Two-Thirds Excited, One-Third Terrified

I've alluded to it a couple of times before, but I don't think I've come out expressly and said: we're having a baby!

(It's a boy, due in January)

When people ask me how I'm doing, I have a stock answer: "Two-thirds excited, one-third terrified." It's always good for a laugh. But it's more or less accurate.

There's so much I'm excited about. I'm excited to share my favorite books. I'm excited to get him into Calvin & Hobbes. I'm excited to take him to hockey games. I'm excited to tell him stories. I'm excited to see him sit up, crawl, and walk for the first time. I'm excited to learn his passions. I'm excited to find out who he's going to be. I'm excited to be a dad, and I'm excited to watch my wife become a mom. This is, of course, only a very partial list.

But I'm also, admittedly, a bit terrified. And I know that's normal -- everyone says the moment the hospital discharges you and just ... sends you home with a baby generates a feeling of incredulous disbelief ("Who, me? I'm in charge now? You're just letting this happen?"). But I want to talk about the fear side in a bit more in depth.

One overall salutary development we've seen in society recently is that we've moved towards allowing women -- including women who very much want to have children -- to have a more complicated relationship with pregnancy and childrearing beyond "it's the greatest thing ever and if you have any misgivings you're a failure as a woman." There is at least some more space to acknowledge that pregnancy is uncomfortable, and labor painful, and parenting is exhausting. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother. It's an acknowledgment of reality, and it makes for stronger, not weaker, parents.

Meanwhile, for men, there's been a cultural push in the other direction, because the gendered social dynamics began in a different place. For men acculturated into thinking of children as either "seen not heard", or a sort of doomsday event ("baby trap"), the emphasis has been on accentuating both the positives of fatherhood but also the responsibilities of being a good partner. Parenting is equal parts our job. It's not okay to just leave it all to the missus. In fact, the missus almost certainly has it a lot harder than you (you're not the one gestating and then expelling a whole human being inside your body).

This, too, is a salutary development. But it has I think left a bit of a gap in men being able to talk earnestly about their legitimate fears -- in part precisely because those fears in some ways need to be subordinated to the more pressing needs of one's partner.

For example: one thing I'm really scared about is the process of labor. Leaving aside catastrophizing about medical complications, it's a terrible thing to see my person, whom I love more than anyone in the world, in pain. Under normal circumstances, that fear and fright solicits resources of care and concern -- probably from my wife, who is my main source of care and concern when I'm feeling fear or fright. But of course, in the context of labor, that resource is unavailable, and more broadly my need for care resources is obviously of lower priority than my wife's -- what kind of self-absorbed jerk would I be if I made the pain of childbirth about supporting me? My job in the delivery room is to support my wife however I can, not to horde care resources for myself. I don't want to reenact this scene from Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I've spoken about this before as an "empathy drought": circumstances where our care resources are overtaxed and so need to be triaged. And so again, I want to emphasize that the prioritization here is absolutely, 100% proper. There is no injustice here. And the lack of injustice is, in its way, the injustice -- or at least the loneliness: what is one supposed to do when one's genuine needs (because I don't think, in the abstract, that the pain of seeing a loved one in pain is not the sort of thing where one might need emotional support) are rightfully subordinated? It's hard, and it generates a lacuna.

Childbirth represents an especially clear case. But there is some carry over to fatherhood as well -- it's hard to talk about one's genuine fears and concerns without sounding like one wants to reach back into the not-so-misty past of overgrown man-babying where mom-wife just took care of everything. And again, it's a good thing that we're rearticulating manhood and fatherhood. But that doesn't change the fact that, just as a more complex relationship to childrearing for women that speaks to both the joys and the fears doesn't make one out as a bad mother, so too for fathers as well.

Because while I'm two-thirds excited, there is plenty that sits in that third of terror. I'm scared of not getting enough sleep. I'm scared of freezing up when my kid throws a tantrum. I'm scared of not knowing how to balance between transmitting my values and letting him be his own person. I'm scared of my two-person life suddenly adding a third. I'm scared of not having time for my own hobbies. I'm scared of raising a Jewish child in today's world. Hell, I'm scared of bringing any child in today's world. Again, only a partial list, and not one I claim is unique to men. But it's a real list, and I don't think it's one that is unreasonable in soliciting support. 

I'm not a parent yet, so I don't have some deep words of wisdom to offer on this. But I do believe, and I've always believed, that letting oneself be vulnerable and honest encourages others to be as well. Talking about these things openly lets others do so too. We don't have to work through these fears alone. We should not and need not present these fears as the number one priority of parenthood. But the more people who come out and speak, the more this burden can be shared, and the more room we all have to also turn our attention to the essential task of being great fathers and great partners. So this is me doing my part: being open, and being vulnerable, and trying to make everyone a little less alone -- because there's so much to be excited about.

The Conservative Experiment at New College is Failing on Easy Mode

I'll admit: when Ron DeSantis and Christopher Rufo announced their intention to convert the New College of Florida into a conservative indoctrination camp, I thought they might succeed. Not just in the enshrining conservative orthodoxy part, but in doing so while maintaining or increasing New College's numbers along traditional metrics of academic excellence.

Simply put, the New College is a small place (fewer than 700 students). And so my logic was straight-forward: are there 700 young conservatives with reasonably good test scores who are eager to devote their college experience to a crusade in owning the libs? Probably! Especially given the largesse that undoubtedly would be funneled to them by the DeSantis administration in support! And given the high profile of DeSantis' and Rufo's machinations, it would be easy to attract that sort of young right-wing zealot to the New College campus. Any right-wing culture warrior who would find this sort of endeavor appealing no doubt would have heard of the New College and what's being done there, and would quickly put it at the top of their application list.

