When Will a Show Get Today's Students Right?

I'm watching The Chair, because I'm an academic so of course I am (the Sandra Oh top billing isn't necessary, but it's nice). Most of the commentary I've seen on the show has come from academics, who give it the usual lovingly mixed reviews one expects when one's own profession is placed on the big- or small-screen (lawyers do this so often we've given up). The offices are absurdly big. There are no contingent faculty. Nobody is teaching an oversubscribed first year writing class. The old White men of the department would have gone to grad school in the late 70s and 80s -- they are far less likely to be scandalized by the teaching of sex in a novel than they are to be a little too enthusiastic about it. Being a department chair is less of an "honor" and more of a "massive headache someone has foisted upon them unwillingly." And so on.

But I want to ask a different question, and one not limited to The Chair: when will one of these shows stop doing today's students dirty?

The Chair isn't even the worst offender here -- that would be the current(?) season of Billions -- but it is certainly in the family. Hollywood has gone all in on a very specific caricature of the modern Gen-Z student: a bunch of whiny, self-indulgent and self-righteous identity activists who willfully take things out of context in order preserve a posture of angry, confrontational grievance. Every class includes some student yelling out "when are we going to talk about patriarchy!?" in a tremendously sanctimonious voice, to murmurs of agreement meant to evoke the incipient formation of a mob. Rallies feature speeches and chants that are pulled straight from a tumblr thread and any challenge is derided as verbal bullying or silencing.

It sounds familiar because it's the portrait of today's student one gets from reading any Free Beacon article. As always, it's not entirely coming from nowhere -- no caricature does -- but it's already grown intensely tiresome. I've said before how little it tracks my own experience with Berkeley students (a place where one might expect such a caricature would be most accurate). It's the epitome of a cold take that still thinks it's hot -- story after story of student boots stomping on Erika Christakis' face, forever.

Is there any show set at a college that doesn't fit this template these days (putting aside those going with the far older template of "college students are engaged in one giant party/orgy/frat rush") -- one that actually tries to deal with and present today's students as actually thoughtful, considerate, nuanced individuals -- at least normally? The closest I can think of -- and I haven't seen the most recent season -- might be Dear White People, which is not perfect on this front either, but certainly is putting forward a far more genuine effort. Beyond that? I'm drawing a blank.

Thinking of Refugees First

A not-so-modest proposal:

The next time the United States commences a large-scale military incursion into another nation (and let's be realistic, that will happen again -- perhaps because it will be genuinely necessary, perhaps because we never do learn our lessons), someone in Congress should attach a rider to the authorization bill that preemptively opens up America's immigration process for persons fleeing from that country in the wake of the hostilities. The longer we're there, the more migrants we agree to accept -- as a pre-commitment, not a slapdash farce as we race out the door.

It probably won't pass -- hubris is a hell of a drug -- but at the very least when Congress votes to begin a war members should be forced to think about what happens when it ends.

For the GOP, It's Trolling All the Way Down

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), responding to the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, asks what he calls a "serious question": "Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?"

Biden can justifiably take his share of lumps for the Afghanistan pullout. We can talk about how Trump set the wheels in motion, we can talk about how the military leadership screwed the pooch, but Biden is President right now and so the ultimate buck stops with him. But saying he's mentally incapacitated and needs to be involuntarily removed from office? Seriously?

Well, not seriously, but perfectly expectedly coming from someone like Rick Scott. Yet not everyone agrees with me on that score. CNN reporter Ryan Nobles, for example, says that such a call is "startling" coming from Scott: "Scott is a major Biden critic, but not a flamethrower."

For my part, I'm startled that Nobles, who watches politics for a living, is startled. As Brian Beutler notes. Rick Scott tried to overturn the election -- this isn't even the first time this year he's spuriously decided that Joe Biden cannot be allowed to serve as President because he doesn't like him. What could be less startling?

That Rick Scott is trolling is utterly unsurprising, because trolling is all the GOP is capable of at this point. To be clear, I don't think Scott actually thinks Biden is mentally incapacitated. That's not what's happening here. Rather, it's "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" directed at the calls to invoke the 25th following Trump's encouragement of the January 6 insurrection. Those were serious, this is not, but that's the point: the fundamental unseriousness of Scott's call is meant to make the entire discourse unseriousness -- the sort of thing only trolls do -- and so retroactively make the suggestion that the 25th might have to be invoked to stop Trump from literally destroying American democracy the stuff of trolls too. Tit-for-tat, both sides do it. 

The same logic applies to the resonance with the "sleepy Joe" narrative Trump ran on in 2020 (and the parallel claim that Kamala Harris would be the true power behind the throne): it's meant to be absurd, smirking, winking, because in doing so it suggests that everything is absurd, smirking, and winking -- even that which should be deadly serious. That was Trump's genius as a political actor, and the GOP is nothing if not Donald Trump's party. What Sartre said of the antisemite applies to Rick Scott, and virtually the entire Republican Party, as well:

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

Perhaps Nobles is surprise because he views Rick Scott as falling pretty far down the line of the GOP troll depth chart. He might be right -- the competition is stiff -- but that only illustrates just how deep the GOP's bench is on that axis. Rick Scott doesn't stand out as a GOP troll, but that's only because among the GOP trolling has become so normalized being a troll doesn't stand out anymore. 

In short: when it comes to frivolous, unserious taunting, the GOP is trolls all the way down. A political reporter like Ryan Nobles should have figured that out by now.

UPDATE: Paul Campos makes essentially the same point.

The Squad and the Afghan Interpreters Bill

For obvious reasons, the past few days have seen a lot of people making hay over the fact that "the Squad" voted against a recent bill which, among other things, funded an emergency visa program for Afghan interpreters to come to the United States. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Jamal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) were the only Democrats to vote against the law, joined by five Republicans (Chip Roy (R-TX), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Bob Good (R-VA), Tom McClintock, (R-CA), and Ralph Norman (R-SC)).

I imagine it is probable that the Squad voted against the bill to make some sort of statement against the increased appropriations for Capitol security (which was the primary purpose of the law), not because of anything to do with the Afghan interpreters. That doesn't mean I feel especial sympathy for them taking bad press today -- they were clearly engaging a protest vote and, well, live by political theater, die by political theater -- but I am curious what exact point they were trying to make. Was it a "defund the police" bit -- opposing responding to the January 6 insurrection by funneling more money into security programs? Or else what?

In the meantime, I get the idea that America couldn't stay in Afghanistan forever even as the exact moment we left would always be wrenching. But the absolute least America can do for the people we're leaving behind -- not just the interpreters, but basically anyone associated with and friendly towards the American presence -- is to ensure our doors are open to Afghan refugees. Remonstrations about leaving or about having stayed too long can have their moment, but they need to take a back seat to a far more urgent need.

Nine Angry Dems

Nine moderate Democrats are trying to tank Joe Biden's strategy for passing his signature social policy package by demanding it be decoupled from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Their reasons are not exactly compelling, and they have a lot less leverage than normal in circumstances like this because they don't have a cost-free "...or we walk" option (doing that would imperil the infrastructure bill they very much do support).

