Trevor Noah and Offensive Comedy: Confirming or Undercutting Stereotypes

Like many people, I spent some time watching great video clips of Trevor Noah's standup routines (compiled here by Vox) and laughing. I certainly enjoyed his first appearance on the Daily Show, which I happened to catch live (I don't watch the show routinely, but like many people consume clips via the internet the next day).

Today, I became aware of the controversy around a series of anti-semitic, fat-shaming, misogynistic tweets. They are pretty bad - standard stuff for many comics, perhaps, but the position of Daily Show host (thanks to John Stewart) has become something of a higher stature and visibility than the usual comic position.

Here's what's going to happen. People are going to express outrage (ongoing). Then defenders are going to defend Noah as edgy, as pushing the envelope, and blame critics as "censoring" or trying to decide what is or isn't funny. I recommend, should you dabble in these discussions, thinking about comedy in terms of reinforcing or undercutting prejudice.

Last summer, I wrote a CNN piece about jokes involving Down syndrome and intellectual disability, then had a phone call with Wyatt Cenac about comedy. He suggested that instead of thinking about punching up vs punching down (my language), which of course involved subjective assessment of power dynamics, or "offensive speech," which likewise is subjective, that there's better framing. I wrote:

In our conversation, Cenac acknowledged that for someone like me, inside the Down syndrome community, the piece could easily have come off as offensive. Most comedy risks being offensive, but his goal is never to do it "at the expense" of marginalized people or "in a way that promotes continued insensitive behavior." He talked about his experiences, as a kid, hearing people make a joke at the expense of a group of people, and thinking, "what would they be saying if I wasn't in the room?" He doesn't want to make those kinds of jokes and it definitely wasn't his goal here.

What I took from this is that comedy can promote and perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice or it can fight against them.

Noah's stand-up clips are mostly the latter. He talks about race, identity, perceptions of Africa, and so forth in ways that undercut stereotypes.

These tweets do the former. And that's the problem. The Daily Show host succeeds by mocking power, mocking prejudice, mocking convention. These are conventional jokes that reinforce the dominant, rather than attack it.

And undercutting stereotypes makes for good comedy! It's the surprise when you think something is going in a bigoted way, then suddenly switches directions, that gets the laugh.

UPDATE: Noah has tweeted a "statement" of sorts.

To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian.
— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) March 31, 2015

"Jokes that didn't land" implies that the problem of making fun of fat women and Jews is that not enough people laughed. That's not the problem.

Three Premises: Language and Power

Premise #1: There is no way for a powerful white man to critique the public voice of women on the grounds of tone without replicating patriarchal "silencing" discourse.

Premise #2: There is no appropriate way for a powerful white man to question why someone invokes the race of another powerful white man.

Premise #3: Sometimes, holding to these two above premises mean that rude women go un-chastised or that the race of a white man is invoked unfairly. I can live with that. The alternative - silencing of women, denying the power of racial privilege, is worse. 

Here's the context behind these three general premises. As a writer on language, power, and privilege, I find the general more interesting than the specific, but the specifics do matter. As I wrote about last week, Inside Higher Ed blogger and Dartmouth online education director Joshua Kim, chastised Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab for being too rude in their review of Kevin Carey's new book. I understand that this is all very inside-baseball to the non-higher-ed readers, hence leading with the three premises that apply more broadly.

Note - I am not suggesting in any way that Rab or Watters was rude or unfairly invoked race. Only that it is abstractly possible for people to be unjustly rude or unfairly bring up race.

Over on IHE, Joshua Kim has penned a defense. You should read it in full and not rely on my summary. It asserts his status as a feminist activist dad. It asks for "evidence" before anyone is accused of sexism. I left this comment:

Joshua - Your response to Watters and Rab was sexist. That is not a "casual" statement. The evidence you are looking for is twofold. 1) Your critique. 2) Their response.

You are writing here to talk about your intentions and your sense of self as a feminist activist dad. I believe you. I do. But that doesn't change what you said or how these two female academics experienced it.

 To fall back on academese: Your letter fell into standard forms of patriarchal discourse that silences female public voices through questioning their ability to handle their emotions appropriately. I'm a fan of Mary Beard's relatively recent explication of this phenomenon on the public voice of women, but the bibliography here is vast. Would footnotes and citations persuade you? I suspect the cognitive dissonance of what you said versus who you are is very difficult to overcome. I sympathize. I genuinely do.

The problem with this post is that you continue to deny the validity of Rab's and Watters' response to your scolding. They have lived experience as women in our patriarchal culture. Your letter, telling them to be nicer, reinforced patriarchal norms. Their tweets made it clear that they understood it this way. That's real. You are now falling back on intention, but that doesn't erase either the content of your critique or Rab's and Watters' understanding of it.

So when you write: "Is there some way we can agree that -- until there is evidence of dishonorable goals or a pattern of attacking women (or some other group) -- we can evaluate ideas based on their merits, and not just accuse people of being sexist or otherwise dishonorable?"

Yes, we can agree on that. But the evidence /is/ your critique as part of a constant barrage of discourse telling women to be nicer if they want to be part of the public conversation. It's not about who you are, but what you said.

It sucks. I've been there. Good luck.

I really have been there. It really does suck when our actions conflict with our identity.

But again, see premise #1. To me, no matter his intentions, it is not possible for him to critique Rab and Watters on the grounds of tone without replicating patriarchal silencing discourse. That does not make him a sexist. It does mean his critique operates within sexist norms whether or not he intended it to do so.

And that's the power of culture. We all consume patriarchal culture. It wants us to replicate it in our speech and actions. We have to push against the grain. We have to hold ourselves and each other accountable when we mess up. And when I mess up, I try to resist being defensive, but instead say - Crap. Patriarchy (or whatever oppressive system I have inadvertently contributed to) is powerful and pernicious. I'll try and do better next time.

Being the Target of a Boycott - Indiana and Lessons from UIUC

A month or so ago, UIUC professor Susan Koshy wrote a piece on being the target of a boycott. She supports the candidacy of Steven Salaita. She's angry at the administration for their conduct. She writes (behind the paywall. I will quote as extensively as seems reasonable):

For someone like me, who is inside the university and supports Salaita, the boycott represents an experiential impasse. I find myself in the impossible position of being the target of a boycott as a member of an institution whose actions I and many others here have challenged. Unlike faculty members outside Urbana-Champaign whose safe target is another university, our target is our own. The frequently repeated joke here—How do we boycott ourselves?—captures this problem. How do you oppose your own institution yet protect valuable parts of it at the same time?

There's been a lot of shouting about the Indiana bill, with "boycott" as a major part of the strategy to punish the state for its prejudice. I get it. I recommend Melissa McEwan's piece "Stop" on why this is a bad idea.

The boycott is a blunt tool. Koshy writes:

First, in most boycotts, the relationship between external and internal groups is crucial to the campaign’s efficacy. Various arrangements are set up to enable the two groups to coordinate strategies and organize actions together, and to provide support for those on the inside. Throughout, the concerns of those within the boycott help determine the choice of tactics. By contrast, the actions and narrative of this boycott have been shaped mostly by those on the outside. Outside actors have taken the lead in organizing it and defining its stakes, sometimes without sustained input from those on the inside, although often in stated symbolic solidarity with them.

Second, boycotts typically are only one tactic among many—and usually one of last resort—in a multipronged political strategy to bring about change. Boycotts usually work in tandem with economic sanctions and protests that reinforce the boycott’s effects. 

Koshy talks about discourse and the way that the internet, focusing on star political bloggers (I assume this is a veiled call-out at Corey Robin), shape the understanding of the boycott from the outside, with less attention given to the narrative from the inside. She concludes:

Finally, while the primary focus in the last few months has been on the negative actions of the boycott—what outsiders will not do for the university or its faculty and students—affirmative actions, or what outsiders will do for those inside, have been few or largely symbolic.

