Land Acknowledgements and the 1st Amendment

Like many other Americans, Curmie is something of a mongrel in terms of ethnicity.  He’s never done a formal genealogical study of his ancestry, but assuming he was not led astray by parents and grandparents, his heritage includes representatives from at least six western European countries… and one Native American tribe.  His paternal grandfather would have been the last in the line to be able to claim tribal membership, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there.

As Curmie suggested, channeling George Carlin, back on the 4th of July, it’s sort of strange to take pride in something that is totally beyond one’s control.  Curmie isn’t “proud to be an American,” although he’s reasonably content, current government notwithstanding.  Pretty much the same could be said for his First Nations heritage: he thinks it’s kinda cool, but that’s as far as it goes.

Of course, his status is somewhat in-between.  He’s got more Native ancestry than most folks, but to suggest that he is in any way part of that world, part of that culture, would be silly at best.  Is his position, then, liminal? compromised? intermediary?  Whatever.  Does this give Curmie a slightly different perspective on questions regarding land acknowledgements, which have become something of a lightning rod in both directions of late?  I dunno.  Maybe?  At least it gives Curmie a bit more than an average person’s interest in the phenomenon.

There are those who would argue that these pre-event speeches, additions to syllabi, etc., are an appropriate recognition of history.  Others think they’re no more than self-congratulatory virtue-signaling.  The issue splits more or less on ideological lines, with liberals in favor and conservatives opposed.  On this one, though, Curmie leans rather more to the conservative view.

One particular aspect stands out in Curmie’s mind: The Man, however embodied, always wants to tell everyone what to do.  A few years ago, Curmie was (he thinks) the only faculty director at his university not to include a land acknowledgement at the beginning of his shows.  He does confess to taking that stand at least as much to resist conforming to liberal dogma as for thinking the whole thing rather inane.  And there was pressure: the tone of “you don’t have to…” made it clear that the politically wise choice was rather obvious.

A year or two ago, after Curmie had retired, at least from production work, his university was absorbed into the gaping maw of the University of Texas system.  Word came down from somewhere on high—the governor, the state legislature, the politically-appointed Regents, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, the system chancellor, the university president… somewhere—that land acknowledgements were now banned at state universities.  They’re political, you see, so we’re going to use our political power to prevent you from using yours… or your 1st Amendment rights. 

It’s probably not very surprising that after over four decades in the classroom, Curmie is likely to side with the professoriate rather than the administration except in truly exceptional cases.  So it is—well, mostly, at least—with the story that prompts this essay: the case of University of Washington computer science professor Stuart Reges (seen above), who just got a $600,000 settlement from the University of Washington for their retaliation against him for criticizing the land acknowledgement policy and including a parody version in his syllabus.

Ok, let’s go back to whether this all started.  Back in the fall semester of 2021, UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering issued a “best practices” document which included an “Indigenous Land Acknowledgement”: “The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”  (The document seems to have been online back then, but the links no longer work.)

Despite what it says in an article in the not-exactly-politically-neutral Campus Reform, it does not appear that faculty were required to include the passage in their syllabi.  According to a letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE’s name before changing the latter two words of their title to “and Expression”), however, if they mentioned the topic at all, they had to use precisely the version approved by the administration. 

Reges, who opposes DEI initiatives in general and apparently this one in particular, didn’t follow that policy.  He distributed an email opposing land acknowledgements and included the following statement in his syllabus: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”  That, Curmie is told, is based on John Locke’s theory of property rights.  It’s been over a half century since Curmie read any Locke, and he remembers little if any it, so he’s going to have to accept that analysis.  It doesn’t really matter, anyway.

The university’s response was what in Curmie’s day was called a conniption.  Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska described Reges’s parody as “not related to course content,” “inappropriate,” and “offensive,” and demanded that he remove it.  He refused.  So the university changed his syllabus anyway, apologized in an email to students which claimed Reges’s commentary “dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people,” and opened a competing section of the same course scheduled at the same time. 

OK, let’s rate those claims.  “Not related to course content”: true.  Of course, land acknowledgments of any description aren’t related to course content in any class except perhaps for a handful of examples in history or the social sciences… certainly not in computer science.  Spewing the party line would, of course, not have been a problem for the administration.  “Inappropriate”: yeah, at least a little.  “Offensive”: nope.  “Dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people”: give me a fucking break.  And don’t get Curmie started on the sense of smug superiority that fairly drips off the page.

Exactly why Reges put the fake land acknowledgement on his syllabus isn’t clear.  Perhaps he foresaw the opportunity to sue if he were punished for it.  Maybe he just wanted his proverbial 15 minutes of fame.  Or he regarded land acknowledgments as inane, and he couldn’t stand yet another politically-inspired edict forbidding him from being political.

