecklers were protesting Beccara's efforts to protect immigrants against predation by the Trump administration.

I mention this story in part because FIRE is the body who picked it up (I periodically hear people claim FIRE doesn't care about free speech violations emanating from the right, but that has not been my experience and this represents a good counterexample). I also mention it because it is a clear example of a free speech violation on a college campus. I do not mention this story to play "right-wingers are the real threat to free speech in this country" game.

The fact is, lots of people don't like free speech; mostly when it's exercised by groups they dislike. Sometimes it's right-wingers at Whittier, sometimes it's left-wingers at William & Mary (what a terrible example to pick, by the way, as the fulcrum for "protest is speech too". Yes, it is, precisely because the overwhelmingly majority of the time it does not manifest as censorial disruption as it did at W&M).

That they actually indict free speech on the regular doesn't stop them from racing off to cry "free speech" when the speaker is someone they like -- the lead heckler at Whittier, as FIRE observes, is rather flagrantly ... opportunistic, we'll say ... on this issue; one could see George Ciccariello-Maher on the other side (as the National Review rightly observes, in GCM's case not believing in academic freedom doesn't mean he doesn't deserve it, but it's fair to call things what they are).

It's perhaps not surprising that this issue -- like so many others -- has devolved into little more than partisan point scoring and desires to push a narrative. But the fact is that there are threats to free speech from all over the political spectrum. I don't tend to think college campuses should be the epicenter of this conversation, particularly when the President of the United States is talking about shutting down broadcast television networks whose coverage he dislikes. Yet even on campus, one can see plenty of offenders on both sides.

The Many Voices of Silence

One of the more vexing questions raised by the recent flurry of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein was why, if "everybody knew", nobody spoke up? Why did people -- colleagues, victims, friends, press -- stay silent for so long? Is it right to blame them (all of them? some of them? which ones?) for not talking? Why?

On this subject, I'd like to share a story (I might have written about it before, though if so I can't find it) from when I was in college.

I was working a summer job at a law firm. Two of my closest friends from that summer -- also college students, both women -- worked together in the mail room; I worked by myself in another wing of the office. What that meant was that we didn't really see each other during working hours, but we did eat lunch together pretty much every day.

About a week before the end of the summer, in our daily lunch walk, one of them said she wanted to ask me something personal. She said that she thought she was being sexually harassed by her supervisor, and she wanted to know what I thought she should do about it. Should she say anything? Should she report it? The summer was about to end anyway; maybe she should just ride it out.

The "thought" part is important, because part of the conversation was her being unsure whether what was happening was sexual harassment. She seemed to be consistently talking herself into and out of her own position on the matter. She'd say things that to my mind clearly sounded like harassment, but when I'd concur in the assessment she'd second-guess herself and start redescribing the events more as if he was just sort of a generically lousy boss. Then eventually she'd reach the end of the pendulum and return back to it being harassment. She went back-and-forth in that vein for awhile, and never really settled on a conclusion.

I'm not really sure why she thought I'd have any unique insight. I wasn't any older than them, and had no particular experience in the area. The best advice I could give -- and to this day I don't know if it was good advice -- was that if she felt like it was sexual harassment she should report it, and if she felt like the guy was simply a bad supervisor she should wait out the week and leave.

Meanwhile, the second friend -- who also worked in the mailroom and to whom I periodically was turning to for clarification -- was making gestures and facial expressions to the effect of "I want absolutely no part in this." I could tell this all was bothering her as well, but she was firmly on the "don't say anything, don't do anything" side. I asked her why.

She told a story of being harassed at her middle school. And there was no "thought" there: she was being groped in the halls, people were tearing off her blouse, it was truly sickening behavior. And what did she do? She did complain. She and her parents went to the principal, told him what was going on, and demanded he put a stop to it.

The result? Nothing happened.

Well, not "nothing". The principal wasn't happy to have this thrust on her plate, and so now the administration started retaliating against her for complaining. Her entire position at the school became untenable. So she transferred to a different school -- one less convenient and less academically prestigious.

The moral she learned was "don't complain about sexual harassment." Hence, she made clear, she would neither confirm, nor deny, nor participate in any way in any conversation about any sexual harassment she or her friend may or may not have experienced in the mail room.

I'm not entirely sure how this story ended, but I don't think anybody ended up saying anything to the powers-that-be. Why not? Well, I didn't in part because I don't think either of them wanted me to, in part because I didn't know what I should say, and in part because I didn't view it as my place to speak (particularly given Friend #2's vivid description of the potential consequences for them if I talked). I imagine Friend #2 didn't talk because of the "lessons" she learned the last time she tried to fight back against harassment. And if Friend #1 didn't talk, it might have been because she was afraid the same might happen to her, or because she ultimately wasn't confident in her own credibility as a complainant, or because the end was in sight and she just wanted to put things behind her.