It has become too easy to support the boycott from the outside—to share, "like," and forward one’s political commitments; to update oneself through the musings of star boycott bloggers; and to "give up" invitations that one could hypothetically receive from the university. Meanwhile, on the inside, the costs are steep and mounting.

Many colleagues outside the university have posted their rejections of university invitations on their Facebook pages, blogs, or websites, or have written open letters to the chancellor condemning the university’s actions. These actions are invaluable in exerting pressure on the university. But despite a few calls to invite Urbana-Champaign faculty and students to their campuses to counter the debilitating isolation those on the inside are facing, few have followed through on those proposals.

Perhaps colleagues could post with as much passion on their Facebook pages the affirming actions they have taken to support the boycott—listing the graduate students they have hired from our university, or the professors they have invited, or the collaborations they have undertaken with groups here.

There are specific issues with the university boycott. But I think Koshy also raises important points about boycotts in general. They can be effective tools, but they have to work WITH the people on whose behalf one is boycotting, and they have to be paired to specific, direct, affirmative actions to support those people.

Calls to boycott Indiana have not, to my knowledge, included affirmative actions to support LGBTQ and other progressive movements within the state. Until that happens, keep me out of your boycott.

Cult of Compliance: Boy with Down Syndrome Forced to Remove Letter Jacket

Principal forces student with Down syndrome to remove high school letter jacket: http://t.co/9dsd9hxZNC pic.twitter.com/WxLdUQjyaa
— USA TODAY Sports (@USATODAYsports) March 27, 2015

USA Today Sports has a new piece on a boy with Down syndrome forced to remove a letter jacket. His mother had bought him the jacket, he loved it, but because he's not a "real" varsity player, the principal made him take it off. From the story:

Michael Kelly is a high school student who plays on Wichita East’s special needs basketball team. His mother bought Kelly a letter jacket and a varsity letter to show his participation. But when Kelly, who has Down syndrome and autism, wore the jacket to school, he was forced to remove it and put on a sweatshirt instead.

According to school principal Ken Thiessen, it’s because Kelly isn’t actually on the varsity team.

“Teachers told the parents they would prefer he not wear the letter on his jacket,” Thiessen told WKSN TV adding that he would not allow special needs teams to have letters. “We have considered it, and our decision was no. We decided that it is not appropriate in our situation because it is not a varsity level competition.”

This is not just a story about special needs and cruelty (though it is also that), but about the ways that disability often points at the power of hierarchy and compliance in our school system (and beyond). By existing and demanding inclusion, people with disabilities reveal the ways in which we accept all kinds of inequality in other circumstances.

This is the power of the cult of compliance. It pushes people like this principal to enforce rules against individuals clearly not trying to game the system, but who just want to belong, because to do otherwise would betray the principle that compliance is the highest virtue.

For those readers unfamiliar with the "cult of compliance" - Start here. Then search "compliance" on the blog for much much more.

Edit: Apparently it was another parent who complained and prompted this. I have no printable words for that parent.

Open Letter to Joshua Kim - Own up; Apologize; Try to do Better

Preamble: I make mistakes

Sometimes, I make mistakes. Often, those mistakes emerge from my privilege - straight, white, tenured, able-bodied, neurotypical, married, etc. I say something or do something that is exclusionary, hurtful, or simply wrong.

If I'm lucky, someone calls me on it.

If I'm very lucky, after I apologize and try to make it right, I get re-admitted into the community I betrayed. For example, I made an OCD comment to a man whose son is greatly struggling with OCD. I apologized. He accepted. I will not do that again. I drew three lessons from this experience.

Lesson 1: When you screw up, and you will screw up, own it. Apologize. Try not to do it again.
Lesson 2: No one is entitled to have their apology accepted.
Lesson 3: On the other hand, one mistake (rather than a pattern of repeated bad behavior) can become an opportunity for dialogue and strengthening community, rather than sundering it.

In that post, of course, I wasn't talking about my slip at the Thanksgiving table, but about Daniel Handler, Barilla, Matt Taylor, and all the other privileged people who have recently made mistakes, apologized, and tried to do better. They've been let back into their communities. This is in opposition to those who either don't apologize, or apologize because the less-privileged party was offended, putting the blame on the less-privileged party for being so thin skinned.

Context: The End of College

There's a new book out by Kevin Carey on The End of College. It's been criticized by lots of people, men and women alike, for many different reasons. It's been praised by lots of people, men and women like, for other reasons. I am not, in this post, going to engage with the book in any detail.

Instead, I want to talk about Joshua Kim, blogger for Inside Higher Ed and director of online learning at Dartmouth. He wrote a comment on book called "Dear Kevin," in which he spoke in a chummy, man-to-man, peer-to-peer, sort of way to Carey. According to his picture, Kim is a white man. He works for a very wealthy institution in a highly desirable field. I bet he makes a lot more money than almost everyone I know in academia. He is, in short, privileged in important ways.

Then, later in the day, Kim went after two of Carey's detractors. Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab are two high-profile, respected, higher-education writers. They attacked Carey's book in their review, also for Inside Higher Ed, called - Techno Fantasies, It is a devastating review, undermining Carey's evidentiary basis and assumptions in ways that I find effective. I have read only excerpts of Carey's book and some of his interviews, so I cannot fully judge. Still, Rab and Watters have certainly pushed back hard against Carey's intentional polemic.

Kim seems to have decided to defend "Dear Kevin," not on substance, but on tone. He chastises Rab and Watters for attacking. He asks why it's relevant to bring up Carey's race (white)? He expresses a wish that Rab and Watters had been "more constructive." In other words, he tone polices them. He does not engage with the substance of the critique, but merely wishes they had been nicer.

This is typical a typical sexist pattern of behavior. I am NOT saying Kim is sexist. I'm saying his decision to tone-police two prominent female academics, engaging their abrasive language and not the substance of their ideas, falls into a sexist tradition of demanding women stay demure and kind. Moreover, given that there has been other severe critiques of The End of College, including this essay by a fellow white male on Inside Higher Ed itself, his decision to attack the tone of Rab and Watters suggests the presence of unconscious bias.

And that's the thing about unconscious bias - it's there without us intending for it to be there. And when it rears up, and we get called on it, there are only a few things we can do. See lessons 1, 2, and 3 above.

Unasked For Advice

I tweeted my thoughts about the column. I know Kim has read them. First, he was online long enough to tweet out his link to his piece on Twitter this morning, but he hasn't otherwise engaged the criticism (not in the comments either, to my knowledge). Second, I got this message this morning.

So if you're listening, Joshua, here's some unasked for advice from a fellow privileged sinner. Man-to-man (not really peer-to-peer).

1. Race, class, gender, institutional affiliation, and so forth always matter. Carey is being accused of ignoring the issues for non-elite students. Non-elite students generally correlate to students of color and students who are lower class, and then race and class intersect, students are especially vulnerable. That's why they bring up Carey's race - his argument serves his own privileged position. But here's the real kicker - as a white guy, you don't get to ask non-white-guys why they bring up race. Just take that question out of your lexicon. 

2. There have been other critiques of Carey that are equally aggressive, and you have not to my knowledge called them out for being shrill and abrasive. They were, of course, written by men. I'm sure you didn't intend to be sexist, but that's not relevant. Your actions, your writing, falls into paternalistic and sexist patterns of discourse. You messed up.

3. The only path out of out of this is to apologize. To say - I should not have engaged with Rab and Watters by questioning their tone, but only by engaging with their content. In short, you should do exactly what you want Rab and Watters to do with Dear Kevin's book.

4. Then you wait and see if your apology is accepted. If it is, you try to re-enter community by thinking hard about the response to your piece, thinking hard about why you wrote the way you did, and then trying to do better in the future. Because people will be watching.

