Corey Robin's Blog, page 91

A Very Bourgeois Post on Buying a House

Last weekend, I was at my parents’ house and I saw a copy of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons on the shelf. I’ve stared at the book since I was a kid, but I never bothered to pick it up, much less read it. In the last several years, though, my friend Adina has been singing the praises of Durrell as one of our great writers of place. So I decided to spirit the book away with me back to Brooklyn. (Sorry, Mom! I also have your copy of Rebecca.)

I’m glad I did. It’s a terrific read. I’ve just finished the chapter on Durrell buying a house in Cyprus. I haven’t laughed out loud, that loudly, in some time. The elaborate dance between the broker, the seller (really, an extended family in a Cyprus village), and Durrell, as they argue about the house over the totem of the house key, had me in tears.

She [the seller] wore the white headdress and the dark skirt of the village woman, and her breasts were gathered into the traditional baggy bodice with a drawstring at the waist, which made it took like a loosely furled sail. She stood before us looking very composed as she gave us good morning. Sabri [the broker] cleared his throat, and picking up the great key very delicately between finger and thumb—as if it were of the utmost fragility—put it down again with the air of a conjurer making his opening dispositions. ‘We are speaking about your house,’ he said softly, in a voice ever so faintly curdled with menace. ‘Do you know that all the wood is…’ he suddenly shouted the last word with such force that I nearly fell off my chair, ‘rotten!’ And picking up the key he banged it down to emphasize the point.

The comedy here is that the wood is not rotten at all—in fact, the broker had just been praising the Anatolian timber as some of the hardest wood in the world—and everyone knows it. Yet they argue as if they don’t.

The Durrell got me to thinking about another literary treatment of buying a house: those hilarious opening chapters in A Hazard of New Fortunes where Isabel and Basel March slowly watch their ballooning fantasy of the perfect home in Manhattan settle back down to earth, and Isabel finds her sense of what is absolutely necessary in a house gradually shrinking to fit the reality of their finances. Adam Gopnick had a smart article in The New Yorker a few years back on this wonderful mis-en-scène.

I’m not sure what it is about the act of buying a house that makes it so amenable to story-telling. It can certainly be funny, almost comically absurd: the elaborate performance of bargaining, the histrionic prices, the outsized battle between fantasy and reality, the marriage of money and home, family and market.

Maybe it’s the last that makes buying a house such a tempting source for literature: it stages a confrontation between one’s sense of what is personal and intimate with some of the most impersonal forces in our society. Buying a house is supposed to be a shrewd move, yet it’s caught up in embarrassing fantasies and all kinds of family romance. (That’s certainly what you find in Howard’s End, another wonderful novel about property. Didn’t Lionel Trilling talk about this?) I suppose in this respect it’s a bit like being a professor in an academic department, which is a literary genre in its own right: on the one hand, it’s just a job; on the other hand, your colleagues are a bit like family, around for a very long time.

Out of curiosity: what are some other depictions of buying a house in literature that you’d recommend?

NYU President John Sexton Supports the Boycott of Israel. Just Not the ASA Boycott.

NYU President John Sexton has come out against the ASA boycott of Israel.

The boycott, writes Sexton,  is “at heart a disavowal of the free exchange of ideas and the free association of scholars that undergird academic freedom; as such, it is antithetical to the values and tenets of institutions of advanced learning.”

NYU has a campus in Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates.

Guess who is banned from entering the United Arab Emirates? Israeli citizens.

So, according to John Sexton, it is a violation of academic freedom for the ASA to refuse to partner with Israeli academic institutions; it is an affirmation of academic freedom for NYU to partner with Abu Dhabi, which not only refuses to partner with Israeli academic institutions but also forbids Israeli citizens from entering the country.

Does the ASA Boycott Violate Academic Freedom? A Roundtable

Does the American Studies Association (ASA) boycott of Israeli academic institutions violate academic freedom?

According to the presidents of Harvard, Yale, Indiana University (see my comment on that university at the end of this post), and numerous other universities across the United States, the answer is yes. The question is: Why?

I asked my Facebook friends that question. A bunch of people—some in favor of the ASA boycott, others opposed, others undecided—answered. I thought the discussion was worth reprinting here.

Fair warning: it is a fairly narrow discussion. We were not considering the pros and cons of the boycott or where justice lies in the current Israel-Palestine conflict. We were simply trying to figure out whether and how the boycott violates academic freedom, which has become one of the standard arguments against it.

To get oriented, you might want to read this helpful Q and A from the ASA, which clarifies what the boycott does and does not entail.

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Chris Bertram What is the argument that this boycott violates academic freedom, Corey? I just can’t see how a refusal of some academics in one country to associate with institutions in another country violates anyone’s academic freedom. Are there any clarifications on this from the opponents?

Siva Vaidhyanathan The boycott has no effect on “academic freedom.” And I say that as a fervent opponent of the boycott. The fact that academics default to that phrase only shows the poverty of the level of thought about the issue. There are a dozen good reasons to oppose the boycott. But “academic freedom” is not one of them.

Corey Robin I suppose the argument would go something like this. In the same way freedom of speech refers both to the individual right of individuals to speak their minds without fear of coercion, and to the actual state of unimpeded discourse and exchange between individuals (the latter is on some accounts Justice Brandeis’s view of freedom of speech), so does academic freedom refer to the right of individual academics to pursue their teaching and research (and perhaps voice their political ideas as well) without fear of coercion, and to the actual state of unimpeded discourse and exchange between professors. If roadblocks are set up that block that exchange, that exchange is diminished. And so is academic freedom. At least I think that’s the argument.

Siva Given that the ASA resolution is not binding on ASA members there are no roadblocks.

Corey But were universities to drop joint programs of exchange and research—as Brandeis University recently did with Al Quds—that would take away a road that had facilitated that exchange and research. Perhaps not the creation of a roadblock so much as the elimination of a road? Or if an Israeli academic and her institution had been part of a joint research program with a group of American academics and their institutions, and that program were ended, that would also make exchange harder. I’m trying to think out loud here. I suppose the argument is that academic freedom is not merely about an individual’s right to pursue a program of research or teaching but also about material conditions and infrastructure that facilitate research and teaching. Again, I’m not sure; just trying to figure out the other side’s argument.

