AI Blues

 Grading, slowly making my way through a digital pile of script analysis papers. 

One newish twist is AI. It seems, more and more, I find a paper whose paragraphs are beautifully crafted but whose prose is superficial. My mode of script analysis focuses exclusively on structure. GPT and its ilk tend to prefer lofty reflections on theme and character, making (and repeating) basic links between those or that scene and this or that theme. 

Most students just don't recognize that a writer has a voice, that we can tell when they shift from their own (often error-riddled but honest) voice into the cottony vagaries of AI.

Encountering one of these depletes me. Usually I catch on about halfway through, as nonspecifics pile up. By that point I've spent time and energy crafting some encouraging intervention ("can you be more specific? Give me a 'for instance' from the text?"). 

And then I cut and paste something into gptzero or another detector, and BAM--likely AI generated. Such detectors are themselves error prone. I wouldn't use them as a first-line test. But they can sometimes tell me if and how someone has run into trouble.

I have to remind myself, as I always do when encountering academic dishonesty, that it's not personal. Dishonesty happens, as Truth Default Theory avers, when the truth becomes inconvenient. Students cheat out of desperation, not out of some desire to hurt teachers. I'm sure some may feel a certain contempt for the class or for me, but the same could be said of those who don't cheat.

Mostly there's just a mass of students who aren't (or who feel) unprepared to do the kind of reading and writing we do in class. I'm continually trying to revise my teaching to reach such students, to clarify what it is they need to make this task seem doable. 

And AI makes it harder. It feels like work to them--they look it up, they teach it about this play they may have read part of, and they have it spit out what they think I want to hear. I think some of them convince themselves it's like what they might have written. But then, how would they know? That's one of the awful things about LLMs (large language models); they prevent students from learning their own voice. They never know what they "sound" like without the filter of AI-ification. 

And it's exhausting to go through the rigmarole of reporting them to student advocacy and accountability. Each time, I'm like is it worth it? Am I doing this out of pique, or am I doing it to teach the student something? At this point, it's more a matter of consistency. I did it for this one student; I have to do it for everyone similarly positioned. And sometimes it really is a good wake-up call. My institution at this moment is pretty good about making these teachable moments. 

But. It's still rough. 

"I use GPT for lots of things," say some friends outside of academia.

I don't.

What's There to Say?

 Man. I don't have much to say. Across-the-board tariffs for all (except for Russia and a few other exempted states). Math apparently based on fundamental misunderstandings of economy. Fantasy predictions of liberation and prosperity. Global stock futures tanking. Retaliatory tariffs incoming. 

This on top of massive and stupid cuts to vital services (HSS, most recently). This on top of abandoning or even mocking the idea of due process for all and of democratic checks and balances. Just lots of open revenge and power-grabs.

Can't even write in complete sentences rn. 

And the worst thing is that I'm afraid none of this will be enough, that popular apathy, boredom, distraction, and/or ignorance that will make it seem like those sounding the alarm about all this are the unreasonable ones. Or I'm worried that the consequences, though bad, won't be severe or sustained enough to alter the opinion of low-information citizens about either (1) passionately supporting Trump, or (2) disengaging from everything.

I don't know. 

Even the comedy of Trump assigning "reciprocal tariffs" on unoccupied Antarctic islands falls flat in the face of the magnitude of damage he's done to the country and the world. 

God help us.

Booker's Filibuster

 Kudos to Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ), who broke the record (set by Strom Thurmond) for longest speech given on the Senate floor. He filibustered against Trump for over 25 hours (25 hours, 4 minutes). He spoke the entire time save for questions from the floor and time given over to fellow speakers. He remained standing throughout.

As Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski noted, "Whether you agree with him or not, the past 24+ hours was what most people think a filibuster actually looks like." She congratulated him. 

Social media that I looked at (Bluesky) seemed mainly supportive of Booker. Some detractors pointed out that he wasn't filibustering any one piece of legislation, that this made his performance more of a stunt than anything. Others disagreed, noting that Democrats have needed a coherent and inspiring leader since Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reversed course and (with nine other Democratic votes) helped Republicans to avoid a government shutdown. 

I still don't know what to think about that decision. I was against it, in no small part due to arguments from Isaac Saul. Saul himself, however, withdrew his opposition to the continuing budget resolution. Friends and family who work for government agencies were likewise opposed to shutting down the government, fearing that would embolden DOGE's already drastic government cuts. 

Those same friends, however, just got "the letter" today--a "better take it while it's offered" deal to retire early. Some are taking the deal. Some--those who haven't worked long enough or aren't old enough (there's a calculation that balances those factors)--can't afford to retire now. Thus they wait for a roll of the dice to see if they still have a job.

Mind you, the FAA will, I expect, still be relied upon to do all the tasks they currently do--prevent widespread death and chaos in air travel--at severe labor shortages.

Tomorrow, April 2, Trump is supposed to be announcing his "liberation day" tariffs on everyone everywhere. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board calls the "tariffs are really tax cuts" an Orwellian exercise. One gets the sense that Trump and his Commerce Secretary Howard "I Don't Know Anyone That Isn't Pissed Off At Him" Lutnick really do believe what, well, no one with any economic training agrees with. The Politico article I linked to suggests that Trump world is poised to blame Lutnick when things go south. "Bad advice." I hope that dodge fails. Trump owns "tariffs are good." And even if he didn't, isn't he supposed to be so good at hiring the best people?

I don't know. I'm back to hoping for bad things. Really, I'm not sure what good path Trump perceives by raising taxes on all imports. Nothing I've heard on that score seems realistic or coherent. 

There's so much I'm losing track of what next to write about to my Republican Senators. I'm guessing it'll be about ICE overreach and the horror of doing away with due process for all. But it could be about how Trump's initiatives seem to do the opposite of what they aim to do. He's going to fix the economy by ruining it? He's going to create peace by going to war? He's going to improve government efficiency by gutting vital programs--including and especially those that make or save us money--randomly? He's going to fix immigration by creating no-human-rights-apply states of exception? 

No wonder Senator Booker needed 25 hours.

Credit Where It's Due

 Credit where it's due: I gotta write one of my two mega-GOP senators today. I had written them previously to ask them to stand up to Trump's badmouthing of judges who rule against him. It seems now that some Republican senators are doing just that, including the one I wrote to. He was quoted saying, well, good things?

Of course, other Republican legislators are trying to replicate that end run with extra steps, proposing a bill to strip federal judges of blocking executive acts beyond the immediate parties bringing the challenge. That seems like a bad idea, one that GOP senators would have (rightly) decried had Democrats attempted the same to curtail challenges against Biden's or Obama's executive orders. Hopefully they'll see that.

Did my letter make any kind of difference, play any kind of role in that senator's stand? Almost certainly not. But it was good to see.

Thus he gets this letter tonight:

Dear [SENATOR]--

About a week ago I wrote to urge you to stand up to the White House's badmouthing of federal judges for rulings they don't like. I was pleased to see an article from thehill.com: "Senate Republicans urge Trump, allies to stop threatening courts." You were quoted, speaking against Speaker Johnson's plans to defund federal courts. 

I applaud your stance and thank you for defending our system of checks and balances.

I am less thrilled by Senator Grassley's proposal to limit the injunctive power of federal judges. Limiting injunctions to the immediate parties bringing a challenge would seriously hinder a major check against executive overreach. Temporary stays and temporary injunctions already have a limiting factor: they're temporary. If the acts in question are legal, then they will find their way through judicial scrutiny. If they're illegal, then they should never have been issued in the first place.

By contrast, victims of ill-considered executive orders require broad and immediate protection. Waiting for a class action lawsuit to redress a sweeping illegal order by the President is like filling out mail-in request for firefighters while the house burns. 

I note that Republicans have never taken a stance that judicial injunctions go too far when Democrats occupy the White House and issue executive orders. Nor should you. Executive orders that overstep should be challenged and when necessary paused. Thus we have judicial stays and injunctions.

That there have been many injunctions against the President indicates executive overreach, not judicial activism. Over the last two months, the White House has proudly adopted a "move fast and break things" attitude. The President has "flooded the zone" with sweeping executive orders and novel interpretations of old laws to justify a range of actions. It's no surprise that causing a flood triggers floodgates to close.

The broad powers the President claims call for extra caution. Already we've seen how imprudent acts such as the Venezuelan deportations to El Salvador turn out badly. News reports tell of mistakenly identified several innocent people as violent gang members. It's a nauseating abuse of power and flagrant disregard of due process. The worrisome practice of "disappearing" legal residents who break no laws at all likewise cries out for close scrutiny.

Great power requires great oversight and accountability. The White House has so far been reticent to accept oversight on its own. (Witness the shameful whataboutism and excuse-making around the Signal debacle.) Congress and the courts must step in to compensate for the White House's rashness.

I ask that you and the rest of Congress continue to hold the executive branch accountable to the law and to the Constitutional protections for all.  

Thank you,

Mouffe in the Time of Trump

 A friend of mine at church briefly let me know he'd been thinking of my work with Braver Angels and the entire endeavor of talking to the other side. 

He was having a hard time with it lately. When a senator of ours was walking his dog through my friend's neighborhood, my friend rolled down his window and "said some unkind words."

I'm not a fan of unkind words per se. But I do see where my friend is coming from. Support for Trump--really, absolutely loving what he's doing--seems so foreign to me. 