In my life, I have been called out for being ableist, sexist, and classist, I have surely displayed other forms of prejudice in actions or speech in my life. I thank the people who call me out. I try to do better. I hope they accept my apologies. I do not demand that they accept my apologies. 

It sucks when we mess up. But if we're lucky, we rejoin community a better person than when we left it.

Good luck.

The Conundrum of Achievement and Disability

One response to ableism, eugenic ideology, or just plain ignorance is to tout the achievements of people with disabilities. Sometimes it can veer into inspiration porn or cuteness porn, but I've long thought that there's a bigger problem. 

If we define the worth of an individual by what they do, and then say - look, people with disabilities can do many things - what about those people who do less? Have we devalued them? By adopting the epistemology of "do" = "worthy," we implicitly reinforce disability hierarchies.

My son Nico is a wonderful, talented, smart boy. He has profound verbal delays in expressive speech, and in our society, expressive verbal ability tends to place limits on inclusion. If we presume achievement in neurotypical norms is the pathway to asserting value, Nico loses in that contest. Instead, we have to reject that epistemology and assert value based on broadening our perception of shared humanity.

I write this because of a powerful essay by Liz Rouch in The Mighty. Have you read The Mighty? It's an awesome site, featuring essays mostly by parents in the special needs community, run by long-time media professionals, trying to create space for new kinds of essays. And here's one by Rouch.

News stories abound everywhere on social media, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with pictures galore of children and adults with Down syndrome, autism or other disabilities. In these pictures the children are participating in athletics like cheerleading, basketball and wrestling for their school teams, graduating from high school with their diploma in hand, modeling for Target, Nordstrom or Toys ‘R Us catalogs, getting a job or even being a bat boy for the Cincinnati Reds.

 These are all amazing achievements from awe-inspiring individuals, and we all go “ooooh,” and “aaaah,” and smile. Maybe we even shed a few happy tears watching the videos, hearing the stories and seeing the pictures. Especially those of us who have a child with the same disability. We revel in it, all the while probably secretly, or even outwardly, hoping, yearning and praying for the same or higher accomplishments and recognitions for our child.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wonderful these people are all able to participate in something they love and excel at it. And I really do enjoy seeing their happy faces beaming with the pride of what they’ve achieved with a lot of hard work. There are so many individuals exceeding expectations, goals and misconceived mindsets, and it is a sight to behold. Of course they should celebrate and share their accomplishments, but I think we as a society desire the “higher functioning” child

What about those so-called “lower functioning” individuals? What place do they have? Shouldn’t the child quietly sitting in a wheelchair deserve as much recognition and acceptance for their abilities, whatever they may be or as minor as they may seem?

This is my conundrum too. How to celebrate without excluding. Read the whole essay. She finishes:

I want these people to be valued and praised as much as the ones who can run, talk, dance in recitals, score a touchdown, shoot a winning 3-point-shot, earn their high school diploma or graduate from college by the time they’re 16. I’d also love to see a child with Treacher Collins syndrome or a cleft palate (repaired or not) grace the pages of a department store catalog.

If you’re promoting the acceptance of disabilities, then please embrace and include everyone — the lower functioning, the mid-functioning and of course the higher functioning. They all have a story and need to be celebrated because in the end all life is precious, no matter the functioning level.

I share the concerns. I see the "get disabled kids into advertising" campaigns mostly succeeding in putting conventionally cute white children into advertisements. I see the "high functioning" label being used to segment and divide. These results are unintentional. They are also true. What do we do? How do we fix this?

So again I say, as I do almost every day - fight disability hierarchies. Parents, high functioning individuals, people with physical but not intellectual disabilities, white people with disabilities, wealthy people with disabilities - we are atop the disability hierarchy. We have power and privilege.

Use it to change the epistemology.

The Rise of Neo-Primitivism

I've become increasingly interested in nostalgia, especially when used as political discourse (following the scholarship of my friend Matthew Gabriele (@prof_gabriele), a professor at Virginia Tech).

It reminded me of this recent essay from Andrew Potter, the editor of Ottawa Citizen, on the "Rise of Neo-Primitivism." Potter describes the "neo-primitives" imagined by speculative fiction author William Gibson, and links these fictional people to moderns. He writes:

From the paleo diet to the “ancestral health” craze to the criminals leading the anti-vaccine movement, we live in neoprimitivist times, in precisely the manner sketched by William Gibson. A disturbingly large segment of society has adopted a highly skeptical and antagonistic relationship to the main tributaries of modernity. But as in The Peripheral, these people are not opting out of modernity, going off the grid or deciding to live in caves. Instead, they are volunteering for “another manifestation” of modernity, living in the modern world, without being entirely of it, or even understanding it.

It's an interesting essay throughout, talking about the faux authenticity ascribed to "natural" and "nature" in this modern world, and the consequences.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once noted that the misfortunes that can befall humanity can be sorted into two broad categories: things that are inflicted by nature, and things that are inflicted by humans. For most of our history, a great deal of suffering was due to natural causes such as famine, disease, and disaster. But as we have developed in knowledge and skill, the class of harms inflicted upon humans by other humans has come to occupy a greater chunk of the total. Put simply, there is less disease but more war, and as a result, we’ve come to believe that “nature” is relatively benign, while “civilization” is increasingly a threat.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet we are caught in the grip of a fierce nostalgia, where the thought of contracting a disease like the measles is not something to be feared, but to be welcomed as a sign of our profound connection to nature.

We live in neoprimitivist times. Authenticity seeking wedded to technophobic irrationalism has led us to a bizarre situation where we are increasingly ignorant and suspicious of the scientific and technological underpinnings of our world. It’s like fish deciding that water is their enemy.

I don't know that I agree with all his conclusions - some of the mistrust of technology is learned, rational, behavior. But I like the concept of nostalgic neo-primitivism.

Academics Talk About Money

Recently, I've seen a positive trend - Academics talking bluntly about money.

Talking about money doesn't besmirch intellectual activity; rather, being paid fairly enables more and better intellectual activity.

We exist in a profession in which talking about money is gauche. We're supposed to work because we love it (read this essay on the exploitation built into the concept of "do what you love") and, of course, our institutions' financial structures positions tend to be secretive and haphazard.

I believe that silence about money keeps academics from thinking of their work as work. Wanting to be paid fairly for our work is not betraying a higher intellectual calling; rather, being paid fairly is what enables us to pursue our callings.

Here are some recent pieces on this theme. I don't agree with everything said in all of them, but I'm thrilled the conversation is happening:

The conversation is being driven, appropriately, by people writing about the non-tenure-track and alt-academic careers. They have no choice but to think explicitly about finances, but are still part of a culture that discourages it. That's why we, as a profession, are so fortunate to have such outstanding alt-academic and post-academic writers.

I start with excellent column by Katie Rose Guest Pryal​ (one of my absolutely favorite Chronicle writers) on "the university as a client" for "freelance academics." Pryal writes:

It begins with a shift of mindset—from that of employee to that of freelancer. As a freelancer, your institution is just one of your many clients. That means you need to spend your extra time and energy on projects that earn you money and respect outside of one particular institution. 

I love the "one of many clients" language for the freelance academic. The relationship may be different for the full-time professor, in that we may have fewer clients, but even so, we can think like a savvy freelancer and benefit from it, as discussed in this next piece.

Pryal's call was taken up in another Chronicle piece (not by me) on marketing yourself as a freelancer while a tenured professor. The author, a humanities professor writing under the pseudonym "Sam Johnson," talks about the tenured entrepreneur.

Here’s the line in [Pryal's] essay that really caught my eye: "If you are a tenure-track professor … and you’ve noticed that higher education might not be able to sustain you either, then I’m also talking to you."
I came to that exact realization a few years ago, after receiving my last promotion and struggling through several years without so much as a cost-of-living raise. The resulting epiphany has changed the way I look at my work, revitalized my career, and improved my life immeasurably.

