The Atlantic has a very interesting short story on how the rise of the Goldwater movement in 1964 was the final nail in the coffin for Black Republicans (via). Though the African-American community had been moving towards the Democratic Party since the FDR administration, a pace that accelerated when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson enthusiastically supported sweeping civil rights legislation, through the 1960 election there were still plenty of Black GOP voters and prominent Black Republican supporters (including Robinson). Nixon had gotten over 30% of the Black vote in 1960 and Eisenhower received nearly 40% in 1956.
The Goldwater campaign was a choice for the GOP -- to honor the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights and create a national front on the subject, or to embrace the fury of historically Democratic White southern voters and abandon the legacy of Lincoln outright. They chose the latter. It is often said that Senator Goldwater was not himself personally racist, but that made the choice even more stark -- it was a calculated decision to sacrifice the principle of racial equality (not to mention the equal standing of Black Republicans) for votes in the South. The Goldwater campaign openly appealed to racists in a way that made it impossible for even the most rock-ribbed Black Republicans to continue to support the Party. And compared to those relatively decent numbers in 1956 and 1960, since 1964 no Republican has ever received more than 15% of the Black vote.
There's an important lesson here. The overwhelming dominance the Democratic Party today enjoys among African Americans was not a historical inevitability It wasn't because Black citizens were inherently inhospitable to the Republican Party or its ideas. It was because the Party made a choice to embrace its most extreme elements and, in doing so, made continued Black support untenable. The great migration of Black voters to the Democratic Party was not a blind stampede. It was an advised decision, just as the GOP made its own calculated decision to effectively toss its remaining African-American contingent overboard.
Friday, March 25, 2016
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
University of California Regents Approves Stellar "Principles Against Intolerance"
Today, the University of California Regents approved a document articulating its "Principles Against Intolerance." The proposal has had a winding road. It arose initially in response to reports of rising anti-Semitic sentiments at UC campuses. An early draft was widely panned for not mentioning anti-Semitism at all; critics have since complaining that the current draft focuses too much on anti-Semitism at the expense of other forms of discrimination.
Following public comment, the Regents adopted one amendment: In an introductory paragraph which had read "Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California," the Regents voted to instead say that "Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California." This language was suggested by the University of California Faculty Senate and approved by the Board unanimously. The full statement (minus the aforementioned amendment, which appears to be the only change) can be found here.
The document is clearly a product of its genealogy. The introductory segment focuses specifically on anti-Semitism -- this is where the controversial reference to "anti-Zionism" was; as the report makes clear, it was this controversy which was the original impetus to establish the working group in the first place. Following that introduction, the report branches out to encompass other forms of discrimination. A paragraph on concerns regarding anti-Semitism is followed by another paragraph devoted to Islamophobia, and then a subsequent paragraph considering issues of racism (with respect to the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration policy) and homophobia (on marriage equality). By the time one gets to the actual principles themselves, anti-Semitism is reduced to a single mention (in section c: "The Regents call on University leaders actively to challenge anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination when and wherever they emerge within the University community. ").
The principles themselves strike me as very solid. The most important element of its approach is centered around two essential distinctions. The first is between challenging speech versus censoring speech; the second is between speech and conduct.
On the first, the policy contains compelling arguments regarding the damage that biased or prejudiced views -- even when "merely" in the form of expression -- can take. But its remedy of choice is for that speech to be challenged, not banned (as Justice Brandeis might have put it: "More speech, not enforced silence."). The policy contains a strong affirmation of First Amendment values, and earlier in the document in contains a paragraph which should dispel any worries about the principles being used to effectuate censorial ends:
In sum, I feel like I can endorse these principles without reservation. And it seems hard for me to imagine any reasonable person or organization harboring objections -- particularly given the amendment to the "anti-Zionism" language which specifically restricts it to the "anti-Semitic forms". But of course, not everybody is reasonable, and the usual suspects, Jewish Voice for Peace for example, are pitching a tantrum that the Regents even acknowledged that anti-Zionism can ever be anti-Semitic. As per usual, their primary source of outrage seems to be that the Regents would consider the anti-Semitism issue at all (it contends that this somehow obscures forms of discrimination it deems more "urgent", like racism and Islamophobia. As noted above, this is spurious: the principles actually devote specific attention to both of these issues in their own right). If there's one thing you can count on in life, it's that if anyone, anywhere, dares call anything anti-Semitic, the JVP will be there to scream about how it is outrageous it is that anyone would even consider such a thing anti-Semitic (doing so, of course, diminishes the grandeur of that elusive but no doubt majestic beast, "the real anti-Semitism").
Then, though, we get this little doozy of a charge:
For those who can't see, the highlighted portion reads: "The Regents congratulated themselves on a process that heard from 'both sides,' despite the fact that the experts they consulted were four white men, three of whom are avowed Zionists." Ignore whether being an "avowed" (as opposed to?) Zionist is disqualifying of anything. The four advisers in question are UCLA Law Professor and Critical Race Theory scholar Jerry Kang, UCLA Law Professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh, Brandeis Center chief Kenneth Marcus, and Simon Wiesenthal Center Dean Marvin Hier. Somehow in its outrage the JVP managed to "forget" that Professor Kang is not, in fact white. But -- putting aside the ongoing stickiness over whether Ashkenazi Jews are properly regarding as white -- there is something quite revealing over the JVP's new apparent position that even opposing anti-Semitism converts one into a white man. (Ironically, it was Prof. Volokh, one of the "avowed Zionists", who initially raised the alarm about the "anti-Zionism has no place on our campus" language. That's because some people are not simply fair-weather friends to the First Amendment).
In any event, given the strong speech-protective elements of the principles, the concerns over "chilling" speech are spurious, except to the extent that the JVP considers (as we know it does) the counterspeech act of accusing someone of anti-Semitism to be a form of censorship (which it is not). The real issue here is no doubt JVP's generally favorable attitude to acts of disruption aimed at preventing other groups from speaking. Zachary Braiterman puts it well:
Following public comment, the Regents adopted one amendment: In an introductory paragraph which had read "Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California," the Regents voted to instead say that "Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California." This language was suggested by the University of California Faculty Senate and approved by the Board unanimously. The full statement (minus the aforementioned amendment, which appears to be the only change) can be found here.
The document is clearly a product of its genealogy. The introductory segment focuses specifically on anti-Semitism -- this is where the controversial reference to "anti-Zionism" was; as the report makes clear, it was this controversy which was the original impetus to establish the working group in the first place. Following that introduction, the report branches out to encompass other forms of discrimination. A paragraph on concerns regarding anti-Semitism is followed by another paragraph devoted to Islamophobia, and then a subsequent paragraph considering issues of racism (with respect to the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration policy) and homophobia (on marriage equality). By the time one gets to the actual principles themselves, anti-Semitism is reduced to a single mention (in section c: "The Regents call on University leaders actively to challenge anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination when and wherever they emerge within the University community. ").
The principles themselves strike me as very solid. The most important element of its approach is centered around two essential distinctions. The first is between challenging speech versus censoring speech; the second is between speech and conduct.
On the first, the policy contains compelling arguments regarding the damage that biased or prejudiced views -- even when "merely" in the form of expression -- can take. But its remedy of choice is for that speech to be challenged, not banned (as Justice Brandeis might have put it: "More speech, not enforced silence."). The policy contains a strong affirmation of First Amendment values, and earlier in the document in contains a paragraph which should dispel any worries about the principles being used to effectuate censorial ends:
Punishing expressions of prejudice and intolerance will not prevent such expressions or change the minds of speakers. In confronting statements reflecting bias, prejudice or intolerance arise from ignorance of the histories and perspectives of others, the University is uniquely situated to respond with more speech – to educate members of our community about the different histories and perspectives from which we approach important issues. As a public university, First Amendment principles and academic freedom principles must be paramount in guiding the University’s response to instances of bias, prejudice and intolerance and its efforts to create and maintain an equal campus learning environment for all.The back half of the principles, by contrast, focuses on the distinct case of discriminatory conduct -- for example, discrimination, vandalism, or obstruction of the speaking rights of others. And here the Univerrsity, quite rightly, preserves its ability to respond juridically. The principles are unyielding in stating that discrimination in selection for leadership position, vandalism or destruction of property, threats, or harassment all fall in the realm of conduct which can be prohibited. Likewise "Actions that physically or otherwise interfere with the ability of an individual or group to assemble, speak, and share or hear the opinions of others " This, too, seems precisely on target.
In sum, I feel like I can endorse these principles without reservation. And it seems hard for me to imagine any reasonable person or organization harboring objections -- particularly given the amendment to the "anti-Zionism" language which specifically restricts it to the "anti-Semitic forms". But of course, not everybody is reasonable, and the usual suspects, Jewish Voice for Peace for example, are pitching a tantrum that the Regents even acknowledged that anti-Zionism can ever be anti-Semitic. As per usual, their primary source of outrage seems to be that the Regents would consider the anti-Semitism issue at all (it contends that this somehow obscures forms of discrimination it deems more "urgent", like racism and Islamophobia. As noted above, this is spurious: the principles actually devote specific attention to both of these issues in their own right). If there's one thing you can count on in life, it's that if anyone, anywhere, dares call anything anti-Semitic, the JVP will be there to scream about how it is outrageous it is that anyone would even consider such a thing anti-Semitic (doing so, of course, diminishes the grandeur of that elusive but no doubt majestic beast, "the real anti-Semitism").
Then, though, we get this little doozy of a charge:
For those who can't see, the highlighted portion reads: "The Regents congratulated themselves on a process that heard from 'both sides,' despite the fact that the experts they consulted were four white men, three of whom are avowed Zionists." Ignore whether being an "avowed" (as opposed to?) Zionist is disqualifying of anything. The four advisers in question are UCLA Law Professor and Critical Race Theory scholar Jerry Kang, UCLA Law Professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh, Brandeis Center chief Kenneth Marcus, and Simon Wiesenthal Center Dean Marvin Hier. Somehow in its outrage the JVP managed to "forget" that Professor Kang is not, in fact white. But -- putting aside the ongoing stickiness over whether Ashkenazi Jews are properly regarding as white -- there is something quite revealing over the JVP's new apparent position that even opposing anti-Semitism converts one into a white man. (Ironically, it was Prof. Volokh, one of the "avowed Zionists", who initially raised the alarm about the "anti-Zionism has no place on our campus" language. That's because some people are not simply fair-weather friends to the First Amendment).
In any event, given the strong speech-protective elements of the principles, the concerns over "chilling" speech are spurious, except to the extent that the JVP considers (as we know it does) the counterspeech act of accusing someone of anti-Semitism to be a form of censorship (which it is not). The real issue here is no doubt JVP's generally favorable attitude to acts of disruption aimed at preventing other groups from speaking. Zachary Braiterman puts it well:
No doubt, even the revised statement will outrage anti-Zionist activists on campus. They will argue that the statement of principles chills their own free speech and right to protest. But the statement is very clear that even all speech, including prejudiced speech, is to be protected. Mostly, one suspects that activist groups like SJP and JVP and their on-campus advocates will object because of the strong statement against actions on campus that violate by shutting down the free speech of others.So again, my congratulations to Regents for passing an excellent set of principles which both are firm in their condemnation of intolerance, while being equally emphatic in their protection of free speech. These principles are written to encompass not just anti-Semitism but all forms of discrimination, and they are well tailored to that endeavor. This was a difficult process, but the resulting policy is an excellent model not just for California residents but all of academia. Kudos.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Two Tales of Free Speech at Emory
A few days ago, Eugene Volokh posted an opinion by Emory University's "Standing Committee for Open Expression" which gave a broad defense of open expression rights at the University (Volokh's brother, Sasha, serves on the committee). The opinion was in reference to an incident where Emory's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter put up a mock wall in front of a campus building as a means of protesting against Israeli policy. Two Emory community members proceeded to vandalize the wall.
The opinion concludes that such vandalism conflicted with the principles of open expression that govern an academic institution. It expressly rejected the notion that any subjective feeling of "offense" caused by the display, or its alleged "incivility", or the acknowledge commitment of Emory to creating a diverse and inclusive academic space, could justify the attempt to suppress the SJP's expressive activity. All of this seems exactly right in my view -- had I seen the display, I may well have been offended (the SJP hardly has a spotless track record), but that is simply no excuse for vandalism or other thuggery aimed at suppressing their speech. Free expression requires that we sometimes must endure even deeply offensive, uncivil, or anti-pluralistic speech.