The problem, I thought, was always going to be one of scalability. Sure there may be 700 such students who could make the New College experiment into a "success". But are there 10,000? 100,000? The factors which would make the New College experiment work could not be replicated across the education sector as a whole. Try this at the University of Florida and you'd just have the academic wrecking ball of mass faculty departures and an enraged student body, and nothing to show for it. So my prediction would be that some of the "cream of the crop" currently going to Liberty or Patrick Henry might redirect themselves to the New College, thus giving a false impression that there was untapped demand for the product Rufo was selling, and then we'd have to explain that redistributing the small set of baby conservative crusaders is not actually evidence of a plan that can work at scale.

But it turns out I was still giving Rufo and DeSantis too much credit. Because the early returns are in, and while they've certainly done a number in terms of destroying the New College's academic reputation and standing (over a third of the faculty have departed, alongside dozens of transferring students), the new crop of students coming in are actually less impressive than those the college attracted before the takeover.

Rufo speaks a lot about academic excellence and the virtues of a classical liberal education. But as Steven Walker of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in a damning July story, the incoming class recruited by the new administration has lower average grades, SAT scores and ACT scores than last year’s class. “Much of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school’s $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships,” wrote Walker.

With all the publicity, and all the conservative cheerleading, and all the momentum of the right's latest culture war, the New College couldn't even attract a few hundred talented right-wing youth to create the impression of a successful reform? Hilarious.

And it gets better. Rufo defends the recruitment of underperforming athletes on the grounds that -- wait for it -- there are too many ladies at the New College.

Rather than reviving some traditional model of academic excellence, then, it looks as though New College leaders are simply trying to replace a culture they find politically hostile with one meant to be more congenial. The end of gender studies and the special treatment given to incoming athletes are part of the same project, masculinizing a place that had been heavily feminist, artsy and queer. When I spoke to Rufo last weekend, he offered several explanations for New College’s new emphasis on sports, including the classical idea that a healthy body sustains a healthy mind. But an important part of the investment in athletics, he said, is that it is a way to make New College more male and, by extension, less left wing.

In the past, about two-thirds of New College’s students were women. “This is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems,” said Rufo. Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into “what many have called a social justice ghetto.” The new leadership, he said, is “rebalancing the ratio of students” in the hopes of ultimately achieving gender parity.

But gender parity is not necessarily compatible with a pure academic meritocracy, which Rufo claims to prize. Women are outpacing men in education in many parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Hungary, nearly 55 percent of university students are women, leading the government to warn about the “feminization” of higher education. Selective American colleges tend to have more female than male applicants; to maintain something approaching a gender balance, some have adopted lower standards for men. In other words, it often takes deliberate intervention — one might call it affirmative action — to create a student body in which women don’t predominate. New College isn’t jettisoning gender ideology. It’s just adopting a different one.

Oh buddy, I hope upon hope someone sues the New College for sex discrimination based on these passages. 

It's entirely appropriate to call Rufo's endeavors an affirmative action program for men. And while the SFFA opinion is about race-based affirmative action, even before that case conservative lower courts had been reflexively applying their affirmative action skepticism to sex-based programs (for example, in Vitolo v. Guzman, the 6th Circuit struck down preferences for women in COVID relief programs using essentially identical analysis to why it struck down race-based preferences). The logic of SFFA should, if fairly applied (I know, I know: that's one hell of a caveat), cover a case like this as well.

But even absent SFFA, the sex discrimination here is worse than a standard affirmative action case. Not only does the quoted language from Rufo suggest that the New College's decisions were taken "because of, not in spite of", the effect they'd have on women, they also demonstrate that explicit hostility to women -- a belief that too many women leads to "a social justice ghetto" and creates "cultural problems" -- was a motivating factor in the decision. This is far more powerful evidence of discriminatory intent than one would find in, say, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology case (where race-neutral changes to admissions policies were alleged to be motivated by discriminatory animus against Asians). Even defenders of affirmative action have never agreed that an affirmative action program could be justified by disdain for the overrepresented class. And one would struggle to find a more overt admission of misogynistic motivations than what one has here -- all in the service of further degrading the New College's academic quality in service of an ideological indoctrination effort.

There's still time for Rufo to, er, "right ship". If you dump enough money and resources into the New College, it will attract students no matter how bad its academic reputation gets. A lavishly funded subsidy program for right-wing kids really should be able to find an audience even if it's being run by incompetents.

But for now, this is just delightfully embarrassing. What a joke.

UPDATE: I believe it's paywalled, but this article has a lot more detail on the utter chaos that's overtaken the New College as it prepares for the next academic year.

Assumption of Pregnancy Risk

A Nebraska Republican, State Senator Steve Halloran, has challenged the notion that the post-Dobbs world "forces women to be pregnant" by arguing the following:

“No one’s forcing anyone to be pregnant. Pregnancy’s a voluntary act between two consenting adults.”

Immediately, one might note that both the "consenting" and the "adults" parts of that sentence are not at all necessary. And that is no small elision! But beyond that, pregnancy isn't really an "act". It's a status. People who become pregnant consent to the status of being pregnant if and only if they are permitted to terminate that status and choose not to.

What Halloran is trying to gesture at is the notion that any person who consents to sex, also consents to becoming and staying pregnant. But we don't typically call that sort of downstream effect "consent". Rather, the phrase Senator Halloran really is going for, but doesn't want to use, is "assumes the risk".  We might say that if I mouth off at strangers in a seedy bar, I assume the risk of getting punched. That is not the same thing as saying I consent to participating in a bar fight.

