Why Is Tablet Digging In?

The post I wrote the other day, debunking some claims in a widely-shared Tablet Magazine article about the latest draft of California's Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, went pretty viral. Several readers were surprised that Tablet and the author have completely dug in their heels. They haven't admitted any wrongdoing, are defending the piece to the hilt, and have not even retracted the most obvious falsehood: the allegation that there is an antisemitic quote contained in the curriculum that is not, in fact, present. Their efforts at defense have gotten increasingly ludicrous, turning off even some readers who were broadly skeptical of Ethnic Studies in general but didn't support flatly lying about the curricular content. Why wouldn't they just confess error on that issue and move forward?

I admit I was a bit surprised too, and when someone asked me why Tablet was digging in I leveled two hypotheses. The first was professional vanity. It's hard for anybody to admit a mistake, and it's easier to go into denial mode and kick up a lot of dust. The second was that the article was so thin with respect to problems with the current curricular draft that if they conceded error on this quote, they really were left with virtually nothing. The entire edifice collapses without it, so they were forced to defend it lest they abandon the article entirely.

Both of those hypotheses I think remain plausible. But on reflection, I think there's a third possibility, and it relates to "cancel culture". In quotes, because I'm not referring to any actual cancellation, but rather the idea of "cancel culture", political correctness, and other such concepts that provoke so much ire in segments of the right-leaning media (Jewish media very much included). Persons who have drank of these waters believe we are overwhelmed with attempts at censorship, sugar-coating, and kowtowing to online gangs. For such persons, then, there is no greater betrayal, no greater cowardice, than acceding to the demand for a retraction. It doesn't really even matter if the claim under attack was justified or not; it ceases to be about defending the claim on its merits. The "principle", such as it is, is to stand up to the mob. Anyone who fails to do that is weak.

I started thinking about this when I called on Bari Weiss -- surely one of the doyens of this approach -- to retract the allegations she had made regarding the Ethnic Studies course that, it turns out, were objectively false. Weiss had just written a column where she said that "Being popular is not essential ... Telling the truth is essential." The truest test of character, she continued, is whether someone is "willing to tell the truth even if it hurts their own side." This would be a good place, I thought, for Weiss to practice what she preaches. To tell her readers that the claims about the Ethnic Studies curriculum she had amplified were false would not be popular with the readership she cultivated. But popularity isn't essential. Truth is. Or so she said.

Alas, Weiss has not seen fit to tell her readers the truth. But the issue about it being "unpopular", I think, is one that goes beyond an uncomfortable truth. If Tablet retracted the article, or even if they publicly admitted that there were flaws in it that shouldn't have been published, they would face a different sort of backlash from readers who thought they had prostrated themselves before the politically correct mob. It wouldn't matter that the claims in question fail basic journalistic standards. The fact that there was so much outrage (even justified outrage) on its own makes it imperative that Tablet stand its ground.

We cannot disconnect this from the sense of grievance which inspired some, albeit not all, of the popularity of the initial article. There is a segment of the Jewish community (and other communities) which views Ethnic Studies as so much PC claptrap, a sop to loud and angry minorities who want to silence anything and everything that doesn't present America as a bigoted hell-hole. They read the Tablet article and understood this curriculum as reflecting the ambitions of this cohort, they view the critiques of the article as Tablet being besieged by this cohort, and if the article was retracted they'd view Tablet as having been captured by this cohort. Ironically, Tablet's credibility with its readership (or at least large chunks of it), depends on them not correcting even obvious mistakes. Many of the folks who couldn't care less about the realities of the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (the author of the article now forthrightly admits that it doesn't matter what's in the curriculum; she thinks it's a poisonous idea no matter what it teaches) would never forgive Tablet if seemed to be giving in to "the left" (whatever that means).

Telling the truth does indeed, take courage. But telling this particular kind of truth -- that you made a mistake, that you have to retract -- perhaps takes even more courage than normal. And that's especially so when you're part of a social current which values above all else standing firm in the face of challenge.

