Last night, I received the very sad news that Judge Diana E. Murphy had passed away. She was 84.
As many of you know, I clerked for Judge Murphy from 2012 through 2013 (occasioning the great and terrible one year blackout of this blog). It was one of the great honors and great joys of my life. While I knew she was having health problems, I'm still in a bit of shock -- I'm in Minnesota right now, and I was actually planning on visiting her in chambers today before getting the news from one of my co-clerks last night.
Among the many, many friends and colleagues who adored her, I'm exceedingly lucky to be one of those writing a tribute to her that will be published in the Minnesota Law Review in a few months. For now, I'll just say that Judge Murphy was an inspiration in every possible sense of the term: she was smart, she was empathetic, she was caring, she was funny, and she was kind. There's no other judge I'd rather have clerked for, and I'm unaccountably fortunate to have had her in my life.
She was widely loved, and she'll be missed. Rest in peace, Judge.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Big Media David: Israel Doesn't Care About American Jews
I've been on a travel kick this week -- came back to DC for a wedding, stayed for Mother's Day, and now am departing for Minnesota for my wedding tasting(!) -- and, as you may have noticed, haven't really been able to blog. Frankly, given how terrible this week has been, I don't mind being mostly off the grid.
But I did make time to write a column for the Forward on what's been a very painful realization for me: While American Jews care a lot about Israel, Israel doesn't give a damn about American Jews.
We've spent all this time and energy to foster a sense of "connection" between American Jews and Israel, only to discover that it flows almost entirely one way. We'll step up to bat time and again to defend Israel in debates and controversies, even when we're unsure of the wisdom of their particular policy choices. But when we try to assert reciprocity, what do we get?
On any one of these issues, one might be able to say "Israel's a democracy, it gets to make it's own calls." Nobody is saying American Jews should be able to dictate Israeli policy. But we could justly say Israeli Jews should consider American Jewish perspectives, just as we've often (very often) heard that American Jews should consider Israeli viewpoints. But when time and again, over and over, we're completely ignored to the degree that there's barely even the pretense of considering the position or status of American Jews as a data point of consideration -- well, it becomes very obvious how much we matter in the scheme of things.
Israel, it seems, has made a calculated decision that it can do without American Jews. Whatever we can give them -- votes, aid, opposition to BDS, whatever -- they can get from other sources. Now one might have thought -- and many of us did think -- that the relationship between American and Israeli Jews wasn't one built solely on necessity or self-interest; it didn't depend on what one party could give to the other, it was a relationship grounded on a sense of shared identity and camaraderie. But no longer think that's true. Israel has decided it doesn't need us, and -- more importantly -- that if it doesn't need us, it doesn't care about us.
But I did make time to write a column for the Forward on what's been a very painful realization for me: While American Jews care a lot about Israel, Israel doesn't give a damn about American Jews.
We've spent all this time and energy to foster a sense of "connection" between American Jews and Israel, only to discover that it flows almost entirely one way. We'll step up to bat time and again to defend Israel in debates and controversies, even when we're unsure of the wisdom of their particular policy choices. But when we try to assert reciprocity, what do we get?
- A sneering disdain for the two-state solution, or basically any efforts to secure political equality for Palestinians;
- A busted Western Wall agreement;
- Continued fealty to an ultra-Orthodox Rabbinate that openly discriminates against the denominations that represent most American Jews;
- Invocations and prayers by viciously bigoted Evangelical preachers guaranteed to make American Jews blanche; and
- A level of snuggling up to Donald Trump that might as well constitute a taunt.
On any one of these issues, one might be able to say "Israel's a democracy, it gets to make it's own calls." Nobody is saying American Jews should be able to dictate Israeli policy. But we could justly say Israeli Jews should consider American Jewish perspectives, just as we've often (very often) heard that American Jews should consider Israeli viewpoints. But when time and again, over and over, we're completely ignored to the degree that there's barely even the pretense of considering the position or status of American Jews as a data point of consideration -- well, it becomes very obvious how much we matter in the scheme of things.
Israel, it seems, has made a calculated decision that it can do without American Jews. Whatever we can give them -- votes, aid, opposition to BDS, whatever -- they can get from other sources. Now one might have thought -- and many of us did think -- that the relationship between American and Israeli Jews wasn't one built solely on necessity or self-interest; it didn't depend on what one party could give to the other, it was a relationship grounded on a sense of shared identity and camaraderie. But no longer think that's true. Israel has decided it doesn't need us, and -- more importantly -- that if it doesn't need us, it doesn't care about us.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Big Media David: NPR on Arizona's anti-BDS Law
I was interviewed by NPR's Phoenix affiliate regarding the ACLU's challenge Arizona's anti-BDS law. I was positioned as the academic expert alongside the ACLU and its client challenging the law, and the AJC and Arizona Attorney General's office, defending it. Presumably, they found me either because of this column on the Israel Anti-Boycott Act or this one on the problem with trusting state bureaucrats to fight your anti-BDS battle. So I neither came out for or against the law, but rather tried to situate it inside broader controversies balancing free speech and with anti-discrimination law. The main normative point I tried to make was that when these laws are passed primarily to score an ideological point, they aren't always written or applied with the utmost care, and that poses particular dangers in the First Amendment context.
The other interesting thing I discovered while researching the case is that the Arizona AG's office does not interpret its law as covering a boycott targeting, say, HP for its alleged complicity in human rights abuses in the West Bank. Only a general boycott of all (or virtually all) Israeli products would qualify (see pp. 8-10). Whether or not that's the correct interpretation of the statute, it is a much narrower understanding of what BDS is than is typically cast either by the movement's backers or critics.
Anyway, I think it's an interesting case (and I think the NPR story was solid, all told). Most importantly, when listening to it I didn't absolutely hate the sound of my own voice, which is a rarity for me. But on that score YMMV.
The other interesting thing I discovered while researching the case is that the Arizona AG's office does not interpret its law as covering a boycott targeting, say, HP for its alleged complicity in human rights abuses in the West Bank. Only a general boycott of all (or virtually all) Israeli products would qualify (see pp. 8-10). Whether or not that's the correct interpretation of the statute, it is a much narrower understanding of what BDS is than is typically cast either by the movement's backers or critics.
Anyway, I think it's an interesting case (and I think the NPR story was solid, all told). Most importantly, when listening to it I didn't absolutely hate the sound of my own voice, which is a rarity for me. But on that score YMMV.
Wednesday, May 09, 2018
Nordstrom's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Racist (and Almost Entirely Legal) Racial Profiling Scandal
Three Black teenagers shopping for prom wear at a St. Louis-area Nordstrom's had the police called on them for suspected shoplifting. But that's skipping to the end of the story. Here's the beginning:
So you might think that, at least if it could be proven that the behavior of Nordstrom's employees -- shadowing and surveilling the customers, denying their request to speak to a store manager, then having that manager give them a mocking wave goodbye when they left in disgust, opening a new register for the benefit of a White customer behind them in line who had called them "bums" -- were race done because of race, it would violate federal law. The customers' ability to make a desired contract with Nordstrom's (here, buying prom clothes) would have been obstructed and interfered with on account in race -- in open defiance of Section 1981.
Fun fact: You'd be wrong. And again, you'd be wrong even if it was absolutely, 100% incontestably proven that Nordstrom's did this only to Black customers, due to avowedly racist beliefs acted on by store employees.
St. Louis, Missouri, you see, lies in the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (indeed, the Eighth Circuit is based in St. Louis). The Eighth Circuit, for its part, is the single most conservative appellate court in the country. And so Eighth Circuit observers perhaps would not be surprised to find out that in 2009 the Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, handed down a 6-5 decision in Gregory v. Dillard's which immunized virtually all of the above behavior from legal challenge under Section 1981.*
The court concluded that neither a department store's practice of explicitly racist shadowing and surveillance, nor racist remarks or gestures directed at the customers, nor these things in conjunction, can make out a Section 1981 violation even in circumstances where it is indisputably the but-for cause for why a customer who otherwise planned to purchase a product decides not to do so. Hence, until Nordstrom's actually called the cops on the customers -- and perhaps not even then -- everything it was doing was wholly lawful under Gregory even if there was no question that it was targeting the Black customers due to their race.
The Gregory decision held that, as a matter of law, no amount of racial harassment or disdain directed at shoppers acts to "block" or "thwart" the creation of a contract -- only an explicit refusal to make a sale will do the trick. So if you're a Black shopper in Missouri and being nakedly racially profiled causes you to leave the store in disgust -- hey, that's on you. As far as the Eighth Circuit is concerned, you should have grown a thicker skin.
And yes, in case you're curious: part of the Eighth Circuit's rationale for why Section 1981 had to be constricted so as not to include racist shadowing, surveillance, and harassment is that these practices might be necessary to stop "shoplifting". Of course.
* The lead dissent in Gregory was authored by Judge Diana E. Murphy, whom I clerked for several years later. It was joined by Judges Bye, Melloy, Smith, and (in relevant part) Benton. Judges Murphy and Bye were Clinton appointees, while Judges Melloy, Smith, and Benton were all George W. Bush appointees. All six judges in the majority were Republican appointees. Judge Smith was also the only African-American judge serving on the Eighth Circuit at that time, and I believe only the second ever to sit on that court.