Halloran, for his part, believes that if a woman has sex, she assumes the risk of becoming pregnant and can therefore be coerced into preserving that status regardless of her actual preferences or any intervening changes in circumstances (whether those changes be health-related, financial, emotional, familial, or anything else). In this, he is reflecting a common Republican view. Pregnancy, as far as the GOP is concerned, is a risk sexually-active women take. And having assumed that risk, any further consent they might want to offer or withdraw is wholly and utterly superfluous. Once a woman becomes pregnant, consent for Republicans is perhaps a nice to have, but absolutely not a need-to-have.

Post-Conference Roundup

Last week, approximately 35 speakers (and dozens more guests) came to Lewis & Clark Law School for the 2nd Annual Law vs. Antisemitism conference. It was an event I'd been planning for over a year, and I'm pleased to report it was a rousing success. The panels were scintillating, the conversations crackling, and the two keynotes (by the ADL's Steve Freeman and civil rights activist Eric Ward) blew the doors off the joint. I could not be prouder.

Unfortunately, as the conference approached I could feel myself getting a cold, and so I did that deal-with-the-devil bit where I just willed myself to not be sick for the conference, and my body was like "okay, but you're going to pay for that come Tuesday." So the day after the conference I was sick as a dog. But now I'm mostly better -- just some residual congestation.

Anyway, here's a roundup:

***

Haven't seen the clip, but apparently a protester held up a "Jews control the USA" sign on the CNN segment reporting on Trump's indictment today. So that's fun.

Iowa school hit with bomb threats over LGBT book after "LibsOfTikTok" sics her goons on them.

In other "is killing students in school controversial?" news, Nashville students walk out of class to protest for gun reform following the Covenant School shooting.

Also in Tennessee: a federal judge has enjoined the state's new draconian "anti-drag" law as likely violating the First Amendment.

As a now-certified Caitlin Clark fan, it's beyond evident that folks calling Angel Reese "classless" for doing the same mugging that Clark had done all season are, well, they're not hiding the ball. And for what it's worth, there's zero evidence that Clark in any way needs or supports y'all white knighting on her behalf -- I guarantee she can take what she dishes out. (Surely, we can all agree that the only thug on the court yesterday was Kim Mulkey).

Israel looks set to give its resident fascist his own personal state-backed paramilitary squad. What could go wrong? Nothing, because "wrong" implies that the the utterly predictable consequences aren't intended.

A beautiful story of a transwoman recounting "coming out" to her 100 year old grandpa. His memory clearly already is a blessing.

Oh, and I published a new article! "Microaggressions as Negligence" is now out in the Journal of Social Philosophy.

Caitlin Clark is a Crossover Sensation

I was watching boxing today -- the Anthony Joshua/Jermaine Franklin card -- and on the boxing blog I follow the fans between fights were just shooting the breeze about just how good Caitlin Clark is. And not that boxing fans can't follow women's basketball, but it was still striking to see that sort of crossover appeal in this particular forum. She really has the potential to be a true breakthrough sensation.

Obviously, Caitlin Clark is very, very good. First ever 40-point triple double in NCAA tournament history. First player to have two consecutive 30-point triple doubles. She's a threat on all angles. She can create off the dribble as well as anyone I've seen. You can't even say "well, a team just has to stop one person", because she's a fantastic passer as well. And on top of that, she's got a bit of menace to her which I love. She's just a ton of a fun to watch play ball. Her performance against the #1 seeded South Carolina was a tour de force.

The Iowa/South Carolina match was a fantastic game of basketball. Indeed, my only sour note about it is the degree to which the post-game coverage has emphasized it as (in the New York Times' words) "the upset of all upsets", something that nobody saw coming, an impossibility made real. No, it wasn't. To be sure -- it absolutely was an upset. South Carolina was the favorite, and deservedly so, given its absolute dominance on the court this year. But going into the game, South Carolina's victory was not treated as a foreordained conclusion, precisely because Caitlin Clark would be on the floor. To the contrary, the game was promoted -- correctly -- as must-see TV, a "clash of the titans" pitting the tournament's clear best team against the tournament's clear best player. This was not Purdue/Farleigh Dickinson, where nobody outside the FDU locker room could have possibly seen the upset coming. This was seen as a very competitive matchup precisely because everyone knew Caitlin Clark really was that good. And she proved that yes, she was that good.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXII: Women Attending College

You might have heard the (latest) terrible news from Afghanistan, where the Taliban has enacted a ban on women attending college.

Now, I say "terrible news". But if you're Tyler Russell -- a White supremacist sporting an "America First" cap (ironic, given that he's Canadian!) -- you call it a "step in the right direction." Why? Since women only attend college because they're being "tricked by Jews".

Female education: a Jewish plot! Once again, our enemies sometimes seem to say far nicer things about us than our friends do!

(Dear readers: not only did my wife go to college, that's where I met her! Does that make me an apex trickster?)

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXI: Protests in Iran

A recurrent theme in this series is people "blaming the Jews" for activity that is, in all relevant respects, absolutely praiseworthy. Before the series even launched, for instance, I flagged instances where the dictator of Sudan "blamed" Jews for causing the world to pay attention to the Darfur genocide. I'm dubious we were behind that trend, but certainly it'd be nothing to be ashamed of. Jews helping support worthy causes is a good thing!*

But sometimes, we can't take credit even where credit is extended. And so it is in Iran, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has finally spoken out about the roiling protests against gender apartheid that have torn through his nation. Does he know what's driving these demonstrations? You bet he does!

“I openly state that the recent riots and unrest in Iran were schemes designed by the U.S.; the usurping, fake Zionist regime; their mercenaries; and some treasonous Iranians abroad who helped them,” Khamenei said Monday in a speech to police cadets in Tehran, remarks which were later posted in English on his official Twitter account.