Notably, while this letter is identified with the party "moderates", it doesn't include some of the more high-profile members of the "moderate" wing of the party -- folks like Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, or Lauren Underwood. Indeed, nine names is a rather infirm showing. So who are the Dems that did sign on? Are they "usual suspect" sorts, or surprises? Here's the list:

• Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey
• Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia
• Filemon Vela of Texas
• Jared Golden of Maine
• Henry Cuellar of Texas
• Vicente Gonzalez of Texas
• Ed Case of Hawaii
• Jim Costa of California
• Kurt Schrader of Oregon

Rep. Gottheimer is at the helm of the "Problem Starters Solvers Caucus," and this sort of letter has his fingerprints all over it -- the only signatories who aren't part of the cause are Reps. Vela and Case (though again it's perhaps more notably how few PSC members signed (not even a third, by my count). Case has always been far too moderate for the deep blue hue of Hawaii; I don't know too much about Vela (or Rep. Gonzalez). Bourdeaux is a freshman congresswoman and a rare R-to-D House flip in 2020; she represents a swingy district but I still expect better. Reps. Golden and Schrader broke from the Democratic Caucus to vote against the American Rescue Plan Act because it was too generous to too many Americans -- they've already proven themselves capable of being chaos muppets. Rep. Cuellar is one of the worst Democrats in the House -- I sincerely hope he meets the same second-times-the-charm fate as Dan Lipinski and gets ousted by Jessica Cisneros in their rematch. Jim Costa likewise seems to be completely taking his seat for granted in California -- but hey, maybe he won't have a seat anymore after redistricting!

So basically, of all the people on this letter, the only one who maybe I care about listening to is Bourdeaux -- possibly Vela too, but I doubt it. In all, though, this is a stupid push on behalf of bad politics, and the Democratic leadership should tactfully but firmly tell them to suck on a root.

Sympathy for the Devil

I've never been (and still am not) a police abolitionist. I've also never felt any particular way about police officers -- neither lionizing them nor deploring them. If anything, my main feeling towards cops has been to be intimidated by them, though that sentiment is based more on certain idiosyncratic personal neuroses than any political instinct.

However, I've noticed recently an interesting trajectory in my own thoughts on the subject of policing that seems counter-intuitive, and so I wonder if it resonates with anyone else. To wit:

As I grow more sympathetic to police officers in controversial situations ("it's a hard job", "what would you have them do in this situation", etc.), I also grow more inclined toward abolitionism.

This certainly runs counter to the prevailing narrative, where abolitionism pairs up with ACAB views towards individual officers. So how come it's working differently for me?

As best I can tell, here's what's happening. When I read a story about egregious police misconduct -- the sort that would make me endorse the view "that guy's just a plain old bastard" --it doesn't on its own suggest a problem with policing as a concept. If the problem is that some people are bastards, the solution is to remove the bastards. When a nasty sort of person commits a murder in Oregon, that doesn't indicate that the very idea of "Oregon" is a failure. Bad people can do bad things in all sorts of systems without demonstrating that said systems are irredeemably flawed. Thinking of the problem in terms of individual moral failings leads me in a reformist, not abolitionist, direction -- ensuring that bad officers are punished, that systems of accountability are made more robust, that officers are given the proper training so that when they do bad things, it is obviously because they chose it rather than that they were thrown into a situation nobody told them how to handle, and so on. Even widespread instances of police misbehavior or ego tripping, such as the refusal to vaccinate, can resolve down to "then fire the bad actors en masse and replace them with better people--good riddance!"

But increasingly, one sees stories where policing injures, humiliates, even kills, vulnerable civilians in circumstances where I'm not sure the conduct can be reduced to or even characterized as a particular police officer being a plain old bastard. These are circumstances where I can imagine even someone who is, in some sense, perfectly public-spirited and who fully intends to serve and protect can nonetheless be the vector of terrible injustices upon innocent Americans. That's the hallmark of a systemic problem. It's one thing if a system generates injustices when bad people abuse it. It's another when a system generates injustice even when good people are doing their best.

The fact is, our system of policing regularly places officers in fraught situations with regular Americans; scenarios that are fast-moving, have murky expectations, and carry undertones of threats (especially given the absurd proliferation of firearms among the American populace). The police are simultaneously the violent arm of state enforcement and the enforcer of first resort for ordinary public disputes and missteps (imagine telling a Martian that the same agency has both "solve murders" and "stop drivers from turning right on red" in its portfolio!), and that will often put even decidedly non-bastard sorts in exceptionally difficult or precarious circumstances. That's not a problem that can be fixed by better training or better hiring, because it's not a matter of officers failing to do their jobs. It's a matter of the very contours of the job, as we've constructed it.

So yeah--that's where I'm moving. The more cases I see where a terrible injury inflicted on a civilian pairs up with a genuine "... but look at it from the officer's point of view", the more skeptical I grow of policing as a system, because if these problems persist even in cases where there isn't any obvious individual failing on the part of the officer then it suggests a problem that lies deeper than individual-level reforms could reach. It's very much not All Cops Are Bastards, and much more It Doesn't Matter If Any Cops Are Bastards. Do I stand alone on this?

Hardcore Democratic Partisan Voters =/= Hardcore Progressive Voters

Imagine a legislative district that which was 100% comprised of Democratic voters -- and more specifically, partisan Democratic voters who are guaranteed to vote Democratic in the general election. There is no chance any of them would ever vote for a Republican -- they are committed Democratic partisans. In an open seat primary race, what intra-Democratic ideological position on a scale from left to center (i.e., from AOC to Kyrsten Sinema) would be most likely to win?

One might think that this is exactly the sort of district an AOC-type is most likely to win. Voters who are committed Democratic partisans would prefer the left-most candidate who is still within the broader spectrum of Democratic positions. The more firmly Democratic you are on the axis of partisanship, the more firmly progressive you are on the axis of ideology. Put differently, Democratic partisanship can be recast as "unwillingness to vote GOP". The further away you are from the GOP ideologically, the less likely you are to vote for them; so if we encounter a population that would never contemplate voting GOP, it stands to reason that the explanation why is that they are ideologically most distant from the GOP -- i.e., the most progressive voters. It's possible that such Democrats might vote strategically in races where electability is a concern -- choosing a more moderate option than they'd prefer in order to ensure they prevail in the general. But where electability is no barrier (as in our hypothetical 100% Democratic partisan district), their ideal-world preference would be the candidate representing the Democratic Party's left flank.

But there is actually a lot of evidence that this isn't necessarily true. Consider Chryl Laird and Ismail White's book Steadfast Democrats, seeking to explain why the African-American community so overwhelmingly affiliates with the Democratic Party -- circa 90% support for Democratic candidates in national elections. One answer would be "because they have overwhelmingly progressive political views". But, while it is likely the case that the Black American community nets out towards being more progressive than the White American community, there still are plenty of moderate and conservative African-American voters -- many if not most of whom also consistently vote Democratic. They are steadfast Democrats for reasons that don't map on perfectly to ideology.

For these voters, partisanship does not necessarily translate into preferring the most progressive available option even in a Democratic primary (so one is choosing among Democrats) where the winner is effectively guaranteed to win the general (so one's choice isn't an electability trade-off). Such voters are both consistent Democrats and might prefer a Joe Biden sort to a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren sort (or a Shontel Brown sort to a Nina Turner sort) on the basis of ideological preference. And (as committed partisans), such voters are especially likely to recoil from campaigns that appear to be antagonistic to the Democratic Party -- there's a reason why this was far and away the most powerful vector of attack for Brown against Turner, or Biden against Sanders for that matter.