Siva Yes, you are fleshing out that position with an argument that my side has not really made. I can imagine boycott terms that would materially affect one’s ability to conduct and express work. But I tend to think of academic freedom as a matter of content discrimination. If a boycott targeted, say, certain types of research, certain positions on political matters, or particular areas of research that might have applications that could further the strength of the Israeli military, then it would clearly violate academic freedom. I think we are hearing a reflexive call to defend “academic freedom” because it has bumper-sticker currency within the academy.

Aaron Bady I’ve been thinking about this too; after all, if non-association is a violation of academic freedom, then association with Israel is compulsory, no?

Ben Alpers Trying to ban association with an entire nation’s universities is the problem. The fact that an organization like the ASA lacks an enforcement mechanism for its attempted ban just means it’s an ineffectual affront to academic freedom.

Corey Ben, it’s a statement of voluntary non-association. Not by default but by design: see the actual statement from the ASA respecting individual members’ freedom of conscience on this matter (“The Council’s endorsement of the resolution recognizes that individual members will act according to their conscience and convictions on these complex issues.”) The only way to spin that particular aspect into an affront to academic freedom—however effectual or not it may be—is by embracing the position that Aaron describes above: namely, that association with Israel is compulsory.

Aaron Ben, don’t think a “ban” without compulsion or enforcement can be called a ban. If BDS were trying to ban association with Israel, the violence of doing so would be in the compulsion, or force used, to make it something that someone who didn’t want to, would have to do. That’s simply not what’s happening here. Not to mention that, by this logic, every boycott is a ban; if a group of people resolve to boycott Wal-Mart, because of their bad labor practices or something, are those people “banning” Wal-Mart? Not unless they go beyond urging others to join them, I would think.

Aaron Because I’ve been watching The Good Wife—and have courtroom dramas on the brain—I am picturing a prosecutor trying to accuse someone of intended murder, and explaining that even though the accused didn’t have a murder weapon, that just shows that it wasn’t a very effectual murder attempt.

Ben Here’s the AAUP’s 2005 statement opposing academic boycotts in general.

Aaron In what way does the ASA’s boycott “curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues”? Unless there’s an enforcement mechanism, it simply doesn’t.

Corey But if you look at the ASA resolution, Ben, it looks remarkably like what the AAUP says in that statement is “censure,” which it accepts as a legitimate tactic: “The Association is careful to distinguish censure—which brings public attention to an administration that has violated the organization’s principles and standards—from a boycott, by leaving it to individuals to decide how to act on the information they have been given. The AAUP engages in no formal effort to discourage faculty from working at these institutions or to ostracize the institution and its members from academic exchanges, as is the case in AUT ‘greylisting’; but moral suasion could have such results if faculty members were to decide to have no contact with an institution on the censure list.”

Corey Aaron, if said academic colleagues refuse to engage in work with said teachers and researchers, the freedom of said teachers and researchers to engage in work with said academic colleagues is curtailed.

Ben FWIW, the AAUP sees the ASA resolution as an example of the sort of academic boycott it opposes.

Aaron Taking a position on an issue is different from having a coherent rationale for doing so; like Corey, I simply don’t understand the logic.

Corey I know the AAUP does see it that way, Ben, but in this case, it seems to be misapplying its own principles, which it almost implicitly recognizes in its statement on the ASA resolution, when it says, “It will be up to those members of ASA who support the principles of academic freedom to decide for themselves how to respond to this decision.” If that’s the case, by the AAUP’s own criteria, the ASA boycott looks remarkably like a censure.

Ben Surely the ASA could have cleared this up by issuing a censure instead of calling for a boycott (part of the defense of which appears to be that it isn’t a boycott).

Aaron I think the AAUP’s distinction is specious, frankly. I think it is a boycott! But a call to boycott Wal-Mart, say, is not an infringement on their ability to sell products. By the same token, a call to boycott Israeli institutions also does not infringe on their freedom to do what they do: if the only people who participate in the boycott are people who voluntarily choose to do so, then I don’t understand how anyone’s freedom is being curtailed in any way.

Corey No, it’s just not a boycott as the AAUP defines the term, which is rather peculiar, if you ask me. It is however a boycott within any standard definition of the term: namely, it is only as enforceable as the voluntary will of its members. It is a voluntary act of non-association.

Corey Oops, Aaron beat me to it.

Aaron December is apparently the month where Corey and I coordinate our thinking; last year it was Lincoln, this year it’s BDS.

Corey The irony in this whole discussion is that there is one entity in the US that routinely violates the putative academic freedom strictures of all those individuals and institutions who have come out against the ASA boycott: the American state. Its boycotts and sanctions—against Iran, North Korea, and Cuba (I guess now to a lesser degree)—are in fact mandatory for US citizens, but I’ve yet to see a coordinated response from those noted defenders of academic freedom like the presidents of Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and so on, doing anything about that. I mean, it’s a bit rich to hear someone like Larry Summers fulminate on this topic when he was part of the actual government apparatus—in the Department of Treasury, no less—that implemented these boycotts and sanctions.

Aaron That’s a good point, Corey; but, of course, all the ways in which universities in the Axis of Evil are effectively blockaded is an invisible given. Like arguing that censoring bad books is fine, because they’re bad books. But you can’t, then, demand that it’s bad to censor good books except by appealing to that judgment call.

Corey All this said, I think there might be a way in which you could argue that the boycott violates academic freedom, as I argued at the beginning. In the freedom of speech paradigm, there are two (actually more) ways of thinking about freedom of speech: there is the right of individuals to speak without fear of coercion (call this FS1) and there is the actual state of unimpeded public discourse and exchange (call this FS2). Brandeis, some have argued, was more concerned about the latter, and those inspired by him (like Cass Sunstein or Owen Fiss) are more interested in regulating things like campaign spending (set aside the issue of whether money = speech) and creating viable public deliberative institutions in order to generate a more robust public discourse. Drawing on the model of FS2, one could say that academic freedom refers also to the actual state of exchange and discourse among academics. And to the extent that a boycott impedes that discourse (however voluntarily), either by individual refusing to associate, or by associations and organizations severing ties with institutions, one could say that it impedes academic freedom. Since academic freedom refers to more than the right of individuals to pursue their teaching and research without fear of coercion but also, on this model, to the maintenance of infrastructure for cooperative teaching and research.

