Tag: Civil Rights & Liberties
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We Have Never Been Woke: pre-orders now live
I am pleased to report that my first book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, now has an official release date: October 8, 2024. Even better, it is now officially available for preorder via Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and most other major retailers. Princeton University Press was very…
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Bill and Hillary Clinton Revolutionized U.S. Politics (Twice)
Joe Biden’s approval rating has been consistently underwater for most of his presidency. Although there has been a bit of improvement, the president continues to trail Trump in most swing states. Eager to turn around his fortunes, Biden has sought to enlist the Clintons into his reelection bid – starting with Hillary, who hosted a…
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It’s Easy to Misunderstand Antisemitism in America
According to many popular contemporary narratives, American society is rife with antisemitism. Institutions of higher learning are purportedly hotbeds of anti-Jewish animus, indoctrinating impressionable young people into a leftist ideology that paints Jews as extraordinarily privileged, Israelis as oppressors, Hamas as brave freedom fighters and Palestinians as blameless victims. Many people I deeply respect have embraced claims like these…
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New paper explores censorship and self-censorship in science
In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I explore the prevalence, causes and impacts of censorship and self-censorship in science. We find that censorship is driven heavily by scientists themselves and, although the consequences of censorship are often pernicious in practice, censors tend to be…
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The ‘Great Awokening’ Is Winding Down
Beginning in 2011, there was a rapid shift in the ways people associated with the knowledge economy talk about, and engage on, ‘social justice’ issues. Those who work in fields like tech, finance, education, journalism, arts, entertainment, design and consulting (and students who aspired to these professions) grew much more politically ‘radical’ over the…
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On Christian Nationalism and the ‘Religious Right’
In recent years, there has been growing scholarly and media focus on Christian nationalism. Google nGrams, a search engine that tracks word frequencies in books, show that the contemporary resurgence of interest in Christian nationalism seems to correspond with the 2016 election cycle. A search on Google Scholar produces roughly 7,000 results for scholarly works…
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On Clarence Thomas, White Liberals and Racial Politics
There were six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade this week. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Samuel Alito. However, in the aftermath of the ruling, there has been an intense and particular focus on a different justice: Clarence Thomas. This may have been in part a product of Thomas’…
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The Loneliest Americans
Jay Caspian Kang’s life story is both extraordinary and somewhat normal for families like his. That’s kind of the point. His parents’ family had roots in North Korea, although they fled to the South in the leadup and aftermath of what is known in America as the ‘Korean War.’ Upon getting married, and for very…
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My Problem with the ‘Harper’s Letter’
On July 7th, Harper’s Magazine published “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” colloquially known as the “Harper’s Letter.” The collective statement was signed by more than 150 public luminaries, from prominent academics and journalists to bestselling authors. The signatories denounced a culture of repression, fear, and reprisal which they claim has overtaken many institutions of cultural…
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What about the ‘good apples’?
Isaac “Ike” Lambert was a decorated detective who had served more than 24 years in the Chicago Police Department. In 2017, an off-duty officer shot a teenager named Ricardo Hayes, who had autism and whose caregivers had reported him missing hours before. Some officers then tried to charge Hayes with assault on the basis of…
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Police in America Are Out of Control
Following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent wave of protests nationwide (indeed, worldwide) against police brutality, Americans have witnessed video after video of cops assaulting unarmed demonstrators, and even complete bystanders unlucky enough to cross their path. In one striking case, police senselessly shoved a seventy-five-year-old man to the ground, causing blood to…
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What Coronavirus Reveals About the Lifestyles of the Professional-Managerial Class
In New York City and throughout the country, the professional-managerial class is hunkered down and making the best of a bad situation: working remotely, enjoying time with their families, making sure their children stay up on their schoolwork, finding ways to work out, exercising self-care, and catching up on all the shows they’ve wanted to…
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Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism
This essay is part of a forthcoming special issue of Sociological Forum: “Resistance in the 21st Century.” Suggested citation: al-Gharbi, Musa (in press). “Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism.” Sociological Forum. “Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two closely related forms…we call these individual racism and institutional racism… The second type…
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On the relationship between ideological and demographic diversity
It is often said that the academy is dominated by the left. There is certainly a sense in which that is true. In terms of ideological self-identification, for instance, students, faculty and administrators trend decisively left (in ascending order of political homogeneity). However, this narrative is also a bit simplistic. First, because ideological self-identification is…
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Comparing Perceived Freedom of Expression on Campus v. Off
As an organization, Heterodox Academy is growing increasingly focused on highlighting not just problems, and what is going wrong – but also solutions, and what’s going right, who is doing it well, and how. Consequently, many of us were thrilled reading Jeffrey Sachs’ recent Niskanen essay highlighting positive trends on campus (although an implication of…
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Trump’s Executive Order on Campus Speech is a Raw Deal for Conservatives
“The political world is playing a very different game, and it’s a game that almost always damages our work in universities.” Jonathan Haidt, Chronicle of Higher Education One year ago, almost to the day, President Trump declared that the campus free speech crisis was ‘overblown.’ Since then, the trends have actually moved in an even…
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You Can’t Change the World From a ‘Safe Space.’
