How The Jewish Left Learned To Stop Playing Defense And Fight Anti-Semitism

2018/10/22 Leave a comment

While I don’t follow the UK debates in detail, I found this commentary of interest:

It is no surprise that the British Labour party would ask an anti-Zionist to help fight anti-Semitism. Labor’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has long supported the Palestinian cause, and facing a long-running scandal over Jew hatred in Labor, it is natural that the British Left would turn to the Jewish Left. Indeed, Corbyn has long been friendly with Jewdas, the irreverent, non-Zionist left-wing group whose member, Annie Cohen, led an “interactive workshop” to “raise awareness of anti-Semitism” to a branch of Labor.

Rather, the surprise is that the Jewish Left is now in the business of offering anti-Semitism workshops.

For many years, the Left has responded to allegations of anti-Semitism defensively. The Left traditionally argues that claims of anti-Semitism are used cynically to delegitimize criticisms of the Israeli government.

I would know: I have made this argument many times.

Ours was a reactive analysis of anti-Semitism, which ceded the term to the Right and then frantically played defense, trying to stave off Leon Wieseltier’s or Abe Foxman’s assaults on this or that progressive figure.

But over the last five years, a younger, radical segment of the Jewish left has positively embraced the term “anti-Semitism” — along with fighting it.

These lefties, associated with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), IfNotNow, and portions of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), put anti-Semitism at the center of their political practice. “We show up for ourselves,” IfNotNow’s principles announce. “We acknowledge the existence of anti-Jewish oppression, in the world and in ourselves.”

And indeed, the group regularly runs trainings on internalized anti-Semitism. This is startling and audacious, given that for decades, “self-hating Jew” has been the term of abuse right-wingers use for critics of the Occupation.

Moreover, these groups tell a clear, coherent story about what anti-Semitism is, a story that is fully compatible with non- or anti-Zionism and which fits Jews into the Left’s broader analyses of class, race and gender.

The Left can talk about anti-Semitism in part because of the surge of right-wing anti-Semitism, especially since Donald Trump’s election. White nationalists are chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” and George Soros has become the object of conservative conspiracy theories.

Such circumstances have eroded the link that the Right forged over the last half-century between anti-Semitism and Israeli politics.

When you ask a millennial to picture an anti-Semite, we imagine not a left-wing Muslim but an alt-right white man.

But the shift on the Left goes deeper than momentary politics, because it reflects a new theory and philosophy of anti-Semitism.

I first encountered that theory in April Rosenblum’s 2007 pamphlet, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere,” which I read as a college student. Rosenblum argued that anti-Semitism had emerged from medieval Christianity, and that Jews provided ruling elites, whether in feudal Europe or under global capitalism, a convenient scapegoat for their crimes. She thus integrated thinking about anti-Semitism into the Left’s broader account of how power works across many axes of oppression.

Flash forward to 2017, when JFREJ released “Understanding Anti-Semitism: An Offering to Our Movement.” The document, which quotes Rosenblum, also extends her analysis: “Originating in European Christianity,” anti-Semitism has “functioned to protect the prevailing economic system and the almost exclusively Christian ruling class by diverting blame for hardship onto Jews.”

That is, Jewish middlemen make convenient targets for the rage of the oppressed. JFREJ also connects anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, showing how stereotypes about Jews and Muslims are parallel and intertwined.

In short, the document crafts a usable account of Jewish identity, one that places our history in a larger context of racial and economic exploitation and oppression.

Most notably, while JFREJ does take the standard line on Israel (“Criticisms of Israel and Zionism are not inherently or inevitably anti-Jewish), that gets only a page or two out of forty-four. They are consciously crafting a broader definition of anti-Semitism, one in which Israel politics are mostly a distraction. “Confronting antisemitism,” the pamphlet concludes, “is a necessary precondition for collective liberation.”

You can see the struggle between the two Left views of anti-Semitism playing out within an organization like JVP. The edited collection they released in 2017, “On anti-Semitism,” often seems at war with itself. Some of the essays emphasize the ephemerality of anti-Semitism, or the role of the Israeli government in exaggerating the problem of Left anti-Semitism and discrediting pro-Palestinian advocacy. One essay even declares that there is no anti-Semitism, strictly speaking, in the United States: anti-Jewish prejudice, sure, but no structural oppression of Jews.

On the other hand, many of the contributions of younger Jews were enthusiastic about fighting anti-Semitism, which they placed alongside homophobia, classism, and racism as a basic category of radical analysis. (It bears saying that much of the new theory of anti-Semitism comes from queer Jews and Jews of Color, who often do not enjoy the privileges of the white, mainstream American Jewry and who naturally speak the language of intersectional oppression.)

The JVP collection didn’t say much that was new, but it was fascinating as an index of the two, opposed impulses on the Left: to minimize the significance of anti-Semitism and to see it everywhere; to see it largely as ploy by the Israeli Right and to see it as fundamentally baked into Western civilization.

I have some worries about the new narrative of anti-Semitism. For many white Jews, I think, it is all too convenient to rediscover our own oppression at a moment when our whiteness and privilege make us increasingly uncomfortable.

The liberal interest in Steve Bannon’s alleged anti-Semitism seemed to me very odd: no one in the Trump administration is talking of deporting Jews or banning circumcision, after all.

This is not a critique of JFREJ or IfNotNow, both of which aim to be intentional and careful about race; it is rather my nervousness about how this new narrative circulates in the broader culture.

I have seen too many Facebook declarations to the effect of “I’m not white, I’m Jewish” to be entirely comfortable with re-emphasizing Jewish oppression.

Nonetheless, I think that a broader, proactive analysis of anti-Semitism is the better of the two options for the Left.

