Peterson/Khan Recap

Last night, Lamont Peterson won a close split-decision victory over titlist Amir Khan in Peterson's hometown of Washington, DC, lifting two belts in a massive upset and a beautiful fight. There was some controversy over the refereeing, and that has some validity, as I'll discuss below. But the first thing that has to be said is that it was a great fight, and a career-defining performance by Peterson, who was a massive underdog going in. I told my girlfriend before the match started that "one of my favorite fighters is on tonight, and he's going to lose." Boy, did he prove me wrong.

Unfortunately, there are questions about the referee. What I think is clear is that he didn't seem ready for a fight of this magnitude. He seemed jumpy, was often out of position, and was extremely unclear about when he was breaking the fighters. But the controversy stems from deducting two points from Khan for pushing off -- which is a foul, but one that is rarely penalized. Rarely isn't never -- Mayweather was penalized against Castillo for much the same infraction -- but it isn't common. I'm not wild about the deductions, but that comes with a ton of caveats. "Not wild" isn't the same as outraged. Khan committed a foul, he was warned about it, he kept doing it, and eventually he got penalized. Then he did it some more, and got penalized again. The point Max Kellerman made about the lack of a "hard warning" I see, but only for the first deduction (I think deduction #1 counts as the quintessential "hard warning" before deduction #2). There's no disputing that Khan was pushing off, and there was no disputing he was warned about it. This isn't a case where there was a phantom low-blow or anything like that.

The other thing this wasn't, despite Khan's incessant attempts to claim otherwise, was a fight where Peterson's infractions were ignored while Khan's were jumped on. Did Peterson come in with his head low? Yeah, sometimes, but never in a way that led to any headbutts. And plenty of times Khan was holding his head down entirely of his own volition. Those, to me, washout. And while Khan claimed he "had to" push off because Peterson's head was low is simply bogus -- Khan was pushing Peterson off because Peterson was effectively ripping him up in close. A low head doesn't require pushing.

Meanwhile, Khan was the beneficiary of a borderline knockdown call in the first round. The first time Peterson tasted canvas in the first was ruled a slip because he was caught in the referee's legs. Bad positioning by Joe Cooper, but the right call. The second time, which was scored a knockdown, Peterson's legs were tangled with Khan's. Was it a blown call? I don't think so, not the least because tangled feet are very hard to spot, but it may have been the wrong one (Max Kellerman tried to sneak in that observation in the midst of several righteous tirades by Jim Lampley, mostly without success). Take away the two point deductions, and Khan wins by UD. Take away the two deductions and the knockdown, and it's a majority draw.

And speaking of that, let's talk about the scores. The two judges who gave it to Peterson scored in 113-112, which translates to each fighter getting six rounds apiece. That sounds about right to me (I had it 114-112 Peterson, or 6-5-1). The one judge who gave the fight to Khan had it 115-110. All the points shenanigans make that deceptive, so let me break that out for you -- that's a 9-3 Khan advantage. Does anyone think Amir Khan won nine rounds in that fight? 7-5 in either direction I can absolutely see, but 9-3? Come on. (Some folks made hay about the time it took to add up the cards. I don't think that signifies anything -- I can tell you what 7 rounds to 5 adds up to in my sleep, when there are no knockdowns or point deductions. When those come into play, then I actually have to do the addition. And when it's as close as this fight was, I do the addition slowly).

Hopefully, that dispenses with the refereeing section of the discussion, because I would really we rather focus on the fight itself. The story was actually pretty simple: Khan won on his front foot, Peterson won when he could force Khan on his back foot. And how did Peterson create the latter situation? Body work. Virtually everything good Peterson did started with the same thing -- a ripping one-two combination to the body which I found myself yelling at the TV for Peterson to throw more. Those two body shots -- which always seemed to land with wicked force -- force Khan up, allowing Peterson to get in his grill and hammer him on the inside until Khan was able to scamper (or push) off. The rounds where Peterson was able to do that for any significant portion of time were the rounds Peterson won, and the rounds he won clean.

It's easy to say Peterson could have put this fight beyond doubt by being more willing to press the action in that vein in some of the slower rounds. It is true what Max was saying, that Peterson has a tendency to keep his hands in his pocket until he thinks everything is lined up perfectly, and I think it's equally true that the special moments in last night's fight occurred because Peterson was able to overcome that instinct and throw with more abandon. But I also think it doesn't give Khan enough credit. He was genuinely elusive moving around the ring, and those four punch combinations he'd stop and throw, though mostly caught on the gloves, did have the effect of stopping Peterson from coming in. It's also worth noting that in the last round, where Peterson really did get a little reckless trying to rush Khan, Khan was mostly able to pick him off and move away. While aggression is the order of the day against Khan, he's a good enough fighter to force you to be intelligent about it.

The final thing I want to say is that I absolutely understand why Khan is upset. It was a close fight that went against him, in his opponent's hometown. My conspiracy-o-tron is not buzzing too loudly, because Khan had the money behind him, which counterbalances the hometown edge, but in the heat of the moment that's going to rankle. I'm sympathetic. But I don't think he was robbed, and I think acting as if that was the story of the fight doesn't give due credit to an outstanding performance by Lamont Peterson, who turned in the fight of his life.

Congrats, champ.

* * *

I couldn't figure out where to add this in, but another congrats is due to Maryland heavyweight Seth "Mayhem" Mitchell, who made a huge impression with a second round TKO of Timor Ibragimov. Mitchell, a converted football player, looks like he may have the goods. He had been getting along on natural athleticism, and there was a question about how he would handle someone who really did know his way around the ring. Ibragimov, an amateur standout and a solid pro, was a legitimate test. And boy did Mitchell ever pass -- hammering Ibragimov (who'd never previously been stopped) with right hands until the ref stepped in at the close of round two.

Mitchell looked outstanding to me, throwing in combinations beyond the classic heavyweight 1-2, and showing a good finishing instinct when he had Ibragimov hurt. He reminds me a bit of Chris Arreola, except unlike Arreola Mitchell is in impeccable condition. I'm excited to see more. We had a great card tonight featuring "Havoc" (Peterson) and "Mayhem" (Mitchell), and I think few DC fight fans would say no to more cards featuring them in the future.

Take It Down From the Inside

Everyone is so focused on Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) complaining about the "eight unelected and, frankly, unaccountable judges" on the Supreme Court, that they overlooked his proposal to abolish the federal government. To wit: That the Supreme Court prohibited mandatory, state-sponsored prayer in school is "one of the reasons I’ve called for doing away with the federal government."

Well, that's proportionate.

Qatar Depicts "Palestine" as West Bank and Gaza

Maps of Israel and Palestine are touchy subjects. Partisans tend to get angry at maps which don't depict the land in question in the form they like. Sometimes, this leads to hilarity, as when the Palestine Solidarity Committee complained about an Israeli map which did not separate out Israel from the West Bank and Gaza ... same as the PSC's own logo which also presents the territory undivided. Or when a flight to Tel Aviv didn't include Israel on its inflight map, and instead told bewildered passengers they were going to Mecca.

In any event, at the 2011 Arab Games in Doha, "Palestine" was depicted as consisting of the West Bank and Gaza. Which to my mind is a positive development -- building a consensus around two-states is always a good thing, and it's particularly good coming from a nation that currently does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. Of course, I heard about it from a very upset blogger at Electronic Intifada -- the "upset" part is unsurprising, since EI is a critical player in the irredentist faction of Palestinian politics. Not being a fan of either Jewish or Palestinian irredentism, though, I'm glad on the occasions where I can see it marginalized.

So good on Qatar. While who controls what particular patch of land will ultimately be decided by negotiations, in broad strokes there is no solution but one predicated on 1967 borders with agreed-upon swaps. The more people who endorse that basic vision, the better off we are. It was gratifying to see a majority of Palestinians endorse that vision this past April, and it's gratifying to see Qatar sign on as well.

Offend Better!

In what might be a first, home improvement company Lowe's has pulled its advertisements from a television program due to complaints over its portrayal of Muslims. Specifically, that it portrayed them in too positive a light. Apparently, depicting Muslims in ways other than "blood-thirsty terrorist" or "stealth threat to the American way of life" does "not meet Lowe's advertising guidelines."

Berkeley Hillel Urges Berkeley JSU to Reconsider

Ha'aretz reports that the local Hillel has belatedly entered the fray in support of J Street after the university's Jewish Students Union controversially voted to exclude them from membership. Hillel had been sharply criticized for its lack of leadership on the issue, but now has come down rather decisively on J Street's side:

"We respect the right of the Jewish Student Union, an organization sponsored by UC Berkeley student government, to make its own decisions, but we encourage JSU to reconsider its vote and include JStreetU as a member," wrote Board of Directors President Barbara Davis and Executive Director Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman in a letter to Haaretz and the Northern California Jewish Weekly.

