Demanding More Of Our Democracy

There is always the debate in my little family: if things get really bad, should we move to the UK? What is the point we personally have to leave?

During the Trump administration, that onslaught of daily horror, my husband and I talked about this on a periodic basis. Checking in with each other—what’s our status now? How are we feeling about the lines in the sand we agreed on last time?

My dad, back in the UK, wanted to know if we had an emergency situation escape plan (we did). His sense of North American geography is pretty similar to mine before I moved here, so while we were living in Ann Arbor I promised we would indeed go to his sister in Vancouver if shit got really bad.

The question makes me reflect on what it means to be part of this country.

Specifically, why people here in the US expect so little of their democracy, and the danger of just cynically, sarcastically, and “pragmatically” assuming we are all powerless to stop our democratically elected representatives from doing whatever the hell they like.

The Texas ruling aims to humiliate all women, not just those able to get pregnant

Should we call Texas’ anti-abortion laws an “attack on women”? Or rather recognize that it will also affect people of other genders?

From “Abortion is an LGBTQ issue, too, advocates stress.” Photo by Alex Wong.

This question reflects important efforts to make the language of reproductive health care more gender inclusive; recognizing that transmen and non-binary individuals can have periods, get pregnant, have abortions, and need contraception.

However, while I am a whole-hearted supporter of gender-inclusive language around pregnancy, in the case of the Republican Party’s and the Christian Right’s anti-abortion campaigns I’m beginning to think we should carry on calling it an ‘attack on women’ rather than ‘an attack on people with a uterus’.  

Not because I don’t believe transwomen are ‘real’ women: of course they are. And not because transmen who want to have abortions will not also be materially affected. They will – piling this injustice on top of the existing marginalization and hostility they already face when seeking reproductive healthcare, including abortions.

And yet, in the face of the Texas Republican Party’s actions, calling this anything other than ‘an attack on women’ fails to acknowledge that anti-abortion laws are attacks on a broader swath of individuals than ‘those who might be in a position to get pregnant’. If we focus only on the biology of having or not having a uterus, or the ability to become pregnant, we are going along with the lie that this is about the unborn child.

It isn’t.

The intention is to undermine the autonomy and humanity of all women, including trans-women and women who cannot get pregnant. It is a concerted attack against women’s humanity that is being waged in parallel to an attack on non-gender conforming people’s right to exist at all.

It’s not about abortions

The fear felt across the US this week is not limited to those who anticipate needing an abortion in the future. The terror is spread much wider; that is precisely the point.

Are you sure you wouldn’t support a dictatorship?

In the lead up to the election, discussing all the ways Trump could stage a coup became almost a parlor game. Open a copy of The Atlantic or the New Yorker, and find yet another spooky political Choose Your Own Adventure designed to scare the bejeezus out of Democratic podcast audiences.

I was struck by the incredulity underlying these role-playing scenarios. The authors appear genuinely shocked that US citizens who would support something so brazenly undemocratic as a coup, or that the World’s Greatest Democracy is apparently held together with sticking tape and bandaids.

Illustration by Victor Juhasz, from an article titled ‘Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?’ printed in The Nation on Sep 7, 2020.

But now the election is over, there is a sense that those who believe the Republican Party’s increasingly farcical attempts at block Biden’s election are just crazy fanatics. Which softens the fear that ‘ordinary’ Americans — i.e., people who are not explicitly MAGA-supporting covid-denying overt white supremacist nutjobs — would ever support an antidemocratic solution.

I can see us settling back into the comfy idea that support for democracy in the US is the norm, that democracy itself is something we can take for granted, and that no right-thinking citizen would ever defend a dictatorship.

This would be dangerous. If we learn anything from all this, it should be that democracy is not the default, but rather one option out of many. Trump failed in his coup because he is incompetent, not because there is no inherent appetite for anti-democratic regimes in the US.

If we are to avoid dictatorships, we can’t be complacent. Now more than ever, we must make a clear and compelling case for why democracy is better for everyone, even when it means some people don’t get the kind of society they want or need.

On Revoking Student Visas. Or, what it feels like when the secret fear that organized your immigrant life becomes a reality.

So, yesterday Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) quietly announced that international students on F-1 or M-1 visas will be required to leave the US, if their courses go entirely online in the fall.

Active students currently in the United States enrolled in [online only] programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.

This does not apply to J-1 students, whose visas are overseen by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Abolish Tenure, and Replace it with a 40 Hour Work Week

This is part of a series of posts on the abuse of power inherent to academia as a profession, and what we could do to reimagine and rebuild a more just, anti-racist university. Read parts one and two.

Although I have tenure now, as a new, African American faculty member I know I was strongly advised by my senior colleagues and administrators to keep my service to that so-called diversity mission to a minimum, and it was advice that I was happy to follow. I was happy to follow that advice even if it meant keeping as low a profile as possible and declining requests to take on important projects that I knew would not count when I came up for tenure. I’m not sure what choices I would make now.