Today, Emory is dealing with a new objection to allegedly threatening speech in its public forums. Overnight, several campus sidewalks were chalked with messages supporting Donald Trump. As one might expect, many students find (as I do) Trump to be a repulsive racist whose success in this election cycle is a disgrace to the nation. But some of them have initiated a protest at the President's office, demanding some form of official condemnation.
Assuming, as seems plausible, that Emory does not have a general (or at least generally-enforced) policy of prohibiting chalking in support of political or social causes, the pro-Trump messages are no different in form than the SJP wall display. In both cases, many will find one or both forms of expression threatening and emblematic of deeply hostile and oppressive social norms. It is absolutely reasonable to be upset that people hold such beliefs. But in an academic community, this cannot result in any official censorship -- as one would have hoped the Standing Committee's opinion would have made clear.
Unfortunately, this may not be the case. The President did flatly decline to issue a statement "decry[ing] the support for this fascist, racist candidate". But, according to campus reports:
One other thing worth remarking on:
The opinion concludes that such vandalism conflicted with the principles of open expression that govern an academic institution. It expressly rejected the notion that any subjective feeling of "offense" caused by the display, or its alleged "incivility", or the acknowledge commitment of Emory to creating a diverse and inclusive academic space, could justify the attempt to suppress the SJP's expressive activity. All of this seems exactly right in my view -- had I seen the display, I may well have been offended (the SJP hardly has a spotless track record), but that is simply no excuse for vandalism or other thuggery aimed at suppressing their speech. Free expression requires that we sometimes must endure even deeply offensive, uncivil, or anti-pluralistic speech.
Today, Emory is dealing with a new objection to allegedly threatening speech in its public forums. Overnight, several campus sidewalks were chalked with messages supporting Donald Trump. As one might expect, many students find (as I do) Trump to be a repulsive racist whose success in this election cycle is a disgrace to the nation. But some of them have initiated a protest at the President's office, demanding some form of official condemnation.
Assuming, as seems plausible, that Emory does not have a general (or at least generally-enforced) policy of prohibiting chalking in support of political or social causes, the pro-Trump messages are no different in form than the SJP wall display. In both cases, many will find one or both forms of expression threatening and emblematic of deeply hostile and oppressive social norms. It is absolutely reasonable to be upset that people hold such beliefs. But in an academic community, this cannot result in any official censorship -- as one would have hoped the Standing Committee's opinion would have made clear.
Unfortunately, this may not be the case. The President did flatly decline to issue a statement "decry[ing] the support for this fascist, racist candidate". But, according to campus reports:
The University will review footage “up by the hospital [from] security cameras” to identify those who made the chalkings, Wagner told the protesters. He also added that if they’re students, they will go through the conduct violation process, while if they are from outside of the University, trespassing charges will be pressed.The "decrying" email would have been better -- at least that could be considered naught but counterspeech (the University expressing its opinion just as the chalkers expressed theirs). But the threat of disciplinary sanctions is entirely inappropriate and inconsistent with free expression values.
One other thing worth remarking on:
[President James Wagner] addressed several questions throughout the time in the board room, including “Why did the swastikas [on the AEPi house in Fall 2014] receive a quick response while these chalkings did not?” to which Wagner replied that they “represented an outside threat” and clarified that it was a second set of swastikas that received a swift response from the University.The comparison is obviously inapposite, as the swastika case was an act of vandalism, while the chalking was not (and, as Wagner indicates, the university response was not exactly "quick"). But more importantly, it brings to mind a theme I've remarked upon on several occasions -- the idea that Jews are anti-discrimination winners, and the way we get roped into controversies that we on face have nothing to do with. Hence why a protest against (non-Jews) allegedly insulting Muhammad can manifest as a cartoon mocking the Holocaust -- the grievance morphs from "I'm not getting the protection I deserve" to "Jews seem to be getting protections they don't deserve," even though one can fairly wonder why one's mind jumped to the Jews at all. And likewise here: frustration at perceived inadequate university response to Trump's racism (expressed through ordinary political activity) quickly converts into frustration that the administration "quickly" (sort of) responded to anti-Semitic vandalism as a Jewish fraternity. It is fair to be alarmed at the role the figure of the Jew is playing in these sorts of narratives, and to be skeptical of their capacity to encompass Jews as a protected group when they crest.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Could AIPAC Be Trump's Toughest Room Yet?
In a conference meant to convey unity in the pro-Israel community, nothing has been more divisive for AIPAC than Monday's scheduled speech by Republican front-runner Donald Trump. I don't necessarily fault AIPAC for extending the invitation (as it does to all significant presidential candidates), but I also agree that his speech cannot be an occasion for business as usual. And many in the Jewish community -- ranging from Jane Eisner to Liel Leibovitz to Todd Gitlin -- have been urging a forceful response by conference attendees to emphasize that Trump values are not Jewish values.
Which raises the question: Will AIPAC be the toughest venue Trump faces?
In a sense, it won't be simply because many AIPAC attendees will be walking out before or during his speech -- they won't be in the room at all.
But that reaction -- the breadth of it and the strength of it -- demonstrates the more general point. AIPAC is far less friendly terrain for someone like Trump than many imagine. Contrary to the tired stereotypes, AIPAC is not a particularly conservative organization -- liberal or liberal-leaning organizations are well represented among its membership and advisory council. What is fair to say is that these groups have often been too fragmented or passive to really make a mark; and more conservative voices have accordingly set the agenda with relative impunity. But Trump has, finally, unified progressive elements within the AIPAC tent and motivated them to plant their feet a bit. Among the groups that have directly or indirectly condemned Trump are the Reform Movement, the Reconstructionist Movement, the AJC, and the ADL. Together, those encompass a huge swath of the organized Jewish community. And if Donald Trump is what prompts these groups to finally unify and start insisting on a louder voice in determining what "pro-Israel" means, I'm all for it.
Much of these groups' antipathy stems from Trump's abhorrent rhetoric directed at Muslims, Latinos, and pretty much any other outgroup that he can blame for America's ills. But let's be clear -- Trump is not afraid to engage in Jew-baiting either (remember "You're Not Going To Support Me Because I Don't Want Your Money"?). In general, Donald Trump has been the best thing to happen to American anti-Semites in recent memory -- it's no accident they've rallied to his side.
Trump is used to friendly audiences who are there to go gaga over him, with a few protesters mixed in that he can bully out of the room. Whatever criticisms one has of AIPAC -- and there are plenty of grounds for criticism -- its conference is not on his home turf. And I both expect and hope that it is the Jewish community -- and the pro-Israel community no less -- that is the first to get the opportunity to show just how unwelcome he is up close and in person.
Which raises the question: Will AIPAC be the toughest venue Trump faces?
In a sense, it won't be simply because many AIPAC attendees will be walking out before or during his speech -- they won't be in the room at all.
But that reaction -- the breadth of it and the strength of it -- demonstrates the more general point. AIPAC is far less friendly terrain for someone like Trump than many imagine. Contrary to the tired stereotypes, AIPAC is not a particularly conservative organization -- liberal or liberal-leaning organizations are well represented among its membership and advisory council. What is fair to say is that these groups have often been too fragmented or passive to really make a mark; and more conservative voices have accordingly set the agenda with relative impunity. But Trump has, finally, unified progressive elements within the AIPAC tent and motivated them to plant their feet a bit. Among the groups that have directly or indirectly condemned Trump are the Reform Movement, the Reconstructionist Movement, the AJC, and the ADL. Together, those encompass a huge swath of the organized Jewish community. And if Donald Trump is what prompts these groups to finally unify and start insisting on a louder voice in determining what "pro-Israel" means, I'm all for it.
Much of these groups' antipathy stems from Trump's abhorrent rhetoric directed at Muslims, Latinos, and pretty much any other outgroup that he can blame for America's ills. But let's be clear -- Trump is not afraid to engage in Jew-baiting either (remember "You're Not Going To Support Me Because I Don't Want Your Money"?). In general, Donald Trump has been the best thing to happen to American anti-Semites in recent memory -- it's no accident they've rallied to his side.
Trump is used to friendly audiences who are there to go gaga over him, with a few protesters mixed in that he can bully out of the room. Whatever criticisms one has of AIPAC -- and there are plenty of grounds for criticism -- its conference is not on his home turf. And I both expect and hope that it is the Jewish community -- and the pro-Israel community no less -- that is the first to get the opportunity to show just how unwelcome he is up close and in person.
Saturday, March 19, 2016
You Know Jews -- They're Only After That One Thing (Part II)
Back in 2009, I wrote a post commenting on the metacontroversy surrounding the appointment of Chas Freeman as chair of the Obama Administration's National Intelligence Council. Freeman was a controversial selection, along a variety of axes. One reason was that he had supposedly criticized Israel in a way that rankled certain pro-Israel voices (I don't recall the nature of his comments, and they're not relevant for this post). But other reasons also existed -- he was not particularly well liked by many in the human rights community, who viewed him as too sympathetic to authoritarian regimes like China and Saudi Arabia.
The issue, though, was that even when Jewish critics framed their concerns about Freeman in terms of the latter issue -- mentioning Israel in passing or not at all -- many commentators were explicit in basically saying the critics were lying. Sure, they said they were concerned about human rights in China -- but that's just a smokescreen. Really, it's Israel that's motivating them. I mean, what else motivates Jews? They're only after that one thing.
All of this predates the "pinkwashing" fad currently popular among some segments of the left. But in many ways, the claims of pinkwashing embody the same basic instinct: that Jews only care about one thing, and that when they purport to care about something else it's a facade designed to distract everybody from their true agenda.
Nominally, "pinkwashing" refers to a specific practice of the Israeli government to promote a "gay friendly" image as a means of distracting progressives from the occupation. Even along that narrow dimension I think this is significantly overstated as a tactic worth commenting on -- it is an argument favored by those activists for whom thinking two thoughts at once is two too many. But more importantly, as a political tool "pinkwashing" has stretched way beyond these relatively narrow boundaries to encompass virtually any Jewish political discussion of any variety -- no connection to the Israeli government required. Commenting on the "Creating Change" fiasco where protesters stormed a reception hosted by a North American and an Israeli LGBT NGO, I wrote that
Over 100 Brown students signed a petition accusing the proceedings of being a form of "pinkwashing". Mock canceled the event.
This is past the point of parody*: The non-Israeli giving a talk not on Israel whose hosts include a Jewish group which does not take a stance on Israel, with Hillel providing a venue. Basically, if Hillel hosts anyone on anything it's a facade to cover up Israeli crimes. Because why else would Hillel host someone except to make a point (or avoid making a point) about Israel? What else motivates the Jews? With them, you know it must be a plot.
I hope my tone doesn't understate the seriousness of the problem here. The petition sought to create a norm in which Jews are effectively (certainly presumptively) excluded from deliberative projects along all fronts. This is no trivial thing. The legitimation of the politics of ethnic or religious exclusion should rightfully terrify us -- not the least because Muslim persons are enduring an entire presidential campaign premised around it. The Jewish students at Brown targeted by the petition certainly understood what was at stake:
The Brown Jewish community asked "does simply engaging in a Jewish space render one unfit to do justice work?" The answer they got was clear: If you're in a Jewish space, you're doing one thing and one thing only. And if you try to claim otherwise -- well, you know how Jews are.
* I keep on describing things this way, but I'm beginning to suspect that I've simply miscalibrated my mental line between reality and farce .
The issue, though, was that even when Jewish critics framed their concerns about Freeman in terms of the latter issue -- mentioning Israel in passing or not at all -- many commentators were explicit in basically saying the critics were lying. Sure, they said they were concerned about human rights in China -- but that's just a smokescreen. Really, it's Israel that's motivating them. I mean, what else motivates Jews? They're only after that one thing.
All of this predates the "pinkwashing" fad currently popular among some segments of the left. But in many ways, the claims of pinkwashing embody the same basic instinct: that Jews only care about one thing, and that when they purport to care about something else it's a facade designed to distract everybody from their true agenda.