This, my training tells me, represents a failure of my imagination. I remember my Chantal Mouffe. The classical trap is thinking your political opponents must be either irrational or immoral. They're deluded, poor things, misled by the right-wing mediasphere into believing the stories of immigrants flooding over the border to steal their jobs and infect their communities with fentanyl. Or they're just self-centered, ethically broken people who covertly or openly want a white supremacist (and patriarchal, anti-queer, anti-disabled, etc.) society. 

The hardest truth to swallow is that people just as intellectually and ethically sophisticated as you are hold very different values and believe very different things. They think the same things about your side: how could anyone believe what they do? Are they stupid or just evil?

 Our differences can't just be talked out. We can't just meet in the middle. Our struggle will determine the fate of democracy, the political and practical realities for everyone.

Mouffe argues that the challenge is to see such opponents not as antagonists--enemies we must crush utterly--but agonists--players in the same liberal democratic game. We play to win, not to draw. But winning does not mean annihilating our opponents. Nor does it mean breaking the system that allows them to play in the first place. That means anyone's victory is always partial, always temporary. The struggle continues. 

At least, that's ideally how it is supposed to go. 

I'm not sure Mouffe entertains enough the possibility that one set of players might operate via bad faith. I'm not sure she entertains the possibility that a majority of the populace may vote to do away with the fair-play rules altogether. Stanley Fish once wrote that democracy has a self-destruct button permanently installed inside of it. Any demos at any time could conceivably press it, abdicating rights and popular sovereignty in favor of monarchy or feudalism or something else.

It's hard not to see people who defend this administration's chaos and incompetence and pettiness and unlawfulness as mashing that button as hard and as often as they can. Does this make them evil? Deluded? Something else? 

I don't know. But Mouffian agonism seems unlikely to muster an effective response. The alternatives, though, promise even less appealing paths. 

All this to say: I don't know what Braver Angels has to offer right now. I've not yet been able to bring myself to watch some of the "debates" about Trump's first 100 days. I may need to summon some courage, if only to respond well to my friends--and my enemies. 

A Small Voting Victory

 It's hopeful that all four amendments on the state ballot today failed. Though some of them dangled enticing treats (e.g., a pay raise for teachers), such lures hid several sharp hooks that would have snared citizens. Our GOP Governor wanted more power. The people denied him this power, contrary to his apparent expectations.

I'm especially heartened Amendment 3 failed. It would have, essentially, made it easier to prosecute juveniles for a wider array of crimes. That 65% of voters said no to this gives me hope that the culture of justice-as-revenge-on-those-I-hate may be losing steam. 

So much of the Trump administration's actions seem predicated on revenge against those Trump perceives as having slighted him: people, law firms, companies, universities, and whole countries and international organizations. Trump acts like a petty bully; this we knew already. 

The really depressing part was how many US voters seemed happy to endorse that bullying. Decimating federal government agencies, firing qualified people for random reasons, and choking off research funding? Just what those stupid bureaucrats deserve! Disappearing people from other countries--even those here legally and legitimately--without due process? Screw 'em! Threatening universities and colleges? Love those know-it-all elites' tears!

I think we're starting to see some pushback even from Republican voters. This is especially so among those who find themselves directly affected by DOGE cuts and anti-DEI purges. John Stoehr, editor of The Editorial Board, however, argue that such stories do not indicate conversions to left/Democratic causes--just disillusionment with Trump. The woman CNN interviewed for the story, a Trump voter who lost her job due to DOGE, regrets her vote now. But, Stoehr skeets, "She expected the government to cut out people who do not belong, that is, cut out “waste, fraud and abuse,” and now that she has discovered that she is among the 'undeserving,' she is experiencing cognitive dissonance." She voted for Trump three times, Stoehr observes. Her problem isn't that Trump wanted to go after/take revenge on people; it's that she personally got caught up in those targeted people. For Stoehr, Democrats must focus efforts not on converting or appealing to voters like her--that's not a winning move for them. Rather, the aim should be to discourage her from supporting Trump. "Stay home if he's on the ballot" makes for a better and moer reachable goal.

Stoehr's rationale here presumes that Trump voters will never share the ethical stance Democrats might wish them to have--Perhaps it's wrong to treat people unfairly even if we don't know or like them. I don't know about that. 

Maybe people voted down Amendment 3 just because they hate Amendments, or hate Landry, or just hate change. But maybe, just maybe, there was something in them that militated against the idea juvenile offenders deserve harsher and longer sentences. 

I'd like to think so.

Solo

 We put one of our cats down today. Solo--named not after Star Wars but because originally we thought we'd be getting him and his brother. When his bro was given away before him, we got a solo kitty instead of a duo. He'd been having gastrointestinal trouble for the last year or so--throwing up a ton, lots of poop problems. Gradually he went down from his former 14 pounds to 10, then 9, then this week 7. Despite tons of vet visits and medication regimens--is it IBS or lymphoma?--over the last week or so he just stopped eating. 

Even at the end, Solo so enjoyed his "water treat": we trickle water from a cup into a bowl for him. He's always gone gaga for that, pawing (and clawing) at the cup, taking a turn around the mini waterfall, examining the back of the cup, sticking his little nose underneath the stream, sneezing violently after water would go up his snoot, and even sticking his head into the cup to drink directly from the cup as water trickled out of it. Just the words "water treat" would summon Solo like magic.

That remained up even this morning. When I got up, Solo came in, thin and bony and bleary-eyed, and sat next to his bowl and cup. I gave him water treat. He stuck his nose in the stream. But he couldn't bring himself to drink. He hadn't eaten anything for days, not even the nibbles or licks at kibble or canned food. 

We had stopped the nightly ordeal of stuffing meds down his throat a few days prior. 

After I got home from school, we took him to the vet down the street, the same vet that had taken care of Solo when he was a kitten with what they feared was kitty pneumonia. 

As we pet him, the vet gave the first of two shots--this one to relax him into near unconsciousness and painlessness. His eyes stayed open, and I tried to close them so they wouldn't cause any discomfort (though he was by that point beyond discomfort). They then brought in the heart-stopping injection. They had to struggle a bit to fit it into his thinned vein. But they did, and he was gone.

Solo is only the second cat that I've raised from a tiny kitten, and the only one so far I've seen all the way through from kitten to passing. (Our other cat, Hidey, we got from a shelter when she was just emerging from smallest kittenhood.) Our next cat is likely to be my partner's attempt to domesticate the stray he's been courting for over a year now. I'm not convinced NC ("Neighborhood Cat") wants to be indoor, nor am I convinced Hidey would want her. But he'll try anyway, and we'll see.

I cried earlier this week, holding Solo, anticipating this day. I shed tears all day and sobbed on the way home. I'm going to bump up against a kitty-shaped absence in my life for some time to come. All the little places he'd be: hopping up to take one of my hands as I work on the computer, waiting outside of the shower to investigate the drips and puddles (a scientist of water was Solo), chewing on anything crinkly and often carrying it to his water bowl like an offering to some sea god, and mostly snuggling up to me. At his healthiest, he was so big, and he insisted on taking up my torso. 

Cats are infamously aloof. You can't count on a cat to show affection to you. But Solo outdid any dog in loving on us. He adored us. We adored him, even in his destructive kitten phase. (We would often joke about having visits from some mysterious cult's monks, who in their gentle way would inform us that our cute little kitten was in fact Destruction incarnate. "Behind his innocent face, he dreams of the world broken and burning." "But he's such a cute boy!" we'd respond. "Yes," they would sigh, shaking their heads, "That's how he gets you.")

We withdrew somewhat as his health declined. I suspect some touches of kitty dementia. But he was still happy to sit with us, kneading a blanket and sucking on it, never having grown out of his nursing phase. He loved our hands resting on him or his head and paws resting on our hands. 

He was an exceptional cat. I told him often how much I loved him, what a good guy, a good Solo, he was. I thanked him often for being with us, and I thanked God for bringing us together. 

May God take his soul to a paradise of water treats, crinkly plastic, and beloved hands and warm torsos to snuggle with. 

Homo Sacer in US Deportations

 I was going to post about how much I like toys, which toys I enjoyed as a kid, etc. 

But I can't get over a story (one of many) about the Venezuelan men deported--against a federal judge's orders--to a brutal prison in El Salvador.

Here's a skeet about it.

 

Do I know if the man is lying? No. Do I know whether he is, as alleged by Trump's ICE, a member of a violent gang? No.

Does it matter? Not as far as my horror at this act goes. 

Way back in the bad old days of the Iraq invasion, philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote about homo sacer (sacred man, set-aside man). This refers to the classification of biological human life excluded (set apart) from consideration as a fully political person. It was possible, Agamben wrote, to kill homo sacer without it being a crime. Homo sacer isn't so much murdered as exterminated. Agamben's larger argument suggested that something like this figure forms the necessary counterpoint to human rights discourse. When there exist "humans" with "rights," there also exists homo sacer--the human being with no rights. 

Human rights are, in theory, universal. In practice, however, they require systems that recognize and honor such rights. These systems in turn inevitably distinguish between the humans who "count" as having rights and those who, for some reason, do not. Different eras offer different social-political technologies that define such groups: enslaved people, women, the poor, immigrants, unhoused people, children and adolescents, disabled people, queer people, incarcerated people, elderly people, Black or Indigenous or POC folk. The 2000s provided ample opportunities to see Agamben's theory play out: "enemy combatants," some of whom still languish in Guantanamo in a legal limbo. These "terrorists" were denied even Geneva Conventions consideration. It became legal to commit acts (torture, indefinite detention, lack of habeus corpus) that would be war crimes if committed against others.