Aaron FS2 takes us to an extremely subjective place, though, right? What constitutes a normative level of academic freedom? Anybody’s guess. And I would add, if the absence of infrastructure for cooperative teaching and research is the violation of academic freedom, then the number of “Academics” who lack it is huge.

Corey I don’t know if it’s that subjective. Complicated, yes, but I’m not sure why subjective. As for your second point, yes, that’s the point. Which is why I can’t imagine that critics of the boycott—many of whom include university presidents who are increasingly relying on adjunct labor, which dispenses not only with the infrastructure for cooperative teaching and research, but also tenure and other traditional protections of academic freedom—would actually embrace that position.

Chris Bertram Yes Corey, but the “maintenance of the infrastructure” condition has to be based on some threshold level of adequacy. I can’t claim that my academic freedom has been violated because there isn’t a world lecture tour organized for me! It is very hard to see how tenured Israeli academics, with access to the internet, a range of publishers, journals to publish in, etc., are being denied an adequate infrastructure.

Corey Good point, Chris. So we would say not having a world lecture tour for you is not a violation of academic freedom—though it sucks for the rest of us who can’t hear you!—but would we say that conference attendance is a critical part of academic discourse and life? I’m not sure, just throwing this out there. I mean why is access to the internet, but not access to academics the world over in the form of cooperative research opportunities and conference attendance, not a prerequisite of academic freedom? I would imagine in some fields the latter kind of thing is critical to research, no? What is the necessary infrastructure of academic freedom such that we could say once a threshold is met, academic freedom is secure or maintained?

Chris I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Already I know of several academics who won’t fly to conferences because of the carbon emissions. I don’t think they have rendered themselves “academically unfree” as a result. Kant never made it out of Konigsberg, of course.

Corey What if a university decided to act on the boycott and ended an ongoing joint research program—in some scientific area that relies upon intensive infrastructure support between more than one university—between itself and a university in Israel? I’m just playing this out; don’t really believe it, in part because the only way to make sense of it is to say that academic freedom requires an affirmative duty on the part of individuals and institutions to participate in ongoing exchange, even if they don’t want to.

Sarah Chinn As far as I can tell, here’s one version of how academic freedom might be violated: Israeli universities have partnerships all over the world in various fields (not least of which is the new Technion/Cornell campus on Roosevelt Island). Boycotting Israeli universities means abandoning those partnerships, and depriving those scholars of the opportunity to work on research projects, denying students study abroad possibilities, and shutting down new transnational projects. These relationships are not just one-on-one, scholar to scholar, but require institutional support. It also means that scholars can’t accept invitations to talk or teach at Israeli universities, which violates their freedom to disseminate their research and interact with students and scholars at other institutions.

Timothy Burke On the academic freedom side of things, there seems to me is a huge difference between institutional-level action and individual action. If you’re talking about individuals, then I think your belief that this doesn’t violate academic freedom is right. As a strong supporter of academic freedom, I’m not required to go to all possible events, and if I strongly object to a speaker and do not go to the talk or the event, that’s my individual decision. But if I ask my institution to enforce a boycott? To forbid my colleagues from inviting speakers? If I refuse to release departmental funds to support speakers that someone has asked me to support because I have a political disagreement with that speaker? That’s where for me it crosses into a trespass against academic freedom.

Josh Mason I’m glad the ASA resolution passed and I don’t disagree with anything Corey, Chris Bertram and Aaron Bady have said here. But I do wonder if the emphasis on the voluntary nature of the boycott is quite right. After all, the entire point of the boycott, like all outside pressure against the occupation, is to impose costs on Israelis. If American academics face exactly the same choices with respect to collaboration with Israeli institutions that they faced before the resolution, passing it was a waste of effort. And if the choices by American institutions and individual scholars have no effect on the ability of Israeli scholars to carry out their work, then the boycott is ineffectual and pointless.

Corey Josh, I think what Sarah said above answers your question. The ASA is saying it will not engage in those sorts of partnerships. Now of course it doesn’t really do that now. The hope is that other organizations would do the same, organizations that in fact do do that now. And that ultimately universities might do the same. For instance, Brandeis recently severed its program with Al Quds; the idea is that other universities would eventually sever similar type programs with Israeli universities. In addition, individuals would now, if they agree, no longer participate with Israeli academic institutions (accepting offers to speak or teach at those institutions). Before, individuals might not have done that b/c it would have been an entirely personal or individual affair; now, knowing that others will be doing that, they might be more inclined. The only quibble I have with what Sarah said is that scholars would only refuse to accept such invitations voluntarily; I don’t think a voluntary refusal of association constitutes a violation of one’s freedom to disseminate one’s research and interact with students and scholars at other institutions.

Chris Josh, merely making a choice less eligible by raising its cost doesn’t impugn the freedom of someone to make it. (Leaving aside cases where cost of the action so threatens a person’s vital interest that only the heroic or unimaginative would persist in making it.) So if American academics are less willing to collaborate with Israeli institutions because they would face social disapproval, they are nevertheless free do so, but Israelis will predictably find themselves with fewer opportunities to work with Americans.

Josh I agree with Sarah Chinn. I think that if the boycott is meaningful, there will be some sense in which it limits academic freedom for Israeli scholars. Boycott supporters need to be prepared to affirmatively defend that.

Chris writes, “Merely making a choice less eligible by raising its cost doesn’t impugn the freedom of someone to make it.” I don’t agree.

Corey Josh, while I’m sympathetic to the argument that academic freedom requires a certain infrastructure to be maintained—see my comments above—the problem with your argument is that it implies that if a university doesn’t now have partnerships with Israeli institutions, that university is violating the academic freedom of Israeli scholars. (And by extension the academic freedom of scholars at any institution with which it does not have a partnership.) That can’t be true. Or, it requires you to say that any time a university shuts down a partnership with another institution—for whatever reason—it is violating the academic freedom of those who are engaged in the partnership. Again, that can’t be true. The point Chris was saying earlier is that even if we accept the infrastructure of academic freedom argument, we have to establish a threshold by which that freedom can be met. I don’t think we believe that maintaining partnerships is part of that threshold. Or do we? I’m uncertain on all this.

