It wasn’t too long ago that the orchestral world recognized that it might have a race and gender problem, largely because symphonic orchestras were pretty much all white and all male. It’s not that they weren’t great, but they weren’t diverse. And there was a solution that would not only serve to eradicate bias in the audition process with almost no pain required, but would enhance the quality of music. Blind auditions were born.

Blind auditions, as they became known, proved transformative. The percentage of women in orchestras, which hovered under 6 percent in 1970, grew. Today, women make up a third of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they are half the New York Philharmonic. Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras.

Problem solved? So everyone thought at the time. But no more. Continue reading →

Over the years, I’ve watched fellow bloggers take their voice legit. My old pal Radley Balko went from being the Agitator to being a WaPo columnist and writing two books of exceptional importance to criminal law.

My friend and former colleague, Cristian Farias used to write on the intersection of criminal law and immigration at Fault Lines, before anybody outside of lawyers gave a hoot about such matters, and then wound up doing a stint on the New York Times’ editorial board, and writes for Vanity Fair and New York Magazine. I’m particularly proud of Cf, as he still thinks in Spanish, yet he writes brilliantly in English. I am amazed at his skills, and thrilled for him that his issues on immigration have finally captured the public’s attention. Continue reading →

Not that this wasn’t obvious years ago, when I admonished academics to take back their classrooms. Some wanted to, but they didn’t stand a chance. As a result, classrooms have become, in the words of history prof Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Education,* “contentious.” But Mintz has the solution!

Too often, students’ concerns like these are dismissed as the product of overindulged, hypersensitive, easily offended snowflakes who consider themselves paying customers who are always right. But I think that it is a terrible mistake to trivialize the student concerns.

Many undergraduates are convinced that important alternate perspectives and noncanonical texts and works of art are ignored or disparaged, and that too many faculty members are insensitive to how their assignments and classroom activities are perceived and experienced by students. Continue reading →

Ibrim X. Kendi is the patron saint of the “Anti-Racist” movement, which promotes the argument that if you are not anti-racist, meaning that you do not dedicate yourself, your “privilege,” your time, money, assets and, perhaps, even your physical existence, to the cause of affirmatively fighting racism, then you are a racist. In the long parade of horribles, there is none worse than being racist.

To be fair, he comes by it honestly, in the sense that he’s an academic who has argued this, written about this (See How To Be An Antiracist, inter alia) and been unabashedly clear about this long before it was fashionable. As someone who has done anti-racist things for most of his career, I might take some comfort in trying to claim the mantle. I can point to a few things, like decades of defending black people and Hispanics from the cops to prove my bona fides. Continue reading →

There’s been quite a bit of back and forth over at Arc Digital and lesser publications about the merits of the Harper’s Letter. One of the signatories, Cathy Young, addressed it at some length in as straightforward and substantive a way possible. It’s not exactly a quick read, but it’s a worthwhile read. Unlike the sophist apologias, where people explain why they’re all for free speech, but the other side is worse, or they’re hypocrites so we can do it too, Cathy makes no excuses and refuses to bog down in ever-shifting parameters of “cancel culture.”

But there were many signatories to the letter, one of whom caught my eye in particular because, well, she’s regularly found egging on the townswoke with their pitchforks and torches. And when she signed onto the Letter, how could she know that instead of coming off as one of the elites, alongside such luminaries at Noam Chomsky, she would find herself in the midst of a shitstorm of anger and excuses by her very own tribe, defending destroying people because they deserve to be destroyed. Continue reading →

It’s been more than 50 nights of protests and riots in an American city. Like it or not, Portland is still an American city, even if it seems more like Somalia or, as President Bush called it, Little Beirut. You can call it “peaceful protests,” and there certainly is peaceful protest, but that doesn’t make the riots disappear. Or the damage caused by the riots. Of the many shocking things that happened, the attacks on the Portland federal courthouse loomed large.

Even if you support the general cause of the protesters, you can’t rationally deny that when they decided to go after the courthouse, shoot commercial grade fireworks into it, break into it, the rioters were begging for trouble. And they got it. Continue reading →

Traffic stops have problems. They’re used as a pretext to stop drivers for other reasons to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. They’re used for racial profiling. And then there’s always the potential in any police interaction that someone is going to end up dead, like Philando Castille. There is no question that problems exist and they’re real.