It takes real backbone, and real commitment to the internal norms of journalistic integrity, to tell the truth in that case. I hope that Tablet can one day find those virtues in itself.

Republican Rep. Wants Us To Know She'll "Never Back Down" from her Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

Republican House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene responds to Jews calling her out for antisemitism in the classic Republican fashion: telling us to get bent.

“I will never back down,” Greene said in a defiant statement Friday afternoon, one day after revelations of one of her conspiracy theory-filled Facebook posts from 2018 thrust the term “Jewish space lasers” into public discourse.

In the post, the freshman congresswoman from Georgia theorized that the Rothschild family was involved in starting California wildfires using lasers from space. Invoking conspiratorial control by the Rothschild baking family over world events is a centuries-old anti-Semitic stereotype, and it is also a theme in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory that Greene has promoted.

[...]

On Friday afternoon, Greene signaled — in a statement titled “A Message to the Mob” — that she felt emboldened by the criticism.

“Every attack, every lie, every smear strengthens my base of support at home and across the country because people know the truth and are fed up with the lies,” the statement said. “For me, it’s people over politicians. It’s people over Big Money PACs. It’s people over powerful elite corporations and the Silicon Valley cartel who are trying to cancel all of us.”

She added, “I will never back down. I will never give up. Because I am one of you. And I will always represent you.”

But don't worry: accountability is coming!

Republican leaders this week appointed her to the House’s education committee.

Joy.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quote isn't there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadomasochistic Judging

I have a new article out, entitled "Sadomasochistic Judging", in Constitutional Commentary. Nominally a book review of Richard Fallon's Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court, it's a classic law review style book review where the book itself is a flimsy veneer allowing me to talk about things I already wanted to talk about. 

In this case, "Sadomasochistic judging" is the practice of finding legal legitimation via the fact that a judicial opinion hurts people -- causes pain. It's legitimating because it supposedly falsifies the persistent worry that judges are merely imposing their own policy preferences, the inference being that if the decision is painful, then it is not be what the judge wanted to do but rather must be what the judge was legally compelled to do. Judges hate causing pain, but they crave the legitimacy hit they get from decisions that cause pain, and so end up pursuing pain as a means of garnering this illusive feeling of legitimation. Hence, sadomasochism: judges gain pleasure from the pain of causing pain.

Here's the abstract:

What makes a judicial decision legitimate? Common answers include fidelity to legal texts and precedent, coherence to natural or intersubjectively agreed upon norms, or endorsement from democratically accountable actors. But while these criteria each have strong theoretical appeal, their practical usefulness as a means of validating any contested judicial decision is often limited. In cases of legal indeterminacy or the proverbial “hard cases,” many different outcomes can at least claim to fulfill these requirements. A decision which genuinely fulfills legitimacy criteria and one which is merely going through the motions often will be observationally equivalent. 

As a means of practically establishing legal legitimacy in a way verifiable to external observers, pain is an underappreciated but important element of judicial practice. Judges routinely brag of rendering decisions which are painful to them—upholding “uncommonly silly laws,” protecting “speech that we hate,” reluctantly permitting terrible injustices to persist because the law “ties our hands.” Far from being relegated to the embarrassed fringes, such cases play a central role in establishing judges as legitimate actors bound by law, and in many ways represent the demarcation line between good and bad judges—a good judge is one who does not flinch even in the face of great pain. Yet it should be clear that there is great risk in tying the validation of judges to the infliction and receipt of pain. To the extent judges are socialized into associating pain with legitimacy, the legal system that emerges will likely be one which needlessly and gratuitously inflicts pain.

This article is also special for another reason: it is the first one where my bio includes my new title -- Assistant Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School. It's jumping the gun a little bit, but I don't think anyone will begrudge me my eagerness.

No Retaliation for DC Statehood

A DC statehood bill has officially been introduced in the Senate.