To take a striking example: while Black voters in general are more likely to identify as "liberal" than White voters, Black Democrats are considerably less likely to identify as "liberal" than White Democrats are. 55% of White Democrats describe themselves as liberal, compared to just 29% of Black Democrats (almost identical to the 25% of Black Democrats who characterized themselves as conservative). How can this be? One way of thinking about it as follows: If you're a White liberal, you're almost certainly a Democrat, if you're a White conservative you're almost certainly a Republican, and if you're a White moderate you could be either (or a swing voter). By contrast, if you're a Black liberal, you're almost certainly a Democrat, if you're a Black moderate, you're still almost certainly a Democrat, and if you're a Black conservative, it's still pretty darn likely you're a Democrat. So if you're trying to appeal to the "steadfast Democratic" constituency of African-American voters, that means appealing to a cadre that is probably quite diverse in ideological orientation -- including liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

I think this analysis also tracks onto Jewish votes, though I'm less familiar with scholarship on the topic. Jews are famously also one of the most steadfast Democratic demographics behind African-Americans, regularly voting Democrat at rates around ~70%. And, while on net Jews again are certainly more liberal than the average American, Jewish Democrats don't necessarily cluster onto the left-edge of the Democratic Party. For Jews, too, the fact that we're an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc does not necessarily mean that the best way to appeal to us as a candidate is to be as progressive as possible  within the broad spectrum of Democratic Party opinion -- even in circumstances where "electability" is a non-issue.

It is notable to me how groups which seek to crack Jewish communal attachment to the Democratic Party often sound very similar in rhetoric to "Blexit" type organizations on the right. They'll typically speak of how they were "raised Democrat", how it was part of their "mother's milk", how for a long time it was "unthinkable" to even contemplate voting Republican -- all lines which speak to a connection between Jews and Democrats which is as much cultural as ideological. To be sure, such appeals will only have limited success given that there are only so many Jewish conservatives and because the "cultural" reasons which bind Jews and Democrats together remain quite solid. But it is notable nonetheless.

Why does this matter? Well, it suggests that the Democratic Party's base -- defined as its most loyal, committed supporters (of whom both African-American and Jewish voters certainly qualify) -- is more ideologically heterodox than one might think at first glance. They're certainly considerably more liberal than the country writ large, but it's not necessarily the case that they're thirsting for the most progressive possible option only to be thwarted by a party apparatus that takes them for granted. It's entirely possible, and I'd say likely, that their preferred Democrats are liberal Democrats who still maintain some distance from edge of the Democratic Party spectrum -- so not a Kyrsten Sinema, but not an AOC either. More like a nice, comfortable Chris Van Hollen.

It's Not the Positions, It's the Atmosphere: On What To Learn from the OH-11

I feel a bit sheepish even writing a post on the proper takeaways from the OH-11 race, where Shontel Brown upset insurgent darling Nina Turner to win a Democratic primary and (in effect) a House seat. It seems everyone and their mother is doing a bit on this, and there's no especial reason to listen to mine.

But whatever -- either you read me or you don't. The obvious lesson to learn from the OH-11, which I endorse but which you hardly need me to tell you, is "if you're running as a Democrat, don't compare voting for the Democrats to eating shit." Democrats tend to like Democrats! You can't win a Democratic primary running against the Democratic Party.

In addition, I do think there are some naïve views on whether "Establishment : insurgent :: moderate : progressive." Turner is certainly a flag-bearer of the insurgent wing of the party, and there's no doubt Nina Turner's policy views are on the left side of the Democratic Party. But it's not altogether clear to me that Shontel Brown, though definitely favored by the establishment, is a "moderate" in any normal sense of the term. Just how far apart are they on policy? The establishment/insurgent divide very often is more about affective disposition to the Democratic Party as a brand than it is about major policy divides. You can trace it back at least to the Howard Dean campaign -- Dean was considerably more conservative than most of his competitors on most issues, but his campaign surged on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq War, an issue where he effectively was railing against the party apparatus selling out. His base wasn't attracted to him because he was more progressive, they liked him because he channeled their own feelings of frustration that the Democratic Party circa 2003 was failing at its job.

One thing I might suggest, then, is that Democratic voters are entirely willing to vote for candidates with strong progressive policy agendas -- so long as they aren't actively antagonistic to the Democratic Party as an institution. Even as the race slipped away from Turner, there was little evidence that Cleveland voters were turning against Medicare for All.

This, I think, also has some resonance for some Jewish-specific takeaways. David Klion did a fascinating interview Daniel Marans on this subject (this post also had an interesting perspective, though it's anonymous so I can't verify the content), but I'll add a few more thoughts.

The main one will surprise you: Nina Turner actually opened the campaign with perfectly reasonable and acceptable views on Israel. Seriously -- read the questionnaire she filled out on the subject. Everything she wrote was entirely in-bounds for your typical Jewish Democrat. So how did it become so widely assumed that she was and would be in Congress an anti-Israel zealot?

The answer is it's less about her, and more about those around her. Turner might have had perfectly fine views on the subject, but the people who most enthusiastically supported Turner were people who it was clear were itching for a fight with Israel and, often, with the Jewish community in general. It's not the positions, it's the atmosphere -- so much of what surrounds Turner is toxic. When an unremarkable picture of Shontel Brown with a Rabbi is boosted throughout the pro-Turner social media space as proof that Brown is "pro-apartheid", Jews definitely noticed. There was a distinctive swath of pro-Turner backers who seemed to delight in sidling up to Jews and smirking -- "when we win, your reign is over." A vote against Turner wasn't really a vote against her policies, even on Israel; it was a vote against empowering the political coalition that was rallying behind Turner.

This isn't, to be clear, just guilt-by-association. It is fair to think that Turner will be most susceptible to influence by her most enthusiastic supporters -- to the extent many of these supporters seemed to enjoy antagonizing the Jewish community, Jews are entitled to waylay that at the pass. But the disjuncture where perfectly acceptable policy positions become irrelevant in the face of broader coalitional associations is something seen this on several other occasions. How many times has Ayanna Pressley been lumped in with the rest of the squad as an anti-Israel fanatic, even though her positions on Israel are manifestly different and more mainstream than even AOC's, let alone Omar or Tlaib? Hell, look at Sanders himself -- he wrote a very, very good piece for Jewish Currents that I think clearly fell within the Jewish Democratic mainstream, but he's demonized because of who supports him.

In many ways, I view this Jewish-specific angle as a subspecies of the broader "don't hate the Democratic Party if you want to win a Democratic Party primary" takeaway. While in 2016 Sanders could perhaps be accused of being a less-than-enthusiastic team player once he lost the primary, few could argue that he didn't go all out for Joe Biden in 2020. The reality is that Sanders largely doesn't share the "burn the party to the ground" outlook that many of his most zealous supporters do. But the fact is Sanders still surrounded himself with those people and became the standard-bearer for those people, and so it was understood that a Sanders victory would represent a victory for those people and an empowerment of those people. Those people are the atmosphere, and they're choking the underlying political positions' chances at flourishing.

As Marans put it:

Over the past five years, Turner developed an intense following among left-wing activists while saying a lot of things that alienated rank-and-file Democrats. That gave her a false sense of confidence.... There’s a hanger-on problem in the left political subculture—you have a lot of Bernieworld people who end up filling not just volunteer positions, but consulting gigs and major campaign roles. When left-wing candidates aren’t willing to confront uncomfortable truths about the things they’ve said and done in the past, because the people around them keep them insulated, then they’re going to keep losing.