Mekhi Lee, Eric Rogers and Dirone Taylor were shopping at the Nordstrom Rack on Thursday when they noticed store employees closely eyeing them and following them through the aisles. Lee has just completed his freshman year of college and was with his
longtime friends, Taylor and Rogers, who were shopping for prom.
[Local NAACP President Adolphus] Pruitt said that one of the men wanted to try on a shirt, so he removed his hat to do so. The store employees kept following the men, Pruitt said, so they decided to leave.
Shortly after, the man who had tried on the shirt realized he left his hat in the store, so the three of them went back. That’s when they were approached by an elderly white woman who had also been shopping.
“Now they’re confronted by an elderly white woman in the store who says to them, ‘Would your parents and grandparents be proud of what you’re doing?’ ” Pruitt said. The woman also referred to them as “a bunch of bums,” according to Pruitt.
At that point, the men asked to speak to a store manager, but employees told them they couldn’t meet with one, Pruitt said. The men left the store a second time and turned back to see the manager come to sidewalk and wave.
That’s when they chose to return, Pruitt said.
“They decided, ‘We have money, we came here to shop and demonstrate to them that we aren’t thugs. We have money like anybody else,’ ” Pruitt said.
While the men were making their purchases, the elderly woman was in line waiting to check out behind them. The manager, who is white, opened up a new register to ring the woman up, Pruitt said.
The manager then escorted the white woman to her car, Pruitt said.
While the men were paying for their items, they heard staff employees say they were calling the police. Pruitt said the men left the store and waited for the police to arrive.Title 42, Section 1981 of U.S. Code is one of the single oldest civil rights laws in America. Enacted as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, it protects the equal rights of all persons to "make and enforce contracts" (including retail transactions) notwithstanding race. As the Supreme Court has made clear, this statute "protects the would-be contractor along with those who already have contracts." Indeed, in Runyon v. McCrary, the Court described a circumstance where individuals "sought to enter into contractual relationships" but were denied the ability to do on basis of race as "a classic violation of § 1981."
So you might think that, at least if it could be proven that the behavior of Nordstrom's employees -- shadowing and surveilling the customers, denying their request to speak to a store manager, then having that manager give them a mocking wave goodbye when they left in disgust, opening a new register for the benefit of a White customer behind them in line who had called them "bums" -- were race done because of race, it would violate federal law. The customers' ability to make a desired contract with Nordstrom's (here, buying prom clothes) would have been obstructed and interfered with on account in race -- in open defiance of Section 1981.
Fun fact: You'd be wrong. And again, you'd be wrong even if it was absolutely, 100% incontestably proven that Nordstrom's did this only to Black customers, due to avowedly racist beliefs acted on by store employees.
St. Louis, Missouri, you see, lies in the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (indeed, the Eighth Circuit is based in St. Louis). The Eighth Circuit, for its part, is the single most conservative appellate court in the country. And so Eighth Circuit observers perhaps would not be surprised to find out that in 2009 the Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, handed down a 6-5 decision in Gregory v. Dillard's which immunized virtually all of the above behavior from legal challenge under Section 1981.*
The court concluded that neither a department store's practice of explicitly racist shadowing and surveillance, nor racist remarks or gestures directed at the customers, nor these things in conjunction, can make out a Section 1981 violation even in circumstances where it is indisputably the but-for cause for why a customer who otherwise planned to purchase a product decides not to do so. Hence, until Nordstrom's actually called the cops on the customers -- and perhaps not even then -- everything it was doing was wholly lawful under Gregory even if there was no question that it was targeting the Black customers due to their race.
The Gregory decision held that, as a matter of law, no amount of racial harassment or disdain directed at shoppers acts to "block" or "thwart" the creation of a contract -- only an explicit refusal to make a sale will do the trick. So if you're a Black shopper in Missouri and being nakedly racially profiled causes you to leave the store in disgust -- hey, that's on you. As far as the Eighth Circuit is concerned, you should have grown a thicker skin.
And yes, in case you're curious: part of the Eighth Circuit's rationale for why Section 1981 had to be constricted so as not to include racist shadowing, surveillance, and harassment is that these practices might be necessary to stop "shoplifting". Of course.
* The lead dissent in Gregory was authored by Judge Diana E. Murphy, whom I clerked for several years later. It was joined by Judges Bye, Melloy, Smith, and (in relevant part) Benton. Judges Murphy and Bye were Clinton appointees, while Judges Melloy, Smith, and Benton were all George W. Bush appointees. All six judges in the majority were Republican appointees. Judge Smith was also the only African-American judge serving on the Eighth Circuit at that time, and I believe only the second ever to sit on that court.
Qualified Grader Roundup
I passed my qualifying exam last week, which is the last formal hurdle before I begin writing my dissertation. That's a weird sentence to write -- like talking about the last safety check before jumping out of an airplane, or the last underling to defeat before facing the Ultimate Final Boss Monster -- but it's where I am.
At the same time, my students' final exams are due today, so my immediate future is not as a writer but as a grader. And since it would be just catastrophic if anything distracted me from that essential task, I suppose it's time to clear some browser space.
* * *
I wrote last week about alleged discrimination against Jewish chaplains in the army; now we get a different story about retaliation against a chaplain in the Air Force after he converted to Judaism.
This is the story of another immigrant we, the United States of America, effectively murdered in the most gruesome way possible (the penultimate part of the story -- before the death -- is an amputated penis) via a mixture of grotesque indifference to obvious medical need and complete lack of empathy.
UC-Berkeley releases its report on campus free speech issues. One interesting thing about it is that it is not really focused on questions law. Rather, it takes for granted that Berkeley is constrained in various ways by the First Amendment, and rather than dwelling on where those precise borders lie it tries to ask what practical steps the university can take -- consistent with those strictures -- to foster and maintain a healthy speech culture.
Also germane: Jeffrey Sachs has an interesting data set on instances of speech suppression on campus. Interestingly, there have been more successful terminations of left-of-center college professors for "bad" speech than conservative professors -- and while on its own that might be explained by different base rates, the big spike in left (but not right) firings from 2015 to 2017 can't be. The other interesting finding was that -- contrary to some narratives about the so-called "Palestine exception" to the First Amendment -- Israel issues were of comparatively minor importance. There were, depending on how you count Joy Karega (Oberlin) and Michael Chikindas (Rutgers), between three and five Israel-related terminations (or coerced resignations) over the data-collecting period (out of a total of 58). Of the unambiguous cases, two were for anti-Israel speech (Steven Salaita at Illinois and N. Bruce Duthu, who returned to the regular Dartmouth faculty from a deanship position due to backlash over his role in the NAISA BDS resolution), one was for pro-Israel/anti-BDS speech (Melissa Landa at the University of Maryland).
The mixture of deep hostility to divorce, openly male supremacist theology, and physical abuse is a toxic combination in the Southern Baptist church.
Speaking of toxic Protestants, a wing of the Presbyterian Church has published a follow-up to its notorious Zionism Unsettled document -- 110 pages on why Israel is the locus point of global colonialism and genocide (this sounds familiar....) through everything from eating hummus ("cultural genocide") to wanting to actually talk to people ("normalizing oppression"). This is the latest in a series of PCUSA highlights, including calls for all Jews to "come home to America" and my absolute favorite exhortation by a Christian minister on this issue: "Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell the Jews when they were wrong."
An interesting "This American Life" segment on an ill-fated Alabama field trip to see Schindler's List.
Two good pieces on police misconduct that I wanted to flag. One is by a Black police officer commenting on business trespass calls (like the Starbucks affair). The argument here is that when individuals call the cops against seemingly innocuous conduct, there is to some extent a fobbing off of responsibility to then say the police officers are the wrongdoers rather than the caller (cf. Colorado State). The other is in the Atlantic on how we might want to extend our narratives of police bravery or cowardice to cover instances where they whistleblow (or cover off) instances of violence, racism, or misconduct by their colleagues.
At the same time, my students' final exams are due today, so my immediate future is not as a writer but as a grader. And since it would be just catastrophic if anything distracted me from that essential task, I suppose it's time to clear some browser space.
* * *
I wrote last week about alleged discrimination against Jewish chaplains in the army; now we get a different story about retaliation against a chaplain in the Air Force after he converted to Judaism.
This is the story of another immigrant we, the United States of America, effectively murdered in the most gruesome way possible (the penultimate part of the story -- before the death -- is an amputated penis) via a mixture of grotesque indifference to obvious medical need and complete lack of empathy.
UC-Berkeley releases its report on campus free speech issues. One interesting thing about it is that it is not really focused on questions law. Rather, it takes for granted that Berkeley is constrained in various ways by the First Amendment, and rather than dwelling on where those precise borders lie it tries to ask what practical steps the university can take -- consistent with those strictures -- to foster and maintain a healthy speech culture.
Also germane: Jeffrey Sachs has an interesting data set on instances of speech suppression on campus. Interestingly, there have been more successful terminations of left-of-center college professors for "bad" speech than conservative professors -- and while on its own that might be explained by different base rates, the big spike in left (but not right) firings from 2015 to 2017 can't be. The other interesting finding was that -- contrary to some narratives about the so-called "Palestine exception" to the First Amendment -- Israel issues were of comparatively minor importance. There were, depending on how you count Joy Karega (Oberlin) and Michael Chikindas (Rutgers), between three and five Israel-related terminations (or coerced resignations) over the data-collecting period (out of a total of 58). Of the unambiguous cases, two were for anti-Israel speech (Steven Salaita at Illinois and N. Bruce Duthu, who returned to the regular Dartmouth faculty from a deanship position due to backlash over his role in the NAISA BDS resolution), one was for pro-Israel/anti-BDS speech (Melissa Landa at the University of Maryland).