Many of these technologies persist for these groups. Right now, "citizenship" seems to be asserting itself once more as a major dividing line between humans with rights and "others" whom it is legal to mistreat. This isn't new. "The right to have rights" has long been one of the major defining features of citizenship. The notion disrupts ostensibly universal human rights discourse--don't rights inhere in humanity itself? 

As I tell my students, however, the core question of politics is "Who counts?" Which humans count as human? Which humans actually get considered as such by the State (and arguably by culture, the economy, etc.)? As long as that question exists, the possibility of not counting--or of counting not as much--persists. Indeed, how are the ones who count able to know what "counting" means except via constant reference to those who don't count as much? There's an old lefty adage that we have prisons to convince those not in prison that they're free. I know I have rights, in one sense, only to the extent that I can imagine and point to those who do not. That imagining and pointing can all too easily create or rationalize classes of homo sacer.

The men kidnapped and deported to a torture space under an authoritarian dictator--they are homo sacer. They have been deemed as "not counting"--apparently not endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. We don't know--can't know--whether they are actually guilty, let alone debate whether their guilt justifies shipping them off into what amounts to a concentration camp. We are expected simply to take the word of an administration whose first two months have been defined by incompetence, cruelty, and power-grabbing.

It is the job of every person who invokes the stirring rhetoric of human rights, of liberty and equality and democracy, to speak out against the curtailment of these rights. We must not claim the right to have rights--and then slam the door behind us, locking everyone else out into the space of bare existence as homo sacer.

God help those imprisoned there--and everywhere. Help those living in fear of being kidnapped by the State and sent into hell. Save them, Lord who sets prisoners free. 

 

Taking Stock of Some Shifts

There was a period--back when I first started this blog--when I felt like I had a deep sense of what "the other side" was thinking. Doing research on conservative evangelicalism through the aughts and the early 2010s, I was able to listen carefully. I practiced Krister Stendahl's three rules for religious understanding:

1. Read/listen to the practitioners, not their critics
2. Don't compare your best with their worst
3. Find room for holy envy--aspects of their side that you wish your side had

I immersed myself in conservative evangelical books, podcasts, sermons, websites, blogs, interviews. I bled "conservative evangelicalism" from every orifice.

I published my book, enjoyed the mostly positive feedback--and then watched as, over the next few years the "other side" that I examined morphed into something I didn't recognize. I suppose the influence of early-to-mid-2010s-era trolling, the birth and growth of the "alt right," played a part. A kind of nihilistic irony, a sharpening of the South Park poke-fun-at-every-sincere-belief mentality, wormed its way into the American right's structure of feeling. Cheap, one-sided victories--owning the libs, getting the lulz--came to supplant and eventually replace gains for long-term visions about a shared future.

It's easy to rose-color-tint the early twenty-first-century right. Plenty of cynicism drove the Bush II era's militant patriotism. Yet one gathered that George W. Bush himself actually believed the faith he professed, and that faith--unappealing as I personally found it--gave him some kind of coherent core of sincere values. And yes, I think there were plenty of bad-faith pretenders and grifters willing to mouth churchy platitudes in order to win audience. 

But the first-wave trolls of early Facebook, Twitter, 4chan, Reddit, etc., didn't even pretend to coherent ethical or religious conviction. Instead you had webs of anonymized bullying and chaos for chaos's sake--all for anonymized fame and anonymized approval. These networks granted users a sense of power (I can make people outraged=I have power) and community (likes, lulz). Naturally, such an ethos attracted and intensified parts of online culture who felt themselves in need of power and community (young white men, mainly). This group in turn found a useful (and easily provoked) antagonist in the burgeoning online social justice movement. 

The sometimes brittle sincerity of the online left proved an appealing target for the "just joking" trolls eager to push buttons. The reaction from the left (and everyone else) to such puerile bullying soon crystallized around framing lonely white cishet men as infantile bullies. That framing in turn spurred some trolls to affirm and strengthen their male cishet non-SJW whiteness as a core identity. Thus Gamergate and other flashpoints advanced the polarization of trollish masculinity versus social justice warriors (feminists, Black and brown people, queer folk, etc.). 

Enter Trump as candidate. He and his campaign leaned happily into the trollish joy of provocation for provocation's sake. Trump's own ethos seems grounded in a petty bullying mentality: you're winning if--and to the extent that--you insult the other side. Their being outraged just proves how weak they are. It's shocking and funny at once to his audience. He gets the lulz. No wonder he so often praised his "army of trolls."

Trump II's governance advances this ethos, only without the laughs. Shock and awe--He can't be serious, can he?--defines his style so far. Yes, he really does mean it. Yes, he really will do that thing. The fact you're offended proves he's winning.

All this (and I'm super-simplifying) seems clear enough. The missing player here in my overview so far is the right-wing media ecosphere, a masterful hegemonic accomplishment. Its messages are consistent: Everything Trump does is good; everyone critical of Trump is deranged; only he alone can save us from The Threat. And, quelle suprise, The Threat turns out to be the same antagonists of Gamergate-era trolls: women, Black folk and POC, queer people. It's anyone who would dare to say that their puerile bullying is, well, puerile and bullying. 

And the government. This, I sense, comes more from TEA Party (and then Pizzagate and then Q-Anon) streams than from disgruntled gamergaters. From this source comes the deep-seated distrust and resentment of institutions, especially schools and government agencies. The right-wing mediasphere has over the past few decades supecharged such distrust into a reflexive hatred of complexity of any sort. Elon Musk and his DOGE seem the perfect blend of anti-SJW troll (with a bad boy hacker genius spice) and anti-big-government savior. Their cuts don't need to be smart or well considered, just grandiose and outrageous to Trump's enemies. That those people are getting upset about DOGE must, in this mentality, mean that it's doing something right.

The big question I have, though, is where conservative Christianity fits in. The evangelical intellectuals whose thoughts and stances I got to know so well--what's happened to them? I'm hardly the first to marvel at evangelicals' fawning over an amoral narcissist like Trump. I recognize that this support has happened. I'm still wondering how and why, which tells me I need to do some listening.

Another Constitutional Crisis, Another Letter to My Electeds

Sigh. Time for another letter to my congressional representatives, in my case, a Democrat House member and two Republican senators. 

(By far the most difficult to contact online is my Democratic House member. There are multiple pages and CAPCHAs before you get to the text field. And the text field itself has a 2,000 CHARACTER limit. That's disappointing.) 

Anyway--here's my sure-to-be-ignored letter:

###

Dear [congressman/senator] and Staff--

I am a Louisiana voter, one of your constituents.

I have read, with growing unease, reports of the White House's refusal to recognize judicial authority. Specifically, I am concerned about the administration's evasion of Judge Boasberg's orders regarding the deportation of dozens of Venezuelan men to a hard labor camp in El Salvador. 

I understand the White House believes itself to be in the right. I understand that they believe Judge Boasberg to be in error. There are established, effective procedures for handling such disagreements. It disturbs me greatly to see the White House choosing instead to call for the judge's impeachment.

I see this call echoed and amplified by Trump-adjacent officials and Trump-supporting media--and not just about Judge Boasberg but about any judge ruling against the White House. 

To be clear: I find the deportation itself highly suspect. ICE claims that these men are members of a violent criminal gang. Subsequent reporting indicates that this is not the case at least for several of them. I think it shocking we are shipping people to a foreign dictator's prison with no trial, no evidence, and no right of appeal. It does not lend credence to the White House's case for it to be responding to judicial inquiries about such issues with cries for impeachment.

I realize you may disagree. Perhaps you, like the President, see Judge Boasberg's ruling as wrong. And perhaps he is! Right now, though, the point is that the President is refusing to recognize a clear judicial order. Instead of simply appealing the ruling, the White House is ignoring it and heaping public abuse on judges.

Regardless of your feelings about the deportation or about Judge Boasberg's ruling, I ask you to support the process. I ask you to defend the basic legitimacy of Constitutional checks and balances. The President must, like everyone else, follow the law. He cannot simply ignore judicial rulings. He ought not threaten urge impeachment for judges whose rulings he does not care for. As Justice Roberts tweeted, such threats are inappropriate and dangerous.

Executive overreach threatens not just the judiciary but the legislative branch as well. What happens when Congress tries to assert its authority as a coequal branch of government? Will President Trump call for your impeachment, claiming that you have no right to check his power?

Please join Justice Roberts's rebuke of President Trump's anti-Constitutional rhetoric. Please affirm the legitimacy of judicial checks and balances.

Thank you.

###

Breathing

Earlier today, Louisiana executed a man, Jessie Hoffman, Jr. Their first execution since 2010, the state made national news today when a the Supreme Court turned down Hoffman's appeal for a stay. Hoffman's case rested on the fact that this was Louisiana's first attempt to execute someone using nitrogen gas. 

Mr. Hoffman was convicted of killing a woman, Molly Elliot, kidnapped from a parking lot in 1996. Hoffman was 18 at the time.

His lawyers advanced a religious liberty rationale. When I first heard the story, the summary delivered sounded odd. The lawyers argued that the execution method violated Hoffman's rights as a Buddhist, interfering with his practice of "Buddhist breathing." 