Most of us who go into the humanities and social sciences don’t just want to understand social problems — we want to help resolve them as well. There strong agreement about what our societies’ biggest problems are (for instance, inequality), and broadly, how to go about solving them (i.e. harness expertise and leverage the state or…
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The Radical Black Liberation Theology of Kanye West
Kanye West has always had a streak of what one might call conservatism. He defiantly included “Jesus Walks” on his 2004 debut album, despite repeated urging from record execs to drop it, and predictions that it would never get play. Instead, the single helped make his career. The track begins with Kanye revealing, “We at…
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Vox’s Consistent Errors on Campus Speech, Explained
The Free Speech Project (FSP), based out of Georgetown University, attempts to document “incidents in which Free Speech has been challenged or compromised in recent years, and collect analysis from various points of view of the struggle to sustain First Amendment Values.” This is a great initiative. In fact, Heterodox Academy recently ran a post…
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Q&A: Why Care About Ideological Diversity in Social Research?
Perhaps the most common response I get from my fellow scholars when I mention the dearth of conservative perspectives in the academy (and especially in social research fields) is something like, “what about other historically disadvantaged or underrepresented groups? Isn’t the underrepresentation of blacks, Hispanics, women, LGBTQ scholars a bigger problem than the lack of…
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(How) The Lack of Conservatives in the Academy Harms Progressive Scholars (Most)
It is no longer a matter of dispute whether increasing diversity of perspectives enriches understanding of social issues. Conversations about diversity at institutions of higher learning typically turn on questions of race, gender and sexuality. More recently, class, geography and the intersections between categories of underrepresentation have been integrated into the discussion. However, viewpoint diversity…
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Charlottesville and Americans’ Increasingly Polarized Response to Terrorism, Political Violence
On the night of August 11th, white nationalists held a torch-lit pride parade through the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They were met with counter-protests, and the demonstrations descended into a melee. The next morning, these same organizers held a “Unite the Right” rally in Emancipation Park, centered on a statue of Confederate General Robert…
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In the Trump Administration, Principled Civil Servants Like James Comey Are Critical
Let’s be clear about one thing straightaway: James Comey did not sabotage Hillary Clinton. If that had been his intention, it was well within his power to outright destroy her candidacy. In the wake of Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s improper meeting with former President Bill Clinton, the Department of Justice was scandalized. Under pressure, Lynch…
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The Big Debate About Microaggressions
The concept of microaggressions gained prominence with the publication of Sue et al.’s 2007, “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” which defined microaggressions as communicative, somatic, environmental or relational cues that demean and/or disempower members of minority groups in virtue of their minority status. Microaggressions, they asserted, are typically subtle and ambiguous. Often, they are inadvertent…
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Racially Profiling “Jihadists” Sounds Like Common Sense. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Work
Over the weekend there was a series of bombings, and attempted bombings, in New Jersey and Manhattan (where I live). Authorities have identified and arrested one Ahmed Khan in connection with the attacks, which injured dozens of people in the New York area. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was quick to seize on this incident…
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One Thing Trump Gets Right About Muslims, Terrorism (Kind of)
Let’s start with all the usual caveats: Trump is a demagogue. He and his advisory team are painfully ignorant about Islam—and as a result, most of his policy proposals and rhetoric about Islamic terrorism have been ill-informed and counter-productive. But for all that, Trump has repeatedly emphasized a point which many of his rivals and…
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Epistemological Pluralism, Cognitive Liberalism & Authentic Choice
Originally published in Comparative Philosophy, Vol. VII, No. 2 (Fall 2016) Print version available here. In “Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism,” Martha Nussbaum (2011) persuasively argues that political liberalism is superior to its perfectionist cousin. However, her critique of perfectionism also problematizes Rawls’ account of political liberalism—particularly as it relates to his account of…
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Hillary Clinton Is No Friend of Black Empowerment
As an African American, I have struggled to understand why so many of brothers and sisters seem to prefer Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Some have argued that black people are terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and so they rally around Clinton under the belief that she is more electable in the…