Once Johnson realized that their skills - "teaching, training, speaking, writing, editing" - had monetary value, marketing followed, then significant income. The piece writes about making the leap both conceptually and pragmatically, including how one draws boundaries between oneself and one's main employer.

Meanwhile, "The Tenured Radical" wrote a blog post called "How we make money from books." She seems to be responding to debates about how stringently to fight for a bigger advance/royalties from academic publishers. Her argument is - don't. Academic book publishing is structurally designed not to make money for authors in almost all instances (not textbooks), but she's not saying we should write for love. Rather, books make us money in other ways - i.e. getting jobs, speaking fees, etc. What I like about this piece is that the basic premise - money matters - isn't in dispute. The question is how to maximize one's returns, and that's a fine subject for debate.

One problem in academia is that we valorize certain kinds of money making activities and not others. Clearly, the pseudonymous Chronicle author is concerned that their outside activities might violate a contractual position on secondary employment, even as their wages stagnate and expenses mount. Or maybe, they just don't want to get criticized for "selling out." Here's my advice to artists and intellectuals - sell out. You'll do better art when your bills are paid.

And it's not confined to academia - writers of all types have been posting essays on getting paid. I think it's health. Here's Jim Hines, an SFF novelist, posts his writing income every year. Ann Bauer, at Salon, talked about the way her writing is supported by her husband's salary and why it's essential to be open about that. "Who pays writers" is an anonymous crowd-sourced list of rates from Scratch Magazine. There are others, but that's a good sampling of the kind of non-academic writing on money that's out there.

I am a freelance journalist. It took me ages - dozens of essays - to embrace the word freelance, because freelance suggested that I am writing for the money.

I am not writing for money. If I were writing for money, though, that would be fine, as we could use the money. I could recite long list of unimpeachable expenses relating to child and elder care, but I won't, because frankly if I were writing to make money to make car payments on my HumVee, that would be fine too (seriously people, I do not have a HumVee. I drive a 1997 minivan with 200K miles on it).

I started writing because I thought I had some things to say and I found venues to say them in, almost all unpaid. I finally learned to ask the question, "what is your rate for freelancers." It turns out that almost all publications have them, they are not negotiable at my level, but they're mostly fine. And when people say they can't pay, no matter how interesting, I don't write for them (I do sometimes allow them to re-publish my blogs).

This has all made it easier to do more writing. I am a disciplined writer because it's work. I market myself, increasing my visibility, and thus making it possible to land more visible writing gigs. I work harder for $400 essays than for $100 essays (that's basically the range for me), especially in terms of the research and interviews that lie behind them.

Being paid has helped me invest in my writing - a better phone for interviews and recording conversations. I'm going to buy a better voice recorder soon though. A landline for when I am intereviewed. Cable (I'm reviewing some cable TV shows). Books with relevant information.

Last year I published about 45 essays. I would have had to publish about 350 essays to make anywhere near my current salary (which is very low on the AAUP scale of what professors make).

I am now learning to quote a speaking rate comparable to other journalists, though between you and me, I'm always ready to undercut myself and come talk to anyone who wants to listen. If you have the money, though, you should pay your speakers well.

Again, here's the principle - Fair pay for work makes it possible to do more and better work, and there's lots of work that needs doing. Academics need more blunt talk about pay.

The Arguments - Sheehan vs SF

The arguments for Sheehan vs SF are a little weird. Predictions, always fraught for the Court based

Monty Python: The Argument Clinic

on oral arguments, are going to be even harder in this case, because the city changed their brief between cert (when SCOTUS took the case) and filing.

From the arguments, it's clear that the court took the case so they could rule on the extent to which the ADA applies to arrest, particularly of a potentially violent individual with a known disability. They were not especially interested in the Fourth Amendment issues. The ADA question is vital.

However, after cert, perhaps due to pushback from the ACLU and other groups, the city changed their brief. Scalia launched in at the SF attorney (Christine Van Aken, who I interviewed for my Al Jazeera piece) saying that she had pulled a bait and switch, arguing a big point in the petition, and changing it to a narrow one in her brief.

Here's an excerpt from the arguments [my emphasis]:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Your petition for ­­ for writ of certiorari, and it was a petition that had your name on it, said on ­­ on the reasons for granting the petition, this Court should resolve whether and how the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to arrests of armed and violent suspects who are disabled. The circuits are in conflict on this question. The question presented is recurring and important, and Title II of the ADA does not require accommodations for armed and violent suspects who are disabled, and that's the issue on which there is a circuit conflict.

Van Aken replied that the issue is to what extent Title II applies, not whether it applies, but Scalia and the other justices, both liberal and conservative, seemed eager to weigh in on that question. 

If you're interested, I highly recommend reading the transcript. It's conversational, not filled with much technical legalese, and fascinating. 

Basically, the court might just make a narrow ruling, based on the actual briefs, and move on. Or they might decide to weigh in on Title II protections anyway. That would, I suspect, be bad (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas are no friends to the ADA, based on my reading of the record. Again, though, I am not a Supreme Court expert).

It was, though, the Solicitor General's comments that demonstrate this to me - the ADA will never be the tool that really helps stop police violence against people with disabilities. At best, it might mitigate behavior in very specific circumstances in which the disability is known ahead of time - and the Sheehan case meets that bar. But that's the limitation.

JUSTICE ALITO: But in the case I posited, there would be an issue about whether the officers should have known that this person was behaving bizarrely, had a mental illness?

MR. GERSHENGORN: We don't believe that should have known is the standard in the ADA. So it's not a should have known standard with respect to the disability.

This is the problem. The ADA medicalizes even though it emerged from the social model of disability. Instead, we need to reform police tactics to apply to all situations, not just for the Sheehans.

That said, Sheehan's case remains strong to me. SF's case is based entirely on hypotheticals. I hope the hypotheticals don't carry the day.

Sheehan vs SF: Waiting on Transcripts

Oral arguments for Sheehan vs San Francisco will begin at the Supreme Court in a few hours (it's the

second case of the day). It will provide the opportunity for the court to do a number of things.

Here are the questions before the court:

Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent, and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; and

Whether it was clearly established that even where an exception to the warrant requirement applied, an entry into a residence could be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment by reason of the anticipated resistance of an armed and violent suspect within.

What might the court do? They could ...

1. Affirm or severely limit the protections of the ADA for people with disabilities as they apply to policing.
2. More clearly define the limits of qualified immunity (the Fourth Amendment issue).
3. Carve out a narrow ruling that sends the case back to the Ninth Circuit and doesn't establish wide precedent either way.

Three, I think, is the best we can hope for. I am not a lawyer nor a Supreme Court expert, but I did talk to a lot of lawyers, though, previewing the case for Al Jazeera America yesterday. I argued: "This case will determine to what extent police can be held accountable to the best practices of their profession." Please consider reading and sharing my piece.

There are best practices. The police did not follow them. Their claims as to the "public safety" risk that Sheehan presented consistently run counter to the facts, but the law in fact allows them to make up what a "reasonable officer" might have imagined, even if neither officer at the time believed it. 

Here's a very useful preview, especially in its summary of the US Government position on the ADA. My emphasis:

The United States’ ADA argument asks the Court walk a line between the Petitioners’ and Respondent’s arguments. Title II requires officers to provide reasonable accommodations during the arrest of mentally disabled individuals. Yet, if objective evidence causes concerns about public or police safety, then it might not be reasonable for police to provide accommodations (i.e., delay immediate entry to arrest). In those situations, safety can outweigh accommodations. And despite the importance of safety, the United States refused to make the safety exception ironclad, arguing that a plaintiff “should remain free to show that special circumstances rendered a modification reasonable.” (U.S. Amicus Br. 7.) For this case, the United States asked the Court to pass on rendering judgment on the reasonableness of the officers’ actions by instead remanding the case to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether Respondent, who would bear the burden of proof establishing that “special circumstances” were present, was owed reasonable modification despite the safety risks she posed.