I figured there had to be more to the story. Don't all executions interfere with all breathing? It was only after I read Justice Gorsuch's dissent (he joined the three liberal justices in a 5-4 decision) that I understood. Hoffman maintains that a particular kind of meditative breathing prior to death holds a profound meaning for Buddhists. Lower courts (the 5th circuit) overrode this claim, declaring Hoffman's practice spurious. This, Gorsuch points out, courts may not do. Courts may not invalidate someone's religious practice by declaring it the "wrong" way to practice that faith. Louisiana's lawyers argued that it hardly matters whether his breathing is interrupted by nitrogen or by firing squad. Gorsuch disagreed, wanting at least the chance to look further into the matter. 

His five conservative colleagues, however, declined to stop the execution. Mr. Hoffman died.

I am opposed to the death penalty for religious, ethical, and pragmatic grounds. Ethically, I do not think the state should have the right to carry out vengeance against people who do wrong. "Justice" is different than eye-for-an-eye revenge. Religiously, I believe in the possibility of change and redemption, and I think the criminal justice system ought to be framed around rehabilitation rather than pure punishment. 

Just as a matter of practice, the death penalty does not accomplish its stated goals (deterrence and justice) due to the hard fact that the criminal justice system suffers from well-documented systemic biases against people who are Black, brown, poor, and disabled. Those who cannot afford the best representation suffer disproportionately. The same crime results in different punishment for any number of variations. That alone makes the death penalty the most egregious example of injustice masquerading as fairness. (Separate but also relevant are the many cases where convictions are proven to have been mistaken or flawed. Execution is an inappropriate measure given the imperfections of the system.)

Molly Elliot's murder was a horrible crime. Mr. Hoffman's murder by the state (calling it execution is a too-neat rationalization) is, too. God be with both of their spirits, and with their friends and family members.

I don't know that the religious liberty argument was a winner. I imagine his lawyers had exhausted all other avenues, and it was worth a try. 

I teach my students breathing as a centering practice. "You don't have to believe in it," I say. "It works anyway." 

I'm breathing now, remembering Mr. Hoffman's final request.

 

Chapter Challenge or Other Things?

 So--there's a book institute for faculty this summer. I wasn't able to participate last summer due to a conflict. But this summer, the week is open.

The deadline to get a full chapter in is in one day. I have no such chapter.

Put it this way: you get $500 if you write a chapter in 24 hours. Could I do it?

What if it's $1,000?

I might try in that case.

 But. Part of me feels too old and tired to invest the kind of madcap-dash, put-anything-on-paper rush this kind of thing would require. I have classes to plan. I have friends to see (maybe, if they're free). 

And, if I'm honest, I have a lot of hangups about this project. It's the one I was supposed to complete by last August, the one where two weeks before that due date I found an old book that absolutely did what I was planning to do much better than I ever could have. So I gave up. It was freeing to give up, all that energy and worry about August evaporated in a puff of "should've done better research." 

"It happens," said one colleague. "Really? C'mon," chided others. 

The relief won out. 

And now--after today--I have other matters to occupy myself this summer. I may even have a church after July. 

I may even have a church after July. 

Yeah, it was a big last few days. My life is gonna take a big step into a different thread of the strand, methinks.

I suppose I'm thinking of ways to tie off this strand--write another book, the book I was supposed to write--before I hop onto the new strand.

I don't anticipate I'll have much time to write a book and get full prof after I start seminary and (somehow??) have a church. 

But that might be a long shot anyway. The number of churches that want a queer pastor--the first in the conference so far as I know--is small. And I've signaled that I'm good sticking with just full-time professoring and full-time grad studenting. It's not like I need a congregation on top of that.

And of course a congregation of my own would mean stepping back from my church, the church I've attended for twenty years. 

All this is God stuff. May doors open, and may I say yes--either to a madcap writing dash, a church, both, or something else entirely.

 

Hunchback the Musical

 I didn't post yesterday. It was a long day, and I spent the evening watching a community theatre production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the stage version of the Disney musical). My best friend played Quasimodo.

In my experience, stage versions of animated hits are a mixed bag. Certainly Julie Taymor's vision lifted Lion King from its animated roots and made it into a theatrical event. (I've not seen it, but its influence is unimpeachable.) Having loved the animated versions of  The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, I was unimpressed with the stage versions. Both seemed bloated with extra songs better left on the cutting room floor.

Frozen onstage--well, at least the soundtrack--enriches the original. I like the extra songs generally (well, the one about "Hygge" I could do without). 

None of these, though, alters the original to the extent that Hunchback does. The movie's Alan Menken (music) and Stephen Schwartz (lyrics) join with playwright Peter Parnell to move the material closer to Victor Hugo's original.

Quasimodo is much less articulate--except when alone alongside the gargoyles and saints (who serve here more as chorus than as fully realized characters). The book clarifies that, as in the novel, Quasi is mostly deaf due to his proximity to the bells. The musical's writers also lean into the narration of the story, expanding the narrator from Clopin's singular song to a leitmotif for the ensemble to fill in details and move the plot along. 

For instance, everyone starts off in white, singing a medievalish Christian chant. Then the cast sings the exposition tune "The Bells of Notre Dame," playing out the back-story of Frollo and Quasimodo's origins. The actor playing Quasi dresses similarly to everyone else and is re-costumed--a prosthetic hump added--as part of that introduction. He becomes Quasimodo before everyone's eyes.

The script and lyrics unfortunately keep the term gypsy for Roma people. It's a confusing choice given how easy it would have been at least to nod to the distinction between the epithet that labels them versus the term they use for themselves. (I wonder if the choice makes sidesteps contemporary issues of Roma standing and integration--relevant given how often the show has played in Europe. Relevant--but not an excuse.)

The biggest change, of course, is the ending. As in Hugo's novel, everyone dies. Quasi swoops down to rescue Esmeralda from the executioner's fire, does his iconic "Sanctuary!" cry (this won applause when I saw it), and carries her to his tower abode--only to have her die in his arms. He then throws Frollo off the tower and into the fire (rather than, as in the cartoon, Notre Dame itself seems to kill him). The wounded Phoebus stumbles in, collapses on Esmeralda's body, weeping. He tries to lift her, fails, cries. Quasimodo lurches out of his own grief to approach him, lay a hand on his head, and lift up his loved one for Phoebus.

The saints and gargoyles of the ensemble surround him and reprise the song "Someday" (an afterthought in the movie, central here), hoping for a better world. Esmeralda, in the white light that is musical convention for "afterlife" walks slowly off stage.

The actor playing Quasi completes the song. He stands tall, turns to regard Esmeralda, doffs his outer costume and prosthetic hump,and rejoins the chorus. 

In the production I saw, the audience is then told (as in Hugo's novel) that in Notre Dame's crypts, people found two skeletons embracing. One was that of a woman, wearing a brightly colored band. The other was a man with a bent spine. When they tried to separate them, the man's skeleton crumbled to dust.

The narration concludes:

 And we wish we could leave you a moral
Like a trinket you hold in your palm

But there's none beyond the "what makes a monster and what makes a man" question.

And that's it! Ballsy. 

The musical never made it to Broadway. It's not the most tightly constructed piece, dramaturgically. The music is fine, the extra songs intriguing (Phoebus is given a bit more PTSD from the Crusades). "God Help the Outcasts" remains the standout song.

I will admit that the melodramatic themes of how to treat immigrants and outsiders rang loudly in a year where many Christian leaders are saying that the greatest sin is empathy. The ending--replacing a miraculous and happy conclusion for a yearning that "someday" things might improve:

Someday, life will be kinder

Love will be blinder

Some new afternoon

Godspeed this bright millennium

Hope lives on

Wish upon the moon

Let it come

One day

Someday

Soon

Amen too, Hunchback of Notre Dame. Amen.

Uring No Votes from Other States' Senators

 I just emailed three senators from states other than my own. All are Democrats who have signaled their willingness to support the continuing resolution narrowly passed by the house. The CR advances Trump's plans to consolidate sweeping power into the executive branch. It supports DOGE's charade of cost-cutting while increasing the overall budget.

Here's the email I wrote:

I live in Louisiana. Neither of my two senators represents my interests. Both are voting for a stopgap budget we know to be a dereliction of duty by the legislative branch. The executive branch needs reining in. There is no long-term up-side to supporting the continuing resolution in the face of President Trump's authoritarian overreach.

I know the arguments for not playing into Trump's hands, for keeping your powder dry, and for preventing the pain of a shutdown. But we're in pain already. Passing the CR is exactly what Trump wants, and the chances to stop him dwindle as he gains more power.

I beg you, as someone who can be my senator when Louisiana's senators won't: please stop this budget.

Thank you.

At least I spelled reining correctly. (I spelled it reigning in a different email to my own senators.) 

It looks like just enough Democratic senators will vote along with the Republicans to keep the government open. The decision is partly tactical (Trump would benefit from a shutdown that he could blame on Democrats), partly ethical (it'll be harmful to shut down the government, including harm to ongoing judicial checks against Trump), and partly--well--it's hard for many Democrats to set a firm boundary. I get it. I don't like setting boundaries myself, and I'm constitutionally skeptical of government shutdowns as political messaging.

But I'm swayed by arguments like those of the Federal Workers Union, which points out that we're already in the middle of a de facto shutdown via Trump's executive orders. Isaac Saul's Tangle, my go-to for a taste of what the other side thinks (Saul samples all sides), lambasted the CR, a highly unusual move for an outlet that relies on credibility with conservatives as well as liberals. "I don’t just think Trump’s plan is bad in the immediate term," he writes, "I think it will do lasting damage to our government by becoming a blueprint for how a president can wrest control of spending from the legislative branch."