As much as I might want to tip my cap in thanks, I don't think there's any basis to assume the Zionists or their "mercenaries" are behind these protests. To say otherwise would disserve the brave Iranian women and girls who really have been taking the lead here.

But if we were involved, there'd be nothing but pride to report. All solidarity to the people of Iran demanding freedom from state repression.

* There is a somewhat serious point here, which is that an impact of antisemitic conspiracy theorizing is to constrain Jews from even valid political participation, as any tangible and/or successful intervention into the political sphere can and will be coded as validating the conspiracy. If there were widespread Jewish efforts to extend resources and support to the Iranian protesters, for instance, it probably would not be viewed as positive solidarity but rather would quickly be leveraged as proof that the protests were a Jewish plot and the protesters Zionist stooges. This can quickly become a double-bind: Jews who don't extend themselves politically are faulted for not being sufficiently solidaristic towards others, those who do are indicted for exerting undue political control and influence.

Republicans Propose Nationwide Compulsory Women-Maiming Law

It's abortion/privacy week right now in my Constitutional Law class (Griswold and Roe today, Casey and Dobbs on Thursday). After class this morning, a student came up to me and showed a headline regarding the new Republican proposal to ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks. He was surprised, since all the judicial rhetoric he had read thus far had been emphatic about "returning the issue to the states" -- how was that consistent with a federal ban? I answered, as politely as I could, that anyone who actually believed anti-abortion activists would settle for "leaving it to the states" once Roe was overturned is someone I'd like to sell bridges to. And, in fairness, that makes sense from their vantage -- if you think abortion is murder, you're hardly going to be content with allowing some states to murder to their heart's content.

That being said, as philosophically unsurprising as a federal abortion ban may be for anti-abortion activists, it seems like political suicide under circumstances where abortion is already supercharging Democratic intensity. Yet say what you will about the GOP bill, it dares venture boldly into new domains of terrorizing women and girls.

Authored by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican bill not only bans abortions after 15 weeks, it does so without any exemption for the health of the mother. While "life-endangering" pregnancies are exempt, those which only risk severe bodily injury to the pregnant vessel person remain subject to the ban. The bill also goes out of its way to clarify that "emotional" or "psychological" harms cannot be the basis of labeling the pregnancy "life-endangering". In circumstances where there is an extreme suicide risk, the Republican law's mandate is apparently "let her die". A nationwide abortion ban with no health exemption is, stunningly (or not), being cast as an attempt at "unifying Republicans" who have been placed on the back foot after finally catching the car that is overturning Roe. After all, views may differ on whether government is permitted to murder pregnant women, but Republicans are united behind the principle that they can be maimed without consequence.

Other exemptions in the bill, most notably for rape and incest are highly circumscribed. Rape victims, for instance, must have obtained government-approved counseling at least 48 hours prior to the abortion proceeding. Child victims of rape or incest must have reported the incident to government authorities in advance. On that point, the statute helpfully gives the parents of said minor rape/incest victims the right to sue if such reporting does not happen -- a fantastic provision that I have no doubt will not at all be used to help chill and retaliate against child victims of sexual violence.

Those who do not consent to compulsory federal maiming of women face up to five years of jail time. This is the new, nationwide GOP policy on abortion. And it is on the ballot in November.

Are States Allowed to Murder Pregnant Women? Views Differ!

One of the Biden Administration's responses to the Dobbs decision was to issue an interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that basically says doctors have to provide necessary medical care to pregnant persons in emergency situations -- including abortion care, if that is necessary to protect the mother's life or health. Since EMTALA is a federal law, it would preempt state laws which purport to prohibit abortion care in those circumstances.

Consequently, various red states have sued to vindicate their sovereign entitlement to require by law that hospitalized pregnant patients be left to die even when their life could easily be saved by surgical intervention. Two courts, one in Texas and the other in Idaho, have now opined on the Biden executive order. They've split in their decision -- the former striking down the new guidance, the latter upholding it and preempting Idaho law to the extent it conflicts with the guidance.

The belief that Dobbs would remove the judiciary from the thicket of deciding abortion cases was always a mirage (if it was believed at all). It just changes what courts will have to decide. Right now, they're deciding whether states are allowed to require, under pain of criminal penalty, that pregnant women and girls be maimed or killed when their bodies and lives could be easily saved. And as we're seeing, on that novel legal question, "views differ". Such is the burden of having a uterus in the post-Dobbs world.

What Happens When There is No Contraception

The New York Times has a harrowing story about women in Venezuela who cannot access contraception. A raging economic recession has made condoms, IUDs, and other birth control products prohibitively expensive for many poorer women; at the same time, the cost of raising a family has also spiraled out of control. Many women have resorted to shady back alley abortion attempts (it is still illegal in the country), but unsurprisingly these are exceptionally dangerous.

If you're a conservative, maybe the fact that it's Venezuela and you can nyah-nyah about it since Chavez is of course AOC's role model for Americana will make the story resonate more. But let's be clear -- America is not as far off from this as we'd imagine ourselves to be. The legality of abortion is on the very brink, and cases like Hobby Lobby threaten contraceptive access as well -- again, especially for poorer women. It may be that in a few years, the main difference between America and Venezuela is that we have proportionally fewer women in the sort of abject poverty that is comparable to that found in the South American country -- but for those who do find themselves in that situation, this story could easily become a U.S. story as well.

They Can't Be Trying, Because We Tried, and We're Amazing

There's a new women's organization out there -- Supermajority -- that's trying to succeed where the Women's March fragmented. And Linda Sarsour has some thoughts on them:

Sarsour says the Women’s March tried to be a space for all women, to be intersectional, but that “this never worked before” because when issues arose outside of gender equality, like racism or immigration, it made people uneasy.

