Tag Archives: rights

Felician University Statement on the Repeal of DACA

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Almost all readers were unimpressed with the “Statement of the Faculty of Felician University” that I posted here in January, responding to the election and inauguration of Donald Trump. I’m happy to report that Felician’s president, Anne Prisco, has released a statement that takes a much stronger and more substantive position on the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program. I’ve excerpted it below the fold. I’m grateful for it.

I can’t help remembering the “proseminars on pedagogy” I attended back in grad school, intended to prepare us for the ups and downs of college-level teaching. Oddly enough, I don’t ever remembering anyone’s covering “what to do when the federal authorities come in force to campus, invade your classroom, and seize your students as a preliminary to deportation.” But hey–the great thing about this job is that it forces you to learn new things. What I’ve learned is a twist on the old cliche that “life is a journey”: for some of us, it promises to be a journey from the classroom to a prison cell, and from there to a permanent exile from the country of one’s birth.

To be honest, if such deportations are to take place at all, I prefer that they take place on campus. Better collectively to have to bear witness to them than to have the luxury of pretending that they aren’t happening.

Continue reading →

Covering Jerusalem: A response to Jacques Delacroix

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I’d been thinking of writing some free-standing posts on the aftermath of the shooting two weeks ago at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (July 14), but haven’t gotten the chance. Meanwhile, here’s a long response I wrote at Notes on Liberty to Jacques Delacroix’s post, “A short note on the riots in Jerusalem.” Scroll down for my comments.

As some of you may know, I spent most of the month of July in Jerusalem and vicinity, and spent a fair bit of time observing the events in question. It’s notable that for Americans, “what happened” can be reduced to a shooting on July 14, an Israeli decision to put metal detectors at the entrance to Al Aqsa Mosque, and rioting by Palestinians. Suffice it to say that in this as in so many matters, there is a large gap between what Americans end up hearing about Israel and Palestine and what actually happens there. But that’s a longer story than I can tell at the moment.

Postscript, August 8, 2017: The discussion continues here.

“We’re Not In Wonderland Anymore, Alice” (Charles Manson)

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I’ve contributed to The Health Care Blog a couple of times and follow its posts to stay on top of issues relevant to health care. Dr. Al-Agba wrote this article recently in relation to the recent shooting at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx (see link here). I think Manson was wrong; I think we are, indeed, still in Wonderland as it pertains to mass killings.

Dr. Al-Agba makes the very good (and one might argue rather obvious) point that organizations we work for have an obligation to take threats to our personal safety seriously. Today, if an individual threatens suicide, most people know that such threats should be investigated. Lives have been saved as a result.

Still not so with homicidal threats despite the carnage (and I’ve been maintaining this to anyone who will listen since I studied school shooters in the late 1990s while a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; it has been discouraging to know that not many have listened). This is the most pertinent line from Dr. Al-Agba’s article: “After his resignation, Dr. Bello warned former colleagues he would return someday to kill them.” Bronx-Lebanon did what in response to this threat? It’s not clear but so far I have found no evidence to suggest they took any action (i.e., reporting it to police? Seems like that would have been a good place to start).

Dr. David Lazala, who worked with Dr. Bello, described him as “very aggressive, talking loudly, threatening people,” and said that he had been threatened by Dr. Bello via email after Dr. Bello had been terminated. I could not find out if Dr. Lazala told Bronx Lebanon about these threats. But even if he had, consider what Bronx Lebanon would have done after you read about my experiences working as a clinician in New York City since 2003. Continue reading →

Felician University Event: “Policing the Police”

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For those of you in the area, Felician University’s Committee on Leadership & Social Justice will be sponsoring the fourth and final event in its year-long series on “Race and Criminal Justice in America.” Previous events covered racial profiling in Bloomfield, the ethics and constitutionality of police stops, and community policing in Bergen County.

Our upcoming event is “Policing the Police,” about allegations of police abuses by the Newark Police Department, featuring a public screening of the PBS Frontline documentary of that name, followed by commentary and discussion by Junius Williams, the Newark-based author and activist. I’ll be moderating. (We may have some other speakers, but for now, Mr. Williams is the confirmed speaker.)

The event takes place Thursday evening, April 27, at 6:30 pm, in the Education Commons auditorium on Felician’s Rutherford campus (227 Montross Ave, Rutherford, New Jersey 07070). The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by Felician’s Committee on Leadership & Social Justice, its Pre-Law Program, its Department of Criminal Justice, and its UN Fellows Program.

Hope to see some of you there.

Extra reading: Here’s an an article about Newark’s policing problems in The New Yorker by Jelani Cobb, the filmmaker. Here’s the U.S. Justice Dept’s consent decree re the Newark Police Department. Here’s the Department of Justice’s list of special litigation (including consent decrees against law enforcement agencies). The website of Newark’s Independent Monitoring team. Jelani Cobb, again, on the fate of federal consent decrees under the Sessions Justice Department.

Saira Rafiee, CUNY Research Assistant, Detained and Deported (Updated)

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I just happened to see this letter posted on the Philosop-L list serve and thought I’d reprint it here. I strongly urge PoT readers to read Professor Gould’s letter, and consider signing the petition.

