Montgomery Town Council
Sept. 4, 2025, 7 pm
100 Community Dr, Skillman, New Jersey
Hi, my name is Irfan Khawaja. I live in Princeton, but spend a fair bit of time here in Montgomery. I’m here to speak in favor of Montgomery’s passing a municipal-level resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act, just as we’ve recently done in Princeton, and has been done in more than a dozen municipalities across the state. Continue reading
The doctrine of institutional neutrality asserts that an institution ought not to make public pronouncements on matters of public controversy. It’s promoted most vigorously nowadays by organizations like Heterodox Academy, and by the 150 or so universities that have signed on to Heterodox Academy’s campaign. This gives rise to an oddly neglected question: does institutional neutrality apply to Heterodox Academy itself? Is Heterodox Academy itself bound by the doctrine of institutional neutrality? It’s not clear how to answer this question, or whether it can coherently be answered at all. Continue reading
Francisco Goya, “Fight with Cudgels,” (1820-23)
Professor, can I ask you a question? What does Sophocles want?
–Exasperated student to my friend Charles Persky, Professor of English at Hunter College, City University of New York (1970-2017)
Between doing the numbers for Hartford HealthCare, and prepping the inventory reports for the Atlantic Health System—and blogging to excess in the middle of it all—I left the office late, got on a late train home, and once again got my ass stranded at Princeton Junction Rail Station. No sooner did I get there, but who should show up as if waiting for me but my favorite Arab taxi driver? Meaning the same guy who gave me the free ride last time.
Continue readingNotes on Migrant Justice
As readers of this blog know, I’ve been involved in Resistencia en Acción’s campaign for a municipal level resolution, in Princeton, in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. The ultimate aim of the campaign for municipal-level ITA resolutions is, of course, passage of the Act itself. The idea is to exert pressure on the state legislature through the municipal councils on the premise that the council resolutions provide a multiplier effect for public opinion.
The precedent here is the state law now in effect prohibiting the use of single-use plastic bags in retail sales, which passed through a decade-long campaign of citizen advocacy via the passage of local ordinances and resolutions. Whatever you think about that particular law–some love it, some hate it–it provides proof of concept for the strategy behind the campaign for the ITA municipal resolutions.* Continue reading
A reprise of an earlier announcement: I’ll be presenting “Academia’s Complicit Executioners: A Critique of the Kalven Committee Report” at the MAP Public Facing Philosophy conference on Saturday, September 6th. The first link above goes to a video of my talk at the Heterodox Academy conference this past June in Brooklyn. I’m hoping to have a much-expanded hard copy version of that presentation written up soon, which I’ll post here and on the MAP page. Anyone can attend the MAP conference (it’s free), but you have to RSVP. Info below, and RSVP here.
The panel goes from 12-1 pm EDT, and the Works in Progress Presentations begin at 1. Updated correction: The presentations are ten minutes each, and will be given sequentially, followed by a joint 30 minute discussion until about 2. The keynote follows that.
The contrast with Heterodox Academy is sort of amusing. For my most recent attack on institutional neutrality, go here. Continue reading
Notes on Migrant Justice
In two posts here, I’ve taken issue with the idea that Princeton’s recent passage of (or even mere discussion of) the ITA Resolution has induced ICE to raid the town and detain people. The basic premise behind this claim is that ICE operations target municipalities that express opposition to ICE. The further implication is that if you want to avoid ICE operations where you live, you have to tone down your public opposition to ICE, and adopt a “quiet” form of dissent. It can’t be stressed enough how dangerously out of touch with reality this claim is. If put into practice, it would mean the end of public opposition to ICE at a time when public opposition is clearly working, and is all we have. Continue reading
Policy of Truth has been around for eleven years now, and on reflection it occurs to me that I’ve frankly done a horrific job of tagging and categorizing my posts here over time. Many of them discuss the same topic, theme, or campaign, but are scattered in ways that make them hard to find.
My migrant justice posts are a perfect example: they stretch back over a decade, but are inconsistently tagged, categorized, and titled. You’d never know that a post written in 2025 bears a connection to one written five or ten years ago, but that’s often the case. It also doesn’t help that I’m so indecisive about titles, e.g., posting one and changing it five minutes (or five days) later. Henceforth, all of that will change. O brave new blog, that has such structure about it!
Continue reading
Policy of Truth 