“If another group wants to attempt it,” said Sarsour, “that must mean that they don’t want to have the hard conversations, because when we had the hard conversations, it was really uncomfortable and difficult for people.”

Is it just me, or does this come off as almost unbelievably petty?

Which isn't to say Sarsour doesn't feel good about her impact with the Women's March:

The formation of the Women’s March, said Sarsour, is a “very simple story.” After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, “white women started a Facebook page, and they called it the Million Women’s March.”

“These women started this Facebook page, but in order for this Facebook page to be translated into tangible, actual organizing, into actual marches, it required women of color leadership,” said Sarsour. “That’s when me, Carmen [Perez] and Tamika [Mallory] were called to come to the Women’s March. We were the only organizers, like actual seasoned organizers. Everyone else was a fashion entrepreneur. They worked in tech. They were yoga teachers. We had a woman who was a chef. Everyone had a different profession, and we were the ones that came in with the organizing background.”

The first Women’s March was a day after Trump’s inauguration. Sarsour and her co-chairs set out an agenda to harness the energy of the millions of women who took to the streets and turn it into political power. They, along with local, grassroots chapters, organized events to get women into office and voters to the polls.

“We watched the impact of activism of people who’ve never once went to a march, never called their member of Congress, all of a sudden engaging in activism at a level that we hadn’t seen in at least the last 20 years,” recounted Sarsour. “And then seeing in 2018 us winning back the House, putting over 110 women in Congress. I’m not saying that’s all Women’s March, but absolutely the Women’s March set the foundation for all of these things to happen.”

You know, I've long been content with my view on Sarsour, which is that while she doesn't deserve the frankly insane amount of attention and vitriol she receives from the American Jewish community, she's also just ... not that impressive. She's a decent rabble-rouser, but really more of a glory-hound -- everything is her her her. Thank goodness those fashion designers and yoga teachers had her to lead them! But there's not a lot going on past that.

The Washington Post just did a piece on the fractured friendship of Cory Booker and Shmuley Boteach and ... Boteach actually strikes me as a decent parallel to Sarsour. Boteach is a mediocrity who had his moment but now is seen mostly as a "he's still here?" sort of figure. He'll probably keep on getting media coverage because he has a natural knack for drawing attention to himself, but his time is past, and everyone knows it. And so too, I suspect, with Sarsour. She'll always have a cadre of folks who think she's the cat's meow, and her sheer status as a lightning rod will ensure that she can always get some amount of attention to herself (Sarsour exists in symbiotic relationship with her most inveterate haters, who also are marginal figures in the Jewish community that know the fastest way to get prime column placement if her name is in the title). But more and more, I think she'll be seen as of the past.

Who knows whether Supermajority will go anywhere. But I think Sarsour's star has faded, and she's going to be increasingly irrelevant from here on out. Just like Shmuley.

Meeting Day Roundup

Today was a big meeting day for me (I was basically continuously talking with people from 10 AM to 3:45 PM -- lunch included). But it was fun! The conversations were nice and very productive. I met somebody new, got mentored by my adviser and mentored two undergraduate advisees. All in all, a good day.

* * *

My friend Sarah Levin explains why, as a Mizrahi Jewish women, she did not feel comfortable marching with the Women's March this year. Particularly given how the debate over the Women's March has often been perceived to break down as "White Jewish women" versus "Middle Eastern/POC women", Sarah's perspective regarding Mizrahi erasure is an important one that needs consideration.

In the course of defending excluding all Israelis from the country, the Malaysian Prime Minister also explains why he so frequently indulges in naked antisemitism: "when I say only the 'Zionists,' people don’t understand. What they do understand is the word 'yahudi' or 'Jews.'" Oh, I bet they do.

Orin Kerr flags a Third Circuit which raises an interesting qualified immunity question: how long after the release of an opinion does the legal holding of that opinion become "clearly established". My instinctive view is "immediately" (or, at least, immediately after the mandate issues). But that may well be colored by my view that qualified immunity is basically a set of special privileges given to government officials to break the law that aren't extended to everyday citizens.

Buzzfeed publishes a report (apparently originally printed in a Swiss magazine) claiming that two Jewish political operatives were originally behind the campaign to vilify George Soros; a JTA article expresses skepticism about the timeline.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) apologizes for a 2012 tweet where she accused Israel having "hypnotized the world" to blind global actors to the Jewish state's "evil". The apology was proximately prompted by this column from Bari Weiss, explaining the antisemitic provenance behind the "hypnotized" language; Weiss thanked Omar for her apology and extended an open invitation to her to write on the issue in the New York Times op-ed section.

Board Game Night Roundup

Let's see, what's new .... having a board game night with some friends, sent a (horribly rough) first draft of my first dissertation chapter to my advisers, been trying to put together some columns for Tablet, and have been in a real love-hate relationship with my Twitter account for the past week or so.

What's new with you?

* * *

Can't endorse this piece by David Roberts hard enough: the goal of the Green New Deal should be 100% decarbonization, not necessarily 100% renewable. If the best, fastest, cheapest way to get to the latter is through the former, awesome! But if (say) nuclear power ends up being the most direct route to the finish line -- listen, when it comes to climate change, it's all hands on deck right now.

South Florida city commissioner, on Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "A Hamas-loving anti-Semite has NO place in government! She is a danger and [I] would not put it past her to become a martyr and blow up Capitol Hill." Gross racism is gross.

Pranksters dupe Laura Loomer into thinking CAIR got her booted off Twitter. Wall Street Journal reporters then credulously follow along. (No matter how dumb the internet is....)