There are all sorts of reasons for all sorts of silence. One of my personal mentors, Martha Nussbaum -- surely one of the most powerful (in all senses of the term) women in the world today -- spoke incisively about why she never reported her sexual assault and why, even now, she continues to think it was and would continue to be useless to have done so. Silence can be complicity, and sometimes it's nothing more than that. But sometimes it is much more than that. Silence is the function of an entire network of power in which everybody feels alone, everybody feels powerless, everybody feels like they can't make a difference and that the only thing that will be gained from speaking up is hurting those who deserve it least.

Put another way, the condemnations of those who "knew" and said nothing often act as if the problem was just lack of character virtue -- if people cared more, then they wouldn't remain silent. This, to my estimation, dramatically understates the cultural forces which encourage and demand silence at every turn. The forces are not -- or are not just -- threats of reprisal. They're also bonds of trust ("you promised you wouldn't say anything if I confided"), norms of role ("it's not your place to do this for me"), and desires for lost privacy ("I just don't want this to become the center of my life"). When I hear about something that "everybody knows" but nobody says, my assumption isn't that "everybody" is a callous monster. I assume that there is something deeper going on.

When it comes to sexual assault, silence occurs in isolation, while resistance comes in groups. This is why one woman catching Weinstein bragging about sexual assault on a wiretap set up by the NYPD didn't bring Weinstein down, but many women telling a reporter (who lacks guns, or handcuffs, or prison threats) causes a cascade. Taken alone, we can't imagine how our speaking up could possibly make a difference -- it will only bring trouble. They stay silent because if they speak up:

• They'll be threatened ("you'll never work in this town again"); and/or
• They'll be ignored ("she's just seeking attention"); and/or
• They'll be mocked ("what makes you so special that you think Harvey Weinstein would make eyes at you?"); and/or
• They'll be shamed ("what did you think you were getting into, going to a meeting with him alone?"); and/or
• They'll be discredited ("Weinstein is a public figure; if he was a predator there's no way he could've kept it a secret for so long.").

And after all that heartache? Weinstein remains untouched, but the accuser has to live with the knowledge that her accusation meant nothing.

But when enough people refuse to cooperate, that massive array of power, which felt like it was an impregnable fortress, starts to topple like dominos. The people who could end your career in Hollywood now need to rush to show they're not beholden to a tainted figure like Harvey Weinstein. The "attention" oddly dissipates because it's spread across so many victims. The mockery falls flat because it is evident that Weinstein was a serial assailant. The shame doesn't stick because so many verify how he got so many women in a vulnerable position.

But the thing is, it's difficult to make that jump from being relatively alone to relatively in a community. It requires a lot of things, and courage is certainly one of them. But again, I don't think the problem is simply one of bad hearts. It's about bad culture. And I don't expect things to change much until that culture is unwound.

"It Could've Been Worse" is the Ultimate Non-Sequitur

Israel Bonan writes on the history of Egyptian Jews and the significant oppression -- culminating in violence and expulsion -- that characterized their experience in the 20th century.

It's a reply to Eyal Sagui Bizawe, who also wrote about the 20th century history of Egyptian Jews. Bizawe's column is somewhat peculiar, since it doesn't rely deny the reality of historical oppression so much as it seems cranky that it's being talked about as a form of significant oppression. It's replete with logic like "well, yeah Jews were expelled from Egypt, but not all of them so ... why should we call it 'expulsion'?" Or "yes, there was violence directed at Jews and Jewish neighborhoods, but 'pogrom' -- that's overselling it, no?"

Basically, Bizawe seems to think it's a sort of trick, or a form of dirty pool, for Egyptian Jews to argue that a significant (not the only, but a significant) component of their recent social experience was discrimination by the Egyptian state and society. It's unfair, it's reactionary, it's harboring a closet right-wing agenda. None of these contentions are particularly persuasive, and Bonan's column does a good job refuting them. But read them both and decide for yourself.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXVI: Charlottesville

Charlottesville was a "turning point" in our national conversation about racism. By that I mean "lots of people sort of acknowledged racism still existed and was scary, and then proceeded to not alter any of their other political priors in any meaningful way such that within two weeks it was as if nothing had changed whatsoever."

But who was responsible for this hitherto unfathomable display of open white supremacy? Oh, I think you know who:

[REP. PAUL] GOSAR: Well, isn’t that interesting. Maybe that [the Charlottesville rally] was created by the Left.