"Berkeley Hillel is committed to creating a pluralistic community that embraces the diversity of our Jewish tradition," added the Hillel directors. "At a time when Jewish students are seeking community, we are careful not to exclude Jewish students, and we embrace the wisdom of our namesake Hillel by embodying the value of an inclusive community."

The letter continued: "Berkeley Hillel is steadfastly committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State with secure and recognized borders and as a member of the family of free nations. Berkeley Hillel supports a range of student groups whose activities advance our mission. The JStreetU chapter adheres to our Israel policy and Hillel International’s Israel Guidelines and will receive the support of Berkeley Hillel as do the broad spectrum of other Israel-focused groups working with Berkeley Hillel including, Bears for Israel (AIPAC group), Tikvah: Students for Israel, Israel Action Committee, Tamid, and Kesher Enoshi."

Tikvah also came out with a defensive post where they claimed they hoped to be "proven wrong" about J Street. That, I suspect, will be a difficult task, since their original belief that J Street is secretly anti-Israel is so devoid of factual analysis that I'm not entirely sure how it could be falsified at all. The claim that J Street supports BDS appears to be entirely fabricated,* and the claim that J Street is only critical of Israel and lets the PA and Arab actors off the hook entirely is obviously, completely, wildly, flagrently false. So that leaves the speaker who said that Jerusalem has become a "symbol of violence", which is a remarkably thin reed to rest on (even if the comment is objectionable, which I'm not sure it is -- the ongoing struggle regarding who is allowed to live in what neighborhood in Jerusalem surely is symbolic of the broader conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples). Again, to be frank, I think Tikvah has far more work to do in proving its pro-Israel bona fides than does J Street. Step one would be to disassociate itself from groups which give prizes to anti-Semites like Glenn Beck.

One wag on twitter characterized Tikvah as having a policy encouraging Jews to be apathetic about Israel. While, as I noted in my last post, Tikvah's claims to be neutral on any question regarding Israel beyond basic acknowledgment of its right to exist as a Jewish state is performatively false, that's almost a relief, because actually taking that stance seriously would be catastrophic. Caring about something means having opinions about it. J Street cares about Israel, which means they have opinions about what actions it should take and what actions it shouldn't. Those beliefs put them in line with some Israeli leaders (like Tzipi Livni and Kadima) and against others -- which is how it works in a pluralistic political environment.

* Not only have they not given any sources about J Street's alleged hosting of BDS kingpin Omar Barghouti, they didn't even let my comment asking about it through moderation. So I remain convinced it didn't happen. But hey, maybe Max Blumenthal has the scoop!

Yesterday's News Roundup

I went to bed last night before I could do a roundup, so much of this stuff is from yesterday.

* * *

Is Israel responsible for the OWS crackdowns? No. But is Max Blumenthal lying about his sources? In all likelihood, yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg agrees with Peter Beinart that the settlements are slowly making a "one-state solution" inevitable, and if Israel wants to survive, it has to muster the balls to cut them loose.

11th Circuit decides that discrimination on basis of transgender status is sex discrimination. Arch-conservative Judge Bill Pryor surprises by joining the opinion.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' overruling of the FDA on P;an B is a complete and utter disgrace.

Palestinian poet successfully gets Jewish Israeli Arab writer booted from a panel.

Tim Kaine and George Allen are already trading shots as they chase Virginia's open Senate seat.

Finally, someone from Berkeley has linked through Facebook to my discussion of their JSU's appalling decision to exclude J Street. I'm just curious about the context (is it someone's wall, or is it a Facebook page for one of the relevant orgs?). So if someone knows and wants to drop a comment to satiate my curiosity, I'd be grateful [UPDATE: Mystery solved, I think!].

Blogger as Media

A federal district court judge in Oregon has just held that a blogger is not a member of the "media", at least if she is not affiliated with a more "traditional" media source such as a newspaper or television station. The case involved a defamation suit against a blogger, Crystal Cox, who had posted allegedly false information about a corporation. She attempted to defend herself by invoking a media shield law which would have protected her from divulging her sources. The court held that

although defendant is a self-proclaimed "investigative blogger" and defines herself as "media," the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law.

Cox represented herself in court, which is nearly always a bad decision, and she so far is indicating she'll represent herself on appeal, which is even worse.

The decision itself strikes me as wrongheaded on a host of levels, being in accord neither with what I understand to be the original understanding of what "media" is, nor the animating values that cause us to provide media actors with enhanced protections. This is demonstrated by the courts' own list of archetypical media outlets -- how does one "affiliate" with a "pamphlet"? Pamphlets, of course, were a key aspect of public communication at the time of the founding, and they bear much in common with modern blogs -- they were produced individually, with varying degrees of professionalism, and were circulated organically and haphazardly. Their status as "media" stems not because they approximate newspapers, but because they are opining to the public about public affairs in an intentionally public manner.

Indeed, the court's list doesn't really articulate a standard for when something is media or not -- it simply gives a list of entities which assuredly are media, finds that Cox isn't a part of any, and thus assumes she isn't. That doesn't provide any real basis for adjudicating future cases. What it does do is sharply limit "media" to mostly corporate actors -- businesses and institutions that can afford to set up large printing presses or television networks. This is sharply contrary to the democratic understanding of "media" present throughout our nation's history, which allowed for and encouraged mass participation in the conversation.

Hopefully Cox can be persuaded to attain counsel or, at the very least, some public interest organizations can intervene to make sure this issue is argued fully.

UPDATE: An important update to this story.

Putting the "Buster" in "Mythbusters"

Oops:

One of the zany experiments staged by the "Mythbusters" television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy Tuesday afternoon in Dublin when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m., authorities said.

There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all - only awakening because of plaster dust.

The ball wasn't done bouncing.

It exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into the Gill family's beige Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.

That's where Jasbir Gill, 42, who had pulled up 10 minutes earlier with his 13-year-old son, Manvir, found the ball on the floorboards, with glass everywhere and an obliterated dashboard.

Since thankfully nobody was hurt, I'm free to marvel at the incredible "my poor meatball" trajectory of this cannon shot.

Berkeley JSU Rejects J Street U

Last year, Jewish organizations at UC-Berkeley barely staved off an effort to get the student government to divest from Israel. Apparently on the theory that what Berkeley needs is fewer outspoken Jewish opponents of the BDS movement, the university's Jewish Student Union has voted to exclude the local campus chapter of J Street from membership (Bradley Burston has good commentary). Instead of following in the footsteps of the British UJS, which elected to take the lead in pushing for a peaceful, two-state solution which preserves Israel's Jewish, democratic (and thus Zionist) character, the Berkeley JUS instead apparently is looking to sabotage that vision.

One of the "nay" voters, identified as "co-president of the pro-Israel student group Tikvah", explained his vote by saying "J Street is not pro-Israel but an anti-Israel organization that, as part of the mainstream Jewish community, I could not support." This position was expanded on at Tikvah's site, which, while conceding that J Street talks the talk of being "pro Israel, pro peace", argues that its actions speak otherwise. The indictment is rather brief and exceedingly unpersuasive -- deciding whether talks or greater sanctions on Iran is the quintessential embodiment of a tactical question which people can and are likely to disagree on, and the claim that J Street has hosted BDS chieftain Omar Barghouti is one I have not seen verified or even mentioned anywhere else on the internet (a Google search reveals an apparently much-discussed instance of Jeremy Ben-Ami rebuffing Barghouti, but nothing about hosting him -- I dropped a comment on Tikvah's site asking for clarification).

Nonetheless, I'm sympathetic to the claim that not all those who proclaim themselves to be "pro-Israel, pro-peace" really deserve the moniker. For example, Tikvah claims to be a pro-Israel organization and their blogger says he supports the creation of a Palestinian state, thus preserving Israel's Jewish and democratic character and with it the Zionist vision. But I'm dubious -- to wit, I'm skeptical that any group which would act so aggressively to exclude J Street actually is either "pro-Israel" or "pro-peace". Just as Tikvah is entitled to be skeptical of J Street's bona fides, I'm entitled to be skeptical of theirs.*

For example, on their website Tikvah proclaims its agnosticism to any question relating to Israel save "the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland." We can note immediately that their claim of neutrality on other issues appears to be fictitious -- after all, one's beliefs on the tactical question of sanctioning Iran are clearly quite severable from one's beliefs about Jewish self-determination, yet they explicitly use it as a litmus test for "pro-Israel" in opposing J Street.