Chris Josh: “I don’t agree.” Well of course you don’t, you’re an economist, and this is one of the conceptual deformations that economists are prone to.

Josh Corey, how about this? Academic freedom requires that when making decisions about academic partnerships, one considers only scholarly criteria. One should not reject an otherwise preferred partner simply because of it its nationality. But this is just what the boycott requires.

Josh Chris, think it is a violation of freedom of speech if the government fines you for stating a political view. That judgment doesn’t depend on whether it’s a big fine or just a little one.

Corey I don’t see how that violates academic freedom, though. I don’t know how administrators make decisions about academic partnerships right now—I would imagine such things as reimbursement rates from governments and other economic considerations play a huge role—but I’m fairly certain that “only scholarly criteria” isn’t entirely accurate. Other factors inevitably come into play. Why is Yale setting up a partnership or whatever it is in Singapore as opposed to Iran? I’m sure it’s not only—or even to a large degree—because of scholarly criteria. But while we can object to those partnerships for all sorts of reasons, I don’t think violations of academic freedom would be among them. Except to point out that those societies may not be exactly hospitable to notions of academic freedom.

Chris That’s true Josh, but it is the law under which you are fined that restricts your freedom (the sovereign is commanding you not to state that view). The fine isn’t the price of violation. Hobbes is quite good on this IIRC.

Chris “Academic freedom requires that when making decisions about academic partnerships, one considers only scholarly criteria.” That’s nonsense! Academic freedom does not require me always to choose a better scholarly collaboration over one that would bring greater financial benefits to me or my institution.

Josh Corey, Chris: I was just putting out an idea. I’m not committed to it.

But again, I feel the specific issue of academic partnerships is kind of a red herring. If this movement is successful, it won’t stop there.

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That was basically the end of the discussion.

Let me make three final comments on issues that didn’t come up in our discussion.

First, most of the major universities in the United States are currently pursuing partnerships with academic institutions in Abu Dhabi, China, and other countries that are not exactly known as bastions of civil liberties. It’s hardly a surprise then that the presidents of these universities would come out against the ASA boycott.

Whatever their personal beliefs about the Israel-Palestine conflict—like other members of the American power elite, I suspect university presidents mouth the party line in public, while acknowledging the reality in private—they have a vested interest in no one raising human rights concerns when it comes to the American academy’s dealings with other countries.

Their ultimate concern has much less to do with Israel/Palestine than with the opportunities for expansion in China and other parts of East Asia. That doesn’t prove their arguments wrong, by any stretch, but it’s important to keep in mind as critics of BDS start racking up statements from them.

Second, the president of Indiana University has just announced that the university is withdrawing its institutional membership in the ASA because of the boycott. In the name of academic freedom. The statement makes no mention of whether the American Studies faculty were consulted on this decision, much less voted on it.

But the bottom line is this: Indiana University is so opposed to boycotts of academic institutions in Israel that it is going to boycott an academic institution in the United States.

I eagerly await the statements from the presidents of Yale, Harvard, and elsewhere, denouncing this decision. In the meantime, let’s look on the plus side: even the critics of the ASA decision have accepted that it is perfectly legitimate for academics and universities to engage in an academic boycott of institutions they find politically objectionable.

Finally, you’ll notice that nowhere in this discussion does the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars come up. That’s not a fault of the participants; it’s a function of how I raised the issue. Even so, it’s a mirror of how the larger discussion in this country has gone down.

Here we are, twisting ourselves into pretzels in order to figure out how exactly the academic freedom of an Israeli scholar is being violated, when it wouldn’t require a high school sophomore more than a moment’s reflection to see how it is routinely violated in Palestine. Have American academics ever put this much effort into worrying about the academic freedom of Palestinians?

If you’ve ever wondered at the bitterness of the Palestinian people, perhaps you could put yourselves into the shoes of a fellow academic or intellectual in the West Bank or Gaza, as they read these pronunciamentos from the Ivy League.

So much concern for the Israeli scholar, who—even with the boycott—will have tenure; a comfortable, well-paying job; an easy way to get there; access to all the academic journals; an office, a classroom, students, and the internet; the ear of the world.

And for the Palestinian scholar? Not a word.

My Christmas Picks

The American Spectator, which is a fairly right-wing magazine, asked me and several others to make some recommendations for Christmas reading.

I appreciate their insistence on calling it Christmas rather than holiday reading: no pretense that by “holidays” we mean anything other than Christmas. (Whenever anyone tells me holiday season is the time of love and good cheer, I remind them that Hanukkah celebrates the overthrow of occupying forces and the smiting of enemies. My kind of holiday.)

Given the audience, I thought The American Spectator could use some Babeuf and communism. So I recommended, among other texts, Babeuf’s defense at his conspiracy trial and a sympathetic study of Soviet spy Anthony Blunt.

Here’s what I say about the latter:

The other book is Miranda Carter’s Anthony Blunt: His Lives. Ever since he was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1979, Blunt has been the subject of speculation and scrutiny. So great are the contradictions of his story that it almost writes itself. A Communist whose friends were killed in the Spanish Civil War was also the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. An art historian whose job it was to detect the fake and the fraud was himself a fake and a fraud. The cool appraiser of classicism was the hot lover of mystery and intrigue. But where most commentators have taken their lead from George Steiner, who found in Blunt an almost arctic inhumanity, Carter offers a warmer, if more depressing, picture. Among friends and colleagues, Blunt was supportive and caring; in the tutorial, he was passionate and engaged. It was this cloistered fraternity rather than grand ideology that led him to become a spy. As his star rose in later life, long after he had ceased to work as a spy, he distanced himself from his past and ultimately his inner life. Ironically, it was as an ex-communist that Blunt most resembled the stereotypical Communist.

You can read the whole thing, including my other picks, here.

When it comes to the boycott of Israel, who has the real double standard?

Last month, Brandeis University announced that it was severing its decade-long relationship with the Palestinian university Al Quds. Since 2003, the  two universities have engaged in sustained academic exchanges, involving joint research projects, conferences, study abroad programs, and more.

Brandeis severed the relationship in response both to an Islamic Jihad rally on the Al Quds campus that featured Nazi-style salutes, military-style outfits, and fake weapons, and to the failure, in Brandeis’s eyes, of the Al Quds administration to respond appropriately to that demonstration. Three Brandeis professors who have been involved in the Al Quds exchange wrote a lengthy report protesting this decision by Brandeis.