VICE News: Why do you say that?  

GOSAR: Because let’s look at the person that actually started the rally. It’s come to our attention that this is a person from Occupy Wall Street that was an Obama sympathizer. So, wait a minute, be careful where you start taking these people to.  

And look at the background. You know, you know George Soros is one of those people that actually helps back these individuals. Who is he? I think he’s from Hungary. I think he was Jewish. And I think he turned in his own people to the Nazis. Better be careful where we go with those.  

VICE News: Do you think George Soros funded the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville? 

GOSAR: Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out?

Interesting indeed. On behalf of the Jews, thanks, Rep. Gosar, and thanks to the Republicans of Arizona's 4th congressional district for electing him!

The New Trump Administration Push To Blow Up Energy Markets

David Roberts has a great post on efforts by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to essentially blow up the wholesale energy market in a naked effort to protect coal (and, to a lesser extent, nuclear) power plants from free competition. Basically, he proposed a new rule that would guarantee coal and nuclear power plants a positive return on their investments, regardless of whether their power capacity was used or even is economical. Whereas other power plants (ranging from wind to natural gas) make money based on their ability to compete effectively in the marketplace, a few preferred operators would get their profits guaranteed.

Nominally, this is because they uniquely contribute to grid "resilience" by being a source of power able to ramp up quickly in the event of a major disruption (like, say, a major weather event). The problem (well, the short version of the problem) is that all the relevant studies -- including those conducted by the DOE under the supervision of Secretary Perry in the hopes that they'd confirm his political preferences -- conclude that coal and nuclear power don't actually improve grid resilience, and that, in fact, the grid is generally quite reliable and resilient right now (and only improving). So the only real upshot is to serve as a massive intrusion on the market in favor of uneconomical coal power.* It's thus no surprise that one Republican former FERC commissioner described it as "the antithesis of good economics," or that simply said it would "blow the market up."

The whole article is worth your read, both as an introduction to how energy markets work (Roberts is great at explaining for a lay audience) and as an entry in the infinite-series of "Republicans don't actually care about market competition.

After laying out a litany of obstacles to passing the rule -- ranging from wall-to-wall opposition in the energy sector (outside of coal/nuke lobbyists) to severe time pressures to a complete lack of legal or policy justification necessary under the relevant statutes, Roberts concludes by saying the future of this proposal depends "on just how hackish and partisan FERC is willing to get." In other words, hold on tight.**

* As Roberts notes, while nuclear power is in a somewhat different boat from coal, this rule is also terrible policy as applied to supporting nukes.

** FERC is actually normally a relatively well-run agency, but at the moment it is controlled by Trump partisans who are, shall we say, not typically concerned with abiding by standards of technical expertise. So we'll see.

The (Ex-)CBS Executive Who's (Not) the Next Google Software Engineer!

After the horrifying massacre in Las Vegas this weekend, one CBS executive (business-side, not content-side) put up a Facebook post saying she was "not even sympathetic" to the victims because, as country music fans, they were probably Republicans and thus partially culpable for the epidemic of gun violence in this country.

She was fired.

I don't have a particular problem with that. Her comments were obviously repulsive, and if CBS decided that they were beyond the pale, casting doubt on her ability to work empathetically and sensitively with others, then this remedy seems well-within bounds.

And it seems most people agree. Because we haven't heard her compared to the Google software engineer. Or the Mozilla CEO. Or, on the other side, NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem.

What to make of all this? I don't think that it's actually a lack of principles, precisely. Rather, I think this demonstrates that we need to make judgment calls, and that there's no substitute for nuanced, critical consideration. A pure "free speech" position can't work in the private sector, and few of us seem to desire it anyway. At the same time, a "if you don't like the political line the company forces you to espouse, you can get a new job" line doesn't seem to map onto our intuitions about free speech or political freedom either.

It requires thinking. And sometimes, it's the easy, unthinking cases -- the uncontroversial termination of an executive when her speech really does seem obviously beyond the pale -- that illuminates the thought that needs to go into the more difficult ones.

Hell's Kitchen: All-Stars!

Yom Kippur began this evening, so obviously the smart move is to blog about a food show. But tonight was also the premier of Hell's Kitchen's all-star season! Long-time readers may recall that I pitched my dream lineup for a "heroes versus villains" HK all-stars all the way back in 2011. That was in the middle of Season 9, and we're now through Season 16 -- and since the lineup skews towards recent seasons, most of my picks didn't make it (I think the only exceptions are Ben from Season 7, and Jen and Elise from Season 9).