I've been a big proponent of DC statehood for some time now. And one thing I really like about it as a political play is that it is (a) morally correct (obviously DC residents should have representation in Congress), (b) politically advantageous (it's two safe Democratic seats), and (c) immune from direct retaliation. You're usually lucky to get even two, let alone all three. Compare court packing: it'd be politically advantageous for Democrats to add more justices to the Supreme Court, and it's perhaps arguably morally justified, but it's also easily open to retaliation -- the next time the GOP controls Congress, they'll just add even more seats to re-pack the judiciary.

But DC statehood is relatively immune to that sort of tit-for-tat. I can imagine the conversation:

"You're only adding DC as a state to secure two new Democratic senators! Well if you do that, the next time we're in power we'll add two new states with safe Republican majorities!"

"Oh? Are there non-state territories under permanent American dominion that are overwhelming made up of conservative White people?" 

"..." 

"Yeah. Funny, that."

Coming Not To Praise Sheldon, But To Bury Him

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's eulogy for Sheldon Adelson doesn't mince words: It's titled "I hate everything Sheldon Adelson loved about Israel". A taste:

Adelson loved Israel and contributed much to a variety of Israeli organizations. And yet, which Israel did he love? Adelson loved an Israel that expels Palestinians from areas under our control. He stated this explicitly on a number of occasions.

Adelson loved an Israel that ignores its Arab citizens and refuses to recognize their equal rights. Adelson believed in a right-wing, nationalistic and fundamentalist Israel, though he himself was not a religious person. He also thought that if Israel had nuclear capability, it should use this power against Iran.

Adelson contributed to public discourse in Israel by fueling hatred toward elements that did not identify with the extreme Right, and that were unwilling to bear the dominance of settlers and their supporters.

[...] 

Sheldon loved an Israel that most of the residents living here don’t even want. He preached a racism that is inimical to us. He supported discrimination against Arabs, which we are definitely not prepared to go along with. He hated leftists, and did his utmost to make Israeli society fractious. He encouraged internal disputes and rivalries among ourselves, even though he himself didn’t live here.

Everything he loved, I hate.

Everything I love about Israel has nothing to do with Adelson.

May he rest in peace.

Woof. But hardly undeserved. (H/T) 

 

Firin' Biden

The Joe Biden administration has already begun with a bit more fire than the "sleepy Joe" chanting GOP had probably hoped for. Among the moves they made on day one came the termination of several particularly noxious Trump-era holdovers. This is big news, if no other reason than it suggests that Biden will not, contra the fears of some, allow Republicans to have their cake and eat it too on the question of norms. Trump shattered norms for four years without nary a peep of complaint, and Biden does not appear interested in unilateral disarmament.

That's clearly a necessary move, and I applaud him for it. If the risk of Biden was that he'd be too enamored with the old model of Washington where gosh-golly we just play nice with one another and agreements will be made over some cocktails, the reward would be that he's a savvy enough DC insider to know when to play hardball. Indeed, while it's certainly too early to make such judgments, I'm feeling a faint burbling of hope that Biden might mimic Terry McAuliffe in Virginia -- the seemingly boring party man who punched way above his weight in terms of pushing an aggressive progressive agenda forward.

That's all good news for the immediate future. But what about the downstream effects? Who benefits if incoming presidential administrations feel more free to terminate the seemingly "burrowed" figures from the previous administration?

One of the main drawbacks to doing these sorts of terminations is that they leave gaps in the federal bureaucracy which are (temporarily, at least) filled by essentially whichever career civil servant happens to be next in line. The argument that the new normal favors Democrats would be that basically competent and conscientious bureaucrats are more likely to be at least amenable to Democratic priorities compared to Republican ones, and so the "empty" time will be less costly. The argument in favor of the Republicans is that Democrats generally need a fully functioning bureaucracy running on all cylinders to achieve their aims, whereas Republicans -- at least in their more nihilist moods -- can "achieve" their desires simply by allow things to fall apart.

Which will it be? Hopefully we won't find out, because hopefully the GOP will be in the political wilderness for a long, long time.

The Beginning of the Beginning

The Donald Trump presidency is officially over. Congratulations to our new President, Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris.