Nominally, "pinkwashing" refers to a specific practice of the Israeli government to promote a "gay friendly" image as a means of distracting progressives from the occupation. Even along that narrow dimension I think this is significantly overstated as a tactic worth commenting on -- it is an argument favored by those activists for whom thinking two thoughts at once is two too many. But more importantly, as a political tool "pinkwashing" has stretched way beyond these relatively narrow boundaries to encompass virtually any Jewish political discussion of any variety -- no connection to the Israeli government required. Commenting on the "Creating Change" fiasco where protesters stormed a reception hosted by a North American and an Israeli LGBT NGO, I wrote that
[e]ven if there were some evidence that the Israeli government is actively seeking to leverage its relatively strong LGBT record to "cover" for the occupation (and I continue to think that's oversold), it's become abundantly clear that the "pinkwashing" label has taken a decidedly conspiratorial edge. Any LGBT organization in Israel, or any Jewish LGBT organization anywhere, that is not avowedly anti-Zionist (which is to say, any of substantial size) will simply be asserted to be part of a grand Zionist pinkwashing plot. At that stage, the "pinkwashing" charge has become anti-Semitic root to branch.This week, we saw perhaps the apex of this conspiratorial, exclusionary deployment of "pinkwashing". Black trans activist Janet Mock was invited to give a talk at Brown University. She is not Israeli. Her talk was not going to be about Israel. Her invitation was extended by (among others) a Jewish group that takes no position on Israel. The event was to be hosted at the campus Hillel.
Over 100 Brown students signed a petition accusing the proceedings of being a form of "pinkwashing". Mock canceled the event.
This is past the point of parody*: The non-Israeli giving a talk not on Israel whose hosts include a Jewish group which does not take a stance on Israel, with Hillel providing a venue. Basically, if Hillel hosts anyone on anything it's a facade to cover up Israeli crimes. Because why else would Hillel host someone except to make a point (or avoid making a point) about Israel? What else motivates the Jews? With them, you know it must be a plot.
I hope my tone doesn't understate the seriousness of the problem here. The petition sought to create a norm in which Jews are effectively (certainly presumptively) excluded from deliberative projects along all fronts. This is no trivial thing. The legitimation of the politics of ethnic or religious exclusion should rightfully terrify us -- not the least because Muslim persons are enduring an entire presidential campaign premised around it. The Jewish students at Brown targeted by the petition certainly understood what was at stake:
This petition does, however, make us ask: given that Hillel is the center for Jewish life on this campus — with a mandate to support the interests and meet the needs of a very diverse constituency of Jewish students on College Hill (ranging widely in their political, religious, and cultural inclinations) — does simply engaging in a Jewish space render one unfit to do justice work?
The discussion of lateral violence within the LGBTQ+ community itself is central to this year’s topic. In challenging the legitimacy of our social justice work based on the group’s Jewish affiliation, the petition seeks to undermine our right to intersectional engagement and implies a need for us to cede spaces and relinquish causes that are very much ours.Exceptionally well said. But there is a trend here, and a scary one at that. We saw it when student government officials at UCLA tried to block a Jewish candidate simply because she was Jewish (and therefore biased). We saw it at Vassar when funding for Jewish groups to go to a Haaretz conference in New York were delayed because Jews meeting Israeli Jews was alleged to contradict the campus anti-racism policy. We saw it at Creating Change, when the conference organizers initially said that hearing from North American and Israeli queers would be too "divisive". And we're not that far removed from the days when campus Jewish Societies were being banned (there was a flurry of such activity in Britain in the 70s), because non-Jews did not accept the legitimacy of Jewish voices in multicultural dialogue.
The Brown Jewish community asked "does simply engaging in a Jewish space render one unfit to do justice work?" The answer they got was clear: If you're in a Jewish space, you're doing one thing and one thing only. And if you try to claim otherwise -- well, you know how Jews are.
* I keep on describing things this way, but I'm beginning to suspect that I've simply miscalibrated my mental line between reality and farce .
Thursday, March 17, 2016
"Advice and Consent" as Hendiadys
I am an admitted skeptic of English as a discipline; particularly when it seeks to intrude on other (e.g., my) academic domains and argue that literary theory is the key to understanding some legal dilemma or constitutional controversy. But I have to say that today I attended a fantastic workshop featuring UCLA Law Professor Samuel Bray and his forthcoming article "'Necessary AND Proper' and 'Cruel AND Unusual': Hendiadys and the Constitution." It actually did a great job of making me rethink a number of knotty problems of constitutional interpretation.
The underlying paper is excellent, not the least of which is that it taught me how to pronounce "hendiadys" (actually, pretty much as it's spelled: "hen-DIA-u-dus"). A hendiadys is special case of the written construction "X and Y". Normally, that's a conjunction referring to two separate things. So if I ask for "eggs and milk", I want two items purchased. If I write that an applicant must be "college educated and have four years of relevant experience," I've put down two qualifications.
In a hendiadys, however, "X and Y" refers to a single concept. If I say that my steak is "nice and juicy", I'm not giving two characteristics ("nice" and "juicy"), I'm giving it one -- "nice and juicy" refers to a single attribute. Likewise with common expressions like "rough and tumble" or "high and mighty." These refer to one thing rather than two.
As the title suggests, Bray applies this concept to two "X and Y" constructions in the Constitution which have typically been given the standard conjunctive read. Under this view, to be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment a punishment must be both "cruel" AND "unusual" -- two criterion , of which both must be met. More recently the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision did a similar thing with regard to "necessary and proper" -- Chief Justice Roberts' opinion indicated that the law might have been "necessary" to effectuate Commerce Clause ends, but it separately analyzed whether it was "proper" and concluded it was not.
What's wrong with this? Sometimes the conjunctive reading leads to perplexing results, or doesn't seem to match our understanding of what the text means, or just seems awkward. Consider "necessary and proper". Bray observes first that, at the time of the founding, the term "necessary and proper" was almost always treated and discussed as a single term -- there are very few contemporaneous sources that sought to disaggregate them into two distinct qualifications. Moreover, "necessary" is a pretty hard word -- while people have tried to argue that it can mean "convenient" or "useful", that's far from the natural reading. Yet if necessary does means something closer to "indispensable", what non-superfluous work could "proper" do -- presumably any law which is unavoidably required to achieve a licensed congressional power is also a "proper" law? It'd be a weird thing to write (and weirder still since the man who inserted "and proper" into the clause, James Wilson, was a fierce proponent of a strong national government and would have been unlikely to have sought a further limitation on congressional power beyond "necessary").
As a hendiadys, however, "necessary and proper" modulate each other, creating a single hybrid requirement that evokes attributes of each. "Proper" tempers "necessary", suggesting that it is something closer to "useful" or "convenient". But "necessary" in turn alters "proper", suggesting that a law must have some non-trivial bearing on an articulated congressional power to be valid. Bray has fuller arguments for this in his paper, and I encourage you to read it.
Another potential example of a constitutional hendiadys which springs to my mind is "advice and consent" -- as in the President's power to appoint Supreme Court Justices "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." This has obviously become quite timely with the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and the position of many Senate Republicans that they will refuse to even consider his (or any other) nomination in favor of whomever the next President selects.
Liberals have, of course, cried foul, and some have tried to argue that the Senate has breached its "advice and consent" obligation (these are, as you might expect, arguments whose partisan affiliations tend to hew closely to who's sitting in the Oval Office). These arguments, as a formal matter, strike me as a weak (Michael Ramsey at the Originalism Blog gives a good rundown why). Yet I do think the controversy helps illuminate some surprising ambiguities in "advice and consent", which I do think is best read as a hendiadys.
Of course, it is perfectly grammatical to read it conjunctively: for a judicial appointment to be confirmed, the Senate must provide (a) its advice and (b) its consent. But this duo of obligations rings very odd when you think about it: we seem to pay very little attention to the "advice" part. If the President selects his nominee with zero input from the Senate and the Senate proceeded to immediately confirm the nomination by unanimous vote, would the constitution have been violated? I'm highly skeptical. "Advice" seems superfluous.
"Consent", for its part, is like "necessary" -- it's a hard word. It denotes agreement, and it does not suggest any restriction on the bases for which the Senate can withhold its approval. If the Constitution simply said "the President, with the consent of the Senate, shall appoint" justices of the Supreme Court, it would seem to place the two branches on equal footing with respect to judicial nominations -- the President and the Senate must come to a mutual agreement on who goes on the Supreme Court, with both branches possessing equally legitimate authority to veto the choice.
Yet this doesn't track the norms of judicial nominations at all. For nearly all of American history, the Senate has never acted as if it could withhold consent to a presidential nominee simply because there was someone else they liked better, or because they'd rather their party was in control of the White House. Their confirmation role has been much weaker -- withholding consent only for unqualified nominees, or perhaps nominees so ideologically extreme as to demand an exception. The default was heavily titled in favor of the President -- the Senate will not reject judicial nominees simply because, on balance, it'd prefer someone else to be making the choice; it acknowledges a default presumption (and a relatively strong one at that) that the President should be able to appoint the nominee of his choosing. And it is the breach of that historical practice that is why today's liberals are so aggrieved: the Senate's position right now (refusing to confirm any nominee while it waits a year for a new president to take office) is, as a historical matter, an unprecedented deployment of the "advice and consent" power.
Reading "advice and consent" as a hendiadys helps put some constitutional muscle behind that instinct. Just as "necessary" and "proper" modulate each other, the term "advice" tempers "consent." It suggests that the consent power the Senate possesses ought to be an advised consent -- not an automatic consent, not an unconsidered consent, but still a consent that places the Senate in a subordinate, advisory position. This tracks well with the historical practice identified above, wherein Senators have not acted as if they can simply withhold consent for no other reason than the preference for a different candidate. The Senate, historically, has treated "advice and consent" as a hendiadys; they have voluntarily agreed to exercise the power in a way that acknowledges the president's superordinate position in the nominating position.
None of this means I think there is any actionable case against Senate Republicans for refusing to utilize their consent power in an "advised" fashion (if for no other reason than it's an obvious political question). But I do think reading this clause as a hendiadys better gets at how the executive and Senate have generally conceptualized their respective roles in the nomination process across American history, and so gives some credence to the idea that liberal objectors to the blanket obstructionism of Senate Republicans are appealing to a norm with genuine constitutional roots.
Of course, these are my thoughts less than 24 hours after reading Professor Bray's paper. His argument, with respect to the two clauses he focuses on, is much more polished than mine. And, as I say, it is an article well worth reading.
The underlying paper is excellent, not the least of which is that it taught me how to pronounce "hendiadys" (actually, pretty much as it's spelled: "hen-DIA-u-dus"). A hendiadys is special case of the written construction "X and Y". Normally, that's a conjunction referring to two separate things. So if I ask for "eggs and milk", I want two items purchased. If I write that an applicant must be "college educated and have four years of relevant experience," I've put down two qualifications.
In a hendiadys, however, "X and Y" refers to a single concept. If I say that my steak is "nice and juicy", I'm not giving two characteristics ("nice" and "juicy"), I'm giving it one -- "nice and juicy" refers to a single attribute. Likewise with common expressions like "rough and tumble" or "high and mighty." These refer to one thing rather than two.
As the title suggests, Bray applies this concept to two "X and Y" constructions in the Constitution which have typically been given the standard conjunctive read. Under this view, to be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment a punishment must be both "cruel" AND "unusual" -- two criterion , of which both must be met. More recently the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision did a similar thing with regard to "necessary and proper" -- Chief Justice Roberts' opinion indicated that the law might have been "necessary" to effectuate Commerce Clause ends, but it separately analyzed whether it was "proper" and concluded it was not.
What's wrong with this? Sometimes the conjunctive reading leads to perplexing results, or doesn't seem to match our understanding of what the text means, or just seems awkward. Consider "necessary and proper". Bray observes first that, at the time of the founding, the term "necessary and proper" was almost always treated and discussed as a single term -- there are very few contemporaneous sources that sought to disaggregate them into two distinct qualifications. Moreover, "necessary" is a pretty hard word -- while people have tried to argue that it can mean "convenient" or "useful", that's far from the natural reading. Yet if necessary does means something closer to "indispensable", what non-superfluous work could "proper" do -- presumably any law which is unavoidably required to achieve a licensed congressional power is also a "proper" law? It'd be a weird thing to write (and weirder still since the man who inserted "and proper" into the clause, James Wilson, was a fierce proponent of a strong national government and would have been unlikely to have sought a further limitation on congressional power beyond "necessary").