Still, the entire lineup consists of people who at least made it to black jacket territory, which distinguishes it from certain shows where "all-star" somehow includes people who didn't even make it into the top half of their season.* So I'm largely happy, and think it's a decently strong set. I fully expect Robyn to melt down in spectacular fashion, but other than that we'll see how people do!

* Back in the 1980s NHL, there were 21 teams and 16 playoff spots, leading one wag to quip that "if WWII was a hockey season, Poland would have made the playoffs." Project Runway all-star seasons are rapidly approaching similar status.

Who Doused the GOP with Truth Serum?

Something very strange is going on. Republicans are suddenly being remarkably ... candid:

Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), on why deficit hawks aren't saying anything about the Trump tax cut busting the budget:

It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led. It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), on what's motivating Republican primary voters:

All this time I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas — they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along.

And of course, an Alabama GOP County Chairman on how he'd respond to charges that Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore is "anti-Muslim":

I'm anti-Muslim too.

All are stand-outs, but I have to give extra-credit to Massie for explicitly including himself as a "craz[y] son of a bitch."

Return of the Muscle

In 2015, during anti-racism protests at the University of Missouri, a journalism professor named Melissa Click gained notoriety by calling for "muscle" to expel student journalists attempting to cover the proceedings. Click was widely censured and eventually fired.

I'm not convinced on the "firing" part (there are substantial due process questions that have yet to be answered persuasively), but the censure portion was entirely appropriate. A free press is essential to an open society. Seeking to block, obstruct, or threaten journalists for doing their jobs is absolutely incompatible with a commitment to free speech. What Click did was utterly contemptible.

Yesterday, a Missouri journalism student who was covering the Jason Stockley verdict protests published his account of what happened to journalists at the scene. He is not doe-eyed about the protesters -- while most were non-violent, a few were not and particularly as the main protest died down some were engaging in destruction of property (and were, unsurprisingly, not thrilled to be filmed in the act of destruction of property). But the journalist was also quite clear and emphatic in his ultimate verdict:

At this event, the police officers were far more threatening to journalists than were the protesters.

The SWAT truck stopped, and heavily armored officers carrying assault rifles poured out, screaming at us. Thinking that they would likely ignore the journalists and go after the demonstrators, we stopped and put our hands and cameras in the air. Most of the demonstrators were wearing black, their faces covered with bandanas, and some had weapons. The journalists, on the other hand, were dressed the way we often are — in button-down shirts, with press credentials and cameras plain to see. The difference was obvious. 

And yet most of the demonstrators escaped while nearly all of the SWAT officers grabbed the journalists by our necks and forced us against a brick wall. An officer pulled my respirator off my face and threw it into the street and then pulled my helmet back so tightly that the fastened strap began to cut off my air supply. Our hands were immediately zip-tied tightly behind our backs, and I was unable to breathe or remove my helmet. I tried in vain to choke out the words — “I can’t breathe.” A photographer next to me noticed and loudly said to an officer behind us, “You need to take off his helmet, he’s choking.” The officer looked at him, then at me, and said “I can’t hear you” and walked away. 

I was eventually able to use the wall next to me to nudge my helmet back onto my head. Now able to speak, I turned to the officer in charge and asked, “Am I under arrest?” His reply was: “Shut up, mother------.” 

The SWAT officers then yanked us onto our feet and walked us toward a police van. As we were being shoved into the van, the officer in charge stopped us. “All of you dumbasses are going to jail tonight. Stupid mother-------.” Then he turned to one of the other officers and said: “Throw these stupid b------ on the van.”

Everyone who censured Melissa Click should be equally loud in denouncing the actions of these St. Louis Police officers (arguably, they should be more emphatic -- there is special danger in such assaults on the free press occurring under color of law -- but I'll settle for "equally"). They won't, of course. As always, free speech has many fair-weather friends, and in a world where a guy can body slam a journalist and then cruise into the House of Representatives it's hard to speak of the health of our commitment to an open press.

But principles are principles, even in their breach. Sometimes, the "muscle" is a wild-eyed academic thinking she's "protecting" student activists. Sometimes, it's police officers claiming to be "protecting" the streets. Both are contemptible. But there's no doubt that only one will become a national story.

You Can't Go Home Again

I'm writing this post on my childhood bed, in my childhood bedroom, in my childhood home, for the last time.

My parents recently sold this house, which we've lived in since I was born. This trip was the big "clean out your room" day (through extraordinary effort, I'm proud to say not a single baseball card will be left behind -- fulfilling a promise my parents made to me when I was eight that they'd never throw out my collection).

As you maybe can tell, I'm a sentimental guy. I gave an emotional send-off to this blog's pageview counter, for crying out loud. So you can imagine that this has been a very difficult trip for me.

