The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of America by Daniel Okrent is this weeks book of the week.

It traces the impact of anti-immigration sentiment in late 19th and early 20th century America.

The book also discusses multiple changes that were attempted or made as a result of those sentiments: from pushing for literacy test and tax requirements for immigrants to the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, a law that put random restrictions on how many people could be allowed into the United States from different countries.

If anyone would like to better understand the historical roots of how immigration and its regulation became such hot-button issues in America, The Guarded Gate is a good place to start.

This book is available at the Beckley branch.

Elizabeth Hoyle is a reference assistant at the Raleigh County Public Libraries.

See original here:

Book review - "The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of...

Pennsylvania's Democratic governor has vetoed a bill that was created to protect babies from abortion after they've been diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome.

Gov. Tom Wolf had said he would reject the bill if it made it to his desk, and that's just what he did.

Pennsylvania state law allows for abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason, except in cases where it is used for gender selection. In other words, a mother can't abort her baby just because he's a boy when she really wanted a girl.

This new bill would have also prevented the eugenic targeting of a specific population of people, protecting individuals with Down syndrome from selective elimination. Republicans who control the state Senate said it would've protected a "vulnerable population whose lives are productive."

Supporters of the measure believe it's essential because other countries have expressly targeted people with Down syndrome for elimination. For example, in Iceland, nearly 100% of babies with the syndrome are aborted, and in Denmark, that figure stands at roughly 98%. In the US, an estimated 67% of children with the condition are aborted.

The Pennsylvania Family Council stated, "Children are being targeted for abortion simply because they may have Down syndrome. Medical professionals are pressuring women and families to have an abortion upon a diagnosis of Down syndrome. And tragically, the vast majority of babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted after the diagnosis. A diagnosis of Down syndrome should never be a reason to terminate a child. Down syndrome is a life worth living."

Earlier this year, President Trump summed up what's at stake in the battle to protect the lives of unborn children with this condition.

"Sadly, there remain too many people both in the United States and throughout the world that still see Down syndrome as an excuse to ignore or discard human life. This sentiment is and will always be tragically misguided," he wrote. "We must always be vigilant in defending and promoting the unique and special gifts of all citizens in need. We should not tolerate any discrimination against them, as all people have inherent dignity."

The Pennsylvania Family Council has created a powerful photo series that gives nearly 30 examples of Pennsylvania residents with Down syndrome who are enjoying life and contributing in many ways to our world. Click here to see their smiling faces.

Original post:

'Targeted for Abortion Simply Because They May Have Down Syndrome': PA Gov. Blocks Anti-Eugenics Bill - CBN News

Photo: Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61

Some depressing new research suggests that your dog might not really be obsessed with you. Well, it might be, but not because of a special human-dog bond. It turns out that dogs love basically every species they come into contact with, be it a sheep, a duck, or a dolphin.

While I refuse to believe that the human-dog connection is anything less than sacred, a dogs ability to fall for basically every living thing is not necessarily a bad thing, says Clive Wynne, a dog behavior specialist who has been researching dog emotions for decades. He explained to the New York Times that dogs abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path has helped them thrive relative to other members of the animal kingdom (they outnumber their canine cousins, meany wolves, 3,000 to 1.)

And while dogs may be better at following human directions than other animals, and are nicer to us too, this is mostly thanks to thousands of years of domestication, Wynne says. He even found genes in dogs that are associated with indiscriminate friendliness in humans, suggesting that humans have bred so many good dogs that the dog genome actually changed.

Outside of that light bit of eugenics, dogs will be mostly nice to anything humans just have a little bit of an evolutionary advantage. And while that may be the case, it doesnt make love from these very good boys any less real.

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Does Your Dog Actually Love You? - The Cut

Outrage was the general researcher and media response to the Chinese bioengineer He Jiankui's announcement last November that he had used CRISPR gene-editing technology to modify the genomes of several human embryos with the goal of making them resistant to HIV infection. The result was the birth of twin girls; one with the genetic modification in all of her body's cells and another whose body is a mosaic of modified and unmodified cells. He did certainly cut both scientific and ethical corners in applying CRISPR technology to human embryos. Happily, a preliminary study in June that suggested the He's modifications might shorten the twins' lifespans appears to be wrong.

Setting aside He's moral shortcomings, is it ever ethical to use CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies to modify the genomes of human embryos? Yes, argues Abertay University bioethicist Kevin Smith in the journal Bioethics. Smith addresses the question using a rigorously applied utilitarian ethics approach. He details recent advances in CRISPR gene-editing safety and concludes that the benefits of preventing heritable diseases already outweigh the risks of using the technology.