Our longstanding defensive posture on anti-Semitism largely failed, for obvious tactical reasons. It was fundamentally reactive, it allowed our opponents to set the terms of the debate, and it meant we were constantly apologizing for perceived faults.

The new Left approach to anti-Semitism, by contrast, puts the Right on the defensive. It is positive and aggressive.

Moreover, it offers Jews a usable identity in the age of Trump: a story in which the struggle for social justice is not merely a Jewish value, but a necessity for Jewish survival.

Source: How The Jewish Left Learned To Stop Playing Defense And Fight Anti-Semitism

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The British Museum’s new Islamic world gallery is a triumph

2018/10/22 Leave a comment

The Louvre’s Islamic art section, renovated and expanded some 10 years ago if I recall correctly, is also impressive:

IT IS a striking object. The lyre (pictured below), dating from the 19th century, was used in Sudanese Zar ceremonies, in which individuals thought to be possessed by spirits (jinn) were exorcised. Its arms are adorned with items that might appease spectres: multi-coloured beads, traded by Europeans; assorted currencies from Cairo, Istanbul, Britain and Sumatra; and shells. The instrument may not be the obvious draw for a prospective visitor to a gallery of the Islamic world, but in its wonderful complexity it illustrates the diversity of the works, places and ideas on display at the British Museum’s new Albukhary Foundation Gallery.

The gallery, which was opened on October 18th, explores the geographical spread of Islam chronologically, from the 7th century to the modern day. Islam is wisely presented not as a monolithic culture, but a global one with many centres and peripheries; artefacts range from Spain to Nigeria to Indonesia. The displays are devoted to themes such as science, calligraphy, fashion and storytelling, and the visitor is led through historical periods and regions, reflecting the movement of art and ideas between cultures. A case displaying Islamic lustreware reveals a glaze perfected by Iraqi ceramicists in the 9th century; it is juxtaposed with a dish created by Italian potters in the 15th century, who had later mastered the same technique. Other skills were learnt and spread from one place to another: a 13th-century flask from Syria is decorated in gold and intertwining vegetation, a Byzantine style.

The new space lets the curators display more of the museum’s collection than was previously possible—archaeological finds as well as newly commissioned contemporary art—and create beautiful, expansive displays. This is particularly true of the “Reading the Skies” case, containing items related to astronomy and astrology. An astrolabe, considered the computer of the 10th century, has been taken apart and its composite layers arranged to show their design. The intricacy of the mechanism is staggering. According to William Greenwood, one of the curators, “one 10th-century astronomer estimated that there were a thousand possible applications for an astrolabe, ranging from the position of the stars to finding the direction of Mecca.” The design of this display, and many others throughout the gallery, elevates the objects. The lighting for a celestial globe, for example, is so subtle that it seems as if it might be lit by its own heavenly design. The “exploded astrolabe”, meanwhile, casts planet-like shadows across the wall.

This thoughtful marriage of scholarship and design is striking, even unconventional. A turquoise dish from 17th-century Iran has been turned over to reveal the labels of the previous exhibitions it appeared in. One is for a showcase of Persian art held at Burlington House in London in 1931, then the largest the city had ever seen, and visited by 250,000 people. The exhibition was organised as a “symphony of pure form” and focused solely on the decorous beauty of Islamic art; a New York Times correspondent of the time said it was “like stepping into a recreation of the Arabian nights”. The touch reveals the curators’ willingness to show how the objects have been acquired by the British Museum, as well as the clichéd perceptions of the Islamic world that have surrounded them.

The location of the new gallery makes a statement, too. Where the artefacts were once isolated in restrictive rooms in the northern section of the building, the exhibit is now on the second floor of the museum. It is next to the Sutton Hoo collection, a prestigious collection of treasures from an Anglo-Saxon burial, and alongside the rooms on medieval Europe, Greece and Rome, and the ancient near east. The relocation puts the Islamic world in conversation with the rest of global history.

The British Museum’s new gallery avoids the “Orientalism” of past exhibitions—essential given that the institution is facing intense criticism for the colonial provenance of some of its collection. The curators have created displays that approach the subjects and the artefacts with nuance, sensitivity and skill. At a time when Islamophobia and misconceptions about the religion are prevalent, it is a vital corrective.

Source: The British Museum’s new Islamic world gallery is a triumph

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Swiss citizenship fees vary widely across country: report

2018/10/22 Leave a comment

Most aspects of citizenship procedures are administered at the cantonal level with considerable variation between cantons:
Swiss citizenship doesn’t come cheap. While the cost of filing an application with federal authorities is relatively low (100 Swiss francs for an adult, or 150 francs for a couple), cantonal and communal authorities also charge non-refundable administrative fees which can seriously mount up.

Those administrative fees can vary depend on factors including age, place of birth, and marital status, but also differ significantly depending on place of residence as a new study carried out by Swiss weekly Le Matin Dimanche shows.

This is despite attempts to bring these administrative costs in line across the country back in 2006.

The study reveals that administrative costs can range from 500–1,600 francs in the canton of Jura to 1,800–3,000 francs in Fribourg, depending on which commune you live in.

Costs in other cantons include 550 to 800 francs in canton Vaud, 1,000 francs in Valais and a fixed rate of 1,250 francs for adults over 25 in Geneva.

For the canton of Zurich, the cost is listed on the cantonal homepage as 1,200 francs for foreign-born adults aged over 25. However, the canton also notes there are additional cantonal costs to be factored in. According to Le Matin Dimanche, the fees in Zurich total 1,700 francs.

Contacted by Le Matin Dimanche, authorities in Fribourg said there was no political motivation behind the high administrative costs associated with citizenship in that canton. A spokesperson said costs of individual applications were calculated based on actual costs incurred.

The office of Swiss price watchdog, Stefan Meierhans, is now looking into the matter.