In terms of the ADA, that's pretty much what I hope for. That the court affirms the right of a person like Sheehan to argue that she was owed a reasonable accommodation. I'd prefer a much stronger position from the government and for the court to enhance the power of the ADA, but I don't expect that.

More later once the transcript is up. Also, I continue to maintain it is ludicrous that SCOTUS isn't live-streamed.

Sheehan vs SF at SCOTUS

I have a new piece out today at Al Jazeera America on the upcoming Supreme Court case - Sheehan vs San Francisco. I write:

Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities are regularly dying at the hands of police officers across the country. In just the last few weeks, four such deaths have made national news: Kristiana Coignard in Texas, Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Washington, Lavall Hall in Florida and Charley Robinet in California. According to the American Psychological Association, some officers spend more time “responding to calls involving mental illnesses than they do investigating burglaries or felony assaults.” Too often, these encounters turn violent. Our best guess is that about 50 percent of killings by police involve psychiatric disability of some sort.

On March 23, the Supreme Court will have a chance to address this national crisis. The case of Sheehan v. San Francisco offers the justices the chance to clarify how the ADA applies to law enforcement — an important step that could strengthen the broader movement for police reform. This case will determine to what extent police can be held accountable to the best practices of their profession.

I read hundreds of pages of briefs, talked to lawyers on both sides, consulted an ACLU expert on these issues, and also talked to Seth Stoughton, a police law expert I often rely on. You might also read this argument summary from SCOTUSblog. Here's my summary:

In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, a resident of a group home for people with psychiatric disabilities, threatened a social worker with a kitchen knife. The social worker called the police. Two officers arrived and entered Sheehan’s room but retreated when she threatened them as well. They called for backup. Instead of waiting, they re-entered the room. Sheehan came at them with the knife, and they shot her repeatedly. Luckily, she survived. A hung jury resulted in a partial acquittal of assault charges against her.

The lawsuit focuses on the legality of the second entry into Sheehan’s room. She sued the officers under Title II of the ADA, arguing that by not waiting for backup, the officers did not reasonably accommodate her disability. Furthermore, her attorneys argue that the violation of the ADA exempts the officers from qualified immunity, a doctrine intended to protect police from lawsuits unless it’s clearly established that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. At issue is not whether the police were wrong to enter the room the second time but whether it’s allowable for Sheehan’s lawyers to argue that they were wrong before a civil jury.

I am concerned, honestly, although I tried to set the stakes and make an argument, rather than gnash my teeth and worry in the AJAM piece. The Teresa Sheehan case is so compelling, on the facts, that if she can't win her right to sue (which is not the same as winning her case), then the line has been drawn so even farther in law enforcement's favor.  The officers knew, absolutely knew, that Sheehan was in mental health crisis, had psychiatric disabilities, was along in her room (it's a small room), did not have a fire escape out the back (the fire escape was on the front of the building, where any law officer could have seen it entering the building), did not have a firearm, had no hostages, etc. And yet they charged in the second time anyway, and Sheehan got shot. She has the right to sue them and let a jury decide culpability.

Please read and share the original Al Jazeera piece, if you can. We need the country to understand the stakes here.

World Down Syndrome Day: Fight Disability Hierarchies

Tomorrow, 3/21, is World Down Syndrome Day, so called because of the 3 copies of the 21st chromosome that marks the condition. Last year, I wrote about the limits of cute. I expanded that argument in the Fall with this "Beyond Cute" piece for Al Jazeera.

Cute is the first move, it gets people to notice Down syndrome and smile, but then what? I asked my community to think about to what extent they are playing the "long game." For example, by far the most popular Down syndrome blogs and sites have built their popularity using cute pictures of their white kids under the age of 10.  That's fine - your kids are cute and you are white. Now think about what you're doing to go beyond that and, importantly, is it working?

This year, I want to talk about disability hierarchies.

Here's an uncomfortable truth -  The Down syndrome community has it pretty good. It's uncomfortable, for me, to say this, because raising a child with Down syndrome is plenty challenging, and so I'm working hard. But compared to many other disabilities, Down syndrome carries fewer stigmas and obstacles. People with Down syndrome often have strong social skills. "Cute" has advantages, for all I'm more interested in its limitations.

Moreover, Down syndrome is common enough to give widespread familiarity with the condition. When Nico was diagnosed, I quickly discovered that most people have, at some point, met either people with Down syndrome or people who were caregivers. And their impressions were generally positive.

Moreover, the clarity of the diagnosis - Down syndrome being literally written into every cell in the body - means that qualification for certain kinds of services is easier than for other people. I've witnessed the intense anger and sadness at caregivers being unable to get services for their children, because while the need is obvious to them, the diagnosis isn't there to support it. Or the agonizing confusion of people or caregivers who just don't know what's going on with their confusion.

None of these details eliminates the challenges. We still get to own our struggles (I am all about owning our struggles), but we also need to recognize our privileges and act accordingly. This lies at the heart of the concept of the disability hierarchy.

So - If you accept my premise (and if you don't, let's talk about it), here's the key question: what does a strong position on the disability hierarchy mean for us? What responsibilities does it entail? What should we do?

My answer, of course, is to show solidarity and work across hierarchies, even if doing so does not directly benefit the Down syndrome community.

Take, for example, early intervention in the state of Illinois. As I wrote about this week for CNN and on the blog, the DHS is going to kick 4000+ children off the early intervention rolls in Illinois. Not one of those children will have Down syndrome, I'm told, as the condition brings automatic qualification. And yet, the Down syndrome community must rally to oppose those cuts. I know many conservative, relatively well-off, parents of children with Down syndrome, including some in Illinois. I know they voted for Rauner. I would like to believe that they will rally with us to save Early Intervention.

This is how we fight the divide and conquer rhetoric on disability emerging from elements in the American right-wing. We refuse to be divided. We refuse to let politicians play on the disability hierarchies, but instead stand united.

Happy World Down Syndrome Day.

Fight Body Issues by Reinforcing Patriarchy?

No.

No no no no no.

Also no.

According to a piece in The Telegraph (a right-wing British newspaper. Do Not Link used here), here's how to fight body image issues among girls:  A doctor and author says teachers should ask boys to tell girls what boys find attractive. Then girls will realize that boys like girls with some fat, because of evolution and child breeding. And all the girls who fit within those new standards of beauty will feel great.

1. It is true that people find many body types attractive and that the single-type of female beauty betrayed [Edit - I meant portrayal. I'm leaving this Freudian slip in] is not the sum total of "what is attractive."

2. This is a terrible idea.

Here's the key quote:

To fight a “neurosis” amongst school girls on body fat, teachers should get boys to tell girls what they find attractive, including other qualities beyond pure looks, said Aric Sigman, author of “The Body Wars: why body dissatisfaction is at epidemic proportions”.

He said it was important that teachers picked boys from an older year group because girls look up to them and they are not direct peers so it would be easier to talk about body image issues.

“It would be helpful for them to explain that what they find attractive is not just physical qualities but also qualities like caring, the sound of a girl’s voice and her body language.

Science stuff follows.

This is fine in a way, except that it reinforces the patriarchal notion that what girls should be concerned about is to what extent they are or are not attractive to boys. Attractiveness remains the key arbiter of personal worth.

Instead, the way to fight body image issues is to de-legitimize the male gaze as the arbiter of what is and is not "good."

The notion that a girls' body exists to be attractive starts very young, the minute we call a girl baby pretty and put a pink hat on her (while the strong boy gets a blue one). I wrote about this issue when she was in pre-school, almost two years ago, on the occasion of her winning a "best dressed" award.

