- May 2022
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I defy any of my colleagues to argue persuasively that defunding campus police is a good idea, even at idyllic Princeton.
Has Katz not encountered persuasive arguments for why one might support systematic change in policing?
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evil
Is "evil" really the right word? Profoundly immoral and wicked? Doing the work of the Devil?
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a small local terrorist organization
Much has been made out of these few words. No doubt calling BJL "terrorist" is incendiary. Does Katz believe incendiary rhetoric makes his case more convincing?
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“Establish a core distribution requirement focused on the history and legacy of racism in the country and on the campus.” There would be wisdom in this time of disunity in suggesting (not, in my view, requiring) that students take courses in American history and constitutionalism, both of which almost inevitably consider slavery and race, but that is not the same thing. Not incidentally, if you believe anti-blackness to be foundational, it is not a stretch to imagine that you will teach the 1619 Project as dogma.
This section demonstrates how calls to "objectivity" undermine critical thinking. Objectivity becomes its own dogma.
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reason other than their pigmentation
It boggles Katz's mind that advantages for certain people have been established and are still working today for "no reason other than their pigmentation"? Does Katz believe that structural racism is no longer in operation?
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civil war on campus
Like armed conflict? Very dramatic.
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No one is in the middle.
Rush to judgment; unsound research. Because Katz's friends' POVs and POVs he found online are all extreme, all POVs are extreme.
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In 1776 there were “united States” but there was not yet the “United States”; in these past two months, by contrast, at a time when we are increasingly un-united, “black” has become “Black” while “white” remains “white.”
A focus on "proper" writing: recognizing the historical specificity of why "united" might not yet have been capitalized in 1776, but avoiding an understanding of why today one might capitalize Black and white differently.
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whose first words every American child knows, or used to
More nostalgia; Katz projects his own experience and the experience of people like him onto "every American child".
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just a few minutes ago
Hyperbolic nostalgia for the loss unexamined hero worship of "founding fathers".
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