Source: Swiss citizenship fees vary widely across country: report

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Seuils d’immigration: le Québec aura moins de poids, prévient Ottawa

2018/10/22 Leave a comment

While I don’t advocate for more immigration for immigration’s sake, the overall demographic and eventual political impact of the Legault government’s reduced immigration levels is clear:

Le gouvernement Legault risque d’accélérer la chute du poids démographique du Québec au sein de la fédération canadienne – et, par ricochet, son poids politique – en voulant réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui s’installent au Québec.

Telle est la mise en garde qu’a poliment lancée le gouvernement Trudeau à de proches collaborateurs du nouveau premier ministre du Québec, François Legault, au cours des derniers jours, alors que le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) a officiellement pris les commandes de l’État jeudi.

Selon des informations obtenues par La Presse, le gouvernement Trudeau a entrepris de sensibiliser le gouvernement caquiste aux répercussions possibles de son intention de réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui élisent domicile au Québec sur le poids démographique de la province au sein de la fédération. Au lendemain des élections québécoises, qui ont vu la CAQ remporter 74 des 125 sièges à l’Assemblée nationale, François Legault a réitéré la promesse électorale de son parti de faire passer le nombre d’immigrants de quelque 50 000 à 40 000 dès 2019.

Le nouveau ministre de l’Immigration du gouvernement caquiste, Simon Jolin-Barrette, a obtenu le mandat de réaliser cette promesse qui a suscité de vifs débats durant la campagne électorale, d’autant plus que le gouvernement fédéral a son mot à dire en matière d’immigration et que les entreprises doivent composer avec une pénurie de main-d’oeuvre au Québec.

Rappelons que le gouvernement fédéral, quant à lui, s’est donné pour objectif d’accueillir 310 000 immigrants en 2018, 330 000 en 2019 et 340 000 en 2020.

Durant les trois premiers mois de 2018, l’Ontario a accueilli presque autant d’immigrants que la cible annuelle que propose François Legault dès l’an prochain, soit 35 222 personnes, selon des données du ministère des Finances de l’Ontario obtenues par La Presse. L’Ontario comptait 14 374 084 habitants au 1er avril 2018 (contre 8,4 millions au Québec) et avait aussi accueilli 44,1 % de tous les nouveaux arrivants au Canada durant le premier trimestre de l’année. En 2017, pas moins de 121 915 immigrants ont installé leurs pénates dans la province la plus populeuse.

Les nouveaux sièges en fonction du poids

Dans les coulisses, on a tenu à rappeler que c’est à partir du poids démographique d’une province que l’on distribue de nouveaux sièges à la Chambre des communes – de plus en plus dominée par l’Ontario, qui détient 121 des 338 sièges. À titre de comparaison, le Québec détient 78 sièges, alors que la Colombie-Britannique (42) et l’Alberta (34), mis ensemble, en ont presque autant (76) depuis la réforme de la carte électorale de 2011.

« Quand on décide de réduire le nombre d’immigrants qui s’installent au Québec, cela va avoir un impact sur le poids démographique du Québec par rapport au reste du pays. Et cela pourrait aussi avoir un impact sur son poids politique à long terme », a-t-on fait valoir dans les rangs libéraux à Ottawa.

Au cours du dernier siècle et plus, le poids démographique du Québec est passé de 30,7 % de la population canadienne en 1901 à 22,6 % en 2018.

Le poids démographique de l’Ontario, lui, s’établit à 38,7 % aujourd’hui. Le gouvernement ontarien prévoit qu’il atteindra 39,8 % en 2026 et qu’il franchira le cap des 40,3 % en 2031 si la tendance actuelle se maintient.

Au cours des dernières années, la population de l’Ontario a donc crû fortement, ce qui lui a permis d’obtenir davantage de sièges à la Chambre des communes et d’augmenter du même coup son influence sur les décisions qui sont prises dans la capitale fédérale.

Des inquiétudes

Dans les coulisses, des députés libéraux fédéraux du Québec ont aussi exprimé leurs inquiétudes quant aux répercussions de la politique du gouvernement caquiste en matière d’immigration. « Je suis un député du Québec et je ne veux pas que le Québec en vienne à perdre de son influence politique à Ottawa au profit de l’Ontario », a résumé un député libéral, qui a requis l’anonymat pour s’exprimer plus candidement sur cette question qui pourrait devenir une pomme de discorde entre les deux capitales.

En 2011, l’ancien gouvernement conservateur de Stephen Harper avait annoncé l’attribution de nouveaux sièges à l’Ontario, à l’Alberta et à la Colombie-Britannique afin de tenir compte de la forte croissance démographique dans ces trois provinces. La Chambre des communes est passée, aux élections de 2015, de 308 à 338 sièges. L’Ontario a obtenu 15 de ces 30 nouveaux sièges, tandis que l’Alberta et la Colombie-Britannique se sont vu donner six nouveaux sièges chacun. Le gouvernement du Québec et le Bloc québécois sont montés au créneau pour décrier la baisse du poids politique du Québec à la Chambre des communes. De proches collaborateurs québécois de Stephen Harper l’ont alors convaincu d’accorder trois nouveaux sièges au Québec, même si la croissance de sa population ne justifiait pas une telle mesure.

Le Québec détient aujourd’hui l’équivalent de 23 % des sièges à la Chambre des communes, soit une proportion plus élevée que son poids démographique (22,6 %).

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Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

An interesting report on using behavioural insights and nudges in immigration and integration policies.

Although written largely from the perspective of Europe, the recommendations below can be more broadly applied with the two fundamental points IMO being the need to consider nudges as part of the policy toolkit and the importance of including the “host” society in these initiatives:

As policymakers contemplate these fundamental questions, it is important that they acknowledge the potential limitations of a behavioural insights approach. One such challenge is that it generally focuses on fine-tuning an existing system rather than wholesale change. This may set a natural ceiling on what behavioural interventions can do within the field of integration, where many commentators emphasise the need for structural and organisational changes in the face of deep-seated inequalities. Behavioural approaches also tend to put the onus on individuals, and applying this to integration may prove particularly challenging when working with vulnerable groups of newcomers such as refugees.