As far as I'm concerned, there's good news and bad news here for the Democratic Party left. The good news is that it remains very possible to elect more candidates with squad-like views into Congress. Democratic voters aren't necessarily averse to the policy per se; they're averse to the affective hostility towards other Democrats. So keep the policies -- run fifty candidates who respond to the Jewish Insider's Israel questionnaire exactly as Nina Turner did -- just don't run candidates who have histories of publicly declaring how much they loathe Democrats who are broadly popular with most Democrats. What could be simpler? Nowhere was this more evident than in the Markey/Kennedy race, where Markey managed to do the not-actually-impossible and straddle the "establishment/insurgent" divide by enthusiastically promoting progressive policy priorities without ever suggesting broader antipathy to the Democratic Party. I absolutely endorse Max Berger's suggestion that progressive Democrats should present themselves as more-Democratic-than-thou.

But that underscores the bad news, which is that squad-like candidates are likely to find their early and enthusiastic support from persons who want nothing more than to be tossed some red meat about how corrupt the Democratic Party establishment is. And when that's your base, it's really hard to shake them off, even though their presence is a huge thorn in the side of most Democrats. The anti-Democratic Party Democrat message can get a very committed base of support, but it isn't scalable.

Making Non-Oppressive Speech Unspeakable

I have a thought (sketched below), which I'm curious as to your views. Specifically, is this thought an at all interesting or novel thought (obviously even if it is either/both it would still need to be fleshed out in much more detail/rigor)? So please read the below and let me know if I'm on to anything.

I recently reread Rae Langton's legendary "Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts" article, and it got me thinking about a case I'm not sure has been fully discussed (related to but also different from what Langton is talking about): one where structural oppression (misogyny, racism, antisemitism) causes an illocutionary misfire by making it impossible (or at least far more difficult) to express an "innocent" thought (one that, in of itself, presents a legitimate argument that does not depend on or appeal to misogyny, racism, antisemitism, etc.) without it actually being misogynistic/racist/antisemitic/what have you.

Some examples to illustrate the problem:

(a) Tim is a defense attorney, representing a client who is charged with sexual assault. He client admits that he had sexual contact with the accuser, but insists that she expressly consented and that she's falsely accusing him now. Tim wants to make this defense, without in any way imputing that women generally lie about sexual assault or that the accuser is lying because she's a woman. Nonetheless, he knows that making this argument will, despite his best efforts, be heard by many as making such a claim; and worse, he knows his defense is more likely to be taken up by a jury precisely because it "appeals" (again, in spite of his own intentions) to this misogyny.

(b) Paula is a politician. She believes that most social ills on the planet -- from Colombia to Colorado to Gaza to Georgia -- are attributable a global class of ultra-rich capitalists, who promote a system that profits them while immiserating others. By "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" she does not in any way mean Jews; she does not argue that Jews are especially likely to be part of this class or that this class has any particular connection to Jews. Nonetheless, she knows that talking about the "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" will be heard by many to talking about Jews (especially when, as will be periodically be the case, when the proximate subject of her ire does happen to be Jewish), and worse, she knows that her political pitch is more likely to be taken up by the public precisely because it "appeals" to this antisemitism.

In both cases, Tim and Paula have an intention regarding what they want their speech to do (or more accurately, not do) -- they want it to not subordinate women/Jews, make accusations against women/Jews, denigrate women/Jews, and so on. In both cases, their speech plausibly will defy their intent and "do" what it's supposed to not do anyway. In both cases, it would be difficult if not impossible to avoid having the speech taken up in the way they do not desire (note that merely disclaiming -- "Just to be clear, when I make this argument I am not talking about 'women'/'Jews'" -- probably wouldn't work: if anything, it sounds like protesting-too-much; it may make the problem worse). In both cases, all of this happens despite the fact that we could not say that the actual intended thought (this accuser is being untruthful; there are rich people who bolster a global unjust system) is one that should be out-of-bounds per se. And in both cases, the unavoidable-undesired misfire actually aids in the direct desired end result -- the unintended misogyny makes it more likely the jury will conclude that this woman was lying about her claim; the unintended antisemitism makes it more likely that the citizenry will believe that the global system is controlled by an elite global ultra-wealthy class.

Notice how this problem eludes some normal attempts to resolve it. We already mentioned that one can't just disclaim the bad intent. Here are a few more possible resolutions that I don't think work: 

(a) Sometimes people dismiss cases like what I'm talking about by claiming, in essence, that because there's no bad intent and because the literal content is innocent, any inference of misogyny/antisemitism is invented or made in bad faith -- "you're just hearing things that aren't there." But that's not quite right -- while it's true that the inference of bad intent may be mistaken, the listeners are in fact hearing something real -- they're aware of and identifying the likely reasons for the idea being taken up by the audience. That's not invented! Likewise, telling the putatively aggrieved group to grow a thicker skin misses the mark -- the problem isn't really with how *they* understand the speech, but with how the speech is taken up in society writ large; their negative reaction is based on accurately identifying the illocutionary misfire that's in process. Even if the speaker was trying not to say anything about Jews, and even if the Jews agreed that the speaker was indeed not trying to speak of Jews, neither of those facts would do anything to affect whether non-Jews were taking up the speech to be about Jews. 

(b) On the other side, we can't reduce the problem to being "unintentionally" misogynist/antisemitic. The problem runs deeper -- it's that certain innocent ideas which it may well be *important* to express become impossible to express without triggering the misogyny/antisemitism problem. It becomes "unspeakable" to critique an international elite of ultra-rich individuals without attacking Jews. One hears glimmers of this in the frustration some people have surrounding "trope" discourse -- *everything* is a trope, they say, and this ends up indiscriminately capturing innocent arguments. And they're right! But they're wrong to infer that this is because of bad faith or seeing things that aren't there. It rather suggests that the ubiquity of structural oppression renders legitimate arguments in certain domains unspeakable insofar as they are intended to be spoken sans a hook with the oppression. Which seems like a serious problem. 

(c) Sometimes people frame this serious problem by saying something like "claims of racism/misogyny/antisemitism" are silencing. But that isn't actually what's happening here -- it's not the claim but the reality of racism/misogyny/antisemitism that's doing the "silencing" (that is, by converting the "innocent" statement so that, against the speaker's intention, it is publicly understood to mean something else and the speaker's actual thought becomes unexpressable). One thing misogyny does is that it makes it so that certain (typically negative) talk that is not meant to be about women-as-a-class is publicly understood to be -- and is accepted as -- indeed about women-as-a-class. It is because there are powerful misogynist narratives about women lying about sexual assault that an attempt to specifically claim this-woman-Jane-Smith-is-lying-about-this-incident unavoidably becomes imbricated with the broader misogynistic narrative, whether the speaker wants it to or not (and whether Jane Smith the individual IS being untruthful about this incident or not).

So: am I thinking a remotely interesting thought here?

Moving Into Port(land)

The movers come tomorrow and Wednesday, and then on Thursday we depart again -- this time for Portland. Knock on wood, we will be there for a long, long time (though ideally not in this apartment -- not that there's anything wrong with it, but we do plan to buy a house in a year or so).

Doubt I'll be blogging much, if at all, until we're settled in. Enjoy the rest of the Olympics!

What If We Treated "Liberty" Like "Intersectionality"?

