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	1	+The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of the affirmative policy vs a competing neg policy option to reduce material oppression.
	2	+The aff deploys the state to learn scenario planning- even if politics is bad, scenario analysis of politics is pedagogically valuable- it enhances creativity, deconstructs biases and teaches advocacy skills
	3	+Barma et al 16 May 2016, Advance Publication Online on 11/6/15, Naazneen Barma, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brent Durbin, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Professor of Government at Smith College, Eric Lorber, JD from UPenn and PhD in Political Science from Duke, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Rachel Whitlark, PhD in Political Science from GWU, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, “‘Imagine a World in Which’: Using Scenarios in Political Science,” International Studies Perspectives 17 (2), pp. 1-19,
	4	+What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science? Scenario analysis is perceived most commonly as a technique for examining the robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers in future states that go beyond conventional extrapolations of current trends, preparing them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and to protect themselves from adverse exogenous shocks. The global petroleum company Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes scenario analysis as the art of considering “what if” questions about possible future worlds. Scenario analysis is thus typically seen as serving the purposes of corporate planning or as a policy tool to be used in combination with simulations of decision making. Yet scenario analysis is not inherently limited to these uses. This section provides a brief overview of the practice of scenario analysis and the motivations underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the technique for political science scholarship and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were created. The Art of Scenario Analysis We characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing current trends in unexpected combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet plausible futures, often referred to as “alternative worlds.” Scenarios are thus explicitly not forecasts or projections based on linear extrapolations of contemporary patterns, and they are not hypothesis-based expert predictions. Nor should they be equated with simulations, which are best characterized as functional representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005). Instead, they are depictions of possible future states of the world, offered together with a narrative of the driving causal forces and potential exogenous shocks that could lead to those futures. Good scenarios thus rely on explicit causal propositions that, independent of one another, are plausible—yet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future worlds. For example, few predicted the dramatic fall in oil prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent driving forces, such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, China’s slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major Middle Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends that—combined with OPEC’s decision not to take concerted action as prices began to decline—came together in an unexpected way. While scenario analysis played a role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are found in corporate futures studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not capturing the rapidly changing environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends were inadequate for anticipating the evolving business environment. Shell-style scenario planning “helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present” (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4). Using scenario thinking, Shell anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position itself for major disruptions in the global petroleum sector. Building on its corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it defines as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another prominent application of scenario thinking is found in the National Intelligence Council’s series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in anticipating and planning for future challenges. These reports present a handful of “alternative worlds” approximately twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and opportunities, and intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical change and its effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and coping with more narrow and immediate challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Fund’s EuroFutures project, which uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German Marshall Fund 2013). Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking.5 Long-term global trends across a number of different realms—social, technological, environmental, economic, and political—combine in often-unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges. Yet the ability of decision makers to imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the policy realm is constrained by their existing mental models and maps. This limitation is exacerbated by well-known cognitive bias tendencies such as groupthink and confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005). The power of scenarios lies in their ability to help individuals break out of conventional modes of thinking and analysis by introducing unusual combinations of trends and deliberate discontinuities in narratives about the future. Imagining alternative future worlds through a structured analytical process enables policymakers to envision and thereby adapt to something altogether different from the known present. Designing Scenarios for Political Science Inquiry The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs. Scenarios are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine how the future political-economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy challenges and opportunities. For example, terrorist organizations are a known threat that have captured the attention of the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore how seemingly unrelated vectors of change—the rise of a new peer competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and nonstate actors in surprising ways, and the destabilizing effects of climate change or infectious disease pandemics—can be useful for illuminating the nature and limits of the terrorist threat in ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized states and groups. By illuminating the potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats, scenario analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding of global politicaleconomic trends and dynamics. The notion of “exogeneity”—so prevalent in social science scholarship—applies to models of reality, not to reality itself. Very simply, scenario analysis can throw into sharp relief often-overlooked yet pressing questions in international affairs that demand focused investigation. Scenarios thus offer, in principle, an innovative tool for developing a political science research agenda. In practice, achieving this objective requires careful tailoring of the approach. The specific scenario analysis technique we outline below was designed and refined to provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-based research questions with contemporary international policy relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating the scenario set described here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the goal; on the contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing theories about global change (e.g., a resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle underpinning the transformation of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was to “simplify, then exaggerate” them, before fleshing out the emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details about the possible pathways to that point filled in second. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree of bias or our own form of groupthink went into construction of the scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare these especially implausible claims and systematic biases.8 An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as the analytical process around them—that of case-centered, structured, focused comparison, intended especially to shed light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005). The use of scenarios is similar to counterfactual analysis in that it modifies certain variables in a given situation in order to analyze the resulting effects (Fearon 1991). Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally retrospective in nature and explore events that did not actually occur in the context of known history, our scenarios are deliberately forward-looking and are designed to explore potential futures that could unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying how individual events might expand or shift the “funnel of choices” available to political actors and thus lead to different historical outcomes (Nye 2005, 68–69), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better illuminate surprising intersections and sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical knowledge. We see scenarios as a complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in international affairs, rather than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other methodological tools. In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are employed, acting as cases for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit “driving forces” which represent hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process itself employs templates (discussed further below) to serve as a graphical representation of a structured, focused investigation and thereby as the research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett 2005). In essence, these templates articulate key observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios and serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Finally, this structured, focused comparison serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario analysis that leads directly to the articulation of new research agendas. The scenario process described here has thus been carefully designed to offer some guidance to policy-oriented graduate students who are otherwise left to the relatively unstructured norms by which political science dissertation ideas are typically developed. The initial articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students might choose topics based on their coursework, their own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research agendas are thus typically developed by looking for “puzzles” in existing research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral students also, understandably, often choose topics that are particularly amenable to garnering research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their funding priorities on extrapolations from what has been important in the recent past—leading to, for example, the prevalence of Japan and Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000s—in the absence of any alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance. The scenario approach to generating research ideas is grounded in the belief that these traditional approaches can be complemented by identifying questions likely to be of great empirical importance in the real world, even if these do not appear as puzzles in existing research programs or as clear extrapolations from past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC envision alternative worlds that could develop in the medium (five to seven year) term and are designed to tease out issues scholars and policymakers may encounter in the relatively near future so that they can begin thinking critically about them now. This timeframe offers a period distant enough from the present as to avoid falling into current events analysis, but not so far into the future as to seem like science fiction. In imagining the worlds in which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for avoiding failures of creativity and for overturning the assumptions that prevent scholars and analysts from anticipating and understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in international affairs.
	5	+No act omission distinction for states means means based theories collapse to consequentialism.
	6	+Sunstein and Vermule 05Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule. The University of Chicago Law School. “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life‐Life Tradeoffs.” JOHN M. OLIN LAW and ECONOMICS WORKING PAPER NO. 239. The Chicago Working Paper Series. March 2005
	7	+In our view, both the argument from causation and the argument from intention go wrong by overlooking the distinctive features of government as a moral agent. Whatever the general status of the act-omission distinction as a matter of moral philosophy,38 the distinction is least impressive when applied to government.39 The most fundamental point is that unlike individuals, governments always and necessarily face a choice distinction does not make a morally relevant difference. Most generally, government is in the business of creating permissions and prohibitions. When it explicitly or implicitly authorizes private action, it is not omitting to do anything, or refusing to act.40 Moreover, the distinction between authorized and unauthorized private actionfor example, private killing—becomes obscure when the government formally forbids private action, but chooses a set of policy instruments that do not adequately or fully discourage it.
	8	+Use particularism- root cause claims and focus on overarching structures ignore application to material injustice.
	9	+Gregory Fernando Pappas 16 Texas AandM University “The Pragmatists’ Approach to Injustice”, The Pluralist Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2016,
	10	+The pragmatists’ approach should be distinguished from nonideal theories whose starting point seems to be the injustices of society at large that have a history and persist through time, where the task of political philosophy is to detect and diagnose the presence of these historical injustices in particular situations of injustice. For example, critical theory today has inherited an approach to social philosophy characteristic of the European tradition that goes back to Rousseau, Marx, Weber, Freud, Marcuse, and others. Accord- ing to Roberto Frega, this tradition takes society to be “intrinsically sick” with a malaise that requires adopting a critical historical stance in order to understand how the systematic sickness affects present social situations. In other words, this approach assumes that¶ a philosophical critique of specific social situations can be accomplished only under the assumption of a broader and full blown critique of soci- ety in its entirety: as a critique of capitalism, of modernity, of western civilization, of rationality itself. The idea of social pathology becomes intelligible only against the background of a philosophy of history or of an anthropology of decline, according to which the distortions of actual social life are but the inevitable consequence of longstanding historical processes. (“Between Pragmatism and Critical Theory” 63)¶ However, this particular approach to injustice is not limited to critical theory. It is present in those Latin American and African American political philosophies that have used and transformed the critical intellectual tools of ¶ critical theory to deal with the problems of injustice in the Americas. For instance, Charles W. Mills claims that the starting point and alternative to the abstractions of ideal theory that masked injustices is to diagnose and rectify a history of an illness—the legacy of white supremacy in our actual society.11 The critical task of revealing this illness is achieved by adopting a historical perspective where the injustices of today are part of a larger historical narrative about the development of modern societies that goes back to how Europeans have progressively dehumanized or subordinated others. Similary, radical feminists as well as Third World scholars, as reaction to the hege- monic Eurocentric paradigms that disguise injustices under the assumption of a universal or objective point of view, have stressed how our knowledge is always situated. This may seem congenial with pragmatism except the locus of the knower and of injustices is often described as power structures located in “global hierarchies” and a “world-system” and not situations.12¶ Pragmatism only questions that we live in History or a “World-System” (as a totality or abstract context) but not that we are in history (lowercase): in a present situation continuous with others where the past weighs heavily in our memories, bodies, habits, structures, and communities. It also does not deny the importance of power structures and seeing the connections be- tween injustices through time, but there is a difference between (a) inquiring into present situations of injustice in order to detect, diagnose, and cure an injustice (a social pathology) across history, and (b) inquiring into the his- tory of a systematic injustice in order to facilitate inquiry into the present unique, context-bound injustice. To capture the legacy of the past on present injustices, we must study history but also seek present evidence of the weight of the past on the present injustice.