Nonetheless, behavioural approaches offer potentially significant benefits as countries work to tackle press-ing challenges that affect immigrants, disadvantaged native-born groups, and wider communities—from the reduction of segregation, prejudice, and conflict to increased positive educational and employment outcomes for traditionally underperforming groups. In short, behavioural interventions may not create major structural change in and of themselves, but they can be powerful tools to make existing systems work better and to buttress change efforts.

Policymakers interested in investing in behavioural approaches to integration should consider the following lessons:

  • ƒRigorously pilot and test. The behavioural approach provides a roadmap for improving the culture of evaluation across government. It suggests that governments should resist the urge to introduce wholesale, top-down change without first testing and evaluating what works on a smaller scale. This is particularly salient given the pressure on integration policymakers in European countries to act, and act fast. Equally important, governments should be prepared to stop investing in programmes that evaluations show to be ineffective, and to share those findings so other policymakers can learn from them.
  • ƒBe realistic about potential impacts and prepared to scale up effective interventions. Most successful behavioural approaches might be expected to increase uptake or interactions by 5 to 7 per cent; indeed, this would be considered highly successful for many.130 This may seem insubstantial, but it is important to understand the impact that even small effects can have if made at scale and across populations, especially if the cost is reasonably low. Furthermore, if multiple interventions are introduced to build social capital and increase cohesion, they are likely to result in complementary effects.
  • ƒTake steps to understand the user experience. An effective behavioural approach requires a deep qualitative understanding of the context in which decisions and actions take place. Taking steps to understand how individuals experience policies and systems can facilitate understanding of why, for example, disadvantaged groups may be less inclined to take up services to which they are entitled (e.g., health check-ups), even after receiving information about the problems this could lead to further down the line. By understanding user experience, policymakers can begin to explore more innovative nudging approaches to improve take-up of services. While reducing the cognitive load involved in accessing services is good practice across the board, minimising the time and mental costs of engaging with public services is especially important for newcomers adjusting to life in a new society and for those who have experienced considerable trauma, as in the case of refugees.

While the segment of the behavioural-science field focused on integration remains nascent, its early findings have substantial promise. Among the lessons they recommend are:

  • Focus on developing the skills that everyone needs to live in diverse societies. Skills such as empathy are often described as innate, but studies show they can be developed, particularly in classrooms. With many European countries updating citizenship curricula to foster common values or even guard against extremism, there are opportunities to revisit the role that schools play in nurturing the citizens of tomorrow. Teaching a growth mindset or encouraging perspective-taking can help young people develop less rigid views about others and ultimately reduce prejudice. A host of simple initiatives could also be trialled to blur the lines between in- and outgroups, with the aim of promoting a sense of cohesion and belonging.
  • Explore ways to engineer social connections. Segregation is not an intractable problem, though it persists in many societies and aspects of life. There are numerous (and relatively low-cost) tools and techniques to encourage young people to build social connections with peers of different backgrounds. Again, educational settings represent promising venues, whether through in-class activities or cooperative learning programmes across schools. Beyond schools, there is promise in inclusive neighbourhood events and citizenship processes that encourage more active engagement between immigrants and other members of local communities. Behavioural approaches could also be implemented in workplaces and other areas of public life, such as residential planning, with positive impacts.
  • Indirect contact can be effective and scalable. Research has shown that indirect contact (via broad-cast media, social media, or virtual reality) can have important effects on reducing prejudice. There is also promise in programmes designed to build empathy or showcase altruism (moral elevation) as tools for encouraging behaviours that support integration. Government and civil society both have important roles to play in encouraging direct and indirect contact between groups that may not otherwise interact.
  • Increase aspirations and motivations in order to reduce barriers. Traditional government integration efforts tend to focus on tangible barriers, such as language. But beyond this, newcomers encounter other complex barriers, such as low bridging social capital, limited aspirations, or a heavy cognitive load, that can hold people back in areas such as employment and education. Traditional policy approaches to reshaping motivations and aspirations that rely on financial incentives and sanctions may not have the desired effect; immigrants and other underserved groups may benefit from more sophisticated tools that take into consideration group-specific behavioural insights. Governments have a relatively high-impact (and low-cost) lever at their disposal: public-sector hiring. Testing how different messages can help or hinder job seekers overcome barriers such as stereotype threat could help individuals find high-quality employment while helping governments improve the diversity of the public-sector workforce.

Addressing the integration challenges of today and tomorrow will require a radical expansion of the policy toolbox. To enable this integration-policy reboot, policymakers would do well to attend to the potential of behavioural insights. At low cost, and with a strong evidence base, these type of policy interventions are likely to increase cohesion and narrow socioeconomic gaps, while also increasing civic integration.

Source: Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

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As others go backward, Canada moves forward: Ibbitson

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

Good sense of perspective:

Australia’s coalition government blamed an “administrative error” after many of its senators supported a motion that declared: “It’s OK to be white.”

The motion, which also decried the “deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilization,” was narrowly defeated, by a vote of 31-28 on Monday, thanks to opposition by Labour, the Greens and independents.

After the government forced a revote, the motion was decisively defeated. But the fact that the Australian Senate could even be debating these noxious words is remarkable. Any Canadian politician who tried to introduce such a declaration into a legislature would surely be expelled from whatever caucus they belonged to.

In that sense, the legalization of cannabis use on Wednesday is simply the latest evidence that Canada has set itself apart from the world.

We are the only Group of 20 country to have legalized cannabis use at the national level, and to offer pardons to those convicted in the past.