The mixture of deep hostility to divorce, openly male supremacist theology, and physical abuse is a toxic combination in the Southern Baptist church.
Speaking of toxic Protestants, a wing of the Presbyterian Church has published a follow-up to its notorious Zionism Unsettled document -- 110 pages on why Israel is the locus point of global colonialism and genocide (this sounds familiar....) through everything from eating hummus ("cultural genocide") to wanting to actually talk to people ("normalizing oppression"). This is the latest in a series of PCUSA highlights, including calls for all Jews to "come home to America" and my absolute favorite exhortation by a Christian minister on this issue: "Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell the Jews when they were wrong."
An interesting "This American Life" segment on an ill-fated Alabama field trip to see Schindler's List.
Two good pieces on police misconduct that I wanted to flag. One is by a Black police officer commenting on business trespass calls (like the Starbucks affair). The argument here is that when individuals call the cops against seemingly innocuous conduct, there is to some extent a fobbing off of responsibility to then say the police officers are the wrongdoers rather than the caller (cf. Colorado State). The other is in the Atlantic on how we might want to extend our narratives of police bravery or cowardice to cover instances where they whistleblow (or cover off) instances of violence, racism, or misconduct by their colleagues.
Monday, May 07, 2018
Tamika Mallory's Israel Rehabilitation Tour
When the controversy over antisemitism and Tamika Mallory first flared up, I noted that it had one very interesting characteristic: it wasn't about Israel. This is somewhat uncommon in left-of-center antisemitism disputes, and one could almost hear the gears grinding in Mallory's would-be defenders. So used to having "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic" as their "get-out-of-talking-about-antisemitism-free" card, they were left almost dumbstruck.
Mallory has been notoriously resistant to any serious reckoning with antisemitic sentiment on her part. She views herself as the victim here, and so she's seemingly cast about for new avenues to antagonize her Jewish tormentors. First it was going after the ADL. Now, as part of a "fact-finding" trip to Israel, it's blaming Netanyahu for Trump's border wall and Muslim ban.
Antisemitism, like racism, tends to take the path of least resistance down to the ground. As Paul Berman noted, while we
Note the argument is not that "criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic", any more than I'm saying orthodox Christian beliefs are inherently antisemitic or opposing the political preferences of wealthy billionaires is. My argument is exactly what was stated above: that in certain communities positions of this ilk provide a convenient point of discharge for antisemitic sentiments that offer up the path of least resistance. Precisely because there are perfectly valid critiques of Israel that are, on face, wholly laudable from within a progressive paradigm, a speaker harboring antipathy towards Jews and looking for a socially-acceptable vector to express them will gravitate toward that issue. A conservative speaker with the same internal sense of grievance towards Jews might pick a different path to the ground. Put another way, we should expect that if someone with progressive-inclinations harbors antisemitic sentiments (consciously or not), they'd be most likely to express them in the idiom of anti-Israel speech. Why wouldn't they? Antisemitism will always be expressed in the dominant language of the place and the time, and it is entirely predictable that people will seek to express antisemitism in ways that enhance rather than detract from their social standing.
In Mallory's case, then, the shift from Farrakhan to the ADL to Israel is a move from forms of antisemitism that encountered great resistance to that which will (again, in the relevant communities) gain plaudits. It is a rehabilitation tour because it moves her sense of grievance towards Jews out of a context where even her allies would have trouble defending her, to an arena where people in her community are quite accustomed to dismissing Jewish complaints. Even though the sequence of events for Mallory offers compelling evidence that she's at least in part motivated by a sense of antipathy against Jews, because she's now expressing her disdain in terms of anti-Israel sentiment people will ironically view further complaints about her antisemitism as weaker rather than stronger.
Finally, I want to remark on the specific content of her tweet -- claiming that Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies are cases of him following the Israeli lead -- because I think it's also "rehabilitative" in its way, and it's worth articulating why that's so. As many people have noted, there is something more than a bit absurd about the contention that American conservatives need an Israeli example to enact racist and White supremacist policies. Moreover, it ends up acting as an indirect apologia for American racism -- asserting that it is not truly homegrown but rather is a foreign disease imported from Israel. Why would Tamika Mallory find that sort of claim attractive?
I discussed a similar move when Winona LaDuke made a putative critique of America's implication in colonialist and genocidal practices by saying "we are Israel". One would think that "Israel is us" would be the more accurate label, since "even if we thought that Israel was a valid case of colonialism ... surely it isn't the paradigm case."
One thing that is often-forgotten when talking about antisemitism, or racism, or other systemic hatreds, is that they are productive ideologies. They build things, they engender alliances, they motivate actions. Reflexive claims that antisemitism "hurts our movement" always thus struck me as far too pat -- of course it depends on how one defines the goals of the movement, but more fundamentally it overlooks the way that antisemitism can represent a genuine and attractive tool of mobilization. Given the choice between arguing against American support for the Muslim ban by articulating how it reflects fundamental malformations that are deeply-rooted in our national character, versus arguing against it by saying we've been led astray by the Jews -- it's quite plausible that the second route might be more effective than the first.
And so again, we see a form of rehabilitation here. Any organization seeking to make the sort of wide-ranging and deep-cutting critique of discriminatory American practices that the Woman's March does is going to face the inevitable charge that it is "anti-American" in some way. It is hard to counter these accusations, even though they are deeply unfair, because it's always hard to demonstrate love for a place or institution while simultaneously leveling a radical critique (something Jews with sharp objections to many Israeli policies are quite painfully aware of). So the temptation will be to cheat: the problem isn't with America, you see; the problem is with those Jews over there ruining America. One need not reject America; one need only "de-Zionise" it.
People think that when Tamika Mallory blames Israel as the source of American anti-immigrant and Islamophobic policies, she's revealing herself to be more radical than ever before. In reality, though, it is a significant step back towards the mainstream. The radical critique -- the one that it is so hard for many Americans to latch onto -- is the claim that we, America, are our own problem. We are responsible for our own decisions; our hatreds, our injustices, our wrongdoings stem from nobody but ourselves. In Richard Rorty's trenchant words: "There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves." But to the extent that problem is not in ourselves, but rather came to us from Israel -- well much of that discomfort can go away and a radical critique instantly becomes far more digestible.
Plenty of people who'd resist mightily the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with America are entirely happy to agree that there's something fundamentally wrong with outsiders, with aliens, with others, who've insidiously managed to infect our great nation. And so I suspect that Mallory will find many willing and eager recipients of this new message. After all, it is saying nothing more than what so many have long wished to hear.
* Racism almost certainly works in the same way. People don't just want to be racist, they want to be racist in ways that earn them validation and enhanced social standing. Hence, they will flock to argumentative pathways which allow them to express hostility or disdain for racial outgroups in ways that are socially legitimate. There's a reason why so much anti-Latino sentiment now gets channeled through language about "securing the border". The issue isn't that there are no valid arguments to be had about how permissive or restrictive our immigration policy should be. The issue is that, in context, these debates are simply the most convenient forum where persons already harboring anti-Latino sentiments can discharge their antipathy with minimum social resistance. One of the primary impacts of Trumpism has been to greatly increase the number of viable social pathways for expressing racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and other bigoted sentiments -- greatly multiplying their "paths to the ground" and hence dramatically magnifying their social reach.
Mallory has been notoriously resistant to any serious reckoning with antisemitic sentiment on her part. She views herself as the victim here, and so she's seemingly cast about for new avenues to antagonize her Jewish tormentors. First it was going after the ADL. Now, as part of a "fact-finding" trip to Israel, it's blaming Netanyahu for Trump's border wall and Muslim ban.
In response to this tweet, Abe Silberstein articulated a common sense of Jewish dismay.Be clear: Donald Trump’s wall + #muslimban + #deportation plan are all lines out of the #Netanyahu book of oppression. Trump has referenced this himself. We ought pay attention & not allow folks to label us + try to black list us in to silence. #JusticeDelegation (more 2 come)— Tamika D. Mallory (@TamikaDMallory) May 7, 2018
But in some ways I think Silberstein is missing the point. Mallory isn't tweeting unaware of what Jews think about her. Rather, her goal in this Israel trip is precisely to rehabilitate her reputation -- albeit not amongst Jews.I dislike Bibi and Trump in equal measure, but our xenophobic politics precedes Israel's. I appreciate the fact that you visited the region, but I wish you had a better sense of your own reputation in the Jewish community before commenting like this https://t.co/V6bCi9CuPf— Abe Silberstein (@abesilbe) May 7, 2018
Antisemitism, like racism, tends to take the path of least resistance down to the ground. As Paul Berman noted, while we
like to think of hatred of the Jews as a low, base sentiment that is entertained by nasty, ignorant people, wallowing in their own hatefulness. . . . normally it’s not like that. Hatred for the Jews has generally taken the form of a lofty sentiment, instead of a lowly one – a noble feeling embraced by people who believe they stand for the highest and most admirable of moral views.If one dislikes Jews, there are many ways for that disdain to manifest. But among these diverse options, people with antisemitic views want to express those views in ways that will gain social approval -- at least in the communities they care about. Hence, we should expect that antisemitic sentiments will be systematically channeled in directions where their expression can expect to find validation and laudation. The content of those sentiments will vary from community to community. In some railing against "globalist financiers" will do the trick. In others speaking of those who "crucified Christ" will work. And of course, in still others, lambasting Zionist perfidy is the winning ticket.*
Note the argument is not that "criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic", any more than I'm saying orthodox Christian beliefs are inherently antisemitic or opposing the political preferences of wealthy billionaires is. My argument is exactly what was stated above: that in certain communities positions of this ilk provide a convenient point of discharge for antisemitic sentiments that offer up the path of least resistance. Precisely because there are perfectly valid critiques of Israel that are, on face, wholly laudable from within a progressive paradigm, a speaker harboring antipathy towards Jews and looking for a socially-acceptable vector to express them will gravitate toward that issue. A conservative speaker with the same internal sense of grievance towards Jews might pick a different path to the ground. Put another way, we should expect that if someone with progressive-inclinations harbors antisemitic sentiments (consciously or not), they'd be most likely to express them in the idiom of anti-Israel speech. Why wouldn't they? Antisemitism will always be expressed in the dominant language of the place and the time, and it is entirely predictable that people will seek to express antisemitism in ways that enhance rather than detract from their social standing.
