Here’s That Time Jeff Sessions Wanted to Execute Drug Dealers

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions to Attorney General on Wednesday morning along a party-line vote, clearing the way for a floor vote in the Senate to confirm his appointment. But there’s a little bit of unfinished business that should be cleared up.

Back during Sessions’ confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee in December, Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy asked Sessions about his previous support, while he was the attorney general of Alabama, for making repeat drug trafficking offenses punishable by the death penalty.

“[Y]ou have some very strong views,” Leahy said. “You even mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a second drug trafficking offense, including marijuana, even though mandatory death penalties are, of course, unconstitutional.”

“Well, I’m not sure under what circumstances I said that,” Sessions replied. “But I don’t think that sounds like something I would normally say. I will be glad to look at it.”

If Sessions wants to look at it, here it is: The proposal was part of a package of crime bills introduced by the Alabama governor and Sessions, then state attorney general, in 1996. The details of the crime package were reported in a ’96 issue of Alabama Lawyer, the magazine of the state bar association. This has been reported elsewhere, but I haven’t seen a link to the article and the details of the bill. Take a look for yourself on pg. 155.

“In addition to ‘tort reform’ bills, Governor James and Attorney General Sessions have proposed 31 crime bills, that they propose will ‘fix a broken system,'” the magazine wrote.

According to Alabama Lawyer, one of those bills, would have amended Alabama’s Drug Trafficking Enterprise Act to change the punishment for a second conviction from mandatory life imprisonment to a sentence of death.

The bill included a host of other punitive proposals such as:

  • Abolishing parole, similar to the federal prison system.
  • Eliminating the state court of criminal appeals from review of death penalty cases, instead sending death penalty appeals directly to the Alabama Supreme Court. This would have had the effect of curtailing the number of appeals death row inmates could file.
  • Expanding the number of persons ineligible for bail from those convicted of capital offenses to those charged with Class A or B felonies.
  • Allowing “warrantless searches for violations as well as felonies and misdemeanors.”
  • It would have also strengthened the mandatory penalties for anyone convicted of a drug crime while possessing a firearm, expanded the definition of felony murder, and raised a second conviction of possession of marijuana for personal use from a misdemeanor to a felony crime.

The bill ultimately failed. Sessions’ views on drugs and crime have softened in the years since, as have many politicians whose careers outlasted the “tough on crime” demagoguery of the ’90s, but it never hurts to take a trip down memory lane, especially when one of those politicians is poised to become U.S. attorney general. And especially when that presumptive attorney general is reportedly the “intellectual godfather” behind the current administration’s policies.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2jYv6te
via IFTTT

Meet the MSNBC Legal Eagle Who Proposes Destroying the Free Press

Ari MelberIt’s the early days of a presidency that has openly declared itself to be hostile to the media (and to be fair—the reverse is also true), and Ari Melber, MSNBC’s legal correspondent and a lawyer, has what he thinks to be a brilliant idea—let’s have the federal government get more involved in evaluating the legitimacy of news.

I’m not a big MSNBC viewer, but I’m fairly sure that they haven’t suddenly become big supporters Donald Trump’s presidency. That’s not what Melber is going on about. Rather, what Melber has suggested is that the federal government, particularly the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), can use its authority to protect consumers from fraudulent advertising claims in order to fight the existence of “fake news.” He suggests that by classifying disprovable media claims as fraudulent, the government has the authority to intervene. “Fraud” is not considered protected speech. He makes the case in a piece for the New Jersey State Bar Association:

To follow First Amendment precedents, the framework could limit the FTC to only regulating posted articles—not seeking prior restraints against future articles—and to only regulate businesses devoted to fraud news.

Legally, a focus on deceptive businesses keeps the FTC in the ballpark of commercial speech, patrolling deceptive practices taken in pursuit of commerce. During the election, the most popular fraud news sites were launched by business people, often abroad, enticed by the market online for political news. They were trying to make money, not express any particular view. …

Since these sites are clearly operating as businesses, it is logical to regulate their commerce and deceptive practices like any other business.