But, more to the point, Tikvah's one issue does not -- or at least does not clearly -- commit itself to defending Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. Since, as expressed earlier, my understanding of Zionism is as the Jewish iteration of liberal nationalism, the agnosticism towards Israel's democratic character could easily render Tikvah a non-Zionist organization (while Tikvah has a section on its site that asks the question "What is Zionism", it doesn't provide answer, instead providing a history of the Jewish presence in what is today Israel). Meanwhile, their apparent endorsement of the Zionist Organization of America provides a clear link to what at this point is an anti-Zionist organization that hands out awards to raging anti-Semites -- a far clearer link that J Street's, at best, nebulous contacts with the BDS crowd.

I don't have a problem with line-drawing in the Jewish community, and I specifically don't have a problem with declaring out-of-bounds positions inconsistent with maintaining Israel's position as a Jewish, democratic state. But that standard has to cut both ways, and while there certainly left-wing Jewish groups that don't meet it (not J Street, but the JVP springs to mind), there are right-wing groups that also cannot honestly state they are committed to that vision. Is Tikvah one of them? I'm not sure, and my default would be to be inclusive rather than exclusive. But if they want to play hardball, then that's the way the game should be played, and in a world where J Street isn't pro-Israel, then neither is Tikvah.

* For clarity, I'm not and have never been a member of J Street, though I'm sympathetic to their aims. I'd characterize myself probably as more as an Ameinu (formerly known as the Labor Zionist Alliance) guy, as I think they've done a better job firmly locating themselves as "Zionists" in the way that I understand the term.

Bitch, Please!

In happy blogging news, Tedra Osell, better-known to blogosphere veterans as "Bitch, Ph.D", will make her return to the medium as a co-blogger at Crooked Timber. An outstanding pickup for CT (which already is a great group blog), and equally outstanding for the rest of us who missed Bitch, Ph.D's fantastic blog.

Yitzhar Settlers Abduct Palestinian Shepherd

Ha'aretz reports that a group of Israeli settlers from Yitzhar have abducted a 60-year old Palestinian shepherd (as well as his flock). Apparently negotiations are ongoing with Israel to secure the man's release (Ha'aretz does say it is having trouble corroborating the report).

Assuming the report is true -- and Yitzhar is a hotspot of terrorist "price tag" activity, so it's well within the realm of possibility that it is -- well, let's just say priority one is getting this person back to his family. Priority two is bringing his kidnappers to justice. Priority three is accomplishing priority two without hurting any of the abductors. Hopefully they can resolve this without violence, but it sounds to me basically like a hostage-situation, and the hostage-takers should be treated like any others. If they have to send in a team, that's what they have to do. And if the rescuers are attacked, well, sometimes the IDF has to kill violent terrorists. I'd rather they be arrested and imprisoned, but that's only a preference.

In Every Word

Likud MK Ofir Akunis, who is promoting a controversial bill sharply circumscribing the foreign funding of Israeli NGOs -- earning criticism from Abe Foxman, among others -- now is under fire for saying Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) "was right in every word." He later backtracked, claiming "I didn't say McCarthyism was right, or that every word that McCarthy said was right." (I'm curious as to the difference between saying McCarthy "was right in every word" and "every word that McCarthy said was right", aside from sentence construction).

Akunis then proceeded to describe his "right and just" bill as saying "that a foreign country will not transfer money to another country." Which, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically a request for Israel to be boycotted? Obviously that's not what Akunis means either, but this is still impressively bad phraseology (One caveat: English may not be his first language and I do not know if these comments were made in English).

Mis-Match Mish-Mash, Part II

Via Ilya Somin, George Will forwards the "mis-match" hypothesis as an argument for abandoning race-based preferences in education admission. Argued most forcefully by UCLA law professor Richard Sander, the mis-match hypothesis argues that race-based affirmative action places minority applicants in schools above their level, at which point they struggle mightily. Someone who would have been a B+ student at the University of Iowa becomes a C- student at the University of Michigan. This has the effect of discouraging minority students, leading to worse rates of employment and bar passage than we would see in absence of affirmative action. The first thing that has to be said about these studies is that they are deeply controversial, not in the "their conclusions are uncomfortable" way, but in the "the data doesn't support the conclusions" sort of way. That's always important to note before we cede too much terrain to this argument off the bat. But putting that aside, it is an argument I continue to find very, very strange. The basic thrust of the argument is that it is worse for a student to attend a better school. That's counter-intuitive to begin with, but one can see Sander's logic. Where it starts to crumble a bit is that nobody seems to notice or worry about "mis-match" in any other situation but race-based preferences. Legacy admissions are the obvious control case, as they offer a situation where (mostly) White students are admitted to a school they likely otherwise would not have been in absence of the preference. Two things jump out here. First, I've yet to hear anyone say these students are "mis-matched". People argue against legacy preferences on the grounds that they are unfair to the marginal candidate not admitted to the university, but I've yet to hear anyone argue they hurt the legacy beneficiary. Second, if we're to take mismatch seriously, we'd have to come to the hard-to-swallow conclusion that wealthy, well-connected parents -- the epitome of the sophisticated education consumer -- are deliberately sabotaging their children's academic futures. Someone should tell them. On a smaller scale, Sander's hypothesis indicates that all the steps law school applicants take to improve their profile without actually becoming smarter (e.g., LSAT prep courses) are actually self-destructive. I took an LSAT prep course and my LSAT score went up four points. Since my LSAT score basically was carrying my GPA on its back, that may have been no small thing in getting admitted to the schools I was. Was I shooting myself in the foot? Oh cruel world, if only I had been placed properly, at the appropriate law school, my life probably wouldn't be such a dismal failure right now. The other oddity about this, particularly stemming from someone like Somin, is how openly paternalistic it is. Somin writes that he is "pessimistic about the ability of government to institute compensatory justice preferences that are simultaneously equitable and effective in accomplishing their objectives." This is purely an attempt to harmonize some cognitive-dissonance, because it is Somin who is taking the interventionist, big-government approach here. He promotes a one-size-fits-all government mandate which stifles local innovation and prevents schools from adopting the admissions policies they think are optimal for creating the best possible incoming classes. Public universities are essentially market participants -- they for the most part act similarly to their private counterparts, except when some state law or regulation constrains them or otherwise forces them to modify their behavior. When it comes to affirmative action, it is pretty clear that most state universities, left to their own devices, would practice it. They don't because some law or regulation or court decision forbids it. To test this hypothesis, imagine if tomorrow the University of California, or Michigan, or Nebraska was cut loose and went private. Would they utilize affirmative action for their next incoming class? I think the answer is obviously yes -- in all these controversies, the university administration wants to have such programs and it is some act of government which forbids it. Somin's argument, hence, is clearly a plea for greater government intrusion in the field of admissions policy -- it replaces what is in essence quasi-private market competition amongst universities (each university decides its own policy, and presumably the one with the best admissions policy is rewarded by having better students, more successful alumni, greater prestige, etc.) with a blanket legal rule. And the "why" is even more embarrassing: First, because he, in his judgment, thinks that the admissions directors and college administrators are so bad at managing these programs that it is better for a government power (the Supreme Court) to make the decision for itself (a command-and-control model); and second, because he is worried for the sake of the students who are being given the opportunity to attend their dream school (i.e., naked paternalism). The cop-out here is to just say government should get out of the field of education entirely. That's a cop-out because it doesn't answer how we should structure legal rules in a world where that's a pipe dream. It would seem the answer, from a libertarian perspective, would be to have the rules governing these schools approximate a free market regime as much as possible -- to wit, allow the schools to implement whatever admissions standards they want, and certainly don't step in as a paternalistic measure to protect admitted students from their allegedly unwise choices.

It Bears Repeating

Yesterday, I commented on how Ta-Nehisi Coates' site is one of the very few with a large, worthwhile comments section. Today, I will comment on a very different aspect of his site -- that he is a damn good writer. I'm envious.

A Killer Crossover, Among Other Things

My rule of thumb about comments sections is this: If threads regularly top a dozen commenters, it will be a cesspool. I can think of two exceptions to this rule. The first is Alas, a Blog. And the second is Ta-Nehisi Coates' site.

In that vein, I agree with Ta-Nehisi that this comment is excellent and illuminating. It's from a White guy who grew up in an overwhelmingly Black neighborhood in DC:

Speaking to the "at a young age" point, for me that brings up the asymmetry with how I experienced being a "minority" at a young age. At a pretty young age (8 to late teens), I was the only white kid in my neighborhood, and really the only non-black person. Being in DC public schools, I was also a minority at school, but not as much so. I spent 3-4 hours many days at the basketball court a block away (Hamilton, between 13th and 14th, for any DC peeps) where my nickname was "white boy" because that was sufficient to distinguish me. I had a great time and got to be a pretty good playground basketball player. My race was often a thing, whether when an opponent ribbed his teammate who was checking me after a three-pointer ("that's what they do!") assigning me a NBA nickname (my mop of hair doomed me to John Paxson, who I hated), or sometimes worse. I got called a "KKK m**f*r" for no reason other than the kid was having a bad day and I was having a good one. New people to the court often got frustrated and looked to single me out, aggressively. I backed down from many eager combatants, and I rarely called fouls. My friends the other regulars often protected me, but sometimes not, and I chose to prostrate myself in whatever way would allow the game to keep on going, and me not to get my ass kicked.