¶ If injustice is an illness, then the pragmatists’ approach takes as its main focus diagnosing and treating the particular present illness, that is, the particular situation-bound injustice and not a global “social pathology” or some single transhistorical source of injustice. The diagnosis of a particular injustice is not always dependent on adopting a broader critical standpoint of society in its entirety, but even when it is, we must be careful to not forget that such standpoints are useful only for understanding the present evil. The concepts and categories “white supremacy” and “colonialism” can be great tools that can be of planetary significance. One could even argue that they pick out much larger areas of people’s lives and injustices than the categories of class and gender, but in spite of their reach and explanatory theoretical value, they are nothing more than tools to make reference to and ameliorate particular injustices experienced (suffered) in the midst of a particular and unique re- lationship in a situation. No doubt many, but not all, problems of injustice are a consequence of being a member of a group in history, but even in these cases, we cannot a priori assume that injustices are homogeneously equal for all members of that group. Why is this important? The possible pluralism and therefore complexity of a problem of injustice does not always stop at the level of being a member of a historical group or even a member of many groups, as insisted on by intersectional analysis. There may be unique cir- cumstances to particular countries, towns, neighborhoods, institutions, and ultimately situations that we must be open to in a context-sensitive inquiry. If an empirical inquiry is committed to capturing and ameliorating all of the harms in situations of injustice in their raw pretheoretical complexity, then this requires that we try to begin with and return to the concrete, particular, and unique experiences of injustice.¶ Pragmatism agrees with Sally Haslanger’s concern about Charles Mills’s view. She writes: “The goal is not just a theory that is historical (v. ahistori- cal), but is sensitive to historical particularity, i.e., that resists grand causal narratives purporting to give an account of how domination has come about and is perpetuated everywhere and at all times” (1). For “the forces that cause and sustain domination vary tremendously context by context, and there isn’t necessarily a single causal explanation; a theoretical framework that is useful as a basis for political intervention must be highly sensitive to the details of the particular social context” (1).13¶ Although each situation is unique, there are commonalities among the cases that permit inquiry about common causes. We can “formulate tentative general principles from investigation of similar individual cases, and then . . . check the generalizations by applying them to still further cases” (Dewey, Lectures in China 53). But Dewey insists that the focus should be on the indi- vidual case, and was critical of how so many sociopolitical theories are prone to starting and remaining at the level of “sweeping generalizations.” He states that they “fail to focus on the concrete problems which arise in experience, allowing such problems to be buried under their sweeping generalizations” (Lectures in China 53).¶ The lesson pragmatism provides for nonideal theory today is that it must be careful to not reify any injustice as some single historical force for which particular injustice problems are its manifestation or evidence for its exis- tence. Pragmatism welcomes the wisdom and resources of nonideal theories that are historically grounded on actual injustices, but it issues a warning about how they should be understood and implemented. It is, for example, sympathetic to the critical resources found in critical race theory, but with an important qualification. It understands Derrick Bell’s valuable criticism as context-specific to patterns in the practice of American law. Through his inquiry into particular cases and civil rights policies at a particular time and place, Bell learned and proposed certain general principles such as the one of “interest convergence,” that is, “whites will promote racial advantages for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest.”14 But, for pragma- tism, these principles are nothing more than historically grounded tools to use in present problematic situations that call for our analysis, such as deliberation in establishing public policies or making sense of some concrete injustice. The principles are falsifiable and open to revision as we face situation-specific injustices. In testing their adequacy, we need to consider their function in making us see aspects of injustices we would not otherwise appreciate.15
	11	+Institutions are inevitable and learning to pragmatically engage them best facilitates change
	12	+Themba-Nixon 2K – Makani Themba-Nixon, “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing,” Colorlines. Oakland: Jul 31, 2000. Vol. 3, Iss. 2; pg. 12
	13	+In essence, policies are the codification of power relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100 gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint
	14	+
	15	+of what we stand for. Getting It in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how things should be. And then we must be committed to making it so.
	16	+Plan
	17	+Defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic chills on-campus discourse that attempts to criticize Israel or support Palestine
	18	+Emmons 16 Alex Emmons, Senate Responds to Trump-Inspired Anti-Semitism By Targeting Students Who Criticize Israel, The Intercept, December 2 2016
	19	+A draft of the bill obtained by The Intercept encourages the Department of Education to use the State Department’s broad, widely criticized definition of anti-Semitism when investigating schools. That definition, from a 2010 memo, includes as examples of anti-Semitism “delegitimizing” Israel, “demonizing” Israel, “applying double standards” to Israel, and “focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations.” Critics have pointed out that those are political — not racist — positions, shared by a significant number of Jews, and qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. According to the draft, the bill does not adopt the definition as a formal legal standard, it only directs the State Department to “take into consideration” the definition when investigating schools for anti-Semitic discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The memo’s definition — which is widely supported by Israeli advocacy groups — was intended for identifying anti-Semitic groups overseas. Even then, it came with caveats. Criticisms of Israel are only examples of possible anti-Semitism “taking into account the overall context,” and the memo concludes: “However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.” Attempts to adopt the definition as a standard for campus censorship have drawn criticism from civil rights groups, free speech advocates, newspapers, hundreds of academics, and even one of the definition’s crafters, who wrote a column last year arguing it should not be applied to campuses. The bill approved by the Senate on Thursday was supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish Federations of North America, and the Anti-Defamation League. “The definition will have a severe chilling effect on campuses, and that is the explicit goal of the Israel advocacy organizations who promote it,” said Liz Jackson, an attorney with the group Palestine Legal. “Student activists for Palestinian rights already operate in a repressive environment. If this bill passes, they will face the specter of federal investigation simply for engaging in criticism of the Israeli government’s abusive policies.” Campus activists are being subject to an increasingly broad censorship effort by Israeli-allied groups. Each year, Palestine Legal documents hundreds of instances of obstruction, censorship, or punishment of pro-Palestinian activism at colleges and universities. In December 2015, for example, one student at George Washington University was ordered by campus police to remove a Palestinian flag from her window, and threatened with further disciplinary action. At other campuses, students have been suspended or threatened with expulsion for demonstrating against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The University of Illinois in 2014 fired a tenure-track professor for tweeting about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Filing complaints with the Department of Education has been a favored tactic of groups including the Zionist Organization of America and the Brandeis Center, which have written letters to the department alleging that events like demonstrations and film screenings amount to “harassment” or “intimidation,” and create a “hostile environment on the basis of national origin” for Jewish students on campus.