This is obviously a huge step forward in terms of stemming the bleeding and repairing the immense damage caused by the last four years of quasi-authoritarian rule. And yet, I worry that so much time will need to be spent on the act of repair that we may struggle to also effectuate the positive changes we need. To be clear, by "repair" I don't mean vapid acts of "unity" and acting like the Trump era didn't happen. I mean the actual steps of undoing and rectifying the damage wrought against our democratic institutions. These are very much necessary, but they also will take time and energy; and that's time and energy that can't be devoted to other things.

It is not an easy situation that Biden, Harris, and the other Democratic leaders have placed themselves in. I wish them all the luck and all the support as they try to navigate difficult shoals.

Happy Trails to Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum has announced he's leaving his post at Mother Jones for health reasons (Drum has been battling multiple myeloma for several years now). He isn't hanging up the spikes altogether -- he plans on launching his own blog -- but he felt he could not maintain the pace that justified working for a major magazine like Mother Jones.

Drum was one of the first bloggers I read -- I don't think I caught him during his Calpundit days, but I sure read him at the Washington Monthly -- and was a tremendous influence on my own development as a blogger. I'm certainly not alone in that: Drum was a towering figure during the Golden Age of blogging, whose influence on the mainstream liberal side of the commentariat could not be overstated. And while blogging is fading as an artform, Drum remained decidedly old school and has accordingly stayed as one of my favorites. His work on the lead/crime hypothesis was absolutely fascinating and dare-I-say important, and in general I've always respected him for being thoughtful, considerate, and fair-minded without being mushy or wooly. Those are virtues that are perhaps in rare supply these days, and so I'm especially grateful to Drum for modeling them for so many years.

I'll certainly be following Drum at his new gig, wherever it may be, and so I'm glad this isn't goodbye. But it did strike me as a good time to give a brief tribute to one of my favorite members of the blogosphere.

La Foule, C'est Moi, Part III

The pattern of Republican politicians just openly identifying with the lawless mob continues with Josh Hawley, who thinks he bravely stood up to the insurrectionists who rampaged through the Capitol by actively encouraging them and endorsing all their demands. Such boldness. Such courage.

Of course, this doesn't even get into the (at least) six Republican elected officials who were actually, literally part of the marauders.

Anyway, a whopping ten House Republicans voted to impeach President Trump for his actions fostering a violent attack on democracy. That's nearly 5%! I'll tell you what, the days of the GOP being in thrall to lawless anti-democratic authoritarianism are certainly coming to a middle.

Where Does Adelson's Wealth Go Now (Politically Speaking)?

Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate and massive backer of conservative and right-wing causes (particularly in the Jewish community), has died at age 87.

I don't feel the need to do any retrospective on Adelson's life. Suffice to say, while he did donate to some good causes, particularly in the medical field, his primary contribution to public life were to bolster regressive and reactionary forces in America and Israel. This influence will not be missed.

Of course, even with his death, his money doesn't simply disappear. The question is whether his heirs are as committed to serving as right-wing kingmakers as he was. To the extent his death dries up a significant source of conservative largesse, it could make a significant difference in the ecosystem of right-wing politics (again, especially in the Jewish community where Adelson was a major benefactor of an array of reactionary institutions).

Adelson's wife, Miriam, is a physician and is probably more responsible for the health-side donations of Adelson fortune. It's possible that she will pivot to focus more on those endeavors, which would be an unadulterated good. That said, while not having as high a profile as her husband, from all appearances Miriam's politics are not materially different from her late partner, and so it is entirely possible that she'll keep up the money flow same as before.

I suppose we'll see. But it will be interesting to see the degree to which the heirs of some of the Republican mega-fortunes share their parents' politics. It's possible that deaths such as these could effectuate significant shifts in the political landscape simply by changing who signs the checks (which is itself not exactly a healthy indicia of democracy, but leave that aside for now).