In Mallory's case, then, the shift from Farrakhan to the ADL to Israel is a move from forms of antisemitism that encountered great resistance to that which will (again, in the relevant communities) gain plaudits. It is a rehabilitation tour because it moves her sense of grievance towards Jews out of a context where even her allies would have trouble defending her, to an arena where people in her community are quite accustomed to dismissing Jewish complaints. Even though the sequence of events for Mallory offers compelling evidence that she's at least in part motivated by a sense of antipathy against Jews, because she's now expressing her disdain in terms of anti-Israel sentiment people will ironically view further complaints about her antisemitism as weaker rather than stronger.
Finally, I want to remark on the specific content of her tweet -- claiming that Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies are cases of him following the Israeli lead -- because I think it's also "rehabilitative" in its way, and it's worth articulating why that's so. As many people have noted, there is something more than a bit absurd about the contention that American conservatives need an Israeli example to enact racist and White supremacist policies. Moreover, it ends up acting as an indirect apologia for American racism -- asserting that it is not truly homegrown but rather is a foreign disease imported from Israel. Why would Tamika Mallory find that sort of claim attractive?
I discussed a similar move when Winona LaDuke made a putative critique of America's implication in colonialist and genocidal practices by saying "we are Israel". One would think that "Israel is us" would be the more accurate label, since "even if we thought that Israel was a valid case of colonialism ... surely it isn't the paradigm case."
But note the subtle shift of responsibility here -- our misdeeds are characterized as following another's evil example. Israel stands in for our own misdeeds -- it is the platonic ideal of our own wrongs. We are not intrinsically bad, we're only bad insofar as we're "Israel". Our absolution comes when we're no longer Israel. It offers a way to maintain a sense of moral growth and possibility by externalizing the source of the sins onto another body deemed irredeemably corrupt.There is, I suggest, a perverse form of patriotism at work here. By suggesting that American misdeeds are actually instances of a foreign (Jewish) infection, the implication is that the American body itself is not the problem. The issue is outwards, not inwards. The fundamental appeal of "the Jews are our misfortune" is that it actually allows for a sort of redemptive American narrative to emerge, and for even those most critical of contemporary American policies to lay claim to it.
One thing that is often-forgotten when talking about antisemitism, or racism, or other systemic hatreds, is that they are productive ideologies. They build things, they engender alliances, they motivate actions. Reflexive claims that antisemitism "hurts our movement" always thus struck me as far too pat -- of course it depends on how one defines the goals of the movement, but more fundamentally it overlooks the way that antisemitism can represent a genuine and attractive tool of mobilization. Given the choice between arguing against American support for the Muslim ban by articulating how it reflects fundamental malformations that are deeply-rooted in our national character, versus arguing against it by saying we've been led astray by the Jews -- it's quite plausible that the second route might be more effective than the first.
And so again, we see a form of rehabilitation here. Any organization seeking to make the sort of wide-ranging and deep-cutting critique of discriminatory American practices that the Woman's March does is going to face the inevitable charge that it is "anti-American" in some way. It is hard to counter these accusations, even though they are deeply unfair, because it's always hard to demonstrate love for a place or institution while simultaneously leveling a radical critique (something Jews with sharp objections to many Israeli policies are quite painfully aware of). So the temptation will be to cheat: the problem isn't with America, you see; the problem is with those Jews over there ruining America. One need not reject America; one need only "de-Zionise" it.
People think that when Tamika Mallory blames Israel as the source of American anti-immigrant and Islamophobic policies, she's revealing herself to be more radical than ever before. In reality, though, it is a significant step back towards the mainstream. The radical critique -- the one that it is so hard for many Americans to latch onto -- is the claim that we, America, are our own problem. We are responsible for our own decisions; our hatreds, our injustices, our wrongdoings stem from nobody but ourselves. In Richard Rorty's trenchant words: "There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves." But to the extent that problem is not in ourselves, but rather came to us from Israel -- well much of that discomfort can go away and a radical critique instantly becomes far more digestible.
Plenty of people who'd resist mightily the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with America are entirely happy to agree that there's something fundamentally wrong with outsiders, with aliens, with others, who've insidiously managed to infect our great nation. And so I suspect that Mallory will find many willing and eager recipients of this new message. After all, it is saying nothing more than what so many have long wished to hear.
* Racism almost certainly works in the same way. People don't just want to be racist, they want to be racist in ways that earn them validation and enhanced social standing. Hence, they will flock to argumentative pathways which allow them to express hostility or disdain for racial outgroups in ways that are socially legitimate. There's a reason why so much anti-Latino sentiment now gets channeled through language about "securing the border". The issue isn't that there are no valid arguments to be had about how permissive or restrictive our immigration policy should be. The issue is that, in context, these debates are simply the most convenient forum where persons already harboring anti-Latino sentiments can discharge their antipathy with minimum social resistance. One of the primary impacts of Trumpism has been to greatly increase the number of viable social pathways for expressing racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and other bigoted sentiments -- greatly multiplying their "paths to the ground" and hence dramatically magnifying their social reach.
Sunday, May 06, 2018
The Train Has No Brakes: Hillel Station Approaches
A group of student organizations at Cal Poly demand increases in funding for all student clubs -- except the Zionist ones. This follows the University of California Press just publishing a book calling for the American academy to be "de-Zionised" -- a chilling phrase that I had to look up to see if David Duke hadn't gotten there first.
And if you think this branch of activism is going to stop short before it gets to Hillel -- you're wrong.
An SJP activist at Stony Brook University declares "We want Zionism off this campus, so we want Hillel off this campus" (a "proper Jewish organization" where Jews can, apparently, have Sabbath services and do little else, would be acceptable).
An English Professor says that "Hillel has as much place on university campuses as does the KKK."
OPIRG refused to work with University of Ottawa Hillel when it hosted a member of the African Jewish community who did work on interfaith sustainable development projects because "Zionist Ideology does not fit within OPIRG's mandate of human right's (sic), social justice." And at York University, a Professor sent a letter to the university president demanding Hillel be disbanded as an "agent" of a foreign government.
I've leveled my share of critiques at Hillel -- for being undemocratic, for applying its "partnership guidelines" in absurd and unjustifiable ways, for privileging perceived "pro-Israel" bona fides as taking precedence over any and all other Jewish values. And why shouldn't I? No organization is immune from challenge, and if you can't criticize, you can't optimize.
But perfection is not a standard I, or any of us, should demand out of campus groups -- Jewish or otherwise -- and the attempts to expel Hillel from campus life are in no way related to valid dissent regarding the proper structuring of the Jewish collegiate experience.
There is a train that says that any iteration of Zionism or association with Jews and Israel is intolerably toxic and must be expunged. It has no brakes, and it will sooner rather than later come after Hillel and the entirety of Jewish communal life on college campuses. It already happened decades ago in the UK, where there was a concerted campaign in the 1970s and 80s to bar Jewish Societies ("JSocs") from campus as intrinsically racist. And as that tide rushes in once again, it's incumbent upon Hillel's backers and its critics to unite against it. This cannot stand.
And if you think this branch of activism is going to stop short before it gets to Hillel -- you're wrong.
An SJP activist at Stony Brook University declares "We want Zionism off this campus, so we want Hillel off this campus" (a "proper Jewish organization" where Jews can, apparently, have Sabbath services and do little else, would be acceptable).
An English Professor says that "Hillel has as much place on university campuses as does the KKK."
OPIRG refused to work with University of Ottawa Hillel when it hosted a member of the African Jewish community who did work on interfaith sustainable development projects because "Zionist Ideology does not fit within OPIRG's mandate of human right's (sic), social justice." And at York University, a Professor sent a letter to the university president demanding Hillel be disbanded as an "agent" of a foreign government.
I've leveled my share of critiques at Hillel -- for being undemocratic, for applying its "partnership guidelines" in absurd and unjustifiable ways, for privileging perceived "pro-Israel" bona fides as taking precedence over any and all other Jewish values. And why shouldn't I? No organization is immune from challenge, and if you can't criticize, you can't optimize.