The chances that my little emails--as a non-constituent--move the needle at all are minuscule. But I'm taking a page from my partner's survival advice and making my voice heard, even a little bit.

The Sacrament of the Present

 My Lenten devotional group today reflected on the need to embrace (in Richard Rohr's words) "the sacrament of the present." Rohr's meditations in God For Us encourage us in the ancient practice of "being here now." We let go of living in the future or the past so that we can be fully present and give our attention to matters immediately before us.

As a practice of visio divina, we spent time contemplating Paul Gauguin's Christ on the Mountain of Olives (1889):

 

Visio divina (the visual art equivalent of lectio divina) involves focusing on a painting and opening oneself to inspiration. You contemplate the portrait. You ask four questions:

What do you see?

What do you feel?

Are you in the painting? If so, where/who?

What is God telling you?

 Since the meeting was on Zoom, I saw only the painting, not its title. I did not immediately catch on that the central figure was Christ on the night he was betrayed. I saw only a man consumed with worry and isolated from companions. He was suffering. It recalled to me times when I have felt isolated, fretting about some matter (including my isolation). 

Learning the painting's title and subject matter solidified my reading. Christ was suffering in heart and mind, knowing at least the broad contours of the more bodily, protracted suffering of the passion and the Cross.

But where Rohr invites us into a present focus that allows worry about what is to come to fall away, Christ here seems both focused on the present and also suffering. The feast of foot washing and communion is over. There's only the sweat drops of blood as he begs God to let this cup pass from him.

What is God telling me? 

I can't help but hear, "Suffering. Suffering is coming." 

Sometimes I think the sacrament of the present isn't sweet like unfermented wine or wholesome like bread. It is bitter and draining, a promise of pain and loss and sacrifice. It is a call to that sacrifice, not for the glory of martyrdom but out of love for the world, even the parts that inflict pain and hate.

I read words by Timothy Burke, a voice I usually listen to for perspective and calm. He argues that "the Trump Administration is not just walking away from the world system established in the aftermath of World War II. It is quite seriously running towards a world where territorial aggression and imperial conquest are entirely thinkable—and where the United States will not just ignore aggression in the spirit of isolationism but will actively pursue it for itself."

This is no bluff, Burke stresses. It has become increasingly evident that Trump and his closest allies believe this sincerely and deeply. (Burke speculates some of them may even accept the inevitability of global warming, encouraging climate-skeptical Trump northward so as to secure lands that will eventually be a destination from those fleeing hostile climes.)

Whatever his reasoning, whatever the reasoning or rationalizations by his supporters and enablers, the rest of the world needs to act now:

Canada needs to regard the threat as completely serious and not just bluster, in a way that goes beyond stalwart rhetoric from political leaders and clearing the shelves of bourbon. The Canadians need to be planning in response to scenarios that no one has modeled before—what if Trump directs the American military to deploy special forces and air power to seize Canadian airports and key government buildings with the goal of forcing a quick surrender while moving some ground forces to the northern border in anticipation of a longer conflict? It doesn’t matter if this is madness, because this administration has already made it clear that they’re not playing at being madmen for negotiating advantage but are in fact doing all of that self-destructive nonsense. The Canadian government and its real allies in NATO need to act now to remove the United States from all shared military and intelligence cooperation, no matter how hard that is to do in practical terms. The U.S. needs to be booted out of Five Eyes, needs to be expelled from NATO. Because now those countries have to plan as if the United States government is an enemy regime, to take all of what is being said as if it is serious. 

And us?

Americans need to plan in order to think what a war with Canada—and possibly Europe—means for the rest of their lives. Misery, deprivation, suffering, and the certain end of anything like a constitutional democracy in this country are only the immediate consequences. None of it necessary, none of it right, none of it for the better in the long or short run. . 

Burke ends by insisting that it is not yet too late for Americans--especially "people with real power in our unequal society"--to draw a line in the sand. Not on our watch. Not this time.

It may be that the sacrament of the present involves a full-scale, costly drawing of such lines.

I don't know. But the Gauguin painting and the Gospel narrative it portrays remind me that sometimes, it is OK to admit to fear, to look at what the present offers and pray that God take it away. And it is comforting, at least a little, to know that Christ suffers with us (com-passion), contemplating what it is to partake of a sacrament of sacrifice.

Title IX Purges

 I met my institution's new official in charge of Title IX things. I inquired about how the bios of all confidential supporters had been purged from the website (since confidential support falls under his purview). [In case you don't know, confidential supporters undergo special training in university systems related to matters of sexual assault and abuse. Most faculty and staff are mandatory reporters; if a student tells them they were sexually assaulted, the employee must report that to the nearest Title IX representative. Confidential supporters are exempted from mandatory reporting for the most part. Students can come to us for advice about what to do next without fear that they'll be forced into a process that may not respect their anonymity.]

The guy had just started in January, and I knew I was pitching him a bit of a difficult scenario. A colleague on zoom (bless her) backed me up, pointing out that the bios serve an important purpose. Students may want to know who among us confidential supporters are queer, Christian, feminist, etc. Removing our bios removes helpful information from students. 

I suppose I expected him to sigh, shake his head, talk about how that decision was out of his hands, and perhaps promise to help us put up some bios that would still inform students about each of us while still passing anti-DEI muster. 

Instead, the official averred that the site was changed to better reflect the aims of Title IX and the confidential supporter system. Since you're all confidential supporters, he said (basically), we decided that having just your names, contact info, and pictures was best so that students know they can go to each of you. I griped a bit at that. How would that rationale justify removing our bios? I asked. The status quo ante fulfilled that goal just as well. What was wrong with our bios? My colleague on zoom concurred.

The man basically repeated the same line, suggesting that this was not sudden, ignoring the rest of the purge, and omitting the elephant-in-the-room reason: the "dear colleagues" letter. 

Then he left.

As I mentioned to the staff that remained after the workshop, the official's dissembling bothered me almost more than the removal did. It signaled clearly whose side he was on: not ours, not the students', and not the goals of diversity, equity, or inclusion. 

I don't know the guy's heart. Perhaps he is, behind the scenes, engaged in elaborate strategies to preserve systems of justice and equity, and his public support of the purge (not just support but whitewashing) is a necessary maneuver in that larger war. I don't know.

But that's not the impression I got.

Prospectus-ing

 I sat on the committee for a doctoral prospectus defense this afternoon, part of a marathon day of solid classes and meetings. 

The defense lasted over two hours, well past what such affairs usually last. I was part of the problem. The prospectus had to do with theatre, and I was the expert in the room. (I wasn't supposed to be; I was just there as a "dean's representative.") I talked too much.

But the bigger issue had to do with a common problem in doctoral prospectuses: the proposal was too big. 

Doctoral students spend years in coursework absorbing enough of some large critical conversation to perceive a gap or lacuna in the scholarship. Their dissertation intervenes in the conversation to repair that gap: "They say . . . But I say . . ."  

Sometimes--oftentimes--the gap they find is huge. Especially when the subject matter is (or becomes) near and dear to the student's identity, the need to fix the conversation can grow urgent and enormous. They propose a project to satiate that need, shifting the entire field.

Such ambitions generally exceed the reach of most dissertation projects. They describe the work of a career (or several careers) rather than the work of a single dissertation. 

The dissertation, I tell students, isn't the only or final thing you'll ever write on this topic. I encourage them to think of the diss more as "volume 1" (or "Notes toward volume 1") of a multi-volume project. 

Turning the two-big proposal into a doable project often involves letting some planned sites fall away, zeroing in on one aspect of the larger issue, and/or making a simpler narrative out of a complicated web. It stings to lower one's sites at the prospectus stage. It feels like failure.

Most of the time, though, starting work on the actual dissertation quickly proves what the dissertation committee already knows: there's more than enough to write about. The work expands to fill a dissertation-sized volume. Close engagement with the site itself--the archive, the dataset, the texts--inevitably changes the course of research. You find so much more to talk and write about than you had originally imagined.

And then there's the deadlines. At my institution, a strict seven-year clock starts ticking from the first semester. Students can't languish in research and writing forever. Eventually they have to end their project because the clock runs out. 

The deadline works in the student's favor. Past a certain level, one can feel as if the research is never enough. As we say in theatre: productions always need about two more weeks of rehearsal. They open not because they're ready but because opening night is set, the tickets already sold. Similarly, we tell students, "A good dissertation is a done dissertation." You conclude not because you've said all there is to be said but because the defense date is set, the committee committed. 

I say this, of course, knowing that--past the pristine scenario of the dissertation--I'm terrible at actually following through with research and writing myself. I can do it for conferences, partly because (like productions) they're set. Put up or shut up. But other than that, deadlines are hard to create and enforce on your own. 

It doesn't feel like that for dissertators, though. Ah, well. They'll learn. 

My First Kiss

 I was 19 when I kissed for the first time. It was on stage during a rehearsal for a seventeenth-century farce. I played the comic servant, who predictably falls (at least in lust) for the comic female servant. Since it's a classical comedy, the script ended with many happy pairings, including ours.

"Now kiss!" my director said. 

I went for it with the good-natured actress (a senior to my freshman self). 

Mercifully, the kiss got cut. I imagine it looked like the first kiss for me.

I didn't actually kiss someone--a guy--til a year later. It was in a car. It was very hot and very clumsy. 

I was pretty bad at kissing for a long time. I think I got better gradually. 

I don't do a lot of kissing now--not that deep, urgent, lust-filled kissing. It's just not the phase of life I'm in.