A focus on deceptive businesses would also keep the government away from meddling with actual journalists or citizens exercising their right to lie while engaged in politics.

Where to begin here. First of all most media outlets—whether legitimate or “fake”—are trying to make money, most were launched “by business people,” and many are not trying to express any particular view. But some are. “Making money” and “expressing any particular view” are neither opposing choices, nor or they determinants of the validity of the existence of a media outlet. And that a media outlet might be a venture designed to make money doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes exempt from the First Amendment protections that the government cannot censor the press.

But that’s just semantics (and frustration at people who work in the media who think they aren’t already engaged in acts of commerce). The much bigger, so much more important issue here is what it would actually look like were a government agency to decide that it can use a tool to fight consumer fraud to monitor the legitimacy of news.

We already saw what happened when the whole latest outburst about “fake news” happened during the election. People went looking for resources that separated “real” news from “fake” news and we ended up in a place where media outlets with heavily ideological slants were dumped in with media outlets that were deliberately making up stuff.

You don’t have to go very far to determine what could happen when a politicized apparatus (and every government agency is partly political) can have control over what can be defined as “fraud” when it comes to information. You don’t even have to leave this site! Several attorneys general for states across the country have teamed up to go after ExxonMobil for its participation in the larger debate over climate change. They have decided to attempt to prove that ExxonMobil knew more about what was going on with the burning of fossil fuels and the environment and deliberately attempted to mislead investors and customers. They are attempting to reclassify the debate (free speech) as deliberate consumer fraud (not free speech).

To do so, they’ve attempted to subpoena decades of communications between ExxonMobil and various policy groups in order to fish for information they hope will make that case. One of the policy groups targeted is the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit think tank that publishes Reason.com and Reason magazine. Reason was dragooned into a highly politicized case where government officials deliberately attempted to reclassify public debate as “fraud” in order to target a disliked business. One of the AGs involved, Kamala Harris, is now a United States senator.

Given Trump’s general attitude toward the press and his propensity to declare unflattering coverage to be fake or fraudulent, you don’t have to be either a lawyer or a journalist to recognize the very, very bad potential consequences of Melber’s proposal. Nobody should make the mistake of assuming that the FTC’s behavior would be a value-neutral analysis of truth vs. falsehood. Our government has an extremely lengthy history of applying regulatory pressure in ways that favor whoever is in power and the allies of said people.

Since the left these days is quick to point out the ties between Trump and Russia, let’s remind folks like Melber that Russia passed a law classifying discussions of gay relationships in the media (and the public) as propaganda and criminalized it, meaning that the government sees the concept of same-sex couples and families as a fraudulent proposal. If you give the government the power to decide what news is “fake,” you will create an environment where people will very quickly want to weaponize it for their own ends.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2jYdKg8
via IFTTT

California Mayor Says There’s ‘No Rational Justification’ For City’s Six-Figure Pensions

A few weeks back, I noted the story of James Mussenden, a retired city manager from El Monte, California.

A quick recap: in a town where more than a quarter of the population is living below the poverty line, and where the median household income is a mere $32,000, Mussenden is pulling down a $216,000 annual pension (along with free healthcare and annual cost of living increases). The Los Angeles Times uncovered Mussenden’s outrageous pension—which, as the paper reported, he feels awkward talking about with his golf buddies.

With retirement promises like that, it’s no surprise that El Monte is dealing with one of the worst pension crises in a state full of municipal pension messes. Last year, more than a quarter of the city’s budget was spent on benefits for retired public workers.

Now, Mayor Andre Quintero tells the Los Angeles Times that there’s “no rational justification” for the extraordinary pensions that are busting his city’s budget and enriching a few hundred former employees. Yet, because those benefits are written into the city’s collective bargaining agreements, he tells the Times that it can be undone only through negotiations with unions.

As the Times put it: “El Monte’s predicament reflects the deep difficulty of reining in public pension costs.”

Yes, but there’s more to it than that. El Monte’s “predicament,” like similar predicaments facing municipalities from coast to coast, is of its own making. City officials signed off on these generous pension benefits when they reached collective bargaining deals with public sector unions. El Monte’s pension problems are particularly acute because of a special loophole opened by the city in 2000 allowing El Monte city employees to qualify for a second pension as county employees too.