But perfection is not a standard I, or any of us, should demand out of campus groups -- Jewish or otherwise -- and the attempts to expel Hillel from campus life are in no way related to valid dissent regarding the proper structuring of the Jewish collegiate experience.
There is a train that says that any iteration of Zionism or association with Jews and Israel is intolerably toxic and must be expunged. It has no brakes, and it will sooner rather than later come after Hillel and the entirety of Jewish communal life on college campuses. It already happened decades ago in the UK, where there was a concerted campaign in the 1970s and 80s to bar Jewish Societies ("JSocs") from campus as intrinsically racist. And as that tide rushes in once again, it's incumbent upon Hillel's backers and its critics to unite against it. This cannot stand.
Friday, May 04, 2018
Maplewood, MO Bond Trap Case Moves Forward
One of the more arcane, but important, issues to gain renewed spotlight in the wake of Ferguson is how the deeply fragmented municipal structure of the greater St. Louis area encourages abusive policing practices. Basically, the area around St. Louis is divided into countless tiny independent municipalities, each which often has their own police force, governmental units, judicial system, and so on.
It's not really economical for each of these small towns to run their own mini-government, and so many of them have resorted to policing-for-profit. They squeeze out revenue from vulnerable community members (often people of color) by exceedingly aggressive traffic law enforcement, predatory bond practices, overpolicing of minor regulatory violations, and other like practices (The DOJ report on Ferguson highlighted these practices as part of its findings that the Ferguson PD routinely violated the law and operated with an eye towards revenue generation rather than serving its own community).
Right now, for example, there is a lawsuit against the city of Maplewood, Missouri (population: 8,046) alleging that it has a deliberate policy of trapping poor motorists facing traffic finds with bond payments that they can't afford to pay. The plaintiffs
Nonetheless, it is absolutely a good thing that this sort of behavior is being spotlighted and will now have to stand up to federal judicial scrutiny. This is a case worth keeping an eye on.
It's not really economical for each of these small towns to run their own mini-government, and so many of them have resorted to policing-for-profit. They squeeze out revenue from vulnerable community members (often people of color) by exceedingly aggressive traffic law enforcement, predatory bond practices, overpolicing of minor regulatory violations, and other like practices (The DOJ report on Ferguson highlighted these practices as part of its findings that the Ferguson PD routinely violated the law and operated with an eye towards revenue generation rather than serving its own community).
Right now, for example, there is a lawsuit against the city of Maplewood, Missouri (population: 8,046) alleging that it has a deliberate policy of trapping poor motorists facing traffic finds with bond payments that they can't afford to pay. The plaintiffs
assert the City automatically issues an arrest warrant whenever someone ticketed for violating its traffic and vehicle laws fails to pay a fine or appear in court. Once arrested, the motorist is allegedly presented with a Hobson's choice: Either pay a bond the amount of which was set in advance without any determination of his ability to pay it, or sit in jail possibly for days. The plaintiffs further contend that once a warrant has been issued, a motorist cannot avoid it by voluntarily returning to the municipal court or paying the outstanding fine, but must either submit to a custodial arrest or retain a lawyer to argue a motion before the municipal judge to vacate the warrant. If the court does not grant the motion, the motorist, whose presence in court the judge allegedly demands, will be arrested and jailed. Jail, the plaintiffs assert, is the means by which the City attempts to coerce the motorist into paying the bond to secure his release. The complaint indicates that the City's policy or custom involves additional steps that can ensnare motorists in repeated cycles of arrest, jailing, and pressure to pay a bond irrespective of their ability to do so.Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit allowed that claim to proceed, rejecting city arguments that it is immune from suit. This is a preliminary ruling completely detached from the substantive merits of the case (for technical reasons not worth going into, it's easier to sue cities compared to states for alleged constitutional violations); no doubt as the case proceeds there will be textured arguments about the specific nature of Maplewood's bond practices and any viable defenses that they can put forward.
Nonetheless, it is absolutely a good thing that this sort of behavior is being spotlighted and will now have to stand up to federal judicial scrutiny. This is a case worth keeping an eye on.
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
White Supremacist Found Guilty in Beating of Charlottesville Counterprotester
A jury has convicted Jacob Scott Goodwin of malicious wounding after he was caught on film beating DeAndre Harris while brandishing a large shield and wearing a tactical helmet.
The trial studiously avoided discussing race -- for example, the fact that Goodwin was wearing an "88" pin (alluding to Heil Hitler) and another with the insignia of a White nationalist party -- until the very end, where Goodwin's defense attorney told the jury "They want you to convict this man because he’s white, and DeAndre is a black man."
The argument -- as well as Goodwin's claim that he was acting in self-defense when he broke Harris' arm and injured his spine while kicking him repeatedly on the ground -- apparently didn't sway the jury, which recommended a 10 year prison sentence.
The trial studiously avoided discussing race -- for example, the fact that Goodwin was wearing an "88" pin (alluding to Heil Hitler) and another with the insignia of a White nationalist party -- until the very end, where Goodwin's defense attorney told the jury "They want you to convict this man because he’s white, and DeAndre is a black man."
The argument -- as well as Goodwin's claim that he was acting in self-defense when he broke Harris' arm and injured his spine while kicking him repeatedly on the ground -- apparently didn't sway the jury, which recommended a 10 year prison sentence.
Pay No Mind To Door #3....
Gail Heriot is now a regular Volokh Conspiracy contributor, but I kind of wonder how long she'll last. All of her posts thus far are rather generic right-wing hobby horses of the "actually, civil rights activists are bad for minorities"/"actually, feminists are bad for women"/"actually, we should be putting more Black people in jail" sort. And while there are any number of publications that would be delighted to put those thoughts into print, it doesn't really work well in the blogging format because they're too generic. For blogging to be sustainable, it generally is responsive to contemporaneous events (if only someone else's post). In my experience, people who blog their general abstract political views tend to get bored pretty quickly.
I guess we'll see. Anyway, today's entry is "actually, feminists should oppose the Equal Rights Amendment." The argument is that feminists like certain identity-conscious programs (and hence have opposed, e.g., Proposition 209 which banned affirmative action in California), but the ERA's sex equality language would place programs of that sort in jeopardy where they operate to the benefit of women. Given this, Heriot suggests, there are two possibilities:
Now, to be sure, Heriot might not be wrong that the ERA, if ratified, "would very likely be interpreted to invalidate the many state-sponsored 'affirmative action' programs that currently give preferential treatment to women and women-owned businesses." The "colorblind turn" in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence has been notorious in not resting on even a purported attempt to discern the original understanding of the relevant constitutional text; a point of considerable embarrassment for the Court's originalists. So it strikes me as perfectly likely that the Court would give the ERA the same treatment -- ignoring powerful evidence of how what its backers and ratifiers understood themselves to be doing in favor of a particular, contested viewpoint of "equality" as sex-blindness. Still, it seems rather telling that even the prospect that an alternative view of "equality" is being appealed to here -- one that harmonizes the positions Heriot sees as inconsistent -- isn't even recognized as a possibility.
I guess we'll see. Anyway, today's entry is "actually, feminists should oppose the Equal Rights Amendment." The argument is that feminists like certain identity-conscious programs (and hence have opposed, e.g., Proposition 209 which banned affirmative action in California), but the ERA's sex equality language would place programs of that sort in jeopardy where they operate to the benefit of women. Given this, Heriot suggests, there are two possibilities:
(1) Feminists secretly want the ERA to fail; or
(2) Feminists are willing to see sex-conscious policies struck down as unconstitutional.Maybe. But might I suggest there might be something behind door #3?
(3) Proponents of the ERA don't understand the term "equality" in the ERA to ban the sorts of programs Heriot has in mind.Put another way, perhaps the most straight-forward way of parsing "feminists support the ERA and support sex-conscious policies where they facilitate gender equality" is that "the prevailing public meaning of 'equality' in the ERA's text -- at least as understood by ERA backers -- does not preclude the passage and enforcement of sex-conscious policies that facilitate gender equality."
Now, to be sure, Heriot might not be wrong that the ERA, if ratified, "would very likely be interpreted to invalidate the many state-sponsored 'affirmative action' programs that currently give preferential treatment to women and women-owned businesses." The "colorblind turn" in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence has been notorious in not resting on even a purported attempt to discern the original understanding of the relevant constitutional text; a point of considerable embarrassment for the Court's originalists. So it strikes me as perfectly likely that the Court would give the ERA the same treatment -- ignoring powerful evidence of how what its backers and ratifiers understood themselves to be doing in favor of a particular, contested viewpoint of "equality" as sex-blindness. Still, it seems rather telling that even the prospect that an alternative view of "equality" is being appealed to here -- one that harmonizes the positions Heriot sees as inconsistent -- isn't even recognized as a possibility.
Monday, April 30, 2018
They Would Still Say It About Jews; They'd Still Say It About Others Too
The Army is investigating its own lead chaplains in the elite 101st Airborne Division after they summarily terminated (with no explanation) the division's longstanding Jewish lay leaders. The chaplains had refused to ever attend Jewish services despite multiple invitations, and at one point tried to block the Jewish leaders from hosting Passover services because they'd occur on the same day as Good Friday. At the moment, Jews at Fort Campbell, Kentucky are left without any Shabbat and High Holiday services for the first time in decades.
Meanwhile, the top-polling Republican candidate for the California Senate race (and second overall in the Golden State's frankly idiotic top-two "jungle primary") is a raging antisemite who's calling for a government "free from Jews" and running on a campaign of "counter-semitism".