Really interesting story on the life of Maya Casablanca, a famous (in her time) Moroccan-Israeli singer who recently passed away.

National Union -- the far-right flank of the far-right Jewish Home party -- replaces Uri "I am a spy" Ariel with Bezalel "Proud Homophobe" Smotrich as its new leader. Smotrich -- who has advocated for segregating maternity wards in Israeli hospitals and denies that there is even such thing as Jewish terrorism -- is probably the only member of the Knesset to make Oren Hazan seem like a sober moderate.

I love this profile-interview of Angela Buchdahl, a prominent Korean-American Reform Rabbi, as she talks about intermarriage, assimilation, and Jewish continuity. She really speaks to my understanding of an inclusive, progressive Jewish community.

Mini-Women's March Roundup-within-a-Roundup!

• Women's March adds three Jews to its steering committee (the name I recognize is April Baskin)!
• Carmen Perez urges Jews to stay with the Women's March, despite their "mistakes"!
• Mijal Bitton (whose work I always, always love) says "no thanks, I'm out"!
• JTA gives a helpful breakdown of which local Women's Marches are and aren't affiliated with the national organization!
• Gratuitous shots at the ADL notwithstanding, Jewish Currents makes some good points on the undemocratic nature of American Jewish life while coming down on the "stick with the Women's March" side!

"[We] Did Not Make" the Women's March Embrace Antisemitism

I really, really like Carly Pildis' essay on how the Women's March can -- if it so chooses -- succeed and undo much of the damage it's done to Jewish and LGBT women.

In particular, I loved this section:

I did not make you go to Savior’s Day. I did not make you post on Instagram with a man that calls me a termite and my marriage a threat to black America. I did not make you attack the ADL and defame their anti-bias work. I did not make you say that feminism can’t include Zionism. I did not make you sit on a panel on anti-semitism while Jewish leaders were asking you not to. I did not make you say that anti-Semitism is not a systemic hatred. I did not make you go to Israel and call the founding of our homeland, our self-determination, our biblical dream, a crime against humanity. I did not make you march with Louis Farrakhan. I did not make you write that your Jewish critics were enemies of Jesus. I did not make you write cruel facebook posts that undercut your organizational message. Jewish women did not do this to you. The “right” did not do this to you, “The Jews” did not do this to you. You did this. You did all of this.

This this and everything this. So much of the frustration around, not the antisemitism itself, but the reaction of the Women's March to the controversy, centered on how it was portrayed as ginned up, a concoction, a plot that was crafted by enemies of progressivism and feminism in order to destroy the movement. So it is bracing and refreshing for Pildis to say, flatly, "we did not do this. You did this." I can't tell you how good it is to see that written in such an unflinching manner.

Personally, I'm mostly indifferent to the ultimate fate of the Woman's March. It wasn't my cup of tea to begin with -- which isn't a criticism, not everything has to be tea for me -- and to the extent it has become a vehicle for the specific careers of Sarsour, Mallory, Perez, and Bland, I have no particular stake in their continued prominence or power.

But for many other people, Pildis included, the Women's March does matter, a lot and so it does matter that there be a demarcated pathway by which the Women's March can accept responsibility and move forward.

Maybe they'll take it. Maybe they won't. But I can't say it's a bad thing that people are putting in the work to create it.

Almost Floridian Roundup

On Saturday, Jill and I depart for our annual holiday trip to Florida (her family winters in the panhandle, and mine has begun the traditional Jewish relocation to Boca Raton). We'll be there for about a week before heading up to Boston for New Year's.

* * *

Given the ongoing tensions between "Bernie Bros" and racial minorities, this article on the DSA's race problems is wholly unsurprising (I know some East Bay DSA folk, and they -- the organization, not the folks I know -- have a gender problem too).

Netanyahu is frantically trying to stop Trump from releasing his Mideast Peace plan (which sounds like it is basically ... the Clinton peace plan), worrying it will make him vulnerable to a right-wing challenge. This is torture for me, because normally a Bibi-Trump fight is a "root for injuries" situation, but here I actually have to be constructive and want whatever makes a just peace agreement most viable (and I honestly don't know if "releasing it now" or "later" is more likely).

I had been meaning to link to this outstanding meditation by Erika Dreifus on being a Jewish-American writer in 2018, and just never found the right moment. Well, no moment like the present.

This is an okay -- not great, not terrible -- article on how toxic masculinity intersects with Zionism. I think I did a better version, though.

Albania expels Iranian diplomat after alleged plot to attack an Israeli soccer match.

When I read that the Women's March was consulting with "Jewish groups" on the question of antisemitism, I just assumed it would be JVP-style groups. But I was wrong, and I'll give due credit: the NCJW, Bend the Arc, and JFREJ represent a fair spectrum of progressive Jewish organizations to give perspective on these matters.

On the Tablet Women's March Story

As you've no doubt seen, Tablet published a long investigative piece on the Women's March organization -- covering turmoil in the ranks, weird patterns of money moving around, how the current leadership rose to power and attempted to consolidate its position, and, of course, antisemitism.