Some 200 former city employees, including Mussenden, are legally double-dipping because of that loophole.

The problem is one of incentives. Public sector unions have a strong incentive to get the best possible benefits for their members, of course. City officials are supposed to be negotiating on behalf of taxpayers, but often times they have a stronger incentive to give in to union demands in order to maintain labor peace or to reward valuable political allies who help keep election coffers filled.

The same story plays out in small cities like El Monte and big ones like Chicago.

Adding to El Monte’s predicament is the fact that courts in California (and most other states) have long held that pensions are locked-in and cannot be reduced even if a city is unable to meet the obligations.

That’s one thing that might be changing. The California Supreme Court will take up a case later this year challenging that long-standing legal framework—known as the “California Rule.” If the state Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling (which upheld a pension reform signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011) saying that says municipalities can cut unearned benefits for future employees, it would give places like El Monte a little bit of flexibility when it comes to paying off their debt.

Even if the Supreme Court upholds the reform, it won’t affect already-retired workers like Mussenden, who will get to keep cashing his six-figure pension checks until he dies.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2jYdfT3
via IFTTT

Gorsuch Defends Illegal Immigrant’s Rights, and Progressives Are Appalled

People for the American Way (PFAW) cites Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, a 2016 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, as evidence that Neil Gorsuch is unfit for the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in a New York Times op-ed piece, Neal Katyal, a solicitor general in the Obama administration, cites the same case as an illustration of “Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch.” These diametrically opposed takes show why it is hazardous to view constitutional law as a battle between liberals and conservatives.

PFAW does not like Gorsuch’s questioning of the Chevron doctrine, which says courts should defer to executive agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes, even to the point of reversing prior judicial interpretations. “Eliminating this principle…would tie the hands of precisely those entities that Congress has recognized have the depth and experience to enforce critical laws, safeguard essential protections, and ensure the safety of the American people,” PFAW says. It neglects to mention that Gutierrez-Brizuela involved immigration law, and Gorsuch came down on the side of a longtime resident trying to legalize his presence in the United States. Sounds kinda liberal, no?

The decision dealt with an apparent conflict between two provisions of immigration law. One gives the attorney general “discretion to ‘adjust the status’ of those who have entered the country illegally and afford them lawful residency.” The other “provides that certain persons who have entered this country illegally more than once are categorically prohibited from winning lawful residency…unless they first serve a ten-year waiting period outside our borders.”

In 2005 the 10th Circuit ruled that the first provision supersedes the second, so even residents who have illegally entered the country more than once can still obtain legal status without waiting 10 years outside the United States. Two years later, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an administrative agency, decided the second provision limits the attorney general’s discretion, meaning the waiting period is unavoidable. In a 2011 case, the 10th Circuit acceded to the BIA’s interpretation, as required by the Chevron doctrine.

Last year’s case involved an unauthorized immigrant, Hugo Rosario Gutierrez-Brizuela, who petitioned for a change of status before the new interpretation was adopted. In the majority opinion, Gorsuch noted that applying the new interpretation retroactively would not only violate the usual rules of statutory construction but raise “due process and equal protection concerns,” since immigrants who had made decisions based on the previous interpretation would suddenly have the rug pulled out from beneath them:

After all, back in 2009 the law expressly gave Mr. Gutierrez-Brizuela two options: he could seek an adjustment of status…or accept a ten-year waiting period outside the country. Relying on binding circuit precedent, he chose the former path. Yet the BIA now seeks to apply a new law to block that path at a time when it’s too late for Mr. Gutierrez-Brizuela to alter his conduct. Meaning that, if we allowed the BIA to apply Briones here, Mr. Gutierrez-Brizuela would lose the seven years he could’ve spent complying with the BIA’s ten year waiting period and instead have to start that waiting period now. The due process concerns are obvious: when Mr. Gutierrez-Brizuela made his choice, he had no notice of the law the BIA now seeks to apply. And the equal protection problems are obvious too: if the agency were free to change the law retroactively based on shifting political winds, it could use that power to punish politically disfavored groups or individuals for conduct they can no longer alter.