	20	+Thus, the plan Resolved: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict any constitutionally protected speech that criticizes the State of Israel.
	21	+Volokh 16 Eugene Volokh, teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation, “University of California Board of Regents is wrong about ‘anti-Zionism’ on campus,” The Washington Post, March 16, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/03/16/university-of-california-board-of-regents-is-wrong-about-anti-zionism-on-campus/?utm_term=.cfab0cd93ad6
	22	+The University of California Board of Regents has just released its Final Report of the Regents Working Group on Principles Against Intolerance, which includes a proposed set of such principles. I hope to blog some more about the actual proposal in the coming days, but what has made the news is the passage in the introduction to the report’s “Contextual Statement” that says: Fundamentally, commenters noted that historic manifestations of anti-Semitism have changed and that expressions of anti-Semitism are more coded and difficult to identify. In particular, opposition to Zionism1 often is expressed in ways that are not simply statements of disagreement over politics and policy, but also assertions of prejudice and intolerance toward Jewish people and culture. Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California…. Footnote 1: Merriam Webster defines Zionism as follows: an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel…. The Oxford American Dictionary defines Zionism as follows: A movement for (originally) the reestablishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. I’m ethnically Jewish (I say “ethnically” because I’m not religious), and I support Israel. It’s the one democracy among its neighbors, and for all its flaws it’s doing a pretty good job faced with very difficult circumstances. Whatever one might say about whether Israel should have been created in 1948, it’s there, and undoing that decision would be a disaster in many ways. And I do think that a good deal of anti-Zionism is indeed anti-Semitic. But I think the regents are flat wrong to say that “anti-Zionism” has “no place at the University of California.” Even though they’re not outright banning anti-Zionist speech, but rather trying to sharply condemn it, I think such statements by the regents chill debate, especially by university employees and students who (unlike me) lack tenure. (For more on that, see here.) And this debate must remain free, regardless of what the regents or I think is the right position in the debate. Whether the Jewish people should have an independent state in Israel is a perfectly legitimate question to discuss — just as it’s perfectly legitimate to discuss whether Basques, Kurds, Taiwanese, Tibetans, Northern Cypriots, Flemish Belgians, Walloon Belgians, Faroese, Northern Italians, Kosovars, Abkhazians, South Ossetians, Transnistrians, Chechens, Catalonians, Eastern Ukranians and so on should have a right to have independent states. Sometimes the answer might be “yes.” Sometimes it might be “no.” Sometimes the answer might be “it depends.” But there’s no uncontroversial principle on which these questions can be decided. They have to be constantly up for inquiry and debate, especially in places that are set up for inquiry and debate: universities. Whether Israel is entitled to exist as an independent Jewish state is just as fitting a subject for discussion as whether Kosovo or Northern Cyprus or Kurdistan or Tawain or Tibet or a Basque nation should exist as an independent state for those ethnic groups. Of course, Israel is different from the other countries in that it has already been internationally recognized as an independent state. But while that’s an important practical argument, and an important argument under international law, it can’t determine what should be talked about at universities. International recognition can be granted, and it can be taken away. Certainly international recognition doesn’t conclusively resolve either moral or pragmatic questions about whether an ethnic group is entitled to a state of their own. The United Nations of 1947, or the great majority of the governments of today, may have been right or they may have been wrong. We can’t decide even for ourselves whether they’re right or wrong without hearing a lively debate about the subject. And certainly the University of California Board of Regents ought not prejudge this debate. I entirely agree that, to give an example given by the regents, “vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism” should be condemned and punished. I think that UCLA student government should not be allowed to discriminate against Jewish candidates for student government positions. And I agree, as I said, that some anti-Zionist speech and speakers are indeed hostile to Jews as an ethnic group, rather than just opposing a particular government or nation-state. But the regents should not be telling professors and students that “there is no place” at the University of California for a political viewpoint on the existence of Israel as a nation-state — a statement that is likely to and intended to deter debate on that subject. Indeed, universities are the very places where such matters should indeed be discussed.
	23	+Advantage 1 is Islamophobia
	24	+Suppression of pro-Palestine movements on campus denies Palestinian students the ability to form solidarity
	25	+Nadeau and Sears 11 Mary-Jo Nadeau and Alan Sears, Mary-Jo Nadeau teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto-Mississauga. Alan Sears teaches at the Department of Sociology, Ryerson University, Toronto. “This Is What Complicity Looks Like: Palestine and the Silencing Campaign on Campus,” The Bullet, March 5, 2011, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/475.php
	26	+The silencing campaign is particularly dangerous given the overall political climate, which facilitates the neoliberalization of education. The goal of neoliberalism in post-secondary education is to make the universities serve exclusively economic goals, preparing students for the corporate workplace and creating know-how that can be commercialized. This requires a serious culture shift on campuses. One of the core political projects of neoliberalism on campus has been to roll back the spaces for campus activism and freedom of expression originally won by student militancy in the 1960s and 1970s. The campus silencing campaign against Palestine solidarity aligns in important ways with this neoliberal agenda, shutting down political spaces in the interest of a narrow vocational conception of education. Campus equity movements are particular targets in this broader effort, as they have won a certain limited space for themselves, and often critique the limits of the dominant forms of academic knowledge. The silencing campaign around Palestine solidarity organizing has played a leading role in the attack on freedom of expression on campuses. There are in fact two ideas of academic freedom and campus freedom of expression at stake. The first is the narrow and professional conception of academic freedom, which stresses the right of the professor to conduct free inquiry within his or her own specific realm of expertise and to disseminate the results of that inquiry through publication or teaching. This sense of academic freedom informs the influential “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” developed in the U.S. in 1915. The second, and more recent, conception of campus freedom of expression and academic freedom was won through struggles from below by the radical student movement of the 1960s. The freedom struggles of African-Americans galvanized activists, including students who fought for the right to build solidarity campaigns on campuses. This was strongly opposed by university administrations, who sought to keep activist politics safely off campus. Nowhere was this struggle sharper than at the Berkeley campus of University of California. There, the Free Speech Movement fought for political rights on campus, challenging the administration of