In terms of actual academic exchange, this decision by Brandeis has a substantive impact. It ends a real relationship, with real infrastructure and opportunities for scholars and students to communicate with each other and work together.

To my knowledge, not a single professor of American Studies at Brandeis has publicly protested the decision of the university. Indeed, the only public comment on the controversy by an American Studies professor at Brandeis that I could find was a criticism of the professors’ report protesting the decision.

Now the ASA has voted for an academic boycott of Israel. In response, the entire American Studies department at Brandeis has resigned from the ASA in protest. Claiming, among other things, that “we can no longer support an organization that has rejected two of the core principles of American culture–freedom of association and expression.”

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In related news: In response to the BDS movement against Israel, critics say, “It’s not South Africa!” Turns out that in response to the sanctions movement against South Africa, critics said, “It’s not Palestine!” Seriously, they did.

Freud on Global Warming

Whenever I think about global warming, and our suicidal rush to destroy the planet, I think of these bleak lines of Freud, which he composed after witnessing a similar headlong rush toward destruction in the form of the First World War:

It would be in contradiction to the conservative nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a state of things which had never yet been attained. On the contrary, it must be an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is striving to return by the circuitous paths along which its development leads. If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything living dies for internal reasons—becomes inorganic once again—then we shall be compelled to say that “the goal of all life is death”…

David Brooks Says

Matt Yglesias has an excellent post on the most recent column of David Brooks.

David Brooks says:

We are in the middle of…a dangerous level of family breakdown.

David Brooks says:

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites. The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids. Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

David Brooks says:

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families.

David Brooks says:

It’s not enough just to have economic growth policies. The country also needs to rebuild orderly communities. This requires bourgeois paternalism: Building organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly rather than irresponsibly and, yes, sometimes using government to do so.

David Brooks is getting divorced.

A Response to Michael Kazin on BDS and Campus Activism (Updated)

Writing in The New Republic today, Michael Kazin issues a sharp attack on the BDS movement, particularly the recent vote of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions. (That decision is now being voted upon by the wider membership of the ASA.)

Kazin levels two charges against the boycott movement. First, it is inconsistent: why single out Israel when there are other human rights violators like China and Russia that could just as easily be targeted for an academic boycott? Second, it is ineffective: the boycott movement is “quite unlikely to change anyone’s minds or, for that matter, Israeli policy.” It is a form of theater, professors playing politics.

Kazin contrasts the boycott movement of self-righteous, divisive, “flashy” poseurs with what he calls “a larger and more practical academic left.” That left is engaged in movements for economic justice on campuses across the country. It campaigns for a living wage for university workers and union rights for adjuncts; it works against sweatshop labor in Bangladesh and high student debt at home.

Beyond the justice of their cause, what attracts Kazin to this academic left is that it practices a version of what Michael Walzer calls connected criticism. “They ‘challenge the leaders, the conventions, the ritual practices of a particular society…in the name of values recognized and shared in the same society.’” While “one left talks about something it calls ‘American Studies’; the other actually practices it.”

Kazin’s first charge—inconsistency and double-standards—puzzles me. As a long-time activist, Kazin knows that campaigns against injustice inevitably single out one target, while ignoring others. The farm workers’ grape boycott of the 1960s and 1970s didn’t go after every workplace (or fruit) in the country; it shone a spotlight on one particular set of working conditions. The antiwar movement of Kazin’s youth didn’t go after all wars (or even all unjust wars) being fought around the globe; it targeted the war in Vietnam. The civil rights movement didn’t fix on every racial injustice on the planet; it went after American apartheid.

Nor do these movements necessarily target the worst injustices. Working conditions in the fields of California were awful, but God knows there were far worse elsewhere. American sexism wasn’t the most terrible on offer. South African apartheid wasn’t the most oppressive regime, and the death squads in El Salvador were hardly grislier than the killing fields of Cambodia. Yet the leaders of the domestic movements against California agribusiness, American patriarchy, South African apartheid, and the Salvadoran death squads chose their targets as they did, without burdening themselves with the charge of fighting even worse injustices elsewhere. Many people—including, I’m sure, Michael Kazin—supported them, and the world is better for that.

When Kazin invokes consistency, he reminds me of nothing so much as those rigid and abstract ideologues he so often denounces elsewhere. Indeed, what would Kazin say about a movement that, acting on some cockamamie notion of consistency, decided that it could only go after injustice somewhere if it simultaneously went after injustice everywhere? He’d call it foolish and dogmatic, and he’d be right. Those campus living wage movements he supports, after all, aren’t fighting for living wages everywhere, are they? And what would Kazin say to someone who refuses to support a living wage for workers—or a union for adjuncts—at Georgetown, where Kazin teaches, because workers in Guatemala have it so much worse? (If he hasn’t heard such criticisms, he should go to more meetings. Or read Matt Yglesias.) He’d think they were nuts—or insufficiently connected critics. (I’ll come back to that latter point in a second.)

It is in the very nature of a campaign for social justice that it be selective, focusing on targets that it can mobilize against and perhaps even defeat. And it is in the very nature of such targets that they can be mobilized against and defeated in part because they are not necessarily the most egregious, or oppressive, instances of their kinds. That’s what makes such movements practical, the very virtue Kazin espouses.

Which brings me to Kazin’s second point: he thinks the boycott movement is impractical. What in the world can a group of American Studies professors or campus activists do about the policies of the Israeli government?

According to the Israeli media, quite a bit. Unlike the detractors of the boycott movement in the US, voices in Israel seem genuinely alarmed about the growing power of the boycott movement. Not just in academia or in the US, but throughout the world.

Just yesterday, a piece in Haaretz opened with the following two grafs:

This has happened in recent days: The Dutch water company Vitens severed its ties with Israeli counterpart Mekorot; Canada’s largest Protestant church decided to boycott three Israeli companies; the Romanian government refused to send any more construction workers; and American Studies Association academics are voting on a measure to sever links with Israeli universities.

Coming so shortly after the Israeli government effectively succumbed to a boycott of settlements in order to be eligible for the EU’s Horizon 2020 scientific cooperation agreement, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is picking up speed. And the writing on the wall, if anyone missed it, only got clearer and sharper in the wake of the death of Nelson Mandela.