My second lesson of being on the internet is:

2. No matter your ideology, there will always be someone profoundly idiotic who largely agrees with you, and someone profoundly idiotic who largely disagrees with you. Neither fact should be unduly weighted.

I was thinking about this today in relation to an argument I sometimes hear made by critics of "intersectionality" (or "critical race theory" or "microaggressions" or other like terms). Persons, such as myself, will often chide them for "criticizing" a strawman, caricatured version of the term. What they call "intersectionality" bears little resemblance to what one would find if one read the actual, primary source scholarly literature on the subject. In response, these critics might (with varying degrees of begrudging) concede the point -- but, they'll rejoin, these academic sources bear little resemblance to how the terms are being used "in the wild". Their criticism isn't of an academic text, it's of a political practice, and so it is entirely fair game to attack "popular" (if unsophisticated or sophomoric) iterations that holds themselves out to be "critical race theory" from social media influencers, overzealous college students, faddish activists, and so on.

Sometimes, even these examples will betray a lack of context or interpretive charity. But it is not difficult, no doubt, to find genuine cases where someone flies the banner of intersectionality in order to say something profoundly stupid or genuinely offensive. That, after all, is the thesis of my Rule #2. There will be idiots who call themselves "intersectionalists", and (this is a corollary to the rule) they will not be that hard to find.

But here's the rub: we could do this for any political ideology or concept. "Individualism," "freedom", "democracy" -- pick your favorite. 

Take "liberty". As a concept, "liberty" carries a robust philosophical pedigree -- there is much worth reading and contemplating regarding what liberty means, what its contours are, what its political utility is, and what it conceptually can and cannot do. At the same time, right now there are a host of people who, flying the banner of "liberty", are promoting outright crankish and idiotic politics -- claiming "liberty" means the right to hold massive unvaccinated public gatherings without any meaningful health safety measures during a pandemic, or "liberty" means one shouldn't even be exposed to others wearing a cloth mask.

These people are morons. And indeed, in terms of raw numbers, there are far more of these morons than there are morons endorsing "intersectionality". Yet how weird would it be for someone to point to such morons in order to dismiss the idea of "liberty" as a concept? Imagine how it would go: 

Sure, Mill or Hayek or Berlin may be interesting thinkers, but I'm talking about what 'liberty' means 'in the wild.' In practice, 'liberty' means MAGA nutjobs spreading conspiracy theories about how vaccine passports are akin to the Holocaust. That's the 'real' public meaning of freedom today. Therefore we must recognize 'liberty' as a toxic ideology, ensure that the dangerous idea of 'liberty' is one we mustn't ever teach to our children, and whenever anyone in the U.S. or around the world appears to be mobilizing for 'liberty', we must do whatever we can to stem the dangerous tide that threatens our very way of life.

It wouldn't fly, and it shouldn't fly -- not because the identified nutjobs aren't nutjobs, but because the existence of said nutjobs most certainly does not warrant the conclusion that "liberty" is itself inherently dangerous, much less support a campaign to extirpate "liberty" theorists from our educational domains.

When it comes to "liberty", we fully understand that we can indict and dismiss the inevitable idiots who will adopt it as their ideological cloth without suggesting that said idiots' existence means the whole concept of "liberty" is corrupt. The same should hold true for other theories. I do not doubt there are genuinely foolish people who fly the flag of intersectionality or critical race theory or microaggressions. That makes it entirely non-distinct from literally any other prominent ideology or political concept, and it is not cause to sacrifice our own commitment to intellectual fairness and rigorous inquiry.

Assorted Olympic Thoughts

Today is the last day of my beach vacation. It's been a blast, though at some level this was a terrible weekend for me to be at the beach, since it's the Olympics. I love the Olympics, and so for much of the past few days I was all too happy to stay inside and watch obscure sporting events rather than do, you know, beach things (don't worry: I got my share of wonderful-horrible boardwalk cuisine).

The coldest hot take around the Olympics is that they should be abolished -- every "hard-bitten" lefty curmudgeon has their version of this essay somewhere on their hard drive. Interestingly, I agree with several of the underlying criticisms of the Olympics, specifically that they're (a) corrupt as all hell and (b) not even close to the economic boon to their host cities they're promised to be (if anything, they're often an economic albatross). I'll spot both of those, but nonetheless I am pro-Olympics on the simple basis that it is a very rare example of a truly global event that brings representatives of all nations together for something fundamentally happy. I think it is essential to have something of that ilk, and there isn't anything else I can think of that fills or could plausibly full the niche. It is a product of our (dare I say it?) neoliberal era that both the pitch for and against the Olympics is fundamentally economic in character -- the promise of economic revitalization in favor, the reality of resource maldistribution against. The Olympics is not and, just as importantly, should not, be anyone's urban renewal program. The sooner we recalibrate expectations -- that hosting the Olympics is, essentially, a favor to the rest of the world (or, more charitably, a pure prestige/pride project) -- the better we'll be.

Oddly, I am pro-Olympics in the same way I'm pro-United Nations. I think the UN also is a fundamentally corrupt and dysfunctional organization that, to say the least, doesn't follow through on the overwhelming majority of its promises. Nonetheless, I think it is important to have something like the UN just because we need some forum where the nations of the world can come together and express -- in however muddled, inchoate, diplomatically garbled form -- their opinions. Even when it turns out those opinions are kind of hypocritical garbage -- well, that's useful information too. So I happily cop to many of the "abolish the UN" criticisms, without having any interest in actually abolishing the UN.

With respect to these Olympics specifically, my favorite storyline so far definitely is the Austrian cyclist who won gold primarily because the rest of the field forgot she existed. Other highlights have included Katie Ledecky smashing the field in the 1500m, Ariarne Titmus gutting out wins against Ledecky in shorter events (and of course, her coach's viral celebration), the random Tunisian swimmer winning gold out of lane eight as his country is embroiled in political chaos, and the Mongolian judoka, who defected from Iran because his country was forcing him to throw matches against Israelis, dedicating his silver medal to Israel.

The biggest story, of course, is Simone Biles withdrawing from the team gymnastics competition. Biles, predictably, is getting heaps of racist abuse from MAGA sorts who get an obvious erotic thrill out of tearing down talented Black people. To some extent, the only thing that needs to be said to this is "how many medals have you won?" When it comes to the GOAT's decision to compete or not, I'd be entirely fine with an exchange rate here: one medal entitles you to one minute of criticizing Biles.

My favorite sport is boxing (albeit not, oddly, Olympic boxing), and there's an interesting parallel to the Biles discourse in the form of boxing fans criticizing boxers for "quitting". Take a ten count, retire on the stool, or don't emphatically declare to the referee that you want to continue, and you've "quit". At one level, of course part of boxing is that you get punched hard in the face and yet you still keep going. Indeed, much of the appeal of boxing, for me, is the superhuman feats of will that are demonstrated in the ring -- you've been punched in the face so hard you actually topple over, and yet you still continue!  So there's a level in which it comes with the sport that we ask people to keep competing even when they're hurt and wobbled. On a deeper level, it is frankly absurd for fans to be judgmental of fighters who decide they're not in a position to keep getting punched in the face. We're not in their shoes, we don't know what they're going through. A bunch of sideline warriors talking about how tough someone else should be -- in terms of literally asking them to spend more time being violently assaulted -- always rubbed me the wrong way.