The other day, then, I arrived at after-school to find my daughter in a big loose school t-shirt because her pants were a little saggy. The teacher said that she "didn't want Ellie to fell uncomfortable." I guarantee you that Ellie didn't feel uncomfortable until the teacher told her that having too much of her body showing was something to feel uncomfortable about. My daughter is five. She does need to learn about privacy, but making her feel ashamed of part of her body being visible is not the way (in this case, the issue is two-fold: She doesn't have enough of a butt to hold up pants, and the tie had become snagged and wasn't re-tying).

I asked them, very politely, to let me know if there was a problem with her clothes and not to intervene directly in that way again, and discussed body shaming. And you know what, her feminist teachers were probably very upset, because they don't see the way they replicate patriarchal culture through these kinds of little micro-aggressions.

And we, of course, went out to buy more pants with better elastic waistbands.

Micro-aggressions matter. They build up over time, in tiny ways. I find the particular stresses of raising a girl in our culture to be very tiring, but I try to push back against the grain and hope it helps.

Illinois DHS Secretary Gregory Bassi: Kick My Nephews Out of Early Intervention

I have a new piece up at CNN on the Bruce Rauner budget. It attacks core services that both are necessary to help the most vulnerable and sound fiscal policy in the long-term sense. I write:

The Rauner budget slashes state spending by over $4 billion, much of the savings gleaned by eliminating or reducing eligibility for programs based in the Department of Human Services (DHS). Each cut will come with costs to families and individuals who need the state's help most. Moreover, many of them actually save the state money over time.

I then go on to discuss two programs - early intervention and respite care. I'll talk more about these in the context of Down syndrome in the next few days. It's a long essay (hundreds of words longer than my usual CNN length) and I had to cut discussing my own involvement with the program. I'll have more to say soon.

Today, though, I want to focus on an extraordinarily revealing statement from the Department of Human Services acting secretary Gregory Bassi. See my emphasis at the bottom of these paragraphs:

The program [Early Intervention] is extremely economically efficient. For each dollar spent on programs like Early Intervention, according to studies by people such as the Nobel Laureate James Heckman and the Rand Corporation, the state saves at least $7 in future services. Those savings are, in fact, most likely to be realized most dramatically with precisely the children that DHS is trying to exclude. Children with only mild delays can, with Early Intervention, avoid requiring the more expensive special education services in school when they are older. Everyone wins.

Despite this Gregory Bassi, acting secretary of DHS, is undeterred. At a recent state Senate budget hearing, which I attended, Bassi kept saying that the program was too expensive and seemed unable to address the long-term costs of short-term savings. He even, in a revealing moment, said that his own nephew ought to get booted from the program because the nephew's parents make too much money (a spokesperson clarified that Bassi actually has two nephews in the program, both of whom have benefited from the therapy).

Bassi was being asked by a Democratic senator about early intervention, and he started talking about how much he cared about Early Intervention. He cited his autistic nephew who had benefited from the program as a sign that he cared. Then said - "Honestly, I think my nephew shouldn’t be getting the service because they have the means to pay for it.”

Some points.

• A DHS spokeswoman told me that he actually has two nephews who have benefitted from EI and neither has autism. She wrote: "Secretary Bassi has two nephews with delays – not autism – who have gone through the subsidized EI program. He believes that the program has been great for his nephews and is in favor of their participation in the program. But he also understands that the family has the means to pay for the benefits of the EI program and do not need to be subsidized by the taxpayers – that the priority for the subsidy should fall in favor of those families with the greatest need."

So why did he say autism? And why did he just say one nephew? Was he confused about their diagnosis? Is he not actually all that close to the kids and is unaware of their challenges? Or was it just a convenient way to make a point that he cared and he didn't want to let a more complicated set of facts get in the way of the testimony? Or was it just a slip of the tongue? It's baffling to me. 

• The second part, though, is more interesting. The principle behind EI is that it is available and necessary for all kids with relevant needs. All kids. Co-pays are means tested, but when EI acts not as a benefit for the poor only, but as something to which we all contribute and on which we can all draw, is becomes part of the fabric of our society. Republicans resist such programs and use means testing as a way to undermine essential services. 

And that's one of the big problems with the GOP. Rauner may not be able to pass much, given veto-proof Democratic majorities in both houses, but he - like fellow Republicans - can appoint people to run things that they fundamentally don't believe in. Bassi wants to turn EI into a program only for the poor. And then, in typical right-wing fashion, it can be demonized as an entitled for "those" people." And then it be cut further. 

We see this playbook all the time,  and we have to resist it here in Illinois.

"Daddy, What's Down Syndrome?"

I have a new essay up on Yahoo! Parenting. It's first piece for them and I'm glad to have a space that's interested in my more personal essays (especially with their giant readership). It's about talking to my daughter about her brother's diagnosis.

"My daughter is five and she likes to ask questions. Some are awesome: “Why can’t you see black holes?” “Why is sugar sweet?” “Can I be the first girl president?” “If I do this, will it explode?” (Answers: physics of light; chemistry of food; yes you can; and “Stop shaking that bottle right now!”).

Other questions are more complicated: “How do babies get inside mommies’ tummies?” and “Will you and mommy die?” We try to answer all questions honestly, but also appropriately for her age.

A few weeks ago, though, Ellie asked me the one question I’ve been preparing for since before she was born, but was still not ready to answer: “Daddy, what is Down syndrome?”

I told her. Read on! :)

My kids. Nice hats.

Resources: Republican Governors Attack Disability

This is a collection of links about Republican cuts to programs serving people with disabilities, as well as comments from Republican officials/candidates questioning the rationales behind such programs.

Resource pages offer collections of links for pieces I am writing, usually without comment. The comment comes in the piece I write later. Please suggest other links via social media, email, or in comments.

Bruce Rauner (Illinois)

• Proposes cuts to respite care.
• Proposes cuts to early intervention.

Scott Walker (Wisconsin)

• Walker cuts "Family Care" plan, closing options.
• Walker cuts long-term care services.
• Disability Rights Wisconsin has a call out for people affected by Wisconsin cuts to share their stories at upcoming hearings, along with budget numbers.

Rick Scott (Florida)

• Florida cuts hit department of health hardest.
• Overview of funding cuts since 2003 (to the present day).
• Within this article on workers' comp: "Florida has cut benefits to its most severely disabled workers by 65 percent since 1994."

Scott Brownbeck (Kansas)

• "KanCare" makes life harder for disabled Kansans.
• Kansas forces disabled people off Medicaid.

Paul LePage (Maine)

• Governor's proposal would shred safety net for people with mental illness.

Greg Abbot (Texas)

• Despite being personally disabled, record on disability issues concerning, including his "sovereign immunity" defense against the ADA.

North Carolina

• Cuts in Early Intervention funding closes centers.

Bonus federal links:

• Medicare block grant plan from Senate Republicans targets people with disabilities (among others)
• SSDI - Divide and Conquer Strategy, limiting the ABLE act, Thom Tillis makes it explicit, new attacks on SSDI on day one of the 2015 congress,  Rand Paul claims half of SSDI is wasted on fraud (fact-checked less than 1%), threaten to send millions of disabled Americans into poverty.

And just for fun, remember when a Fox News host told a woman her bipolar disorder was made up? 

Sunday Roundup - Twitter, "Dear Student," and Anthony Hill.

Here's what I wrote last week:

• On Twitter and Tenure
• History and Memory: Southern Nationalist talk about how great slavery was.
• No Consensus on Mental Health and Policing - Three articles about how to solve the problem, none really in agreement with each other.
• Cult of Compliance: The Death of Anthony Hill - Naked, Black, Unarmed, Bipolar man killed by Atlanta-area police.
• Curt Schilling Discovers Internet Misogyny. - Or the Problem with Conservative Empathy.
• St. Patrick's Day Season Performance Schedule - So much music!