But did Berkeley come up with a viable solution?

After hours of emotional public testimony and a middle-of-the-night vote by Berkeley leaders, the progressive California city is moving forward with a novel proposal to replace police with unarmed civilians during traffic stops in a bid to curtail racial profiling.

Continue reading →

While his day job is teaching at the University of Illinois, Nick Grossman’s side hustle is being a senior editor at Arc Digital, where I’ve posted a few things. I rarely do so anymore as I write like a lawyer and that’s really not what Arc is about. I try to pick words with some precision, whereas the more philosophically-minded try to pick words they can easily weasel out of. I don’t want to play “Rhetorical Calvinball.”* Others hope to be Olympic champions at the game.

So when Nick wrote a post exposing the “real questions” about cancel culture following the Harper’s Letter, it received a very warm reception as being the most “fair” perspective. But after reading it, I had some issues. Continue reading →

It’s not as if lawyers haven’t managed to find their way onto social media over the past decade or two, but most of us haven’t exactly been early adapters unless we had the misfortune to be born digital natives. And almost every early adapter touted by the New Normal of Legal Tech folks from a decade ago have since failed at law and are now engaged in trying to make self-help podcasts on how to beat drug addiction, mental illness, and still fail at law.

But with the n00bs who have entered the ether, especially over the past few warehoused months when it’s become the only means of outside communication, adaption is no longer optional. So naturally, state bars are doing what they can to help explain the “minefield” of online ethics. Indiana, a perennial leader in technological lurching, pushed to the head of the virtual line in response to a pressing issue. Continue reading →

In contrast to the screams that the Harper’s Letter was signed by famous wealthy celebrities trying to protect their terf from the voices of the oppressed and marginalize, there is the barely audible whimpering of Gary Garrels.

Who? Gary Garrels. You know, that fabulously wealthy celebrity who . . . oh wait. He’s nobody you would know unless you happen to be in the bowels of the art world.

Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.

He resigned, which may be a product of his taking the pressure off his employer to fire him, because his colleagues who petitioned for his removal were rather harsh about it.

“Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable,” read the petition. “Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?”

Wow. What sort of heinous racism was this guy, a senior curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA, long a hotbed of white supremacy, doing?

After hearing of events that occurred at an All-Staff Meeting on Tuesday, July 7, 2020 we call for Gary Garrels to resign or be removed from his position as Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As Senior Curator, he represents the museum in tone and content. Through actions and words, Gary has been obtuse (at best) to the point of offense or deliberately racist (at worst) in his retorts to criticism. When pressed on the museum’s collecting policies he has repeatedly said some variation of “don’t worry, we will continue to collect white male artists.” Amongst SFMOMA staff as well as in public view, Gary has used and continued to use white supremacist and racist language such as “reverse racism.” This has been documented.

What sort of Nazi would openly say, at a museum no less, that Picasso was still welcome? What’s next, Warhol? It’s almost like demanding that museum employees call him “Master,” and so they petitioned the lord in prayer.

Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable. Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum? Furthermore, is any more evidence required to prove that these viewpoints are cavalierly wielded by staff members in the most extreme positions of leadership and power and setback long-term progress towards a more inclusive institution?

That escalated quickly, from “obtuse” to “toxic white supremacist” in three paragraphs. All because his notion of “inclusivity” didn’t mean excluding white artists. I’m literally shaking.

You might think that one of the most prominent art curators in the country—with 20 years of experience at SFMOMA—would be able to weather such a pathetically weak accusation of racism. But in the current cultural moment, it appears not. Garrels promptly resigned.

In a statement announcing his decision to step down, Garrels apologized for the harm his words caused, only slightly disputing the absurd charge against him. ” I do not believe I have ever said that it is important to collect the art of white men,” he said, according to artnet.com. “I have said that it is important that we do not exclude consideration of the art of white men.”

No wonder Garrels’ termination was non-negotiable. He just doesn’t get it. And to further the cause of inclusivity, I will take all the Modigliani’s off their hands, maybe even a Jackson Pollack or a (ugh) Haring, so their diverse eyes never bleed again from the toxicity of modern art.

As for Garrels, he chose to walk away. Maybe staying was untenable in light of the petition, and its “non-negotiable” demand, but at least he wasn’t canceled by culture.