All this is to say I just read a thesis about intimacy choreography in actor training programs. The author notes that intimacy coaching has become pretty regular in the bigger studio film and television productions. Stage productions have been slower to adopt such practices. 

Theatre (and likely every artistic craft) suffers from a "back in my day" stodginess. To certain theatre teachers, the whole "let's communicate carefully and precisely about what's going to happen here" process just seems like so much political correctness (or DEI wokeness). 

Back in my day, you just went at it. 

Yeah, but just speaking for myself, that didn't work so well. I mean, I think everyone involved was as sensitive and open as the era expected anyone to be. Intimacy choreography wasn't on the radar. Had I been a more experienced actor, a more experienced kisser, or--well--straight, I likely could have made a kiss work. (Indeed, by the time I was a senior, I kissed just fine through shows like Private Lives and whatnot.) And I was fine. The freshman show kiss in that rehearsal was awkward, and I was embarrassed that that was my only kiss experience. But I wasn't traumatized. (I was lucky; there are plenty of stories where things go way bad.)

Nevertheless, I definitely would have appreciated having back then what we try to make possible for actors now--someone there to give everyone permission to be honest about boundaries and comfort zones, someone who had a toolkit to balance the requirements of the production with where I was as an actor and as a person.  

I imagine when fight and combat choreography became an accepted practice, there were folk who scoffed. Back in my day, you'd just learn how to fake a slap or a hit or a wrestling match. You worked it out! Yet we all recognize the value of having someone trained in how to make interpersonal violence on stage compelling for audiences, effective for the scene, and safe for the actors. 

A worrisome quote from one anonymous acting teacher the thesis-writer quoted argued that this intimacy craze was a fad. It would fade, and we could just get back to making art. 

I fear the current political climate in the US supports that sense of Oh, thank goodness. We white straight cishet men can get back to doing the real work around here without worrying about all those others. 

I hope that's not the case. I hope other young folk get to kiss or not as they would want, even in the pretend-land of theatre. 

Problematic Musicals

 For my Monday seminar, I assigned two beloved-yet-problematic musicals: West Side Story and The King and I. "Watch whichever one you haven't seen before," I advised.

I hadn't seen the Rodgers and Hammerstein, so I watched that. 

Yikes. 

The good: 

• The songs are charming.
• Yul Brenner is indeed a handsome, charismatic guy. (Those calves! That chest!)
• Anna's dress in the "Shall We Dance" number is wonderful. I love a dress that accentuates a spin.

Everything else? Well, it's like a lot of Rodgers and Hammerstein: the mid-century liberal good intentions and excellent song/lyric-craft can't compensate for the stifling Orientalism of the script and story.

Especially from a 2025 perspective, the yellowface is unignorable and inexcusable. Rita Moreno and Yul Brenner are amazing; it's not OK that they were made up to pass as "Asian." The dialogue is the prototypical "ching chong" (the derogatory name for stereotyped "Asian" dialects). The styles and customs have nothing to do with nineteenth-century Siam (Thailand). The "Small House of Uncle Thomas" dance number is a visually striking model of concentrated, aestheticized pseudo-Asianness. The trope of "benevolent, culturally mature English white person civilizes ignorant simpletons" overrides everything else. 

I don't see a way to redeem this one, frankly. That it got an acclaimed revival in 2015 surprises me.

Yet I have no doubt that more revivals will appear in the future. Broadway seems addicted to problematic R&H musicals. Recent revisions of Oklahoma! (Oregon Shakespeare's queerly cast production, Daniel Fish's 2019 "gritty" immersive version) attest to this. We're always sure we can fix the major problems in these musicals (the Orientalism of King and I, the exoticization of indigenous folk in South Pacific, the invisibility of indigenous people in Oklahoma!). I remain unconvinced. When is a work so problematic that we allow it to rest?

West Side Story revivals have arguably fared better. At least they've attempted more and more creative changes. Whether such changes work (see varied reactions to the 2019 Spielberg/Kushner revival) remains up for debate. 

I like the music of West Side Story better. I find the Robert Wise movie and the Spielberg one more interesting pieces of film. I respect what Spielberg and Kushner were trying to do, though I question whether they were the right dramatists to tap (there's no shortage of Latine, and specifically Puerto Rican, playwrights and directors). 

Brian Herrera cites a 2022 podcast episode of On The Nose called "Whose West Side Story?" that usefully adds another dimension to the debate. Namely, they discuss how, alongside ongoing criticisms and debates from Latine critics about the show, the work remains an important cultural marker for many Jewish critics. I've not heard the podcast yet. The debate sounds complicated and important and definitely one that doesn't really require my personal input as a non-Latine, non-Jewish person. 

Herrera has also talked about the ways that that musical has inspired other work, creating something of an extended universe of stories and productions based around its themes, music, and legacy. Does this legacy rescue that musical in a way less possible with King and I? How do responses to problematic musicals (e.g., David Henry Hwang and Jenine Tresori's Soft Power) affect such musicals' legacies?

I'll have to see what my students think on Monday.

 

The Ghost Light Goes Out

I just got back from watching a production of Xanadu at our local community theatre. After this production closes, the theatre itself shutters permanently. It's been around for 79 years. The news came suddenly, a shock to everyone.

I'm not privy to all the tea about what went wrong. A combination of post-COVID malaise, internecine disputes, and money troubles all contributed. They had a new artistic director, now gone. They had a full season planned, now cancelled. Two more weekends of Xanadu, and the stages go dark forever.

It reminds me of the lines from that NPR story I wrote about earlier:

I don't know what comes next. Things fell apart so quickly, but also slowly; as the years passed, cracks started opening up, eventually turning into a chasm. In the end, we didn't make it.

I've seen so many productions at this theatre. I've been in a show there. You can find me in a picture from that production. It hangs on the walls alongside photos from years--decades--past. I saw people I acted with in the audience. I saw people I taught, people I teach with, people from my church, and people from other productions with a rare night off.

The show, based on the featherweight 80s movie, leans into its campy lightheartedness. Clio (they pronounced it kleye-oh), Muse of History, descends to earth to help a young artist realize his dream of a roller disco that also has theatre and dance and sports and magic, etc. 

Much of the plot revolves around revitalizing an old abandoned theatre space. The owner had himself been visited by Clio nearly forty years prior, initially inspired but then backing away from his dream. Many lines concerned what they could do to save this precious space where art happens.

And then they'd shift into one of many lesser-known 80s hits, usually with a self-aware metatheaticality. 

But beneath the silliness and the energetic cast, the lines about abandoned theatres and jokes about artistic inspiration disappearing from earth after 1980 landed differently. 

This theatre had its share of excellent performances as well as many "good try, ya'll!" productions. But its value was never as a source of Great Art. Instead, it really did what the best community theatres do--putting people in touch with Some Art in ways that feel more entertaining than obligatory. Seats fill up for musicals, and standing ovations are the norm. Everyone on stage seems excited to be there. Everyone in the audience seems eager to see and laugh and clap. 

It's a living theatre space. 

I don't know what comes next. So much love and sweat and energy and spirit haunt that place. It feels wrong for a lifetime's worth of of theatre to end so abruptly.

The cast looked like they were having the time of their lives, soaking up the well-earned guffaws at their jokes and the giggles at technical malfunctions (e.g., the projection system crashing) with equal good faith. I laughed, too. 

And I may yet shed a tear. RIP, TBR. Thanks for all the art you produced.

Boring Updates and Perspectives on The Awfulness

 Well, I got done SOME of what I had planned. Nothing read of the many comps for next week, nothing written in terms of rec letters or article reviews. 

But I took the car to the mechanic--replaced a sensor and met another prof from my university. Both of us are stuck at the associate level, too overworked to focus on a book (maybe). Both of us are nervous in that resigned way of institutional veterans: more of the same. Both of us wonder if this time is worse? Because the governor hates us? Hates higher ed? Stacked the Board of Regents with his cronies? 

And I got good news: a call from one of the seminaries I applied to, offering me a full tuition scholarship. Very nice, that personal touch. 

I also figured out midterm grades, loaded them up, sent them out--and then immediately discovered an error in the grades for one class, recalculated, changed the grades, and sent out an explainer email.

And I dipped back into some News. Tariffs seem to be off again. Or delayed? Suspended? Who knows. Some random quote from some anonymous White House staffer basically praised it as a thrilling what-comes-next story line. We'll see how enjoyable markets find chaos. 

Another death from measles, this time an adult. This is more deaths this year than we've had in the past twenty-two years. 

I read two pieces today about The Awfulness--well, two blog posts and a video.

Writing in 3 Quarks Daily, Barry Goldman reflects on the conventional wisdom he has absorbed and transmitted about care and deliberation in the face of seeming emergencies. Goldman recalls a speech by a political science professor he heard once when he was young:

He said all revolutionary movements are essentially utopian. The central idea is that there is a madman at the wheel. If we could just knock out the madman and grab the wheel, we could steer to safety. He said, sadly, this is a juvenile fantasy. The bitter truth, he told us, is there is no madman. And there is no wheel.

The world is much more complicated than the slogans of the revolutionaries would have it. There are no simple solutions. There are not even any simple problems.

Worse, the idea that there are simple solutions leads inevitably to fanaticism. The notion that there is a simple truth, we know it, and that guy over there is preventing us from reaching it, leads us to excuse pushing that guy out of the way.

