DAVID BERNSTEINS, FTW: (A different) David Bernstein’s Woke Antisemitism: How A Progressive Ideology Harms Jews is out! Highly recommended. And while you’re on a David Bernstein kick, you might as well pick up my Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
Fun fact: The editor for both books was another guy named David Bernstein. #CommissionEarned
AMERICA’S FUTURE MAY DEPEND ON IT: Debate/Discusssion–Can We Separate Race and State?
SELF-DELUSION ON THE LEFT, MARK JOSEPH STERN EDITION: The Supreme Court Is Blowing Up Law School, Too. Inside the growing furor among professors who have had enough.Stern writes that constitutional law professors are “giving up on the Supreme Court.” He writes:
The problem, it’s worth emphasizing, is not that the Supreme Court is issuing decisions with which left-leaning professors disagree. It’s that the court seems to be reaching many of these conclusions in defiance of centuries of standards, rejecting precedent and moderation in favor of aggressive, partisan-tinged motivated reasoning. Plenty of progressive professors have long viewed the court with skepticism, and many professors, right- and left-leaning, have criticized the reasoning behind certain opinions for decades. But it’s only in recent years—with the manipulation of the justice selection process combined with clear, results-oriented cynicism in decisions—that the problem has seemed so acute that they feel it affects their ability to teach constitutional law.
Actually, the fact that the Court is solidly conservative, and the constitutional law professoriate overwhelming liberal or further left, is exactly the problem. In the past, the left could count on the Court for sporadic big victories: same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion. Now they can’t, so they have turned against the Court. We all know that left-learning lawprofs would be dancing in the streets if SCOTUS were equally aggressive to the left. And indeed, while Stern portrays discontent with the Court as a question of professional standards rather than ideology, he does not manage to find a single right-leaning professor to quote in his article.
[Crossposted at Volokh]
IN CASE YOU THOUGHT THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION’S PRIORITY MIGHT BE EDUCATION:
AND YOU CAN’T BEAT FREE: A prominent lawyer recently told me that the best possible advertisement for my book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America was the introduction, which left him “salivating” to read the rest of it. He suggested I post it online, for free. Here it is.
Given that the Supreme Court is going to consider the constitutionality of affirmative action based on these classifications later this month, the book, and its call for the separation of race and state, is especially timely.
RES IPS LOQUITUR:
UPDATE: It’s been suggested to me that Mossad got wind that Khamenei was ill, and decided that they could preeemptively “take credit” for it to freak out their enemies. If so, still good show.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Just Amnesty International’s Middle East Director retweeting an obviously play-acting photo purporting to be Israel chaining up a 13 year old Palestinian girl. You don’t have to be an expert to note that those aren’t IDF uniforms, the guns are fake, she is not chained in a way that would prevent her from escaping, and if she were being detained she’d be in zip ties, not chains, in any event. But then again, Amnesty itself is in the business of crude anti-Israel propaganda, so this is entirely consistent.
LIVE WEBCAST TODAY AT NOON EASTERN TIME: I will be talking about my book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America at the Cato Institute, with comments from Joan Coaston of the New York Times and Robert Cottrol of George Washington University. You can register here.
THIS MIGHT MAKE YOU CURIOUS ABOUT THE UNTOLD STORY OF RACIAL CLASSIFICATION IN AMERICA: Credit is also due Cory Liu, who actually authored the brief on my behalf.
IT WOULD BE A GREAT LEAP FORWARD:
WHAT IT TAKES TO GET OUR POLITICAL ELITES RILED UP: Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’ suggestion that Israel has committed “fifty Holocausts” against the Palestinians is grossly inaccurate and offensive. But he was answering a question in Germany about whether he would apologize for his involvement in the Munich massacre of Israel fifty years ago. The lack of apology is more important than overheated, offensive rhetoric, because it shows that either deep-down he’s still the same terrorist as always, or at least that he thinks it would be very harmful in Palestinian politics to acknowledge that murdering innocent athletes was wrong. Similarly, his government continues to pay generous pensions to terrorists who murder Israeli Jews, not just rewarding those terrorists but encouraging others to follow in their footsteps. Abbas is also a dictator who has not held elections in almost two decades, and as corrupt as the day is long. None of that gets the elites nearly as agitated as making an offensive Holocaust-related remark. It’s almost as though if you pay lip service to the memory of the Holocaust, you will get a free pass for current crimes committed against Jews and others… In fact, it’s exactly that.
CLASSIFIED UPDATE: I have posted the Introduction to Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, here.
Meanwhile, here’s a roundup of recent podcasts and reviews for Classified.
Podcasts
Podcast with Coleman Hughes, conversations with Coleman
Jewish Institute for Liberal Values
Reviews
Robert VerBruggen, Washington Examiner
THE ODDS THAT EVEN ONE PERSON ACTUALLY SAID THIS TO LIZ WARREN ARE NO BETTER THAN 1/1024:
IN SHORT, NOTHING GOOD: What a ‘MENA’ racial classification would mean for American Jews. Though it would be fun to be a fly on the wall when Linda Sarsour discovers that the new Middle Eastern and North African classification she is pushing for, meant to turn Muslim Arabs and Iranians into a victim class eligible for affirmative action, winds up being claimed by millions of American Jews.
