I had a conversation the other day with a friend who just started law school at Columbia. This person told me that on the first day of orientation, the first-year law students were visited by officials from Columbia’s so-called Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). According to OIE, the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” is presumptively to be understood as advocacy of genocide, as discrimination against Jews, and therefore as a violation of Title VI. Anyone who chants it thereby becomes a candidate for reprimand, suspension, and/or expulsion. So they were instructed not to chant it. A couple of things can be said about this, I think. Continue reading
The Mikie Sherrill Sweatbox
I saw this on Facebook just now. The “her” is Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for Governor of New Jersey. To my regret, I volunteered for her 2017-2018 campaign for Congress (along with Chelsea Handler and a bunch of other idiots), and avidly promoted her here at PoT.
It reminds me of a scene in Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1990 film, “Lionheart.” Legionnaire Lyon Gauthier is a lowly private in the French Legion, stationed in North Africa, whose brother has just been put in the hospital by a gang attack in LA. (Naturally, the family doesn’t have health insurance.) On receiving this news, Gauthier tells his Nazi commanding officer that he “needs” to see his brother in LA. The officer responds:
You need what I tell you you need. And right now, I think you need two weeks’ hard labor.
That’s what voting for Mikie Sherrill is like, except that she’d be governor for four years, not two weeks. Continue reading
“Not the Time for Cowardice”
Statement of Sadaf Jaffer in support of a municipal resolution supporting the Immigrant Trust Act, Montgomery (NJ) Town Council, Sept. 4.
Good evening,
As a former mayor and state legislator, I urge you to pass a resolution supporting the Immigrant Trust Act and to do everything in your power to ensure that our state assemblymembers Roy Freiman and Mitchelle Drulis cosponsor it as well. Continue reading
Statement to Montgomery Town Council
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
“Divestment and the Boundaries of Conscience”
Does Heterodox Academy Practice Institutional Neutrality?
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
Goya’s “Lucha Con Palos” (1820-23)
Francisco Goya, “Fight with Cudgels,” (1820-23)
Great Moments in Pedagogy
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)
The Activist As Revenue Manager
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 readingThe Immigrant Trust Tour: Montgomery
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