As a hendiadys, however, "necessary and proper" modulate each other, creating a single hybrid requirement that evokes attributes of each. "Proper" tempers "necessary", suggesting that it is something closer to "useful" or "convenient". But "necessary" in turn alters "proper", suggesting that a law must have some non-trivial bearing on an articulated congressional power to be valid. Bray has fuller arguments for this in his paper, and I encourage you to read it.
Another potential example of a constitutional hendiadys which springs to my mind is "advice and consent" -- as in the President's power to appoint Supreme Court Justices "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." This has obviously become quite timely with the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and the position of many Senate Republicans that they will refuse to even consider his (or any other) nomination in favor of whomever the next President selects.
Liberals have, of course, cried foul, and some have tried to argue that the Senate has breached its "advice and consent" obligation (these are, as you might expect, arguments whose partisan affiliations tend to hew closely to who's sitting in the Oval Office). These arguments, as a formal matter, strike me as a weak (Michael Ramsey at the Originalism Blog gives a good rundown why). Yet I do think the controversy helps illuminate some surprising ambiguities in "advice and consent", which I do think is best read as a hendiadys.
Of course, it is perfectly grammatical to read it conjunctively: for a judicial appointment to be confirmed, the Senate must provide (a) its advice and (b) its consent. But this duo of obligations rings very odd when you think about it: we seem to pay very little attention to the "advice" part. If the President selects his nominee with zero input from the Senate and the Senate proceeded to immediately confirm the nomination by unanimous vote, would the constitution have been violated? I'm highly skeptical. "Advice" seems superfluous.
"Consent", for its part, is like "necessary" -- it's a hard word. It denotes agreement, and it does not suggest any restriction on the bases for which the Senate can withhold its approval. If the Constitution simply said "the President, with the consent of the Senate, shall appoint" justices of the Supreme Court, it would seem to place the two branches on equal footing with respect to judicial nominations -- the President and the Senate must come to a mutual agreement on who goes on the Supreme Court, with both branches possessing equally legitimate authority to veto the choice.
Yet this doesn't track the norms of judicial nominations at all. For nearly all of American history, the Senate has never acted as if it could withhold consent to a presidential nominee simply because there was someone else they liked better, or because they'd rather their party was in control of the White House. Their confirmation role has been much weaker -- withholding consent only for unqualified nominees, or perhaps nominees so ideologically extreme as to demand an exception. The default was heavily titled in favor of the President -- the Senate will not reject judicial nominees simply because, on balance, it'd prefer someone else to be making the choice; it acknowledges a default presumption (and a relatively strong one at that) that the President should be able to appoint the nominee of his choosing. And it is the breach of that historical practice that is why today's liberals are so aggrieved: the Senate's position right now (refusing to confirm any nominee while it waits a year for a new president to take office) is, as a historical matter, an unprecedented deployment of the "advice and consent" power.
Reading "advice and consent" as a hendiadys helps put some constitutional muscle behind that instinct. Just as "necessary" and "proper" modulate each other, the term "advice" tempers "consent." It suggests that the consent power the Senate possesses ought to be an advised consent -- not an automatic consent, not an unconsidered consent, but still a consent that places the Senate in a subordinate, advisory position. This tracks well with the historical practice identified above, wherein Senators have not acted as if they can simply withhold consent for no other reason than the preference for a different candidate. The Senate, historically, has treated "advice and consent" as a hendiadys; they have voluntarily agreed to exercise the power in a way that acknowledges the president's superordinate position in the nominating position.
None of this means I think there is any actionable case against Senate Republicans for refusing to utilize their consent power in an "advised" fashion (if for no other reason than it's an obvious political question). But I do think reading this clause as a hendiadys better gets at how the executive and Senate have generally conceptualized their respective roles in the nomination process across American history, and so gives some credence to the idea that liberal objectors to the blanket obstructionism of Senate Republicans are appealing to a norm with genuine constitutional roots.
Of course, these are my thoughts less than 24 hours after reading Professor Bray's paper. His argument, with respect to the two clauses he focuses on, is much more polished than mine. And, as I say, it is an article well worth reading.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Trump Offers The Finest Smears
This is unbelievable. Dr. Ben Carson on why he endorsed Trump:
Q: If someone like Mr. Trump can call you, an acclaimed and noted neurosurgeon, as someone who lacks intellect or is a child molester, doesn't that alarm you as to how he can portray other people in this country as well, and use the same rhetoric?
A: Well, you know, he said it was political, he was concerned about the fact that he couldn't shake me. Look, I understand politics, particularly the politics of personal destruction. And you have to admit to some degree, that it did work. A lot of people believed him."You act like him being a destructive liar is somehow a bad thing." This speaks volumes about the current pathology of the Republican Party.
Dear Leader
I had no idea that, on his Twitter account, Mitch McConnell goes by "Leader McConnell":
I have no further comment on this, but that seemed worth noting on its own.
Thank you @BretBaier for the lively discussion on the #SCOTUSnominee. https://t.co/VOWxMu2fZl pic.twitter.com/7baik4UtyP
— Leader McConnell (@SenateMajLdr) March 16, 2016
I have no further comment on this, but that seemed worth noting on its own.
Garland Isn't a Kennedy, He's a Breyer
And the nominee is ... Merrick Garland, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals! (Looks like my SCOTUS pick streak comes to an end -- but two out of three ain't bad). Garland wasn't the first choice of many liberals, but I think in retrospect it is highly likely that many of the younger guns (Kelly, Srinivasan, etc.) calculated that they have a better shot in the future then in this crap-shoot of an election year confirmation attempt. Garland, who's 63 years old, almost certainly knew it was now or never.
And with respect to liberal concerns, look -- Garland isn't a Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But he's not a Anthony Kennedy either. He'll be a reliable member of the Court's liberal bloc. There's a reason he's been the primary feeder of liberal Supreme Court clerks for years now. Replacing Justice Scalia with Justice Garland would be a tremendous move forward.
The other thing to say about Garland is that he really puts Senate Republicans in a pickle. It's not just that, as Chuck Schumer put it, if Garland can't garner bipartisan support than nobody can. It's how stark of a choice he puts in front of Republicans. The obstruct at all costs approach puts two outcomes on the horizon: either whichever 39 year old liberal ingenue Hillary Clinton nominates after 12 months of Republicans insisting that "this election is when the people decide!", or Donald Trump putting forward Judge Judy. Suddenly, a 63 year old conventional Democrat doesn't seem that bad, does it?
In any event, congratulations to Judge -- hopefully soon-to-be Justice -- Garland, who is a fantastic jurist and would make a great addition to the Court. May your confirmation process be smooth as is conceivably possible in these turbulent times.
And with respect to liberal concerns, look -- Garland isn't a Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But he's not a Anthony Kennedy either. He'll be a reliable member of the Court's liberal bloc. There's a reason he's been the primary feeder of liberal Supreme Court clerks for years now. Replacing Justice Scalia with Justice Garland would be a tremendous move forward.
The other thing to say about Garland is that he really puts Senate Republicans in a pickle. It's not just that, as Chuck Schumer put it, if Garland can't garner bipartisan support than nobody can. It's how stark of a choice he puts in front of Republicans. The obstruct at all costs approach puts two outcomes on the horizon: either whichever 39 year old liberal ingenue Hillary Clinton nominates after 12 months of Republicans insisting that "this election is when the people decide!", or Donald Trump putting forward Judge Judy. Suddenly, a 63 year old conventional Democrat doesn't seem that bad, does it?
In any event, congratulations to Judge -- hopefully soon-to-be Justice -- Garland, who is a fantastic jurist and would make a great addition to the Court. May your confirmation process be smooth as is conceivably possible in these turbulent times.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Against Coalitional Intersectionality
In the Forward, Sigal Samuel contributes a new entry to the debates regarding intersectional discourse and the place of Mizrahi Jews inside of it. It is a worthy addition, and as one might suspect I'm pleased to see it in one of my favorite media outlets. I highly recommend reading it, and I hope that we see more articles and columns in this vein.
That said, Samuel's article does finally prompt me to explain why I will continue to fight against the definition of "intersectionality" as "the idea that different forms of oppression are linked" such that, for example, "Jews must stand in solidarity with Palestinians because our liberation is intrinsically tied to theirs." I dub this "coalitional intersectionality" -- that an anti-racist organization cannot "just" fight racism but must also align with anti-sexism organizations and anti-colonial organizations and so forth (as Samuel puts it: "standing up for victims of sexism and homophobia should also mean that we stand up for, say, victims of Israeli state violence.").This may well be a worthy sentiment. But, I will argue, it's not "intersectionality" -- indeed, often it actively undermines of intersectional analysis. And while I've become resigned to accept this is a losing battle, because I think "intersectionality" as I understand it to be an incredibly valuable category I think indulging in the conflation causes us to lose something very rich and quite difficult to replace.
Intersectionality, as I view it (drawing directly from Crenshaw), is about the interaction of multiple (marginalized) identities and how that interaction is not reducible to each constituent element. As applied to Mizrahim, it critiques the view that one can the oppression of Middle Eastern Jews simply by fighting anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism -- that is, that if we fix the oppression of "Jews" and fix the oppression of "Middle Easterners" we will by definition resolve the oppression of "Jewish Middle Easterners". Instead, it suggests that the intersection of Jew and Middle Eastern creates a cluster of experiences and wrongs which are not adequately encompassed by simply adding "Jew" and "Middle Eastern" together.
My frustration with the "coalitional" model of intersectionality that is being deployed in activist circles, therefore, is that it actually exacerbates the problems that intersectionality was designed to address -- it contributes to the erasure of those parts of multiply-marginalized groups that are not assimilable into either of the constituent identities. In a sense this shouldn't surprise: in many respects intersectionality began as a rebellion against the uncritical demands of the "coalition" -- that black women must subordinate their discrete interests as black women for the benefit of the sisterhood or the good of the black community (where "sisterhood" was defined by white women and "black community" by African-American men). The basic problem identified wasn't that feminist and anti-racist organizations didn't work together, it was that their agendas were set by the dominant categories within each group and so even when they were "allies" the resultant alliance still was non-inclusive of the black woman marginalized within each.
Coalitional intersectionality starts from the problem that, say, feminist organizations didn't sufficiently attune themselves to racism, but it presents the remedy for double marginalization as the white women saying "okay, we'll be anti-racist as that's defined by 'the black community'" (aka, the black men). Perhaps the black men say in turn "okay, we'll be anti-sexist as that's defined by 'the sisterhood'") (aka, the white women). This doesn't cure the intersectional problem, it reinscribes it by perpetuating the marginal status of black women in both communities. In the Mizrahi case, simply declaring that we must "fight anti-Semitism" and "fight anti-Arab racism" fails to acknowledge that the meaning of fighting "anti-Semitism" or "anti-Arab racism" simpliciter is defined by how the dominant castes within those groups (Ashkenazi Jews, Gentile Arabs) conceptualize the oppression and articulate its remedies. Such conceptualizes can and often are quite distant from how internal minorities, like Mizrahim, conceptualize their own situation.
For example, Zionism is often presented as a means of fighting anti-Semitism -- the creation of a Jewish national homeland liberates Jews from being in a position of supplication towards others. However, if the mid-20th century Mizrahi activists Samuel cites are right (more on this in a second) then Zionism really is only doing that for Ashkenazi Jews -- it is not attentive to the particularities of the Mizrahi experience, it doesn't even liberate them as Jews and certainly not as Middle Easterners. If we flip over and describe the relevant form of fighting anti-Arab racism as anti-Zionism, the same problem emerges -- abolishing the Jewish state is a way of curing discrimination against Gentile Middle Easterners; it speaks very little to the marginalization Mizrahi Jews experience even as Middle Easterners let alone as Jews. Once one thinks about it, it is highly likely that a program for liberating Mizrahi Jews will not stem from simply adding the (Ashkenazi) Jewish liberation project to the (non-Jewish) Middle Eastern liberation project (even if such a merged project was coherent). It almost certainly will be a unique politics that is not neatly encompassed either in conventional Zionist or anti-Zionist frames -- that is to say, which resists the pre-existing "coalitions" in play.