Boxing is, in many ways, just a more extreme iteration of all athletics. Some of the most iconic moments in sports history have been when the greats overcome tremendous adversity to nonetheless get the job done -- Michael Jordan with the flu, Kerri Strug on the vault, Kirk Gibson's hobbling home run. We're allowed to be in love with those moments. But ultimately, the athletes are the professionals, and they know what their bodies can and can't do. While not as viscerally violent as boxing, gymnastics is an exceptionally dangerous sport -- all the more so when your head isn't in the right spot. Simone Biles knows the difference between the ordinary pressures and pains of competition, and something that threatens her ability to safely and effectively compete at the level she expects of herself.

The thing is, objectively speaking the "problem" solves itself because it regulates itself. Simone Biles is, it should be needless to say, plenty tough, mentally and physically -- if she wasn't, she'd never have won all those medals. She won a world championship with a kidney stone, for crying out loud! So when someone with her talent and track record tells the world "I'm not in a position to compete at the level I need to", it is the height of arrogance for the rest of us to even indulge in the flicker of thinking "eh, I bet she's exaggerating." Again, obviously high level athletics requires participants to make the choice to dig down against adversity and pain and pressure to nonetheless perform. But by definition, someone at Biles' level does not lack the ability to do that; if she actually did lack that ability it wouldn't be an issue because we'd have never heard of Simone Biles in the first place.

All of this is to say, we were right in our initial instinct: the only person who has any right to criticize Simone Biles is Simone Biles. The very history that makes people feel entitled to demand she keep going is the same history that should compel us to defer to Biles' own assessment of her own situation. She knows competition. She knows pain. She knows her body. She became the GOAT because she knows all these things; nobody wins all those medals while being deterred from competing by a pinprick. So if someone with all that history and all those victories and all those medals says "not today", we should have the humility to trust her.

Gone Beachin'

FYI everyone, I'm on vacation through Wednesday. We're in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware right near the boardwalk, and I'm happy as a sitting duck.

The picture is Michael Bedard's "Sitting Ducks", which was featured on the wall of the beach house we stayed in the first time my family took me to Rehoboth Beach as a kid.

Pre-Portland Thoughts

Our move to Portland is rapidly approaching -- more so, because tomorrow Jill and I are actually going to the beach for a long weekend, so we have even less time left in Chicago than the calendar would indicate.

It's an interesting time to be moving to Portland. Fortunately, the city seems not to have been incinerated off the face of the earth. But it still is among the go-to references for conservative pundits looking for an urban hellhole ravaged by antifa and anarchists. "Don't let our city become another Portland!", they say. Meanwhile, the people I've met in Portland all universally rave about how incredible the city is. Other cities should be so lucky as to become another Portland.

Short stint back in Chicago notwithstanding, we're functionally moving to Portland from Berkeley, and that's clearly the best way to do it, because all the potential negatives of Portland are like baby versions of what you'd encounter in Berkeley. Homelessness crisis? I didn't see one person masturbating on the sidewalk on my visit. Housing prices? It's so cute what people outside the Bay Area think is expensive! Pretentiously crunchy granola vibes? Please -- Berkeley will take that granola, spit it out, and then eat it again freegan-vegan style.

So we're really just left with all the positives, including (normally) beautiful weather, lush greenery, a great restaurant scene, and a population that is markedly united in deep city pride. I wish there was an NHL or MLB team in town, but you can't have everything.

I'm so excited -- I can't wait for us to begin our new lives in the City of Roses.

The Other Horseshoe

I was reading a fascinating review by Yair Wallach about how antisemitism was combatted during the 1917 Russian Revolution,* and he made an observation which in retrospect is very obvious but for whatever reason had never fully clicked with me before.

Many of us are familiar with the idea, often referred to as "horseshoe theory", that antisemitism serves a conduit between left and right-wing politics. Antisemitism bridges the left and the right, so that persons who begin in one milieu can end up finding affinity with persons in the other, united by shared antisemitic beliefs.

But Wallach observes that there is another potential "horseshoe" vector between left and right -- this one running through "anti-antisemitism". Here, left and right overlap based on real and perceived affinity for fighting antisemitism. Persons who feel, rightly or wrongly, that the left is not taking a strong enough stance on antisemitism, that it excuses antisemitism, that it has become infected by antisemitism, may -- need not, but may -- become enamored with right-wing actors who are every day loudly banging the drum calling out exactly these cases of antisemitism.

Just as the left, even if it may start from a principled position of "anti-imperialism" or "decolonialism", regularly finds itself keeping company with (and worse -- being sympathetic to!) outright antisemites whose Israel hatred is merely a subspecies of their Jew hatred, so too are there persons who begin from a genuine anti-antisemitism posture who find themselves in the company of, and eventually even sympathetic to, Islamophobes and other right-wing bigots for whom "fighting antisemitism" really just means hating Muslims and other non-White persons.

This is not something limited to antisemitism, either. One can see versions of this coming out of feminism (some feminists who truly hate what they see has the repressive characteristics of the hijab eventually floating into outright hostility to Muslims) or even anti-racism (some anti-racists whose beliefs in racial self-help and self-empowerment eventually lead them into hierarchical nationalism). If anything, what this demonstrates is that our politics are less organized and coherent as the simple left/right binary would have one believe -- there are all manner of tunnels, thoroughfares, and crossings that offer opportunities to quickly travel from one side of the ideological spectrum to the other.

But certainly this is something I have observed -- sometimes seemingly in real time -- in the Jewish case. The rise of the neo-neoconservatives is one example -- starting as liberals, such persons' travel to more conservative territory is very much greased by a perceived affinity for the sort of anti-antisemitism discourse emanating out of the right. A similar concept was alluded to when I spoke of the knife's edge of radicalization -- the right stimulus can cause someone to rapidly tumble over into ideological terrain seemingly incompatible with their own proffered beliefs. Bret Weinstein was a Bernie Sanders backer, after all! Now he's claiming liberal values are best being protected by the likes of Tucker Carlson.

Weinstein, for his part, illustrates another important point -- that the start of the journey across the horseshoe can very much be prompted by legitimate grievances. Based on everything I've read, Weinstein was indeed treated poorly by his community at Evergreen State. That doesn't justify him becoming a member of the intellectual dark web, anymore than legitimate grievances against the Israeli state justifies one becoming a tankie. But insofar as we're less interested in identifying who we can legitimately chide and more interested in undermining pathways towards people on the left adopting  right-wing politics, it's important to dispassionately map out how these journeys progress. 

And there's no question that at least some persons -- I have many, many more names in mind beyond Bret Weinstein, but I don't want to call anyone out -- make the trek over in part by traversing the causeway of "anti-antisemitism". Surely, anyone reading this knows of whom I speak.

It is unfair, and a gross exaggeration, to conflate noting the horseshoe's existence with saying that any progressive concerns in this arena are tantamount to indulging in right-wing politics. That's true if our horseshoe's base camp begins with legitimate concerns about Israeli policies, and that's true if our horseshoe begins with legitimate concerns about antisemitism in the left-wing, or Muslim, community. Taking the horseshoe seriously means not conflating anyone who expresses concern over the occupation with a David Duke aficionado, and not conflating anyone who expresses concern over Corbynist antisemitism with a Tommy Robinson fanboy. That sort of cheap gotcha politics can only be indulged in by people who don't take the underlying issue seriously at all; viewing it as fundamentally benign enough that it can turned into political sport.