We are also the only large developed nation that continues to embrace high levels of immigration. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada expects to take in 330,000 immigrants and refugees next year, and 340,000 in 2020.

In Sweden, which accepted a record number of refugees from the Middle East on a per-capita basis during the migration crisis of 2015, anti-immigrant sentiment powered the far-right Sweden Democrats to a strong showing in September’s elections. Six weeks later, the mainstream parties still haven’t figured out how to form a government.

The Trump administration wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico. In Britain, the Conservative government imposes tougher restrictions on immigration every year. New Zealand is also discouraging new arrivals: Parent-class approvals fell by 63 per cent in 2016-17, while 6-per-cent fewer skilled immigrants were approved.

While Australia continues to have a robust immigration policy, the United Nations has condemned rules that imprison asylum seekers in offshore detention centres, sometimes for years.

The UN has also condemned the deplorable conditions in which many Canadian First Nations live. And the federal Liberal government is internally divided over whether Canada suffers from systemic racism.

“That expression is not a part of my vocabulary,” Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, told The Globe and Mail’s Daniel Leblanc. But Liberal MPs Celina Caesar-Chavannes and Greg Fergus maintain systemic racism is a fact of Canadian life.

We are far from perfect.

But if perfection is at the end of a scale, Canada is farther along than most. Not only was this country one of the first to legalize same-sex marriage, it is the only country to formally apologize and offer restitution to those who were dismissed from the public service and military in the past simply because of their sexuality.

Same-sex marriage in the United States arrived through a Supreme Court decision that LGBTQ advocates fear could be reversed, now that conservative jurist Brett Kavanaugh is on the court, tilting it further to the right. Advocates for women’s rights fear the court might also reverse Roe v. Wade, which made abortions legal in the United States.

In contrast, this Liberal government mandates that half the ministers in cabinet be women. More than half (55 per cent in 2016) of the federal public service is female.

At least 40 per cent of full-time university faculty are women (up from 37 per cent in 2010), although they make up less than 10 per cent of senior management in major companies.

And how do Canadians feel about this march toward greater tolerance? A recent international Ipsos poll says Canadians are less likely to feel their country is in decline than almost anyone else.

Only 30 per cent of us agreed with the statement: “Your country is in decline,” in contrast to 51 per cent of Americans, 49 per cent of Brits and 36 per cent of Australians. Among 24 countries surveyed, only the Germans and Chileans were more confident than Canadians that things are getting better rather than worse.

While much of the developed world stagnates or backslides in the struggle for greater equality, Canadians remain determined to keep going forward.

There is no excuse for complacency. But we might be permitted a moment or two of quiet satisfaction.

Source:     As others go backward, Canada moves forward John Ibbitson October 18, 2018     

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Third of British people wrongly believe there are Muslim ‘no-go areas’ in UK governed by sharia law

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

No great surprise in the divide between the cities and other areas:

Almost a third of British people now believe the myth that there are “no-go zones” where non-Muslims cannot enter, according to a report warning of mounting intolerance.

Research by Hope Not Hate found that economic inequality was driving hostility towards Muslims, immigration and multiculturalism, particularly in post-industrial and coastal towns.

“These areas also voted strongly for Leave in the referendum and, ironically, may well suffer most under a hard Brexit – making them a ripe target for the far and populist right,” the group said.

“In effect, two Britains have emerged, with a more confident, diverse, liberal population now concentrated in our cities. The implications of this for Brexit, for the Labour Party, for politics in general, and potentially aiding the rise of a far-right movement, could all be profound.”

The research comes following an increase street protests by far-right groups including the anti-Islam Democratic Football Lads Alliance and supporters of English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson.

A 2018 YouGov survey of more than 10,300 people showed that attitudes towards Muslims had been hardening in Britain in the wake of Isis-inspired terror attacks and grooming scandals where the majority of suspects have been of Pakistani heritage.

It found that the perception of Islam as a threat was moving into the mainstream, with 32 per cent of respondents believing that there are “no-go areas in Britain where sharia law dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter”.

The view was shared by almost half of people who voted Leave in the EU referendum, and 47 per cent of Conservative voters.

The “no-go zones” theory, which is spread by global far-right pundits online has been widely debunked and where there have been isolated incidents of “Muslim patrols”, suspects have been arrested and condemned by local Muslim leaders.

The most infamous group, called the Sharia Project, was headed by Siddhartha Dhar, an acolyte of Anjem Choudary who later joined Isis in Syria.

In the YouGov poll, a small majority felt that there was an increasing amount of tension between the different political and demographic groups in the UK.

Almost a third thought Islamist terrorists “reflected a widespread hostility to Britain from among the Muslim community”, including two thirds of Leave voters.

Hope Not Hate’s research mapped data from the YouGov poll across parliamentary constituencies to create a heat map of different attitudes.

Overall it showed that liberal attitudes are most concentrated in areas like major cities where diversity is a normal part of everyday life, and the population tends to be better educated, younger and enjoying greater opportunities.

Meanwhile, the greatest concern about immigration and Islam was found particularly in post-industrial towns and coastal areas, where populations are less diverse.

Researchers documented a “halo effect” where cities with large Muslim populations are surrounded by predominantly white British areas with more hostile views.

“Where non-Muslims live, work and socialise with Muslims, these interactions are likely to reduce prejudice,” the report said. “But if people witness rather than experience super diversity, existing prejudices can be reinforced.”

Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, warned of a growing cultural divide between increasingly educated, diverse and multicultural metropolitan populations and those living in smaller towns.

“Communities with the greatest anxiety to immigration and multiculturalism are also the ones which has lost most through industrial decline,” Mr Lowles said.