Consequently, what actually tends to happen when intersectionality turns coalitional is that one side of the identity is sublimated into the other. If we erase the distinctively Jewish elements of Mizrahi experience, we can act as if we are advocating on their behalf simply by virtue of pursuing a program combating anti-Arab discrimination as conceptualized by and implemented through non-Jewish Middle Easterners -- e.g., through an anti-Zionist program. The "Mizrahi" part of the equation drops out; fighting for Middle Eastern Jews is not viewed as different from fighting for Middle Easterners generally, and fighting for Middle Easterners generally is constructed via the interests of the dominant elements within the category "Middle Eastern" (which are not Jewish) It's the mirror image of the attempt to elide the "Mizrahi" part of "Mizrahi Jew" among some Zionists -- if we combat anti-Semitism (viewed through an Ashkenazi lens), we effectively liberate Mizrahi Jews (who are, in effect, simply "Jews", which is to say, Ashkenazi Jews). Both are instantiating the same exact wrong upon Mizrahim -- erasing them at the point of their difference from their putative ally (if I focus on the former case, it's because folks doing the latter tend not to even conceptualize themselves as being "intersectional" in the first place).
This is why those few persons who do attempt to incorporate Mizrahim into a (coalitional) intersectional lens do so by immediately reaching for those who identified Mizrahi oppression as stemming from Zionism. If Mizrahi Jewish and Palestinian oppression can be merged under a single metric, then the tension dissipates and the coalition becomes easy -- it is as if there is no distinction at all between that which ails Middle Eastern Jews and Middle Eastern non-Jews.
The problem, of course, is that most Mizrahim don't conceive of their situation in that manner. Some people proceed then to the simple brute erasure of Mizrahi Jewish difference -- either by ignoring them as a category outright, or by only accepting the legitimacy of Mizrahi voices who align with their understanding of anti-Arab oppression (that is, by delegitimizing any Mizrahi voices which are distinct from the dominant Arab chord). By contrast, my Berkeley colleague Smadar Lavie, who herself is a Mizrahi activist seeking to promote this sort of anti-Zionist Mizrahi-Palestinian alliance, is honest in admitting that such endeavors today have a very small constituency within the Mizrahi community. Where she errs is in saying that the inability to establish a Mizrahi-Palestinian coalition demonstrates that intersectionality is (for the time being) a dead-end. It's not a dead end because enabling coalitions is not the purpose of intersectionality. Intersectionality is a method for identifying forms of marginalization which otherwise would escape the eye. It is wholly expected, and consistent with intersectionality's roots, that there would be distinct problems experienced Jewish Middle Easterners that were not reducible to, and might be sharply in tension with, the politics promoted by non-Jewish Middle Easterners (or, of course, non-Middle Eastern Jews).
In this light, it is worth exploring why, exactly, a Mizrahi-Palestinian alliance has not been forthcoming. Samuel notes, for example, that the Israeli national project constructed "Jew" and "Arab" as binary categories, encouraging Mizrahim to distance themselves from an "Arab" identity as a means of solidifying their place in the Jewish state. Moreover, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are often deeply mistrustful of the (Ashkenazi-dominated) Israeli left, which unfortunately was significantly responsible for their marginalization during the initial wave of Mizrahi and Sephardic arrivals following Israeli's independence. It has been the Israeli right, by and large, which has facilitated their inclusion in Israeli society while the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Israeli left continues to think of them as backwards, reactionary, and tribalistic.
These examples carry legitimate weight, but it would be wrong to assume that but-for (Ashkenazi) Jewish malfeasance Mizrahi Jews and Arabs would be thick as thieves. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding the removal -- effectively expulsion -- of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from the Arab world plays no small role in their less-than-coalitional outlook. And considerable swaths of the project of constructing an Arab national or pan-national identity have come at the expense of Jews and in opposition to Jews; at the very least they've rarely been encompassing of Jews on equal terms. As Sephardic Jewish researcher Mijal Bitton argues, the failure to adequately reckon (often, the outright denial of) with this raw history of oppression Mizrahi Jews experienced in Arab countries makes it extraordinarily difficult for Sephardic and Mizrahi to act as a "bridge" between Jews and Arabs, much less view themselves as in "coalition" with Palestinians.
The result is that proponents of the coalitional model typically exhibit ignorance of the actual conditions and perspectives of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews in favor of an imagined harmony of interests among all "Arabs" (non-Jew and Jew alike) that is conducive to collective action. A deeper investigation demonstrates that it is neither surprising nor a product of "false consciousness" that Mizrahim do not generally believe that an anti-Zionist program will do them any good; even as many very much believe that the Israeli state as currently constituted is insufficiently respectful to and attentive towards their unique histories, cultural heritages, and political priorities. Such a political standpoint does not fit neatly into either the (Ashkenazi) Jewish or (non-Jewish) Middle Eastern "coalition".
A good intersectional theorist is not intimidated by this. The entire point of intersectionality, after all, is to bring such issues to the surface when too often they remain submerged underneath the dominant discourses of "Jew" (as defined by Ashkenazim) or "Middle Eastern" (as defined by Muslim or sometimes Christian Arabs). I would suggest that an intersectional approach is in fact essential to ensuring that Mizrahi Jewish perspectives are given an adequate airing. And done properly, an intersectional lens attunes us to seeing how our own narratives -- even when we think of them as anti-oppression or liberatory, often do not encompass those outgroups within outgroups (like Mizrahi Jews), and how instead of seeking to engage with such groups in an egalitarian fashion we instead seek to brute-force them into the frames we've already established.
But the coalitional intersectionalist can't look past the fact that the Mizrahim are poor candidates for a "coalition" with other groups who are already members in good standing. Their interests in fact do not align nicely with the groups already included in the pantheon, they do not see themselves in terms which parallel the conceptions that dominate their constituent elements. To incorporate them into a coalition that is already in solidarity with (Ashkenazi) Jews would require significant alterations to the project -- incorporating Arab and Middle Eastern cultural practices and heritage, attacking head on discrimination Mizrahim face in Jewish communal settings inside and outside of Israel. And by the same token, to incorporate them into a coalition that is already in solidarity with (non-Jewish) Middle Easterners would likewise problematize key elements of that endeavor -- recognizing that Zionism is viewed as an essential liberatory element of some Middle Easterners' life experiences, acknowledging and fighting for the equal status of Jews as Middle Easterners, with equal entitlement to determine what that means. Such work would be tremendously difficult; and there is little evidence that non-Mizrahim (Jews or non-Jews) are willing to budge all that much in deference to Mizrahi differentiation. In essence, Mizrahim are welcome into the coalition on the non-negotiable condition that they not challenge any other member of the pack -- even when some of those members are directly responsible for facilitating Mizrahi marginalization. It is no wonder that Mizrahim refuse to enter on such terms.
So what is to be done? Coalitional intersectionalists are at a loss. At best they ignore Mizrahim outright and go about their coalitional work with those groups that are more easily assimilable. At worst they actively demand the exclusion of most Mizrahi voices as harmful to the good of the coalition, or pluck out those few whose perspectives can be incorporated into the preexisting coalitional politics with minimal stress. In neither case is Mizrahi marginalization adequately addressed; indeed, it is perpetuated in both.
This is not intersectionality. This is the very thing intersectionality was trying to combat. And it's why I'm deeply troubled by the activist trend to reduce "intersectionality" into the project of building coalitions.
That said, Samuel's article does finally prompt me to explain why I will continue to fight against the definition of "intersectionality" as "the idea that different forms of oppression are linked" such that, for example, "Jews must stand in solidarity with Palestinians because our liberation is intrinsically tied to theirs." I dub this "coalitional intersectionality" -- that an anti-racist organization cannot "just" fight racism but must also align with anti-sexism organizations and anti-colonial organizations and so forth (as Samuel puts it: "standing up for victims of sexism and homophobia should also mean that we stand up for, say, victims of Israeli state violence.").This may well be a worthy sentiment. But, I will argue, it's not "intersectionality" -- indeed, often it actively undermines of intersectional analysis. And while I've become resigned to accept this is a losing battle, because I think "intersectionality" as I understand it to be an incredibly valuable category I think indulging in the conflation causes us to lose something very rich and quite difficult to replace.
Intersectionality, as I view it (drawing directly from Crenshaw), is about the interaction of multiple (marginalized) identities and how that interaction is not reducible to each constituent element. As applied to Mizrahim, it critiques the view that one can the oppression of Middle Eastern Jews simply by fighting anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism -- that is, that if we fix the oppression of "Jews" and fix the oppression of "Middle Easterners" we will by definition resolve the oppression of "Jewish Middle Easterners". Instead, it suggests that the intersection of Jew and Middle Eastern creates a cluster of experiences and wrongs which are not adequately encompassed by simply adding "Jew" and "Middle Eastern" together.
My frustration with the "coalitional" model of intersectionality that is being deployed in activist circles, therefore, is that it actually exacerbates the problems that intersectionality was designed to address -- it contributes to the erasure of those parts of multiply-marginalized groups that are not assimilable into either of the constituent identities. In a sense this shouldn't surprise: in many respects intersectionality began as a rebellion against the uncritical demands of the "coalition" -- that black women must subordinate their discrete interests as black women for the benefit of the sisterhood or the good of the black community (where "sisterhood" was defined by white women and "black community" by African-American men). The basic problem identified wasn't that feminist and anti-racist organizations didn't work together, it was that their agendas were set by the dominant categories within each group and so even when they were "allies" the resultant alliance still was non-inclusive of the black woman marginalized within each.
Coalitional intersectionality starts from the problem that, say, feminist organizations didn't sufficiently attune themselves to racism, but it presents the remedy for double marginalization as the white women saying "okay, we'll be anti-racist as that's defined by 'the black community'" (aka, the black men). Perhaps the black men say in turn "okay, we'll be anti-sexist as that's defined by 'the sisterhood'") (aka, the white women). This doesn't cure the intersectional problem, it reinscribes it by perpetuating the marginal status of black women in both communities. In the Mizrahi case, simply declaring that we must "fight anti-Semitism" and "fight anti-Arab racism" fails to acknowledge that the meaning of fighting "anti-Semitism" or "anti-Arab racism" simpliciter is defined by how the dominant castes within those groups (Ashkenazi Jews, Gentile Arabs) conceptualize the oppression and articulate its remedies. Such conceptualizes can and often are quite distant from how internal minorities, like Mizrahim, conceptualize their own situation.
For example, Zionism is often presented as a means of fighting anti-Semitism -- the creation of a Jewish national homeland liberates Jews from being in a position of supplication towards others. However, if the mid-20th century Mizrahi activists Samuel cites are right (more on this in a second) then Zionism really is only doing that for Ashkenazi Jews -- it is not attentive to the particularities of the Mizrahi experience, it doesn't even liberate them as Jews and certainly not as Middle Easterners. If we flip over and describe the relevant form of fighting anti-Arab racism as anti-Zionism, the same problem emerges -- abolishing the Jewish state is a way of curing discrimination against Gentile Middle Easterners; it speaks very little to the marginalization Mizrahi Jews experience even as Middle Easterners let alone as Jews. Once one thinks about it, it is highly likely that a program for liberating Mizrahi Jews will not stem from simply adding the (Ashkenazi) Jewish liberation project to the (non-Jewish) Middle Eastern liberation project (even if such a merged project was coherent). It almost certainly will be a unique politics that is not neatly encompassed either in conventional Zionist or anti-Zionist frames -- that is to say, which resists the pre-existing "coalitions" in play.
Consequently, what actually tends to happen when intersectionality turns coalitional is that one side of the identity is sublimated into the other. If we erase the distinctively Jewish elements of Mizrahi experience, we can act as if we are advocating on their behalf simply by virtue of pursuing a program combating anti-Arab discrimination as conceptualized by and implemented through non-Jewish Middle Easterners -- e.g., through an anti-Zionist program. The "Mizrahi" part of the equation drops out; fighting for Middle Eastern Jews is not viewed as different from fighting for Middle Easterners generally, and fighting for Middle Easterners generally is constructed via the interests of the dominant elements within the category "Middle Eastern" (which are not Jewish) It's the mirror image of the attempt to elide the "Mizrahi" part of "Mizrahi Jew" among some Zionists -- if we combat anti-Semitism (viewed through an Ashkenazi lens), we effectively liberate Mizrahi Jews (who are, in effect, simply "Jews", which is to say, Ashkenazi Jews). Both are instantiating the same exact wrong upon Mizrahim -- erasing them at the point of their difference from their putative ally (if I focus on the former case, it's because folks doing the latter tend not to even conceptualize themselves as being "intersectional" in the first place).