For the rest of us, though, the darker truth is that the horseshoe -- insofar as it is a conduit between left and right -- is both a danger and a temptation. It's a danger because of the prospect of losing people to the right. It's a temptation because of the prospect of gaining people from the right. The conduit flows both ways. It takes a lot of discipline to know of the conduit's existence and even, gingerly, to try to reach through and pull people out of reactionary politics, without falling through it oneself and coming out the other side. That's true regardless of whether the consonance you're pulling on is emotive hostility to Jewish self-determination or snarling suspicion towards Muslim power; seething resentment of (((globalist financiers))) or furious loathing of (((cultural Marxists))).

If we're being honest with ourselves, all of us probably know which version of the horseshoe we're more vulnerable to. Some of us are more likely to be tempted by persons whose pure, uncompromising loathing of Israel is intoxicating even as it spills out and over into hatred of Israelis and Jews. Others of us are more likely to be seduced by those whose vocal, prideful denunciations of antisemitism is mesmerizing even as it laps against the walls of race-baiting and conspiracy-mongering.

We can pound our chests all we want and how very dare you the premise, and I don't need anyone to raise a hand and admit to anything.

Just -- be mindful. The conduit is there. Know yourself, know your weaknesses, and don't walk through it.

* Which is, of course, a very different question than how antisemitism was "combatted" -- which is to say, implemented -- by the Communist government after the revolution was over. The review (and I assume, the underlying book) do not pretend that the actually-established Communist regime was anything other than a disaster as far as antisemitism was concerned.

Are We Pro- or Anti-Enlightenment? And Other "Anti-CRT" Questions

On the one hand, the Jewish Journal's latest screed against the "Cultural Marxism" of Critical Race Theory, embarrasses me as a Jew -- not the least because (((cultural Marxism))) is a well-known antisemitic dogwhistle. On the other hand, the screed also embarrasses me as a political theorist, since the column's treatment of the political theories and theorists it mentions is so scattered and incoherent one can hardly remember what the underlying argument is supposed to be.

Some of the puzzles I was left with:

1. I thought Voltaire was a hero of free speech and Enlightenment liberalism. But here I'm told Voltaire actually is an evil harbinger of contemporary leftism.
2. For that matter, is the Enlightenment a good thing? I thought the anti-CRT folks were casting themselves as last guardians of the dying Enlightenment tradition, but here the Enlightenment is presented as a utopian nightmare opposed to "individual rights" and "free expression."
3. I thought CRT was bad because it supposedly presents biological race as an immutable and totalizing feature of the self. But here it's bad because it recognizes race is socially constructed?
4. What the hell is a "collectivist belief system" in this context? Telling me it is just "other words" for saying that race is socially constructed, racism is endemic, and racial progress tends to occur when it is to the advantage of racially dominant groups is less illuminating than one might think. Is "the new antisemitism" also a "collectivist belief system"?
5. When did Cheryl Harris promote the outright abolition of private property? Because it sure wasn't in her "Whiteness as Property" article. Is this just Christopher Rufo spreading lies again (all signs point to yes)?
6. What is the relationship of "cultural" to "Marxism" in "cultural Marxism"?
7. And what makes any of this non-class based activity "Marxist" in the first place? Is "Marxism"  now just any theory that claims a certain group is discriminated against and wants to change society so that it no longer is? Is Zionism "Jewish Marxism"? Was the American revolution "American Marxism"? (And if that is the definition then I still can't figure out what "cultural Marxism" could possibly mean)?
8. How on earth can "tech-titans and corporate leaders" be pursuing a Marxist agenda? If it's their agenda, isn't that a pretty glaring hint that the agenda -- whatever else it is -- is not "Marxist"?

There are so, so many more, but enough is enough. We sure could use a bit more rigorous inquiry, though.

Coming Now: Abolishing Qualified Immunity for Everyone But Killer Cops

A few weeks ago, I flagged remarks from Justice Thomas raising the prospect that the Supreme Court might get rid of qualified immunity for everyone but abusive police officers. Justice Thomas' rationale was that police officers have to make "split-second decisions" and so should receive more deference from courts, whereas, say, college administrators "have time to make calculated choices" regarding the policies they impose and so perhaps should be held to a stricter standard.

It is of absolutely no surprise to me to see the Eighth Circuit become (to my knowledge) the first court to race through the door Justice Thomas opened, in a case concerning the University of Iowa's application of non-discrimination policies to religious student organizations, in a context where that meant a Christian student group (InterVarsity) could not deny a leadership position to an individual who refused to affirm that same-sex relationships were against the Bible. Denying qualified immunity, the panel wrote:

We acknowledge that the intersection of the First Amendment and antidiscrimination principles can present challenging questions. See, e.g., Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colo. Civil Rights Comm’n, 138 S. Ct. 1719, 1732 (2018) (noting that the conflict between Colorado’s anti-discrimination law and a baker’s First Amendment rights created “issues [] difficult to resolve”). “Qualified immunity gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743 (2011). And, if applied properly, it protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Id. (citation omitted). 

But as Justice Thomas asked in Hoggard v. Rhodes, “why should university officers, who have time to make calculated choices about enacting or enforcing unconstitutional policies, receive the same protection as a police officer who makes a split-second decision to use force in a dangerous setting?” __ S.Ct. __, *1 (2021) (Thomas, J., statement regarding denial of certiorari). What the University did here was clearly unconstitutional. It targeted religious groups for differential treatment under the Human Rights Policy—while carving out exemptions and ignoring other violative groups with missions they presumably supported. 

Way to get off the blocks quickly, Eighth Circuit!

I'd note that, while I don't think the court's decision in this case is clearly incorrect under governing precedent, I also don't think it is as "clear" as the court suggests. The court relied heavily on the fact that the university approved another student Christian group (LoveWorks) which required leaders to affirm support for gay relationships, claiming that such a requirement "violates the [university's] Human Rights Policy just as much as" InterVarsity's anti-gay requirement. But, at least as I read the record (and it is a bit murky as presented in the opinion), that isn't necessarily true.

If the university purported to deregister InterVarsity because no student organization could require a religious statement of faith as a leadership prerequisite, then I agree allowing LoveWorks' statement of faith but not InterVarsity's is viewpoint discrimination. But it seems that InterVarsity was deregistered not because statement-of-faith requirements were always banned, but because InterVarsity's statement violated the university's Human Rights Policy because it "effectively disqualif[ied] individuals from leadership positions on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity." LoveWorks' statement, by contrast, obviously does not disqualify individuals from leadership on basis of sexual orientation, nor  does it appear to disqualify individuals along any other characteristic protected by the Human Rights Policy. So if Iowa's Human Rights Policy is itself considered viewpoint neutral -- and the panel agreed it was -- then the university's different treatment of LoveWorks and InterVarsity may not be viewpoint discrimination but rather a product of just correctly enforcing the policy.

This observation doesn't necessarily end the story in the university's favor -- there is some evidence of targeting religious groups for heavier university scrutiny, and the manner in which the university decided how to interpret the Human Rights Policy's requirements differently for different sorts of organizations may run afoul of the Supreme Court's new "most-favored-nation" doctrine regarding religious exemptions to generally applicable rules. As I said, the record seems a bit murky and I'm not sure that the ultimate decision against the university is wrong here under the prevailing precedents. 