While this experience has shaped my attitudes on race (and given me a killer crossover and a preference for 33 instead of 21) it hasn't left any legacy of fear or alienation. This, to me, is not a testament to my own courage (clearly lacking, or at least not deployed in this arena) or any great personal conviction, but that I could go home and go out into the wider world with the confidence that any racial resentment I experienced there wouldn't follow me or affect me. When a playground friend asked if I was going to college, and I told him yes, and the name of my very well-regarded destination, he said "Where's that?" This was not my bubble, it was his, and there was a big world waiting for me.

I'd be fine with being corrected on this, but this to me is the essence of white privilege from my experience. Not only do I get to feel "raceless" for most of my life and just be "psychologist," "father," "coach" or "teacher," but even those moments when my race was clearly a hindrance to people seeing me as a person, I could rest assured that this was temporary. In college and elsewhere, that part of my upbringing was essentially optional to share with people, which is not true for someone with different colored skin than I.
Totally off topic, but since people seem to be sharing. And now... back to being the central casting aloof academic...

That's a better comment than you'll find on the main page at most sites. It's worth reading on its own, but it's testament to the sort of site TNC runs that he's able to get these sorts of discussions rolling on a regular basis.

New Israel Poll

The University of Maryland has released a new poll documenting the attitudes of Israelis, broken down between Jews and Arabs. There's lots of interesting data in there, but three things jumped out at me:

(1) Barack Obama's approvals have recovered and are now quite strong -- he's at 54/39 split amongst Jewish Israelis. That's a gain of 25 points from last year.

(2) Jews and Arabs are mostly in agreement when describing the situation of Israeli Arabs: Formal equality, but with institutional and social discrimination. 52% of Jews and 57% of Arabs agree with that statement, as against "full equality" (a third of Jews and a handful of Arabs) and "apartheid" (a third of Arabs and a handful of Jews).

(3) There was a precipitous fall in the number of Israeli Arabs who see "right of return" for Palestinian refugees as a redline issue. Whereas in 2010 57% of Arabs viewed it as an important issue on which no compromise could be broached, now, that same number still call it important but say a compromise should be reached.

Anyway, all the findings are interesting. I encourage you to check it out.

Dual Loyalties, Part Who The Hell Knows Anymore

A British Labor MP, Paul Flynn, accuses the UK's envoy to Israel of possessing dual loyalties, because he's Jewish and "proclaimed himself to be a Zionist". UK foreign service employees need to be "someone with roots in the UK [who] can't be accused of having Jewish loyalty." Well alright then.

But what is the best part of this story? There are so many candidates! Is it:

(1) The classic "I have Jewish friends!" defense?

(2) Flynn prefacing his comments with "I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories...." (Because you sure jumped headfirst into this one!)?

(3) Flynn's appended proclamation as an equal opportunity racist -- he thinks all Brits with non-British ancestry should be suspected of divided loyalties (e.g., since Foreign Minister Denis MacShane's father was Polish, MacShane may have a conflict in loyalty between the UK and Poland)?

(4) Flynn being turned onto this whole "issue" because of a complaint from a neo-fascist anti-Israel activist who broadly waved the flag of Syria's Social Nationalist party and asks "who can blame" Hamas leaders for being "anti Jew" (the woman was upset because she was arrested after trying to break Israel's blockade, and didn't feel like the government did enough to represent her in her flouting of both Israeli law and British foreign policy priorities)?

Cast your votes now!

On Liberal versus Left Zionism, Part II

Abir Kopty has a post up attacking the entire concept of "liberal Zionism" (reposted here). In fairness, it is responding to a pretty impressively bad "defense" of liberal Zionism from Larry Derfner (for a much, much better one, see David Hirsh). But even granting that, I'm left, well, kind of relieved to be honest. While in a sense it's unnerving that someone could put up what is essentially a warrantless repetition of the phrase "Zionism is not liberal" for a dozen paragraphs and find it persuasive, the part of me that still thinks arguments matter is pleased to see what I'm up against.

The only argument Kopty explicitly makes against the possibility of Zionism being liberal is that "what matters is the implementation of this ideology on the ground." That is to say, because Zionism is and has been implemented in illiberal ways, it is congenitally incapable of being liberal.

This is, to be generous, gibberish -- and counterproductive gibberish at that. I could just as easily respond that Palestinian nationalism is congenitally anti-Semitic and illiberal. That would be true to the same degree, which is to say, not very. While it is true that the dominant "on the ground" manifestations of Palestinian national aspiration have been characterized by bigotry, violence, and so far mostly futile eliminationist desires towards Jews, that does not exhaust all the "live" renditions of Palestinian nationalism, much less all it could be. There are many Palestinians who forward visions of Palestinian nationalism and self-determination that have none of these qualities, and absolutely recognize and defend the equal status of Jews locally and globally. The whole point is to try and make it so they win the day. It would be both ridiculous and foolish of me to try and argue that the history of Palestinian nationalism as played out through anti-Semitic violence permanently corrupts the entire enterprise. And so it is with Zionism: there are a host of live schools of what Zionism is, some morally defensible (some I'd say morally obligatory), others not, and the whole point is to ensure that the former defeat the latter. I mean, I suppose I could rename these concepts "Xionism", but I don't think that would remove the problem in Kopty's eyes.

That being said, Kopty does sort of gesture in the direction of some bigger claims about liberalism and its demands, which could arguably sustain an assertion that liberalism and Zionism are intrinsically incompatible. Much of the "debate", such as it is, is a reprise of issues I talked about in this post -- specifically, slippage in the use of the word "liberal". That pops up here as well, as Kopty doesn't actually give us a definition of what "liberal" means. For example, "liberal" can simply mean left-of-center. Or it can mean "as agnostic as feasible between competing conceptions of the good life". Or it can mean "viewing its constituent parts as individuals, and taking no notice of 'identity' characteristics such as race, sex, religion, or nationality." It is a fundamentalist account of the last that seems to be in play here.

It is true that this version of liberalism cannot be reconciled with Zionism. That's because it is opposed to all nationalism -- Jewish, Palestinian, French, Chinese -- as well as affirmative action, historically Black colleges, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. But as I wrote in my other post, finding through "liberalism" that Howard University to be the moral equivalent of Jim Crow Ole Miss is no more a strike against Howard than finding through libertarianism that the Civil Rights Act is unjust indicts anti-discrimination law. The arrow goes the other way. Hence why I rearticulated my Zionism as "left" rather than "liberal", though this is more to avoid confusion, since I don't think the very particular form of liberalism I'm reacting against is the essence of liberalism.

I do not believe it intrinsically wrong for people to organize around identities (race, sex, class, religion, nationality), nor do I think it's wrong for a state (or other entity) to take note of them. As one might guess from the above paragraph, I do not find Howard University or affirmative action morally problematic at all. Nor do I find national self-determination to be inherently problematic. Indeed, I think it can be a very good thing; I think it is a positive good when national groups are able to find a space where they are relatively autonomous and in control of their own destiny. And I am optimistic that such spaces can be created while still respecting the rights and equality of people who don't identify as part of the group -- Howard University is a Black college that nonetheless has White students and faculty members who don't seem to view themselves as second-class members of the Howard community. Which is why I support the existence of a Jewish state, and why I support the existence of a Palestinian state.

Since, for me, "Zionism" is simply the Jewish rendition of "liberal nationalism" (different definitions of liberal strike again!), supporting Zionism flows out of and commits me to two principles: (1) democracy, and (2) national self-determination. The first holds that all citizens in a given territory are given the equal ability to influence via the ballot box the governing authority; the second asks that national groups be given space where they are in control of their own destiny; where they are the norm.

In pursuit of those goals, I am willing to sacrifice another potential moral principle, one which Kopty seems to hold in much higher esteem: the right of people to live on the particular parcel of land they wish. And I apply this even-handedly -- there are many Jewish families that very much wish to live in certain settlements in the West Bank, and I think they will have to let that go; no matter that they view that lands as "home", no matter that they may have deep historic and familial connections to it.