Gorsuch also wrote a concurring opinion, and that is where he directly challenged the Chevron doctrine, which PFAW presumably would argue was unnecessary to resolve the issue of retroactivity. But in the concurring opinion Gorsuch emphasized that Chevron deference endangers liberty by weakening the separation of powers, under which Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces them, and courts decide disputes about their meaning. “The founders considered the separation of powers a vital guard against governmental encroachment on the people’s liberties, including all those later enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” he wrote. “A government of diffused powers, they knew, is a government less capable of invading the liberties of the people.” Giving one agency the power to interpret and rewrite the law as well as enforce it poses a clear threat to people at the agency’s mercy, including highly vulnerable people like Gutierrez-Brizuela.

Here is how Katyal, who notes that he and Gorsuch “come from different sides of the political spectrum,” describes the judge’s position in Gutierrez-Brizuela and an earlier immigration case that addressed a similar issue:

Judge Gorsuch ruled against attempts by the government to retroactively interpret the law to disfavor immigrants. In a separate opinion in Gutierrez-Brizuela, he criticized the legal doctrine that federal courts must often defer to the executive branch’s interpretations of federal law, warning that such deference threatens the separation of powers designed by the framers. When judges defer to the executive about the law’s meaning, he wrote, they “are not fulfilling their duty to interpret the law.” In strong terms, Judge Gorsuch called that a “problem for the judiciary” and “a problem for the people whose liberties may now be impaired” by “an avowedly politicized administrative agent seeking to pursue whatever policy whim may rule the day.” That reflects a deep conviction about the role of the judiciary in preserving the rule of law.

Critics of Gorsuch should not be taken seriously if they can’t recognize (or refuse to acknowledge) the ways that “conservative” convictions can achieve liberal ends.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2kW1udB
via IFTTT

Noontime Radio With Justin Amash, Damon Root, Jimmy Failla, and Tony Pierce

From 12-1 ET today, like yesterday, I’ll be guest-hosting The Dean Obeidallah Show on SiriusXM Insight, channel 121. Sitting with me throughout the show will be the very funny cabby-turned-comedian Jimmy Failla, who, along with world-famous busblogger (and Uber/Lyft driver) Tony Pierce, will have a spirited discussion in the back half of the show about the whole #DeleteUber reaction to the ride-sharing company not participating in the New York Taxi drivers’ mini-strike in protest of Donald Trump’s executive order on worldwide refugees and travelers from seven other countries.

But in the first half we’ll have Reason‘s own beloved Supreme Court analyst Damon Root talking about the judicial philosophy of SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch, and then (voting schedule willing!) we’ll talk to Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) about where he stands on the travel ban here on Day 6.

Please call in, especially during the second half, at 1-877-974-7487!

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2jY2bp3
via IFTTT

Los Angeles Moves to Decriminalize Sidewalk Vending

I’ll say one thing for Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration: They’ve spurred some welcome reactions at the more local levels of government. Los Angeles has a history of hitting unlicensed sidewalk vendors with criminal charges. But yesterday, not wanting the proprietors of tamale carts or T-shirt stands to be deported for their misdemeanors, the city council voted to draft an ordinance to decriminalize such enterprises.

Emily Alpert Reyes explains in the Los Angeles Times:

City attorneys will now draw up new rules that would strip those criminal penalties and authorize the city to eventually issue vending permits, a first step toward legalization….In the meantime, vendors who ply their trade on city sidewalks could still be cited and fined for violating the municipal code, but they would not face criminal convictions.

Lawyers are also supposed to report back on whether the city can offer amnesty to vendors already facing criminal charges. Though lesser citations are much more common, city prosecutors filed misdemeanor charges for sidewalk vending in more than two dozen cases between October 2015 and October 2016, according to the city attorney’s office.