This is why those few persons who do attempt to incorporate Mizrahim into a (coalitional) intersectional lens do so by immediately reaching for those who identified Mizrahi oppression as stemming from Zionism. If Mizrahi Jewish and Palestinian oppression can be merged under a single metric, then the tension dissipates and the coalition becomes easy -- it is as if there is no distinction at all between that which ails Middle Eastern Jews and Middle Eastern non-Jews.
The problem, of course, is that most Mizrahim don't conceive of their situation in that manner. Some people proceed then to the simple brute erasure of Mizrahi Jewish difference -- either by ignoring them as a category outright, or by only accepting the legitimacy of Mizrahi voices who align with their understanding of anti-Arab oppression (that is, by delegitimizing any Mizrahi voices which are distinct from the dominant Arab chord). By contrast, my Berkeley colleague Smadar Lavie, who herself is a Mizrahi activist seeking to promote this sort of anti-Zionist Mizrahi-Palestinian alliance, is honest in admitting that such endeavors today have a very small constituency within the Mizrahi community. Where she errs is in saying that the inability to establish a Mizrahi-Palestinian coalition demonstrates that intersectionality is (for the time being) a dead-end. It's not a dead end because enabling coalitions is not the purpose of intersectionality. Intersectionality is a method for identifying forms of marginalization which otherwise would escape the eye. It is wholly expected, and consistent with intersectionality's roots, that there would be distinct problems experienced Jewish Middle Easterners that were not reducible to, and might be sharply in tension with, the politics promoted by non-Jewish Middle Easterners (or, of course, non-Middle Eastern Jews).
In this light, it is worth exploring why, exactly, a Mizrahi-Palestinian alliance has not been forthcoming. Samuel notes, for example, that the Israeli national project constructed "Jew" and "Arab" as binary categories, encouraging Mizrahim to distance themselves from an "Arab" identity as a means of solidifying their place in the Jewish state. Moreover, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are often deeply mistrustful of the (Ashkenazi-dominated) Israeli left, which unfortunately was significantly responsible for their marginalization during the initial wave of Mizrahi and Sephardic arrivals following Israeli's independence. It has been the Israeli right, by and large, which has facilitated their inclusion in Israeli society while the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Israeli left continues to think of them as backwards, reactionary, and tribalistic.
These examples carry legitimate weight, but it would be wrong to assume that but-for (Ashkenazi) Jewish malfeasance Mizrahi Jews and Arabs would be thick as thieves. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding the removal -- effectively expulsion -- of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from the Arab world plays no small role in their less-than-coalitional outlook. And considerable swaths of the project of constructing an Arab national or pan-national identity have come at the expense of Jews and in opposition to Jews; at the very least they've rarely been encompassing of Jews on equal terms. As Sephardic Jewish researcher Mijal Bitton argues, the failure to adequately reckon (often, the outright denial of) with this raw history of oppression Mizrahi Jews experienced in Arab countries makes it extraordinarily difficult for Sephardic and Mizrahi to act as a "bridge" between Jews and Arabs, much less view themselves as in "coalition" with Palestinians.
The result is that proponents of the coalitional model typically exhibit ignorance of the actual conditions and perspectives of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews in favor of an imagined harmony of interests among all "Arabs" (non-Jew and Jew alike) that is conducive to collective action. A deeper investigation demonstrates that it is neither surprising nor a product of "false consciousness" that Mizrahim do not generally believe that an anti-Zionist program will do them any good; even as many very much believe that the Israeli state as currently constituted is insufficiently respectful to and attentive towards their unique histories, cultural heritages, and political priorities. Such a political standpoint does not fit neatly into either the (Ashkenazi) Jewish or (non-Jewish) Middle Eastern "coalition".
A good intersectional theorist is not intimidated by this. The entire point of intersectionality, after all, is to bring such issues to the surface when too often they remain submerged underneath the dominant discourses of "Jew" (as defined by Ashkenazim) or "Middle Eastern" (as defined by Muslim or sometimes Christian Arabs). I would suggest that an intersectional approach is in fact essential to ensuring that Mizrahi Jewish perspectives are given an adequate airing. And done properly, an intersectional lens attunes us to seeing how our own narratives -- even when we think of them as anti-oppression or liberatory, often do not encompass those outgroups within outgroups (like Mizrahi Jews), and how instead of seeking to engage with such groups in an egalitarian fashion we instead seek to brute-force them into the frames we've already established.
But the coalitional intersectionalist can't look past the fact that the Mizrahim are poor candidates for a "coalition" with other groups who are already members in good standing. Their interests in fact do not align nicely with the groups already included in the pantheon, they do not see themselves in terms which parallel the conceptions that dominate their constituent elements. To incorporate them into a coalition that is already in solidarity with (Ashkenazi) Jews would require significant alterations to the project -- incorporating Arab and Middle Eastern cultural practices and heritage, attacking head on discrimination Mizrahim face in Jewish communal settings inside and outside of Israel. And by the same token, to incorporate them into a coalition that is already in solidarity with (non-Jewish) Middle Easterners would likewise problematize key elements of that endeavor -- recognizing that Zionism is viewed as an essential liberatory element of some Middle Easterners' life experiences, acknowledging and fighting for the equal status of Jews as Middle Easterners, with equal entitlement to determine what that means. Such work would be tremendously difficult; and there is little evidence that non-Mizrahim (Jews or non-Jews) are willing to budge all that much in deference to Mizrahi differentiation. In essence, Mizrahim are welcome into the coalition on the non-negotiable condition that they not challenge any other member of the pack -- even when some of those members are directly responsible for facilitating Mizrahi marginalization. It is no wonder that Mizrahim refuse to enter on such terms.
So what is to be done? Coalitional intersectionalists are at a loss. At best they ignore Mizrahim outright and go about their coalitional work with those groups that are more easily assimilable. At worst they actively demand the exclusion of most Mizrahi voices as harmful to the good of the coalition, or pluck out those few whose perspectives can be incorporated into the preexisting coalitional politics with minimal stress. In neither case is Mizrahi marginalization adequately addressed; indeed, it is perpetuated in both.
This is not intersectionality. This is the very thing intersectionality was trying to combat. And it's why I'm deeply troubled by the activist trend to reduce "intersectionality" into the project of building coalitions.
The Sweet Polls with the Bitter
Last December, I posted some disheartening poll numbers out of Palestine which suggested that strong majorities opposed a two-state solution, opposed an egalitarian one-state solution even more than they opposed a two-state solution, and supported stabbing and other terrorist attacks. A new batch of polling provides better news, at least in the West Bank.
A majority of West Bank Palestinians oppose stabbing attacks on Israelis (an overwhelming majority of Gazans support them). Nearly 70% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution (Chemi Shalev observes that this figure is higher than that prevailing among Israelis) compared to a quarter favoring an egalitarian one-state solution. Moreover, they have strong negative views about both Hamas and ISIS.
Of course, one takeaway from this poll is that it matters, a lot, how one frames one's questions (something any poll expert could tell you). It also suggests deep divides between the outlook of Gaza versus West Bank Palestinians. One has to note that the blockaded Gazans are consistently more radicalized than their comparatively freer West Bank comrades, and that would seem to indicate that the blockade is a failure in its goal of breaking Hamas and creating a more hospitable atmosphere towards negotiation and co-existence. Of course, there's a chicken-and-egg problem here -- defenders of the blockade will no doubt argue that it is necessary because Gaza is a hotbed of radicalism and terrorism -- but to me that is an indicator that the blockade's success is an unfalsifiable proposition.
A majority of West Bank Palestinians oppose stabbing attacks on Israelis (an overwhelming majority of Gazans support them). Nearly 70% of Palestinians supported a two-state solution (Chemi Shalev observes that this figure is higher than that prevailing among Israelis) compared to a quarter favoring an egalitarian one-state solution. Moreover, they have strong negative views about both Hamas and ISIS.
Of course, one takeaway from this poll is that it matters, a lot, how one frames one's questions (something any poll expert could tell you). It also suggests deep divides between the outlook of Gaza versus West Bank Palestinians. One has to note that the blockaded Gazans are consistently more radicalized than their comparatively freer West Bank comrades, and that would seem to indicate that the blockade is a failure in its goal of breaking Hamas and creating a more hospitable atmosphere towards negotiation and co-existence. Of course, there's a chicken-and-egg problem here -- defenders of the blockade will no doubt argue that it is necessary because Gaza is a hotbed of radicalism and terrorism -- but to me that is an indicator that the blockade's success is an unfalsifiable proposition.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Strawson on One versus Two States
I linked to it on Facebook and Twitter, but it deserves a mention here: John Strawson has written an outstanding essay on the ongoing "one state" versus "two state" debate with respect to Israel and Palestine. I've noted my admiration for Professor Strawson before (he's on the law faculty at the University of East London, and has also visited at Birzeit University in Palestine), but this is truly an extraordinary work. I don't even want to excerpt it; it should be read in full and distributed widely.
Strawson's essay is part of a Fathom symposium responding to Perry Anderson's "The House of Zion" essay published in the December edition of the New Left Review. Other contributors include Michael Walzer, Shany Mor, Cary Nelson, and Einat Wilf. All are worth reading, but I consider Strawson to have delivered a truly standout critique.
Strawson's essay is part of a Fathom symposium responding to Perry Anderson's "The House of Zion" essay published in the December edition of the New Left Review. Other contributors include Michael Walzer, Shany Mor, Cary Nelson, and Einat Wilf. All are worth reading, but I consider Strawson to have delivered a truly standout critique.
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Worse Arguments About Anti-Semitism (Or, "Fighting Anti-Semitism Like Any Other Form of Racism")
Erik Loomis tackles a Roger Cohen column on campus anti-Semitism, which he labels as "Bad Arguments About Israel." I wouldn't really say Cohen's column is "about" Israel except in the barest sense of "The decision to partition this region of the world into both a Jewish and Palestinian state was a good faith effort at resolving valid but competing national and historical claims. Jewish presence in the Holy Land predates 1881, and Jews didn't elect to move there because a dart hit that portion of the globe at a drunken Elders of Zion social event." In reality, Cohen's column is "about" anti-Semitism, and it's alarming how few people can tell the difference.
But that's neither here nor there. Loomis' perspective is a familiar one, and perhaps it's worth exploring just how familiar it is. Loomis' opening gesture waves aside all of the examples Cohen gives.in one fell swoop:
based on the empirical data I do have*my own gut instinct that minorities like to make up tall tales about their own experiences to elicit ill-gotten sympathy, coupled with the social power that elevates that instinct into a valid argument as opposed to a raw manifestation of hierarchical dominance.
And even if this a thing beyond the fevered Jewish imagination, hey, sticks and stones am I right? Perhaps Loomis can set up a dinner date with Erika Christakis and they can commiserate together about oversensitive minorities who don't realize that "College students sometimes say stupid things." College is about experimentation and being open to other views; if Jewish students aren't willing to experiment with the view that they were personally responsible for shooting down that Malaysian Air flight, then they're a threat to the very essence of academic inquiry itself.
The next several segments are an extended discourse on colonialism and why U.N. Resolution 181 doesn't count. I have little to say here (since, as mentioned, I view this discussion as properly being about anti-Semitism, not Israel), except to note the sharp eurocentricity. Recognizing that there is an anti-Zionist Mizrahi minority just as there is an anti-Zionist Ashkenazi minority (speaking of cherry-picking, we'll return to that contingent in a moment), I still can't fathom just how tremendously alienating it must be for most Mizrahim to have their presence in the middle east so consistently and casually labeled as a foreign colonial imposition. It alienates me as an Ashkenazi Jew, but there's no question that the level of erasure it entails when applied to non-Ashkenazi Jews dwarfs what I experience.
Back to the main:
All that's left is an obligatory "Ted Cruz Ben Carson 'BDS has plenty of Jewish supporters' decisively refutes any claim of prejudice worth considering" reference, and we can call it a day: a perfect encapsulation of a particular way of, er, "fighting anti-Semitism like any other form of racism."
* Incidentally, if one does want some data, Jews of college age are more likely than any other age cohort to have been called anti-Semitic names, and more than half report having experienced an anti-Semitic incident within the academic year. Admittedly, the persuasive impact of all of this is dependent on the view that Jewish self-reporting of anti-Semitism is valid. Which is to say, probably invalid to those people who generally think Jews are dishonest and disingenuous in reporting anti-Semitism.