Now, she might protest that she doesn't support the principle that anyone can live anywhere, bur rather that "native people" ought to be allowed to live on (or return to) "their land". But this gets us virtually nowhere. After all, a major part of Jewish history is precisely analogous to her own account of the Palestinian experience: that Jews lived in what is now Israel, were expelled, and now want to come back. That they were expelled for longer can't affect the sort of moralistic, first-principles argument Kopty is making, and if she's actually putting forward a statute of limitations on these sorts of claims -- after a certain amount of time in the diaspora, "return" becomes "colonization" -- I'm sure the Israeli government would like to know about it so they can run out the clock.

Even if we restrict the conversation to land where a person has a familial claim to a particular deed, it doesn't get us that far (though it does get us further). First, there's ample ground to be suspicious that this actually is a universal principle: I see very few right of return advocates protesting in favor of the Jewish family over in Sheikh Jarrah,who are seeking to reclaim land they were expelled from in the War of Independence (as indicated above, I absolutely think the Jewish family at issue in Sheikh Jarrah should not be permitted to live there, as I care more about protecting Jewish and Palestinian national self-determination rights and democracy than I do about letting every person live on the precise acre they wish).

Second, in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, possessing a deed is hardly a conversation-stopper regarding the justness of owning that plot of land -- much Jewish-owned land prior to Israel's establishment was purchased, but from absentee landlords who held title rather than from the peasant farmers who actually lived there. But either actually occupying the land in question trumps deed ownership or it doesn't (universal principles are tricky that way).

Third, to the extent Kopty is making a backwards-looking argument, it doesn't have a logical stopping point, and that raises the question of why the Jewish people can't raise a prior claim of ownership stemming from their (much earlier) exile. The answer being, of course, that it is impossible to trace lineage, much less figure out how to reallocate resources so as to "remedy" the original injustice. The egg is hopelessly scrambled (this is a problem that hardcore "liberals" of the vein we're talking about, like Nozick, recognize as potentially fatal -- the inviolability of property claims is predicated on that property being justly attained, a characteristic that describes precisely no property). It would be wildly unjust to tell Palestinians that their entire history of living in this area is unjust because it all happened on top of prior Jewish dispossession. This doesn't mean historic injustices are irrelevant, it just means that they can't be remedied via an expectations damages model.

More likely, Kopty could also explicitly jettison the importance of national self-determination as a value. That is, whereas I'm saying "we can't allow everyone to live on the precise parcel of land they wish and still respect the national self-determination aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians, therefore, we must sharply limit Palestinian 'right of return' to Israel and Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza," she could say "we can't allow everyone to live on the precise parcel of land they wish and still respect the national self-determination aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians, therefore, we must abandon the pursuit of national self-determination for Jews and Palestinians". Again, from this "fundamentalist" version of liberalism, this is probably the position she should be taking -- nationalism is not liberal in this sense. But as I wrote in my prior post, taking that view is a very reactionary form liberalism that I think is politically dominative and at this point better thought of as conservative.

One of the perks of being a dominating majority is that an entity which is "nothing" is, in effect, "you". American doesn't need to be a "Christian Nation" to be a Christian Nation. One does not have to create a White congressional district to have a Congress full of White people. This is Anatole France's neutrality -- it forbids rich as well as poor to beg, steal bread, or sleep under bridges. It is a state of affairs guaranteed to oppress minorities, and there are excellent reasons for progressives to oppose it. Which is one of the reason this sort of "neutrality" which studiously ignores the differentiated histories and positions of various social groups doesn't interest me. Those groups have justice claims too, and we should absolutely listen to them and give them space. Often times, this means creating nation-states. The moral ground that is good for all is trying to create a pluralist global order where various national groups -- even relatively small ones with severe histories of persecution and oppression -- are given a few acres that is to be theirs. Surely both Jews and Palestinians can see the appeal in that.

* Kopty actually writes: "[W]hat will you do if a given country decides today that the land of 'Israel' belongs to its nation, and brings its people to occupy and ethnically cleanse those who have lived here for 60 years." It almost feels unsporting to take a swing at a pitch just lobbed over the plate like that.

In a related vein, she asks "Shall we go through history and examine the many cases of nations who were at war, but were allowed back to their homes when it ended?" Umm, sure, but I think it will lose out rather dramatically to the many more cases where they weren't.

My Thanksgiving Break: A Pro/Con List

They say when you're having trouble making a decision, you should make a pro/con list. Well, I'm having trouble deciding how to blog about my Thanksgiving break. So let's give it a shot, in chronological order.

Thursday

Pro: Going to visit my mom's family in Newport, RI for Thanksgiving. My relatives are great and I always love seeing them. Plus, it's Jill's big rollout to that side of my family.

Pro: Thanksgiving was delicious and my family loved Jill. And she liked them back. Success all around!

Pro: Was actually hungry at around 11:30 PM Thanksgiving night. Ordered online from a pizza place in town, and had to create a profile with my address. When I showed, the guy behind the counter was surprised -- he assumed the order from "Champaign, IL" was a prank. But he had made our pizza anyway, just in case! It was delicious.

Hey, this is going pretty well so far! Let's keep up the momentum!

Friday

Con: Travel home to Maryland, and am assigned the dreaded "pack up or give away your treasured childhood toys" project. I'm very sentimental and I seriously anthropomorphized my toys as a kid, so this sort of thing devastates me (I refuse to watch Toy Story 3, which I'm pretty sure would emotionally shatter me beyond repair).

Saturday

Pro: It's my mom's birthday! And she likes the gifts Jill and I bought (jewelry). We're going to Morton's for dinner, too.

Pro: Jason's gift for mom is even better than mine, but I love my mom so this counts as a "pro" too. Besides, Virginia got slaughtered by Virginia Tech, so he needed the pick me up.

Con: Morton's was delicious, but I actually ate myself sick, which I don't think I've ever done before.

Sunday

Pro: See a bunch of old high school friends, one of whom is now a law student and wanted my advice. Office hours practice! Also try Settlers of Catan for the first time. It was a lot of fun, even if I did get blown out (stupid ore).

Con: Have to drive up to Annapolis for an all-day professionalism course to be admitted to the MD bar. I hate driving. Even when I don't get lost. Which I did. And I had to rent a car, which turned out to be a Kia Soul. I feel like a massive tool.

Con: I just can't be trusted around food this weekend. Get Ledo Pizza for dinner, another favorite of mine, and eat myself sick again. What is wrong with me?

Monday

Con: Hey, you know what takes the sting off a 7:30 AM wakeup call? A 2 AM fire alarm! Thanks, Sheraton!

Con: Professionalism course actually isn't as boring as I had feared, but it doesn't matter because the aforementoned fire alarm means I'm nodding off through the entire morning session anyway.

Pro: Afternoon session is a little better. I teach myself to make crosswords puzzles. It's a completely different skill set than filling them in. Mine aren't symmetrical, and have some two letter clues. But they're still pretty good for first efforts.

Con: Finally done! Roll back into Bethesda at around 6 PM, and check my cellphone (no electronic devices allowed at the professionalism course). My character interviewer called. Apparently about half of materials never arrived. He tells me to look into it. My interview is at 11 AM Tuesday. FML. Frantic phone calls ensue.

Tuesday

Con: It's rainy and otherwise miserable. Get to interviewer's office 10 minutes earlier, wait around for 45. My flight back to Illinois departs at 2:30, so I'm a little antsy.

Pro: Interviewer is really nice, and the whole thing takes about 5 minutes. Missing materials are apparently no problem -- just have folks fax him a letter. He also says "good, you're not an idiot" when I refrain from offering "any additional positive or negative things you want the character committee to know about your fitness to practice law?"

Pro: Tell the people who need to fax things to do so, and get to the airport in plenty of time. Things are looking up! And we're actually flying into Champaign (with a connection through Chicago), rather than having to take a train for once. My excitement at this fact will turn into bitter irony soon enough.

Con: Half a hamburger and my stomach starts aching. Oh come on.

Con: Flight from DC to Chicago is delayed an hour due to high winds in Chicago. Uh-oh.

Con: Flight from Chicago to Champaign canceled entirely. Double uh-oh.

Con: Gate agent puts me standby for the next flight to Champaign, which leaves O'Hare at 6:15. Also informs me it's booked solid.

Pro: Realize that there is no way we'll actually get on the Champaign flight, seize on the brilliant idea to just bail in Chicago and take the 8 PM train to Champaign. I'm so clever. I even get the gate agent to pull our bags and retag them to go to Chicago, so we can claim them at the Chicago carousel when we arrive.

Pro: 3:00 rolls around and we're boarding the plane.

Con: 3:30 rolls around and we're instructed to all get off the plane. The gate agent, with a keen insight on passenger psychology, informs us that if she hadn't deplaned us, we would have been stuck on the tarmac for 3 and a half hours. This staves off the torches and pitchforks.

Con: Flight is delayed indefinitely. Suddenly worried that it will get in too late to catch the 8 PM train. Also find out that there is another, 8:15 flight to Champaign which we probably could have gotten on if we missed the 6:15 flight. Curse myself for having "brilliant" ideas.