In his article, Smith deals with "several wellrehearsed positions and arguments" against permitting parents to use CRISPR gene-editing to fix genetic flaws in their prospective offspring. These include "claims of unnaturalness, the alleged interests of embryos, questions of identity, fears of eugenics, and simply the 'yuck factor.'" Smith points out that critics once denounced in vitro fertilization (IVF) on the grounds of that it was "unnatural." Millions of parents have freely chosen unnatural IVF techniques to overcome their natural infertility. Some 8 million children have been born via assisted reproduction since the first IVF baby was born in 1979.

Some opponents argue using CRISPR would be unethical because embryos can't give their consent to being genetically modified. A requirement for prenatal consent is obvious ethical nonsense. No one has ever given their consent to be born much less to be born the specific complement of genes they bear. In addition, it's hard to imagine that a child will later feel morally aggrieved that his or her parents had prevented them from suffering a debilitating genetic disease. Providing parents with the ability to choose to prevent heritable disease and disability in their progeny using biotechnology is not to be equated with morally pernicious state-imposed eugenics. And lots of biomedical treatments and reproductive technologies have gone from yuck to yippeeas their significant benefits became evident. CRISPR gene-editing will do the same.

Smith persuasively argues that not only would the early application of the technology improve the welfare of prospective parents and their progeny now, it will usher in a human germline genetic modification (HGGM) revolution that will greatly benefit future generations. As Smith explains, "The longer we wait until commencing the HGGM revolution and moving towards a world of increased utility, the greater will be the quantity of suffering accrued meantime through genetically influenced disease."

When should CRISPR and even better gene-editing technologies be made available to parents seeking to prevent genetic diseases in their offspring? Given that some folks are still spooked by He's announcement last November, Smith prudentially suggests that "wekickstart the next biomedical revolution by proceeding not immediately but within around 12 years to intervene in the human germline."

The revolution, however, may start sooner than that. Russian researcher Denis Rebrikov says that he hopes to gain permission in the near future from the appropriate authorities to gene-edit embryos to repair a gene that causes congenital deafness.

Originally posted here:

Genetically Modified Babies Are Ethically OK - Reason

Since 2016,Andrew Marantzhas been reporting on how the extremist right has harnessed the Internet and social media to gain startling prominence in American politics. One day, he was contacted by a woman named Samantha, who was in a leadership position of the white-nationalist group Identity Evropa. (She asked to be identified only by her first name.) When I joined, I really thought that it was just going to be a pro-white community, where we could talk to each other about being who we are, and gain confidence, and build a community, Samantha told Marantz. I went in because I was insecure, and it made me feel good about myself. Samantha says she wasnt a racist, but soon after joining the group she found herself rubbing shoulders with the neo-Nazi organizer Richard Spencer, at a party that culminated in a furious chant of Sieg heil. Marantz and the New Yorker Radio Hour producerRhiannon Corbydove into Samanthas story to understand how and why a normal person abandoned her values, her friends, and her family for an ideology of racial segregation and eugenicsand then came out again. They found her to be a cautionary tale for a time when facts and truth are under daily attack. I thought I knew it all, she told them. I think its extremely nave and foolish to think that you are impervious to it. No one is impervious to this.

Samantha appears in Marantzs new book, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.

Read the original:

Samanthas Journey Into the Alt-Right, and Back - The New Yorker

The 1950s were the first sign that with a booming economy, progressive busy-bodies were going to once again turn their sights on controlling behavior. Though Prohibition had ended the Puritan Piety attack on alcohol, and Hitler had put a halt to progressive dreams of eugenics, the war on inferiors continued by well-meaning elites unabated after the soldiers came home.

They just attacked on a new front. Comic books, for example, were ruining children, according to psychiatrist Fred Wertham, who wrote a book making his case called "Seduction of the Innocent." Though Captain America had punched Hitler in the face six months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, now they were the enemy of decency. The Senate took up the case in 1954 but states were already reacting. Ohio Governor Frank Lausche was all for censorship, for example, and supported Akron in its efforts to ban them. Only Akron Councilman Howard Walker, a Ward 8 Republican and chairman of the public welfare and safety committee, resisted the call for bans. Who is qualified to say which books are good and which are bad?

Though conservatives get the bad press in corporate media, it's often social authoritarian progressives out to control behavior. You don't see writers at Reason arguing for censorship but plenty of California politicians want to ban Happy Meals and golf. It was Tipper Gore who declared war on music, supported by her husband Al. And it is Democrats who want vaping banned today. Credit: Pessimists Archive

Once comic books were censored, busybodies found that children still weren't docile automatons, any more than after their efforts to ban radios, books, and "idle minds" so they then turned on pinball machines, rock music, marijuana, TV, birth control, Dungeons & Dragons, rap music, video games, cell phones, and now ... vaping.