I group these together because I think they're both examples of discrimination that many people would use as an example of the sort of thing "we'd never tolerate if it were happening to Jews." But they do happen, and they're happening now. They're also not unique to Jews -- other minority groups, such as Muslims and immigrants and Blacks, face their own iteration of such bigotry, in the public square, right now.
As Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past." These things we say nobody ever says, or believes, or does? They're still done. They're still done to Jews. They're still done to others too.
Meanwhile, the top-polling Republican candidate for the California Senate race (and second overall in the Golden State's frankly idiotic top-two "jungle primary") is a raging antisemite who's calling for a government "free from Jews" and running on a campaign of "counter-semitism".
I group these together because I think they're both examples of discrimination that many people would use as an example of the sort of thing "we'd never tolerate if it were happening to Jews." But they do happen, and they're happening now. They're also not unique to Jews -- other minority groups, such as Muslims and immigrants and Blacks, face their own iteration of such bigotry, in the public square, right now.
As Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past." These things we say nobody ever says, or believes, or does? They're still done. They're still done to Jews. They're still done to others too.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
The Problem With Canaries
A group of pro-Israel, anti-BDS students at a variety of college campuses issued a statement harshly criticizing the Canary Mission for hindering their efforts on campus and unjustly maligning fellow students. They wrote:
Canary Mission is an anonymous site that blacklists individuals and professors across the country for their support of the BDS movement, presumed anti-Semitic remarks and hateful rhetoric against Israel and the United States.
As a group of conscientious students on the front lines fighting BDS on our campuses, we are compelled to speak out against this website because it uses intimidation tactics, is antithetical to our democratic and Jewish values, is counterproductive to our efforts and is morally reprehensible.
This blacklist aggregates public information about students across the country under the guise of combating anti-Semitism. It highlights their LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pictures, old tweets, quotes in newspapers and YouTube videos. The site chronicles each student’s involvement with pro-Palestinian causes and names other students and organizations with whom the given student may be affiliated.
We view much of the rhetoric employed to villainize these individuals as hateful and, in some cases, Islamophobic and racist. In addition, Canary Mission’s wide scope wrongfully equates supporting a BDS resolution with some of the most virulent expressions of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric and activity.The ADL initially supported the students, referring to Canary as "Islamophobic & racist". Critics quickly contested what, exactly, Canary did that was "Islamophobic & racist", and a day later the ADL backed off, apologizing for "overly broad" language.
I want to talk through why I think objections to Canary as Islamophobic are potentially justified. But I want to do so in what I think is a more nuanced and specified way, because there really are interesting questions here regarding the ethics of counter-antisemitism (or counter-racism, or counter-Islamophobic) discourse that I think are being elided in the usual rush to back our friends and lambaste our enemies.
Let's stipulate for sake of argument that Canary doesn't use specifically Islamophobic rhetoric (in the form of racial slurs, conspiratorial claims about creeping Sharia, and the like), and that in general the factual claims they make about the targeted persons (that they did say X or join group Y) are factually accurate. I'm open to the possibility that they do use such rhetoric or that their claims aren't factual (in which case the argument that they're Islamophobic becomes trivially easy). But I make the stipulation because the case I'm going to make doesn't depend on any such behavior by Canary.
Instead, let's focus on what we might think of as Canary's strongest possible foundation: factual revelations of things the profiled individual has definitely said, or groups they have definitely joined, absent any additional commentary. Again, I'm not saying that this is, in fact, all or even most of what Canary does -- I'm saying that this sort of thing would presumably represents the formulation of Canary's mission that would be most resistant to a claim of Islamophobia.
So. First, I do not generally think it is a smear or otherwise wrongful to simply republish a terrible thing somebody has said (with appropriate caveats about not taking things out-of-context, omitting apologies, etc.). For example, the other day Seth Mandel accused me of a "smear" and a "lie" towards him in the context of my column on sexist responses to Natalie Portman not attending to the Genesis Prize. The irony of Mandel's complaint was that he was actually never mentioned in the column at all; he only appears in the context of two of his tweets being republished, verbatim, with no additional commentary or interpretation directed towards him whatsoever. If you can be "smeared" simply by quoting your own words back to you, then I suggest that the problem lies inward.
Moreover, I'd suggest that there actually is something important about revealing the prevalence of antisemitism that exists amidst certain social movements (on campus or not) -- if only because Jews are so frequently gaslit on this subject. Just this week, the Interfaith Center at Stony Brook University had to release a statement (cosigned by a wide range of campus Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups) in solidarity with campus Hillel after a campus SJP member demanded that Hillel be expelled from campus and replaced with "a proper Jewish organization" (proper, the student confirmed, meaning anti-Zionist). This blog had already covered the Vassar College SJP chapter distributing literal (1940s-era) Nazi propaganda about Jews. These things happen, and there's something off-putting about claiming that it's a form of cheating or a smear to document it. Too many people think that naming and shaming antisemitism is by definition a witch-hunt. That cannot be right, and we should be very suspicious of political arguments which act as if it is right, or act as if the very act of accusing someone of antisemitism (or, for that matter, racism, or sexism, or Islamophobia) is dirty pool or foul play.
So what accounts for my unease? Well, for one it might be the sense that college students, in particular, often say dumb things they regret, and there shouldn't be an entire website dedicated to spotlighting them and inviting people to berate them for it. How much one sympathizes with that point would seemingly correspond to how much one dislikes "call-out culture"; if you're not a huge fan of it (especially when it comes to young people not otherwise in the public eye) then Canary would seem to be one manifestation of a generally malign social trend.
Another basis for objection might be the distinctively chad gadya character of many of Canary's entries. If one reads the site, very frequently a profiled individual is listed because he joined a group which hosts a speaker who supports an organization who bit the cat that ate the goat ... and so on. There's a very distinctive "guilt-by-association" character to what Canary does that I think is obviously objectionable, regardless of how you label it. And note how it resonates with the way blacklists are being deployed against Jews and Jewish groups right now (e.g., the announcement by several NYU student groups that they were boycotting a bevy of Jewish organizations -- including the ADL). Such calls very frequently proceed by similar logic: the group supports a program which hosts a speaker who said a thing ... so on and so forth. Such logic could be used to ensnare essentially anyone who affiliates with anything -- which means in practice it must be deployed selectively to delegitimize certain groups and causes under the guise of neutral idealism. If that stunt makes us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Jewish groups, it should make us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Muslim groups.
And here is where I think the Islamophobia charge has legs. I don't want to say "imagine if this were done to Jews", because it is done to Jews (albeit perhaps not in quite as organized a form). But there absolutely are cases of blacklisting Jewish students simply because they've joined pro-Israel groups, without any claims that the student has said or done anything remotely racist or Islamophobic. And such behavior I think is rightfully thought of as deeply chilling, and striking too deep in terms of the way it polices to the letter Jewish political and communal participation. Many Canary entries seem to be based entirely on groups the individual has joined (everything from Students for Justice in Palestine to the Muslim Students Association -- the latter of which, it is worth noting, joined the letter in solidarity with Hillel at Stony Brook), rather than any specifically antisemitic things that the individual has said or done. That seems to be as dangerous as equivalent blacklist efforts targeting Jews who are part of Hillel, or Students Supporting Israel, or J Street (yes, J Street).
Indeed, I could go further. Let's take the case of the students who have, themselves, said antisemitic things -- they're on the record. Surely there could be nothing Islamophobic about including them in a database?
Yet even here, I'm conflicted -- and again, the mirror-case involving Jews perhaps reveals why. Imagine there was a website which cataloged people -- mostly, though not exclusively, Jews -- who were members of Zionist or Zionist-affiliated groups for the purpose of declaring to the world that they were racist and should not be worked with. Wouldn't we view that as being antisemitic in character? Suppose that it limited itself solely to those persons who had engaged in Islamophobic remarks -- with the goal of showing the degree to which Islamophobia and racism were prevalent in Zionist discourse, in a way that gave the impression that such views ran rampant amongst (Zionist) Jewish college students. Could that be viewed as antisemitic?
My instinct is yes. It is an instinct that is, admittedly, at war with my above acknowledgment that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of antisemitism that exists in pro-Palestinian movements is not a form of cheating (and I'd likewise agree that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of Islamophobia that exists in Zionist movements is likewise not wrongful). But in both cases it is a delicate thing, lest the impression be given that Jews Are The Problem or Muslims Are The Problem. It isn't wrong to demand that groups be attentive to that possibility and work proactively against it, and it isn't wrong to be suspicious of them when they seem indifferent to it.
What was it that Maajid Nawaz said? “Who compiles lists of individuals these days?" Of course, the answer is "many people and many groups," and maybe that's not per se wrong (or even avoidable). But certainly it is something that requires considerable care and concern, and Canary -- given its propensity for guilt-by-association, given its wide sweep, and given the range of individuals it includes under its ambit -- doesn't strike me as expressing said care and concern. Is that Islamophobic? Depends on how you define it, but I would suggest that there is a prima facie case of a sort of moral negligence directed at Muslim students. In other circumstances, that same sort of moral negligence impacts Jews. Either way, it's a wrong, and it's entirely fair to label it as such.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
The Supreme Court's First Rule on Racism
Though it remains unclear, many Supreme Court observers predict that the high court will uphold President Trump's Muslim Ban, in spite of the obvious evidence that the ban was motivated by illicit animus against Muslims.