But when I warned that the potential two-tracking of qualified immunity doctrine -- keeping it "for police officers using violent force, but abolish[ing] it for public university officials contending with the judiciary's rapidly evolving and often seemingly arbitrary campus free speech jurisprudence" -- this is very much the sort of case I had in mind. The intersections of free speech and anti-discrimination doctrine are indeed a nettlesome subject, no matter how much courts pretend they are easy, and university administrators are going to make some wrong calls whether they have time to "calculate" or not.

A Quick, Sad Vignette on American Gun Violence

There was a shooting tonight outside Nationals Park, in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, DC.

When I first starting hearing about this, I quickly googled "Navy Yard shooting" in hopes of getting more information. 

Most of the hits were about a mass shooting event in 2013, where twelve people plus the gunman were killed.

So I got more specific: "Navy Yard shooting 2021".

The search returned results about a shooting that occurred this past February.

I tried one more time: "Navy Yard shooting 2021 Nationals stadium". And that finally gave me results about the events of this evening.

It took me three tries to successfully narrow down to tonight's Navy Yard shooting. Because there were so many other Navy Yard shootings to choose from.

We cannot go on like this.

UPDATE: 

An eight year old girl who was at the game answers a reporter who asks how she was feeling: "It was my 2nd shooting, so I was kind of prepared. I’m always expecting something to happen." 

Regrouping American Jewish Group Strategy: Nazarian versus Harris

This JTA article -- surveying some American Jewish leaders on the new polling showing that between a quarter and a third of American Jews believe some very harsh things about Israel -- illuminates an interesting divide in the American Jewish establishment. All agree the poll shows a "problem" that needs a response. But in terms of specifics, we're saying a breakdown into two camps.

The first is well exemplified by ADL bigwig Sharon Nazarian. She argues that the problem is that major American Jewish organizations' incessant rah-rah-rahing of Israel ends up driving people away insofar as it doesn't paint a "realistic" picture of the state.:

Nazarian says the traditional mainstream organizational focus on, and lionization of, Israel is becoming a liability and turning people away.

“This narrative about Israel needs to be a more realistic one, one that [brings] attention to the strengths of the state, and to its weaknesses,” said Nazarian, a philanthropist who is president of a family foundation that funds research into education.

The second camp is embodied in AJC chieftain David Harris, who locates the problem in a failure of effective Israel education:

“A main source of disconnect between segments of American Jews and the reality of Israel is deficient education,” David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, one of the rally’s sponsors, said in an email. 

Harris pointed to an AJC poll last month that showed only 37% of respondents described their Israel education growing up as “strong,” and to separate data showing that young people increasingly are getting their news from social media “where untruths are rampant,” he said.  

“Clearly, greater efforts at educating American Jews, especially younger cohorts, about all aspects of Israeli society, and connecting them with their counterparts in Israel, are critical for ensuring nuanced understanding about Israel and strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations,” he said. 

Now, nominally these positions can be harmonized. I've written about how our Israel education is failing precisely because it assumes a "never bend, never compromise" posture is necessary in the face of rising anti-Israel sentiment worldwide, when in reality that approach makes it far more likely that young Jews will eventually break. I do not personally relate to the oft-repeated millennial story that goes something like "I was always taught that Israel could do no wrong, but once I visited myself/met some Palestinians/read some new books/watched the news I realized that I had been misled and the story I had been taught was not an accurate one -- and that's why I joined IfNotNow." My Israel education never felt that one-sided. But it makes sense to me that if one was taught that Israel is only a place of virtue and light, that a headlong crash into reality leaves only the choices of denial or existential crisis.

Unfortunately, I do not think that what Harris has in mind with respect to better Israel education is one that gives a more realistic accounting of Israel's strengths and weaknesses as a state. He thinks we need to be more aggressive in instilling young American Jews with a beatific outlook towards Israel, in the belief that such an attitude will make them immune to the lures of the TikTokers and the college activists and the insta videos. 

Again, I think that's a recipe for failure. But my position isn't that important. What is important is how the divide between Nazarian and Harris actually is resolved, because it represents a pivotal decision in how mainline Jewish organizations recalibrate their Israel discourse, education, and programming. Harris is finally retiring from the helm of the AJC after over thirty years in office -- longer than most global dictators* -- and who is chosen as his replacement could make a massive difference in the trajectory of that organization, which has followed Harris down a noticeably right-ward path in recent years. Fresh blood could revert the AJC to a more representative posture aligned with the actual views of the American Jews it purports to represent.

But there's a history of major Jewish organizations tapping leadership well to the right of their membership either to boost fundraising or due to a misbegotten desire to appear "bipartisan" (e.g.: prominent Trump donor Ron Lauder at the helm of the World Zionist Congress, former RJC staffer William Daroff ascending to lead the Conference of Presidents -- it's amazing how little attention this all gets compared to "Jonathan Greenblatt held an obscure non-political post in the Obama administration, ergo, the ADL is basically Our Revolution" discourse). One doesn't see the NAACP tap Thomas Sowell or even Michael Steele to be its top officer, yet I'm having nightmares of reading the press release touting Matt Brooks as the next AJC head.

What I hope is that people like Nazarian will recognize that their diagnosis will go nowhere unless they fight for the right treatments. It is not an accident that there is a growing divide between American Jewish organizations and American Jewish human beings, and simply letting things go on autopilot will not result in a change. Nazarian and her allies need to start working to make sure that the other Jewish groups in the picture start picking leaders and building out staffers in a way that will facilitate the transition. That means elevating a younger, probably more diverse, definitely more liberal (which is just to say, more representative) cadre than the old guard they'll be replacing. But if they don't put in the work, the ship isn't going to turn. 

Nazarian sees the problem correctly. Now it's time to actually right course.

* No exaggeration. There are only five currently-serving heads of state who've have continuously been in office longer than Harris has at the AJC: the leaders of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Cambodia, and Uganda. Grand company, that!

We Could Be Done

It's the cry of exasperated parents everywhere: "If you'd stop squirming, it would be over already!"

I just read an article about a renewed surge of COVID cases in central Missouri, in an area where vaccination rates are appallingly low. It both saddened, scared, and infuriated me. Simply put: we could be done with this by now. We have the resources to get everyone vaccinated, and reach herd immunity for the few people who have genuine medical reasons not to be (no, the chain message your great aunt Margaret posted on FB does not suffice as a genuine reason to avoid vaccination).

But we're not doing it. People are still avoiding vaccination, in large part because -- let's not mince words -- one of our two political parties has converted into a death cult on this issue. Even a few years ago anti-vaxx sentiment was associated with crunchy granola types in Southern California* -- now, it's de rigueur among any remotely ambition Republican politician. The result is that people are dying who do not need to die. And while right now the vaccine does protect against the most serious symptoms of the disease, the longer we go without outright crushing COVID, the more likely that one of these new variants or mutants will evade the vaccine altogether.

One year ago, the fight against COVID was a race to minimize casualties while treatments were developed. Today, we have the tools we need to beat COVID, and the only reason we haven't is because some people remain too selfish or self-absorbed to do the bare minimum to keep their community and loved one's safe. It is such a sad, outrageous commentary on the state of the American people.

* Maybe the best pro-vaccine PSAs to run to persuade conservative heartlanders are not from doctors, or politicians, or celebrities, but just images of some stereotypical beach bum hippy complaining that vaccines are like, ruining their chakra and are the White man's medicine, and saying "don't be like them." You don't want to be some pinko commie, do you? Get vaxxed to own the libs!

It's pathetic that this might work, but it'd be worth it if it did.