If you watch the array of anti-vaping ads appearing on televisions (what used to be corrupting children, according to busybodies) and the Internet (ditto), kids are throwing their video game(ditto) controllers through computers (ditto) because of that demon nicotine; a product that they can't legally buy but some greedy merchant on the internet is still selling so they shout it all needs to be banned.

It's Reefer Madness all over again, which took 60 years to undo. Yet now the same social authoritarian progressives(1) who got marijuana banned and comic books censored have adopted a similar mantra about vaping.

I am not pro-vaping, I don't smoke and never have, nor do I vape, we get no donations from any vaping or tobacco company or trade group, I am simply anti-smoking. It kills, but it is not the nicotine that is harmful, it is the smoke. Vaping needs to be an option for smokers because it simply works better than gums or patches or abstinence only posturing.

Just like Baby Boomers still read comic books in the 1950s - censorship crippled the industry, but it didn't eliminate kids reading comics - they need to realize that kids today are going to do something rebellious or even risky. Some will drink alcohol, some will race cars on streets, some will get addicted to caffeine. But we don't ban beer, automobiles, or Red Bull due to those things, we enforce laws that exist.

That should be the approach we take to vaping. The Trump administration is right to want second opinions instead of listening to what have become increasingly social authoritarian organizations like American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. They represent only a fraction of doctors and the people forcing through fundamentalist beliefs about nicotine are only a tiny fraction of the members in those organizations. More doctors don't stand up to hysteria because they don't want to look like they are for JUUL. Nor do I, I have blasted the company too many times to count. But just like I defend GMOs even though I didn't like Monsanto as a company, doctors should be going with the evidence and not engaging in culture wars rather than being too timid to stand up to the "cool kids" in their tribes.

FDA, EPA, etc. didn't issue a call to ban GMOs because NRDC, Greenpeace, et al. hate science, even though those groups have gotten plenty of fifth columnists placed inside those government agencies. Nor did academic biologists even though they are 94 percent on the left. Doctors should show as much backbone as scientists and tell government to enforce laws to keep kids from using products, not wrap themselves in the flag of Seduction Of The Internet rhetoric.

NOTE:

(1) Progressives were not alone in using government to force their social authoritarian agenda. Also in 1954, Senator Eugene McCarthy became convinced that the U.S. Army was "soft" on communists. Unlike comic books and other efforts by the left, McCarthy's effort ended in a spectacular failure. Then the left got their revenge on him in history. Though only 7 people in Hollywood were actually Blacklisted - and they were actually communists trying to overthrow the government - you can't find anyone old in that town today who doesn't attribute any career setbacks they may have had to being on the blacklist. It became a badge of honor.

See the article here:

Reefer Madness And Seduction Of The Innocent Are Now The Anti-Vaping M.O. - Science 2.0

Like the president he serves, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is a white supremacist. Miller believes that white people should be the most powerful group in the United States and around the world. He has worked diligently and enthusiastically to advance that goal through public policy.

Miller is not a white nationalist. To use such language is to legitimate the ways white supremacists have tried since the 1970s to repackage themselves so as to appear more mainstream and reasonable in order to win over more white Americans.

As though more evidence is necessary after three years of Stephen Millers influence on Donald Trumps regime and its unrepentant and enthusiastic cruelty against nonwhites, 900 emails recently obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center offer further proof of Millers white supremacist ideology.

In his communications with a former editor of the right-wing website Breitbart, Miller then an aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions, who went on to become Trump's first attorney general advanced talking points from white supremacist websites that advocate eugenics against nonwhites and a general belief in the inferiority of black people and others.

Miller praised the notorious white supremacist novel The Camp of the Saints (also a favorite of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon) which depicts nonwhite immigrants and migrants in Europe as subhuman, murderous invaders.

In these emails Miller also channeled white supremacist talking points about nonwhite immigrants being invaders in white countries and the premise that white people are somehow being replaced.

Writing at the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie observesthat "there's no way to spin these emails into something innocuous":

The evidence is overwhelming: Miller was immersed in white power ideology. He was fluent in the language of white nationalism, attuned to its ideas. He was an obvious sympathizer who brought that sympathy to the federal government, where he has a direct hand in making immigration policy and choosing personnel.

For three years, Miller has used his perch to inflict fear and anxiety on refugees, asylum-seekers and unauthorized immigrants. Maybe, if you were charitable to Miller and sympathetic to restricting immigration, you could frame this as a misguided but good faith attempt to pull back from a more liberal status quo. No longer. These emails show that Millers views flow from his commitment to racist exclusion and the protection of a white demographic majority.