“These communities had failed to see any benefit in globalisation and were, if anything, going backwards … the Brexit vote was, in the eyes of many, those in the left behind communities getting their revenge.

“Views are hardening and the target of their anger is increasingly Muslims, Islam and the political establishment.”

He said a sense of loss of hope and abandonment by the government was translating into hostility towards the political system.

“Political parties will not reduce anxiety or even hostility to immigration and multiculturalism by cracking down on immigration alone,” Mr Lowles added.

“It is about rebuilding these communities, equipping their young people with the skills that will enable them to compete more effectively in the modern global world and – fundamentally – giving them a sense of hope in the future.

Source: Third of British people wrongly believe there are Muslim ‘no-go areas’ in UK governed by sharia law

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Deep In The Desert, A Case Pits Immigration Crackdown Against Religious Freedom

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

Interesting test case regarding a positive exercise in religious freedom unlike Hobby Lobby, which was more about restricting rights:

In January, Border Patrol agents walked up to a ramshackle old building on the outskirts of a small town in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. They found three men.

Two were Central Americans who had crossed the border illegally. The third was an American — a university lecturer and humanitarian activist named Scott Warren.

Warren was arrested and ultimately charged with two federal criminal counts of harboring illegal migrants and one count of conspiracy to harbor and transport them. Warren has pleaded not guilty.

Warren’s arrest briefly flickered across the national news amid the partisan tug-of-war over the administration’s immigration policy before fading into the background.

But his legal team’s decision to stake out part of his defense on religious liberty grounds has made the case a clash between two of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ top priorities: cracking down on illegal immigration and defending religious liberty.

A law written to shield faith

One aspect of Warren’s defense is based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, also known as RFRA. At root, Warren is saying that his faith compels him to offer assistance to people in dire need, including immigrants.

Congress passed RFRA in 1993 with an eye toward protecting the exercise of religious beliefs, particularly of religious minorities, by providing narrow exceptions to neutral laws that apply to everyone.

The law would allow, for example, a religious group to use an otherwise illegal drug, such as peyote, in religious observances. In recent years, Christian evangelical groups have used the law to advance their causes.

In one prominent case, Hobby Lobby Inc., a for-profit chain of arts and crafts stores, opposed — on religious grounds — providing its employees with health insurance that includes contraceptive services, as required under the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Hobby Lobby’s favor.

Warren’s lawyer declined to make him available to talk with NPR for this report. But Warren’s parents and others familiar with his work spoke about the case.

Sessions and religious freedom

As attorney general, Jeff Sessions has taken up the banner of religious liberty for the Trump administration.

Last year, Sessions issued a memo with guidance on protections for religious liberty in federal law.

And in a July speech, he called religious liberty America’s “first freedom” and vowed to aggressively protect it. He also announced the creation of a task force to help the Justice Department accomplish that goal.

One of its jobs, he said, would be to ensure that the cases that DOJ attorneys bring and defend — and the arguments they make in court — are in line with federal protections for religious freedom.

“That includes making sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith,” Sessions told the crowd. “As the people in this room know, you have to practice what you preach.”

But some critics say the Justice Department is failing to do just that. Instead, they say the DOJ is selectively supporting religious liberty.

“There’s a public face of this government, which is very protective of religious liberty, and then the real work they’re doing is only protecting the religious liberty rights of those who are religious conservatives, not of religious progressives,” said Columbia Law School’s Katherine Franke, director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School.

Franke was one of several law professors who filed a friend of the court brief in Warren’s case to help explain the statute.

The American Civil Liberties Union also has accused the Trump administration of uneven support for religious freedom.

“The Trump administration’s view of religious liberty is both selective and distorted,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s program on freedom of religion and belief.

“It supports an unfounded, unprecedented religious license to discriminate; and at the same, the administration is indifferent or outright hostile to faiths and religious individuals with which it disagrees.”

The Justice Department declined to respond on the record to those allegations.

Many conservative groups and faith leaders have lauded the Trump administration for its efforts to protect religious freedom and people of faith.

One of the most prominent examples of that support was the Justice Department’s decision to file a brief in support of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

United States v. Warren

Warren, who worked as an instructor at Arizona State University, volunteered with a humanitarian organization called No More Deaths. The group aims to save lives in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, where people frequently die as they try to cross the desert on the journey north.

To that end, volunteers for the group hike into the scrubland and leave food, water and other supplies. They also provide emergency first aid to people they find in distress.

No More Deaths and other humanitarian groups use a private residence they call “the barn” on the outskirts of the small town of Ajo, Arizona, as a base of operations.

That’s where Warren discovered Kristian Perez-Villanueva and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday in January, according to court papers.

Warren found the two men hiding in the barn’s bathroom, the government says. He gave them food, water and clothes, and allowed them to stay for three days.

On Jan. 17, Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officers conducting surveillance on the barn saw Warren talking with “two subjects that matched a description given of two lost illegal aliens,” court papers say.

The agents approached the barn on foot and spoke with Warren, who told them to leave, prosecutors said.

The agents then conducted a “knock and talk,” during which they identified Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday and determined they were in the country illegally. Warren was arrested, while the two undocumented men were detained as material witnesses, deposed and then deported.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona declined to comment on Warren’s case.

It’s unclear whether national political dynamics played any role. But the group No More Deaths believes it is connected to the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration.

“What we see under DOJ now is that they’re going after the activists,” said No More Deaths volunteer Catherine Gaffney. “But unfortunately when you go after activists, they’re going to raise their voices and fight back and not be deterred.”

Gaffney also raised questions about the timing of Warren’s arrest.

She said it came hours after No More Deaths released a report that accused Border Patrol agents of slashing water jugs that the group had left out in the desert. The report included videos of Border Patrol agents destroying plastic water containers.

“So we see a clear pattern of political attack here and of weaponizing these immigration statues to go after the activists,” Gaffney said.