The Legacy of Trump Appointees Who Resigned Now

Many people are wondering how we should assess the legacy of Trump appointees who now, finally, have resigned from his administration. How much should this stand serve to rehabilitate them in the eyes of history? Is it meaningful, or is it too little too late?

My view is simple: If you resigned today, I agree you are absolved from responsibility for whatever Trump does in his last twelve days in office. Your moral liability for the preceding three years and eleven months (or however long you were in the administration) remains unaffected. If Betsy DeVos wants to start the clock running from the time she tried and failed in the push to invoke the 25th Amendment, I'm fine with that too.

The Beard and Overalls Putsch

We should be talking about Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff's historic victories today, ensuring that incoming President Joe Biden has a Democratic House and Senate that can implement his priorities.

But we can't. Because a mob of pro-Trump extremists has stormed our seat of government, an attempted insurrection aimed at the violent overthrow of our democratic system.

This is the final fruit of Trumpian authoritarianism, eagerly abetted by the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party. Even now, Trump can barely murmur a peep against the "protesters", limply calling for peace while insisting that their paranoid fantastical grievances are in fact wholly justified and salutary. In this, he has been backed by huge swaths of his own Party, who own this blot on our national heritage almost as much as he does. Figures such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz deserve permanent disgrace. They cheered this on. They helped make today happen.

And of course, the limp response of the Capitol Police to these acts of White Supremacist sedition stands in such striking contrast to the heavy hand taken against Black Lives Matter protesters. We can't even fathom a similar display to this emanating from the left, because if it had come from the left the streets would run with blood. Yet even here the right plays victim, comparing a few instances of vandalism against  a violent anti-democratic putsch and suggesting that it's the left which comes out with explaining to do. If you think they've learned anything, they haven't.

The Beard and Overalls Putsch will not succeed. It will not stop our democracy. This will not be the day that the American dream dies. But make no mistake. There has to be accounting, and there has to be reckoning. The men and women responsible for allowing this to happen cannot be permitted to escape without consequence. Yes we need to heal. But part of healing means finally expunging the toxic, authoritarian, anti-democratic poison that has been allowed to course through the body politic for far too long.

Sweet Home Georgia

(It's not a mistake, it's a Dollhouse reference)

Georgia heads back to the polls for two Senate run-off elections today, and I honestly don't know what to expect.

On the side of evil:

• Perdue barely missed taking an outright majority in the first round, and the combined GOP vote in the special election was I believe ahead of the combined Dem vote.
• As everyone knows at this point, Dems historically underperform in Georgia run-offs.
• Polls have shown a deadlock, but it seems as if the polls this cycle have had a slight D slant, so a deadlock may translate to a slight R advantage.

On the side of good:

• Early vote turnout figures look excellent for the Democratic candidates. And it seems plausible that in a run-off it will be easier to turn out the early vote than the in-person vote.
• It's also not implausible that Republicans are demoralized after the 2020 election (even if they somehow actually think they won and it was "stolen", they might be less than keen to participate in an election they think will be "stolen" again).
• Donald Trump being, shall we say, "distracted" might also undermine GOP enthusiasm.
• The blue shift in highly-educated suburbs is, among other things, a shift in a relatively high-turnout constituency, which may undercut some of the historical "Dems struggle to turnout in run-offs" baggage.

Honestly, I don't know what to think. But here's hoping that these months where we Warnock-ed our Ossoff pay off!

Cursed Words in the Brandeis University Press

The end of 2020 brought on a burgeoning academic controversy involving the reprint of Marc Dollinger's book Black Power, Jewish Politics (which I happen to have on my desk). The gist is this: in preparation for a new edition, Dolligner authored a new preface which included language about how Jews have begun to reckon with the  "elements of white supremacy in their own lived experience." Dollinger's editors at the Brandeis University Press didn't like the linkage of Jews and White Supremacy. So they refused to print his preface, and allegedly sent the book to the presses without consulting him on their decision. This generated an outraged letter by a good number of eminent Jewish Studies scholars in Dollinger's field, and the BUP's newly installed editors wrote a rather vague reply suggesting potentially that they may revisit the decision.