As a practical matter, Miller views nonwhite people as his enemies. In other words, a senior adviser to the president of the United States is crafting public policy that both directly and indirectly hurts tens of millions of nonwhite Americans. This is a treacherous betrayal of America's multiracial democracy and a direct threat to its future, and provides more evidence that Donald Trump and his regime are illegitimate.

In response to Miller's emails, more than 100 Democratic members of Congress have called for him to resign. No senior Republican elected officials, to my knowledge, have done the same.

These revelations about Stephen Millers white supremacist emails are not secondary to the current impeachment inquiry, or somehow coincidental to a rogue regimes assault on the rule of law and the Constitution.

Indeed, Millers emails are better understood as huge flashing road signs that illustrate how racism and the ideology of white supremacy made Trumps presidency possible and continue to fuel the Republican Party's fascist and authoritarian crusade against American democracy.

There are many examples. Social scientists and others have shown that white racism in combination with nativism and hostile sexism (and assisted Russian interference) that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2016.

Vladimir Putins spies and other agents launched a sophisticated psy-ops campaign, via social media and other means, to exacerbate racial tensions. The goal was to mobilize Trumps voters and demobilizing those more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Research shows that Trumps racially intolerant white voters reject the very idea of democracy if it means that white people will no longer be the dominant and most powerful group in America.A large proportion of Trumps voters are racial authoritarians.

From the post-civil rights era onward, the Republican Party and movement conservatives have embraced racism and white supremacy as a dominant strategy for winning elections and then keeping and expanding power.

Republicans are more likely to be racist and generally more hostile towards nonwhites than are Democrats. Racism and white racial resentment are central to conservatism as a system of motivated social cognition.

In his recent book Post-Racial or Most-Racial? political scientist Michael Tesler shows in exhaustive detail how white racial resentment and racial backlash against Barack Obama now structures the partisanship and other political values of Republicans and right-leaning independent voters.

Political polarization is not race neutral. In reality, the increasing extremism of the Republican Party, as manifested through asymmetrical political polarization from the end of the civil rights movement to the backlash against Obama and then the election of Donald Trump is a function of white racism and white racial resentment. Negative partisanship and political tribalism, where politics is viewed not just as a reasonable difference of opinion between fellow citizens who share common values but rather as a referendum on their human worth and personhood, has also been fueled by white racism and an increasing hostility by Republicans and other conservatives toward the increasingly multiracial and diverse Democratic Party.

Todays Republican Party is opposed to multiracial democracy and the full and equal citizenship rights of nonwhite people, especially black Americans. Through gerrymandering, voter suppression both legal and otherwise and other tactics, the Republican Party has made itself increasingly immune from political accountability for its embrace of white supremacy and racial authoritarianism. In essence, the post-civil rights era Republican Party is the United States largest white racist organization.

Furthermore, this racialization of white group interests in the Age of Trump is increasingly central to white identity and political decision making.

Political scientist Ashley Jardina explained this to Salon in a July 2017 interview:

The idea behind "white identity politics" is that there is a subset of white voters and/or white Americans in general who feel a sense of attachment to their group. They feel a sense of solidarity. They think that their race and their racial identity is important to who they are. Their "white identity" influences how they see and view the political world. Tied up in that sense of identity is a belief that whites are losing out in the United States, their status and power is somehow under threat.

Subsequently those white people who manifest white identity politics are responding to that perception in a political way by supporting policies and candidates who they view as protecting their racial group and preserving its status. Donald Trump is very much the candidate of white identity but white identity mattered before Trump came on the scene.

Yes, white identity is still part of the system of racism because it's about wanting to maintain their power at the top. By implication, this means that people of color necessarily cannot be equal with white people. This type of white identity is about maintaining a system of inequality.

In total, the Trump regimes corruption and lawlessness is made legitimate in the eyes of the Republican Partys leaders, the right-wing propaganda news media and Republican voters because they believe themselves to be defending America from the Democratic Party and its nonwhite supporters.

To this point, Adam Serwer of the Atlantic observes: The Republican Party has responded to the increasing diversity of the electorate with an accelerating intolerance for ethnic and religious minorities, and with elaborate schemes to disenfranchise rival constituencies and rig election rules to its advantage. Crucial to this effort is its conviction that the Republican electorate is the only one that can confer legitimacy on elected officials, and that the partys political opponents are no longer wrong but fundamentally illegitimate, faithless usurpers with no right to determine the direction of the country. This has manifested in the quasi-religious dogma that Trump represents the will of Real America, and therefore defiance of his will is itself a form of treason.