Clark Kerr who was perhaps the most prominent advocate of the technocratic university serving the needs of corporations and the state. Clark Kerr was, in many ways, the forerunner of the current neoliberal strategy of reorganizing universities to focus more clearly on the service of business and the lean state. In the 1960s, Kerr was actually defeated by a mass, militant student movement. But the technocratic vision that the radical student movement of the 1960s successfully defended against has returned in new and aggressive forms under neoliberalism. And part of this agenda is to politically cleanse campuses, stripping away the political rights students won through militancy in the 1960s. The attack on Palestine solidarity is a leading thrust in the current campaign to roll back campus political expression and to define academic freedom in narrow professional terms. The Iacobucci report at York, discussed below, is an important example of this logic. The gains of campus equity movements since the 1960s pose an important obstacle to the narrow definition of academic freedom. Serious struggles against racism, sexism and heterosexism necessarily raise questions about the nature of knowledge and its supposed objectivity. These movements show the ways fundamental inequalities distort knowledge, often in unrecognized ways. Equity movements therefore challenge the conception of expertise that underlies the narrow definition of academic freedom, arguing that the person who experiences systemic inequality often sees it more clearly than someone in a privileged position. As the case for Israeli policy has become harder to make after five years of the highly effective Palestinian-led global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, pro-Israel advocacy organizations have sought to shut down their opponents through silencing. In doing so, they are not only attempting yet again to shut down any expression of Palestinian experience, but also to weaken protections for freedom of expression and narrow the conception of academic freedom. This is a serious attack, and one that resonates with the neoliberal restructuring of the universities.
	27	+Attempts to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism leads to campaigns by pro-Israel groups that demean and marginalize Muslim-American students
	28	+Solomon 16 Daniel J. Solomon, “Inflammatory Pro-Israel Posters Pop Up on Campus — Are They Islamophobic?,” Forward, October 26, 2016, http://forward.com/news/national/352698/inflammatory-pro-israel-posters-pop-up-on-campus-are-they-islamophobic/
	29	+A row over Israel on campus is as predictable as the fall of autumn leaves, and it’s no different this season. Fliers accusing pro-Palestinian students of being anti-Semitic have cropped at numerous colleges in October — including the University of Chicago, Tufts University, Brooklyn College and Berkeley — and have been claimed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a rightwing organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Do you want to show your support for Hamas terrorists whose stated goal whose stated goal is the elimination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state? Join us! Students for Justice in Palestine at Tufts University.” read one flier procured by the Tufts Daily. It also featured a Palestinian militant wrapped in a keffiyeh, or traditional headscarf and toting a machine gun. Other posters included specific callouts to individual faculty and students, accusing them of collaboration with jihadists. According to the anti-Zionist site Electronic Intifada, a flier at San Francisco State University labeled one professor “a leader of the Hamas BDS campaign,” while one at Berkeley said that a professor was a “supporter of Hamas terrorists” and an “Islamophobia alarmist.” Most of the posters featured the slogan #Jewhatred and directed people to the Freedom Center’s Web site. Horowitz’s organization has been termed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has described Horowitz as “a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-black movements.” According to Electronic Intifada, the current poster campaign was preceded by a smaller episode last spring at the University of California–Los Angeles, where the group circulated similar fliers. Critics of the posters — both campus administrators and others — have said they create an atmosphere of fear. “This is not an issue of free speech; this is bullying behavior that is unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campus,” Leslie Wong, the president of San Francisco State, said in a comment run by Electronic Intifada. Joanne Barker, a professor at the university, told the Web site that her school “should be contacting federal and state authorities to investigate this incident as a hate crime.” Recently, some rightwing Israel advocates have adopted more hard-nosed tactics intended to publicly shame and sanction their perceived enemies. Created last year, one such effort, the Canary Mission, has compiled dossiers on hundreds of students and faculty that it sees as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic – often conflating the two. Another new organization, the Amcha Initiative, has an “anti-Semitism tracker” on its Web site that puts calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the Jewish state (BDS) in the same category as Jew-hatred. This also comes on the heels of a controversy at Berkeley, where students and faculty clashed with one another over a course that presented Zionism as a “settler colonialist” movement.
	30	+Islamophobia empirically leads to hate crimes, fractures communities, and increases national security threats.
	31	+Foran 16 Clare Foran, Donald Trump and the Rise of Anti-Muslim Violence, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-muslims-islamophobia-hate-crime/500840/
	32	+A new report from California State University-San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism suggests that political rhetoric may play a role in mitigating or fueling hate crimes. The report shows that anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. rose sharply in 2015 to the highest levels since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. It also suggests that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric could have contributed to this backlash against American Muslims.
	33	+Post 9/11, pro-Palestine movements were conflated with Jihadism leading to rampant Islamophobia which the university took an active role in. At a time where Islamophobia is being peddled at massive scale, dissent from the other side is key to breaking down the specter of the Muslim as a terrorist other.
	34	+Bazian 15 Bazian, Hatem. "The Islamophobia Industry and the Demonization of Palestine: Implications for American Studies." American Quarterly 67.4 (2015): 1057-1066
	35	+The 2001 attacks introduced a shift in US foreign policy and introduced a more muscular and military interventionist approach toward the Arab and Muslim world with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a robust US military presence in over thirty new countries.14 The coinciding of the 9/11 attacks with the start of the second Palestinian Intifada presented a golden opportunity for a strong cadre of neoconservatives connected to the American Enterprise Institute to push for a more decisively pro-Israeli stand in the Bush administration.15 The top tier of the Bush administration adopted a neoconservative line of thinking.16 The neoconservatives in the administration were committed to Israel’s defense and opposed to territorial compromise with the Palestinians; several had participated in drafting the “Clean Break” strategy in 1998.17 The post–September 11 shift focused on a preemptive strategy directed at what they called “terrorist” organizations with global reach and nation-states that provide support or shelter to groups, such as Al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations, but not groups engaged in national struggles like Palestinian factions and the Basque separatists in Spain. President Bush’s “either you are with us or with the terrorists” framing forced nation-states to make policy decisions to facilitate access to execute this global war. The global alliance that emerged cooperated in the “War on Terror,” with Israel playing a central role, providing training and know-how and marketing its “extensive expertise” in fighting terrorism. Israel’s security agencies jumped into the counterterrorism-training business and managed to become key players in local, regional, national, and international joint terrorism programs. For example, Urban Shield, a jointcounterterrorism training program held in the San Francisco Bay Area, which