Goldman says he has long attested to the truth of this insight. But, quoting e.e. cummings, "There is some shit I will not eat":

There can be no respectful listening to the other side when the other side says children shouldn’t be vaccinated for polio, or January 6^th was a day of love, or Ukraine “got in a war.” Ukraine did not get in a war. Ukraine was attacked by a murderous dictator. RFK Jr. is a dangerous crank. Elon Musk has no business mucking around in the Treasury Department computer system. There is no such thing as the Gulf of America.

So I have changed my mind. I do so with the greatest reluctance. It goes against everything I’ve been saying for nearly 50 years. But the facts have changed. And “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

The time for politics as usual has passed. We are in the midst of a coup. The Constitution is in danger. Democracy and the rule of law are at stake. There is a madman at the wheel.

THERE IS A MADMAN AT THE WHEEL!

(I'm reminded of John Mulaney's bit from the first T admin [I paraphrase]: It's like there's a horse loose in the hospital. The surgeries and procedures go on, but now and then you hear galloping, neighing, crashing--and you remember: There's a horse. In the hospital!)

 Timothy Burke (the historian, not the more famous one) offers some advice for those of us convinced that there's a madman at the wheel/a horse in the hospital/a coup in the US:

If you want to do something about it, whatever that it might be, you have a bigger and harder job than just being right. You have to be part of a we. Being part of a we is not just organizing, it is allowing yourself to be organized by others. It means giving up some of your own vanities, you own insistences, your own certainties and urgencies.

Don’t start from the biggest “we” imaginable, and we don’t start with the “we” that is required to win out in a struggle, as if fighting for a better world is a Request For Proposal with an attached list of minimum specs. We start from where we are as individuals, with the people who are most likely to know us. But that is precisely where the lonely purist fails hardest when they mistake their vain righteousness for a truth everyone has to be bullied and cajoled into accepting. If you can’t convince the people most proximate to you, most likely to listen to you, about what you want to make a shared cause or common concern, then that’s what you have to leave behind. If you can’t leave it behind, then embrace being alone, accept that what matters to you is being right as opposed to being effective. Choose the perfect and scorn the merely good. 

And finally,  John Green (one of the vlog brothers) simply gives a sitrep on his own anxiety. His book about tuberculosis gets released in a few weeks, just as (as he notes) we seem as a country dead set on giving a huge boost to "diseases of injustice" like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. This boost to disease (by abruptly and cruelly withdrawing aid) will cost lives. He ends by admitting "I'm scared because it's scary." But, he reminds us, we live not at the end of history but in the middle of it. We don't know the ending, which gives us hope and lays out for us work to do.  

The work, it seems, involves not merely raising the alarm about the present but also imagining a "we" who live today and tomorrow with us.

 

Smorgasbord Post

I'm tired of writing about the awfulness, so let's have a break today. Smorgasbord post!

TOPIC: Schoolwork

Finished--finally--the huge (digital) stack of papers from both script analysis sections. I still have a load of work ahead of me in preparation for Monday (and that's with classes resuming Friday). 

I have (counting) four defenses to attend next week: two comp exams, a general exam, and a dissertation defense. I also need to get moving on a letter of recommendation, an article review, and a revised call statement. I will be more than ready for a break after next week. 

TOPIC: Research

And yet my brain thinks of still more things I could be doing. The dearth of summer funding has me eager to find some way to make money and be productive. One such possibility here lies in a book fellowship focused on writing a second book. 

Since my last go at a second book fell through (long story), I've been poking around with the topic since then. Could I, I wonder, produce a first chapter sufficient to qualify for the fellowship--in two weeks? (Laughs maniacally)

But really. Could I? Hm.

TOPIC: Ministry stuff

I have a full-tuition offer from one seminary. I'm waiting on the other. We'll see... 

Before then, I have the Board Of Ordained Ministry (BOOM) in about a week and a half. Follow-up from the District Committee on Ordained Ministry (DCOM) has been . . . minimal, even with a gentle nudge by email from me. Another nudge may be in order, along with the updated Statement of Call. The last one I had is at this point dated. I was discerning then. I'm certaining now. (pause for a quick search.) Huh. Seems like discern comes from the Latin discernere--to separate, set apart, distinguish. That in turn derives from dis (at a distance) and cernere (separate or sift), and before that the Proto-Indo-European root *krei--sieve. I've sifted; now I'm being sifted, ready to be used or set aside as God wills.

TOPIC: Transformers

Have I mentioned how much I love Transformers? The toys/expanded universe? One discipline I've adopted in the past few weeks has been to devote some time each day just to playing with my transformers. It's been immensely therapeutic. 

Transformers have always fascinated me; I remember being captivated by the GoBot commercials I first saw. A cool vehicle ("cool" meant "resembled something that could fire a laser beam") turned into a robot (definitely capable of firing a laser beam)? Yes, please! Thankfully, it was Transformers rather than the GoBots that won my parents' money and my attention. Cliffjumper was my first; my sister got Bumblebee at the same time. I have a Cliffjumper and Bumblebee now, both light years more advanced (and fun!) than the old ones. Well, I say that, but I had plenty of fun with them and the others. I remember the birthday I got Optimus Prime (which in my mind had been "Optimistic Pride"--I'm so hopeful and proud of you!). That was a good one.

I confess on this Ash Wednesday: I'm still terribly drawn to having and playing with toys. The fact that I have to make myself carve out time to play--and the fact that doing so helps stabilize me--suggests that perhaps I should look elsewhere for Lenten disciplines of fast. 

 TOPIC: Car

I should get up early tomorrow and take the car to the mechanic. It'll be the last free day I have for a while, and there's some worrisome noises and lights there. Plus the tires are pretty old... Sigh. We'll see.

TOPIC: School again

And I gotta figure out miderm grades! 

I better play, pray, and get to sleep.

 

Feeling the Burn

 A friend showed me the Facebook feed of an old buddy of his, someone who's all in for Trump. On that feed was a cartoon to the effect that Democrats' only plan involves hoping for bad things to happen to the country.

As I write this, we're enduring the first day of Trump II's Mexico and Canada tariffs. Trump has made it plain that he's immovably convinced that such tariffs will make life better for Americans. Dozens of people have--in public, before cameras--attempted to walk him through why this isn't so. 

Jeff Tiedrich quotes one such exchange from Feb 27:

reporter: “tariffs don’t hurt other countries — they’re paid by American businesses and consumers.”

[Trump]: “no, no. China pays. other countries pay. it’s a beautiful thing.”

reporter: “then why did farmers need billions in bailout money when tariffs crushed exports?”

Donny: “we took care of farmers! they love me. the best farmers.”

 Even Trump fan Ben Shapiro is baffled:

 I still am unclear as to what the actual demand is against Mexico or Canada that would get rid of the tariffs. If the idea of the tariffs is that they are inherently a good for the United States, that is not true. The tariffs are in fact a tax on American consumers. They drive up the prices.

And sure enough, markets have taken a dive. Target announces price hikes on food. Gas is likely to go up. Cars will cost thousands more.

All of this pain was predictable--was predicted, loudly, time and time again by Democrats and practically everyone else, even many Republicans. The framing of "Democrats hope for the country to fail" makes as much sense as saying parents "hope" their child gets burned if they touch a hot stove. Murc's Law strikes again: Only Democrats have agency. Here's how it goes:

1.  Trump and the entirely quiescent GOP run on plans that will harm the country. 
2. Democrats point this out. 
3. Trump and GOP initiate those plans. 
4. Country is harmed. 
5. Democrats: "We warned you!" 
6. GOP: "Those sadistic Democrats, hoping for the worst!"

 For what it's worth--no, I don't want the country harmed. I don't want people to lose jobs and healthcare. I don't want people to suffer and die here or abroad from preventable diseases. I don't want us to lose standing with the international community. I don't want billionaires to further enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. I don't want democratic norms further eroded by a reckless autocrat wannabe. 

I want none of these things. Does that mean I hope for bad results from Trump's policies? Of course not! It's not up to me, is it? The bad results aren't punishments I'm inflicting. They're natural--predictable--consequences of bad choices. If a kid chooses to touch a hot stove despite all warnings, the best the parent can hope for is that the burn isn't too bad--and that the kid learns not to touch hot stoves. 

Unfortunately, we're all in this together. We're all gonna feel the burn. I hope it's not too bad, and I hope we (meaning they) learn. 

Scales of Awful

 With the constant firehose of gobsmacking awfulness from Trump II so far, it can be tough to keep perspective. Relative to the vast sweep of Trump's activities, his renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is "irritating awful." Banning the Associate Press for refusing to use that name is a notch more awful than that. DOGE's indiscriminate firing of thousands of federal workers and machete-slashing of vital departments and programs perhaps qualifies as the next order of magnitude up--not just irritating but actively harmful both to the workers affected and to the workings of government.

Probably around the same scale of bad but of a different species would be Trump's rank cronyism and graft, extending or withholding favors (DOJ prosecutions, for example) based on whether someone flatters and/or enriches him. Also in that bag are his $5 million citizenship ticket or the payout to billionaires he's promised. The Muskification of government functions (e.g., Starlink promising to take over the FAA) augers a world where vital aspects of civic order turn into privately own subscription services by enshittified for-profit companies. 

The war against all things DEI also ranks here. It looks more and more like a flat-out desire to roll the society back to cishet white patriarchy at the expense of people of color, women, and queer/trans folk. It will cost lives. It damages our country's very soul (never especially healthy or clean to begin with). 