Leading Republicans know that democracy is their enemy precisely because the policies they want to force on the American people are so unpopular. Perhaps even more important, because the Republican Party is organized around white racial tribalism, Republican leaders, their news media and their voters view multiracial democracy, embodied (at least in their eyes) through the Democratic Party, as an existential threat.

Writing in the Guardian, civil rights law professor Carol Anderson summarizes the Republican Party and movement conservatisms commitment to racial authoritarianism and what has been called "Herrenvolk democracy":

The party of Lincolns electoral cul de sac was mapped out by the Republicans contempt for democracy and, especially, fear of the broader American publics access to the ballot box. Despite numerous warnings about the consequences of doubling down on racism, homophobia and misogyny in an increasingly diverse and liberalizing nation, the Republican party ignored those broadsides and chose, instead, to hollow out, shrink and tilt the electorate as far to the right as possible.

I dont want everybody to vote, bellowed Paul Weyrich, the co-founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Those marching orders were dutifully supported by a series of supreme court decisions that gutted the Voting Rights Act, sanctioned voter roll purges in defiance of federal law and ignored the racism embedded in extreme partisan gerrymandered districts.

As a result, a range of Republican-sponsored voter suppression policies now scars the American landscape in a concerted effort to politically silence the majority of the people. Those sheer numbers and the Republican partys hardcore refusal to jettison white supremacy as its operating code has led to policy choices that exacerbate the range of crises facing the nation.

Anderson notes that as of July 2018, even with all the Republican efforts at voter purges, there were 12 million more Democrats than Republicans in the United States. Democrats are 40% of registered voters compared with just 29% listed as Republicans. In fact, the percentage of Americans who identified as members of the Republican party dropped by 5% in four short years. And independents lean overwhelmingly toward Democrats.

The Trump regimes embrace of white supremacy and racism is not limited to the United States. It is also international.In 2018, this administration withdrew the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council. It has pushed for language condemning racism and nationalism to be removed from official UN documents language that has been present for decades.

In what would in more normal times be a stunning admission, the director of Americas National Counterterrorism Center recently admitted that under the Trump regime the United States is now viewed by the world as an exporter of white supremacist terrorism.This report is from Yahoo News:

After an upsurge in racially motivated attacks around the world, other countries are beginning to regard the United States as an exporter of white supremacism, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Friday.

For almost two decades, the United States has pointed abroad at countries who are exporters of extreme Islamist ideology, Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience in Washington, D.C. We are now being seen as the exporter of white supremacist ideology. Thats a reality with which we are going to have to deal.

Travers said there is now a global movement of what he termed racially motivated violent extremism, or RMVE (pronounced rem-vee), fueled by a wide variety of motivations and facilitated by social media and other online communications.

A large percentage of RMVE attackers in recent years have either displayed outreach to like-minded individuals or groups or referenced early attackers as sources of inspiration, he said.

While the Trump regime has brought America low and sacrificed the countrys prestige and honor abroad in apparent supplication to Vladimir Putin and Russia it can claim one success. Under Donald Trump and Stephen Millers stewardship, America is now viewed as the world leader in exporting white supremacist terrorism and violence.

Such an outcome is foundational, not coincidental.Vladimir Putins Russia is viewed by many white supremacists and other members of the New Right as a beacon for maintaining global white power and as a champion against a more cosmopolitan and diverse present and future. To the degree that the Trump regime aligns Americas interests with those of Russia, it is doing the work of global white supremacy.

Stephen Miller should of course be forced to resign. There should also be public hearings in Congress about Miller's role in the Trump regime and the policies he inflicted on the country. Miller also represents a much larger problem, beyond systemic and institutional racism in the United States.

The Trump regime has nurtured a permissive environment that welcomes and empowers white supremacists such as Miller, Bannon, Michael Anton and others, at both senior levels and as middle or lower-level bureaucrats. This problem extends to the courts, police and other law enforcement and the military. Congressional hearings could use Stephen Miller as an entry point to a larger discussion of white supremacist infiltration at all levels of the United States government.

In the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, should Democrats include the full panoply of his crimes and other unpresidential behavior encouraging white supremacy and other political violence; crimes against humanity, as demonstrated by his regimes treatment of nonwhite migrants; betrayal of the presidential oath of office; violations of the emoluments clause and abundant corruption or should they instead go small and just focus on abuse of power, obstruction of justice and the Ukraine scandal?

Ultimately, those questions will reflect on how the Democratic Partys leaders balance political expediency with principle.