“What Is Faculty Diversity Worth to a University?” Patricia A. Matthew, NOVEMBER 23, 2016,

When ever I meet up with friends or colleagues who are tenured academics these days, I’m struck by a rather depressing fact. They are all miserable.

It’s so disheartening! As bad as it is to be locked out of academia, it doesn’t seem all that much better to finally get the thing you’ve been struggling for all your adult life, only to find it sucks.

But apparently this is the case. Finally making it to that coveted position rarely seems to signal the end of the fear and stress inherent to pre-tenure life.

From the University of Copenhagen’s internal magazine, March 2017. Seriously, though – I was recently at a conference talking to an anthropologist whose biological anthro colleague announced he had published a book supporting CREATIONISM the week after he got tenure…

Fuck Genius. Everyone In Academia Should Be Replaceable

This is part of a series of posts I plan to share, on the abuse of power inherent to academia as a profession, and what we could do to reimagine and rebuild a more just, anti-racist university. Read part one here.

Much of the research I have done over the last two decades on academic cultures can be reduced to a single conclusion. Academia as an institution and set of cultural practices is justified by a widespread but damaging ideological belief in both meritocracy and individual genius as the font of knowledge.

Universities, research funding agencies, publications, and so on are organized around an outmoded understanding of how knowledge is created – i.e. by lone individuals whose achievements arise from naturally derived personal abilities.

This idea is a myth. But even if we know that, it’s not easy to change the consequences of institutions and practices founded upon that idea.

Researchers at Fermilab, a high energy physics research facility in the US. As discussed in Karin Knorr Certina’s research, high energy physics is a highly collaborative science, where research is conducted collectively by 100s of researchers working together.

Covid-19 Essential Workers Deserve a G.I. Bill

Yesterday I floated the idea that essential workers deserve their own version of the ‘GI Bill’. Essential workers on the front-line of the Covid-19 pandemic will, in the months and years to come, be disproportionately traumatized by what they have experienced and endured.

Today I want to throw out some ideas on what that could look like.

The Gender of a Pandemic

Photo of an Instacart shopper from The Buffalo News (Robert Kirkham/News file photo)

Past global crises, particularly the devastating world wars of the last century, can teach us a lot about long term impact of trauma, both on those who are on the front-line and those ‘left behind’ at home.

What makes this pandemic different to those wars, however, is that it will be predominantly women who fight to save us. We should already be planning and preparing for how to treat this trauma, if we want to avoid it drowning a new generation.

Not Shock: Can We Take This Crisis And Make A More Humane Society?

There are brief moments these days, where I suddenly realize the scale of what is happening, the full global horror of it all, and I am stunned.

It’s too enormous to hold in my mind all the time.

But at unpredictable moments, something cracks through my hazy feeling that this is just one long weekend at home, and I remember.

For half the world, Capitalism itself is shut down.

From around the time of the 2008 economic crash, but oddly still relevant…

And this is going to continue for weeks, perhaps longer. Capitalism is currently on hold.

Put aside for a moment the epidemiological situation: the fact that in some regions (and possibly everywhere this virus spreads) a whole generation has been wiped out in the space of a few weeks.

Economic life in the Global North has just… stopped.

I’ve been trying to get my head around what this means. And surprisingly, I see reasons for optimism.

Who Is a True American? The Muslim-ban is About Volk, Not Just Racism and Islamophobia

Protesters at O’Hare airport. Image from The Chicagoist.

Last night many friends of mine dropped everything and went to airports to protest the ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US. I wrote on Facebook that as an immigrant myself, I am proud of, and grateful for, everyone who did so.

Over the last few months, however, whenever I’ve expressed fear about the attacks on immigrants and positioned it in relation to myself and my own status, some smart-aleck has helpfully pointed out that I’ll be fine because I’m white/European. I’m beginning to lose patience with these comments. And not just because it implies I’m only scared for my own safety, rather than the safety of others.

Yes, as a white British person I have enormous privilege. I would not have been able to live in as many foreign countries as I have if I didn’t carry a British passport, and my reception would have been less welcoming if I had not been white. However, it is important to be precise about the threat that this restriction on individuals from certain countries poses, and to understand what it is stemming from. This is not just racism as usual.

The current situation in the US is racist, fascist, and misogynist. It is the latest and most threatening manifestation of deeply rooted traditions of white supremacy, Christofacism, and disaster capitalism. This new Republican Trump/Pence regime can be all these things at once, but it is important not to conflate them all into one. We need to know exactly what we are dealing with to avoid being blindsided by things like the totally predictable restriction on Green Card holders and citizens (through the ban on duel citizens).