As Michelle Goldberg, no friend of the BDS movement, recently reported in the Nation:

Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in favor of BDS is the degree to which it seems to be shaking the Israeli establishment. As Haaretz editor in chief Aluf Benn wrote in June, “Netanyahu is worried about the growing international boycott against Israel….He hears warnings in the business community about the damage the diplomatic impasse is causing….If he thought it was harmless noise, he would ignore or minimize the problem. But Netanyahu apparently fears being remembered as the leader during whose time Israel was distanced from the family of nations.”

Many in Israel were shocked earlier this year when Stephen Hawking, acceding to the boycotters, pulled out of Israel’s prestigious President’s Conference. Discussing the reaction of Israel’s leadership, former Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote, “Behind closed doors they’re laughing at Kerry’s peace mission; they’re not laughing at Stephen Hawking or BDS, are they?”

It’s not just Israel that’s worried about the boycott movement. So is the White House, as that Haaretz article I quoted above goes onto say:

In recent days, American statesmen seem to be more alarmed about the looming danger of delegitimization than Israelis are. In remarks to both the Saban Forum and the American Joint Distribution Committee this week, Secretary of State John Kerry described delegitimization as “an existential danger.” Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the same JDC forum, went one step further: “The wholesale effort to delegitimize Israel is the most concentrated that I have seen in the 40 years I have served. It is the most serious threat in my view to Israel’s long-term security.

Whatever one thinks about the BDS movement, it’s clearly having an impact. Its opponents take it seriously, so much so that they have devoted considerable resources to fighting it. Kazin is no doubt right that the BDS movement has chosen a high wall to scale, but what’s most amazing about the movement is how quickly it has not only shifted the discourse but how shaken the most seemingly intransigent defenders of Israel have become. That’s not victory by any stretch—and a shaken Israel can easily respond by drifting even further to the right. But the BDS movement is still in its earliest years, and increasing intransigence in response to a social movement is hardly peculiar to the Israeli government. Indeed, it is a feature of virtually all regimes that come under attack, only to give way years later.

But it’s Kazin’s final point about the “flashy” politics of the BDS movement as against the connected criticism of economic justice movements that I find hardest to understand. For starters, most of the activists around BDS that I know are also involved in economic justice campaigns. Take the activist I know best: me. I first got involved in the left through my work with a TA union in the 1990s, and I’ve continued to be involved in various campus labor activities since then. I also support BDS. And I know lots of people like me. While I think Kazin is right that Israel-Palestine is a line of cleavage on the left, the larger distinction he draws between economic justice campaigns and BDS is not one I see in my everyday world.

And what about this connected critic business? Is there any other country on the planet that the United States is more connected to than the State of Israel? There’s the obvious fact that Israel is the highest recipient of US foreign aid. More than that, there is the deep ideological and cultural connection to the issue of Israel-Palestine felt by American Jews—as well as Christians, Muslims, and Arabs (not to mention other American citizens). While Israel is hardly the only country to be the object of intense interest from a diaspora community in the US, it has the distinctive feature of being the object of intense interest from multiple diasporic and non-diasporic communities in the US. Who happen to stand on opposite sides of the issue. What’s more, many of those individuals happen to be on American campuses.

When Kazin describes connected criticism by citing Walzer—challenging “the leaders, the conventions, the ritual practices of a particular society…in the name of values recognized and shared in the same society’”—I think he’s actually describing the BDS movement quite well.  Most BDS activists I know speak on behalf of the most minimal norms of a liberal democracy, which are widely shared in the US: namely, that Israel should be the state of its citizens (and not some far-flung community of an ancient diaspora), and that it should govern itself according to the norms of one person/one vote, as opposed to the hard facts of ethnic privilege and military occupation. When I talk to BDS activists, that’s what they tell me.

It is not the underlying principles or ideals of the BDS movement that make it controversial; it is the application of those ideals to the State of Israel and its patrons in the United States that make it controversial. To that extent BDS activists look like no one so much as those connected critics whom Walzer celebrated in his book: Camus, Silone, Orwell, and the Hebrew prophets.

If Kazin were to hone in even closer, he’d see that many members of the BDS movement are, like myself, Jewish. And while they speak in a variety of registers, they often invoke Jewish norms and traditions against the State of Israel and its defenders. Indeed, just this week, Jewish students at Swarthmore made international headlines when they sought to retrieve the figure of Hillel from the campus institution that bears its name. While the Swarthmore Hillel did not come out against the State of Israel—all it wants is the right to work with non-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups and speakers, a right the international Hillel organization proscribes—it explicitly invoked a Jewish tradition in taking this stance (and I suspect many of the people in the Swarthmore Hillel who are pushing this line are themselves sympathetic to BDS):

…Rabbi Hillel valued Jewish debate and difference – it was at the core of his practice. We do the same. For us, that is what the name Hillel symbolizes.

Therefore, we choose to depart from the Israel guidelines of Hillel International. We believe these guidelines, and the actions that have stemmed from them, are antithetical to the Jewish values that the name “Hillel” should invoke. We seek to reclaim this name. We seek to turn Hillel – at Swarthmore, in the Greater Philadelphia region, nationally, and internationally – into a place that has a reputation for constructive discourse and free speech. We refuse to surrender the name of this Rabbi who encouraged dialogue to those who seek to limit it.

To that end, Swarthmore Hillel hereby declares itself to be an Open Hillel. All are welcome to walk through our doors and speak with our name and under our roof, be they Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist, or non-Zionist. We are an institution that seeks to foster spirited debate, constructive dialogue, and a safe space for all, in keeping with the Jewish tradition. We are an Open Hillel.

Again, connected critics.

Let me end on a more personal note. I know Michael Kazin. We’ve spoken at conferences together, I’ve written for his magazine, we email each other. I know him to be a good guy. A very good guy. He’s decent, and he’s a genuinely nice person (rare in academia and even rarer on the left).

But something about this issue—like certain other conflicts with the left—brings out a different Michael Kazin. A less measured, less grounded Michael Kazin. (The New Republic emailer accompanying his piece calls BDS “the worst cause in campus activism.” I’m sure Kazin didn’t write that, but it captures the tone of his piece. I guess the folks at TNR don’t know just how bad campus causes can get.)  A contemptuous, teeth-on-edge Michael Kazin emerges. He starts to sound like a disconnected critic, someone who doesn’t recognize—because he cannot even see—his opponents. Even though they are, on virtually every other issue, his comrades.