centers Islamophobia in its conceptual framework and posits Muslims and Arabs as potential threats in its training program, has the Israeli security team playing a major role in setting the scenarios for supposed terrorist attacks and providing guidance on how to profile terrorists.18 Israel was a key participant in the War on Terror, highlighting the “Iraqi threat” that was presented as directly “linked” to the funding of suicide bombings. Critical to the Iraq campaign was a communication strategy devised by US pro-Israel supporters to influence public opinion and maintain the focus on Saddam Hussein while managing to intensify a negative view of the Pales- tinians. PR firms like the Luntz Research Companies pushed public opinion farther to the right and in support of the Iraq invasion as a way to defend Israel. The PR document prepared by this organization offered specific talking points and recommendations on how to speak about Israel to the US public.19 While some might point to a conspiracy, the reality is that a well-organized, disciplined, and well-funded Zionist and neoconservative network operated in an ideologically fertile and supportive administration with allies in sensitive positions who managed to shape public debates on issues pertaining to war at home and abroad. Indeed, those who operated in this space managed to refortify and again consolidate Israel’s narrative in the United States and dominate the discourse inside academe, including American studies. Israeli spokespeople were very effective in deploying their messaging at the local, regional, and national levels in the United States, while the pro-Palestine responses were often delayed and singular in nature. The communication strategy was built on years of negative stereotyping, and misrepresentation of Arabs and Muslims made the language easier to deploy in an existing productive and orientalist materiality. Edward Said (Orientalism 1978 and Covering Islam 1981) and Jack Shaheen (Reel Bad Arabs 2001) ground the subject and point to the cumulative effect of such pro-Israeli strategies. The pro-Israel communication strategy was deployed in existing racist and essentialist representations of Arabs and Muslims, which, in post-9/11, were successfully focused on Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular as the archetypal terrorist. This communication strategy made it possible for Israel to become more connected to US policy formations in fighting the War on Terror. More precisely, Israel’s know-how on fighting Palestinian “terrorism” was peddled and packaged as the best and most successful approach
	36	+
	37	+ to dealing with a fomented Islamic threat. Overnight, Israel became the model for such a strategy with the emergence of numerous Israel-linked corporate outfits offering training services and counterterrorism strategies that helped consolidate the stereotypical image of the Arab, Muslim, and most definitely Palestinian terrorist across the United States, as joint terrorism task forces and intelligence agencies adopted wholesale the Israeli security framework and thus Israeli communication strategy, with many taking up training courses or visiting Israel with a distinctive and hostile view of Arabs and Muslims upon their return.20 Consequently, the US academy was brought into the same project with immediate development of courses that further problematize Islam and Muslims as archetypal terrorists, investment in teaching the Arabic language as a necessary service to the national security apparatus, and cooperation with Israeli institutions on studying violence and counterterrorism. In addition, several key Islamophobic figures became regular guests at universities, including a select group of Muslims connected and funded by the same Islamophobic industry.21 The result is that Islam and Muslims are studied in the academy as an inferior and terrorist “other” in need of interventions and remedies. Furthermore, the ever-present link to the questions or concerns of Israel-affiliated scholars dominate the framing of Islam and Muslims in the US academy, with a constant litmus test applied to individual scholars on Israel and Palestine, as the latest case of Salaita firing illustrates this point clearly.22 Further, almost all US top leaders have visited Israel to get “educated” about the challenges facing the country and Israel’s effectiveness in fighting “terrorism.” The fully funded trips to Israel by US politicians, journalists, and academics are designed to shape public discourse, since the participants begin to use Israeli talking points when discussing Palestine, Arabs, and Muslims. The participants who went on these fully paid tours included a large number of university presidents and top administrative leaders on campus.23 These trips and Israeli securitized training programs are designed to increase support for Israel and have diverse spokespeople who can influence public opinion and maintain hegemonic backing for Israel in the United States. Recently, Shalom Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative began to target American Muslim leaders for fully funded trips.24
	38	+The unchallenged pro-Israel lobby is a violent manifestation of latent Islamophobia. Academia is key to disrupt this process.
	39	+Bazian 15 Bazian, Hatem. "The Islamophobia Industry and the Demonization of Palestine: Implications for American Studies." American Quarterly 67.4 (2015): 1057-1066
	40	+In a recent article analyzing a host of survey results since 2001, Charles Kurzman concludes that the data illustrate how “American attitudes toward Muslim Americans have grown more negative” and that “a growing segment of the . . . population is willing to express negative views about Muslim Americans in recent years.”28 More alarmingly, the data show that the percentage of Americans responding unfavorably to Muslims in general has steadily increased since 2006. The survey results raise important questions about the causes for such a shift, the forces behind it, and how best to reverse it in the future. Indeed, the alarming data reflect the success of the Islamophobia industry and its massive investment in demonizing Muslims as a launching pad for pro-Israel groups from which to maintain US unconditional support for Israel. One way to understand the unfolding pro-Israel strategy is to extend Edward Said’s use of “Latent” and “Manifest Orientalism” to the study of Islamophobia. Said argued that Arab and Muslim subjects are constructed and “judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so they are always the Other, the conquerable, and the inferior.”29 Kurzman’s and Said’s writings bring into focus the link between what I refer to as latent and manifest Islamophobia.30 Latent Islamophobia is conceived through an inception process using films, news reports, media talking heads, book publishing, and emphasis on Islam as a violent, backward, and oppressive religion inclined toward despotism and lack of progress. Culture production is not independent of politics or economy; rather, it is informed and hegemonically determined by it. Manifest Islamophobia is evident in the speeches and writing of Daniel Pipes, a right-wing Israel supporter and founder of the McCarthyite-type web site Campus Watch. Speaking before the convention of the American Jewish Congress on October 21, 2001, Pipes stated, “I worry very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims. . . . will present true dangers to American Jews.”31 This offers a glimpse into some of the thinking behind the Islamophobia industry and how it mobilizes to demonize of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians. Conclusion Academe should take the lead in exploring the entanglement of the pro-Israel groups and organizations in Islamophobia content production. Scholars in American studies should centralize research and teaching about Islamophobia because of the impact it has in normalizing racist discourses in society. I urge American studies scholars to be at the forefront and earnestly embrace Islamophobia studies with intersectionality and connectedness to all struggles for social justice while also affirming the centrality of Palestine’s narrative in the field. In this regard, the forum on Palestine in American studies can play a vital role in collaboratively addressing the Islamophobia crisis with regular panels at the annual conference and regional academic workshops on how to teach and counter it on campus and community levels through partnerships with the American Cultures Community Engaged Scholarship. Lastly, American studies scholars should build robust academic relations with Palestinian universities, foster exchange programs, and proactively seek to centralize Palestinian narratives in the conversation and expose Israel’s role in promoting a racist and hostile campus and civil society environments that seek to limit academic freedom and speech while hiding behind distortions about BDS, Palestine, Islam, Muslims and the “War on Terror.”32
