Part one of the series can be found here. Part two of the series can be found here. During the War on Terror, force drift was explained to me as the concept that increasing levels of force are seen to be reasonable, and there is an almost unstoppable trend toward the use of more and [...]
On Sunday, I attended a training by the Diaspora Alliance about the worrying rise of instrumentalized antisemitism. The Diaspora Alliance describes instrumentalized antisemitism as the use by political actors of Jewish peoples’ legitimate fears in an antisemitic environment. The idea is, these actors will manipulate those fears to compel organized action ultimately aimed at shoring [...]
Part one of this series can be found here: Return of the Torture Monsters: Here We Go Again. Part three of this series can be found here: Return of the Torture Monsters Part III: Force Drift Across Administrations. Recently, the ACLU highlighted one of the torture architects of our past. In early 2002, then National Security [...]
I was recently removed from an academic listserv for expressing my concerns about the administration of Donald Trump. This type of self-censorship permeating across sectors, including academia, is a troubling sign of our times. In some ways I feel as though we are living in 1933 Germany, when Adolf Hitler took power and rapidly dismantled [...]
As the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to dismantle the federal government as we know it, reports have emerged that the US African Development Foundation (USADF) denied entry to a gaggle of DOGE minions. This refusal was reportedly at the behest of the foundation’s resident and CEO Ward Brehm. The USADF board [...]
The Office of the Attorney General was established some 200 years before the first woman ever served in the role (Janet Reno, 1993-2001). It would take an additional decade for the first person of color to hold the office (Alberto Gonzales, 2005-2007). Since the passage of the 1789 Judiciary Act — the law that created [...]
Dear President Trump, As an ordinary citizen, I write to protest and dissent from your effort in plain sight to dismantle the United States Constitution and the Federal Government. You took the oath to take care and faithfully execute the laws of the United States. Instead, you try to dismantle sections of the government established [...]
Part two of this series can be found here: Return of the Torture Monsters Part II: Remembering Abu Ghraib. Part three of this series can be found here: Return of the Torture Monsters Part III: Force Drift Across Administrations. Pete Hegseth, confirmed by the Senate on January 24 as US President Donald Trump’s Secretary of [...]
I turned on my TV on Inauguration Day, but avoided coverage of the event in a bid to depress the ratings. No doubt I will be arrested for that act of lèse–majesté in due course. Regardless, I spent that time watching the King Center‘s Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day — on which this year’s [...]
A recent project combined historic court transcripts, voice actors, and AI to breathe new life into Brown v. Board of Education — the Supreme Court case decided 70 years ago today that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The project used voice-acting performances in an effort to mimic the tones and courtroom setting of the [...]