The thing is, in any other context this is a very straightforward case. If Tom is up for a promotion at work, and says in his interview that if he's promoted, he will fire "all the Black people" in his department, then when Tom proceeds to start firing Black people he and his company are going to be in serious legal jeopardy even if he puts "performance-reasons" in a memo somewhere.
Likewise, this case isn't hard if the guy making the hateful comments and then acting exactly as said hateful comments predicts is a small-town Mayor (Justice Kennedy did raise this hypothetical). If Smallsville, Anystate tried to pull a stunt like this -- announce a "complete ban on hiring Blacks," then implement a policy that the town won't hire anyone from a list of neighborhoods that happen to be overwhelmingly Black -- again, this would be a dunker.
So why is this case hard? The answer is: Because the guy who made the comments is the President of the United States.
But let's be clear about the reason that makes this case hard. It's not because the President should get some special solicitude under the Constitution. If anything, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence around race, ethnicity, and religion suggests that the Court should be applying the most rigorous scrutiny possible in cases like this.
No, the reason that it's "hard" is because a ruling that the President had engaged in unlawful discrimination means conceding that overt, intentional discrimination is present at the highest level of American government. It means saying, in a very real sense, that America is racist -- or at least, we were fine electing a racist. And I think this Supreme Court wants to resist that conclusion with all of its might.
In the gay marriage context, one the arguments conservative jurists made as to why gay marriage bans couldn't be motivated by unlawful animus was the fact that many people supported them -- and how outrageous, how rude, to accuse them all of being bigots! Animus, in this view, was by definition something uncommon. Hence, if a challenged law had widespread support and wasn't limited to a stray set of outcasts or an idiosyncratic township, it couldn't be unconstitutional.
When it comes to racism, the same rules apply. Conservatives may be willing to concede it exists in some nowhere county or scattered across a few corporate malcontents. But the core rule about racism in America is that it is aberrant. It is rare.* It is not who we are. And so any ruling or doctrine which interferes with that conclusion -- that racism has been isolated to a few obscure corners of America -- has got to go.
In a sense, this is what prompted the Supreme Court's doctrinal push towards making motivation the be-all-end-all of what counts as legal racism in America. If you make it so that the only way to prove racism is basically someone admitting "I am doing this because of race/ethnicity/religion" -- I mean, who is going to be dumb enough to do that (other than some podunk mayor or sheriff or other rando)? Well, guess what -- someone just called their bluff, because now the answer is the President of the United States of America. And I don't think the Court cares about the doctrinal niceties as much as they care about the underlying principle that Racism. Is. Rare. Hence, we're going to get some pretzel-logic about why words clearly establishing motive don't count in a doctrinal world where motive is supposedly all that counts.
So that's my prediction: The Supreme Court will uphold the travel ban, with language about how it is unreasonable or unfair or goes too far to ascribe animus to the order based solely on the fact that the President clearly and unambiguously communicated that animus was the reason for his decision.
And I'll make a further prediction: 15 years after the ruling, it will stop being cited. 30 years after the ruling, it will become part of the anti-canon. 45 years after the ruling, it will be beyond obvious that it was an embarrassment, but fortunately, the sort of embarrassment we as a nation have thankfully outgrown.
And 60 years after the ruling, we'll do it again -- or something very much like it.
* The exception is alleged racism against White people. In that case, they are entirely willing to adopt expansive interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights laws to capture wide swaths of public activity.
The thing is, in any other context this is a very straightforward case. If Tom is up for a promotion at work, and says in his interview that if he's promoted, he will fire "all the Black people" in his department, then when Tom proceeds to start firing Black people he and his company are going to be in serious legal jeopardy even if he puts "performance-reasons" in a memo somewhere.
Likewise, this case isn't hard if the guy making the hateful comments and then acting exactly as said hateful comments predicts is a small-town Mayor (Justice Kennedy did raise this hypothetical). If Smallsville, Anystate tried to pull a stunt like this -- announce a "complete ban on hiring Blacks," then implement a policy that the town won't hire anyone from a list of neighborhoods that happen to be overwhelmingly Black -- again, this would be a dunker.
So why is this case hard? The answer is: Because the guy who made the comments is the President of the United States.
But let's be clear about the reason that makes this case hard. It's not because the President should get some special solicitude under the Constitution. If anything, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence around race, ethnicity, and religion suggests that the Court should be applying the most rigorous scrutiny possible in cases like this.
No, the reason that it's "hard" is because a ruling that the President had engaged in unlawful discrimination means conceding that overt, intentional discrimination is present at the highest level of American government. It means saying, in a very real sense, that America is racist -- or at least, we were fine electing a racist. And I think this Supreme Court wants to resist that conclusion with all of its might.
In the gay marriage context, one the arguments conservative jurists made as to why gay marriage bans couldn't be motivated by unlawful animus was the fact that many people supported them -- and how outrageous, how rude, to accuse them all of being bigots! Animus, in this view, was by definition something uncommon. Hence, if a challenged law had widespread support and wasn't limited to a stray set of outcasts or an idiosyncratic township, it couldn't be unconstitutional.
In a sense, this is what prompted the Supreme Court's doctrinal push towards making motivation the be-all-end-all of what counts as legal racism in America. If you make it so that the only way to prove racism is basically someone admitting "I am doing this because of race/ethnicity/religion" -- I mean, who is going to be dumb enough to do that (other than some podunk mayor or sheriff or other rando)? Well, guess what -- someone just called their bluff, because now the answer is the President of the United States of America. And I don't think the Court cares about the doctrinal niceties as much as they care about the underlying principle that Racism. Is. Rare. Hence, we're going to get some pretzel-logic about why words clearly establishing motive don't count in a doctrinal world where motive is supposedly all that counts.
So that's my prediction: The Supreme Court will uphold the travel ban, with language about how it is unreasonable or unfair or goes too far to ascribe animus to the order based solely on the fact that the President clearly and unambiguously communicated that animus was the reason for his decision.
And I'll make a further prediction: 15 years after the ruling, it will stop being cited. 30 years after the ruling, it will become part of the anti-canon. 45 years after the ruling, it will be beyond obvious that it was an embarrassment, but fortunately, the sort of embarrassment we as a nation have thankfully outgrown.
And 60 years after the ruling, we'll do it again -- or something very much like it.
* The exception is alleged racism against White people. In that case, they are entirely willing to adopt expansive interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights laws to capture wide swaths of public activity.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Term Limited Roundup
My last class meeting is on Wednesday. After that (and grading finals), I'm free of teaching obligations for the next two (two!) years. All I have to do in that time is write a dissertation. Should be easy-peasy!
* * *
I've been meaning to share this outstanding essay by C. Thi Nguyen on "echo chambers", and how we discount information from "the other side", for some time now. It's really, really good.
Several Labour MPs, including Luciana Berger, give heart-wrenching descriptions of the antisemitism they continue to face in British society. J.K. Rowling comes in with an assist (though the article doesn't link to her best moment).
Great conversation in Slate by several Black writers about being Black in White spaces in America. Starbucks, Waffle Houses, golf courses .....
J Street is the future of Democratic Party pro-Israel work. How do I know? Because on the one hand, Ben Cardin was welcome there, despite being a high-profile opponent of the Iran Deal and a backer of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. And on the other hand, Ben Cardin's message at J Street was basically in line with the broader progressive Zionist camp. Those who want to keep excluding J Street from the pro-Israel camp do so at their own peril.
The L.A. Times has an interesting piece on Latinos joining the Border Patrol (note: Border Patrol and ICE are distinct agencies). The Border Patrol either is now or soon will be majority Latino in personnel.
You know you're spending too much time following American antisemitism when a new story breaks about an antisemitic professor at Knox College and you're like "I bet I know who!" (my guess was "the guy who said that Michael Twitty wants 'to be everything but [his] African sel[f]' because Twitty is a Black Jew". I guessed right).
Sarah Jones interviews Michael Kimmel on deradicalization and reintegration of former White Supremacists. Also apropos: San Francisco anti-racism trainings that are for White Men only. Good example of "owning your shit" and not demanding that POCs serve as educators, or bad example of White Fragility and refusal to tolerate discomfort? You decide.
Are the Koch-brothers (the famous right-libertarian billionaires pumping money into academia and think tanks) spearheading a new insertion of paleo-con anti-Israel ideology back into the political right?
Two interesting pieces on Mizrahi Jews and the ongoing failure to fully grapple with their differentiated history vis-a-vis European/Ashkenazi Jews. The first centers on the documentary series "The Ancestral Sin", regarding how Mizrahi Jews were systematically marginalized by bigoted (largely secular) bureaucrats in Israel's early days. The second is a call for Mizrahi Jews to be given an equal seat at the table in Jewish conversations today.
* * *
I've been meaning to share this outstanding essay by C. Thi Nguyen on "echo chambers", and how we discount information from "the other side", for some time now. It's really, really good.
Several Labour MPs, including Luciana Berger, give heart-wrenching descriptions of the antisemitism they continue to face in British society. J.K. Rowling comes in with an assist (though the article doesn't link to her best moment).
Great conversation in Slate by several Black writers about being Black in White spaces in America. Starbucks, Waffle Houses, golf courses .....