Warren and RFRA

Warren, whom neighbors called an active citizen within the town of Ajo, filed a motion earlier this year to have two of the charges dismissed on RFRA grounds.

Under the law, he has to show three things to make his case: that his beliefs are religious in nature; that they are sincerely held; and that they are substantially burdened by a law that applies to everyone.

If he can do that, the burden of proof then shifts to the government.

Prosecutors have to show that the government has a powerful reason to apply the law in Warren’s specific case. They also have to show that the government is using the least restrictive way possible to accomplish that.

At a court hearing in May, Warren testified about his beliefs. He described a life force that permeates all things — animate and inanimate. And his faith, he said, compels him to act when someone is in need.

“For me, we most definitely do unto others as we would want to have done unto us,” he told the court.

The government opposed the motion, saying the prosecution does not substantially burden Warren’s beliefs. DOJ lawyers said Warren “is not required by his beliefs to aid in the evasion of law enforcement. Nor were the people associated with these charges ‘in distress.’ ”

The district judge presiding over the case denied Warren’s motion to dismiss it. But the judge left the door open to Warren to try again when he’s scheduled to go to trial in November.

Source: Deep In The Desert, A Case Pits Immigration Crackdown Against Religious Freedom

Filed under Immigration, Religion Tagged with ,

Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and British Anti-Semitism

2018/10/18 Leave a comment

Speaks for itself:

A year ago, the late Philp Roth invited Salman Rushdie to give the Newark Public Library’s annual Philip Roth Lecture. Delivering the lecture in September of this year, as scheduled, Rushdie took the opportunity to eulogize Roth, to speak of Roth’s influence on his own work, and to comment on a particular conversation that made a lasting impression:

“My most vivid memory [of Roth] is of a conversation in London in the mid-1980s, at a dinner in the house in Chelsea where he was living with Claire Bloom, [whom he would later marry]. He spoke of his desire to return to America because of his growing dislike of British anti-Semitism, and the irritation caused by the accompanying British refusal to admit that there was such a thing as British anti-Semitism, and their desire to explain to Philip that he had probably made some sort of cultural misunderstanding.

I have been thinking again about what Philip perceived all those years ago, because the British Labor party is presently in the throes of a dispute about the widespread anti-Semitism within its ranks, a problem the existence of which the party leadership has appeared to minimize or even deny until quite recently, and which, even now, has not been firmly dealt with. . . .

I told [Roth] that evening about my only personal experience of anti-Semitism. One summer when I was young, before I had published anything, and when I was not even slightly fashionable, I was somehow invited to a fashionable rooftop party in London, at which I was introduced to a designer of extremely fashionable hats named Tom Gilbey, whose work, I was told, was often featured in Vogue. He was quite uninterested in meeting me, was curt to the point of discourtesy, and quickly went off in search of more fashionable party guests.

A few minutes later, however, he came back toward me at some speed, his whole body contorted into a shape designed to convey embarrassment and regret, and offered the following apology. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “you probably thought I was very rude to you just now, and actually, I probably was very rude, but you see, it’s because they told me you were Jewish.” The explanation was offered in tones which suggested that I would immediately understand and forgive. I have never wanted so much to be able to say that I was in fact Jewish. . .”

Source: Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and British Anti-Semitism

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed)

2018/10/18 Leave a comment

Hard to combat such wilful ignorance and distortion:

Nowhere on the agenda of the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, being held in San Diego this week, is a topic plaguing many of its members: the recurring appropriation of the field’s research in the name of white supremacy.

“Sticking your neck out on political issues is difficult,” said Jennifer Wagner, a bioethicist and president of the group’s social issues committee, who had sought to convene a panel on the racist misuse of genetics and found little traction.

But the specter of the field’s ignominious past, which includes support for the American eugenics movement, looms large for many geneticists in light of today’s white identity politics. They also worry about how new tools that are allowing them to home in on the genetic basis of hot-button traits like intelligence will be misconstrued to fit racist ideologies.

In recent months, some scientists have spotted distortions of their own academic papers in far-right internet forums. Others have fielded confused queries about claims of white superiority wrapped in the jargon of human genetics. Misconceptions about how genes factor into America’s stark racial disparities have surfaced in the nation’s increasingly heated arguments over school achievement gaps, immigration and policing.

Instead of long-discounted proxies like skull circumference and family pedigrees, according to experts who track the far-right, today’s proponents of racial hierarchy are making their case by misinterpreting research on the human genome itself. And in debates that have largely been limited to ivory-tower forums, the scientists whose job is to mine humanity’s genetic variations for the collective good are grappling with how to respond.

“Studying human genetic diversity is easier in a society where diversity is clearly valued and celebrated — right now, that is very much on my mind,” said John Novembre, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist who has taken to closing his visiting seminars to illustrate how one of the field’s textbook examples of natural selection has been adopted for illiberal ends.

One slide Dr. Novembre has folded into his recent talks depicts a group of white nationalists chugging milk at a 2017 gathering to draw attention to a genetic trait known to be more common in white people than others — the ability to digest lactose as adults. It also shows a social media post from an account called “Enter The Milk Zone” with a map lifted from a scientific journal article on the trait’s evolutionary history.

In most of the world, the article explains, the gene that allows for the digestion of lactose switches off after childhood. But with the arrival of the first cattle herders in Europe some 5,000 years ago, a chance mutation that left it turned on provided enough of a nutritional leg up that nearly all of those who survived eventually carried it. In the post, the link is accompanied by a snippet of hate speech urging individuals of African ancestry to leave America. “If you can’t drink milk,” it says in part, “you have to go back.”

In an inconvenient truth for white supremacists, a similar bit of evolution turns out to have occurred among cattle breeders in East Africa. Scientists need to be more aware of the racial lens through which some of their basic findings are being filtered, Dr. Novembre says, and do a better job at pointing out how they can be twisted.

