Who Speaks for Us? Lessons from the Pinker Letter* Abstract 1 Introduction
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In the Supreme Court of the United States ______
No. 15-1293 In the Supreme Court of the United States __________ Michelle K. Lee, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office, Petitioner, v. Simon Shiao Tam, Respondent. __________ On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit __________ BRIEF OF THE CATO INSTITUTE AND A BASKET OF DEPLORABLE PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE SUPPORTING RESPONDENT __________ Ilya Shapiro Counsel of Record Thomas A. Berry CATO INSTITUTE 1000 Mass. Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20001 (202) 842-0200 [email protected] [email protected] December 16, 2016 i QUESTION PRESENTED Does the government get to decide what’s a slur? ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page QUESTION PRESENTED .......................................... i TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...................................... iv INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................ 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 1 ARGUMENT ............................................................... 7 I. “DISPARAGING” LANGUAGE SERVES AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN OUR SOCIETY ........... 7 A. Reclaiming Slurs Has Played a Big Part in Personal Expression and Cultural Debate ... 7 B. Rock Music Has a Proud Tradition of Pushing the Boundaries of Expression ...... 10 II. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT BE DECIDING WHAT’S A SLUR .......................... 12 A. It Is Impossible to Draw an Objective Line as to What Is Disparaging .......................... 12 B. Brands That Do Not Wish to Offend Can Change Their Names Voluntarily .............. 19 III. THE DISPARAGEMENT CLAUSE VIOLATES THE FIRST AMENDMENT ......... 22 A. The Disparagement Clause Is a Viewpoint-Based Unconstitutional Condition ..................................................... 22 B. A Trademark Is Neither a Subsidy Nor an Endorsement .......................................... 23 1. Choosing which artists and speakers to fund with limited resources is different than trademark registration. -
Linguistics.Pdf
Linguistics 1 Reyes Llopis-Garcia (Latin American and Iberian Cultures) LINGUISTICS David Lurie (Japanese; East Asian Languages and Cultures) Kathleen McKeown (Computer Science) Director of Undergraduate Studies: Prof. Meredith Landman, John McWhorter (American Studies) [email protected] Yuan-Yuan Meng (Chinese; East Asian Languages and Cultures) Program Director: Prof. John McWhorter, [email protected] Michele Miozzo (Psychology) Fumiko Nazikian (Japanese; East Asian Languages and Cultures) In any discussion of linguistics, in popular or academic contexts, the Youssef Nouhi (Arabic; MESAAS) first question is always, what is linguistics, after all? This is remarkable. Christopher Peacocke (Philosophy) Language informs most of our mental and cultural activity, and linguistics John Phan (East Asian Languages and Cultures) is the just study of language. Robert Remez (Psychology, Barnard) Linguistics, especially since the 1960s, has become a highly multifarious, Francisco Rosales-Varo (Latin American and Iberian Studies) and even sprawling, field of inquiry. This requires that a major acquaint Carol Rounds (Hungarian; Italian) students with a number of subfields, all of which are crucial to José Plácido Ruiz-Campillo (Latin American and Iberian Studies) understanding what modern linguistic analysis is about, and foster Richard Sacks (English and Comparative Literature) interdisciplinary inquiry as well. To wit, the person with a basic Ann Senghas (Psychology, Barnard) foundation in what constitutes linguistic study in our times (including -
Full Brief (.Pdf)
No. 15-1293 In the Supreme Court of the United States __________ Michelle K. Lee, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office, Petitioner, v. Simon Shiao Tam, Respondent. __________ On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit __________ BRIEF OF THE CATO INSTITUTE AND A BASKET OF DEPLORABLE PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS AS AMICI CURIAE SUPPORTING RESPONDENT __________ Ilya Shapiro Counsel of Record Thomas A. Berry CATO INSTITUTE 1000 Mass. Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20001 (202) 842-0200 [email protected] [email protected] December 16, 2016 i QUESTION PRESENTED Does the government get to decide what’s a slur? ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page QUESTION PRESENTED .......................................... i TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...................................... iv INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................ 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 1 ARGUMENT ............................................................... 7 I. “DISPARAGING” LANGUAGE SERVES AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN OUR SOCIETY ........... 7 A. Reclaiming Slurs Has Played a Big Part in Personal Expression and Cultural Debate ... 7 B. Rock Music Has a Proud Tradition of Pushing the Boundaries of Expression ...... 10 II. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT BE DECIDING WHAT’S A SLUR .......................... 12 A. It Is Impossible to Draw an Objective Line as to What Is Disparaging .......................... 12 B. Brands That Do Not Wish to Offend Can Change Their Names Voluntarily .............. 19 III. THE DISPARAGEMENT CLAUSE VIOLATES THE FIRST AMENDMENT ......... 22 A. The Disparagement Clause Is a Viewpoint-Based Unconstitutional Condition ..................................................... 22 B. A Trademark Is Neither a Subsidy Nor an Endorsement .......................................... 23 1. Choosing which artists and speakers to fund with limited resources is different than trademark registration. -
Race, Post-Race and the Question of Making It Over