But that's neither here nor there. Loomis' perspective is a familiar one, and perhaps it's worth exploring just how familiar it is. Loomis' opening gesture waves aside all of the examples Cohen gives.in one fell swoop:
What follows [in Cohen's column] is the classic cherry picking from bad campus newspaper articles and student statements used time and time again to generate worry about what the kids are doing on college campuses. Guess what? College students sometimes stay [sic] stupid things! News at 11.Stupid college students; they have the temerity to express hurt at being subject to ethnic slurs and marginalization without providing rigorous empirical data first! What about all the women on campus who aren't being assaulted? What about all the students of color who aren't being profiled? It must be cherry-picked,
And even if this a thing beyond the fevered Jewish imagination, hey, sticks and stones am I right? Perhaps Loomis can set up a dinner date with Erika Christakis and they can commiserate together about oversensitive minorities who don't realize that "College students sometimes say stupid things." College is about experimentation and being open to other views; if Jewish students aren't willing to experiment with the view that they were personally responsible for shooting down that Malaysian Air flight, then they're a threat to the very essence of academic inquiry itself.
The next several segments are an extended discourse on colonialism and why U.N. Resolution 181 doesn't count. I have little to say here (since, as mentioned, I view this discussion as properly being about anti-Semitism, not Israel), except to note the sharp eurocentricity. Recognizing that there is an anti-Zionist Mizrahi minority just as there is an anti-Zionist Ashkenazi minority (speaking of cherry-picking, we'll return to that contingent in a moment), I still can't fathom just how tremendously alienating it must be for most Mizrahim to have their presence in the middle east so consistently and casually labeled as a foreign colonial imposition. It alienates me as an Ashkenazi Jew, but there's no question that the level of erasure it entails when applied to non-Ashkenazi Jews dwarfs what I experience.
Back to the main:
Anti-Semitism is a real thing and it needs to be fought like any other form of racism or prejudice. But you can’t take a few idiotic comments by a few random students here and there and then create a huge scare about it in a major newspaper. I’m sorry but there’s no “demonization of Israel” on the left that is worth discussing.Admittedly "Anti-Semitism needs to be fought like any other form of racism or prejudice: By denying that it exists in non-trivial quantities and vigorously denouncing anyone who presents it as a problem 'worth discussing'" does track some prominent stratagems for "fighting" other forms of racism. I wonder if Ms. Christakis can make room at the table for Reince Priebus and the rest of the RNC to join?
All that's left is an obligatory "
* Incidentally, if one does want some data, Jews of college age are more likely than any other age cohort to have been called anti-Semitic names, and more than half report having experienced an anti-Semitic incident within the academic year. Admittedly, the persuasive impact of all of this is dependent on the view that Jewish self-reporting of anti-Semitism is valid. Which is to say, probably invalid to those people who generally think Jews are dishonest and disingenuous in reporting anti-Semitism.
Monday, March 07, 2016
Do Jews Need a Protest Politic?
I don't like protesting.
I don't like sit-ins or marches or chanting or lists of ultimatums. Perhaps some of this is that I don't feel comfortable in these spaces -- you never know when you think you're objecting to high tuition only to find out that it's really all the Zionists' fault -- but it's also temperamental. Odd as this may be to say, I don't like confrontation. I'm an introvert and a writer, I like to take my time and consider various positions and grapple with other perspectives, and much of the performance of protesting seems orthogonal to all of that. So protesting has never been a big part of my political M.O..
And yet, I've begun to wonder whether Jews -- the Jewish majority, that is -- need to develop more protest tactics to counter rising tides of anti-Semitism.
When one thinks about why protests "work", there are two main considerations. Sometimes, protests succeed because of their direct coercive effects:a boycott inflicts enough economic pain to force a change in policy, a sit-in is sufficiently inconveniencing that an administration has to yield. More frequently, protests exert indirect power: they put an issue "on the map", demonstrating the depth of feeling that exists behind it and its significance as a issue of concern to the relevant protesting community.
Neither of these map on well for Jews. Protests rarely can muster enough coercive power to mandate direct change, and in any event if Jews tried to utilize such power we'd immediately run into a hammerfist of "World Dominating Zionist Conspiracy strikes again!" In terms of indirect effects, well, whatever other problems afflict the Jews, people being unaware that we see a link between certain segments of anti-Zionist practice and anti-Semitism isn't one of them. The issue isn't that people aren't aware of our broad-stroke position, it's that they're utterly dismissive of it as a valid concern.
But I think there is another potential dimension to protest politics that the foregoing doesn't capture. The great legal scholar Robert Cover (I think) once said something to the effect that minorities must act in a manner that demonstrates that they believe they are entitled to equal rights and equal standing in the relevant social communities. They must take those steps that clearly assert that they are here and part of the community that they are making a claim on, equal in value to everyone else.
At least on campuses, it seems that certain brands of protest have become the language through which communities communicate that they are part of the circle of progressive concern. We can identify an issue as a "progressive" one by reference to how its advocates perform their demands -- the medium rather than the message. If something is demanded through a sit-in or a march, that's an issue that's in the progressive pantheon. Something that is pressed through a Board of Trustees resolution, not so much.
Thus far, Jewish groups on campus have almost never organized their political activities this way. They've mostly done things the way that I would like to do them -- letters to the editor and newspaper columns, blog posts and editorials, and when all else fails urging the political branches to step in and be that brute hedge against outright marginalization. And while I don't want to say these tactics have met with no success, they have acted to further isolate Jews from the space of progressive concern. Communities progressives are concerned about don't get Board resolutions passed. Indeed, such resolutions can be dismissed as proof that the Jews are really in the dominant camp; they are part of the structure of power to be smashed rather than a fellow marginalized group to be engaged with.
And so I wonder: What would happen if Jews started acting through the medium of contemporary progressive protest? What would happen if Jews occupied the office of UCSD's Curtiz Marez, demanding that he take anti-Semitism seriously and renounce the anti-Semitic elements latent in the BDS movement he champions (why target Prof. Marez when there are many academics who support BDS? "One has to start somewhere".)? What would happen if Jewish campus institutions voted no confidence in their student governments when they passed BDS resolutions? What would happen if Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews staged sit-ins in Middle Eastern student spaces, demanding that they stop perpetuating their marginalization and accord them equal standing to articulate what Middle Eastern identity means? What would happen if Jews rallied on campus lawns and occupied the quad and said they weren't going anywhere until student government and administration alike took forceful steps to integrate Jewish perspectives into the multicultural curriculum and concretely demonstrate that anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and exclusion are wholly intolerable on a modern campus?
I honestly don't know. The cynic in me thinks that we'd get the same old rolls of the eyes, with a healthy dose of "co-opting" and "appropriating" charges ladled on top. But maybe not. There's a lot of talk about how progressive Jews need to speak in progressive language, but language is about the medium as much as it is the message. It might be the speaking in a medium that is identifiably-left, that suggests that Jews will no longer treat anti-Semitism as politics-as-usual, might make a dent.
As I said, I don't like any of this one bit. Not occupying professors' offices, not staging sit-ins at another group's meetings, not rallies and marches on the quads (resolutions of no confidence is maybe the closest to what I'd generally be okay with). They aren't my style, and they aren't what I'm comfortable doing. I'm certainly not endorsing any of this. But if someone like me -- who really instinctively recoils at this sort of practice -- is nonetheless having these thoughts, perhaps that's a very big sign that they are thoughts worth taking seriously (even if they shouldn't be converted into concrete action).
I don't like sit-ins or marches or chanting or lists of ultimatums. Perhaps some of this is that I don't feel comfortable in these spaces -- you never know when you think you're objecting to high tuition only to find out that it's really all the Zionists' fault -- but it's also temperamental. Odd as this may be to say, I don't like confrontation. I'm an introvert and a writer, I like to take my time and consider various positions and grapple with other perspectives, and much of the performance of protesting seems orthogonal to all of that. So protesting has never been a big part of my political M.O..
And yet, I've begun to wonder whether Jews -- the Jewish majority, that is -- need to develop more protest tactics to counter rising tides of anti-Semitism.
When one thinks about why protests "work", there are two main considerations. Sometimes, protests succeed because of their direct coercive effects:a boycott inflicts enough economic pain to force a change in policy, a sit-in is sufficiently inconveniencing that an administration has to yield. More frequently, protests exert indirect power: they put an issue "on the map", demonstrating the depth of feeling that exists behind it and its significance as a issue of concern to the relevant protesting community.
Neither of these map on well for Jews. Protests rarely can muster enough coercive power to mandate direct change, and in any event if Jews tried to utilize such power we'd immediately run into a hammerfist of "World Dominating Zionist Conspiracy strikes again!" In terms of indirect effects, well, whatever other problems afflict the Jews, people being unaware that we see a link between certain segments of anti-Zionist practice and anti-Semitism isn't one of them. The issue isn't that people aren't aware of our broad-stroke position, it's that they're utterly dismissive of it as a valid concern.
But I think there is another potential dimension to protest politics that the foregoing doesn't capture. The great legal scholar Robert Cover (I think) once said something to the effect that minorities must act in a manner that demonstrates that they believe they are entitled to equal rights and equal standing in the relevant social communities. They must take those steps that clearly assert that they are here and part of the community that they are making a claim on, equal in value to everyone else.
At least on campuses, it seems that certain brands of protest have become the language through which communities communicate that they are part of the circle of progressive concern. We can identify an issue as a "progressive" one by reference to how its advocates perform their demands -- the medium rather than the message. If something is demanded through a sit-in or a march, that's an issue that's in the progressive pantheon. Something that is pressed through a Board of Trustees resolution, not so much.
Thus far, Jewish groups on campus have almost never organized their political activities this way. They've mostly done things the way that I would like to do them -- letters to the editor and newspaper columns, blog posts and editorials, and when all else fails urging the political branches to step in and be that brute hedge against outright marginalization. And while I don't want to say these tactics have met with no success, they have acted to further isolate Jews from the space of progressive concern. Communities progressives are concerned about don't get Board resolutions passed. Indeed, such resolutions can be dismissed as proof that the Jews are really in the dominant camp; they are part of the structure of power to be smashed rather than a fellow marginalized group to be engaged with.
And so I wonder: What would happen if Jews started acting through the medium of contemporary progressive protest? What would happen if Jews occupied the office of UCSD's Curtiz Marez, demanding that he take anti-Semitism seriously and renounce the anti-Semitic elements latent in the BDS movement he champions (why target Prof. Marez when there are many academics who support BDS? "One has to start somewhere".)? What would happen if Jewish campus institutions voted no confidence in their student governments when they passed BDS resolutions? What would happen if Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews staged sit-ins in Middle Eastern student spaces, demanding that they stop perpetuating their marginalization and accord them equal standing to articulate what Middle Eastern identity means? What would happen if Jews rallied on campus lawns and occupied the quad and said they weren't going anywhere until student government and administration alike took forceful steps to integrate Jewish perspectives into the multicultural curriculum and concretely demonstrate that anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and exclusion are wholly intolerable on a modern campus?
I honestly don't know. The cynic in me thinks that we'd get the same old rolls of the eyes, with a healthy dose of "co-opting" and "appropriating" charges ladled on top. But maybe not. There's a lot of talk about how progressive Jews need to speak in progressive language, but language is about the medium as much as it is the message. It might be the speaking in a medium that is identifiably-left, that suggests that Jews will no longer treat anti-Semitism as politics-as-usual, might make a dent.
As I said, I don't like any of this one bit. Not occupying professors' offices, not staging sit-ins at another group's meetings, not rallies and marches on the quads (resolutions of no confidence is maybe the closest to what I'd generally be okay with). They aren't my style, and they aren't what I'm comfortable doing. I'm certainly not endorsing any of this. But if someone like me -- who really instinctively recoils at this sort of practice -- is nonetheless having these thoughts, perhaps that's a very big sign that they are thoughts worth taking seriously (even if they shouldn't be converted into concrete action).
Sunday, March 06, 2016
Arguments from Mediocrity
Scott Lemieux does a brilliant job dissecting Steve Salaita's cliched "voting is primarily about feeling good about myself, and voting for Hillary Clinton won't give me a fuzzy" presentation. Such arguments, as Lemieux observes, are deeply selfish and consumerist (I doubt most people vote because they are "inspired" by their politicians; I vote because I hope the politicians I vote for will make the world materially better compared to the ones I don't vote for. It's not about my feelings.). They also elide completely the very real and material differences in life circumstances for many that would result in a Trump versus Clinton administration -- an elision that no doubt makes sense to someone in Salaita's position because they primarily will impact people not him. That basic fact doesn't change no matter how many times one intones "liberal" or "neoliberal" as if that constituted an actual argument.
