The Immigrant Trust Tour: Montgomery

Posted on by under activism, migrant defense

Notes 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 →

MAP Public-Facing Philosophy

Posted on by under General announcements, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

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 →

Resistance and Retaliation

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

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 →

Re-organization Tempest Brewing

Posted on by under General announcements

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 →

Dreams of Death

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, slices of life

I dreamt last night of my late wife, Alison. I didn’t see or hear her, and I was in a mostly unfamiliar place, but her presence was unmistakable. I knew that we were somewhere in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge, where we used to live. We were dating in the dream, not yet married, and it was late, so I’d decided to go back home. For some reason, I had to go across the street to a pay phone to call an Uber. It was midnight, but paradoxically enough both bright as noon and dark enough to obscure the way. I called the Uber guy, who was hard to hear, but he said he was coming, and there the dream ended. Continue reading →

Resistance in Action (7)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

Resistencia en Acción Rapid Response Emergency Fund

There’s a lot more to say about Rapid Response to ICE detention, which I hope to say here soon, but for now, I wanted to announce Resistencia en Acción’s Rapid Response Emergency Fund in the hopes of getting some contributions from readers. The preceding link takes you to the donation form on zeffy.com. You can also get to the link by going to Resistencia’s Facebook page, and scrolling down to the post for August 21, 11:50 pm.

Continue reading →

Dreams of MacIntyre

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries, slices of life

I dreamt of Alasdair MacIntyre last night. He looked exactly like his Wikipedia photo, except that he was wearing the old blue jacket he always wore when I knew him, with a grey turtleneck underneath. I was sitting down, reading or writing something about Machiavelli: it was either a philosophy conference or a bus station, I’m not sure which.

He walked in, smiling this weird Mona Lisa smile. He seemed happy to see me, or maybe just happy to be back. My first impulse was to ask him what the Afterlife Dept was doing about the genocide in Gaza or ICE, but I didn’t. It somehow seemed inappropriate to ask, like those were my obsessions, not the afterlife’s. You might as well ask a retiree to solve problems at work. Gauche. I hugged him, something that neither of us would have done in real life. I was sort of shocked: bro was ripped. For a second I wondered what part of the afterlife they’d sent him to. Did Mac get misdirected to Hell and spend the last couple of months working out in the yard? Stuff you never expect. The dream ended there. He was inscrutably silent the whole time.

Resistance in Action (6)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

Thoughts on Rapid Response

In the last 24 hours or so, there have been three major ICE raids in my vicinity in central New Jersey, meaning in the vicinity of where I live or work: one in Hightstown (yesterday, at Franklin & Westerlea), one in Edison (yesterday, 45 Patrick Ave), and one in Trenton (today, 36 Bayard St). The Hightstown raid led to the detention of one person; the Edison one, now being described as one of the biggest since Trump took office, led to the detention of 29. My initial impression is that the Trenton raid was thwarted, and didn’t lead to any detentions; ICE lacked a judicial warrant in that case, and was refused entry into the premises.* Continue reading →

Institutional Neutrality as Willed Collective Stupidity

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, migrant defense, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

The doctrine of institutional neutrality asserts that universities ought not to make public statements on matters of public controversy, or in its newer iterations, matters of public controversy not “directly” related to “their core mission of teaching and research.” One exception, present from the start, is what I call the self-defense exception. In the words of the Kalven Committee Report:

From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.

More crisply: if a threat arises to the “core mission” of the university, every threatened university is morally obligated to respond in a non-neutral fashion. Continue reading →

Resistance in Action (5)

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, migrant defense

A Response to John Heilner

Toward the end of the August 11 Princeton Council meeting at which Princeton’s ITA Resolution was adopted, John Heilner, a Princeton resident, offered a comment that has now been transcribed in the August 13 issue of TapInto Princeton and in the August 13 issue of Town Topics (updated on August 18). Though Mr Heilner’s comment has not to my knowledge elicited very much public comment, I think it demands comment. To put the matter bluntly, I regard his comment as both incoherent and irresponsible, and am amazed that a Council that has spent the better part of the last six months lecturing us about matters of facticity and tone has received it with such apparent equanimity. Continue reading →