Reflection on a Dream World: Race, Post- Race and the Question of Making it Over Mario L. Barnes* We Dream A World A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free' INTRODUCTION 2 Fifteen years ago, as a third-year law student, I published my book note in the inaugural issue of the African-American Law and Policy Report (ALPR). The note was inspired both by the book reviewed-Derrick Bell's, Confronting Authority. Reflections of an Ardent Protester3-and an Alice Walker poem that encouraged African Americans to help each other in our mutual struggle against oppression.4 The note sought to analyze the pitfalls, and ultimately, what I saw as the triumph in Professor Bell's protest against Harvard Law School's refusal to hire a tenured/tenure track black female professor. Even though his immediate efforts ended well before Harvard Law School ever tenured an African-American woman, a central theme of ConfrontingAuthority is that protest and struggle are often more about the journey than the destination. * Associate Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law; Visiting Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law. B.A., J.D., University of California, Berkeley; LL.M., University of Wisconsin. 1. THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES 311 (Arnold Rampersad, ed. 1994). 2. Mario L. Barnes, "Each One, Pull One": The InspirationalMethodology Behind and Impassioned Though Somewhat FlawedProtest, I AFR.-AM. L. & POL'Y REP. 89 (1994). 3. The book retold the events that lead up to Professor Derrick Bell giving up his tenured position at Harvard Law School, due to their failure to offer a tenured/tenure track position to an African-American woman. -
The Social Construction of Racism in the United States | Manhattan Institute
REPORT | April 2021 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES Eric Kaufmann Adjunct Fellow The Social Construction of Racism in the United States About the Author Eric Kaufmann is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Kaufmann’s scholarship focuses on cultural politics, religious and national identity, and demography. He is the author of Whiteshift (2019), Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (2004), and The Orange Order (2007), among others. Kaufmann has coauthored reports on academic freedom and the political response to demographic change and edited books on demography and ethnicity. An editor of the journal Nations & Nationalism, he has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, New Statesman, National Review, and Prospect. Kaufmann holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 2 Contents Foreword .................................................................................4 Executive Summary ..................................................................5 Introduction ..............................................................................7 The Media and Public Perception of Racism ..............................8 The Decline of Racist Attitudes .................................................8 The Racism Paradox ...............................................................10 The Great Awokening .............................................................11 -
"The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility," Mcwhorter
CLL | 2020 Fall | Kessler | Race Relations in American Political Thought | for Oct 27 | Page 1 The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people. John McWhorter | The Atlantic | July 15, 2020 I must admit that I had not gotten around to actually reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility until recently. But it was time to jump in. DiAngelo is an education professor and—most prominently today—a diversity consultant who argues that whites in America must face the racist bias implanted in them by a racist society. Their resistance to acknowledging this, she maintains, constitutes a “white fragility” that they must overcome in order for meaningful progress on both interpersonal and societal racism to happen. White Fragility was published in 2018 but jumped to the top of the New York Times best-seller list amid the protests following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing national reckoning about racism. DiAngelo has convinced university administrators, corporate human-resources offices, and no small part of the reading public that white Americans must embark on a self-critical project of looking inward to examine and work against racist biases that many have barely known they had. I am not convinced. Rather, I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract. Despite the sincere intentions of its author, the book diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us. This is unintentional, of course, like the racism DiAngelo sees in all whites. Still, the book is pernicious because of the authority that its author has been granted over the way innocent readers think. -
Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and Its Multifarious Enemies
Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World 10 | 2020 Creating the Enemy The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 ISSN: 2274-2042 Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic reference Maxime Dafaure, « The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies », Angles [Online], 10 | 2020, Online since 01 April 2020, connection on 28 July 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/369 This text was automatically generated on 28 July 2020. Angles. New Perspectives on the Anglophone World is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies 1 The “Great Meme War:” the Alt- Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Memes and the metapolitics of the alt-right 1 The alt-right has been a major actor of the online culture wars of the past few years. Since it came to prominence during the 2014 Gamergate controversy,1 this loosely- defined, puzzling movement has achieved mainstream recognition and has been the subject of discussion by journalists and scholars alike. Although the movement is notoriously difficult to define, a few overarching themes can be delineated: unequivocal rejections of immigration and multiculturalism among most, if not all, alt- right subgroups; an intense criticism of feminism, in particular within the manosphere community, which itself is divided into several clans with different goals and subcultures (men’s rights activists, Men Going Their Own Way, pick-up artists, incels).2 Demographically speaking, an overwhelming majority of alt-righters are white heterosexual males, one of the major social categories who feel dispossessed and resentful, as pointed out as early as in the mid-20th century by Daniel Bell, and more recently by Michael Kimmel (Angry White Men 2013) and Dick Howard (Les Ombres de l’Amérique 2017). -
Do Charter Schools Help Their Students? Caroline Hoxby