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY: A helpful reader reports that the Introduction and the first few pages of the first chapter of Classified are available for free as a “preview” at Scribd.
WELL, IF THEY DIDN’T INVENT IT THEY SURE CONTINUE TO FIND IT USEFUL TO PROMOTE DIVISION BASED ON IT: How the Government Invented Race.
“CLASSIFIED” REVIEW AND PODCAST UPDATE: My book on racial classification’s official publication date was Tuesday, and it’s already garnered several reviews and I have appeared on a bunch of podcasts. So if you want to listen in on what all the cool kids are talking about…
Reviews
Review by Goldwater Institute President Tim Sandefur for the Objective Standard
Review by Prof. Bill Jacobson, Legal Insurrection
Review by Ed Whelan, National Review
Podcasts
The Remnant, with Jonah Goldberg
American Institute for Economic Research
CSPI Podcast with Richard Hanania
Essential Liberty with Bob Zadek
First Things Podcast with Mark Bauerlein
Institutionalized with Charles Lehman and Aaron Sibarium
Washington Outsider Report with Irina Tsukerman
I wish I could tell you I had a favorite, the *one* podcast to listen to, but I have really been blessed with excellent hosts, who each took the interviews in different directions depending on their interests and the natural flow of conversation.
BOOK RELEASE DAY!: Today is the official release day for my book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
To celebrate, if you buy the book today and email me the receipt (dbernste at gmu dot edu) and your address, I will send you a signed copy of one of my previous books, either Rehabilitating Lochner or You Can’t Say That! I have many more copies of the latter than the former, so if you want a copy of the Lochner book, act fast. (Please note that I have a busy travel schedule coming up, so you may not receive your book until mid-August.)
And just so those of you who preordered the book don’t feel left out, if you preordered send me your receipt, your address, and which book you want, and I will send you a signed copy.
THE GOVERNMENT CLASSIFIED ALL IMMIGRANTS FROM EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST AS WHITE AND STILL DOES: How American Jews Stayed White. However:
That said, a change may be in the offing. The Biden administration is considering amending America’s racial classification scheme to include a classification for “Middle East and North African.” This classification would include Jews who immigrated from that region, Israelis, and some fraction of Ashkenazi Jews who consider themselves more “Middle Eastern” by religion, culture, and genetics than European.
ELON MUSK’S KIDS DON’T GET AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Whites from Africa Claiming African-American Status.
RELATED: If you’re looking for some beach reading, Classified’s official publication date is July 19.
OF COURSE, ONE CAN WONDER WHY WE HAVE A RACIAL CLASSIFICATION SCHEME TO BEGIN WITH: How Well Do You Know America’s Racial Classification System? First and Second of a Series.
My book on modern racial classification in America is due out July 19. And the Kindle is only $10.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS FRIENDS?:
INTERESTING WHAT GETS YOU A SPEAKING GIG AT CUNY LAW GRADUATION: Anti-hate watchdog criticizes CUNY Law School’s selection of commencement speaker. Canary Mission: Nerdeen Mohsen Kiswani, the force behind a violent and aggressive anti-Israel group in New York City, has been chosen to give a commencement address.
Related: In response to viral video, CUNY Law denounces antisemitism then retracts In the video, a man wearing an IDF sweatshirt is being confronted by a woman [Kiswani] holding a lit lighter and in the background is a female voice saying “I hate your shirt. I’m gonna set it on fire.”
A SIGN THERE WILL BE MASSIVE RESISTANCE IF THE SUPREME COURT INVALIDATES RACIAL PREFERENCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION THIS FALL: Utah Was Warned Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs Was Illegal. It Did It Anyway. Though to my mind, using race to ration medical care, with only the barest of pseudo-scientific justification, is a much graver sin.
Relatedly, my forthcoming book on US racial classifications, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications in American, is available for preorder on Kindle from Amazon for only 10 bucks. Here’s Glenn’s blurb: “We mock the racial-classifications schemes of the Jim Crow south, of Nazi Germany, and of Apartheid South Africa. But as David Bernstein ably demonstrates, our own racial classification system is just as risible, and no more scientific.”
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THEY CAN’T GET THE STORY STRAIGHT: When it comes to the controversy over Critical Race Theory, progressives have been making two contradictory arguments, neither of which are correct.
The first argument is that CRT merely describes historical examples of racism in the American legal system, and therefore should be uncontroversial except for those who want to censor discussion of the history of racism in the US.
The second argument is that CRT is not taught in public schools.
These arguments contradict each other, because public schools obviously do teach about the history of racism in the US, so if that’s all CRT is, it is indeed taught in public schools.
All this is certainly nothing new to Instapundit readers, but it is rather rare to see both arguments made within paragraphs of each other in the same article, as in this Washington Post piece:
For what it’s worth, I noted discriminatory federal housing and mortgage policy in an article I wrote in 1994, before it was cool to note that the federal government was complicit in American racism, and no one has ever accused me of being a Critical Race Theorist…
And by the way, I recently gave a talk at the University of Chicago about Critical Race Theory and the reasons it’s problematic. And I meant actual CRT, that is both taught in law schools and other academic programs and is having influence on grade school education, not the stylized, inaccurate versions that have become fodder in political debate. You can watch it here.
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