I loved this house. I loved everything about it. I loved that it had the consensus best front and backyard, perfect for capture the flag. I loved that it had tons of trees and woods for exploring. I loved that it had a huge basement that was ideal for running around in as a kid -- big enough for floor hockey games. I loved that it was packed with nooks and crannies that made it perfect for hide-and-go-seek, and that I knew the perfect hiding spot where nobody would ever find me. I loved my room, with its wall-to-wall desk back behind the bed so I could have all my books in arms reach. I loved a closet that was big enough to house my entire baseball card collection, and enough shelves for seemingly-infinite books plus a few choice pieces of sports memorabilia.

Of course, I didn't really have to deal with any of the stresses of home ownership. I just got to grow up here. And even after I left for college and basically moved out, it was always "home". It was always a place I could put down as a "permanent address" (not a small thing, when you moved five times in five years all across the country). It was always a place where I had my childhood toys, just in case I wanted to bask in a bit of nostalgia. Most importantly, it was always there, a promise that if things didn't work out (and I'm not even sure what I mean by that), I could go back. All the things I was doing in the world, the traveling and working and going to school -- they were not points of no return.

I've always said that I hate change, but I've realized that's not quite accurate. What I hate is not being able to go back. I hate irrevocable change. My ideal life comes with save and reload points. The funny thing is, I virtually never use them (in games, I have a propensity to save before big decisions "just in case" -- then never return to the decision-point again). But just having the option is comforting. And the house was the ultimate reset button. It has always been a part of my life; I've never been without it. And so it doesn't matter that I virtually never spent time there anymore. It's very, very scary to let that go.

Tomorrow, the house is hosting an engagement party for Jill and myself, where some of our oldest friends will get to celebrate a big step forward in my life that I am genuinely excited for. My mom asked if I wanted to do that -- it makes for a bit of an emotional rollercoaster -- but I emphatically did. It will make for a fantastic send-off, and I'm glad I'll get to experience it filled with family and friends once more.

And then, after that, we go to the airport, back to Berkeley, and it's gone forever. I'd love to end this post with some moment of personal growth, or at least catharsis. And I am happy that a new family, with a little kiddo of their own, will live here and form their own memories. But the truth is, right now, I'm just sad. I'm sad to be leaving. I'm sad that when we pull out of our driveway (a driveway which only true experts could back out of without straying onto the grass), I'll never be coming back. It is a permanent, irrevocable goodbye, to something I truly loved.

The grand dame herself:

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXV: War!

There is a class in the political science department here at Berkeley, titled simply "War!" (the exclamation point is included). It explores the concept and practice of war from an international relations perspective -- does it follow political science "rules"? Can it be rational? Are there cultural, geopolitical, or demographic markers that make one more or less war-prone? Of course, it's taught by a Jew.

If that "of course" caused a cocked eyebrow just there, well, you aren't Valerie Plame, who ushered in the Jewish New Year by sharing an essay titled "America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars." Shana Tova indeed! It includes such lovely suggestions like demanding the media "label" Jews when they appear on television, "kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison." So that's nice. Missing is the apparently trivial fact that Jews are significantly less likely to support Middle Eastern wars than the American population writ large.

Plame has already completed the cycle that started with "yes, very provocative, but thoughtful," proceeded onward to "Just FYI, I am of Jewish decent [sic]", over to "put aside your biases and think clearly," and finally coming to rest on an apology.

Fun bonus fact: The site she shared from is the Unz Review, which was a key driver in directing antisemitic harassment at me personally following one of my Tablet articles (e.g., the infamous "are you this Jew?" email).

But one can't help but feel for Plame, who says she just "didn't do [her] homework" on the venue. I mean, who could have known that an article titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" would be published on an antisemitic site?

Living in the Machinery of Death

Being a clerk on a United States Court of Appeals was one of the truly great honors of my life. It was a fantastic experience, which included the chance to have a direct hand in the development of American law, to occupy a front-row seat to observe how the legal sausage is mad, and to work side-by-side with some exceptional attorneys and for a federal judge who was a fantastic friend and mentor.

But I've also remarked that, during the tenure of my clerkship, I often felt as if I was "ruining far more lives than I was validating." One arena of law which provoked that feeling was criminal law, where truly obscene oversentencing was a daily occurrence. Another area was immigration.

By the time an immigration case reaches the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the median adjective describing the appealing immigrant is probably "doomed". This is due to a confluence of factors -- the laws on the books are immigrant-unfriendly, the immigration judges are often immigrant-unfriendly, and the standard of review for immigration claims at this stage is exceptionally immigrant-unfriendly. What that meant in practice was that, over and over again, I found myself reading files of people who insisted that they'd be hacked to death if they were deported back to Central America, then assisting in perfunctory one paragraph orders denying their appeal.