Like others, I recognize that the linkage of Jews with my background and White Supremacy is a fraught endeavor. I wrote a lengthy two-part blog series trying to tease through this very topic. I haven't read Dollinger's preface (since, you know, it was never published), and it's possible I'd disagree with what he had to say about "White supremacy". But discussing the topic is well within the purview of academic inquiry into the relationship of American Jewry and the Black community, and it is not a healthy thing if the very phrase is treated as cursed words. The people who are praising the editors' censorial cowardice regarding a book that already passed muster in peer-review are doing a disservice to the project of open academic inquiry (not that I think they care). Give them 30 minutes, and they'll be back to complaining about "cancel culture" soon enough, but for the time being they're gleeful as all get-out that an academic press was afraid to even allow the phrase "White supremacy" to be uttered in a preface.

New Year's Resolutions: 2021

 It's New Years Resolution time! Everyone's favorite annual Debate Link tradition!

The series is collected here, the 2020 resolutions are here. As you might expect, last year was not the greatest year for nailing one's resolutions.

Met: 1, 3 (in the nick of time!), 9, 10 (in February!), 14, 15, 16 (and for the happiest of reasons!)

Missed: 2, 4 (got distracted and then our Switch became 100% Animal Crossing), 5 (2020...), 6 (2020...), 8 (can't blame 2020 for this one), 11, 12 (2020!!!), 13 (seriously, 2020 can burn in a fire),

Pick 'em: 7 (I'm being generous)

What will 2021 bring? Will it be better than 2020? It has to be, right?

* * *

1) Survive. Kind of dark, but if ever there was a time that this is a resolution worth making.... (Met)

2) Get vaccinated. Arguably an auxiliary to #1. (Met)

3) Successfully move to Portland. (Met)

4) Make a new friend in Portland. (Missed)

5) See my brother in person before we leave Chicago. (Met)

6) Finish a draft of a law review article. (Met)

7) Find a restaurant in Portland that can credibly (if perhaps only temporarily) hold down the label of "our favorite spot". (Missed)

8) Use the RingFit Adventure (or do other forms of exercise, but let's be realistic) semi-regularly. (Pick'em -- I haven't kept up with RingFit, but I have semi-regularly been doing sit-ups)

9) Get a crossword puzzle accepted for publication. (Missed)

10) Unlock all the characters in Spelunky 2. (Met)

11) Begin the processes of revising the dissertation into a book. (Met)

12) Confirm you actually have a doctorate. (Met)

13) Be scheduled to give a talk at a conference or workshop (not including Loyola). (Met)

14) Establish contact with someone connected to the Biden administration. (Missed)

15) Have an inkling of where you might want to live permanently in Portland (Met)

16) Attend a professional sports game in Portland (minor leagues count). (Missed)

The Oregon Trail

It's hard for me to imagine anyone reads this blog that doesn't either follow me on Facebook or Twitter, but just in case -- I have some big news to share.

Starting in Fall 2021, I will be taking up a position as assistant professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.

This has been a very long journey, and I might even share some of the details about it someday. For now, I just want to say that Jill and I are both beyond happy and excited about all aspects of this move. Portland seems great, Lewis & Clark seems great, the salary and benefits seem great, the course package they're offering (which is basically whatever blend of constitutional law I want) seems really great -- we could not be more thrilled.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LVIII: Pop Music

It's well known that Jews are responsible for all the good Christmas carols. But what about more contemporary fare?

Alt-right writer and professional misogynist Roosh V gives the tribe credit where it's due:

Taylor Swift, and pop music in general, is a Jewish project. pic.twitter.com/T0GdvG996r

— Roosh (@rooshv) December 22, 2020

Taylor Swift we already knew about, since earlier in this series we witnessed the Jews blamed for her endorsement of former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen's U.S. Senate campaign. But all of pop music? Now that's a coup! Sometimes the antisemites inadvertently pay us the nicest compliments.