On the world stage, the US suddenly becoming an adversary to former friends and a friend to former (and current!) adversaries may just be the next level up. The Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy meltdown and its aftermath--withdrawal of support from Ukraine until Trump gets an "abject apology" (what does that even mean?) exemplifies how horrific we've become. Add this to increased military and economic aggression toward our northern and southern neighbors and you get a new Empire in need of defeating. And as much as I hear many of the pundits I attend to insisting that Trump isn't in fact a Putin stooge--well, if he were, what would look different than what he's doing already? 

But a degree of awful above even this sullying of our international reputation, even beyond the infiltration by malign (Russian) forces we're inviting (e.g., Hegseth closing down DoD research into Russian cyber-warfare)--is the USAID withdrawal. 

Today, news agencies reported on a series of memos circulated by USAID's Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health. These memos detailed the cost in lives that cutting of USAID funding internationally will take. The breakdown of consequences includes some shocking figures:

• up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths;

• 200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually, and hundreds of millions of infections;

• one million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition, which is often fatal, each year;

• more than 28,000 new cases of such infectious diseases as Ebola and Marburg every year.

Enrich was fired Sunday. 

Atul Gawande skeets a longer list of aid programs terminated by Trump II.

I don't want to discount the deaths in this country due to Trump's maneuvers (e.g., queer/trans suicides; violence against people of color, queer folk, women; deaths due to unemployment and insurance hikes; deaths due to curtailing reproductive care). But the scale of human death and suffering worldwide because of Elon/Trump's conspiracy theories about USAID--and Congress's quiescence in the face of Trump's actions--is hard do imagine.

HIV and tuberculosis will surge, likely with new and drug-resistant strains. Diseases we thought vanquished may make a comeback. Widespread health disparities will further destabilize impoverished regions. We'll of course start feeling this in the RFK era of vaccine skepticism (though he has about-faced on measles somewhat). 

There's no contest for which of Trump's acts so far will prove to be most destructive. There's no award. But if there were, I think ending USAID may win that grisly prize. It's an awful trespass against the whole world.

short Post

 Loads of fear all about--I think? Or perhaps I'm just stuck in an echo chamber of doomscrolling.

In any case, weariness overtakes me this evening, so short posting.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

So quickly.

 I've never seen as many people close to me as scared as they are now--not during COVID, not after 9-11. My DnD buddies all work for the FAA. They keep getting ominous notes that huge cuts are coming. No one knows who's safe and who's not. No one has any notion of who's making these decisions, or what criteria they're using.

It baffles me to hear of people acting as if all this suffering constituted victory. "I never knew people hated government so much," one of my buddies marveled.

The short- and long-term suffering is going to be terrible. 

I keep thinking of books I've read (Max Brooks's Devolution most recently) in which a disaster happens and various characters have to adjust to the abrupt change from first-world safety to wartime all-against-all survival mode. 

How close are we to that stage? 

How much military or armed forces support does the billionaires-and-bullies-first accelerationis agenda have? Hegseth seems bound and determined to start a border war with Mexico. I fear what happens if there's any loss of life on the American side--or, just as likely historically, a fake story about American loss of life--from some random Mexican or drug gang or whatever. Nothing galvanizes like a war--We're the wounded ones now! 

I don't know. 

Things fell apart so quickly. 

Things fell apart so quickly.

Things fell apart so quickly. 

Weary

 It turns out the list of forbidden words amounted to three: diversity, equity, and inclusion. At least, that's the official case.

First--I find that hard to believe. Hundreds of pages had those words?

Second--even if that's the case, it's still unconscionable censorship. 

I'm weary. 

The Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy debacle today in the Oval Office encapsulates my frustration. The bits I've seen--even those touted by Trump defenders as proof of Zelenskyy's fault--all seem like ignorant bullies being ignorant bullies. All the core Trump tropes are on display: arrogance (chiding Ukraine as if it were a child), bad faith (marveling that Zelenskyy thinks Putin is untrustworthy--when the whole world knows that's so), pettiness (the bizarre "did you ever say thank you?"), and of course good old-fashioned DARVO ("I think it's disrespectful..."). 

But truly--no matter how obviously cruel or unprofessional Trump seems in any given public scenario, people leap to his defense, framing Zelenskyy somehow as the one suggesting inappropriate things. 

I concur with the frequent observation: if Trump et al. were actually, literally pro-Putin double agents, they would surely be doing exactly what we've seen them doing. I take that back: a professional double agent would be subtler. 

I just don't know. 

I read an account from NPR reporter Zach Mack about the year he spent trying to wean his father away from conspiracy theories. His dad even made a $10,000 bet with him that 10 conspiracy-theory predictions would come true by 2024--$1,000 a prediction. None did. By the time his dad had repaid Mack, he had driven away his wife of 40 years as well as Mack's lesbian sister. His father only doubled down on his beliefs. Mack reflects:

I don't know what comes next. Things fell apart so quickly, but also slowly; as the years passed, cracks started opening up, eventually turning into a chasm. In the end, we didn't make it.

I think about that quote a lot.  Things fell apart so quickly, but also slowly. I think we as a country may be falling apart. I think the next few months will tell the tale.

I don't know what comes next.

The Purge

 Today the roller coaster stayed at the low altitudes. If anything, it dove lower still.

My colleague informed me that my university had spent the evening purging hundreds of its webpages of any language now considered forbidden by Trump's new (soon to be dissolved?) Department of Education. A memo from an Ed Department official, sent on Valentine's Day, made various noises about how awful discrimination on the basis of is...

But cue the goose meme generator:

from Imgflip Meme Generator

 

Can you guess the answer? White people, of course. White people, who (along with Asian people) have apparently been the victims ALL ALONG: "These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia."

 

The memo makes for a fascinating study in supported argumentation. On certain points, the memo dutifully footnotes various court cases it summons to support the judiciary's resistance to race-based admissions schemes. But these footnotes--any evidentiary citations at all--disappear as the memo moves into its tirade about accepted sociological history:

Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them—particularly during the last four years—under the banner of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (“DEI”), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.

 

Moreover: 

Other programs discriminate in less direct, but equally insidious, ways. DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.

 

Again: no evidence, no argumentation, just pure assertion drawn from the right-wing media echo chamber. What these allegations have to do with race as a factor in admissions is unclear.

 

The memo concludes with scary-sounding demands that all educational institutions be ready to prove they're snapping into line against DEI: 

 

All educational institutions are advised to: (1) ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law; (2) cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and (3) cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race. Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding.

 

I am not a lawyer, but these demands seem (1) ridiculously broad--is this about admissions or any mention of race whatsoever?--and (2) practically unenforceable given the Trump administration's wild-machete-thrash-cutting of all federal workers and its stated intention to dissolve the Department of Education altogether. Who's going surveil institutions? How? Using what criteria? Will this be a patchwork of private-citizen bounty hunter laws a la Texas's anti-abortion regime? What?

 

Given the vagueness of this memo, I'm all the more dismayed to see my University not only stumble over itself to comply but to go so far beyond what the memo mentions. Apparently deans got a (not-yet-released) memo from the university's legal council with a list of no-no words that needed to be memory-holed from the university's website. 

 

Were faculty and staff consulted? Of course not! Do we know what those words are? Nope! I'm guessing they're similar to the lists given to National Science Foundation grantees. The Louisiana Illuminator notes that several of these words (diversity and equity, for example) appear in very different contexts in lots of departmental webpages, e.g., studying private health equity firms or cataloging a state's ecological diversity.

 

I found out about the purge only through my colleague's text link to the article. I found out that a bio of mine had been removed (along with those of other faculty) on a particular page only when my school's newspaper contacted me to ask if I knew about it. The reporter also asked what I thought about the anti-DEI purge. 

 

Here's what I said (after necessary qualifications that I was speaking for myself, not for the school, the department, etc.):

 

I'm dismayed by the moral panic against all things DEI. I'm disturbed by the reactionary, short-sighted, and undemocratic actions being taken to satiate that panic. In my view, both the fear and the reactions are being driven by a mix of honest ignorance held by some, persistent misinformation spread by others, and bad faith provocation stoked by outrage profiteers. 

It's a bad idea for LSU to feed into that reactivity. Censorship does not make our University stronger. It does not make education better or more affordable. It weakens our reputation, undercuts our research profile, and drives away talented faculty, staff, and students.

Most of all, it won't prevent future ultimatums by anti-DEI crusaders. Historically, moral panics aren't satisfied by just one purge. 

If we submit to this--or, worse, if we just do the censoring for them--what next sacrifices will Washington demand from us? Today it's a list of forbidden terms. What's tomorrow: forbidden topics? Forbidden books, plays, music, works or art? Forbidden disciplines? Forbidden groups of people? Where does this stop?

It has to stop with us--students, employees, staff, alumni, community members, and citizens. We can decline invitations to censor ourselves. We can refuse to alter our teaching, our research, or our services. We can say no to accommodating cynical fear mongering.

We teach our students about academic integrity--doing our work honestly, rigorously, and openly. I want LSU to model that integrity now.

 

I am trying to keep in mind that the folk behind the purge are probably operating in good faith, doing their best to protect our federal funding. But I'm surprised at the eleventh-hour, slipshod editing here. Did they think no one would notice? It's the weekend before Mardi Gras break, so perhaps they hoped they could get away with "quietly doing away with"? 

 

I'm not interested in keeping it quiet. This is a grave failure of courage on the part of the institution. I know it's not always easy to distinguish between preemptive camouflage and obeying in advance. But this act seems much more like the latter. Do better, please.