Our Stop the Wars rally found its way into Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, where we spent several hours making our anti-war case to the approbation and disapprobation of the several thousand revelers marching in Princeton’s annual P-rade. Among those apparently expressing approbation was Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor, as revealed in this photo, in which she smiled directly at activist leader Sireen Sawalha, who was standing right next to me.
I recently attended a webinar on “commencement neutrality” sponsored by Heterodox Academy. In it, the presenters, John Tomasi and Jeffrey Flier, argue that
Students receiving diplomas while a speaker condemns their political values, whether progressive or conservative, are justified in objecting.
The graduation stage is not an op-ed page, a political blog, or a partisan rally, though some wish to make it one.
This claim extends the idea of “institutional neutrality” to commencement speeches, and is elaborated at further length in Flier and Tomasi’s recent Boston Globe piece, “Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches” (May 14, paywalled). The basic argument is that commencement speeches have a ceremonial or celebratory function which is incompatible with the discomfort provoked by sharp political commentary.
Continue readingSaturday, May 23, 2 pm, Palmer Square, Princeton, New Jersey, alongside Princeton University Reunions.
See this as well.
I’ve so far received campaign literature or text messages from seven of the candidates in the NJ-12 congressional race: Sue Altman, Brad Cohen, Adam Hamawy, Adrian Mapp, Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Shanel Robinson, and Squire Servance. Of these, Hamawy is the only one who’s mentioned ending the Iran War as an explicit part of his pitch. The other six either say nothing, or next to nothing.*
Try to get your mind around this evasion: six out of seven candidates in a Democratic primary don’t think that our being involved in the most irrational and ruinous war in decades is even worth mentioning. Aggression means nothing to them, even when committed by their supposed arch-enemy, Trump. Mass death means nothing to them. Regional war means nothing to them. The potential destruction of the entire oil infrastructure of the Persian Gulf means nothing to them. The potential for a ground invasion means nothing to them. The potential for nuclear war means nothing to them. The indefinite closure of the Strait of Hormuz means nothing to them. The blockade of the Persian Gulf means nothing to them. The recent increase in fuel prices means nothing, the prospect of inflation means nothing, and the expected downstream consequences of the closure and blockade mean nothing.
Converge on Princeton: Reunions, May 21-24
I’ve been making the case to pro-Palestine activists wherever I go: the experience of being shut down at LeMoyne, NYU, U of Texas at Dallas, and Rutgers (with the prospect of retaliation at Michigan) and elsewhere is certainly a dispiriting one, but the answer is not to keep demanding entry where entry has effectively been denied, but to find opportunities for visibility when and where they present themselves. Continue reading
“We absolutely cannot and should not ever be cheerleading and wishing for the deaths of Israeli children…”
–Sue Altman
Sue Altman and Adam Hamawy are both Democratic candidates for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. A controversy has recently erupted over Altman’s response to comments Hamawy made in an interview with Hasan Piker. The basics of the controversy are nicely captured in this short piece in Jewish Insider. I’ll quote the first few paragraphs, but urge readers to read the whole thing. Continue reading
Sue Altman’s Rejection of Reparations, Attack on Adam Hamawy, and Pro-War Politics Show She Is Out of Step With Progressive Values
by Dr Sadaf Jaffer and Minister Elorm Ocansey
On the eve of his death, Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. stood in Memphis as a witness. The speech we remember as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” was a warning. Dr. King spoke of wages withheld, of labor exploited, of systems that consumed Black bodies and called it order. He spoke of a people who had been given a check marked “insufficient funds,” and he dared to say what too many still refuse to say: justice requires repayment. The Promised Land Dr. King saw was not symbolic. It was material. It was economic. It was reparative. New Jersey, for all its progressive language, is not innocent in this story. The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, through the work of the New Jersey Reparations Council, has laid before us a document that reads less like a report and more like a reckoning. Page after page, it testifies: That slavery here was not distant, but deliberate. That segregation was not accidental, but engineered. That the racial wealth gap is not unfortunate, but designed. Continue reading
I get home, look at my mail, and find a solicitation to vote for Adrian O. Mapp, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 12th Congressional District. Mapp is “proudly endorsed” by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a person I respect. What does Mapp stand for? He tells us:
I was just at a protest of the Iran War where a passerby accused us, heatedly, of “killing Ukrainians.” Of all the accusations directed my way in years of protests, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an accusation quite that baffling. By not fighting a war in Iran, we are somehow killing Ukrainians. No matter how I try to conceptualize this, I can’t.
There’s a cottage industry in philosophy on “deviant causal chains,” cases where an agent’s intention causes an action, but in an unexpected or “wayward” manner, leading to the intended result without genuine agency or control. Add this one to the list, I guess, but don’t ask me what happens next. Or what happened in the first place.
Back in February, I wrote a post called “ICE Out of West Orange,” and sent it to the West Orange Town Council. I’m gratified to see that West Orange Councilwoman Joyce Rudin has endorsed a version of the proposal I made, and done so for the right reasons. I don’t know if my post had any influence on her or not; my point is that what she’s endorsing is exactly consistent with what I said. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 