Which pop star are you most excited to welcome into the Elders of Zion? I've always had a soft spot for the divine Ms. Katy Perry. Or maybe now we can finally reel in Ariana Grande once and for all!

Tell me your fave in the comments!

Old in Town Roundup

I've arrived in Chicago! I wouldn't characterize myself as "new in town", since I've already lived in Chicago (indeed, in this very building) before. But I am feeling very, very old as I try to unpack various boxes.

Anyway, here's a roundup:

* * *

The Antisemitism Cow finally speaks (beyond just "MOO", that is)!

A pretty big storm is developing at Ole Miss, where a tenure-track professor was summarily fired from his position after criticizing "powerful, racist donors."

Also in academic freedom, albeit garnering less attention: students at the University of Dallas trying to form a racial justice club offering "a welcoming, inclusive community" are encountering stiff resistance from the student government (and some faculty). Opponents claim -- I swear I'm not kidding -- that the club can't be accepted because it would mean conceding that the university might not already be inclusive and welcoming of all students.

Trump issues a new wave of pardons, with special focus on corrupt GOP politicos and American paramilitary operatives implicated in the murder of civilians. Utterly disgraceful.

An interesting and thoughtful interview with incoming Congressman Jamaal Bowman, with special focus on his relationship with the Jewish community (Bowman ousted longtime Rep. Eliot Engel, who is Jewish, in this year's Democratic primary).

Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck, who is also chair of the state party, announces he will refuse to take the COVID vaccine. The GOP has been flirting with anti-vaxx politics for awhile now, but it couldn't have picked a worse time to topple over the edge.

The Sins of One's Friends

A query for my peanut gallery. Consider the following scenarios, all of which involve a potential friendship with someone who it turns out had engaged in conduct you find morally abhorrent (e.g., they embezzled money from a charity -- but you can pick your own example. The point is it's something that you, personally, would find condemnation-worthy and reflective of bad character. As a quick note -- later on in this post, one such example we'll talk about is of a celebrity sexually preying on and grooming young fans). 

Call this "the bad act". Here are some different scenarios for when the bad act happened and when you find out about it:

1. You meet someone new at a party. They seem like a nice person you'd like to become friends with, so you invite them out for coffee with the intent of striking up a friendship. Later that evening, you find out that this person had, five years ago, done the bad act.
2. Same as #1, but except instead of the bad act having occurred five years ago, it was committed in the immediate past and was currently in the process of coming to light (with whatever consequences that entails).
3. You've been friends with someone for several years. They're not necessarily your BFF, but you're pretty close and you like them a lot. You find out, however, that five years before the commencement of your friendship, they had done the bad act. They never had mentioned this part of their history to you.
4. Same as #3, but here the bad act was committed during the course of your friendship. Again, you had no knowledge of it and your friend had not mentioned it until now.

In which of these scenarios are you most likely to consider yourself a friend of this person one year later?

On the one hand, it stands to reason that one would be more invested in a pre-existing relationship (3 & 4) versus one that hasn't even started yet (1 & 2). Yet one can also imagine more of a feeling of betrayal in that context, whereas for someone you've just met you might be willing to let them explain themselves. The proximity of the wrongdoing seems to touch on whether the person is dodging or at least potentially open to accepting responsibility and accountability. If it's further away, you can say "they're not that person anymore" -- but it might also be the case that they haven't really reckoned with making amends. If the wrong just happened, it may feel more visceral, but there's also more of a direct opportunity to help them make amends and help make whole the people who were hurt at the exact moment where that is likely to be hardest.

On the whole, there are warring impulses here. On the one hand, we do not want to be complicit or indifferent to terrible behavior. To carry on the friendship with a person like that disrespects the victims, it calls into question our own moral code. And on top of that, their conduct hurts us too, even if we are not the primary victim, we are certainly liable to feel wounded or betrayed having been friends with someone under what now perhaps appears to be a false front.