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On the Philosophical Underpinnings of Conservativism
What do conservatives stand for? One popular narrative is that conservatives cling to tradition and resist change. There is an element of truth to this description in that conservatives do value tradition–albeit not for its own sake. Rather, out of the conviction that systems and institutions which have proven themselves over the course of generations…
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What Happened to Black Republicans
It is often remarked that the Republican Party was founded by Lincoln, who oversaw the defeat of the Confederacy, the emancipation of slaves, and laid the foundation for the civil rights movement. But the Republican history of civil rights is much richer than this. Conversely, the history of the Democratic Party has been overwhelmingly pro-slavery…
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No, Ammon Bundy is NOT a terrorist.
On Saturday January 2nd, citizens of Burns, Oregon held a rally protesting the sentencing of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond. The local demonstration was co-opted by a militia, led by Nevada-native Ammon Bundy, now calling itself “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.” Following its participation in the planned protest, the militia seized and continues to illegally…
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Today’s Republican Party, neither Religious nor Conservative
Whistling “zippity doo da” as he stepped into the briefing room, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be vacating his position as Speaker, and also his seat in the Senate, at the end of October—after pushing through a bill to fund the government and ensuring there will be no government shutdown. The announcement…
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Don’t say Black Lives Matter, prove it.
Let’s be clear: for various reasons a large swath of Americans support institutionalized racism, both actively and passively. And in light of the pivotal role the police have played, and continue to play, in preserving the systems, institutions and dynamics which undergird racial inequality in the U.S.–powerful backlash against Black Lives Matter was to be…
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It’s Time to Stop Patronizing White People
On average, whites are far better off than blacks. But the problem with averages is that they often conceal radically uneven distribution of the phenomena in question. This is certainly true of wealth among white Americans. It is well-established that white people are overrepresented in the upper classes. And even in the middle class, whites…
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Who is Whitewashing History? (Hint: It’s the Neo-Confederates)
[su_quote cite=”Confederate General Robert E. Lee” url=”http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments/”]I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.[/su_quote] With the Confederate Battle Standard finally removed from the South Carolina Capitol grounds,…
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America’s Biggest Terror Threat is from the Far-Right, Not the Middle East
According to a New America Foundation report, right-wing extremists have killed nearly twice as many Americans through domestic terrorism as Islamic jihadists have since 9/11. However, this same database shows that jihadists constitute a much higher percentage of those indicted on terror charges or killed when confronted by authorities: despite causing only 35 percent of…
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Do Black Lives Matter? The World’s Shameful Response to Charleston
In the wake of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), analysts have been busying themselves with apparently self-evident questions as to whether the atrocity was racially motivated, or constituted an act of domestic terrorism. Americans have been focused on questions about gun control and the ubiquity of the Confederate Flag—with an emerging…
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The attack on Emanuel AME was certainly terrorism
The Charleston Massacre was an act of domestic terrorism. Consider: Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) was a historically black church founded by a freed slave who eventually tried to lead a revolt to free his people. In the aftermath, the church was burned down. Because predominantly-black churches like Emanuel AME were known to be…
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What we now know about police brutality (and how to end it)
Police brutality has been an integral part of the black experience since the birth of the modern law enforcement. Until recently, however, it was difficult to establish how stark or pervasive the problem was; this opacity plagues many aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system. In part, the data has been hard to come by…
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On the limitations of body cameras for reducing police misconduct
The problem of police brutality and misconduct is uncomfortable for many Americans–in large part because it contravenes so many of our cherished narratives about social progress, and about the United States as a land of freedom & justice–not to mention our post-9/11 idealization of first-responders. When forced to confront these kinds of issues, which we would rather not…
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Police Reform Is More Important Than You Think