	41	+Even if you think BDS is bad, censorship is worse- far right positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict that lead to censorship are also what justify marginalization within Jewish communities. Empirics with Hillel International prove
	42	+JVP 15 Jewish Voice for Peace, “STIFLING DISSENT HOW ISRAEL’S DEFENDERS USE FALSE CHARGES OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO LIMIT THE DEBATE OVER ISRAEL ON CAMPUS,” Fall 2015, https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/JVP_Stifling_Dissent_Full_Report_Key_90745869.pdf
	43	+On college campuses across the country, there has been a concerted effort to purge anyone supporting BDS or Palestinian rights from mainstream Jewish organizations. In many places, involvement in the Jewish community has become dependent on passing an ideological litmus test. It is no exaggeration to say that this process often mimics McCarthyism ~-~- the period of time in the 1950s when political activists were “blacklisted” and accused of treason or disloyalty by the US government ~-~- in its stridency and intensity. 2.1 Hillel’s Israel Guidelines Hillel is the world’s largest Jewish student organization and is active on more than 550 colleges and universities worldwide. Their stated mission is to “enrich the lives of Jewish undergraduate and graduate students” and to provide a place for people to participate in Jewish communal life on campus. Hillel had traditionally been a home for all Jews, regardless of politics. But in 2010, Hillel International issued new guidelines on Israel, stating that “Hillel will not partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers that as a matter of policy or practice: •Deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders; •Delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel; •Support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel; •Exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”11 Hillel’s guidelines encapsulate the pervasive campus atmosphere of ongoing exclusion, marginalization and defamation of Jews whose politics don’t serve the mainstream Jewish agenda on Israel, which is – largely – not to interfere with Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, or inside of Israel. Hillel claims that any individual Jewish student is welcome within Hillel, regardless of that student’s politics. What is explicitly unwelcome is that student’s right to organize for Palestinian rights and to end the Israeli occupation using tactics that are outside of the pro-Israel consensus – a consensus that refrains from confronting Israel too directly. In his op-ed announcing the guidelines, Hillel International CEO Wayne Firestone emphasized a commitment to pluralism in the Jewish community and invoked the Jewish tradition of Talmudic debate as a way to argue that Hillel supports a plethora of political opinion, despite the guidelines. Yet the guidelines explicitly exclude particular views from inclusion within the formal Jewish community. When the guidelines were announced, JVP’s Cecilie Surasky predicted, “These new restrictive guidelines will only further alienate an increasing number of young Jewish students from Hillels, especially those who passionately embrace the values of justice and equality.” Surasky was entirely correct in her prediction. Soon after the guidelines were passed, Brandeis Hillel rejected the campus Jewish Voice for Peace chapter from Hillel membership; a student leader at SUNY Binghamton was forced to resign from Hillel after co-sponsoring an campus event highlighting the Palestinian popular struggle against the Israeli occupation; and Harvard Hillel refused to host an event featuring Israeli politician Avraham Burg because the cosponsor fell outside of the Hillel guidelines. Countless other events, potential student partnerships, and open discussions were no doubt quashed by the guidelines’ heavy shadow. The new student organization Open Hillel was formed in 2012 in response to the pressure put on students to conform to Hillel’s Israel guidelines. Seeking the elimination of the guidelines and dedicated to open discourse, Open Hillel is organizing on college campuses across the country.12 Case studies below look in detail at the ways in which these boundaries limit debate, marginalize dissent, and exclude students from participating in campus iJewish life.
	44	+Attempts to censor anti-Israeli speech is an attempt to “normalize” what is not normal. The way Israel maintains its oppression is through normalization of its practices. Opening up dialogue allows the international community to disrupt the image that Israel’s practices are normal.
	45	+Azzam 16 Zeina Azzam, “Israel as Oppressor, Palestine as Oppressed: The ‘normalization’ of what is not normal,” Mondoweiss, June 14, 2016, http://mondoweiss.net/2016/06/palestine-oppressed-normalization/#sthash.NK3kIYHC.dpuf
	46	+Indeed, objectivity often seems to be absent in situations in which people have been accustomed to a longstanding status quo, even if it is unjust, inhumane, or illegal. Although sociologist Diane Vaughan’s theory of the “normalization of deviance” is usually applied to organizational dynamics, it can also shed light on behavior in larger communities and social groupings, such as Israelis and Palestinians. This theory posits that over time, people become so used to frequent “deviant” behavior that they stop considering it as such, and in fact start to regard it as “a normal occurrence.” There are many notorious examples of this theory; the one most frequently cited is the history of a design flaw (the infamous O-rings) in the space shuttle program that led to the Challenger’s explosion thirty years ago and the death of all the astronauts on board. Vaughan argued that it was NASA’s culture of dismissing what seemed to be inconsequential—though growing—problems, over time, which paved the way for the Challenger disaster. The back page of her book notes that, “history, power, and politics combined to create a disastrous mistake.” A parallel situation can be seen at the highest levels of the Israeli government. The pernicious and public maligning of Palestinians by Israeli lawmakers has become so commonplace that it is hardly questioned or noticed anymore—inside Israel or by the world community. Historian and political analyst Vijay Prashad writes: Netanyahu’s cabinet reeks of hate speech. His Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan said of Palestinians in 2013, “To me they are like animals; they aren’t human.” Last year, Israel’s Welfare Minister Haim Katz said, “The land of Israel is whole. There is no Palestine.” He said that the Palestinians should go off to Jordan. Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon denied the Palestinians the basic elements of humanity. Israelis mourn their dead, he said earlier this year, while Palestinians “seek death,” living in a “society that respects nothing.” Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked compared Palestinians to “snakes” and called for their destruction, “They have to die.” Neither has Netanyahu distanced himself from this hateful language, nor have the supporters of Israel been called to account for such talk. It passes as normal. How is it that high level Israeli lawmakers can denigrate Palestinians to such extremes, and the international community accepts their statements? Vaughan’s theory is useful in that it takes into account history, power, and politics, but one could say that it does not go far enough in the Israel-Palestinian context because it suggests that decision makers are often subtly influenced by each other and may realize their mistakes only in hindsight. In fact, it is evident that Israeli government officials make purposeful and clear-cut statements, decisions, and laws that dehumanize and oppress Palestinians living both in the occupied territories and in Israel. These are calculated choices. The principal concept of the normalization of deviant practices (which can also be termed unjust, undemocratic, and colonial practices) applies very well in the Palestinian case, as Israel’s goal is to be treated as a “normal”
	47	+