Dear colleagues in the profession,
Alas, my Research Assistant at the Center for Global Ethics & Politics at the Grad Center–Saira Rafiee–was detained at Abu Dhabi airport and prevented from returning to CUNY where she’s a doctoral student in political science. She had to go back to Teheran. Needless to say, countless other refugees, immigrants, and visitors are (or will) also be affected.

Please consider signing the petition against Trump’s executive order on immigration that can be found at the link below.  Thousands of academics have already done so, but I didn’t see many philosophers on it as of yet. (I’m not entirely sure whether it’s still open for signatures in fact, but I believe it is, although they’re clearly having trouble keeping up with the flood of support.)

Thanks for considering this.

All best,
Carol
Carol C. Gould
Distinguished Professor
Philosophy, Hunter College; Doctoral Programs in Philosophy and Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Director, Center for Global Ethics & Politics at the Ralph Bunche Institute
President, Human Rights Section, American Political Science Association
Postscript, January 31, 2017: Read this for a related story. (ht: Kendra Khawaja)

Revisiting the “Muslim Registry”: A Proposal

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post here about the so-called “Muslim registry,” demanding clarity on the topic, and making a proposal for pre-emptive civil disobedience. Without retracting a word I said, I revisit the issue here in light of information that’s come to light since then. The post below is a revised and edited version of a comment I wrote in response to a post by Max Geller at the Mondoweiss website, which (pursuing a suggestion made by the Anti-Defamation League and others) called on non-Muslims to register for the so-called registry. Continue reading →

Reince Preibus Meets Moore’s Paradox

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Not a perfect example of Moore’s Paradox, but close enough, from incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus:

“Look, I’m not going to rule out anything,” Priebus said. “We’re not going to have a registry based on a religion.”

Clearly, we’re not going to have a registry based on religion. But we might.

Alas, the question Preibus was asked was: “Can you equivocally rule out a registry for Muslims?” Which is exactly what he did. And not all that hard to do, either. I mean, I could do that. And it’s not even my policy.

The Victim Who Wasn’t: or, The Continuing Saga of the Purloined Pillow

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November 19, 2016

Pamela M McCauley
Victim-Witness Coordinator
Office of the Essex County Prosecutor
Essex County New Courts Bldg
Newark, NJ 07102-0000

Dear Ms. McCauley:

Over the past few weeks, I have been receiving correspondence from your office concerning State vs. Godfrey, Prosecutor File # 16-002030, Indictment # 16-0601832-I. The correspondence comes from the Office of Victim-Witness Advocacy, and describes me as the victim in the abovementioned case. Unfortunately, the correspondence re State vs. Godfrey has all been sent to me in error.  I am not the victim in State vs. Godfrey. I phoned your office and left a message about this matter several weeks ago, but have not received a response.

I am the victim in a case of larceny involving a defendant named Michael Ramos (Prosecutor File # 16-002203). The alleged crime took place in Bloomfield in March of 2016. In your last correspondence to me regarding the case, the case had been referred back to Bloomfield Municipal Court for adjudication. I have heard nothing about it since. In any case, I lack the standing to receive victim impact information regarding State vs. Godfrey. To the best of my knowledge, the case has nothing to do with me.

Best wishes,

Irfan Khawaja

For previous installments in the series, see “Best Voice Mail Ever,” “Our Friend, the State,” and “Pissed, Dissed, and Out $89.18.“

“Police Stops” Event Tonight

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Just a reminder for PoT readers: “Police Stops: What Are Your Rights? What Should You Do?” is tonight, @7-8:15 pm, Education Commons Auditorium, Felician University’s Rutherford campus, 227 Montross Ave, Rutherford, New Jersey 07070. The event is the second (of five) in the University’s year-long series on Race and Criminal Justice in America. It’s sponsored by the Felician University Committee on Leadership & Social Justice, the Department of Criminal Justice, the UN Fellows Program, and the Pre-Law Program.

I happened to have conversations with both speakers over the last week or so, and am confident that we’ll have an informative, enlightening, productive conversation tonight. They agree on enough to share common ground, but disagree on enough to bring out some important unresolved issues. Continue reading →

The Fourth Amendment, Policing, and Pedagogy

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I’m in the middle of working through Akhil Reed Amar’s The Constitution and Criminal Procedure in my Phil/Crim 380 class (“Philosophical Issues in Criminal Justice”), and am also in the middle of planning the second event in Felician University’s “Race and Criminal Justice in America” series. The event is tentatively called “Search, Seizure, Stop, and Frisk: Two Perspectives,” and the idea is to invite a defense attorney and a police officer to share the stage while answering questions on Fourth Amendment rights and contemporary police work. More on that as I firm up the details.

In any case, I’ve got the Fourth Amendment and policing on my mind. To that end, I thought I’d post and invite comments on a paper that I presented back in 2012 at a conference for the Association for Core Texts and Courses, “The Fourth Amendment as a Core Text: A Pedagogy for the Citizen-Philosopher.” The more I think about it, the more I agree with what I wrote in the paper–always the right time to ask whether I’ve gotten anything wrong. Which is where you come in, reader. Feel free to search, seize, stop, and/or frisk the text. Hope you find it arresting.  Continue reading →