Con: It's about 5 PM, and we are about to start a half hour of being "just a few minutes away" from boarding.

Pro: It's 5:30 PM, and we've started to board. Hurray! Gate agent says the boarding process will be sped up if people volunteer to gate check their baggage. Nobody volunteers.

Pro: Gate agent gets back on the mic and informs us that if we don't push off the gate by 6 PM, the flight will be canceled outright. Repeats whether anyone is willing to gate check; swarmed by volunteers. She has a very keen grasp on passenger psychology.

Con: Everyone is on the plane by 5:40. We're just sitting here, waiting, at the gate. I wish there was a big red clock giving a countdown until 6 PM.

Pro: We push off at 5:55 PM. Awesome!

Pro: Flight is pretty smooth, but on the approach to O'Hare our jetliner is getting tossed around pretty bad by the wind. Suddenly glad I'm not flying on the 23-seat turboprop that would be going to Champaign.

Con: Land at about 6:30, central time. Frantically doing calculations about how long it will take to get our bags and catch a cab from O'Hare to Union Station. Compare this to the alternative plan of getting our bags, going back through security, and rebooking ourselves on the 8:15 Champaign flight. Not only do we really only have time to pursue one option, but again grapple with possibility that my "brilliant" idea will mean we miss both the plane and the train.

Con: Waiting at baggage, bags start coming off at around 6:50. Ours don't come. At 7:10 I go up to the lost baggage counter.

Pro: Our baggage is indeed lost. This counts as a "pro" because it means we no longer have to wait at O'Hare, and can high-tail it to Union Station. I fill out a quick form telling them where to ship the bags and ask them whether they think we'll make it to Union Station ontime for an 8 PM train. Fraught glances are exchanged.

Pro: Catch a cab, tell the driver our situation. He promises he'll try, then proceeds to weave through rush hour Chicago traffic like a fucking boss. I love him right now. We get to Union at 7:45 PM, joke we could have dawdled and seen the sights. I tip nearly 30%.

Pro: We just make the train. Text that we've "made it", even though "it" means being 3 hours from our final destination.

Pro: Get to Champaign and it's almost 11. Go to the 24-hour diner for dinner. Did I mention I haven't eaten since the half-hamburger at DCA approximately 11 hours ago? Famished. Scarf down two chili dogs with fries.

Con: Feel sick again. This whole concept of food is starting to unnerve me.

Tuesday

Con: Get "good news!" from American Airlines. They've found one of our two bags! I'm so proud, and cannot fathom why they're bankrupt.

Pro: Call them back and manage to track down bag #2. They're both in Champaign. She asks if I want them shipped or if we'll pick them up at the airport. Select "ship", refrain from mentioning that I already told them that back at O'Hare. Am informed I'll be called when they're on the way.

Con: Phone rings in class, so I ignore it, but figure it's AA telling me my bags are on the way. Wrong. It's AA telling me (again) they have my bags and want to know if I'd like them shipped or pick them up myself. If I call them back in five minutes (which is to say, 1 hour and 30 minutes ago), they can send them out at 3 PM!

Pro: Call AA back at around 5 PM, select the "ship" option. Am told they'll get to me in about an hour and a half. We elect to stay in for dinner as a result.

Con: Get another "good news" call from AA, which is behaving a little too much like Hubert Farnesworth for my tastes. They tell me that my bags are scheduled to be sent out at 8 PM, but that it might take longer for them to get to me.

....and that's where we're at now. Good to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening!

The Not Good News and the Bad News

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is retiring, and that's not good news. Rep. Frank has been one of the more vocal and passionate voices for financial sector reform, and his vigor and assertiveness will be sorely missed in the chamber.

In line to be Frank's replacement as ranking member of the Financial Services Committee is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). And that's bad news -- Waters not only has a ton of corruption allegations swirling around her, but those corruption allegations are specifically tied to banks. To be sure, while Waters is next in line on a seniority basis, no decision has been made on this question as of yet.

The Unbearable Boldness of Andrew Sullivan

Ta-Nehisi Coates is in rare form taking on Andrew Sullivan's obsession with the alleged race/IQ link. I particularly loved Coates' explanation for why he, unlike Andrew, tended to avoid this topic, to wit: "because I have a bias toward knowing what I'm talking about." (For someone who actually does know, see here).

But Coates' also taps into an aspect -- can we call it a character flaw? -- of Sullivan and his writing that bears mentioning again. Sullivan really is wedded to a self-image as a bold crusader who is willing to say the hard truths society needs to hear but refuses to say. The problem is that what he believes to be unsaid, rarely is. To the contrary, it is often the tritest conventional wisdom, dressed up in "forgotten man" language that was dated when William Graham Sumner was doing it.

That Blacks are biologically inferior to Whites along the axes of intelligence is not cutting edge. It is not the brave frontier of social science research. It has been, for most of our nation's history, the (nakedly ideological and poorly argued) default position, and the effects of that persist to this day. Similarly, after 9/11 America was not oblivious to the threat of Islamic extremism -- and informing us of that peril was not the bold, stand-alone position. Neither is Sullivan's sharply critical stance towards Israel the sort of silenced taboo that only a brave rebel like Andrew can shatter.

All of these positions command a solid and influential following in the circles Andrew runs in and in our media. That doesn't mean one shouldn't say them (though one should probably adopt Coates' bias in favor of having actual subject-matter knowledge), but it does mean one probably should cease trumpeting one's bravery and maverickness. It's self-congratulatory without actually having anything done anything laudatory.

Eat Darling Eat!

Sorry I've been quiet these past few days. I've been doing a lot of Thanksgiving traveling ... and a ton of Thanksgiving eating. I'm not sure I've ever had more food over a four day period. It's so good, but I feel so sick.

Anyway, the relative silence will continue for a few days still. I have my Maryland professionalism course tomorrow, and then my character interview Tuesday ... a few hours before my flight back to Champaign. Busy busy busy.

But it was a great few days seeing family and friends. And for those who are wondering, Jill's rollout to my mom's family went great!

The New Definition of Zionism

"Zionism" is one of those terms that gets bandied about a lot, but doesn't seem to have much of a stable definition. The one I forward (inspired if not outright stolen from Phoebe Maltz Bovy, though I can't remember exactly where), and still think is pretty good, is "the belief that the establishment of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state was a good idea and it should stick around." That's deliberately quite broad, and is also deliberately agnostic to a whole range of Israeli policies. For obvious reasons, I reject the claim that the settlements are "Zionist" at all, much less intrinsic to the definition as some of their proponents claim. Zionism, at core, is about granting Jews national self-determination -- there is no rule that we have to use it to occupy the West Bank. But of late, I think there is another definition of "Zionism" rising to prominence -- at least in some quarters. A "Zionist" is anybody who speaks out against anti-Semitism, no matter their politics on Israel. The CST blog forwards this claim with respect to the rhetoric employed by defenders of rabid anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon, in a post titled "You're all Zionists now". Atzmon has long been condemned even by Jewish anti-Zionists, and it's not hard to understand why, for the target of his vitriol is not (or not just) Israel, but "Jewishness" as a whole. That includes Jewish anti-Zionists, because for Atzmon the core sin that he opposes is "acting politically under a Jewish banner", and insofar as Jewish anti-Zionists identify as Jewish anti-Zionists, they qualify. But when these anti-Zionist speakers speak out against Atzmon's inclusion in a "progressive" cultural festival called "Raised Your Banners", suddenly -- presto! They're "Zionists". The one thing I will say is that the CST is, if anything, too generous in calling this a "new low". It isn't particularly new at all: brushing aside accusations of anti-Semitism as "Zionism", even when the complainant is anti-Zionist, has a much longer pedigree (of course, the idea that only anti-Zionists have standing to have their claim of anti-Semitism taken seriously is itself a deeply reactionary position predicated upon denigrating Jews and enforcing the third rule of racial standing). Steve Cohen, introducing his classic text That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semitic, recounts an early review his pamphlet received in a putatively "left" magazine:

There was a particular review—in Searchlight—one sentence of which I will never forget. Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question "what is your position on Zionism?" Wanna support the miners—what's your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what's your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what's your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we'll let you in the club. Which is one reason why I call myself an Anti-Zionist Zionist—at least that should confuse the bastards. Anyhow this particular review, noting that my book actually did attack Zionism, said "It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle". So I'm not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I'm not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a "platitude". Well it ain't me who's here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Once you speak out against anti-Semitism, boom -- Zionist. But this is useful knowledge! As it happens, I am a Zionist (based on my own definition given at the start), and I feel no need to apologize for that. But it is important to know that when I say something is anti-Semitic, and it is dismissed as "Zionist", all we have is a tautology. My complaint against anti-Semitism is "Zionist" because it was a complaint against anti-Semitism. Nothing more is needed than that.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we commemorate the perseverance of illegal immigrants who came to these shores in the face of incredible hardship in order to pursue a better life.