The risk (of being hacked to death) wasn't made up. I was generally quite persuaded that they were at serious risk of violent attack if they were returned to their home countries. But, as I said, the law is quite unfriendly, and since the persecution was rarely the result of direct governmental animosity or membership in a cohesive social group, there was usually nothing to be done. On the rare occasions where there seemed to be a glimmer of hope, I tried my best -- and most of those cases I was unsuccessful. But even the cases where there was even a implausible shot were few and far between. For the most part, the legal rulings were straight-forward -- hence why they could be expressed in perfunctory, single paragraph orders.

The law is straight-forward and it is clear. That does not change the reality of the situation. It is fair to say that the true villains here are the politicians who write and the people who demand laws which regularly enable such horrible outcomes. Fine. But the fact is I was a gear in a machinery of death, one that destroyed families and ruined lives. In terms of how much culpability you want to assign to me, personally, or other agents of the federal judiciary, legal formalism is a fine consideration to take account of. But appealing to it to deny the nature of the machine -- not to say "it's not my fault" but to say "that's not what was happening" -- is a psychological numbing agent. We run to it because it's terrible to have to face up to the reality of the situation.

The Austin American-Statesman reports on a recently deported immigrant -- snatched outside of a courthouse where he was facing a few minor misdemeanors -- who was just found murdered back in his native Mexico. Murdered, just as he told a federal court he would be in a futile effort to stave off his deportation.

Juan Coronilla-Guerrero had a criminal background. Not a serious one, but not a spotless one either. In this, he is little different from many Americans who have a spot or two in their past. Which itself raises the DACA question posited by, among others, my friend Joel Sati. DACA is for perfect immigrants -- those with not a single blemish on their record, those who perfectly fit a respectability narrative. Of course, it's understandable that, in unfavorable conditions, you latch onto the best stories you can. It's no mystery why DACA or the Dream Acts are framed the way they are.

But Juan Coronilla-Guerrero was not a murderer, or a rapist, or a child abuser. More to the point, he did not deserve to die. If or when DACA is passed, or a Dream Act, or some other comparable piece of immigration reform make it through Congress, it will undoubtedly exclude many, many Juan Coronilla-Guerreros. Not perfect people, but not bad people either. And despite the fact that they aren't hardened criminals, or "bad hombres", or incurable monsters, they'll continue to be deported, in circumstances where the results are entirely predictable -- ruined lives as best, death and maiming at worst.

We should still pass a DACA bill. We should do what we can, in the imperfect world we live in, bounded by the terrible political constraints that bind us.

It will remain a machinery of death. I'm not about casting blame; feel guilty or innocent at your own discretion. But don't deny the nature of the machine.

What If Black Liberty Mattered?

Jacob Levy writes on the history of "liberty" as a trope in American racist movements, and the corresponding flirtation that many libertarians have had with White supremacy. Levy's essays for the Niskanen Center have been consistently superb -- I already wrote on his fantastic defense of identity politics as against the Mark Lilla critique -- and this is no different. Give it a read.

Pondering Planets in Science Fiction

A couple of planet-related thoughts I've had over the years in the context of Science Fiction (movies, books, games, etc.)

1) Sometimes, in Science Fiction, something -- an artifact, a person, a dataprint -- will be lost (lost less in the sense of "I had it but dropped it" and more in the sense of "lost to the sands of time"). And where this is a plot point, the heroes usually will "find" the MacGuffin by figuring out what planet it's on (e.g., Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode VII).

I always found this rather striking. Imagine you're searching for a particular human being, and you're told "he's on Earth" ... and that being enough to go on. Even if there weren't a single other human being on the planet, Earth is still really big, at least from the perspective of finding a single guy. There's a ton more sleuthing you'd need to do! It's amazing to me how most "planets" are reducible to basically a square mile of (monolithic) terrain -- anything that's there, is there.

2) In any multiplanetary society, it is taken pretty much for granted that the smallest unit of practical governance is the planet. Sometimes it's larger than that (a galactic federation, or individual star systems), but there's virtually never subplanetary political divisions that are deemed salient on an interstellar level. "Earth" might have a representative on the Galactic Council, or the "Terran Federation" might, but "America" and "China" never do. That actually strikes me as more or less plausible, but it is interesting -- and it strikes me that if humanity ever does spread outside of our home planet we will rapidly coalesce into some form of global government -- at least for the purpose of managing space affairs.