At the Inquirer, Will Bunch summarizes this dilemma:

The evidence is piling up that Trumps political extortion ploy on Ukraine was bribery, an extreme abuse of power, and a violation of his sacred oath to protect the best interests of the United States. That alone merits his impeachment (which will happen), his removal (which probably wont) and a harsh judgment from 2020 voters (when it doesnt). But given the sweep of this presidents assault on both the Constitution and on human decency, it almost feels and Im hardly the first to write this like busting the murderous Al Capone for income tax evasion.

Capone wasnt charged with the St. Valentines Day Massacre, and Trump wont be impeached for ripping toddlers away from their refugee mothers and fathers, or for locking tens of thousands of kids at the border in cages or squalid detention centers. Even worse, confirmation of something awful yet long suspected that the man shaping U.S. immigration policy is a fairly unabashed white supremacist barely caused a ripple.

Yet this unconscionable assault against the tired, the hungry, the poor, and their defenseless children on the southern border is the very worst crime of Donald Trumps presidency, an offense against humanity. Its good to see our elected officials finally holding this president accountable for violating his oath when he put his hand on that Bible on January 20, 2017.

Holding Trump and Stephen Miller accountable for violating the words inside that Bible to love thy neighbor will have to wait on a higher authority than Congress.

Trumps impeachment and the 2020 presidential election offer a referendum on what type of country America is and what kind it will be in the future. The Democrats will impeach Donald Trump. Republicans in the Senate, in all likelihood, will not convict him. Trump and his cult will claim victimhood and be further empowered in their assault on democracy, the rule of law and human decency.

This leaves the American people to decide on Election Day 2020 whether they are prepared to save the countrys multiracial democracy or abandon it to fascists, racial authoritarians and their dream of a 21st-century American apartheid where making America "great again" is an updated version of Whites Only.

Originally posted here:

Stephen Miller's white supremacy is no surprise but it raises the stakes on impeachment and 2020 - Salon

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne introduced two women, each renowned in their respective fields, as scientific trailblazers to a packed CEMEX auditorium of 600 people on Monday. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who invented CRISPR, and Fei-Fei Li, who currently heads the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) endeavor, discussed the twin revolutions of CRISPR and artificial intelligence with moderator Russ Altman, a bioengineering professor.

But beyond just talking about those innovations, Tessier-Lavigne noted the significant urgency present to consider the broader societal impacts of their work: to notice both the promise and peril that accompany innovation.

Innovation alone isnt sufficient, Tessier-Lavigne said. Creating a disruption does not guarantee positive effects for our society or for individuals. Disrupting just for disruptions sake is no honorable activity. Remarkable opportunities for good can also be misused.

Doudna and Lis work has been influential within the fields of gene editing and artificial intelligence, respectively. Doudna and her team developed the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, which allows for the editing of DNA and genomes as well as for a myriad of control applications within the body and potential development of biotechnology products.

Li was the leading scientist of ImageNet, a database used in visual object recognition software that enables computers to recognize a wide variety of human, everyday objects through machine learning.

Both speakers acknowledged the ethical concerns looming over these innovations. This beginning of a revolution in deep learning is accompanied by the threat of ethical complications such as eugenics, patentability and heritable genome editing.

The recognition ability [of ImageNet] is in the background of Google searches when you use Facebook or when you communicate with your phone; its always present, Altman said, adding that recent developments in AI have caused the field to become a breeding ground of questions surrounding ethics.

When asked if it was obvious that the results were going to lead to such an explosive reaction both inside and out of the scientific community, Li said that she knew they were approaching a holy grail question.

We were granting the computers an ability that took humans 540 million years of evolution to achieve, she said. I would be lying, however, if I said I recognized the societal implications of the work at the time.

Doudna replied similarly, saying that for those of us working in the world of CRISPR, it was a very esoteric area of biology back then. It was surprising to see that our very esoteric area was merging with a very important part of biotechnology.

Could I have predicted the advancements, CRISPR babies? she asked, referring to former Stanford postdoctoral fellow He Jiankui who launched international controversy when he announced he created the worlds first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. Definitely not, but it was a very exciting progression.

A significant part of the discussion centered on ethics, with Altman asking the innovators about their engagement with ethics throughout their research. Doudna recalled 2012 as the year that a moral obligation really arose in her life. After reading a published article of CRISPR being applied to human primates, she recalled realizing the potential for genome editing in humans.

I was quite reluctant, but I did feel a real responsibility to engage in the discussion at that point, Dounda said.

Li also described her surprise when her own career in AI came under public scrutiny, with some critics calling genome editing a field summoning a demon.

While major parts of their professional journeys align, their paths diverge in terms of confronting the ethical problems of their work. To combat the potential misuses of CRISPR, Doudna felt like the scientific community really needed to [be] engaged as a whole. She convened meetings to broach the subject of the morality behind CRISPR applications and recalls thinking that that was the beginning of my education in ethics I felt like a student learning how to think about this and how to approach it.