But the white nationalist infatuation with dairy also heightened Dr. Novembre’s concerns about how to handle new evolutionary studies that deal with behavioral traits, such as how long people stay in school.

Anticipating misinterpretations of a recent study on how genes associated with high education attainment, identified in Europeans, varied in different populations around the world, the lead author, Fernando Racimo, created his own “frequently asked questions” document for nonscientists, which he posted on Twitter.

And in a commentary that accompanied the paper in the journal Genetics, Dr. Novembre warned that such research is “wrapped in numerous caveats” that are likely to get lost in translation.

“Great care,” his commentary concludes, “should be taken in communicating results of these studies to general audiences.”

Already, some of those audiences are flaunting DNA ancestry test results indicating exclusively European heritage as though they were racial ID cards. They are celebrating traces of Neanderthal DNA not found in people with only African ancestry. And they are trading messages with the coded term “race realism,” which takes oxygen from the claim that the liberal scientific establishment has obscured the truth about biological racial differences.

Some scientists suggest that engaging with racists would simply lend credibility to obviously specious claims. Many say that they do not study race, in any case: The racial categories used by the United States census correlate only imperfectly with the geographic ancestry groupings of interest to evolutionary geneticists. “Black,” for instance, is a socially defined term that includes many Americans who have a majority of European ancestry.

But as the pace of human population genetics research has accelerated, it has yielded results that, to many nonscientists, appear to challenge the idea of race as a wholly social construction. Genetic ancestry tests advertise “ethnicity estimates” (Senator Elizabeth Warren appealed to the perceived authority of DNA this week to demonstrate her Native American heritage, in response to mocking by President Trump), and some disease-risk genes have turned out to be more common among certain genetic ancestry groups. Doctors use patients’ self-identified race as a proxy for geographic ancestry, because individual readouts of DNA are costly, and though the correlation is imperfect, it exists.

As DNA databases tied to medical records and personal questionnaires have reached a critical mass for individuals of European descent, moreover, so-called polygenic scores that synthesize the hundreds or thousands of genes that contribute to many human traits into a single number are being developed to predict health risks, and in some cases, behavior.

Last summer, researchers developed a score that can roughly predict the level of formal education completed by white Americans by looking at their DNA. And while those scores cannot yet be compared among racial or population groups, the new techniques have prompted some scientists to feel it is the field’s responsibility to head off predictable misrepresentations.

“You have to make a judgment when you have powerful information that can be misused,” said David Reich, a Harvard geneticist who has publicly called on colleagues in a recent book and in a New York Times Op-Ed to more directly address the prospect of identifying genetic differences between populations in socially sensitive traits.

There is no evidence, scientists stress, that environmental and cultural differences will not turn out to be the primary driver of behavioral differences between population groups.

At the same time, the advances in genetic technology have put white supremacists into a kind of anticipatory lather.

“Science is on our side,” crowed Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance, in a recent video that cites Dr. Reich’s book.

Dr. Reich was among those to decline an invitation to lead a discussion on the topic at the San Diego meeting. “I really wanted to return to research,” he said.

The widespread uncertainty among Americans over what scientists know about genetic differences between racial groups, experts say, has left many flummoxed in the face of white supremacist claims that invoke genetics.

“I was surfing my favorite dumb picture site and I came across a post trying to prove racism with science,” a community college student in Florida wrote to Jun Z. Li, a University of Michigan geneticist whose work has been invoked to buttress racist claims of white intellectual superiority. “I read through the paper myself but I do not have the education or experience to understand and make sure I have a coherent counter argument.”

For white Americans half-inclined to blame nonwhite immigrants or African-Americans for perceived social problems, the veneer of a scientific rationale for white superiority, researchers say, can tip them toward racial resentment. It can be more effective than base appeals to tribalism, especially for the educated demographic the far-right has been targeting.

And while much of current white nationalist rhetoric is framed in terms of preserving a white cultural identity, experts say it relies on a familiar narrative of immutable biological differences. On a YouTube talk show earlier this year, for instance, Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, whose appearance set off a brawl outside a Republican club in Manhattan last week, echoed the pet white supremacist theory that the environmental challenges of cold winters explain the supposed higher intelligence of northern Europeans.

Some geneticists have penned blog posts explaining why new genetic tools will not support white nationalist claims that average behavioral differences between groups are immutable. Others — including Dr. Li — have replied directly to individual queries.

And when a blogger at the far-right Unz Review noted that the DNA variations associated with high IQ in a 2017 study of Europeans were at the lowest frequency among Africans, the study’s lead author, Danielle Posthuma, wrote in a published reply that such cross-population comparisons were spurious.

“This,” she wrote, “is a very deep-rooted misunderstanding.”

Many geneticists at the top of their field say they do not have the ability to communicate to a general audience on such a complicated and fraught topic. Some suggest journalists might take up the task. Several declined to speak on the record for this story.

And with much still unknown, some scientists worry that rebutting basic misconceptions without being able to provide definitive answers could do more harm than good.

“There are often many layers of uncertainties in our findings,” said Anna Di Rienzo, a human genetics professor at the University of Chicago. “Being able to communicate that level of uncertainty to a public that often just sees things in black and white is very, very difficult.”

As a step toward changing that, Dr. Di Rienzo has helped organize a meeting of social scientists, geneticists and journalists at Harvard next week to discuss the social implications of the field’s newest tools.

Participants have been promised that the meeting will be restricted to some three-dozen invitees and that any remarks made there will be confidential.

And David L. Nelson, a Baylor College of Medicine geneticist who is president of the human genetics society, says it will not stay completely quiet on the issue, promising a statement later this week.

“There is no genetic evidence to support any racist ideology,” he said.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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