3) Returning to the "planets are big" thing, you know what job must really be low-prestige in science fiction land? An "intraplanetary" transporter or military member. Imagine there exists Starfleet, and you're part of the Navy. Not the Space Navy, just the old-fashioned water Navy that protects ocean-going ships. Somebody has to do it -- again, planets are large and there will have to be substantial intraplanetary trade which will need protection from pirates or rescue from storms or whatnot. But goodness, imagine trying to pick someone up at a bar with that job -- working on a coast guard cutter when there are literal starships flying across the universe. That's rough.

Today in Academic Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Eternal Mystery of Why Jews Vote Democratic

People sometimes ask me why Jews vote Democratic. There's no real mystery behind it. The explanation is simple:

First, on every issue aside from Israel, Jews prefer Democrats to Republicans.

Second, on the issue of Israel, Jews prefer Democrats to Republicans.

As we look at Donald Trump's poll ratings amongst Jews -- far lower than even his catastrophic nationwide ratings -- we see this born out. On every issue save Israel, Jews think Trump sucks. And on Israel ... Trump still is significantly underwater, and well below where Barack Obama polled on that issue at his nadir. It's just not that mysterious why an overwhelmingly liberal electoral subgroup would keep voting for the more liberal of the two parties.

But, you know. 2014 2015 2016 2017 will be the year Jews finally come to our senses and realize who truly loved us all along!

I'm Sick of Smug-Takes on Berkeley Offering "Counseling"

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is coming to campus this week. Shapiro will be followed this month by Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon, and Milo Yiannopoulos, as part of a Berkeley "free speech week".

In a long email outlining the various campus policies that would be in place to facilitate all these speeches (and as I've consistently argued, having been invited by authorized community members they do have a right to speak free of censorship or material disruption, though of course not from non-intrusive protest or criticism), Executive Vice Chancellor Paul Alivisatos mentioned that, among other things, counseling services were available for any students who felt "threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe."

And the internet went wild.

I don't need to collect links -- here's an example, but they're not hard to find. Across the entire political spectrum of the mainstream media -- you know, center-left to hard-right -- there was near-uniform glee in dumping on coddling Berkeley administrators and infantile Berkeley students who need counseling just because they're hearing "ideas they disagree with."

I cannot tell you how sick I am of hearing this. It's lazy, it's a cheap shot, it's intellectually incoherent, and above all it's mean-spirited. Berkeley isn't wrong here. And it's detractors are showing more about what's missing in their character than the most stereotypical Golden Bear hipster.

For starters, Berkeley is a big place. Its total enrollment is over 40,000 students. These young people come from a range of backgrounds, and at any given time across that 40,000 there will be persons who are struggling, or experiencing crises, or feeling threatened, or any other permutation of personal circumstance and emotional troubles you can imagine. I've already written recently about how all of us -- self-satisfied declarations notwithstanding -- intuitively understand how certain speech can truly wound deeply, in a manner which we can all empathize with. That doesn't mean we ban it (and offering counseling doesn't "ban" anything), but it does mean that there's a genuine phenomena that we can and should attempt to address

So let's be empathic. Let's imagine, amongst Berkeley's 40,000 students, that there is a student who is struggling. Maybe he's away from home for the first time and having difficulty adjusting. Maybe she feels in over her head in classes, finding that work that got her an A in high school is barely scraping a C at Berkeley. And then let's add more to it -- maybe he's just found out that he's now at imminent risk of deportation from the only country he's ever truly known. Maybe she's found out that, though she proudly served her country and is a veteran of the American armed forces, the President of the United States publicly declared her to be a burden on the US military who should never have been allowed to wear the uniform.

Now let's remember who Ben Shapiro is.

Ben Shapiro thinks that trans individuals suffer from a "mental illness" and gratuitously misgenders them for the primary purpose of causing offense. He refers to DACA as President Obama's "executive amnesty". Pretty much the only reason he isn't an avowed member of the alt-right is that they happen to hate him too. He's not an intellectual. He's not one the great thinkers of the right. His oeuvre, his raison d'etre, is to be a hurtful provocateur. That's what he brings to the table.

And let's be clear: this, the above, was why Ben Shapiro was invited to Berkeley. It wasn't because he offered "a different view." And it certainly wasn't because of the intellectual candlepower he has on offer. The people who invited Ben Shapiro to UC-Berkeley did so because of, not in spite of, the hurt he will dish out to already-vulnerable members of the community.

The students I outlined above -- already struggling, buffeted by political dynamics which very much are designed to dehumanize them -- now have to reckon with the reality that a non-negligible chunk of their colleagues are glad they're feeling that way. They actively want to accelerate the process. They'll go out of their way to invite speakers to reiterate and emphasize the point.