Lis approach was different because CS was a much younger discipline, without an ethics sub-area, and I didnt know who to talk to. She decided to turn her focus to the drivers of AI, the human representation in the field, especially to diversify the field and open it up to more women and minorities.

Li went on to start the program AI4ALL, which began at Stanford and then grew to become nationally recognized 500 alumni of the program and 11 college campuses that host the students, all with the mission of engaging underrepresented students in underserved communities.

The academic pioneers were then asked about the exposure of young scientists to ethical information, with both agreeing that there needed to be more educating done in their fields.

Its a cultural thing in our field, Doudna said. We are in the vein of creating scholars in our specific subject rather than creating a group of holistically knowledgeable people.

Li added that students of mine dont even have the language to talk about these issues.

Altman went on to note that these are unlikely to be the last scientific revolutions. He wondered what advice the two women had for handling these explosive introductions of research.

We definitely havent seen the end of the AI story its just the beginning, Li answered. We need to invest in people. Diversity and inclusion is a way to ensure that we maximize human representation during these times.

As for representation in policy, Doudna said she would like to see more scientists in Congress.

I was really struck when I met with Bill Foster and he pointed out that he was the only Ph.D. in congress, Doudna said. I think we need to see more representation.

As for their hopes for their work moving forward, their visions were the same: an international framework to cooperate and communicate. Li noted that there are issues of warfare, bioterrorism and a myriad of other potential dangers. She noted that every discovery has a dual potential, which is why we need laws, ethical principles, an international framework given how powerful these technologies are.

Contact Hannah Shelby at hshelby at stanford.edu.

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Renowned scientists address ethics, 'twin scientific revolutions' of AI and CRISPR - The Stanford Daily

Eric Rasmusen is a tenured business school professor at Indiana University Bloomington; for many years, he's posted a stream of "racist, sexist, and homophobic views" to his personal social media, including the idea that women do not belong in the workplace (he often refers to women by slurs like "slut" when discussing this and other subjects); that gay men should not be allowed in academia because of their insatiable sexual appetites and propensity for abusing students; that Black students are academically inferior to white students and do not belong at elite academic institutions.

Indiana U is a state college and bound by the First Amendment's prohibition on discrimination on the basis of speech and Rasmusen has confined his odious speech acts to his personal social media, apparently refraining from voicing these views on campus while acting in a professional capacity. As a result, it's the view of the university provost that he cannot be fired, despite her characterization of Rasmusen's views as "vile and stupid" and "stunningly ignorant." Provost Lauren Robel has also said that her own respect for the First Amendment is such that she would not fire Rasmusen for his personal views, even if she could.

However, Robel and the university acknowledge that Rasmusen's views call into question his impartiality and also expose students to a reasonable belief that they could not be fairly graded or assessed by Rasmusen. Accordingly the university has undertaken a pari of extraordinary measures to protect students without trampling the First Amendment.

1. All classes that Rasmusen teaches will also be offered by another instructor so that any student can chose to take the class without coming into contact with Rasmusen.

2. Rasmusen will be required to grade all assignments on a double-blind basis, and when that is not possible, he will be closely supervised by another business school prof who will ensure that he does not practice discrimination.

The provost goes on to say that this is not exhaustive, and the university is prepared to take further steps to protect students and faculty members from Rasmusen's bigotry.

Rasmusen's publications include articles like "Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably." He has posted a detailed rebuttal to the provost's article.

I think the most interesting thing about this is that Rasmusen was tenured: for decades after the rise of Reaganism, a lot of people assumed that right wingers who dabbled in eugenics, white supremacy, dominionism and other medieval/crypto-fascist ideas were just colorful provocateurs LARPing Archie Bunker. It turned out they were deadly fucking serious. They were a sleeper cell from Gilead, and now they're finished masturbating over the Turner Diaries and have broken cover and plan on enacting a full-blown Dominionist white theocracy.

The First Amendment is strong medicine, and works both ways. All of us are free to condemn views that we find reprehensible, and to do so as vehemently and publicly as Professor Rasmusen expresses his views. We are free to avoid his classes, and demand that the university ensure that he does not, or has not, acted on those views in ways that violate either the federal and state civil rights laws or IUs nondiscrimination policies. I condemn, in the strongest terms, Professor Rasmusens views on race, gender, and sexuality, and I think others should condemn them. But my strong disagreement with his viewsindeed, the fact that I find them loathsomeis not a reason for Indiana University to violate the Constitution of the United States.