Obviously, that’s good news if you’re facing such charges, especially if you’re running the risk of deportation. But it’s also good news for any Angelenos who want to launch one of these micro-businesses, regardless of their immigration status. And it’s good news for consumers, who will have more and cheaper choices. It may not be the taco truck on every corner that we were promised, but I’ll take it.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2kS5H2J
via IFTTT

Trump’s Travel Ban Forces Elderly Green Card-Holder to Stay in Iraq. She Died the Next Day

Getting real now.Mike Hager—an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen who fled his birth country during the first Gulf War, lived in a refugee camp for four years, and finally settled with his family in the U.S. in 1995—says his mother died in Iraq over the weekend after being denied entry back to the States, despite possessing a green card.

Hager told Fox2 Detroit that he, his 75-year-old mother, Naimma, and several other green card-holding relatives had been visiting family in Iraq, but were prevented from boarding a U.S.-bound plane at the airport, as a direct result of President Trump’s executive order banning all visitors from seven countries—including Iraq. Trump’s ban is set to last for 90 days, ostensibly to allow the U.S. government to ferret out “individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States.”

Among his family only Hager, a U.S. citizen, was allowed to travel.

“I was just shocked,” Hager said to Fox2, “I had to put my mom back on the wheelchair and take her back and call the ambulance and she was very very upset. She knew right there if we send her back to the hospital she’s going to pass away – she’s not going to make it.”

By all appearances, Hager is the complete opposite of the secret jihadist embedded with refugees that exists in Trump’s fantasies. Hager fled a war zone, became a U.S. citizen and business owner, and volunteered to work with the U.S. military during the Iraq War as a contractor and interpreter—even surviving getting shot in the back. He and his family appear to be a model of refugees, striving for and attaining the American Dream.

Hager believes his mother would have survived had she made it back to the States and received better medical care than was available to her in Iraq. In his grief, Hager is now is left to worry about if and when his nieces and nephews—also green card holders—will be permitted back into the U.S.

“This is our home. We’ve been here for too long, we’ve been here since we were kids,” Hager told Fox2.

My Reason colleague Eric Boehm profiled an Iranian-American family—specifically an Iranian-born green card holder and his 66-year-old mother—who are left wondering if they’ll ever be able to visit each other again thanks to the confused language and blunt implementation of Trump’s executive order. Boehm writes:

Trump’s immigration policy deems a 66-year-old grandmother to be such a threat to the safety of the United States that she doesn’t even have the chance to look immigration officials in the eye and assure them that she’s not a terrorist. It’s a policy that will keep her from being able to visit her son and daughter-in-law, and may even keep her from ever looking at her grandchild.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2kh1ZzE
via IFTTT

Trump’s Irrational Immigration Crackdown: New at Reason

Give Donald Trump credit where it’s due, writes Jacob Sullum. Trump promised an irrational crackdown on immigrants, and he delivered it the first week of his administration.

Trump began his presidential campaign with a speech in which he described most Mexican immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals, adding that “some, I assume, are good people.” During his campaign, he repeatedly said that as president he would deport all 11 million people who live in the United States without the government’s permission. As in the speech that launched his presidential bid, Trump is once again scapegoating people based on their national origin (and, implicitly, their religion), notes Sullum, with his immigration executive order. But given the weakness of the security rationale for the order, it has to be understood in symbolic terms, and the symbolism is not pretty.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2kRg366
via IFTTT

Trump Could, And Should, Save Vaping Industry From FDA’s Costly Regulations

If President Donald Trump is looking for an easy way to bring American jobs back—without imposing tariffs, building walls, or imposing other big government policies that will cost American consumers more in the long run—and ease regulations on American businesses, he could start by repealing new regulations for electronic cigarettes approved in August by the Food and Drug Administration.

Those regulations for electronic cigarettes adopted by the FDA during the final year of the Obama administration could, if left on the books, effectively wipe out large swaths of the vaping industry. The Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, an e-cigarette industry group, believes as much as 99 percent of all vaping products could be affected.

That costs jobs, of course, but it also curtails the potential health benefits from getting Americans to switch from smoking to vaping.

A new report released this week by the R Street Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free market think tank, argues that the Trump administration should take immediate steps to overturn the FDA deeming rule and other federal impediments to the growth of vaping.

