Permits, Nazis, and the Reclamation of Public Space
A pointed question came up during Public Comments at Princeton Municipal Council a few weeks ago, namely: “Why was a neo-Nazi group ‘allowed’ to march in Princeton despite lacking a permit?” As I’ve suggested here before, this is the wrong question to ask. It also diverts attention away from a series of questions that badly need asking.
Continue readingLaughter, Tragedy, and Comedy Revisited
I can’t resist offering a postscript of sorts to an earlier post I wrote about film depictions of Lolita. As I suggested there, Kubrick’s Lolita has widely been praised on the grounds that it captures the undeniable humor of the novel; by contrast, Lyne’s Lolita has been criticized because it mostly fails (or declines) to do so.
On my view, however, this gets things backwards: Kubrick’s version fails precisely because it plays Lolita as comedy; Lyne’s succeeds precisely because it plays Lolita as tragedy. There is undeniable humor in Lolita, as Kubrick and others have correctly recognized, but this humor fades to the background when contrasted with the tragedy depicted in it. In other words, to get Lolita right, its humor has to be subordinated to the tragedy it depicts, not foregrounded at the expense of the novel’s plot or theme. On my view, while Kubrick inverts the relevant priorities, Lyne gets them right.
Continue readingThe Executive Board of the North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP), recently asked its membership (of which I’m one) for nominations of keynote speakers for its Forty-Fourth Annual Conference in mid-July 2027. The keynote at an academic conference is usually given by a well-known, distinguished professional in the field, and is usually focused on the theme selected that year for the conference. The theme at next year’s NASSP conference will be “Situated Stories: Belonging, Erasure, Replacement.”
Continue readingQuestion submitted for the September 28, 2026 meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community:
On November 11, 2024, I asked this body whether, given evidence of the University’s complicity in grave wrongdoing via its investments, it would in principle disclose the nature of those investments. I was told both orally and in print that it would not. The University now has a campaign in which it asks alumni like me to “Stand Up” for Princeton. This strikes me as an illegitimate request. It’s one thing to make a request for support in a context of reciprocity: you disclose; we decide. What Princeton is asking is that we stand up for it while it conceals what it stands for. How can that be justified? Indeed, how can it be differentiated from an outright scam?
The CPUC meets Monday, September 28 at 4:30 pm in the All Purpose Room of Frist Hall at Princeton University.
(I unfortunately missed this meeting again, stuck at work, and will have to ask the question at the CPUC’s next meeting on November 9th.)
Nassau Hall during Gaza Solidarity Encampment, April 29, 2024
“We have some planes…”
–Muhammad Atta, 9/11 hijacker
The great horror of 9/11 was supposed to be that Al Qaeda hijacked a bunch of American planes and used the civilians on them as mere cannon fodder for their military ends. The great redemption was supposed to be United Flight 93, which flew out of Newark, bound for San Francisco, but crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers stormed the cockpit and brought it down.
The horror hasn’t really ended. It’s just been concealed. United Flight 90 is the standard United flight to Tel Aviv out of Newark that I’ve taken for a decade, starting from the same place as Flight 93, but flying in the reverse direction. It turns out that everyone on it is, and has for some time been, a human shield for Israel. Our lives–and the honest truth–mean so little to our ruling class that they’ll sacrifice both to Israel without a thought.
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I’ll be moderating this event, which takes place Saturday, September 19, 1-3 pm in Princeton. It’s a conversation with four of the ten activists who helped shut down Port Elizabeth, New Jersey this past May 22 to stop the shipment through the port of weapons to Israel.
Scan the QR code on the flyer to register. Confirmed attendees will receive the location of the venue, which by request of the venue is only to be divulged to confirmed attendees. You can also use this link.
For decades now, we’ve been force-fed the dogma that American higher-education is the epitome of “woke”–a fully-owned subsidiary of “the Left.” I spent three years working for the National Association of Scholars, an outfit dedicated to manufacturing and marketing propaganda of this kind. I spent twenty-six years in higher education, teaching at a dozen institutions on two continents. I happen to live in a college town, Princeton, have lived here for fifteen years, am walking distance from Princeton University, and spend time on campus just about every day. I happen to work near another college town, New Brunswick, home to Rutgers University, and spend time on campus there about once a week. And I have friends and colleagues in higher education across the United States and Canada. So I’m no stranger to higher education or to controversies about it.
Continue readingPrinceton Patch has now confirmed that a white supremacist rally did in fact take place in Princeton this past Saturday afternoon, August 29th. Don’t miss the neo-Nazi video embedded in the article, “Youth in Revolt.” Apparently, the spirit of Leni Riefenstahl never quite died.
Unfortunately, the rally is (like so many things) increasingly being seen as a law enforcement matter, and the police, fixated by definition on matters of law enforcement, are now pursuing the thought that the people participating in the rally lacked a permit to march down the street or through Monument Park, and should have had one. Law enforcement’s idea of a solution to the rise of neo-Nazism in Princeton is to set up a Permit Raj: demand that activists get permits to exercise the privilege of assembling, marching, chanting, or holding signs. And make sure to demote those activities to the status of privileges in the process.
Continue readingThe New York Times ran an article the other day that’s notable both for how ordinary and how extraordinary it is. The facts are extraordinary, the attitudes taken to it predictably complacent. It’s yet another addition to my running series here on the use of “Human Shields,” not in Gaza or Southern Lebanon, but right here at home. “The U.S. Start-Up Making Low-Cost Interceptors for the Iran War,” it’s called, describing a military start-up based in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida. Here’s the beginning:
Continue readingFor Florida-based Powerus, becoming a global supplier of counterdrone technology has meant involving the Trumps, a golf course and a new way of doing business.
In a small warehouse in the United Arab Emirates, workers spend up to 12 hours a day snapping together 3-D printed components to make interceptors capable of knocking Iranian drones out of the sky at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.
The facility, which came online last month, is being used by Powerus, a start-up in West Palm Beach, Fla., to make inexpensive interceptors.
The factory is the company’s first foray into the Middle East, and part of its plan to become a global supplier. Factories affiliated with Powerus make roughly 3,000 drone interceptors a month, a spokesman said, and the company is trying to establish a network of factories that will increase production to 15,000 a month worldwide by mid-2027. It would not publicly disclose the identities of its customers or contract manufacturer in the Emirates.
Consider this excerpt from a Guest Essay in today’s New York Times by Sharon Weinberger, editor in chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and author of a forthcoming book, Valley of Death: How Big Tech is Fueling the Future of War.
People seem to forget that Silicon Valley was largely born on the back of Pentagon funding during the Cold War. Fairchild Semiconductor, a company that became the wellspring of the computer chip industry’s growth, was one of those beneficiaries. Conventional wisdom held that, by 2016, many firms, not to mention their employees, found the idea of working on defense projects distasteful, if not unthinkable. Mr. Trump’s election that year seemed to widen the divide. In 2018, Google, under pressure from employees, pulled out of Project Maven, a Pentagon-funded A.I. project to advance drone warfare.
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