Town Hall next Monday

Hey all you Seattle and environs types – Jen McCreight is doing a talk at Town Hall next Monday.

What Makes Us Human: Decoding Our DNA

UW Science Now McCreight

(Why are those graphics always male? Do the artists not realize that the species is not all-male?)

What makes us human? Scientists and philosophers have been asking the question for years. This age-old query is also the subject of UW genome sciences student Jennifer McCreight’s research. She’ll compare the DNA of humans to chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs, sharing how genetic differences help paint a picture of how Homo sapiens walk, talk, and have larger brains.

That’s twice today that the word “lemur” has appeared here. Independently. What are the odds?

A conversation about the challenges to free expression

Courtesy of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, the video of the forum on free expression and Charlie Hebdo on Tuesday morning.

Join us for a conversation about the challenges to free expression in France and Europe, the role of satire in open societies, the controversies that have surrounded Charlie Hebdo, and the tensions between respect for religious differences and protections for freedom of expression.

Charlie Hebdo’s recently appointed editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, and its film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret, are visiting the United States for the first time since the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris, which killed eight of their co-workers and four others. On the evening of Tuesday, May 5, they will receive the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Free Expression Courage Award at the PEN American Center’s annual Literary Gala in New York.

Panelists include the director of NYU’s Institute of French Studies, Ed Berenson; Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gérard Biard; PEN Executive DirectorSuzanne Nossel; and Charlie Hebdo film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret. Journalist Maggy Donaldson will moderate.

Presented by the PEN American Center and NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

H/t Salty Current

“Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering”

In light of the refusal of the anti-Charlie Hebdo protesters to discuss or defend their claims about Charlie, let’s take another look at those claims. Let’s consider what they’re leaving out there, unexplained and unargued.

The letter.

  • An expression of views, however disagreeable, is certainly not to be answered by violence or murder.
  • However, there is a critical difference between staunchly supporting
    expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding
    such expression.
  • To the section of the French population that is already marginalized,
    embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of
    France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage
    of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as
    being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.

    • [Read more…]

They said they did not want to bother “the recently bereaved”

Boris Kachka gives a rather sneery account of the PEN gala.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two people most sanguine about the ruckus were the honorees, who’ve seen worse. “I’m surrounded by cops, and it’s no problem,” said Gérard Biard, the French satirical paper’s current editor-in-chief. “I began to get used to it,” he added — as he has to the notion that Hebdo traffics in needlessly provocative racist caricatures. “I would like to remind the protesters that the first victims of Islamism are Muslim. We don’t attack Muslims, we defend them. Do they?”

[Read more…]

Fighting for the right to control misogyny, and direct it back at women

Here’s an item. I don’t know what or who the original source is. One of several on tumblr.

I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why.

Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny.

Whether I am expressing my emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein I am penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like I’m not paying attention to how I look, when society punishes me or derides me or marginalizes me for these things, it is happening because they are things women, not men, are expected to do, and our society at large fucking hates women. [Read more…]

Deference to “personal” religion even as religion colonizes public life

Salty Current went to the PEN forum on Charlie Hebdo and challenges to free expression yesterday, and reports on it at her blog.

What she says about the difference between French secularism and US “secularism” is exceptionally useful. Bolding mine.

The conversation covered important differences between US and French law and culture, specifically between secularism as practiced in the US and laïcité in France and between US and French laws surrounding freedom of expression. Critics of the magazine in the US often seem to ignore the difference between US secularism (or “secularism”) and French laïcité. Laïcité as they described goes beyond the separation of church and state – it understands the public sphere and political discourse as a common space in which religion has no role or status, and outside of which religion (for some) is practiced, and respected, privately. In this context, religion is seen as intruding on the public sphere and publicly mocking religious iconography and practices as political targets is acceptable. This can be difficult to understand here in the US because our system is so different in theory and in practice. The US system wasn’t really discussed at the forum, but as I’ve argued many times it’s based on a bogus sort of compromise in which institutionalized religion is (in theory) kept separate from the state, but religious claims and identities suffuse political discourse and public policy, all while people are expected to refrain from criticizing or mocking religion because it’s an allegedly personal and emotional matter. Whatever the problems with laïcité in practice (and Berenson hinted at some, although unfortunately there wasn’t time to return to them), the US system with its tradition and practice of deference to “personal” religion even as religion colonizes public life is ridiculous and anti-democratic.