“Perverse tobacco policy is failing the American public and will soon destroy thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that are part of the solution, not part of the problem,” write Clive Bates, former director of the United Kingdom’s Action on Smoking and Health; Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute; and David Sweanor, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Center for Health Law, the three authors of the R Street report.

Among the eight recommendations in the report, the most important is probably wiping away the 2016 reinterpretation of a 2009 law giving the FDA authority to regulate electronic cigarettes and e-liquid by the same standards as tobacco products like cigarettes—yes, even though there is no tobacco in e-cigarettes.

As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has written, this is essentially a slow-motion ban on many vaping products. The FDA’s application process will cost as much as $1 million and a separate application will be required for each and every product. Smaller manufacturers unable to afford the costly application process will likely be driven out of the market, or will be bought up by larger businesses. Any product that has been introduced since 2009 is subject to the new rules and manufacturers have until later this year to either pull their products off shelves, or pay up and get approved.

So far, there have been no signals from the Trump administration on whether it will continue with Obama-era policies on e-cigarettes or move in a new direction. It’s unlikely that there will be any major policy announcements until Trump chooses a new FDA commissioner—something that he’s unlikely to do until after his pick to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Congressman Tom Price (R-Georgia) is confirmed by the Senate.

Jim O’Neill, a managing director at Mithril Capital, an investment firm co-launched by Peter Thiel, has been rumored to be on Trump’s shortlist to run the FDA.

Vaping businesses are hoping to see quick action from the new administration.

“We believe something needs to be done to protect the thousands of businesses that are a crucial player in the global tobacco harm reduction strategy, and help those who are eager to quit smoking have easy access to vaping products,” said Patricia Kovacevic, general counsel for Nicopure Labs, a Florida-based manufacturer of e-cigarette fluid that has launched a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s deeming rule.

Another major change recommended in the R Street report is allowing vaping products to be advertised as what they are: healthier than traditional cigarettes.

The authors note that vaping isn’t completely safe—few things are—but evidence shows that vaping is safer than combustion-based products like cigarettes and cigars.

Guy Bentley, a research associate for the Reason Foundation (which publishes this blog), writes at the Washington Examiner that more than 480,000 Americans died from smoking-related diseases in 2015. That’s more than alcohol, car, illicit drug, HIV and gun deaths combined. The cause of these deaths is the deadly smoke inhaled into the lungs, not nicotine.

The growth of vaping as a substitute for traditional forms of smoking means “smokers can mimic the experience of smoking and get the nicotine they desire while significantly reducing their risk for deadly disease,” Bentley writes.

The rationale for holding e-cigarettes to the same regulatory standard as traditional, tobacco-containing cigarettes is built on the questionable assumption that Americans who smoke e-cigarettes will end up smoking traditional cigarettes too.

While many e-cigarettes contain nicotine extracted from tobacco, but considering them the equivalent of cigarettes is an affront to common sense and medical science. There’s no combustion, no smoke and no tar in e-cigarettes, along with fewer cancer-causing chemicals. One study from the United Kingdom found that e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than their combustible cousins. Driving e-cigarettes out of the marketplace, as the FDA’s new rules are almost certain to do, will make it harder for nicotine-addicted smokers to kick the habit by taking up a safer alternatives.

Despite all those arguments, perhaps the best example of the absurdity of the FDA’s decision to classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products is the simple fact that vaping doesn’t involve tobacco. In fact, some e-cigarette makers offer “tobacco free” nicotine that is synthesized in a lab or produced from other types of plants, like tomatoes and green peppers.

If the federal government continues taking a hard-line stance that prohibits vaping, or makes vaping products so expensive or difficult to obtain that they effectively are prohibited, it is only standing in the way of potential health benefits of Americans switching from smoking to vaping.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2krHToz
via IFTTT

A Student Felt ‘Traumatized’ Because His Professors Did Not Silence Everyone He Disagreed With

PennA recent op-ed in the University of Pennsylvania’s student paper, written by an unhappy student of color, paints a frustratingly bleak portrait of the emotional state of the modern campus liberal.