Civic Bulletin No. 44 October 2006 CiC CENTER FOR CIVIC INNOVATION AT THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE Moving Men into the Mainstream: The Next Steps in Urban Reform Black Men Left Behind: Reflections on Current Research This bulletin is adapted from the first panel of three at a Manhattan Institute conference, "Moving Men into the Mainstream: The Next Steps in Urban Reform," held in New York on June 21, 2006. The other panel discussions are available in Civic Bulletins 45 and 46. JOHN McWHORTER: Today we are going to here to discuss today is what policies we should discuss the issue of reconnecting a certain segment pursue to remedy this trend. of disadvantaged men into the workforce. The Manhattan Institute has been instrumental in The first panel will present an overview of the issues. forging the reform of welfare legislation, beginning Ronald Mincy, Professor of Social Policy and Social with the actual legislation in 1996, and by all Work at Columbia University, is the first panelist. measures, this policy has been a success. It certainly Next, we will hear from Hillard Pouncy, Visiting has not been a magic bullet, but we are seeing that Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public most of the women who have participated in these Policy at Princeton and a specialist on anti-poverty programs are working and childhood poverty, legislation, whose work also focuses on bringing ex- especially among African-Americans, is on the offenders back into the workforce. Next, Lawrence decline, and has reduced most quickly since 1996, Mead is a professor in the Political Science when these programs were instituted. -
ANTIDOTES to the Virtue-Signaling, Violence-Encouraging Ignorance, Arrogance and Intellectual Thuggery of Elitists in U.S
ANTIDOTES to the virtue-signaling, violence-encouraging ignorance, arrogance and intellectual thuggery of elitists in U.S. scientific and academic establishments Compiled by Stuart H. Hurlbert San Diego State University, San Diego, California, June 20, 2020 First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. -- Martin Niemöller, WW I German U-boat commander, Lutheran pastor, and, until 1934, supporter of the Third Reich An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. -- Mahatma Gandhi Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. -- D.H. Lawrence We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us. -- George Orwell (apocryphally) The mainstream media, many university administrations, large numbers of politicians on the left and, now, many scientific societies have declared that there is widespread systemic anti-black racism in law enforcement organizations, in academia, and in society in general. This is the most damaging, divisive, fact-deficient narrative being pushed by the illiberal left at this moment in the U.S. -
Larping & Liberal Tears
Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Marc Tuters LARPing & Liberal Tears: Irony, Belief and Idiocy in the Deep Vernacular Web 2019 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/12373 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Sammelbandbeitrag / collection article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Tuters, Marc: LARPing & Liberal Tears: Irony, Belief and Idiocy in the Deep Vernacular Web. In: Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (Hg.): Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right: Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US. Bielefeld: transcript 2019, S. 37–48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/12373. Erstmalig hier erschienen / Initial publication here: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446706-003 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 License. For Lizenz zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz more information see: finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 LARPing & Liberal Tears Irony, Belief and Idiocy in the Deep Vernacular Web Marc Tuters In the summer of 2017, the American Alt-Right gained international re- cognition following the violence at their Unite the Right rally in Charlot- tesville, North Carolina, which left one counter-protester dead and dozens of others injured. Unwilling to condemn this act of far-right violence, the American president Donald Trump instead spoke of violence having oc- curred “on many sides” (Peters 2017). As exemplified by this response, over the course of his election campaign and early days in office Trump’s reluctance to distance himself from the far right had the effect of normal- izing the public expression of their ideas to an extent that seemed unpre- cedented to many (Mulhall et al. -
Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right
Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Political Science | Volume 71 Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US With kind support of Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Na- tionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No- Derivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commer- cial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for com- mercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting [email protected] Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by Alexander Masch, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4670-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4670-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446706 Contents Introduction | 7 Stephen Albrecht, Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston ANALYZING Understanding the Alt-Right. -
General Insights From: “The Intellectual Dark-Web”
Intersect, Vol 14, No 3 (2021) General insights from: “The Intellectual Dark-Web” Francesco C. Mannella Queen’s University Smith School of Business Within the modern era, personal ideology and political affiliation, in particular, have become absolutely integral components of social identity. In-group bias, and out-group prejudice based on political stance are currently more palpable than biases regarding race, religion, and other facets of personal identity (Iyengar and Westwood, 2015). It simply goes unquestioned that the bipartisan values one holds serve as an all- encompassing test of character and must be subject to incessant scrutiny and questioning, with little nuance or restraint (Peterson et al., 2017). Moreover, close personal relations across party lines have become a rarity, with people increasingly disassociating themselves from those of whom support non-partisan groups (Huber and Malhotra, 2017; Iyengar, Konitzer, and Tedin, 2018; Iyengar and Westwood, 2015; Westwood et al., 2017; Peterson et al., 2017). Rather than working to solve issues collectively, the pressures to either wholly reject or accept ideas have become overwhelming, causing people to be avoidant and exceedingly distrustful of oppositional figures (Rowson, 2020). Suffice it to say, the parameters for amiable discourse are slimming, even though the issues we universally face are nonetheless worsening. There is no singular cause for this growing polarization; it is truly a multivalent problem. However, exogenous forces such as social media do play a significant role. Recently, a movement known as "The Intellectual Dark-Web" has taken the academic sphere within these virtual networks by storm. Furthermore, this group has indoctrinated millions of users in the last decade, effectively strengthening the already divided population.