I'm in Newport, Rhode Island with my mom's family, who are getting the irreplaceable opportunity to meet Jill for the first time. It's very exciting. Personally, I'm thankful for Jill, my family, this wonderful job I have, and the fact that, though I probably won't be eating it today, I do know what "mac 'n cheese" is.

ZOA: Honoring One-Staters and Anti-Semites Alike

The Zionist Organization of America is having its annual gala, and the theme seems to be "revealing ourselves to be a parody". Their first award went out to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. You may remember the good Representative from such pro-Israel actions as kneecapping efforts to improve relations between Israel and Cuba, apparently on the theory that what Israel needs most of all is more countries for it to be in an inexorable state of hostility. During her speech, Ros-Lehtinen proceed to hop into one-stater land, declaring that building settlements is "not an impediment, that’s the solution." The solution to what problem, exactly? Oh yes, the problem of a two-state solution where the same nation is not in control of Tel Aviv and Nablus. Which, in turn, can be recharacterized as the problem of there existing a Jewish, democratic state at all. Ros-Lehtinen and ZOA are now official members of the Hamas wing of the "pro-Israel" camp.

Oh, but it gets better. The next honoree was none other than Glenn Beck. The Forward informs us that part of the reason for his award was Beck's flagrantly anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, so it is good to see that the ZOA also endorses that sort of behavior. Beck, for his part, went on one of his typical reality-deprived tirades about how the status of Jews is more precarious now than it was in 1939. Such a serious organization they're running.

Eat Your Veggies!

Yesterday, in response to the UC-Davis pepper spraying incident, Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted "Pepper spray is made from peppers, peppers are a vegetable, kids need vegetables, therefore schools should pepper-spray kids."

Hahaha! Oh that's hilarious. And as if on cue, we turn to Fox News' Megyn Kelly: "I mean, [Pepper Spray is] like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product, essentially."

Life imitates parody, brought to you daily on Fox!

Kauft Nicht Bei Araber!

I don't like adopting Nazi analogies. I really don't. And people who assert that Israel is a Nazi state are, I think, suffering from -- being generous -- a gross lack of proportion. Less generously, they're simply being anti-Semitic.

But to say that Israel is not the sum of its worst elements is not to say that its worst elements don't exist. Israel has its fascists, same as everywhere else. And right now, a group of far-right extremists are mapping out businesses in Jerusalem which employ Arabs, the goal being "to warn the public" against buying from them. In every respect, it is reminiscent of the anti-Semitic boycotts against Jewish shops that were Nazi bread-and-butter (and live on in the BDS movement).

The persons behind this boycott call hail from the Yitzhar settlement -- a center of Jewish extremist activity and noted terrorist hotspot. Indeed, many of the activists are currently in Jerusalem because they've been barred from the West Bank, on suspicion that they were plotting terrorist attacks. So they likely aren't just racist extremists, but violent racist extremists too.

I ask again -- what is the policy for excommunication? How do we formally expel these insults to Judaism from the faith? They don't deserve to be considered part of our people, and if the Israeli government isn't willing to crackdown against "price tag" fanatics, then its the religious bodies that are going to have to step up to the plate.

The End of the World Draws Nigh

I don't drink coffee, so it is tempting to just snicker at the coming apocalypse of rapidly increasing coffee prices. But if this is what it takes to get conservative folks to recognize that global climate change is a threat, so be it. On the other hand, since the most common coffee bean in the world is named "Arabica", perhaps they'll simply retreat to the old "blame the Muslims" standby.

Close That Gap

The NYT has a good profile on Elizabeth Warren, the highlight being this:

Congress remains only 16 percent female, and Massachusetts has an especially long and rotten history of women in politics. Since Puritans settled there in the early 17th century, more Massachusetts women have been hanged in the Salem witch trials (14) than have been elected to the House of Representatives (4), the Senate (0) or the governor’s mansion (0, though Jane Swift served as acting governor from 2001 to 2003)

I think Warren has to be favored against Brown. Because he's a Republican who won in Massachusetts, Brown has the rep as a great politician, but I think he benefited from a perfect storm of (a) a historically good year for Republicans and (b) an incredibly uninspiring Democratic opponent in Martha Coakley (see also: Robert Ehrlich winning the Maryland governor's mansion in 2002 against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend). Obviously, he's component, but I don't think he's anything special. And while inexperienced candidates always have the potential to flame out in spectacular fashion, I think Warren has a ton of upside. And in this time of economic crisis, it'd be good to have one of America's foremost experts on bankruptcy in a position of influence.

Thanksgiving Starts Early Roundup

The law school is already starting to empty out in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

* * *

Martin Luther King, Jr., was no fan of anti-Zionism. While some quotes to this effect have been fabricated, the famous one ("When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism.") is quite real.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) defends the traditional definition of vegetable.

New Mexico Secretary of State becomes the latest pol to wildly inflate the existence of voter fraud, only to find that it remains a minuscule problem. Unfortunately, rather than conceding error, she just retreats into ever-more ludicrous bluster about how her opponents are "partisan" and how even one instance of fraud is too many. Can't somebody teach conservatives the meaning of efficiency?

The Harvard Law Review's Supreme Court Foreword -- this year by Dan Kahan -- is up. It focuses on motivated cognition as a barrier to "neutral" constitutional decisionmaking, looks very interesting.

Gaddafi helps sow a society-wide ethos of anti-Semitism in Libya. Gaddafi is overthrown. People throw off anti-Semitism? Nope -- people call Gaddafi a Jew. Sigh.

Party of Lincoln!

PPP just did a polling grab bag in Mississippi, but their most interesting question was a hypothetical presidential match-up between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Lincoln prevails by a 55/28 margin -- buoyed by a sterling 76/10 showing margin amongst Democrats. Republicans are somewhat less keen to support the founder of their own party against the man who led a treasonous government in defense of slavery, giving Lincoln only a narrow 45/36 plurality (independents actually split even 44/44). Oddly, this is not paired with any noticeable desire to actually secede -- only 10% of all voters wish to leave the union, 4 points lower than those in Hawaii and Texas (both formerly independent countries).

On the other hand, Mississippi GOP voters have finally cracked 50% support for legal interracial marriage, jumping to 52% from a poll earlier in the year finding only 40% support (overall Mississippi breaks down 60/23 in favor of keeping interracial marriage legal). So things are looking up, albeit slowly.

Progress is Progress

Making a movie out of Ender's Game has always a little like the cinematic version of Duke Nukem Forever -- it has been "in the pipeline" basically for as long as I can remember, without any noticeable progress. On the one hand, DNF did eventually come out; on the other hand, it was apparently terrible. So there's room for optimism and pessimism.

On the optimistic side, apparently the name of the actor playing Ender has been released, which seems like an important first step. On the pessimistic side, the article describes the "game" the children play as "a cross between the Quidditch matches of Harry Potter and the Jedi light saber battles from Star Wars." Umm, only in the sense that it has nothing to do with either. The game is essentially zero-g laser tag, where the laser's actually can freeze you in place. Nothing like Quidditch, nothing like light sabers.

AZ Sup. Ct. Reinstates Redistricting Chair

I mentioned earlier that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) had threatened to impeach Colleen Mathis, the chair of the state's independent redistricting committee, nominally for relatively non-specified malfeasance, in reality because the commission produced a map that was "only" slanted 4-2 in favor of Republican safe seats over Democratic ones (with another 3 seats competitive). Well, she followed through with their threat and the Republican-controlled state senate impeached Mathis. Mathis and the commissioned then sued, and today the Arizona Supreme Court just ordered her reinstated. The order is here, with a fuller opinion to follow.

Like David Nir, I am a bit surprised by this decision -- not because I didn't think the move by the Arizona state senate was a reckless abuse of power (it was), but because I thought this could easily be considered a non-justiciable political question. The Court concluded that it was not (not being particularly knowledgeable about Arizona state law, I have no idea whether they are correct or not), and found that the letter Brewer sent to Mathis spelling out her "allegations" did not rise to the level of offenses warranting impeachment.

A Chink in their Armor

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this seems like it would create a rather severe weakness in the IDF, no?

Israel Defense Forces soldiers should choose death before they remain at army events which include women's singing, a top settler religious leader said in an interview on Thursday.
[...]
[I]n a radio interview on Thursday, Rabbi Levanon criticized a possible ruling that would forbid religious soldiers from leaving events over women's singing, saying that IDF soldier should choose death before complying with such an order.