Thatty that that.

Read it all; it’s outstanding.

When Muslim students complained about posters

There was a panel on free speech and satire in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders at the University of Minnesota on January 29th. There was also, we now learn from Inside Higher Ed, a debate on the debate later on.

When Muslim students complained about posters that promoted the event, the university investigated their concerns and issued a report that questioned the judgment of those who signed off on the posters. And the university sent an email that some interpreted as an order to remove the posters, although the university disputes this.

The discussion raises questions about how colleges and universities should balance their commitments to academic freedom and free speech with the cultural sensitivities of students and others involved in campus life. And like the recent PEN award protests over a planned tribute to Charlie Hebdo, it’s also a reminder of how controversial the magazine and what it stands for remain, and how the attack continues to reverberate among thinkers across continents.

[Read more…]

Guest post: Those who want to limit free expression in the Muslim diaspora

Originally a comment by veil_of_ignorance on “The very existence of Charlie Hebdo is a manifestation of gross privilege”.

Inconsistent, self-defeating rubbish!

Generally, privilege is linked to the unequal distribution of something positive, something which people would like to have, something which Rawls might have called a primary good or Sen/Nussbaum would have called a capability. In this regard, free expression could indeed be a privilege if it is unequally distributed. However, given its nature as an universally-desirable good, people cannot be blamed for wanting it and using it. Privilege is always a problem of the distribution of a good and not of the good itself. Therefore, CH could only be criticized for their privilege if they exploited it to contribute to the unequal distribution of said privilege – i.e. by suppressing the free expression of others. This is certainly not the case. It might be true that CH had a larger capability of free speech/expression than the French Muslim population. However, the attacks on CH were not motivated by the desire the redistribute free expression – they were motivated by an ideology which fundamentally denies the desirability of free expression. Those who deny other people’s free expression can hardly ask for it themselves.

Furthermore, the author ignores the global context. Free speech in the MENA region is severely (and increasingly) curtailed by authoritarian and/or theocratic state and non-state actors. In fact, Muslims in France have for greater capabilities for free speech and expression than Muslims in Algeria, where thousand of left-wing intellectuals have been slaughtered by the FIS because they refused to be silenced. It is absurd and almost insulting to criticize CHs fight against the theocratic elements in Islam, which want to get rid of free speech, by referring to the limited free expression the Muslim diaspora. Those who want to limit free expression in the Muslim diaspora were the ones who shot.

Just a place where people talked

A little more from Joseph Anton, which is an encyclopedia of the kind of bad thinking that’s been going on for the past week. It takes place in France, which is fitting, and mentions a beloved friend of mine.

At the first meeting of the so-called “International Parliament of Writers” in Strasbourg he worried about the name, because they were unelected, but the French shrugged and said that in France un parlement was just a place where people talked. He insisted that the statement they were drafting against Islamist terror should include references to Tahar Djaout, Farag Fouda, Aziz Nesin, Ugur Memeu and the newly embattled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen as well as himself. Susan Sontag swept in, embraced him, and spoke passionately in fluent French, calling him un grand écrivain who represented the crucial secularized culture the Muslim extremists wished to suppress. [p 397]

Plus ça change, eh?

“The very existence of Charlie Hebdo is a manifestation of gross privilege”

The writer Monica Byrne presents us with an example of well-meaning but confused reasons for objecting to an award’s being given to Charlie Hebdo. The example is interesting because I keep finding the objections and protests under-explained and under-motivated, so I remain curious about what exactly the protesters think they’re protesting.

She titles her post “The PENAmerican award I wish I could give tonight.” Ok, but wishing you could give a different award is nowhere near a reason for protesting one actually being given, especially under these particular circumstances. [Read more…]