On the other hand, there is the true fact that in some sense a person who has done something terrible is most in need of friends who can support him or her -- not to evade accountability, but to make amends and recompense, and to hopefully rebuild themselves to be better than they were before. If you believe in rehabilitation, you have to believe in the legitimacy of offenders' friends staying friends with the offender and maintaining that relationship -- not blindly so, but genuinely so. I am exceedingly dubious that any sort of rehabilitation or growth can be managed without the continued support of one's personal network; and yet of course the circumstances which demand rehabilitation are those most likely to cause (and justify!) the severing of that network.

Again -- warring impulses.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, sparked in part by a scandal that broke a few months ago at Rooster Teeth (an internet comedy group that I've been a fan of for years now). A popular member of the group, Ryan Haywood, was terminated after it came out that he had been having affairs with teenage fans. There was significant evidence that Haywood was exploiting several power imbalances -- along the dimensions of age (Haywood is 40), celebrity status, and that he was at very least manipulative if not abusive in these relationships -- in order to groom these young women. This was not a "scandal", where someone's consensual extramarital affair or leaked nudes yields tittering and holier-than-thou judging. This was despicable, grotesque, morally abhorrent conduct that has no justification whatsoever. Haywood deserved to be fired, and he deserves all the other consequences falling upon him now in his personal and professional life.

Two of Haywood's (now-ex) coworkers released a video speaking on the situation, and it's a bracing watch. Obviously, I'm not a part of these people's actual lives and the image one gets on cultivated YouTube videos doesn't necessarily reflect "real life." But it really does seem like all the people who were part of this group were genuinely true friends with one another; at the very least they had worked closely together for almost ten years. You can hear the anguish in this video in having to come to terms with someone who they (thought they) knew and who they definitely cared about having done these awful things; as well as guilt in their own role -- however inadvertent -- in being part of the machinery which enabled Haywood's conduct to occur. After all, this was a comedy group; the reason Haywood was a star and a celebrity who had fans he could groom was because of the joint efforts of the entire collective.

To be clear: the coworkers in their video are absolutely unequivocal in condemning Haywood and are explicit that they are by no means the primary victims. But it's also evident that they're in a form of shellshock over the news and are struggling to cope (they mentioned that Rooster Teeth had provided counseling services to its employees in the wake of the incident), and they know others are in a similar position.

From what I can tell, the first they knew of Haywood's bad actions was upon hearing that he was terminated -- it was a total blindside.* I won't claim to be totally plugged into this community, but it does not appear as if this was a case where "rumors" had been burbling for years until finally they became too much for the powers-that-be to ignore. This was not the widely-demanded inevitable conclusion of a scandal that had breached containment. For the most part, Rooster Teeth appears to have initiated the investigation on its own and made the decision to terminate Haywood without there being any significant external pressure on them to do so.

In the above-linked video, one of his former colleagues said the following to fans who were resistant to the idea that Haywood -- someone whom they had admired and laughed with for years -- deserved to be terminated or even were in denial that he had done what he did:

If you haven’t come to terms with [what Haywood did], I understand. I see people in the audience that can’t — I know a lot of people, for years, a lot of people since they were teenagers looked up to him, looked up to us, and they just refuse to believe it. You need to accept it … He is not coming back. He’s gone. I hope he doesn’t come back in any fashion, and we’re never going to talk about him again.

This is, perhaps, the clearest illustration of "cancel culture" operating in an idealized fashion -- actually being about accountability, but being very explicit that this entails fully cutting someone loose ("we're never going to talk about him again."). When they say there's not going to be any retrospective, there's not going to be a reunion, there's not going to be a big conversation about whether he's "done his time" -- that's what this is. And again, it's fully justified in this case. But this case also drove home just how agonizing that process is. It is not the case that severing a relationship with a close friend will ever be easy, no matter what terrible thing they've done. It will never be easy, and I daresay it should never be easy.

* If you're wondering how they could have not known, Haywood apparently made a habit of staying an extra day at the end of conventions and events -- saying that he wanted to spend time in the city or visit friends -- and it was then, after his colleagues had already flown home, that he would meet with his victims.