"[The IDF] is bringing close the day in which rabbis will have to say to soldiers 'you have to leave those events even if there's a firing squad outside, and you'll be shot to death," Levanin said.

I have to say that a soldier who can be driven to suicide by the sound of a woman singing probably isn't that useful to a modern military. Or perhaps Palestinian militants can just replace rockets with boomboxes of Lady Gaga.

Reflecting on the Race Card

In class yesterday, we discussed "the race card" and its counterpart, "the 'race card' card". To say that someone played "the race card" is to say they made an accusation that something or someone is racist maliciously, in bad faith, or (perhaps) with insufficient evidence. "The 'race card' card", then, is complaining that a statement which allegedly makes an accusation of racism is illegitimate or out-of-bounds as a tool for shunting the discussion away from the merits of the claim.

We talked in class about how the fears which undergird the race card were legitimate. Given (a) the widespread belief that racism is deeply, gravely wrong, and (b) the lack of widespread agreement on what racism is, being tagged with the charge of "racist" has the twin properties of being potentially career-ending and extremely unpredictable. I analogized it to how the death penalty was described in Furman v. Georgia -- akin to being struck by lightning. It is no wonder that people are very anxious around the subject. "The 'race card' card" is an attempt to defuse this seemingly dangerous power.

On the other hand, the attempt to silence "the race card" via "the 'race card' card" is severely problematic on its own. Most obviously, questions about whether something is racist or supports racial inequality are really important, and it is a discussion that needs to be had. We can't say we're trying to build the best, most just country America can be while effectively exiling a huge area of moral dispute from critical inquiry. And while there are legitimate reasons why people are wary of that conversations (see above), there are also illegitimate ones -- namely, people content with the status quo who would rather not see it challenged, rightly or not. The potency of "the 'race card' cad" allows them the ability to permanently defer and thus suppress that discussion.

One bit of evidence for the latter effect is that "the 'race card' card" is deployed exceptionally broadly, even in situations where nobody is being called a racist, even in situations where the prospect of racial injustice isn't on the table. I thought of this while reading this analysis of President Obama's recent polling. The poll notes that Obama's approval ratings are quite low amongst Whites (36/61), while still being relatively high amongst non-Whites (67/32). The piece doesn't say "thus, Whites are racist." It doesn't even really say anything about racial justice issues at all. The only normative conclusion it draws is that, in a country that has a lot of White people, losing Whites badly is not a good sign for one's re-election prospect.

And yet, what was the first response that got broadcast on CNN?

Well, Jack, it’s nice to see CNN is still a valued member of the president’s re-election campaign. Let’s just further divide an already divided country by trying to make this about race. The president is in over his head and people are beginning to realize this administration has only made a bad economy worse.

In effect, this is accusing CNN of playing the "race card" for Obama, simply by virtue of the article making note of a demographic split. That is less indicative of someone genuinely worried about being "hit by lightning", and more someone who wants to shut down a discussion before it starts.

My own views on this topic are close to those expressed by Professor Hirsch, encouraging a default towards discussion and a presumption of good faith. That cuts both ways -- we should assume that a person advocating a policy we believe to have racially unjust effects does not consciously harbor malicious thoughts towards the group in question, but we should also assume that the person making the accusation of potential racial problems is doing so honestly and because the legitimately believe there is a problem that needs addressing.

Our Eyes Turn Eastward....

Occupy Judaism bigwig Daniel Sieradski analogizes the eviction of Occupy Wall Street to Jewish exile, noting, of course, that "As Jews we know: Exile is not nearly the end." Yet all I could think of was that, having been exiled, perhaps Occupy Wall Street will share too in the Jewish experience of having many folks believe that exile was just, proper, and should be permanent, and express outrage and fury if Occupy Wall Street ever tries to return to New York or, indeed, exert any sort of political influence whatsoever.

In related news, the JTA has a good piece up on the continued marginalization of anti-Zionist groups as they attempt to hijack Occupy Wall Street for their own agenda. You can sense their frustration: one anti-Israel OWS member was furious that Stuart Appelbaum (president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and of the Jewish Labor Committee) was coordinating efforts to connect OWS with organized labor, and another complained of how "[v]ocal members of what many know as the 'progressive except Palestine'* demographic take over and obstruct expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians even when the majority in the larger group supports it."

This, of course, is simply self-aggrandizing -- Americans of all political stripes tend to consider themselves supporters of Israel, and the more radical one gets in opposing the Jewish state, the more one's positions tend to approximate those held by, well, about 1% of the population. When the claims are more modest (e.g., supporting the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side Israel), they maintain much greater support -- but that includes the very mainline Jewish organizations these groups claim to be acting against (like the AJC). It is a bit of a shell game -- redefine radically polarized and fringe positions (like one-stateism, or support for BDS, or belief that the entirety of the present conflict is Israel's fault) as generic "criticism of Israeli policies", and use that to try and claim sweeping popular support. In reality, the third camp still dominates amongst Jews, and is disinclined to support the agendas of, much less be co-opted by, those inhabiting the radical left or right.

Obviously, the entire "99%" mantra is somewhat of a fiction, but OWS has done a decently good job of keeping its focus on issues that are directly related to the massive wealth disparities in this country and the effects that has on equal opportunity and achievement (the metric by which "the 99%" is measured), which carry with them consensus in the movement. There is no such consensus around the notion that Jewish self-determination is a radical injustice, nor is it clear that the 99% are particularly interested in obstructing that project, which diminishes any argument that either OWS or its Jewish subset should feel compelled to step aside on these issues.

* I really do love this term, mostly because I think the same thing about the speakers as they of me. Since we agree on things like "Palestinians deserve a state of their own", my so-called heresies are things like thinking that there should be both a state where Jews are the majority and one where Palestinians are, and that unique (and uniquely strident) opposition to Jewish self-determination (or even wrongs committed by Jewish institution) can be signs of anti-Semitism. In all other cases but Israel/Palestine, they recognize such standard anti-racist tropes like "letting historically marginalized groups define their own experience" and "minority groups can rightfully claim spaces of their own where they're in charge of their own destiny." When the topic turns to Jews, though, that progressive understanding magically evaporates.

New Paper Posted: Post-Racialism and the End of Strict Scrutiny

I've just put a new paper up on SSRN, "Post-Racialism and the End of Strict Scrutiny". The paper is, obviously, still a draft, but of course I'd love to hear your comments if you have time to read it. The abstract is below:

In recent years, a growing social consensus has emerged around the aspiration of a “post-racial” America: one where race is no longer a fault line for social strife or, perhaps, a morally significant trait whatsoever. This ambition, however, lies in tension with the most basic constitutional principle governing our treatment of race in the public sphere: that of “strict scrutiny.” Post-racialism seeks to diminish the salience of race to near-negligibility. The strict scrutiny of racial classifications, by contrast, significantly enhances the salience of race by treating it differently from virtually every other personal attribute or characteristic—including hair or eye color—extant in our society.

This article examines both the emergence of post-racialism and the development of the strict scrutiny doctrine in an attempt to resolve the underlying conflict. It concludes that the motivator behind both post-racialism and strict scrutiny is to remove the fear that race carries with it as a concept—fear that it any time race appears in our society it necessarily is the harbinger of ethnic strife or the resurrection of Jim Crow. The model for race should follow that of religion or indigenous status. In both cases, the identity axis has been the subject of severe conflict and oppression. Yet the effort to get “beyond” religion or indigeneity does not focus on, or even countenance, permanent suppression of these identities. Rather it seeks to remove the fear that when we do use these elements of our identity, we are necessarily inviting catastrophe.

As the saying goes, "download it while it's hot!"

Problem Solved

When Hillary Clinton was cropped out of a photo in an orthodox Jewish newspaper, I tweeted the following:

Problem: Hasidic men cant see pics of women w/out it being "sexually suggestive". Solution: Dont let Hasidic men read newspapers #thatwaseasy

As Haredi influence in Israel is growing, they're beginning to press such reactionary gender norms on the entirety of Israeli society. It is a huge problem, and quite scary actually, to see Israel starting to degrade from its pole position in terms of protecting liberal egalitarian values (on a different topic, see also).

Jewlicious just launched a "women's voice" movement, which encourages women in Israel to sing and hum in public, directly as a challenge to Orthodox groups who wish to see them (literally) silenced. And while I sign onto that project (the women's project, not the Orthodox silencing one), I'd add what I wrote in the comments over there, to wit:

If the problem is that Orthodox Jewish men can't hear or see women without being plagued by impure thoughts, then the solution is that Orthodox Jewish men shouldn't be allowed to leave the house.

Problem solved.

UPDATE: And now the problem is crossing over to the IDF, where members of the military's old guard are urging the Israeli armed forces to check forces that threaten women's equal stance in the military.