I also wrote this piece for Vitae on the "Dear Student" controversy, which my academic readers will know about, and the rest of you all probably won't find too interesting. But you should, because I argue it's about power and the nature of higher education today, I argue:

The problem is this: In the Dear Student columns, the angry and precarious faculty are aiming their frustrations at hypothetical students making archetypal complaints that faculty hear all too often. But ... students are the wrong target. While they can be petty, self-involved, rude, vindictive, and otherwise display some of the awful features of humanity, the problem is that they have entered into a system that treats them as interchangeable sources of income. Corporatist rhetoric makes students feel powerful enough to demand things of professors, while all the time concealing their real powerlessness in our neoliberal education system.

I like the essay and am working on a piece in which teaching experts talk to administrators. More to come on that soon.

I've been criticized for not having enough links to other sources for this piece. Let me say publicly that I accept that criticism and should have done more linking, either in the piece when it was edited or, more likely, on my blog when the piece came up. I like to position my academic journalism as a piece in a conversation, and I didn't do that here, with one exception (Dorothy Kim).

A timeline of the essay writing, in case you were wondering:

• Jesse Stommel's column was published on 2/28.
• I was mostly off Twitter on the 28th and 1st of March, when the big Twitter discussions were taking place. 
• I was on Facebook, and participated in a couple of private threads with robust discussion. Those are, of course, private, so I can't link to them.
• I felt that Dorothy Kim's ideas were especially important, so I talked to her privately over email/messenger, and linked to a storify of her Tweets.
• I pitched, wrote, and filed my essay on March 2. In fact, I also pitched, wrote, filed, and edited this CNN essay that day.  It was a busy day. 
• Read lots of things on March 3-5 on the issue, including this awesome storify of links and tweets from Kelly Baker and  a critique of Jesse's critique, called "How Privilege Works." Stacey Patton, the author of the "Dear Student" Columns, brought that last one to my attention personally. Patton is, by the way, an awesome journalist and you should read her work.
• I got edits on March 6 and worked on language issues but did not build a set of links, as I thought of the piece as being in the first-wave of reactions.
• March 11 - Vitae publishes my essay. People wonder why I didn't cite them in the piece, which is fair enough.

What else should I be reading?

Twitter and Tenure

I write about public engagement and the academy for the Chronicle and here on the blog. Mostly, I have talked about the ways that formal non-academic writing (opinion essays, popular books, other media outreach) and community engagement (undocumented students) function within the core mission of an academic institution and career.

There are, though, more radical views.

Recently, my friend and fellow medievalist Jonathan Hsy asked about how we might formally credit the work of building scholarly networks via social media, especially via Twitter. How might the live-tweeting of conferences function as a formal part of one's scholarly portfolio? Should it?

I think it should, or could anyway, but that we have work to do defining how to make that happen. I'm concerned that the effort to bring Twitter into the "put in your CV/tenure-file" fold might, in fact, not be enough.

When I talk about public engagement, I run into many different kinds of opposition, but two in particular. One is that when saying public writing or tweeting or whatever should count, some people hear that I mean EVERYONE should have to tweet for tenure. That is nonsense.  My goal is not to force anyone to eschew traditional scholarship or to degrade its value (far to the contrary), but rather to expand the frame of possible valorized forms of scholarly activity.

I likewise get the response that I am suggesting an opinion essay should count the same as a peer-reviewed scholarly essay - they do, after all, both have the word "essay" in their form. That is also nonsense, but I do believe that it ought to be possible for sustained forms of public engagement to form significant parts of a professional academic portfolio.

The key word here is sustained. Sustained public engagement speaks a level of activity that goes beyond single tweets or single groups of tweets, or single public essays.  If you make some non-traditional form of activity a sustained and intentional part of your scholarly life, then it should be able to count to some extent.

But as I wrote for the Chronicle in my manifesto on this topic, it turns out that many universities already have explicit pro-engagement language in their tenure and promotion documents. We do, because adopt the Boyer model of scholarship, which includes Scholarship of Engagement as a type of recognized activity. People promoting public engagement as something that should count don't have to go far.

But we do have to radically change the "real" systems of value that lie behind the formal tenure and promotion documents.

Part of the problem is that in our traditional metrics we claim to value all kinds of things - teaching, service, engagement, and traditional research. But at most universities, especially the elite ones that drive the prestige economy and create standards for the rest of us, tenure and promotion emerge from a very limited numbers of forms of productivity. Traditional, prestige-laded, scholarship.

So as much as I am committed to counting new forms of public engagement, including social media, I think there needs to be considerable work done from the side of just adding more forms of productivity the list of things that we really value. It can't be all about the peer-reviewed monograph. It can't be all about the journal article in the high-status journal. And while our documents say such things are possible, just try getting tenured, hired, promoted, or a grant without the traditional stuff as the core of a file.

Which is to say that my essays add to my file and make it better, but that the book is the reason it's a good file, and without the book ...

So what I worry about, is that we will add a whole lot of things, including social media activity, to the list of things that count but that in fact no one really cares about. I don't just want to add at the bottom of the prestige hierarchy, I want to be involved in unmaking the prestige hierarchy.

Hence my recent essay: Let Books be Books.

History and Memory: Southern Nationalism and the KKK

For Southern Nationalists, slavery was better than modern taxation and the KKK was just a neighborhood watch. From a Guardian piece:

Kiscaden, who owns a coal mine in Kentucky, had an equally peculiar interpretation of history. He disputed that Forrest was a a founding member of the Klan, which he said played a positive role in bringing about law and order in the south when it was first conceived in the 1860s. (He distinguished the original Klan from the hate group of the same name that, he conceded, orchestrated lynchings.)

“The people in the south – the white people, who were being abused – organised a neighbourhood watch to try to re-establish some order,” he said of the nascent Klan. Slavery in the south was “a bad institution”, he said, but possibly “the mildest, most humane form of slavery ever practiced”.

“If you look at the wealth created by the slaves, in food, clothing, shelter, medical care, care before you’re old enough to work, care until you died, they got 90% of the wealth that they generated,” he said. “I don’t get that. The damn government takes my money to the tune of 50%.”

And this is why teaching history matters. This is why extremists on the right try to take over school boards, textbooks, and fight the AP History standards (which are national).

I'm on my way to a history conference and then have a lot of music gigs all weekend, so I may not be around social media as much.

No Consensus on Mental Health and Policing

Yesterday, I wrote about the death of Anthony Hill, a man with bipolar disorder, who, while naked and unarmed, was killed by police in the Atlanta area. Here are three stories on how police should respond to these sorts of situations (I'm guessing there are 500+ related deaths a year nationally, but numbers are hard to locate).

New Jersey - Crisis Intervention Training Pays Off.

Police officers in 11 New Jersey counties have received crisis-intervention training to interact more effectively with people who have mental illnesses, and research shows that the program is changing cops' attitudes.
During the weeklong, 40-hour training, officers learn about symptoms, meet with people who have a mental illness, and study techniques to de-escalate difficult situations.
"Trainers educate the officer that a person's behavior is often out of their control," explained Mary Lynne Reynolds, executive director of the Mental Health Association in Southwestern New Jersey. "For example, if someone is in a state of mania, they cannot stand still. So if a police officer says, 'stand still,' the individual can't do that."

I like that last line a lot, as it directly works against the cult of compliance. But there are other models, instead of training each officer to handle these situations. In Baltimore, the idea is to create special mental health cops.

State Sen. Shirley Nathan-Pulliam (District 44) and Del. Charles Sydnor (District 44B) have sponsored legislation that would create separate mental health units for the Baltimore City police department and establish an evaluation system for the unit that already exists in Baltimore County.
The legislation would establish a pilot program requiring both police departments to have units made up of officers trained to understand the needs of those with mental illness.