I should know. I’m one of them.

Update (December 14, 11: 15 pm)

It occurs to me that there is one other problem with the selectivity argument—and the insinuation, which often accompanies that argument, that there is something anti-Semitic about that selectivity. It does too much work. It is an argument that applies not only to an academic boycott of Israel but also to any statement or action against the State of Israel.

Think about this way. If a bunch of students on campus decide to organize a rally to protest Israel’s bombing of Gaza—and don’t organize (or haven’t organized) rallies to protest every other instance of bombing—they are being selective. And thus—in the eyes of many of Israel’s defenders or critics of the BDS movement—anti-Semitic. Therefore, their rally is illegitimate and shouldn’t be supported. If Peter Beinart criticizes the bombing of Gaza, the same argument applies. If Congress passes a resolution—work with me—condemning the bombing, the same argument applies. If the UN passes a resolution, the same.

In the end, the real function of the selectivity argument, particularly when it’s paired with the claim of anti-Semitism (and, let’s be frank, that’s really the point that’s being made), is to make impossible any criticism of or action against the State of Israel.

A Response to Michael Kazin on BDS and Campus Activism

Writing in The New Republic today, Michael Kazin issues a sharp attack on the BDS movement, particularly the recent vote of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions. (That decision is now being voted upon by the wider membership of the ASA.)

Kazin levels two charges against the boycott movement. First, it is inconsistent: why single out Israel when there are other human rights violators like China and Russia that could just as easily be targeted for an academic boycott? Second, it is ineffective: the boycott movement is “quite unlikely to change anyone’s minds or, for that matter, Israeli policy.” It is a form of theater, professors playing politics.

Kazin contrasts the boycott movement of self-righteous, divisive, “flashy” poseurs with what he calls “a larger and more practical academic left.” That left is engaged in movements for economic justice on campuses across the country. It campaigns for a living wage for university workers and union rights for adjuncts; it works against sweatshop labor in Bangladesh and high student debt at home.

Beyond the justice of their cause, what attracts Kazin to this academic left is that it practices a version of what Michael Walzer calls connected criticism. “They ‘challenge the leaders, the conventions, the ritual practices of a particular society…in the name of values recognized and shared in the same society.’” While “one left talks about something it calls ‘American Studies’; the other actually practices it.”

Kazin’s first charge—inconsistency and double-standards—puzzles me. As a long-time activist, Kazin knows that campaigns against injustice inevitably single out one target, while ignoring others. The farm workers’ grape boycott of the 1960s and 1970s didn’t go after every workplace (or fruit) in the country; it shone a spotlight on one particular set of working conditions. The antiwar movement of Kazin’s youth didn’t go after all wars (or even all unjust wars) being fought around the globe; it targeted the war in Vietnam. The civil rights movement didn’t fix on every racial injustice on the planet; it went after American apartheid.

Nor do these movements necessarily target the worst injustices. Working conditions in the fields of California were awful, but God knows there were far worse elsewhere. American sexism wasn’t the most terrible on offer. South African apartheid wasn’t the most oppressive regime, and the death squads in El Salvador were hardly grislier than the killing fields of Cambodia. Yet the leaders of the domestic movements against California agribusiness, American patriarchy, South African apartheid, and the Salvadoran death squads chose their targets as they did, without burdening themselves with the charge of fighting even worse injustices elsewhere. Many people—including, I’m sure, Michael Kazin—supported them, and the world is better for that.

When Kazin invokes consistency, he reminds me of nothing so much as those rigid and abstract ideologues he so often denounces elsewhere. Indeed, what would Kazin say about a movement that, acting on some cockamamie notion of consistency, decided that it could only go after injustice somewhere if it simultaneously went after injustice everywhere? He’d call it foolish and dogmatic, and he’d be right. Those campus living wage movements he supports, after all, aren’t fighting for living wages everywhere, are they? And what would Kazin say to someone who refuses to support a living wage for workers—or a union for adjuncts—at Georgetown, where Kazin teaches, because workers in Guatemala have it so much worse? (If he hasn’t heard such criticisms, he should go to more meetings. Or read Matt Yglesias.) He’d think they were nuts—or insufficiently connected critics. (I’ll come back to that latter point in a second.)

It is in the very nature of a campaign for social justice that it be selective, focusing on targets that it can mobilize against and perhaps even defeat. And it is in the very nature of such targets that they can be mobilized against and defeated in part because they are not necessarily the most egregious, or oppressive, instances of their kinds. That’s what makes such movements practical, the very virtue Kazin espouses.

Which brings me to Kazin’s second point: he thinks the boycott movement is impractical. What in the world can a group of American Studies professors or campus activists do about the policies of the Israeli government?

According to the Israeli media, quite a bit. Unlike the detractors of the boycott movement in the US, voices in Israel seem genuinely alarmed about the growing power of the boycott movement. Not just in academia or in the US, but throughout the world.

Just yesterday, a piece in Haaretz opened with the following two grafs:

This has happened in recent days: The Dutch water company Vitens severed its ties with Israeli counterpart Mekorot; Canada’s largest Protestant church decided to boycott three Israeli companies; the Romanian government refused to send any more construction workers; and American Studies Association academics are voting on a measure to sever links with Israeli universities.

Coming so shortly after the Israeli government effectively succumbed to a boycott of settlements in order to be eligible for the EU’s Horizon 2020 scientific cooperation agreement, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is picking up speed. And the writing on the wall, if anyone missed it, only got clearer and sharper in the wake of the death of Nelson Mandela.

As Michelle Goldberg, no friend of the BDS movement, recently reported in the Nation:

Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in favor of BDS is the degree to which it seems to be shaking the Israeli establishment. As Haaretz editor in chief Aluf Benn wrote in June, “Netanyahu is worried about the growing international boycott against Israel….He hears warnings in the business community about the damage the diplomatic impasse is causing….If he thought it was harmless noise, he would ignore or minimize the problem. But Netanyahu apparently fears being remembered as the leader during whose time Israel was distanced from the family of nations.”