In the wake of Freddy Gray’s death and the uprising which followed in Baltimore, President Obama acknowledged the need to reform police practices and accountability, but insisted that the real problem faced by the black community in Baltimore, and around the country, is not the police—but a system of institutionalized racism, socio-economic polarization, and a…
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Drawing Muhammad, Civil Rights & Religious Liberty in America
At the height of the unrest in Baltimore, I wrote a piece for Salon pushing back against the kneejerk condemnations of the riots. In the piece, I argued that advocates of pacifism fail to understand the extent to which their own methods are reliant on violence—to the point where it may not even be feasible…
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Pamela Geller is No Rosa Parks
“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” –Pamela Geller “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.” –Rosa Parks In the aftermath of the shootings in Garland, Texas New York Times reporter…
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Social Movement Requires Force
“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative…
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The “Paper-State” of Palestine is Worse than Useless
On Dec. 30, the United Nations Security Council rejected a proposal put forward by coalition of Arab states and the Palestinian Authority calling for “full and phased withdrawal of Israeli forces” from all Palestinian territories seized after 1967, and full Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza by December 31, 2017. The resolution needed…
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A Brief History of Palestinian Statehood
Although they have not yet been given full-membership in the U.N. (and would not have gained membership through Abbas’ proposal), the body has affirmed Palestinian statehood numerous times, most recently with a 2012’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 67/19, which passed with 138 votes in favor, 9 votes opposed and 41 abstentions, recognizing Palestine as…
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Why the SSCI Report on CIA Torture Doesn’t Matter
In 1984, the United Nations adopted the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The treaty forbade signatories from carrying out torture or related practices, or from deporting to detainees to other places where they knew these acts would be carried out. It would be ten years before the U.S.…
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Credibility is about Outcomes, not “Resolve”
In wake of Vladimir Putin annexing Crimea into the Russian Federation and supporting Eastern separatists against a Ukrainian government it perhaps rightly views as illegitimate, U.S. policy hawks argued the entire crisis could have been prevented: had President Obama followed through on his August 2013 commitment to bomb the Syrian government in retaliation for its…
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Musa al-Gharbi “interviews” Dr. Zuhdi Jasser
(Try to spot the fundamentalist) Apparently Dr. Jasser is a fan of my work…or in any case, he likes to skim it. Over the course of the following exchange, my interlocutor and I go through a good deal of my catalog–the dialectic is basically him systematically misrepresenting what I was arguing, and myself correcting…
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Reclaiming Jihad
In the wake of the excesses by ISIS, and the public outcry against them which often takes on an Islamophobic hue, many Muslims have tried to defend their religion by minimizing jihad (the struggle) as something peripheral to the faith, or else as antiquated: necessary in the time of Mohammed, but rarely of relevance in…
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Forget the Islamic State, Focus on the United States
America’s War on Sexual Violence, Mass Atrocities & Religious Persecution Should Begin at Home Without question, the so-called “Islamic State” is an abomination that should be wiped from the face of the earth. However, it is unclear whether America is the right agent to see this through. Part of the trouble relates to the Obama Administration’s strategy, which…
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Israel & Palestine: The One State Solution
Throughout the current crisis, Israel’s apologists and spokespeople have attempted to blame the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, for the wanton carnage and destruction unfolding in Gaza. One of their consistent talking points has been that, following Israel’s 2005 retreat from the Gaza strip in the wake of the Second Intifada and Hamas’ 2006 electoral landslide victories,…
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It was Israel which sought out the latest conflict with Hamas
In the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the dominant discourse is that the Palestinian militants provoked the hostilities — while Israel, as President Barack Obama affirmed last week, is acting in legitimate self-defense. Many have attempted to problematize this narrative, for instance by arguing that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have a…
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“Enhanced Interrogation,” Tortured Logic
Underlying any interrogation technique are a number of assumptions about how people think and behave. Contemporary cognitive science and psychology suggest rather robustly that the axioms which have historically lent credence to some of today’s most-popular interrogation techniques are more-or-less false. For instance, investigators have long believed (and many continue to believe) that fidgeting, avoiding…