J Street is the future of Democratic Party pro-Israel work. How do I know? Because on the one hand, Ben Cardin was welcome there, despite being a high-profile opponent of the Iran Deal and a backer of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. And on the other hand, Ben Cardin's message at J Street was basically in line with the broader progressive Zionist camp. Those who want to keep excluding J Street from the pro-Israel camp do so at their own peril.
The L.A. Times has an interesting piece on Latinos joining the Border Patrol (note: Border Patrol and ICE are distinct agencies). The Border Patrol either is now or soon will be majority Latino in personnel.
You know you're spending too much time following American antisemitism when a new story breaks about an antisemitic professor at Knox College and you're like "I bet I know who!" (my guess was "the guy who said that Michael Twitty wants 'to be everything but [his] African sel[f]' because Twitty is a Black Jew". I guessed right).
Sarah Jones interviews Michael Kimmel on deradicalization and reintegration of former White Supremacists. Also apropos: San Francisco anti-racism trainings that are for White Men only. Good example of "owning your shit" and not demanding that POCs serve as educators, or bad example of White Fragility and refusal to tolerate discomfort? You decide.
Are the Koch-brothers (the famous right-libertarian billionaires pumping money into academia and think tanks) spearheading a new insertion of paleo-con anti-Israel ideology back into the political right?
Two interesting pieces on Mizrahi Jews and the ongoing failure to fully grapple with their differentiated history vis-a-vis European/Ashkenazi Jews. The first centers on the documentary series "The Ancestral Sin", regarding how Mizrahi Jews were systematically marginalized by bigoted (largely secular) bureaucrats in Israel's early days. The second is a call for Mizrahi Jews to be given an equal seat at the table in Jewish conversations today.
Don't Take My Word For It: Listen To Natalie Portman
I have a new column in Haaretz on Natalie Portman's refusal to share a platform with Bibi Netanyahu at the Genesis Prize ceremony, while simultaneously disavowing support for BDS.
The radical, cutting, never-before-heard thesis is that "We should listen to Natalie Portman when she says that her refusal to share a platform with Bibi Netanyahu does not mean she supports BDS."
If that doesn't seem all that radical to you, you perhaps haven't encountered men on the internet when a woman expresses an opinion. Because it seems like everyone -- pro- and anti-BDS alike -- is racing to tell (Harvard-educated, deeply invested in Israel) Natalie Portman that she actually doesn't understand the content of her own political position.
The radical, cutting, never-before-heard thesis is that "We should listen to Natalie Portman when she says that her refusal to share a platform with Bibi Netanyahu does not mean she supports BDS."
If that doesn't seem all that radical to you, you perhaps haven't encountered men on the internet when a woman expresses an opinion. Because it seems like everyone -- pro- and anti-BDS alike -- is racing to tell (Harvard-educated, deeply invested in Israel) Natalie Portman that she actually doesn't understand the content of her own political position.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Nuke Jersey! (In the Best Way)
I am a big booster of nuclear power. It's probably the single issue I've moved furthest on over the past five years (from "not caring about it one way or the other" to "big booster"). The reason is simple: nuclear power (which is carbon emission-free) is an essential part of moving to deep decarbonization in the electricity sector, and deep decarbonization in the electricity sector is essential to stopping global warming.
On this score, recent (good) news out of New Jersey provides a compelling illustration. A new energy package offers subsidies that will keep nuclear power plants operational for the foreseeable future, while also supporting new renewable power resources. Why does that matter? Well, consider the alternative we're witnessing in Ohio and Pennsylvania:
If the nuclear plants in New Jersey closed, the same thing would happen. New renewable installations would simply be replacing lost nuclear energy -- which means no net reduction in carbon emissions. With the nuclear plants still operating, by contrast, new renewable resources will knock out natural gas plants -- providing a genuine reduction in carbon emissions.
As the linked article concedes, the New Jersey package isn't policy optimal (a carbon pricing scheme would be best). But given politically feasible options, it isn't bad. Importantly, when states treat nuclear power as a linchpin of deep decarbonization, that's a major net win for climate policy hawks.
So kudos, New Jersey. Nuke away.
On this score, recent (good) news out of New Jersey provides a compelling illustration. A new energy package offers subsidies that will keep nuclear power plants operational for the foreseeable future, while also supporting new renewable power resources. Why does that matter? Well, consider the alternative we're witnessing in Ohio and Pennsylvania:
[T]here are four nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania that are slated to close prematurely. Last week, the research consultancy Brattle Group released a report analyzing the impact of those retirements, which are all taking place in the PJM regional energy market.
The results are startling. Closing those four nuclear plants would wipe out the carbon emissions benefits of all the renewable energy installed in the PJM energy market in the past 25 years.
Simply replacing the lost nuclear power with renewable energy would cost $2 billion a year, and that enormous investment would not replace or prevent any fossil fuel generation.The emphasis is mine, but read it again. In terms of carbon emission cuts, losing nuclear power is equivalent to losing 25 years worth of renewable energy installation. Without these nuclear plants, just getting back to even (not replacing any new fossil fuel plants) would cost $2 billion/year.
If the nuclear plants in New Jersey closed, the same thing would happen. New renewable installations would simply be replacing lost nuclear energy -- which means no net reduction in carbon emissions. With the nuclear plants still operating, by contrast, new renewable resources will knock out natural gas plants -- providing a genuine reduction in carbon emissions.
As the linked article concedes, the New Jersey package isn't policy optimal (a carbon pricing scheme would be best). But given politically feasible options, it isn't bad. Importantly, when states treat nuclear power as a linchpin of deep decarbonization, that's a major net win for climate policy hawks.
So kudos, New Jersey. Nuke away.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Paul Ryan's Last Call
Paul Ryan only has a limited time left on Congress. If there are amends to be made, it's time for him to make them now. Priorities that haven't been passed? Time to push them through. And so what is foremost on Paul Ryan's mind right now? What does he envision as his congressional swan song?
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) aims to pass another massive tax cut this summer, which Republicans hope will rev up the GOP base and improve the standing of Republicans at the pollsOf course. A fitting end for a man who, above all else, favored gutting social programs in order to engage in massive upward redistribution of wealth to the most affluent Americans.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
When Will Republicans Turn On Trump?
The answer is "never". Or at least, never so long as they're in the majority. But I still would just bank on "never".
Of course there will be exceptions. But when it comes to the main bodies of the Republican Party -- basically, elected politicians, party officials, and of course, Fox News -- I'll stand by that answer.
Every once in awhile, someone will post about the latest development of some Trump scandal and say "this is the beginning of the end of the Trump administration". What makes it different? It varies.
Of course there will be exceptions. But when it comes to the main bodies of the Republican Party -- basically, elected politicians, party officials, and of course, Fox News -- I'll stand by that answer.
Every once in awhile, someone will post about the latest development of some Trump scandal and say "this is the beginning of the end of the Trump administration". What makes it different? It varies.
- It might be that the investigators leading the charge are unquestionably non-partisan, or even registered Republicans themselves;
- It might be that the scandal implicates some issue area allegedly near-and-dear to the GOP base (e.g., a sex scandal turning off religious conservatives);
- It might simply be that the findings are just too explosive to ignore.
So let me make it clear: It won't happen. There is no amount of Trump malfeasance that will cause Republicans to turn on him en masse. A murmured word of caution here, an "ill-chosen words" there, but that's it. That's the lesson of the past several years -- I have no idea where anyone gets misplaced optimism that something just has to change as things get worse.
If the investigators are Republican -- guess what? Now they're "the deep state"! If it seems to impact the GOP base's precious moral values -- forgiveness is limitless (if you think GOP conservatives actually care about family values in any context where it isn't smashing gay couples, I have a bridge to sell you).
If it threatens basic notions of national security, electoral integrity, or core American values -- well, we're getting a crash course in just how little the Republican Party and its various apparatchiks care about those things. Which is to say -- virtually nil.
The only way this might change is if they're punished sufficiently at the ballot box (among the most disastrous consequences of the 2016 election was that it taught Republicans that limitless brinksmanship, conspiracy-peddling, and open racism would not be punished by the electorate). At which point it would be moot anyway. But I suspect even in the minority the GOP will continue backing Trump to the hilt -- investigations are witch-hunts, oversight is government propaganda, hearings are grandstanding.
Don't depend on the GOP to turn on Trump. They won't. They're his. And so right now, if you ride with the GOP, you ride with Trump.
Monday, April 16, 2018
If Only The Holocaust Weren't So Jewy
First, an employee at the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam was told to stop wearing a kippah -- on the grounds that it might violate the museum's "neutrality" policy (neutrality as to what? Between having Jews and not having them?).
Then, a Quebec parliamentarian attacked a Jewish colleague for wearing (you guessed it) a kippah ... on Holocaust Remembrance Day (did you guess that part, wise guy?). The aggrieved legislator complained (I swear I'm not making this up) that it was unfair for the Jewish man to wear a kippah in session when he wasn't allowed to wear his political party's lapel pin.
#AllAccessoriesMatter
Then, a Quebec parliamentarian attacked a Jewish colleague for wearing (you guessed it) a kippah ... on Holocaust Remembrance Day (did you guess that part, wise guy?). The aggrieved legislator complained (I swear I'm not making this up) that it was unfair for the Jewish man to wear a kippah in session when he wasn't allowed to wear his political party's lapel pin.
#AllAccessoriesMatter
Sunday, April 15, 2018
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.
* * *
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.
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