Many in Israel were shocked earlier this year when Stephen Hawking, acceding to the boycotters, pulled out of Israel’s prestigious President’s Conference. Discussing the reaction of Israel’s leadership, former Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote, “Behind closed doors they’re laughing at Kerry’s peace mission; they’re not laughing at Stephen Hawking or BDS, are they?”

It’s not just Israel that’s worried about the boycott movement. So is the White House, as that Haaretz article I quoted above goes onto say:

In recent days, American statesmen seem to be more alarmed about the looming danger of delegitimization than Israelis are. In remarks to both the Saban Forum and the American Joint Distribution Committee this week, Secretary of State John Kerry described delegitimization as “an existential danger.” Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the same JDC forum, went one step further: “The wholesale effort to delegitimize Israel is the most concentrated that I have seen in the 40 years I have served. It is the most serious threat in my view to Israel’s long-term security.

Whatever one thinks about the BDS movement, it’s clearly having an impact. Its opponents take it seriously, so much so that they have devoted considerable resources to fighting it. Kazin is no doubt right that the BDS movement has chosen a high wall to scale, but what’s most amazing about the movement is how quickly it has not only shifted the discourse but how shaken the most seemingly intransigent defenders of Israel have become. That’s not victory by any stretch—and a shaken Israel can easily respond by drifting even further to the right. But the BDS movement is still in its earliest years, and increasing intransigence in response to a social movement is hardly peculiar to the Israeli government. Indeed, it is a feature of virtually all regimes that come under attack, only to give way years later.

But it’s Kazin’s final point about the “flashy” politics of the BDS movement as against the connected criticism of economic justice movements that I find hardest to understand. For starters, most of the activists around BDS that I know are also involved in economic justice campaigns. Take the activist I know best: me. I first got involved in the left through my work with a TA union in the 1990s, and I’ve continued to be involved in various campus labor activities since then. I also support BDS. And I know lots of people like me. While I think Kazin is right that Israel-Palestine is a line of cleavage on the left, the larger distinction he draws between economic justice campaigns and BDS is not one I see in my everyday world.

And what about this connected critic business? Is there any other country on the planet that the United States is more connected to than the State of Israel? There’s the obvious fact that Israel is the highest recipient of US foreign aid. More than that, there is the deep ideological and cultural connection to the issue of Israel-Palestine felt by American Jews—as well as Christians, Muslims, and Arabs (not to mention other American citizens). While Israel is hardly the only country to be the object of intense interest from a diaspora community in the US, it has the distinctive feature of being the object of intense interest from multiple diasporic and non-diasporic communities in the US. Who happen to stand on opposite sides of the issue. What’s more, many of those individuals happen to be on American campuses.

When Kazin describes connected criticism by citing Walzer—challenging “the leaders, the conventions, the ritual practices of a particular society…in the name of values recognized and shared in the same society’”—I think he’s actually describing the BDS movement quite well.  Most BDS activists I know speak on behalf of the most minimal norms of a liberal democracy, which are widely shared in the US: namely, that Israel should be the state of its citizens (and not some far-flung community of an ancient diaspora), and that it should govern itself according to the norms of one person/one vote, as opposed to the hard facts of ethnic privilege and military occupation. When I talk to BDS activists, that’s what they tell me.

It is not the underlying principles or ideals of the BDS movement that make it controversial; it is the application of those ideals to the State of Israel and its patrons in the United States that make it controversial. To that extent BDS activists look like no one so much as those connected critics whom Walzer celebrated in his book: Camus, Silone, Orwell, and the Hebrew prophets.

If Kazin were to hone in even closer, he’d see that many members of the BDS movement are, like myself, Jewish. And while they speak in a variety of registers, they often invoke Jewish norms and traditions against the State of Israel and its defenders. Indeed, just this week, Jewish students at Swarthmore made international headlines when they sought to retrieve the figure of Hillel from the campus institution that bears its name. While the Swarthmore Hillel did not come out against the State of Israel—all it wants is the right to work with non-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups and speakers, a right the international Hillel organization proscribes—it explicitly invoked a Jewish tradition in taking this stance (and I suspect many of the people in the Swarthmore Hillel who are pushing this line are themselves sympathetic to BDS):

…Rabbi Hillel valued Jewish debate and difference – it was at the core of his practice. We do the same. For us, that is what the name Hillel symbolizes.

Therefore, we choose to depart from the Israel guidelines of Hillel International. We believe these guidelines, and the actions that have stemmed from them, are antithetical to the Jewish values that the name “Hillel” should invoke. We seek to reclaim this name. We seek to turn Hillel – at Swarthmore, in the Greater Philadelphia region, nationally, and internationally – into a place that has a reputation for constructive discourse and free speech. We refuse to surrender the name of this Rabbi who encouraged dialogue to those who seek to limit it.

To that end, Swarthmore Hillel hereby declares itself to be an Open Hillel. All are welcome to walk through our doors and speak with our name and under our roof, be they Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist, or non-Zionist. We are an institution that seeks to foster spirited debate, constructive dialogue, and a safe space for all, in keeping with the Jewish tradition. We are an Open Hillel.

Again, connected critics.

Let me end on a more personal note. I know Michael Kazin. We’ve spoken at conferences together, I’ve written for his magazine, we email each other. I know him to be a good guy. A very good guy. He’s decent, and he’s a genuinely nice person (rare in academia and even rarer on the left).

But something about this issue—like certain other conflicts with the left—brings out a different Michael Kazin. A less measured, less grounded Michael Kazin. (The New Republic emailer accompanying his piece calls BDS “the worst cause in campus activism.” I’m sure Kazin didn’t write that, but it captures the tone of his piece. I guess the folks at TNR don’t know just how bad campus causes can get.)  A contemptuous, teeth-on-edge Michael Kazin emerges. He starts to sound like a disconnected critic, someone who doesn’t recognize—because he cannot even see—his opponents. Even though they are, on virtually every other issue, his comrades.

I should know. I’m one of them.

Must Malcolm Gladwell Mean What He Says?

Malcolm Gladwell on Dave Eggers and Tom Scocca:

When [David] Eggers says, “Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one,” he does not mean you can’t criticize a book or a movie unless you’ve made one….

Eggers is not Wittgenstein…He says pretty much what he means.