Others will no doubt offer more in-depth commentary, but I wanted to give some quick blush reactions to the main themes:

• This was, on the whole, a well-reported and professional piece. It was not a drive-by, and it was not a hit job. Kudos to the authors on that.
• I know the antisemitism portions of the article are the sexiest, but I think some are over-extending from the evidence presented. The claims of explicit, overt antisemitism by WM leaders tended to be thinly sourced -- either relying on inference or on accounts by persons unwilling to go on the record. The claims of implicit or negligent antisemitism -- or simple indifference to the needs and concerns of Jewish stakeholders -- were by contrast very well-supported. The latter, of course, is on its own well-worth criticizing.
• Despite diligent efforts by the authors, it was hard to follow the parts of the article focusing on where money was and wasn't going, or suggestions of improper organizational structures designed to benefit certain insiders. On the whole, the conduct described was the sort where I couldn't really get a bead on how abnormal it was vis-a-vis other like organizations. Were these the sorts of claims you'd could dig up on any decent-sized non-profit if you dug around long enough, or is WM a uniquely bad actor? I couldn't tell.
• The evidence that the Women's March was linked to Nation of Islam personnel for use in their personal security was relatively well-established. This linkage, of course, casts new light on why the Women's March was so markedly reluctant to condemn Farrakhan. And it is also striking given the conversations occurring on the left critiquing increased police presence in, e.g., synagogues, because of how such presence impacts communities targeted by police violence. The same argument, of course, applies to how queer or Jewish persons must feel knowing that Women's March security relies on a group like NoI. Either Women's March leaders thought about that parallel, or they didn't -- and neither option is all that great.
• We already knew about serious tension between Women's March national leadership and regional or "rank-and-file" operatives, and this article definitely provides additional support for those who think that some in the former category are really running the ship ego-first, if you will. It definitely seems that some of the leadership viewed Women's March more as their personal fiefdom and launching pad to greater personal glory than as a grassroots, member-led women's organization that wasn't About Them, per se.

Finally, this wasn't in the article, but the response of the Women's March PR flacks -- offering to send journalists a "fact-check", but only if they wouldn't publish it(!?!), while demanding that journalists take down tweets referencing the Tablet story -- has to be one of the biggest own-goals in crisis management we've seen in contemporary journalism. It is the laughing-stock of journalistic Twitter, and -- to the extent the Tablet story suggests the Women's March organization is in disarray and deeply unprofessional -- has done massive work buttressing that narrative.

Pain in the Roundup

I have recurrent knee pain, that flares up apparently randomly and can be so debilitating that at its crest I can't even walk. It usually comes and goes over the course of a day or two (the "unable to walk" part might last a few hours, though less if I take some painkillers and/or wear my knee brace).

I also was recently diagnosed as borderline asthmatic. I actually have an inhaler, though I've used it probably less than a half dozen times in my life.

Anyway, last night, at around 3 in the morning, both the asthma and the excruciating knee pain hit at the exact same time: I couldn't breathe, and I could barely hobble my way into the bathroom to get some Aleve.

Long story short, I slept three hours last night and am a bit cranky. So you get a roundup.

* * *

The women's wave isn't just an American thing: The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on Arab women running for office in Israel.

Antisemitism and the birth of Jewish Studies.

The RNCC has cut an ad for Jim Hagedorn (running for Congress in southern Minnesota -- the district my in-laws live in, as it happens) claiming his opponent is "owned" by George Soros. Subtle. Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gaetz also posted a wild conspiracy theory (later boosted by the President) accusing Soros of giving money to members of a migrant "caravan" so they would "storm the border [at] election time."

Also on Soros, Spencer Ackerman provides a good history about how a Soros-like figure has virtually always played a central role in antisemitic social movements.

This was published prior to the Israeli Supreme Court ruling allowing Lara Alqasem into Israel to study, but it overlays with the point I made in my column: Israeli academics have (correctly) interpreted the government's attempt to keep Alqasem out as a "declaration of war" against them.

Newt Gingrich calls for the expulsion of all Muslims who "believe in Sharia" from America. But, if I can channel Trump v. Hawaii, we can hardly call this sort of thing "rank religious bigotry" based on nothing more than the fact that it obviously is.

Nylah Burton has a good column up on the weaponization of Louis Farrakhan against Blacks (and particularly Black Jews). I might have more to say on this, but I think the core points -- which in no way are apologias for Farrakhan's despicable bigotry -- are good.

A Nice Rabbinical Lesson in Not Judging

I came across this earlier today -- it's from an Orthodox Jewish advice column where a woman asks how she can be less judgmental of other Orthodox Jewish women who don't dress according to her standards of modesty.

Obviously, on the substance of the issue I have no skin in the game. Modest dress -- by men or women -- is not a matter of religious significance for me, and indeed I'm not wild about religion arrogating to itself an opinion on the question at all.

But what I like about the answer is that -- putting the substance of the question aside -- I thought it was a great model in thinking through how to be kinder, more open, and less judgmental as a general matter -- something that no doubt we all have occasions to practice.

Anyway, here is the columnist's answer:

In terms of your question, I believe the answer can be found in Pirkei Avos. Our sages teach: “asay l’cha rav, u’konay l’cha chaver, v’haveh dan es kol adam l’kaf z’chus (make for yourself a rabbi, acquire a friend, and judge all men favorably).” Until today, I never understood why these three things are listed together, but upon trying to answer your question, a beautiful connection hit me. 

Let’s start with “judge all men favorably.” [It is] easy to think badly of others when we see them doing things which we consider “wrong,” but judging others favorably is a foundational Torah idea and the way you can do it in this case is: a) assume these women learned a different opinion than you did, because there are a range of opinions when it comes to the laws of modesty (the range is not infinite, but there is a range, which means there is more “grey” and less “black and white” than you may realize), b) assume they learned the same opinion you did but were never shown the beauty of modesty and Jewish law like you were and therefore don’t feel compelled to keep it like you do, c) assume they believe in the idea in theory, but it’s such a big struggle for them – much bigger than it is for you – that they haven’t conquered it yet, d) assume they are doing whatever their parents taught them and never looked into it further to realize there was anything problematic about it. 

