A(nother) Reductio for Institutional Neutrality

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, pedagogy, Princeton University

And a challenge to its defenders
Imagine a university whose administration passes what it takes to be a procedurally neutral rule–a “time, manner, place” restriction–prohibiting all protests on campus that take place either on grass or on thoroughfares. Protests inside university buildings are prohibited as well. Protests on grass, admin says, damage the grass, and protests on thoroughfares are a traffic hazard. Obviously, protests inside university buildings are too disruptive of university business to be permitted. All neutral considerations.

Now suppose that 99% of campus consists either of grass, thoroughfares, or buildings. It follows that large scale protests will be made impossible on such a campus. 

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DHS Is Systematically Lying to You

Posted on by under activism, Health Care Series, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

People sometimes claim to be unable to decide between the claims of, say, DHS and migrant defense activists. Faced with conflicting stories, people sometimes retreat into a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism: each side is incompatible with the other, they’ll say, but neither side’s claims can easily be rejected. So we’re left with an undecidable clash of equal and opposite positions.

What to do? The original Pyrrhonian skeptics believed that tranquility was to be sought in the undecidable clash of such equal and opposite claims.* So they lived their lives–or tried to–without having any settled beliefs at all. If belief leads to conflict (they thought), non-belief eliminates it, producing the calm equanimity of the perpetually uncommitted. I sometimes wonder whether this is the guiding ethos of our news media and its modal consumer. If “mental health” means tranquility, and tranquility demands perpetual agnosticism, maybe it’s safer (people seem to be reasoning) to give equal credence to every claim, even if the resulting tranquility is purchased at the price of cognitive paralysis.

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The Delaney Hall Scandal Revisited

Posted on by under activism, Fatwas, Health Care Series, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

Expert Insights and Journalistic Failures
Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with, and possibly sick of, my fixation over the sanitary condition of Delaney Hall. I’ve written four posts on the subject.

On June 24, I challenged New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s whitewash of the state health department’s report on Delaney Hall. On June 25, I took issue with Politico’s misreporting on the subject. On June 27, I took issue with NJ.com’s misreporting on the subject. And on July 2, I responded to Holly Schepisi’s incredibly stupid attempt to “respond” to my earlier challenge. Since then, I’ve demanded that all three of them–Schepisi, Politico, and NJ.com–retract or correct the false claims they’ve made on the subject. Schepisi has served up evasive bullshit; Politico and NJ.com have simply stonewalled and gone silent.

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The Wokeness Threat is a Right-Wing Scam

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University, slices of life, War with Iran, West Orange

I did my annual DEI certification at work the other day. It’s the same one I’ve done here since 2022. The training video is produced by a company called KnowBe4, which specializes in workplace risk reduction: “15+ years of behavior data, 70,000 global customers, 12-in-production security awareness agents…1 of 3 full time US workers has been trained by us.” Not a fly-by-night operation, and not unrepresentative of corporate DEI training. Just the reverse. The norm.

The training took all of 15 minutes. What did I learn? Six woke lessons.

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Our Sacred Honor

Posted on by under activism, libertarianism, migrant defense

I can’t say that I’ve felt very much enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, insofar as 1776 marks that date (and arguably, it doesn’t). It tells you all you need to know that I spent the Fourth of July under a tree in a nearby park, reading Machiavelli in hundred degree heat. But two of my friends wrote notable and interesting pieces commemorating the 250th, and did so in interestingly similar and dissimilar ways. Both are on Substack, and both are worth reading. My friend Bob Massie has a piece called “A New Birth of Freedom” on his Substack. And my friend Chris Sciabarra has one called “From America 200 to 250: A Personal Journey” on his. 

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All Roads Lead from Rome

Posted on by under Palestine, slices of life

I was walking down the street wearing a bright red keffiyeh when a police officer stopped and pointed directly at me. Before I could react, she broke into a broad smile, singled out the keffiyeh, and gave it a thumbs up. You know times have changed when the police have become pro-Palestine.

All roads, they say, lead to Rome. Well, the same roads lead away from it.

Port Newark Activists on Trial

Posted on by under activism, Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

On May 26th and 28th, I mentioned a group of activists who’ve put their bodies on the line at Port Newark/Elizabeth, not far from Delaney Hall, to stop military shipments through those ports to Israel. These activists are part of a little-discussed worldwide effort–spanning Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Denmark, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. (Newark, Norfolk, Houston, Seattle, Tacoma, Oakland, Los Angeles) to block the flow of military hardware to Israel.

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