That students, James Fisher, claims that the recent semester was the worst he’s had at college so far, and for one reason: several of his white professors caused him to feel marginalized and traumatized.

Why? It’s not entirely clear. Nor is it obvious what should be done about it, or even what Fisher would like done about it.

“Imagine being a black student on Penn’s campus with even one of these types of professors,” wrote Fisher. “I had three. And each one of those professors either did not care to learn about their white privilege, or lied to me and said that they did.”

What cause does Fisher have to presume his professors were lying about their disinterest in issues of privilege? He does not say.

Perhaps the professors made offensive statements or used racially charged language? Nope.

“They think that by not saying racist comments in class, they are doing good,” wrote Fisher. “Not knowing that that half-hearted attempt further contributes to the oppression that I experience in my predominantly white classrooms.”

It seems like Fisher has constructed a lose-lose scenario for his professors. If they make racist comments, they would no doubt be marginalizing him. But if they refrain from making racist comments, they are also contributing to his oppression.

Fisher went on to accuse one of his professors of “perpetuating these systems of oppression in class.” Why? The professor showed images of plantation slaves, and also permitted other students to “say ignorant comments.”

Fisher evidently told the professor that this wasn’t okay—the professor had an obligation to silence other students in order to protect Fisher from mental anguish. The professor tried to console Fisher, but to no avail. As a result, Fisher stopped going to class.

“I stopped going to his class for a month,” he wrote. “With different emotions going through my head from not only this class but from the Trump election, I did not want to step foot into another white space until I made sure that my mental health was restored.”

Readers might find it incredible that a college student could remain a college student even after he stopped attending class for a month because he was offended by some of his peers. But the professor’s flexibility wasn’t sufficient for Fisher.

“It is not enough that you gave your black students extensions on their papers because Trump got elected,” he wrote.

Nothing is enough, it seems:

It is not enough to be aware of your privilege. It is also not enough to be a nice person. Your niceness does not mean that you are not capable of contributing to racial systems of oppression.

It is not enough that you are sorry for the injustices caused by your people. It is not enough that you read one article on the Black Lives Matter movement because your black friend recommended it to you. It is not enough that you gave your black students extensions on their papers because Trump got elected.

The truth is, you as a single person cannot make up for the horrific things that white people have done to us throughout human history. But that does not mean that you do not have the power to stop yourself from oppressing the students that you teach every day.

You have to be invested in stopping racism and oppression every day, not just on your free time.

I think even a reader whose sole goal was to please Fisher would be frustrated by this column. That’s because the student utterly fails to explain what he wants out of his college experience. What could his professors do to assuage his feelings of trauma? He never says. Being aware of privilege, reading about the Black Lives Matter movement, granting extensions to students of color in the wake of Trump’s election, and being nice are all insufficient tactics, according to Fisher.

I don’t mean to come down too harshly on a single student who’s having a rough time. It could be the case that the university is doing a particularly bad job of providing him with the resources he needs to succeed. But this column doesn’t do an adequate job of making the problem relatable to readers.

The College Fix reached out to Fisher for comment, asking him to elaborate on how he felt. Fisher evidently bristled at the suggestion that the answer wasn’t obvious.

“I get that you’re always searching for us [minority students] to get the answer,” he told The College Fix, “when all you have to really do is just shut up and listen.”

That’s a frustrating non-answer: The College Fix was listening. People like me who read Fisher’s column were listening. But no useful answer came. This of course makes it harder to take complaints bout marginalization and emotional trauma seriously. When students claim victim status, it often comes across like this is the goal in and of itself, rather than the means to some end.

College classes are supposed to consist of dialogue between highly-learned experts—the professors—and curious, bright novices—the students. No one should really be shutting up, least of all the people teaching the classes. While it’s true that professors have a lot to learn from their students, leftist students increasingly seem to hold the attitude that the purpose of higher education is to reinforce the ideas they already have and shut out all contrary voices.

Such an attitude will leave them ill-equipped for the real world, where the trauma of encountering an uncomfortable notion is unavoidable.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2kqGeQz
via IFTTT