Again, as applied to the "modesty" question this does nothing for me. But the core of the suggestion: that in matters of religious dispute, consider that the other person (a) has thought about the issue and has a different view; (b) has thought about the issue but doesn't view it as compelling in their life; (c) has thought about the issue and agrees with your view in theory but finds living up to it to be a greater struggle than you do; or (d) just never really thought about the issue at all -- all of these strike me as better and more charitable ways of approaching the matter compared to just assuming the person is willfully ignorant, obtuse, or wicked.

The questioner also suggested that seeing women who didn't adhere to her own standards of modesty made it harder for her to stay true to her own path. And the columnist gave advice on this matter as well:

But you can’t only judge others favorably without solidifying your own path. Just because these women have their reasons for doing what they do doesn’t (necessarily) mean that they should be your reasons. So “make for yourself a rabbi,” comes first. Find a rabbi (and rebbetzin) who are your speed that you trust as role models and stay close with them. Maintain a certain standard for yourself that your rabbi/community holds by. 

“Acquire a friend” comes after that because while it’s important to have a guide who can you look up to, it’s equally important to have close friends who have shared values so you can support each other even as you see that different “options” exist. It is possible to accept that there are differing opinions to the ones we follow and that there are opinions which we simply disagree with (but reserve judgment on those who follow them), while simultaneously maintaining a high standard for ourselves. Such a balancing act does not come very easily, but then again, nothing worthwhile in life ever does.

Anyway, it jumped out at me as something that was noticeably kind-hearted, even on a matter whose import is quite foreign to me, and so I figured it was worth sharing.

On the Women's March and Farrakhan

A Women's March leader, Tamika Mallory, attended a speech by Louis Farrakhan, notorious for antisemitic bigotry (which manifested itself in the speech). When called out on it, Mallory doubled-down with a remark ("If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!") that was less of a antisemitic dogwhistle than a bullhorn.

For the most part, the response of the other Women's March leaders has been to defiantly have her back (here's a particularly terrible intercession from Linda Sarsour). At the same time, there's been virtually no public justification as to why the rather obvious antisemitism of Farrakhan should be excused. There's been no effort to defend the things he says about Jews, no attempt to argue that his perspective on Jews is in fact in bounds.

This oddity -- defiant refusal to concede any ground on the antisemitism count, coupled with no attempt to actually rationalize the antisemitic content -- demands explanation. My hypothesis is this:

Leftists don't like thinking about antisemitism in their own ranks. At the same time, they'd never admit this is so. Fortunately, most antisemitism controversies that implicate the left relate to Israel in some fashion, and so they can respond with their favorite chestnut: "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic." On face, this response assures the audience that they do care about antisemitism (the "real" antisemitism), but that the case at hand doesn't count as such (that it never seems to count as such is suspicious in its own right. But leave that aside.).

But Farrakhan's antisemitism isn't really tied to Israel. Which means that the stand-by response won't work. And these leftists are left flummoxed, because they don't really have another thought on antisemitism beyond "criticism of Israel isn't." Forced into a situation where it seems necessary to say something else, they find themselves at a loss. Suddenly, they can't play their get-out-of-talking-about-antisemitism-free card.

And this is revealing. If the problem really was Israel, the Farrakhan case shouldn't present any difficulty. But if the problem is that these leftists just don't want to have to reckon with antisemitism in their community (and Israel is a convenient but ultimately epiphenomenal factor), then Farrakhan presents a huge problem.

We're getting an excellent peek into who falls into which category here.

A Message on Internalized (and Externalized) Antisemitism from 1982

Evelyn Torton Beck's Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology arrived in the mail today. Originally published in 1982, it remains both wonderfully and infuriatingly relevant today.

Here is an excerpt from Irena Klepfisz's "Anti-Semitism in the Lesbian/Feminist Movement," offering a serious of questions that "both Jewish and non-Jewish women might consider asking in trying to identify in themselves sources of shame, conflict, doubt, and anti-Semitism." (pp. 49-51)

1. Do I have to check with other Jewish women in order to verify whether something is anti-Semitic? Do I distrust my own judgment on this issue?
2. When I am certain, am I afraid to speak out?
3. Am I afraid that by focusing on anti-Semitism I am being divisive?
4. Do I feel that by asking other women to deal with anti-Semitism I am draining the movement of precious energy that would be better used elsewhere?
5. Do I feel that anti-Semitism has been discussed too much already and feel embarrassed to bring it up?
6. Do I feel that the commercial presses and the media are covering the issue of anti-Semitism adequately and that it is unnecessary to bring it up also in the movement? Am I embarrassed by the way anti-Semitism/the Holocaust is presented in the media? Why?
7. Do I have strong disagreements with and/or am ashamed of Israeli policies and, as a result, don't feel that I can defend Jews whole-heartedly against anti-Semitism? Is it possible for me to disagree with Israeli policy and still oppose anti-Semitism?
8. Do I feel guilty and/or ashamed of Jewish racism in this country and, as a result, feel I can't defend Jews whole-heartedly against anti-Semitism? Is it possible for me to  acknowledge Jewish racism, struggle against it, and still feel Jewish pride? And still oppose anti-Semitism?
9. Do I feel that Jews have done well in this country and, therefore, should not complain?
10. Do I feel that historically, sociologically, and/or psychologically, anti-Semitism is "justified" or "understandable," and  that I am, therefore, willing to tolerate it?
11. Do I feel that anti-Semitism exists but it is "not so bad" or "not so important"? Why?
12. Do I believe that by focusing on the problems of anti-Semitism I will make it worse? Why?
13. Do I feel that Jews draw too much attention to themselves? How?
14. Do I associate the struggle against anti-Semitism with conservativism? Why?
15. What Jewish stereotypes am I afraid of being identified with? What do I repress in myself in order to prevent such identification?