On the First Amendment [Lauren Robel/Indiana University]

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Indiana University Provost: The First Amendment says we can't fire our notorious bigot professor, so here's what we're doing instead - Boing Boing

Jonathan McIntosh [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

November 22, 2019; Charlotte Agenda

A community foundation based in Charlotte is facing intense public scrutiny after recent investigations uncovered that funds managed by the organization have been funding anti-immigrant groups for decades.

The Charlotte Agenda reports that the Foundation For The Carolinas (FFTC) is the sixth-largest community foundation in the country with $2.6 billion in assets. Their CEO, Michael Marsicano, is considered a civic leader in many circles, and the Foundation is influential in its ability to set the policy agenda with local officials.

FFTC is currently facing a whirlwind of criticism after a variety of news outlets have reported on the developments related to foundation-housed, donor-advised funds. An investigative report by the Charlotte Observer found that the foundation granted roughly $21 million in donor-advised dollars to organizations that advocate for limits on immigration between 2006 and 2018. Two organizations that received funding have caught the attention of the public: The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Those two groups, along with one other group, Numbers USA, received about 85 percent of the $21 million.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated both CIS and FAIR as hate groups. A quick glance at their history provides an understanding of how they operate today. John Tanton founded both groups and was also listed as a board member of FAIR up until 2010. Tanton was a white supremacist and eugenicist who regularly associated with former Klan members and leaders of the white nationalist movement.

A report from the Council on Foundations (COF) explains how community foundations acquire their resources and details the challenges to the overall model in the 21st century. Donor-advised funds (DAFs) have become an increasingly important aspect of generating revenue for many community foundations. Over the years, donor-advised funds have seen huge growth. Total DAF assets reached $121.42 billion in 2018. Community foundations hold a good share of these funds, but over time, funds run by investor firms like Fidelity and Schwab, which now run commercially-sponsored nonprofit DAFs, have grown in market share and have emerged as the nations largest nonprofits.

FFTC provides its DAF holders with full discretion over where their donations go, which is how the donations have ended up in the coffers of groups like CIS and FAIR.

In fairness to FFTC, providing donor-advised fund holders nearly full discretion over disbursements while maintaining legal responsibility for them is a common practice for community foundations. Most community foundations separate their programmatic work in the community from the more transactional work of managing donor-advised funds. It may even make sense in a lot of ways. It allows the community foundations to continue operating and making impact in the community, while maximizing the amount of donor-advised funds at the foundation means increased revenue. It also promotes democratic ideals by allowing a wide range of ideas to receive support.

But when a grant made is considered to be counter to the ideals of the donor-advised sponsor, that rather frail contract can fall apart. We have seen this occur in networks of Jewish federations, some of which have refused to make donations to groups critical of Israel. The issue became serious enough that the New Israel Fund sprung up to meet the needs of progressive Jewish donors.

As for FFTC, Marsicano gives many justifications for the foundations funding of anti-immigrant groups. He asks, Where does one draw the line in what should be funded and what should not be funded? He claims that it is the job of the IRS to determine who receives charitable status. He also mentions how a diversity of viewpoints makes for a healthier community, and that no institution should be engaged in cutting off the freedom of speech of its community members.

These are fair arguments until you begin to examine the current context at a deeper level. Nearly every organization that applies for charitable status is approved. And it is now common knowledge that there are many hate groups who are registered as charitable organizations. Additionally, the gutting of the IRS following the Lois Lerner scandal continues. The IRS have very few resources to regulate whether organizations are staying true to their charitable missions.

The stakes have also gotten higher, given the increase in hate crimes since the 2016 election. Charlotte residents have also been the subjects of increased raids and deportations because of the stance of their sheriff, who refuses to collaborate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Speaking to the Charlotte Agenda, Sil Ganz of ourBridge for KIDS wonders how the Foundation can provide so much support to her immigrant-focused nonprofit, while also channeling funds to anti-immigrant groups. She adds, I find [the FFTCs] position of neutrality highly problematic as it puts our neighbors and families at risk. Aaron Dorfman, of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, offers a more critical view of the situation, there is no such thing as neutrality on thisyou cant be a big tent for your community if youre facilitating harm on some members of your community. Thats exactly whats happening here. In response to the recent developments, over 80 foundations have signed a pledge to filter out hate groups from their grantmaking.

Still, the fact that donors could certainly find another institution to channel their tax-deductible donations speaks to a broader problem in how the US treats charitable organizations. Increasingly, the community foundation world is faced with challenging questions about whether they are more committed to growth and increasing their assets under management, or more committed to their values and mission. These are important developments to follow because community foundations play such a crucial role in our communities. As the famous late historian Howard Zinn said, you cant be neutral on a moving train.Benjamin Martinez

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When DAFs Belie the Community in Community Foundation - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly