Arizona passed a new immigration law, which effectively requires all immigrants, legal or illegal, to carry their papers with them at all times, and mandates that law enforcement officers stop and question anyone for whom they have "reasonable suspicion" of being an illegal "alien."
Republican Senator and former JAG lawyer Lindsay Graham believes the new law is unconstitutional, while former Under Secretary of Homeland Security Michael D. Brown goes off here about how the new law really isn't that big of a deal.
Unfortunately, our former Under Secretary of Homeland Security is functionally illiterate. His misunderstanding of the most controversial aspect of the new Arizona immigration law below:
"Consider just one paragraph of the bill:
FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.
Article 8, Section 11-1051, Paragraph B., lines 20-25
Consider that language again: a law enforcement office must first have 'lawful contact.' 'Reasonable suspicion' must exist that the person is here illegally. A 'reasonable attempt' is all the officer can make to determine the immigration status of the person and then, only when 'practicable.'
That's racist, Reverend Sharpton? Sounds like sound law enforcement to me."
PMB will now reinterpret this paragraph correctly (hopefully the Under Secretary is paying attention):
The former Under Secretary treats "lawful contact" and "reasonable suspicion" above as though they're two separate steps in the process of legally stopping and questioning someone, but this is wrong. "Lawful contact" in this case is not a precursor to "reasonable suspicion"; "lawful contact" requires "reasonable suspicion." "Lawful contact" here is basically interchangeable with "reasonable suspicion," though it's presented above by the former Under Secretary as a preexisting condition upon which "reasonable suspicion" can be (more safely) derived. This might seem like nitpicking, but it's actually the crux of the controversy regarding this new law: since there is much concern over what constitutes "reasonable suspicion" and how "reasonable suspicion" would be derived in order to legally stop and question someone on the street about their immigration status, those defending this law have the burden of explaining this mystery about how, practically, could "reasonable suspicion" be lawfully derived. The former Under Secretary attempts to assuage this concern by presenting "reasonable suspicion" as something based not on a guess about the way someone looks on the street, but as a second-order determination after something called "lawful contact" has already been made. Ah, but since "reasonable suspicion" is necessary for "lawful contact" and not the other way around, the former Under Secretary's interpretation is complete and total bullshit. He attempts to explain away the crux of the controversy circuitously, by arguing essentially that "reasonable suspicion will be attained in the context of lawful stops, because a lawful stop requires reasonable suspicion."
The question remains, then: how exactly would a law enforcement officer attain reasonable suspicion? It's easy to argue, as the Republicans are currently doing in their talking points, that the "reasonable suspicion" stops we're talking about here are things like speeding white vans with 16 passengers packed in the back and police cars tailing them (speeding/being in a car chase indeed meets the "reasonable suspicion" standard to make a stop, obviously); but what about the inevitable gray areas? Will the cops ask every white speeder they stop for his or her immigration papers, or will they profile for Mexican-looking people? Will law enforcement officers who see loiterers outside of the club or the grocery store and approach them for their immigration papers...if they're white? Hispanic? What constitutes reasonable suspicion, not just of a given traffic violation, but of illegal immigration status? And finally, do we expect all law enforcement officers, who can be prosecuted themselves under this law for failing to question the "reasonably suspicious" about their immigration status, to reasonably abide all of these nuances, and to avoid simply profiling for Mexican-looking people? This is most likely why law enforcement officers themselves have voiced serious opposition to this new law, doing so also years before when a similar law was on the table during Janet Napolitano's governorship.
PMB tends to agree with Senator Graham that not only is the new Arizona law unconstitutional, but it's also not a very smart or effective way forward for tackling immigration issues. As current head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has suggested, the law will likely result in the redistribution of immigration law enforcement resources away from concentrated areas of need (cartels and human trafficking) and toward the detaining of peaceful and productive people who happen to get stopped without their papers, and constitute a far lesser security risk.
Those in favor of the new Arizona law are calling it a way of fighting drug and human trafficking; yet the negative effects of this law will move far beyond its alleged toughness on real criminal behavior. John McCain talks about illegals bringing drugs across our borders as though Americans aren't the ones demanding and paying for the drugs that keep the cartels and their violent tactics in steady operation. If drug smuggling and all the nastiness that goes with it were really a concern among these politicians, then surely they'd have figured out by now that the best way to crush the cartels is to cut them out of their US market by legalizing and regulating certain drugs on our own soil. But PMB digresses...
The Arizona immigration law is just another example of shortsighted, xenophobic, fear-addled people compromising some of the most basic American values in order to attempt a quick fix. So long as certain Americans believe that Americans are the only ones in the world deserving of the fundamental rights that we daily proclaim our own, we threaten to erode these rights within our own communities. If you believe things like due process and habeas corpus are fundamental, INALIENABLE rights, then you must concede that they are universally INALIENABLE, even, ironically, for those we deem "aliens."
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Bear Arms, To Keep And
PMB notes that the text of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which prescribes the right of US citizens to own guns, reads as follows:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Now that we've seen a dramatic increase in US 'militia groups,' groups of private citizens who tend to stockpile arms and gather to conduct psuedo-military training exercises in preparation to defend themselves or their states against the US Federal government, PMB is compelled to comment briefly on how this phenomenon relates to the 2nd Amendment.
While many gun rights activists argue that the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is an essential freedom whose primary function is to allow individuals to defend themselves and their families against criminals and allow for the use of guns in sporting or hunting pursuits, another prominent segment of activists views the 2nd Amendment primarily as a means of empowering the people for an uprising against a tyrannical government. While the former view is probably a more tenable justification for the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, the latter is almost certainly more Constitutionally valid. Considering the language of the amendment together with its historical context--the Revolutionary War against tyrannical Britain, fought and won largely by a militia-style army--Constitutional originalists would have to agree that using arms as an aid to populist uprising against an overreaching government was the main purpose or spirit of the 2nd Amendment. For the rest of us who think that divining a singular and definitive meaning or notion of intent from the text of the Constitution is about as ridiculous as assuming that everyone who's ever read Macbeth ought to have come to the exact same conclusions about its 'meaning' and Shakespeare's 'intent,' one can still assume with some confidence based on the text and the history that, indeed, the clause 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State' either imposes a condition on 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' (for the forming of a militia) or it constitutes clear evidence of an 'amplifying example' of the importance of the right to bear arms, the example of a militia being considered extremely important (thus 'amplifying') to those who drafted the amendment. This is to suggest that the 2nd Amendment pertains primarily to the formation of militia groups as a check against tyranny not because Constitutional intent is always clear, but rather because a piece of it happens to be rather clear in this particular case. Whether one subscribes to the idea that the 'militia clause' is qualifying or amplifying, the idea of the formation of a militia and its relation to the right to bear arms is central nonetheless.
What does this mean for the 2nd Amendment in the 21at century?
While PMB is not attempting here to argue for the sheer abolition or recusal of the 2nd Amendment, it's time to reconsider the whole militia thing.
As Obama and Medvedev's recent arms reduction treaty reduces the terms of nuclear weapons deployment down to no more than 1550 warheads or 700 launchers, the idea of 'a well regulated militia' with the ability to 'keep and bear arms' becomes perhaps slightly less ridiculous than it already was in the 1990s, when the US and Russia were operating with literally thousands of nuclear warheads. Of course, nuclear warheads really are just the tip of the 21st-century munitions and combat technology iceberg. Without going into anymore embarrassingly obvious details, suffice it to say that no militia acquiring any number of legal arms stands a shred of a chance against the US military. Perhaps the dark underside of this statement is that any fringe group, foreign or domestic, naturally stands its best chance against state military powers by engaging in acts of terrorism. And terrorists like Timothy McVeigh don't need guns to murder 168 people.
The point here is that, putting aside terrorist groups for whom obviously the 2nd Amendment was never meant to be an enabling factor (i.e. people who will engage in lethal combat against innocent, unengaged civilians as opposed to a state military), militias are now obsolete. In fact, as was the case with the Hutaree Militia in Michigan, the FBI is already protecting the nation and its law enforcement officers and government employees by tracking and getting to potentially violent militia groups before they even get the chance to stare down the barrel of a US tank. With the threat of terrorism continually present, whether from persons home or abroad, the only things a bunch of ragtag middle-aged men playing backyard George Washingtons and Paul Reveres are going to harm with their 2nd Amendment rights is innocent people and potentially themselves, and not the Federal government.
If we're going to justify the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, let us at the very least dispense with the notion that the right to own guns has anything to do with anti-government resistance anymore. Let's stop feeding this potentially dangerous fantasy to burgeoning militia groups all over the country before people start getting killed for all the wrong reasons.
PMB will post again shortly on the Constitution, the early American government, the 'founders,' and the myriad ways in which contemporary anti-government populism evinces a harmful and regrettable ignorance of US history.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Now that we've seen a dramatic increase in US 'militia groups,' groups of private citizens who tend to stockpile arms and gather to conduct psuedo-military training exercises in preparation to defend themselves or their states against the US Federal government, PMB is compelled to comment briefly on how this phenomenon relates to the 2nd Amendment.
While many gun rights activists argue that the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is an essential freedom whose primary function is to allow individuals to defend themselves and their families against criminals and allow for the use of guns in sporting or hunting pursuits, another prominent segment of activists views the 2nd Amendment primarily as a means of empowering the people for an uprising against a tyrannical government. While the former view is probably a more tenable justification for the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, the latter is almost certainly more Constitutionally valid. Considering the language of the amendment together with its historical context--the Revolutionary War against tyrannical Britain, fought and won largely by a militia-style army--Constitutional originalists would have to agree that using arms as an aid to populist uprising against an overreaching government was the main purpose or spirit of the 2nd Amendment. For the rest of us who think that divining a singular and definitive meaning or notion of intent from the text of the Constitution is about as ridiculous as assuming that everyone who's ever read Macbeth ought to have come to the exact same conclusions about its 'meaning' and Shakespeare's 'intent,' one can still assume with some confidence based on the text and the history that, indeed, the clause 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State' either imposes a condition on 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' (for the forming of a militia) or it constitutes clear evidence of an 'amplifying example' of the importance of the right to bear arms, the example of a militia being considered extremely important (thus 'amplifying') to those who drafted the amendment. This is to suggest that the 2nd Amendment pertains primarily to the formation of militia groups as a check against tyranny not because Constitutional intent is always clear, but rather because a piece of it happens to be rather clear in this particular case. Whether one subscribes to the idea that the 'militia clause' is qualifying or amplifying, the idea of the formation of a militia and its relation to the right to bear arms is central nonetheless.
What does this mean for the 2nd Amendment in the 21at century?
While PMB is not attempting here to argue for the sheer abolition or recusal of the 2nd Amendment, it's time to reconsider the whole militia thing.
As Obama and Medvedev's recent arms reduction treaty reduces the terms of nuclear weapons deployment down to no more than 1550 warheads or 700 launchers, the idea of 'a well regulated militia' with the ability to 'keep and bear arms' becomes perhaps slightly less ridiculous than it already was in the 1990s, when the US and Russia were operating with literally thousands of nuclear warheads. Of course, nuclear warheads really are just the tip of the 21st-century munitions and combat technology iceberg. Without going into anymore embarrassingly obvious details, suffice it to say that no militia acquiring any number of legal arms stands a shred of a chance against the US military. Perhaps the dark underside of this statement is that any fringe group, foreign or domestic, naturally stands its best chance against state military powers by engaging in acts of terrorism. And terrorists like Timothy McVeigh don't need guns to murder 168 people.
The point here is that, putting aside terrorist groups for whom obviously the 2nd Amendment was never meant to be an enabling factor (i.e. people who will engage in lethal combat against innocent, unengaged civilians as opposed to a state military), militias are now obsolete. In fact, as was the case with the Hutaree Militia in Michigan, the FBI is already protecting the nation and its law enforcement officers and government employees by tracking and getting to potentially violent militia groups before they even get the chance to stare down the barrel of a US tank. With the threat of terrorism continually present, whether from persons home or abroad, the only things a bunch of ragtag middle-aged men playing backyard George Washingtons and Paul Reveres are going to harm with their 2nd Amendment rights is innocent people and potentially themselves, and not the Federal government.
If we're going to justify the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, let us at the very least dispense with the notion that the right to own guns has anything to do with anti-government resistance anymore. Let's stop feeding this potentially dangerous fantasy to burgeoning militia groups all over the country before people start getting killed for all the wrong reasons.
PMB will post again shortly on the Constitution, the early American government, the 'founders,' and the myriad ways in which contemporary anti-government populism evinces a harmful and regrettable ignorance of US history.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Negative Equity and the Free Market
As unemployment figures improve, investment banks are back to profiting, bailout funds have been repaid at a surplus, and the US economy begins to glimpse a turnaround, there remains a particularly scary issue that still jeopardizes the US economy on a fundamental level: the mortgage crisis, which had a prominent hand in effecting this deep recession, remains unresolved. For this reason, the brilliant Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, has warned and continues to warn that we need to improve (or, rather, establish) consumer protections to help stabilize the housing market. For warren, the mortgage issue is the most pressing issue on the table right now.
Part of the problem is that, even taking the real estate industry's figures, about 25 percent, or over 11 million US mortgages, as of late February are in negative equity. Translation: for these "underwater" mortgages, consumers owe more in debt on their homes than the actual market value of their homes.
Now consider this, particularly if you are a "free-market" conservative: if the all-powerful and self-correcting free market is based on rational consumer choice as well as the rational commercial pursuit of profit, the combination of which ought to provide consumers with the best types of products they seek, businesses with incentivizing profits, and broader society with the greatest possible amounts of wealth and innovation (however one measures these), then what is the best, most rational choice for consumers whose mortgage debt balances are higher than the values of their homes?
The answer is pretty simple: we wouldn't expect a business to continue to invest capital in a division that looses money year after year; we wouldn't expect a real estate firm to retain "sinking" property on which it makes a continual loss; so of course we shouldn't expect a consumer to keep making monthly mortgage payments to a lender on a debt balance that's worth more than the house itself. To do so would simply be irrational, against the very principles upon which capitalist systems fundamentally rest. A business isn't a charity; but neither is a consumer. And a smart consumer in a negative equity situation has plenty of incentive to simply default on the mortgage, walk away from the home, leave the lender with the debt, save his or her money, and go in with another completely desperate lender on a cheaper home. With so many middle-class American "homeowners" in similar situations and so many lenders in self-created shambles, credit standards will fall (have fallen) and consumers can viably move on from negative equity situations if they have the gall.
What does this tell us?
1) The free-market justification for producing sketchy loan products and financial vehicles is also a justification for underwater consumers to walk away from their debt, ultimately threatening the full-scale collapse of the entire loan industry. Yet the hypocrite free-market conservatives and conservative-supported real estate lobbies have continued to tell constituents to keep paying on their mortgages (to suck it up because it's their fault for making such poor financial decisions in the first place), however irrationally, while using arguments for free-markets and industry deregulation to support the industry in preying on un- or under-informed consumers in the first place. You can't have it both ways, folks.
2) As someone who worked as a government contractor for Housing and Urban Development in the past, specifically on the HUD-1 and Good Faith Estimate mortgage forms, more specifically to fight the real estate lobby and design more user-friendly forms that make it easier for consumers to understand their loan terms and harder for "innovative" lenders to intentionally complicate the forms in order to sneak crucial information past un- or under-informed consumers, PMB can tell you that certain kinds of financial "innovations" are poison. Not only does the brute incentive for profit maximization provide incentive to "innovate" financial vehicles that harm consumers; it also harms the very lending industries that created faulty loan products in the first place, as consumers have been defaulting on their mortgages left and right.
Following from Elizabeth Warren's recommendations, the only way out of this mess of self-contradictory, "free-market" illogic is proper consumer protection and financial and lending industry regulation. One would have to be a fool not to support basic regulations that not only save consumers from poison products, but, perhaps more importantly, save industry producers from themselves and their own shortsightend, unbounded avarice.
Part of the problem is that, even taking the real estate industry's figures, about 25 percent, or over 11 million US mortgages, as of late February are in negative equity. Translation: for these "underwater" mortgages, consumers owe more in debt on their homes than the actual market value of their homes.
Now consider this, particularly if you are a "free-market" conservative: if the all-powerful and self-correcting free market is based on rational consumer choice as well as the rational commercial pursuit of profit, the combination of which ought to provide consumers with the best types of products they seek, businesses with incentivizing profits, and broader society with the greatest possible amounts of wealth and innovation (however one measures these), then what is the best, most rational choice for consumers whose mortgage debt balances are higher than the values of their homes?
The answer is pretty simple: we wouldn't expect a business to continue to invest capital in a division that looses money year after year; we wouldn't expect a real estate firm to retain "sinking" property on which it makes a continual loss; so of course we shouldn't expect a consumer to keep making monthly mortgage payments to a lender on a debt balance that's worth more than the house itself. To do so would simply be irrational, against the very principles upon which capitalist systems fundamentally rest. A business isn't a charity; but neither is a consumer. And a smart consumer in a negative equity situation has plenty of incentive to simply default on the mortgage, walk away from the home, leave the lender with the debt, save his or her money, and go in with another completely desperate lender on a cheaper home. With so many middle-class American "homeowners" in similar situations and so many lenders in self-created shambles, credit standards will fall (have fallen) and consumers can viably move on from negative equity situations if they have the gall.
What does this tell us?
1) The free-market justification for producing sketchy loan products and financial vehicles is also a justification for underwater consumers to walk away from their debt, ultimately threatening the full-scale collapse of the entire loan industry. Yet the hypocrite free-market conservatives and conservative-supported real estate lobbies have continued to tell constituents to keep paying on their mortgages (to suck it up because it's their fault for making such poor financial decisions in the first place), however irrationally, while using arguments for free-markets and industry deregulation to support the industry in preying on un- or under-informed consumers in the first place. You can't have it both ways, folks.
2) As someone who worked as a government contractor for Housing and Urban Development in the past, specifically on the HUD-1 and Good Faith Estimate mortgage forms, more specifically to fight the real estate lobby and design more user-friendly forms that make it easier for consumers to understand their loan terms and harder for "innovative" lenders to intentionally complicate the forms in order to sneak crucial information past un- or under-informed consumers, PMB can tell you that certain kinds of financial "innovations" are poison. Not only does the brute incentive for profit maximization provide incentive to "innovate" financial vehicles that harm consumers; it also harms the very lending industries that created faulty loan products in the first place, as consumers have been defaulting on their mortgages left and right.
Following from Elizabeth Warren's recommendations, the only way out of this mess of self-contradictory, "free-market" illogic is proper consumer protection and financial and lending industry regulation. One would have to be a fool not to support basic regulations that not only save consumers from poison products, but, perhaps more importantly, save industry producers from themselves and their own shortsightend, unbounded avarice.
Friday, April 16, 2010
A Life Worth Living?
From Joseph Epstein in Notre Dame Magazine:
"In the last stage of life, even with the cheeriest outlook, it isn’t easy to keep thoughts of death at bay. Consider, though, the advice of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), who lent his name to the school of Epicureanism but who was, in my reading of him, the world’s first shrink. Epicureanism is generally understood to be about indulging fleshly pleasures, especially those of food and drink, but it is, I think, more correctly understood as the search for serenity.
Epicurus, who met with friends (disciples, really) in his garden in Athens, devised a program to rid the world of anxiety. His method, like most methods of personal reform, had set steps, in this case four such steps. Here they are:
Step One: Do not believe in God, or in the gods. They most likely do not exist, and even if they did, it is preposterous to believe that they could possibly care, that they are watching over you and keeping a strict accounting of your behavior.
Step Two: Don’t worry about death. Death, be assured, is oblivion, a condition not different from your life before you were born: an utter blank. Forget about heaven, forget about hell; neither exists — after death there is only the Big O (oblivion) and the Big N (nullity), nothing, nada, zilch. Get your mind off it.
Step Three: Forget, as best you are able, about pain. Pain is either brief, and will therefore soon enough diminish and be gone; or, if it doesn’t disappear, if it lingers and intensifies, death cannot be far away, and so your worries are over here, too, for death, as we know, also presents no problem, being nothing more than eternal dark, dreamless sleep.
Step Four: Do not waste your time attempting to acquire exactious luxuries, whose pleasures are sure to be incommensurate with the effort required to gain them. From this it follows that ambition generally — for things, money, fame, power — should also be foresworn. The effort required to obtain them is too great; the game isn’t worth the candle.
To summarize, then: forget about God, death, pain and acquisition, and your worries are over. There you have it, Epicurus’ Four-Step Program to eliminate anxiety and attain serenity. I’ve not kitchen-tested it myself, but my guess is that, if one could bring it off, this program really would work.
But the real question is, even if it did work, would such utter detachment from life, from its large questions and daily dramas, constitute a life rich and complex enough to be worth living? Many people would say yes. I am myself not among them."
"In the last stage of life, even with the cheeriest outlook, it isn’t easy to keep thoughts of death at bay. Consider, though, the advice of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), who lent his name to the school of Epicureanism but who was, in my reading of him, the world’s first shrink. Epicureanism is generally understood to be about indulging fleshly pleasures, especially those of food and drink, but it is, I think, more correctly understood as the search for serenity.
Epicurus, who met with friends (disciples, really) in his garden in Athens, devised a program to rid the world of anxiety. His method, like most methods of personal reform, had set steps, in this case four such steps. Here they are:
Step One: Do not believe in God, or in the gods. They most likely do not exist, and even if they did, it is preposterous to believe that they could possibly care, that they are watching over you and keeping a strict accounting of your behavior.
Step Two: Don’t worry about death. Death, be assured, is oblivion, a condition not different from your life before you were born: an utter blank. Forget about heaven, forget about hell; neither exists — after death there is only the Big O (oblivion) and the Big N (nullity), nothing, nada, zilch. Get your mind off it.
Step Three: Forget, as best you are able, about pain. Pain is either brief, and will therefore soon enough diminish and be gone; or, if it doesn’t disappear, if it lingers and intensifies, death cannot be far away, and so your worries are over here, too, for death, as we know, also presents no problem, being nothing more than eternal dark, dreamless sleep.
Step Four: Do not waste your time attempting to acquire exactious luxuries, whose pleasures are sure to be incommensurate with the effort required to gain them. From this it follows that ambition generally — for things, money, fame, power — should also be foresworn. The effort required to obtain them is too great; the game isn’t worth the candle.
To summarize, then: forget about God, death, pain and acquisition, and your worries are over. There you have it, Epicurus’ Four-Step Program to eliminate anxiety and attain serenity. I’ve not kitchen-tested it myself, but my guess is that, if one could bring it off, this program really would work.
But the real question is, even if it did work, would such utter detachment from life, from its large questions and daily dramas, constitute a life rich and complex enough to be worth living? Many people would say yes. I am myself not among them."
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Basic Economics for Befuddled Humanities Profs And Higher Ed. Policy 'Experts'
Let's consider the unfortunate job market for English professors:
There is a market oversupply. This means that the quantity of prospective English professors willing to sell labor is greater than the quantity of demand for that labor. In this scenario the "price" of academic labor for English professors--salary and benefits--is relatively low, as consumers of that labor--universities--can pick and choose from a "consumer-friendly" group of highly qualified individuals, the top end of which are relatively interchangeable. And, naturally, since the academic labor market for English professors has more sellers than buyers, much of the "stock" will remain "left on the shelf to rot" (un- or under-employed). This labor market is highly inelastic. This means that, despite the sinking of the "price" of labor to embarrassing levels for the highly-educated, high-achieving, and generally elite members of a profession that still carries a lot of cache and social capital, the supply quantity of those willing to sell their labor in the market remains freakishly high.
So when professors talk about what to say to their poor, forsaken humanities graduate students, and how to address the market oversupply, there are two basic considerations they need to bear in mind (only the first of which they actually do bear in mind, sometimes and sort of):
1) When we're talking about academic labor in the humanities, there's another supply-demand relationship that must be accounted for: student demand for humanities courses, relative to the university's willingness to supply the appropriate resources (largely consisting of academic labor--professors running courses) to meet that demand. Currently, in many cases, the humanities suffer, from professors to students, because universities cut back on their supply of labor to cut costs, and stretch what labor they have beyond what is reasonable for optimal learning and teaching situations. Even with a decline in student demand for humanities courses, universities have slashed budgets and tenure lines in profitable English departments well beyond the demand reduction to save money, simply because they can get away with it. When a a biochemistry professor says "I need a lab to teach these students," the university can't just say "tough shit pal." But when an English professor says "I can't reasonably teach this material to 100 kids in a lecture hall," the university can and does say "tell your graduate TA to do more grading," or "tough shit pal." In other words, in a shocking paradox, because the cost of resources in this case is human and therefore ambiguously scaled, rather than material and therefore easily and accurately priced, the human capital is considered at once more expendable and more exploitable than the the non-human capital. As a result, one factor in addressing market oversupply is that universities don't properly define or recognize human capital, even though human capital makes up the figurative heart and soul of a university. Universities skimp on the quality of humanities instruction by attempting to squeeze more labor out of one professor instead of hiring another to meet demand--by holding the price of professorial labor low and fixed and simultaneously treating the human labor unit as an endlessly malleable and productive thing. Fixed low price, endless mileage. Sound like a bad used car financing scheme? Nope, it's your modern university.
2) This is what none of the people writing on this subject dare to acknowledge (and it relates to market inelasticity): despite these market realities, much of the reason for oversupply has to do with the basic fact that lots and lots of people always have *DESIRED* and currently do and always will *DESIRE* to enter the academic humanities, more people than the field has ever needed, needs, or will ever need, even in its wildest, most decadent dreams. How about these figures for applications for doctoral degrees in English from a handful of strong institutions (for which PMB could get admission stats readily):
From Columbia University's English department website: "The department typically receives around 700 applications per year for about 18 places in our sequential program."
From Oxford University's English department website: "Admission to the graduate school is very competitive. For entry in 2009 we received over 650 applications from candidates who were, or were about to be, graduates from universities all over the world."
From UC Berkeley's English department website: "The English Department typically receives between 450-550 applications each year and offers admission to 40-45 applicants, of whom 18-20 enter the program."
From Brown University's English department website: "We receive approximately three hundred applications each year, and we are able to offer admission to approximately 18 of those applicants."
Lots of people apply for these programs because they want to for a whole slew of reasons above and beyond the feasibility of academic careers. In this respect, humanities fields like English are profoundly successful, drawing a vast oversupply of highly competitive students with consistency through economically difficult and disastrous times. PMB isn't sure that this is plainly a good thing, considering the smoldering pyre of dashed hopes upon which countless humanities PhDs lay themselves year after year; but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this problem isn't in part a function of how attractive these fields are, and how interesting and relevant the work is.
There is a market oversupply. This means that the quantity of prospective English professors willing to sell labor is greater than the quantity of demand for that labor. In this scenario the "price" of academic labor for English professors--salary and benefits--is relatively low, as consumers of that labor--universities--can pick and choose from a "consumer-friendly" group of highly qualified individuals, the top end of which are relatively interchangeable. And, naturally, since the academic labor market for English professors has more sellers than buyers, much of the "stock" will remain "left on the shelf to rot" (un- or under-employed). This labor market is highly inelastic. This means that, despite the sinking of the "price" of labor to embarrassing levels for the highly-educated, high-achieving, and generally elite members of a profession that still carries a lot of cache and social capital, the supply quantity of those willing to sell their labor in the market remains freakishly high.
So when professors talk about what to say to their poor, forsaken humanities graduate students, and how to address the market oversupply, there are two basic considerations they need to bear in mind (only the first of which they actually do bear in mind, sometimes and sort of):
1) When we're talking about academic labor in the humanities, there's another supply-demand relationship that must be accounted for: student demand for humanities courses, relative to the university's willingness to supply the appropriate resources (largely consisting of academic labor--professors running courses) to meet that demand. Currently, in many cases, the humanities suffer, from professors to students, because universities cut back on their supply of labor to cut costs, and stretch what labor they have beyond what is reasonable for optimal learning and teaching situations. Even with a decline in student demand for humanities courses, universities have slashed budgets and tenure lines in profitable English departments well beyond the demand reduction to save money, simply because they can get away with it. When a a biochemistry professor says "I need a lab to teach these students," the university can't just say "tough shit pal." But when an English professor says "I can't reasonably teach this material to 100 kids in a lecture hall," the university can and does say "tell your graduate TA to do more grading," or "tough shit pal." In other words, in a shocking paradox, because the cost of resources in this case is human and therefore ambiguously scaled, rather than material and therefore easily and accurately priced, the human capital is considered at once more expendable and more exploitable than the the non-human capital. As a result, one factor in addressing market oversupply is that universities don't properly define or recognize human capital, even though human capital makes up the figurative heart and soul of a university. Universities skimp on the quality of humanities instruction by attempting to squeeze more labor out of one professor instead of hiring another to meet demand--by holding the price of professorial labor low and fixed and simultaneously treating the human labor unit as an endlessly malleable and productive thing. Fixed low price, endless mileage. Sound like a bad used car financing scheme? Nope, it's your modern university.
2) This is what none of the people writing on this subject dare to acknowledge (and it relates to market inelasticity): despite these market realities, much of the reason for oversupply has to do with the basic fact that lots and lots of people always have *DESIRED* and currently do and always will *DESIRE* to enter the academic humanities, more people than the field has ever needed, needs, or will ever need, even in its wildest, most decadent dreams. How about these figures for applications for doctoral degrees in English from a handful of strong institutions (for which PMB could get admission stats readily):
From Columbia University's English department website: "The department typically receives around 700 applications per year for about 18 places in our sequential program."
From Oxford University's English department website: "Admission to the graduate school is very competitive. For entry in 2009 we received over 650 applications from candidates who were, or were about to be, graduates from universities all over the world."
From UC Berkeley's English department website: "The English Department typically receives between 450-550 applications each year and offers admission to 40-45 applicants, of whom 18-20 enter the program."
From Brown University's English department website: "We receive approximately three hundred applications each year, and we are able to offer admission to approximately 18 of those applicants."
Lots of people apply for these programs because they want to for a whole slew of reasons above and beyond the feasibility of academic careers. In this respect, humanities fields like English are profoundly successful, drawing a vast oversupply of highly competitive students with consistency through economically difficult and disastrous times. PMB isn't sure that this is plainly a good thing, considering the smoldering pyre of dashed hopes upon which countless humanities PhDs lay themselves year after year; but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this problem isn't in part a function of how attractive these fields are, and how interesting and relevant the work is.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Most Crucial of 21st Century "Humanities" Skills: Perseverance
Few things are more insulting to PMB than the approach that so many seem to have these days toward career guidance for humanities PhD students. You can say "Bear, why don't you have any legs," and the bear will not stir. You can say "Nice claws, one is falling off," and he won't so much as crinkle his nose. But don't say what Diane Auer Jones wrote in the Chronicle this week. While some offer ways of reconceptualizing the academic profession and its approach to training young humanities scholars for ever-dwindling academic careers with hopes of addressing the market oversupply, and others are willing (thankfully) to get feisty with those who propagate ignorance and misconceptions about what humanities programs do and don't do for a university, there remains always an undercurrent: humanities PhDs must be prepared for more than just an academic career, since academic careers are awfully hard to come by.
The thing is, humanities PhD students are getting all the "job skills training" and more by just doing what they do already. If you take a look at your preferred job listings source, be it a trade or professional website, Craigslist, an internal job postings e-mail at your current organization, a university careers services job board, etc., you'll find the same lists of the same general, desirable criteria for a broad range of different jobs: "excellent" writing ability, verbal/oral communication skills; ability to work in a team environment and work well with others; highly organized and detail-oriented; self-motivated; ability to work on and manage deadlines; wide range of computer and software proficiencies, etc.
Of course all of these "skills" are rigorously cultivated over the roughly six years it takes to earn a doctorate in the humanities. And as someone who has worked in "high-end" industry (consulting, finance, etc.) before, PMB understands that the "latent" training of humanities PhD students in these "skills" quite often exceeds that which is acquired in industry jobs via job training and project management. Of course the continual writing and revising that is part of a large-scale research project, culminating in a piece of original research that merits a doctoral degree, tackles several of the most important job "skills" on employers' lists: certainly these projects require outstanding writing ability, careful revision, constant and often tactically difficult communication with a committee of dissertation advisors and readers, collaboration with fellow students and researchers, the meticulous management and organization of vast amounts of information (much of it changing frequently) over long periods of time, meeting regular deadlines, and having the fortitude and the motivation to stick through it all, despite poverty-level pay for Wall St. working hours, and grim job prospects. Add to that the growing importance of "digital" humanities resources, familiarity with databases and online information retrieval, and the generally considerable role of software aids in academic research. Add to that the communication and organization skills associated with regular presentations at conferences and in university-based seminars and the regular teaching and grading of undergraduate students. Add to that department service responsibilities, like sitting on faculty hiring committees, organizing and running conferences, and in some cases serving on wider department and/or university academic committees.
What other kinds of "skills" do people like Diane Auer Jones think we should be cultivating?
The bottom line is that most humanities PhD students, many of whom have already worked in other careers, both possess and actively cultivate large sets of directly vocational skills that apply to both academic and nonacademic professions. The very notion of a deep chasm between academic and nonacademic work is more a mirage than not. There is no "Ivory Tower." In other words, the skills are largely transferable. The perception that they're not is the real problem; not that humanities academics aren't getting what they need to branch out and have successful nonacademic careers if the academic gig doesn't work out. Commentaries like that of Ms. Auer Jones suffer from a crude causal fallacy: they assume that because lots of humanities PhD students are still plugging away at academic careers that aren't there, and an oversupply still exists, and they're not looking to get into other (nonacademic) careers, it must be because of their unmarketability (a problem which must then be remedied by doctoral training methods and emphases). No, no, no. People plug away at academic careers in the humanities, despite dismal job prospects, because they really really really want to have an academic career in the humanities; because many of them left other careers precisely to seek an academic career in the humanities; because that's why they're in a humanities PhD program in the first place. They don't need "skills." They need to get organized in collectives and lobbying groups, get feisty, and get ready for a long battle with ignorance: the misconception that their work doesn't have value; that they're not prepared to make measurable and immeasurable contributions to the world; that humanities work should thrive on light consumption in Ivory Towers rather than down and dirty politics, like everything else. Roll up your sleeves, people.
The thing is, humanities PhD students are getting all the "job skills training" and more by just doing what they do already. If you take a look at your preferred job listings source, be it a trade or professional website, Craigslist, an internal job postings e-mail at your current organization, a university careers services job board, etc., you'll find the same lists of the same general, desirable criteria for a broad range of different jobs: "excellent" writing ability, verbal/oral communication skills; ability to work in a team environment and work well with others; highly organized and detail-oriented; self-motivated; ability to work on and manage deadlines; wide range of computer and software proficiencies, etc.
Of course all of these "skills" are rigorously cultivated over the roughly six years it takes to earn a doctorate in the humanities. And as someone who has worked in "high-end" industry (consulting, finance, etc.) before, PMB understands that the "latent" training of humanities PhD students in these "skills" quite often exceeds that which is acquired in industry jobs via job training and project management. Of course the continual writing and revising that is part of a large-scale research project, culminating in a piece of original research that merits a doctoral degree, tackles several of the most important job "skills" on employers' lists: certainly these projects require outstanding writing ability, careful revision, constant and often tactically difficult communication with a committee of dissertation advisors and readers, collaboration with fellow students and researchers, the meticulous management and organization of vast amounts of information (much of it changing frequently) over long periods of time, meeting regular deadlines, and having the fortitude and the motivation to stick through it all, despite poverty-level pay for Wall St. working hours, and grim job prospects. Add to that the growing importance of "digital" humanities resources, familiarity with databases and online information retrieval, and the generally considerable role of software aids in academic research. Add to that the communication and organization skills associated with regular presentations at conferences and in university-based seminars and the regular teaching and grading of undergraduate students. Add to that department service responsibilities, like sitting on faculty hiring committees, organizing and running conferences, and in some cases serving on wider department and/or university academic committees.
What other kinds of "skills" do people like Diane Auer Jones think we should be cultivating?
The bottom line is that most humanities PhD students, many of whom have already worked in other careers, both possess and actively cultivate large sets of directly vocational skills that apply to both academic and nonacademic professions. The very notion of a deep chasm between academic and nonacademic work is more a mirage than not. There is no "Ivory Tower." In other words, the skills are largely transferable. The perception that they're not is the real problem; not that humanities academics aren't getting what they need to branch out and have successful nonacademic careers if the academic gig doesn't work out. Commentaries like that of Ms. Auer Jones suffer from a crude causal fallacy: they assume that because lots of humanities PhD students are still plugging away at academic careers that aren't there, and an oversupply still exists, and they're not looking to get into other (nonacademic) careers, it must be because of their unmarketability (a problem which must then be remedied by doctoral training methods and emphases). No, no, no. People plug away at academic careers in the humanities, despite dismal job prospects, because they really really really want to have an academic career in the humanities; because many of them left other careers precisely to seek an academic career in the humanities; because that's why they're in a humanities PhD program in the first place. They don't need "skills." They need to get organized in collectives and lobbying groups, get feisty, and get ready for a long battle with ignorance: the misconception that their work doesn't have value; that they're not prepared to make measurable and immeasurable contributions to the world; that humanities work should thrive on light consumption in Ivory Towers rather than down and dirty politics, like everything else. Roll up your sleeves, people.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Toward an End to Sexual Violence
PMB wrote a speech, which was read recently at a Take Back the Night event organized by the law schools at Rutgers and Seton Hall. The impetus for this speech was PMB's growing discontentment over the various forms of "unwanted sex" that occur frequently among friends and acquaintances, among educated people, in university settings. This is not to suggest that these are the only conditions for unwanted sex, but rather that the problem persists among people who are being both taught to know better and socialized into university cultures that value both excessive drinking and sexual conquest, generally at the same time. PMB's speech appears below:
Imagine: You’re having dinner with a group of friends after a long and stressful week. This is a dynamic group of people you’ve known and trusted for years, people like yourself: some are lawyers, some teachers or professors, some community organizers or local leaders. As always, your dinner conversation is lively and stimulating.
The conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations from your college days, when a woman and a man, both of whom have had a lot to drink, go home together and share a bed. What happens when one or both parties don’t remember what happened? What happens if sex happened?
You’re educated people. You believe in fairness and equality. You believe in respect, for yourself, for your body, for the bodies of others. You would never engage anyone in unwanted sex, let alone a friend or a colleague.
But what if sex happened? She was at the bar, and then she was in her bed. She woke up and you were there. Not just there, but there. You barely remember it yourself. She’s hurt; she’s sick. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t want it. You couldn’t read her mind; you couldn’t read your own after all those drinks. Now a person is suffering in real life, in real time. Who is responsible? This is a disaster. Is it natural or man-made?
She says: If you’re not sure she wants it, then don’t proceed. He says: But how could I ever be sure? She says: It’s your responsibility to be sure. He says: What about her responsibility? Are we not equals? She says: It’s different for her than it is for you. It’s a different experience. You couldn’t understand. He says: That’s not fair.
For all of us the ability to abstract and articulate the meaning of things like fairness and equality will be essential to our getting by in this world. For many of us this ability will sustain our careers. Yet we can’t afford loose sight of the crude anatomical facts of this material world: the facts that no theory of fairness or justice or equality will ever change. Gender equality between sexes does not produce anatomical equivalence. We don’t need to go into the mechanics of sex between a woman and a man to understand, I hope, why a man must bear particular responsibility for how he wields his anatomy. Perhaps this is unfair; but this is the unalterable reality. So, too, is it reality that a man will never have the experience of birthing a child, or the ability to make decisions about the body that carries his child to term. In some ways this is also unfair. But what jurisdiction does fairness have over such circumstances?
This is a plea from one man to all men: Imagine yourselves having dinner with a close group of friends at the end of a long and stressful week. Imagine that the conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations of unremembered or unwanted sex—the kind that just happens. Imagine sitting at a table full of friends talking in the hypothetical about what’s fair and what’s just and where responsibility lies. Then imagine that not everyone around the table is speaking hypothetically.
This is a plea to men, men who would never do such a thing, well-meaning men, respectful men, strong men, educated men who know better, who can tell you all about fairness and justice and equality: it’s one thing to take responsibility for your arguments, but quite another to take responsibility for your reality. Unwanted sex is not a theoretical matter. What you would do is inconsequential. What you do or refrain from doing is what makes all the difference in the real lives of real people. Despite what you may think, these scenarios don’t really come down to your personal sense of justice or your richly cultivated ethical sensibility. No, these scenarios come down to the cold mechanics of an act, an act that, regardless of intent, accumulates significance in the future-time of an individual like the turning of a gear and the click of a second hand in the momentum of time: once it happens, it can’t be rewound. Once it happens, the reasons behind its happening are immaterial. Only the happenings remain—the bodies—the breathing artifacts of a bad decision, an unfortunate click.
Today I struggle to make sense of what happened to a loved one who passed out in her bed one night and woke up with a male acquaintance on top of her, having sex with her, taking her lack of consciousness as a sign of consent. Or maybe the fact that they chatted earlier that evening was a sign of consent. Or maybe she was shifting in bed, or talking in her sleep, and those were signs of consent. Maybe he was so drunk that he imagined her consent. Maybe she said “I want you to go,” and he missed the “to go” part. Somewhere embedded in the strange semantics of drunkenness, there’s an excuse for everything, it seems. But men: it’s our grave responsibility to be sure. Not hazy, not wishful, not lingering around in a drunk woman’s room at the end of the night. This isn’t a hypothetical. Once you’ve crossed that line, no matter how justified you think you probably were, there really is no turning back.
Imagine: You’re having dinner with a group of friends after a long and stressful week. This is a dynamic group of people you’ve known and trusted for years, people like yourself: some are lawyers, some teachers or professors, some community organizers or local leaders. As always, your dinner conversation is lively and stimulating.
The conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations from your college days, when a woman and a man, both of whom have had a lot to drink, go home together and share a bed. What happens when one or both parties don’t remember what happened? What happens if sex happened?
You’re educated people. You believe in fairness and equality. You believe in respect, for yourself, for your body, for the bodies of others. You would never engage anyone in unwanted sex, let alone a friend or a colleague.
But what if sex happened? She was at the bar, and then she was in her bed. She woke up and you were there. Not just there, but there. You barely remember it yourself. She’s hurt; she’s sick. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t want it. You couldn’t read her mind; you couldn’t read your own after all those drinks. Now a person is suffering in real life, in real time. Who is responsible? This is a disaster. Is it natural or man-made?
She says: If you’re not sure she wants it, then don’t proceed. He says: But how could I ever be sure? She says: It’s your responsibility to be sure. He says: What about her responsibility? Are we not equals? She says: It’s different for her than it is for you. It’s a different experience. You couldn’t understand. He says: That’s not fair.
For all of us the ability to abstract and articulate the meaning of things like fairness and equality will be essential to our getting by in this world. For many of us this ability will sustain our careers. Yet we can’t afford loose sight of the crude anatomical facts of this material world: the facts that no theory of fairness or justice or equality will ever change. Gender equality between sexes does not produce anatomical equivalence. We don’t need to go into the mechanics of sex between a woman and a man to understand, I hope, why a man must bear particular responsibility for how he wields his anatomy. Perhaps this is unfair; but this is the unalterable reality. So, too, is it reality that a man will never have the experience of birthing a child, or the ability to make decisions about the body that carries his child to term. In some ways this is also unfair. But what jurisdiction does fairness have over such circumstances?
This is a plea from one man to all men: Imagine yourselves having dinner with a close group of friends at the end of a long and stressful week. Imagine that the conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations of unremembered or unwanted sex—the kind that just happens. Imagine sitting at a table full of friends talking in the hypothetical about what’s fair and what’s just and where responsibility lies. Then imagine that not everyone around the table is speaking hypothetically.
This is a plea to men, men who would never do such a thing, well-meaning men, respectful men, strong men, educated men who know better, who can tell you all about fairness and justice and equality: it’s one thing to take responsibility for your arguments, but quite another to take responsibility for your reality. Unwanted sex is not a theoretical matter. What you would do is inconsequential. What you do or refrain from doing is what makes all the difference in the real lives of real people. Despite what you may think, these scenarios don’t really come down to your personal sense of justice or your richly cultivated ethical sensibility. No, these scenarios come down to the cold mechanics of an act, an act that, regardless of intent, accumulates significance in the future-time of an individual like the turning of a gear and the click of a second hand in the momentum of time: once it happens, it can’t be rewound. Once it happens, the reasons behind its happening are immaterial. Only the happenings remain—the bodies—the breathing artifacts of a bad decision, an unfortunate click.
Today I struggle to make sense of what happened to a loved one who passed out in her bed one night and woke up with a male acquaintance on top of her, having sex with her, taking her lack of consciousness as a sign of consent. Or maybe the fact that they chatted earlier that evening was a sign of consent. Or maybe she was shifting in bed, or talking in her sleep, and those were signs of consent. Maybe he was so drunk that he imagined her consent. Maybe she said “I want you to go,” and he missed the “to go” part. Somewhere embedded in the strange semantics of drunkenness, there’s an excuse for everything, it seems. But men: it’s our grave responsibility to be sure. Not hazy, not wishful, not lingering around in a drunk woman’s room at the end of the night. This isn’t a hypothetical. Once you’ve crossed that line, no matter how justified you think you probably were, there really is no turning back.
Friday, April 2, 2010
The Catholic Church and Pedophilia
PMB sees fit to preface any discussion of pedophilia with a simple challenge: what assumptions underlie our assumption that the crime of pedophilia is so much worse than other kinds of violent crime? Does pedophilia draw the better part of our outrage because it is a crime against the defenseless? Against the innocent? Is it worse than sexually assaulting an adult? Human trafficking? Torture? Murder? Beating a spouse? Is it worse than pushing drugs on children? Because it's a crime of a sexual nature? Because we're scared of dirty old men? Because we should be?
It is not PMB's aim to apologize for pedophilia, or to justify it, or to de-prioritize it in terms of policy or jurisprudence. PMB only wants to raise the question in an age in which the abundant media already prioritize youth and innocence, perhaps not for all the right reasons: when a pretty blond girl goes missing, an entire nation will hold vigil; when a middle-aged black man is shot dead in a Baltimore alley for $12.55 and a half-empty pack of cigarettes, it's just another Tuesday. We have entire movements dedicated to the "salvation" of unborn children so much so that they're willing to take the lives of doctors with their own families and their own children. When a young soldier is photographed maimed and dying somewhere in the Middle East, half of us shield our eyes while the other takes in the images. So young is this soldier; so innocent; too young to look upon. To put it simply, distasteful as it is, many of us already make day-to-day judgments about the relative value of human lives at different stages and in different circumstances. So we might as well question the extent to which similar judgments operate when we try to make sense of tragedies like pedophilia. Take this as a preface and put it aside for now.
We have very reasonable calls from Laurie Fendrich and Christopher Hitchens to address issues of pedophilia within the Catholic Church through secular, legal means, rather than letting the issue languish as an internal matter with the Church, to be sorted out somehow by what many assume is some kind of epic and clandestine Church bureaucracy.
The first thing to keep in mind with respect to this issue is that the Catholic Church is a massive global organization that, despite its ranging influence, is not the all-powerful monolith that many seem to think it is. This means that the Pope can tapdance for the international media all he wants, but he still won't be able to have much influence, a single man from the Vatican, on what goes on among priests at and in between the far corners of the world. As the figurehead of the organization the Pope bears mostly a symbolic responsibility, like that of the CEO of a multinational corporation whose Kuala Lumpur office gets creative with their accounting and sinks the whole ship. When an organization gets so prodigious and rangy, it's just not possible for its chief executive to have a hand in everything that goes on. Catholics in various traditions, from Europe to the Latin countries to Africa, Asia, and the US, have a range of cultural traditions associated with their Catholicism, branching off into sects and participating in varying degrees of mysticism. Despite strong Papal discouragement, for example, some Catholic Filipinos have found ways to safely and cleanly nail themselves to a cross for Lent--literally--walking away afterward with slight wounds and eventual scars, only to practice the ritual again and again in the following years. What can the Pope do about this? Where is his influence?
PMB mentions this not to excuse Benedict XVI, but to draw attention to the fact that cleaning up the pedophilia mess will be primarily the responsibility of secular law enforcement agencies and not the Catholic Church. Many seek to demonize the Catholic Church, and certainly the pedophilia crisis provides lip-smacking fodder for the demonizers; but the secular societies among (or around) us need to deal with the reality and effects of institutionalized religion as it operates within secular society, not apart from it. Whether we affiliate with or participate in the Catholic Church or not, we're all responsible for protecting victims of crime and enforcing the law against criminals. Reducing the issue to a "Catholic" thing as a way of leveraging against the Church politically sends the wrong message to everyone. For the victims of pedophilia, it suggest that secular society is not there to help and support. For the Church, it suggests that it can co-exist with secular society outside of the law and under its own law.
This is not to say that the Catholic Church is without any serious institutional responsibility. Which brings PMB to a final point: the expectation that a flesh-and-blood human being remain both celibate and without intimate companionship (i.e. marriage) for the duration of his or her life is cruel and untenable. PMB has read through much of the Church literature on this subject, and finds it nonetheless a severe problem that the Church expects priests to vow celibacy and marital or romantic solitude in order to enter the profession. Having no sexual or intimate outlet is certainly not an excuse for inappropriate sexual behavior like pedophilia, though it would not surprise PMB at all if instances of pedophilia in the priesthood were drastically reduced by allowing priests to have intimate partners, homosexual or heterosexual, and to marry in either case as well. Certainly PMB is not holding his breath for such a radical change within the Church, or even, in the case of homosexual marriages, within secular society; yet these measures will be necessary at some point, if not already, for the survival of both. For pedophilia isn't the only crisis in the priesthood. Relatively speaking, fewer people are wanting to become priests these days. Perhaps if priests weren't expected to shed their humanity, if such a thing is even possible, to enter the profession, more might want to enter. But this is a topic for another time.
It is not PMB's aim to apologize for pedophilia, or to justify it, or to de-prioritize it in terms of policy or jurisprudence. PMB only wants to raise the question in an age in which the abundant media already prioritize youth and innocence, perhaps not for all the right reasons: when a pretty blond girl goes missing, an entire nation will hold vigil; when a middle-aged black man is shot dead in a Baltimore alley for $12.55 and a half-empty pack of cigarettes, it's just another Tuesday. We have entire movements dedicated to the "salvation" of unborn children so much so that they're willing to take the lives of doctors with their own families and their own children. When a young soldier is photographed maimed and dying somewhere in the Middle East, half of us shield our eyes while the other takes in the images. So young is this soldier; so innocent; too young to look upon. To put it simply, distasteful as it is, many of us already make day-to-day judgments about the relative value of human lives at different stages and in different circumstances. So we might as well question the extent to which similar judgments operate when we try to make sense of tragedies like pedophilia. Take this as a preface and put it aside for now.
We have very reasonable calls from Laurie Fendrich and Christopher Hitchens to address issues of pedophilia within the Catholic Church through secular, legal means, rather than letting the issue languish as an internal matter with the Church, to be sorted out somehow by what many assume is some kind of epic and clandestine Church bureaucracy.
The first thing to keep in mind with respect to this issue is that the Catholic Church is a massive global organization that, despite its ranging influence, is not the all-powerful monolith that many seem to think it is. This means that the Pope can tapdance for the international media all he wants, but he still won't be able to have much influence, a single man from the Vatican, on what goes on among priests at and in between the far corners of the world. As the figurehead of the organization the Pope bears mostly a symbolic responsibility, like that of the CEO of a multinational corporation whose Kuala Lumpur office gets creative with their accounting and sinks the whole ship. When an organization gets so prodigious and rangy, it's just not possible for its chief executive to have a hand in everything that goes on. Catholics in various traditions, from Europe to the Latin countries to Africa, Asia, and the US, have a range of cultural traditions associated with their Catholicism, branching off into sects and participating in varying degrees of mysticism. Despite strong Papal discouragement, for example, some Catholic Filipinos have found ways to safely and cleanly nail themselves to a cross for Lent--literally--walking away afterward with slight wounds and eventual scars, only to practice the ritual again and again in the following years. What can the Pope do about this? Where is his influence?
PMB mentions this not to excuse Benedict XVI, but to draw attention to the fact that cleaning up the pedophilia mess will be primarily the responsibility of secular law enforcement agencies and not the Catholic Church. Many seek to demonize the Catholic Church, and certainly the pedophilia crisis provides lip-smacking fodder for the demonizers; but the secular societies among (or around) us need to deal with the reality and effects of institutionalized religion as it operates within secular society, not apart from it. Whether we affiliate with or participate in the Catholic Church or not, we're all responsible for protecting victims of crime and enforcing the law against criminals. Reducing the issue to a "Catholic" thing as a way of leveraging against the Church politically sends the wrong message to everyone. For the victims of pedophilia, it suggest that secular society is not there to help and support. For the Church, it suggests that it can co-exist with secular society outside of the law and under its own law.
This is not to say that the Catholic Church is without any serious institutional responsibility. Which brings PMB to a final point: the expectation that a flesh-and-blood human being remain both celibate and without intimate companionship (i.e. marriage) for the duration of his or her life is cruel and untenable. PMB has read through much of the Church literature on this subject, and finds it nonetheless a severe problem that the Church expects priests to vow celibacy and marital or romantic solitude in order to enter the profession. Having no sexual or intimate outlet is certainly not an excuse for inappropriate sexual behavior like pedophilia, though it would not surprise PMB at all if instances of pedophilia in the priesthood were drastically reduced by allowing priests to have intimate partners, homosexual or heterosexual, and to marry in either case as well. Certainly PMB is not holding his breath for such a radical change within the Church, or even, in the case of homosexual marriages, within secular society; yet these measures will be necessary at some point, if not already, for the survival of both. For pedophilia isn't the only crisis in the priesthood. Relatively speaking, fewer people are wanting to become priests these days. Perhaps if priests weren't expected to shed their humanity, if such a thing is even possible, to enter the profession, more might want to enter. But this is a topic for another time.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)