	48	+ state despite its objectively aberrant treatment of the Palestinians. Clearly, therefore, its oppressive practices in the occupied territories, entrenched military occupation, and apartheid-like policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and inside Israel should make the international community constantly vigilant and critical of Israel’s modus operandi. Normalizing the Abnormal Efforts at reconciling the two sides of the conflict have been criticized for using the present and seemingly “normalized” state of affairs as a starting point, and for not recognizing Israel’s historically unjust and harmful policies. Last year, for example, Palestinian activists protested a conference to discuss an initiative called “Two States, One Homeland,” saying that it implicitly legitimizes West Bank settlements, which is a form of normalization. (It is interesting to note that the conference group of speakers and discussants also included settlers.) A member of the popular struggle committee opposing the initiative, Mahmoud Zuwara, explained, “I am in contact with hundreds of Israelis, and very much support our cooperation with them. But the way to do this is through a joint effort, through a joint popular struggle. Israelis need to work out in the open, under the sun, against the crimes of the army and the settlers….” To Zuwara, the initial nexus for cooperation has to include the questioning of the status quo. It has to involve, from the start, efforts to resist and dismantle the accepted paradigm of military occupation and settlements.
	49	+Underview
	50	+1. Use reasonability on T. The brightline is if I show that you could have predicted this aff and there are 7 minutes of link turns to this AC, I am fair. Contradictory definitions of any means neg can always read T on this topic. The neg can always call for more or less specification, depending on the 1AC advocacy. This kills topic discussion because negs are incentivized to always layer the case debate with T and skews time because 1AR’s are always forced to restart.
	51	+2. Re-evaluate the debate as whole-res under neg T interps. Key to reciprocity—. I can’t read T against the neg so it’s a strategy that only the neg gets access too—making it game over allows neg to abuse that power.
	52	+3. All theory arguments have an implicit aff flex standard- the most recent empirics of late elim rounds show huge neg side bias
	53	+Adler 15, Are Judges Just Guessing? A Statistical Analysis of LD Elimination Round Panels by Steven Adler http://nsdupdate.com/2015/03/30/are-judges-just-guessing-a-statistical-analysis-of-ld-elimination-round-panels-by-steven-adler/
	54	+Yet a plausible objection here might be that maybe the elimination round data need to be further segmented. For instance, perhaps the data do not meet this randomization because judges can easily distinguish between winners and losers in early elimination rounds, which typically contain more-lopsided matchups, but that in late elimination rounds the decision is much murkier. In fact, I find some support for this hypothesis, though it may be an artifact of a smaller sample-size for this segment.To evaluate this hypothesis, I replicated the above analysis, but pared down to the 36 coded rounds that took place in quarterfinals or later. In these rounds, the Neg side-bias was even more pronounced, with Neg winning 61 of elimination rounds, so the ‘expected’ randomization rate on ballots to achieve such an overall win-rate would be 57 for the Neg and 43 for the Aff. This creates the following expected distribution, compared to the actual observed distribution for these late elimination rounds:
	55	+
	56	+4. Cambridge Dictionary defines any in context of resolution as
	57	+(Cambridge Dictionary, online dictionary, “Definition of ‘any’,” http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/any/)
	58	+
	59	+(used in negative statements and questions) some, or even the smallest amount (of)
	60	+5. Neg advocacies must defend the same actor as the aff
	61	+a) fairness- otherwise this justifies you getting an infinite number of different actors that can do things that solve the aff harms because they are responsible for said harmswhich gives you perfect solvency that I can never contest
	62	+b) truth testability- is it doesn’t prove the aff is a bad idea because even if it would be nice if another actor solved the problem, if it’s not realistic than the non-ideal actor still has the obligation.
	63	+6. Solutions to oppression need to be grounded in policy rather than abstraction. K’s must be tied to an implementable, political solution to be effective.
	64	+Bryant 12: Left,” Larval Subjects—Levi R. Bryant’s philosophy blog, November 11th, Available Online at http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/, Accessed 02-21-2014)
	65	+Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good at carrying out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks, assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park: The underpants gnomes have a plan for achieving profit that goes like this: Phase 1: Collect Underpants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit! They even have a catchy song to go with their work: Well this is sadly how it often is with the academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows: Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation! Our problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to be produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give our talks at expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you doing? But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to engage with, and we vilify them when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of parties and identifications in general?). This type of “revolutionary” is the greatest friend of the reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done! But this isn’t where our most serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be restructured, for what new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail. How, I wonder, are we to do anything at all when we have no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people. These 6 billion people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their consumption. That network of production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the production of food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building of shelters, the distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc. What are your proposals? How will you meet these problems? How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are so intellectually bankrupt on these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of organization. Who among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy, ie., who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of micro-fascism that arise with party systems (there’s a reason that it was the Negri and Hardt contingent, not the Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle. I would love, just for a moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes in an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? What would be her plan for waste disposal? And most importantly, how would she navigate the school board, the state legislature, the federal government, and all the families of these students? What is your plan? What is your alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone even bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans? But we haven’t even gotten to that point. Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation. “Underpants gnome” deserves to be a category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not because critique isn’t important or necessary– it is –but because we know the critiques, we know the problems. We’re intoxicated with critique because it’s easy and safe. We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral superiority with critique. But do we really do anything with critique? What we need today, more than ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone knows something is wrong. Everyone knows this system is destructive and stacked against them. Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having the wrong economic theory. None of us, however, are proposing alternatives. Instead we prefer to shout and denounce. Good luck with that.

EntryDate

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	1	+2017-03-25 03:47:33.182

Judge

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	1	+Sharma, Gravely

Opponent

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	1	+Harvard Westlake IP

ParentRound

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	1	+72

Round

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	1	+3

Team

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	1	+Strake Jesuit Chen Aff

Title

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	1	+JF - 1AC - Israel Criticism - V2

Tournament

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	1	+Kandi King RR