Vic Kaplan Comment

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Just an FYI for any interested readers that Vic Kaplan, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of New Jersey, has a comment in an earlier post about the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. I’d asked the Kaplan campaign to comment, so I’m grateful for the response. I will likely vote for Benvanides, but the marginalization of both candidates is a good advertisement for John Davenport’s argument in The Democracy Amendments, which I highly recommend. I’m a sucker for any book that describes our nation as being in “a death spiral,” as John does.

Now all we need is for John to go out on tour with Lars von Trier and Kirsten Dunst, and I think we’re in business.

Robert Massie at Princeton

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

“Divestment and the Boundaries of Conscience”
As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been involved since 2024 in the campaign to induce Princeton University to divest its holdings, not just from Israel, but from arms manufacture and military affairs as such. 

It was about a year ago that I got it into my head to get Robert K. Massie IV involved in our efforts. Massie is one of the architects and chroniclers of the decades-long campaign to divest from apartheid South Africa; I’d first encountered his book Loosing the Bonds twenty years ago, and been impressed by the rigor of his argument, as well as by the wealth of detail and moral passion he brought to the subject. Continue reading →

Albert Aghazarian, a Postscript

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries, Palestine

About five years ago, I posted a memorial essay here for the late Albert Aghazarian, the Armenian-Palestinian translator I met on my first trip to Palestine about twelve years ago. By chance, I met a friend of Albert’s tonight, Gaby Kevorkian, a retired physician and resident of Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter, currently living in Princeton. Gaby points out that my description of Albert’s home–“he lived so simply”–may well have been misleading. “Have you ever been inside Albert’s home?” Gaby asked. In fairness, I had not. “Well,” he pointed out, “If you go inside, there are many rooms.” The latter claim does indeed raise doubts that Albert lived quite as “simply” as I had suggested. I have amended the post accordingly.

Morituri Te Salutant

Posted on by under cancel culture, Memorials and Obituaries, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my best friends in Palestine, someone who lives in a small village in the South Hebron Hills. I’ve excerpted it below, deleting personal names, and omitting place names and other particulars, and corrected the grammar of one sentence for clarity. It’s in English, but I’ve provided a tl; dr translation just after the block quote. The word “football” refers throughout to soccer. Continue reading →

Karma Comes for Mikie Sherrill

Posted on by under Big Data, character based voting, EVS Journal, Health Care Series, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

A controversy has recently broken out in the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. Mikie Sherrill, who has long touted her experience as a helicopter pilot for the Navy, is now facing the somewhat exaggerated charge that she “cheated her way” through the Naval Academy (to quote hearsay from the Internet).

The backstory is this: Nicholas DeGregorio, a supporter of Sherrill’s opponent in the race, made a records request re Sherrill, including her Naval Academy record, to the National Personnel Center of the National Archives. Continue reading →

You Lose: The NJ Governors’ Debate

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Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate…
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose
–Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs Robinson“

Yesterday was the New Jersey gubernatorial candidates’ debate, pitting Democrat Mikie Sherrill against Republican Jack Ciattarelli. There are third-party candidates in the race, Libertarian and Socialist, but naturally, neither of them appeared on stage. Continue reading →

Imperium et Dolus

Posted on by under Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

After helping Israel destroy Palestine and commit genocide there, Australia, Britain, and Canada are “recognizing” a “State of Palestine”—a “state” under military occupation, in the process of annexation, without borders, without a government, and without a military—while continuing to arm and support the regime destroying it.

If this is recognition, what would repudiation be?

Thoughts on Complicity

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

I’ve recently given a handful of talks critical of the Kalven Committee Report’s (KCR) conception of institutional neutrality–three or four, depending on how you count, with one or two more to come, depending on what the referees say. My argument is pretty straightforward: it’s an adequacy-condition on any account of academic norms that the account deal with the problem of institutional complicity in wrongdoing. The KCR defense of institutional neutrality doesn’t just fail to deal with this issue; it offers complicit institutions a blueprint for evading accusations of complicity even when those accusations are recognized as true, well-documented, and incriminating. Continue reading →

His Deeds On His Head

Posted on by under Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Fifty or sixty years from now, this is how they’ll be rehabilitating the reputations of the assholes running our current genocide in Gaza. Oh, the private doubts they had! The anguish they suffered! Poor, poor things! Judge not, lest it be discovered that you figured out on Day 1 what these “experts” were too cowardly to admit or act on for the duration.

The “war hawk who wasn’t,” except that he was.