I'd only add that Steve Salaita, of all people, should be reticent to disturb those "mythograph[ies]" which have "conditioned us to treat mediocrity as superior." At this stage it's the only thing keeping his professional career afloat.*
* Usual caveats apply about how I consider Illinois' unhiring of Salaita to have been a breach of academic freedom; the university made its bed and should have had to lie in it, etc..
Saturday, March 05, 2016
What a Dumb Way To End It All
Democracy means your side loses. Which stinks, when you like your side and dislike the other. But that's the way the cookie crumbles. You can't piss and moan about how the system is irrevocably broken everytime you don't win an election. And so while I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio would be awful, awful presidents who would do disastrous things to this country -- well, that's what happens with voting sometimes. Tough cookies.
Donald Trump is potentially different. With him you really do see the potential for non-hyperbolic apocalypse. Shooting off nuclear weapons at random countries, refusing to respect the rule of law ... he is the first serious presidential candidate in my lifetime who genuinely threatens the fabric of American democracy (and, in its way, global stability, since a destabilized American democracy would also be a global catastrophe).
And if that is the case -- what a stupid way to go! All great powers eventually decline, but one would at least hope that America's would be a little dignified. But the history books about Trump's ascendancy would have to conclude that the greatest, most powerful country in the history of the planet unraveled because it couldn't tolerate someone from the wrong ethnic group being president and decided to throw a collective temper tantrum by electing in the most absurd overt demagogue possible.
Most Democrats continue to think Donald Trump is unelectable come November. I'm inclined to agree -- the case of candidates like Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell in the otherwise-GOP-wave year of 2010 indicates that enthusiastic Republican fury manifesting in the nomination of crazy turns off most American voters even in environment's broadly favorable to the GOP -- but who knows? It's all fun and games until somebody gets elected.
Thursday, March 03, 2016
A Claim of Anti-Semitism is an Argument, not a "Smear"
My (first ever!) column for Ha'aretz is online, titled "The anti-Semitism Problem of pro-Palestinian Progressive" (I would have picked the title I used for this post instead -- hey, nobody ever said I knew how to sell copy). It is directly a response to Mira Sucharov's "Crying Wolf on Campus Anti-Semitism" editorial, but more broadly it provides a public exposition of the argument I explore in "Playing with Cards: Discrimination Claims of the Charge of Bad Faith".
Readers of the blog know the drill. Responding to claims of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, etc., with the presumption that they're "made in bad faith" or are the product of hypersensitivity or parahoia, is a response built on prejudicial foundations. It is the key move in the right-wing playbook regarding race ("You're just playing the race card!"), and it is migrated without a hitch over to many on the left regarding anti-Semitism (The Livingstone Formulation). In neither case is it fair play. Anti-Semitism claims are arguments; they may be right or wrong, but they should be addressed on their merits, not swept aside as part of a supposed pattern of Jewish perfidy and dishonesty.
Readers of the blog know the drill. Responding to claims of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, etc., with the presumption that they're "made in bad faith" or are the product of hypersensitivity or parahoia, is a response built on prejudicial foundations. It is the key move in the right-wing playbook regarding race ("You're just playing the race card!"), and it is migrated without a hitch over to many on the left regarding anti-Semitism (The Livingstone Formulation). In neither case is it fair play. Anti-Semitism claims are arguments; they may be right or wrong, but they should be addressed on their merits, not swept aside as part of a supposed pattern of Jewish perfidy and dishonesty.
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Will the Neo-Cons Return to the Democratic Party?
Neo-conservatives were liberals, once (much as Saruman described orcs: "They were elves, once"). Might they become Democrats again? With Donald Trump presaging a potential outright crackup in the Republican Party, I think it's a very realistic prospect. Trump is, to say the least, not the neo-conservative candidate of choice, but the threat he poses to neoconservatives runs deeper than most. To see why, it's worth digging into exactly how the neo-conservatives originally switched sides.
The origin story of modern neo-conservativism is that some liberals, in the 1970s, grew frustrated with what they took as their cohorts indulging in new age argle-bargle that made them soft in pursuing their own values. Internationally, they perceived concerns about "imperialism" or military overreach as preventing America from being a force for good in the world. They were hawks, but hawks justified by the justness of the American cause. Domestically, they had often supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s but saw little difference between the "old" Jim Crow racial politics and "new" left identity politics of groups like the Black Panthers. They styled themselves as hard-headed social scientists who believed in equality but measured it via data. There's a reason neo-conservatives view themselves as their side's intellectual wing (There are excellent reasons to contest these self-assessments, I'm just going with how the neo-cons viewed themselves).
From this vantage, Trump is conservatism out of the neo-cons' worst nightmare. Domestically, he primarily plays on the social fears of the white base in ways that do not even allow the facade of egalitarianism . His foreign policy is not internationalist in orientation at all and seems entirely uninterested in even pretending to project American goodness abroad. He's openly racist, openly anti-intellectual, and openly fear-mongering.
And against him will almost certainly be ... Hillary Clinton. Someone who absolutely seems to have hawkish tendencies. Someone who seems to surround herself with smart people with good intellectual pedigrees. Someone whose New Democrat husband at least gained the respect, if not the support, of neo-cons in the 90s (they were never among the true rabid Clinton-haters). Someone whose social liberalism is hardly a deal-breaker (neo-conservatives tended to be far more socially moderate than the rest of the GOP).
The GOP that Trump has built has no real space for neoconservatives. But they could easily find a home as the moderate wing of a Clinton-led Democratic Party. If there is any faction within the GOP that I predict to defect not just en masse, but permanently, over to the Democrats following a Trump nomination, it's them.*
* Disclaimer: This post in no way should be read as suggesting that Democrats should alter their position to be more amenable to neo-conservative views. It is pure prognostication; no normative or prescriptive suggestions should be inferred.
The origin story of modern neo-conservativism is that some liberals, in the 1970s, grew frustrated with what they took as their cohorts indulging in new age argle-bargle that made them soft in pursuing their own values. Internationally, they perceived concerns about "imperialism" or military overreach as preventing America from being a force for good in the world. They were hawks, but hawks justified by the justness of the American cause. Domestically, they had often supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s but saw little difference between the "old" Jim Crow racial politics and "new" left identity politics of groups like the Black Panthers. They styled themselves as hard-headed social scientists who believed in equality but measured it via data. There's a reason neo-conservatives view themselves as their side's intellectual wing (There are excellent reasons to contest these self-assessments, I'm just going with how the neo-cons viewed themselves).
From this vantage, Trump is conservatism out of the neo-cons' worst nightmare. Domestically, he primarily plays on the social fears of the white base in ways that do not even allow the facade of egalitarianism . His foreign policy is not internationalist in orientation at all and seems entirely uninterested in even pretending to project American goodness abroad. He's openly racist, openly anti-intellectual, and openly fear-mongering.
And against him will almost certainly be ... Hillary Clinton. Someone who absolutely seems to have hawkish tendencies. Someone who seems to surround herself with smart people with good intellectual pedigrees. Someone whose New Democrat husband at least gained the respect, if not the support, of neo-cons in the 90s (they were never among the true rabid Clinton-haters). Someone whose social liberalism is hardly a deal-breaker (neo-conservatives tended to be far more socially moderate than the rest of the GOP).
The GOP that Trump has built has no real space for neoconservatives. But they could easily find a home as the moderate wing of a Clinton-led Democratic Party. If there is any faction within the GOP that I predict to defect not just en masse, but permanently, over to the Democrats following a Trump nomination, it's them.*
* Disclaimer: This post in no way should be read as suggesting that Democrats should alter their position to be more amenable to neo-conservative views. It is pure prognostication; no normative or prescriptive suggestions should be inferred.
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
There's No Liberal Obligation To Prevent Trump from Being Nominated
Donald Trump would be an embarrassment, a disaster, and an outright danger if elected President of the United States. This creates a joint obligation shared by all Americans to try and stop him from being elected. For Republicans, that's easily satisfied in the primaries (vote for another Republican) but very painful to do so in November. For liberals, there is an equally strong obligation to stop him from becoming President in November.
There is, however, no liberal obligation to stop him from being nominated. I have no intention of crossing over and voting in the GOP primary (even assuming the race is still undecided by the time my state rolls around).
Now don't get me wrong: I hope beyond hope that the Republican Party does not select Donald Trump as their nominee, though that hope is becoming increasingly dim. I hope that because even if it is true that Trump would be "easier to beat" than Rubio or Cruz, I still prefer that the forces of unhinged xenophobic racism be weaker rather than stronger, and a Trump nomination would indicate they are far stronger than previously anticipated. So I certainly prefer that Trump loses.
But the Republican nominee should be the person who reflects the preferences of Republican voters. One important function of democracy is aggregative -- it gives a rough sense of people's raw preferences. And it is valuable information to know that open racism, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and thuggery have significant appeal across the base of a major political party. Again, I hope that it turns out that their appeal is not strong enough to carry a nomination. But already the persistent appeal of Trump has been forcing Republican intellectuals to grapple with facts about their rank-and-file that they've long been in denial about. Democratic cross-over voting would only serve to blur the truth and stall the day of reckoning.
Donald Trump has already forced Americans of all stripes to seriously reckon with a revived and rejuvenated racist movement in the United States. That effect would be magnified if he were the nominee, and it would accentuate the threat that this movement represents. But it still only a difference in degree, rather than kind, from what he's already accomplished. As President he could do far worse, and that is a terrifying prospect that should unite everyone. But the call to prevent Trump's nomination, as opposed to his election, seems to be justified based on little more than saving the Republican Party from additional embarrassment. And that isn't any duty Democrats are obliged to take upon themselves
There is, however, no liberal obligation to stop him from being nominated. I have no intention of crossing over and voting in the GOP primary (even assuming the race is still undecided by the time my state rolls around).
Now don't get me wrong: I hope beyond hope that the Republican Party does not select Donald Trump as their nominee, though that hope is becoming increasingly dim. I hope that because even if it is true that Trump would be "easier to beat" than Rubio or Cruz, I still prefer that the forces of unhinged xenophobic racism be weaker rather than stronger, and a Trump nomination would indicate they are far stronger than previously anticipated. So I certainly prefer that Trump loses.
But the Republican nominee should be the person who reflects the preferences of Republican voters. One important function of democracy is aggregative -- it gives a rough sense of people's raw preferences. And it is valuable information to know that open racism, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and thuggery have significant appeal across the base of a major political party. Again, I hope that it turns out that their appeal is not strong enough to carry a nomination. But already the persistent appeal of Trump has been forcing Republican intellectuals to grapple with facts about their rank-and-file that they've long been in denial about. Democratic cross-over voting would only serve to blur the truth and stall the day of reckoning.
Donald Trump has already forced Americans of all stripes to seriously reckon with a revived and rejuvenated racist movement in the United States. That effect would be magnified if he were the nominee, and it would accentuate the threat that this movement represents. But it still only a difference in degree, rather than kind, from what he's already accomplished. As President he could do far worse, and that is a terrifying prospect that should unite everyone. But the call to prevent Trump's nomination, as opposed to his election, seems to be justified based on little more than saving the Republican Party from additional embarrassment. And that isn't any duty Democrats are obliged to take upon themselves
Monday, February 29, 2016
The Army Veteran Muslim Rights Activist Voting for Trump Because Zionism
If you wanted to find the antithesis of every bit of conventional wisdom/stereotyping out there, you'd do worse than to point to Farhaj Hassan. He's a devout Muslim U.S. Army reservist suing the city of New York for its police surveillance program of Muslims who is supporting Donald Trump for President because it stands opposed to "Hillary Clinton’s classically Zionist-run foreign policy." My head hurts
In conclusion, because we've found a Muslim who supports Trump, any claims of Islamophobia against the Trump campaign are now null and void (this argument brought to you by Jewish Voice for Peace). Indeed, a January CAIR poll finds that 7% of American Muslims support Trump -- more than all other Republican candidates combined (Hillary Clinton pulls 52% and Bernie Sanders takes 22%).
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