Meanwhile, in Montreal - training seems of limited use.

Paulin Bureau, director of training at École nationale de police du Québec, detailed how many hours of training are dedicated to dealing with people who suffer from mental health issues and with the homeless.
He said the college offers continuing training to police forces across the province.
But Bureau stressed training isn't an easy fix for police dealing with people who have mental health issues.
Bureau told the inquest cadets might not have to put that training into use in the field for a few years, and by then it would be difficult to recall what they had learned about dealing with someone in crisis.

After 15 weeks of training at the provincial police college, officers don't come out as mental health specialists with the ability to diagnose someone in a short time period, Bureau said.
He said a police officer could get additional training for dealing with mental health issues one year and might not have to use that training for months or even years.

I'm more a fan of the Baltimore model (which is itself the San Antonio model), but even that I think has limited impact. There are medical issues related to mental health and cops need to know them and/or have instant and reliable access to experts. But that's secondary to changing attitudes and approaches to potentially violent encounters.

For me, I've been persuaded that the focus should be on strategic thinking generally, not mental-health specific training. Much more on this to come over the months ahead.

Cult of Compliance: The Death of Anthony Hill

"The [naked] man who appeared mentally ill ran at the officer and ignored demands to stop before the officer shot him twice."

Hill and his parents. Used by permission
of the picture's owner.

Yesterday, in DeKalb, GA, a police officer responded to a call about a naked, unarmed, man at an

apartment complex. He was clearly in a mental health crisis. He ran at the officer and the officer killed him.

His name was Anthony Hill. Here's more detail about his life and death. He was an Air Force veteran, a musician, and a recent critic of police violence. He also had bipolar disorder.

Readers of this blog know the story all too well, but there are points worth emphasizing. Each death operates within the general trend of the cult of compliance and the war on the unpredictable, but each death is a tragedy in its own specific details.

Hall was naked, so there's no question whether or not he was armed. Instead, we have an officer, in admittedly a split-second situation, ordering a naked man to stop, then firing when he didn't. This is another case in which, as I wrote about for Kajieme Powell and other deaths, the police officer is demanding that the disabled person choose between not being disabled or getting shot.

There are three key takeaways that I'd like to offer this morning. 

1. Failure to obey commands while in mental health crisis is not, by itself, a capital crime.

2. Failure to obey commands for anyone is not, by itself, a capital crime.

3. When assessing this incident, we need to ask why the officer ended up in this position both tactically and strategically.

For one and two, we have to ask officers to make split-second evaluations of risk. Hall didn't have a weapon, but was he big? Was he charging or running away? Was he screaming? At what point does any risk of bodily harm justify the use of deadly force? These are questions I can't answer in the specific case, but I do believe that police generally are too quick to use lethal force. In many ways, this is a learned response to policing a heavily armed society, but Hall was naked, so it's not like he was reaching for his belt. 

Still, we don't fix this problem just by giving individual officers better training. Cedric Alexander, director of the county public safety department, said this:

DeKalb officers receive some training in dealing with the mentally ill while in the academy before they join the force, Alexander said, but on Monday he said perhaps the training needed to be bolstered.
“That is becoming more and more apparent,” he said.

More individualized training for officers is an unmitigated good. It is, however, also a limited solution. As with the death of Kristiana Coignard and Charley Robinet, along with so many others, we have to expand our lens and not look only at the moment of death.

What I want to know is why, in a situation that so clearly involved mental health issues - I mean, a naked man crawling around acting erratically is a mental health call - this officer ended up in the position where he killed Hall. Where is the crisis intervention team? Where are the mental health professionals? What teamwork has already been put in place between law enforcement and mental health?

De-escalation and crisis training are good. They might have kept Hill alive. I hold the officer responsible for shooting an unarmed naked man. But I want to know what the whole department, the whole state, is doing to prevent such deaths. The solutions have to be structural.

Curt Schilling Discovers Internet Misogyny; or, The Limits of Conservative Empathy

CS: I would urge people, especially young women, to check out the local laws in your state for cyber-bullying because I think a lot of times crimes are being committed and people don’t know.

So Curt Schilling, baseball hero, conservative activist, and failed video-game designer, discovered internet misogyny recently when awful sexual comments were directed at his daughter. He first applied a typical patriarchal response, which is to threaten to have them killed, but then decided to use internet shaming instead.

As he details here in his own post, "The World We Live in Man It Has Changed" (more on that title in a second) and in this interview (and elsewhere), he tracked down who some of these people were, where they went to school and worked, and applied his celebrity to getting them fired or expelled. Win one for the good guys?

The world can be a pretty lousy place, and every so often a conservative like Schilling encounters hate in a way that makes it impossible to blame on welfare, or Obama, or reverse racism, or whatever. Here, directed at his daughter, Schilling had a clear target and used the tools at his disposal to exact revenge.

There are issues here - the defense of the white daughter by the powerful father plays deeply into purity culture, but overall good job. I hope Schilling sticks with this issue, and extends his support to women who aren't athletes, who aren't white, who aren't poor, who aren't Republicans.

Here are my questions for Mr. Schilling:

1. Will he now become an anti-GamerGate activist? To my knowledge, despite being in the industry, he said nothing before this last week, with silence speaking volumes.

2. He says use law enforcement, but Brianna Wu (who praised Schilling) has documented how ineffectual law enforcement has been. Wu, at PAX this weekend, pointed out that Schilling used celebrity to shame people, rather than relying on law enforcement. But since we aren't all famous sports heroes, we need universally accessible law enforcement solutions. Will Schilling advocate for other people?

3. Will he extrapolate from this experience to think about broader consequences of misogyny, patriarchy, the sexualization of woman, and rape culture?

My guess is no, maybe, and no, but I'm prepared to be surprised.

What really interests me is the failure of conservative empathy - the ability to try to think hard the experiences of others, to empathize, and to work broadly for change - not just change that benefits you and yours. Every so often, conservatives encounter something in their family that they can't ignore: harassment as happened to Gabby Schilling makes her dad fight internet misogyny. Will Schilling, then, generalize to think about patriarchy and misogyny? Will he fight for equal pay? Equal rights? Transgender rights? Anti-discrimination laws? Sexual abuse of homosexuals. And so forth - will he follow the path from his single experience as Gabby's father to seeing the general pattern and work to correct it?

Signs point to no. Here are two other examples:

When Rob Portman's (Republican Senator from Ohio) son came out as gay, a few years later, Portman began to support gay marriage rights. But has he extrapolated from that to other kinds of discrimination? To other kinds of rights? To using the power of government to fight discrimination? Not to my knowledge - Portman has shifted his views to the extent that it benefits his son and no further. There's no bigger result that would emerge from deeper empathy.

Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (Republican rep from Washington State) has a son with Down syndrome. I've spoken to her press secretary a lot and to other people who know her, liberals and conservatives alike, and I knot that McMorris-Rodgers is genuinely driven to use the government to make this country a better place for her son Cole - and my son Nico too. But she's still voting against universal healthcare. She's still part of a Republican congress that is trying to defund SSDI, under the guise of "good poor vs bad poor," and "good disabled vs bad disabled."

There's no generalization of principles or application of empathy, because to do so would threaten a core epistemology. You'd become a social justice warrior. You'd become a liberal.

So I'm happy Schilling is protecting his daughter. If it moves the needle in terms of online harassment just a little, that will be a good thing. But 1) What took him so long? and 2) How far will he go with his newfound realization?

I suspect not very far, because as you see from the top, he's unaware of how deeply his many privileges inform this successful response. Because when women, especially women of color, go to law enforcement or to the press or to companies employing harassers, they DO NOT get the kind of respect that he gets. And tomorrow, when he's forgotten this issue, the harassment will continue.