Honestly, I don't blame them if they could use a venue to talk out their feelings a bit. It strikes me as spectacularly uncharitable, a colossal failure of basic empathy, to think otherwise. Then again, what is our polity going through now but a colossal failure of basic empathy?

After the election, I made a similar comment (which I cannot find) when people again made fun of college kids who expressed deep hurt and fear upon the election of Donald Trump. This, too, was attributed to fragile millennial snowflakes who don't know how to tolerate hardship. And I remarked that the man now faced with being expelled from the country is not scared because he's frail, and the woman who was the victim of a sexual assault is not despondent because she's weak-willed. We've seemingly moved past "don't punch people who think you're subhuman" (okay) to "don't be sad that people think you're subhuman" (really?).

Some are arguing that the real problem with offering counseling is that it doesn't teach the kids "resilience". First of all, I wonder what they think goes on in counseling sessions -- my strong suspicion is that they are precisely about fostering resiliency so that students are better able to cope with such annoying trivialities like "I may be torn from the only home I've ever known at any moment and a sizeable portion of what I thought was my community will cheer as they drag me off." The objection here isn't so much to lack of resilience as to the university having the temerity to try and teach it -- like objecting to wilderness training because shouldn't real men already know how to survive outdoors?

Second, it is hard not to hear in this objection a deep resentment at the fact that today, even now, some people still do proactively care about the feelings of others. The argument seems to be that "fifty years ago if someone felt marginalized on a college campus nobody gave a shit. Today, some people -- including a few holding administrative positions -- do care, and for some reason that's a step backwards for society." One can hear more than a little of the typical mockery associated with using therapy of any sort -- though I admit I hadn't heard it manifest this overtly in some time -- which suggests that only persons of pathologically fragile mental composition could ever need something as lily-livered as counseling. Again, I find this argument hard to relate to, seeing as its genealogy is so thoroughly bound up in nothing more complicated than pure cruelty. Shorn of the feelings of superiority it generates, can anyone actually defend this?

Others complain that students shouldn't be going to therapy in response to such speech, they should be responding in other ways -- debate, protest, donations, activism, any thing else. Of all the objections, this is the one that is the most difficult to credit. Does anyone think that the only way Berkeley students will respond to Ben Shapiro's speech is by going to counseling sessions? That Friday morning, all 40,000 of us will march into whatever center houses our mental health professionals and demand to be soothed? Of course not. Of course there will be debate, and protest, and donations, and activism. And you can bet that however such actions manifest, people will still find a way to denounce the entire response tout court -- unjustified actions like violence, yes, but also silent protest, but also waving signs, but also pure condemnatory speech (especially if that speech dares use the dreaded -ism or -phobic suffixes).

Finally, let's dispense with the notion that this is all being triggered by students who can't tolerate "ideas they disagree with." For starters, it's notable that while Alivisatos' email does not in fact refer to any speakers in particular, everybody simultaneously assumed they were talking about Ben Shapiro while at the same time being aghast at how anyone could possibly need counseling after hearing Ben Shapiro. Me thinks they protest too much. But more to the point: Berkeley regularly hosts speakers who will present ideas many on campus will disagree with. This week, David Hirsh is giving a talk on "Contemporary Left Antisemitism" -- surely, many on campus would resist his conclusions. Later this term, National Review editor Reihan Salam will be speaking on immigration policy -- with no known objections or protests planned.

So the problem isn't ideas people disagree with. The problem is Ben Shapiro, and Ann Coulter, and Milo Yiannopoulos. One doesn't invite them to campus because they're presenting important ideas which need to be reckoned with. There are plenty of conservatives who fit the bill, and when those conservatives show up they are typically met with little fanfare. But if you're inviting this contingent, you're doing it because you like hurting people. That's their comparative advantage, that's the thing they can offer over and above all of their competitors.

It neither bothers me, nor surprises me, nor offends me, that this offends certain students. If some portion of those students are in an emotional place right now where they feel like they need counseling, I encourage them to get it. If others want to protest the speech, I support their right to do so within the parameters of the law. If still others want to attend the speech, or subject Shapiro to harsh questioning, or pen scathing op-eds in the Daily Cal, I applaud them all for it. And each of these options got pride of place in Alivistos' email.

All of these are valid responses. None of them are worthy of scorn, none of them signal any deficiency in our student body. What is far more worrisome is the reaction of the so-called "adults" in the media, who have grown so fond of bashing kids-these-days that they've seemingly forgotten the need to reason, much less to empathize.