Look, Reges is a conservative, opposed to anything in the general vicinity of DEI, and land acknowledgements are in Curmie’s opinion one of the sillier versions of that phenomenon.  It’s difficult to see how Indigenous folks would see them as anything but a hollow promise of support, provided, of course, that no actual action would be required.  Curmie understands Reges’s frustration, is not above a little snark himself, and does appreciate the impulse to throw a spanner in the works.  Still, his comment about Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen State prof who questioned a radical change to a campus tradition a few years ago might apply here, as well: “Curmie admires his stance against thought control, but isn’t so sure he’d want him as a colleague.”  Different reasons; same conclusion.

Anyway, FIRE got into the act rather quickly.  Three days after that organization wrote to the university, Reges raised the visibility of the case by doing an interview with Campus Reform and publishing a piece there titled “REGES: Defy the nonsense of indigenous land acknowledgments.” (Curmie doesn’t know if Reges wrote the headline, although he suspects not).

A few months later FIRE sued the university on Reges’s behalf, arguing that the investigation and punishment constituted viewpoint discrimination and were therefore a 1st Amendment violation, and that the policy itself was overbroad and unconstitutionally vague.  Nearly two years after that, in May of 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled in favor of the university, citing Pickering v. Board of Education as precedent.  That’s particularly interesting because that case was ruled in favor of the teacher involved over the school district.

That 1968 Supreme Court ruling affirmed the rights of teachers to comment on matters of public concern, provided only that they did not knowingly or recklessly make false statements.  Justice Thurgood Marshall advocated a “balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”

Reges and FIRE appealed the district court’s decision, and in December of 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the lower court’s ruling and remanded “for further proceedings.”  Shortly thereafter, the university decided to settle rather than prolong the process; the details of the agreement were announced earlier this month.

There are a couple of things Curmie finds intriguing here.  Foremost among them is where Curmie himself stands on the two central issues of the case.  He is something of a liberal, after all, so one might reasonably expect him to go along with the university’s land acknowledgement policy.  He does not; he thinks that policy is both silly and authoritarian.

One might also anticipate that Curmie, after an entire career in the classroom, would want professors to have absolute control over their syllabi.  Actually, though, this is where things get sticky.  Yes, faculty should be able to determine what gets taught in their courses; those decisions should never be questioned by some administrator from outside the discipline or state legislator or whoever.  But that’s a matter of course content, which of course is what the right-wingers want to control rather than acceding to the professional expertise of the person in the classroom.

And it’s certainly true that Curmie has expressed disdain for what he regarded as stupid ideas propagated by administrators, politicians and the like.  He’s even done that in class if it was relevant to the coursework or to the efficient functioning of the class.  But when we start talking about syllabi, we begin to head into a different territory.  In Curmie’s adopted state of Texas, all syllabi at state universities have to be posted online, accessible within three clicks.  That makes them into something like public documents disseminated by the university.  That the administration ought to have some control over what goes out over its name doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Of course, Washington may not have a rule like that, but the general principle still applies.  Yes, the whole land acknowledgement business is rather dumb, but Reges was in fact being deliberately provocative with his little foray into satire, some students were indeed disturbed, and to the extent that the university may appear to be endorsing his commentary, there’s a problem.  Is Reges acting as an individual, or as a representative of the school?  That’s a tough one, frankly.  Curmie therefore regards the court’s decision as a net positive, but not without its downside.

The other item worth mentioning is that those often paranoid cries from the right that some story isn’t being covered by the mainstream press are actually pretty accurate in this case.  As far as Curmie can tell, there are no stories on the major networks or in the big-name newspapers about the settlement.  Yes, FIRE talks about it, but there’s not even a story that Curmie can find on PEN America, who filed an amicus brief for Reges when the case was before the Ninth Circuit.  There’s a brief piece on Inside Higher Ed (it’s behind a paywall, but it’s there), but nothing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Yahoo did have a story, and it looks like some kind of commentary in the Washington Post about the cost of humorlessness, but it’s behind a paywall.

There are stories all over the right-wing outlets, though: Fox News, Seattle Red, Campus Reform, Minding the Campus… you get the picture.  It would seem to Curmie that the general population, not just the conservative echo chamber, ought to know about this stuff.  But now, at least, you know, Gentle Reader.

On the Meet and Greet at Áras an Uachtaráin

Someone looks rather like a naughty schoolboy
who just got verbally eviscerated by
the headmistress.

Curmie, like many Americans, has some Irish heritage—in his case, on his mother’s side of the family—but he’s never considered himself Irish-American.  He’s spent a little over four months in the country if you add up the dozen or so visits, but only one week-long trip this July was purely for pleasure.  The rest of the time, the main purpose for being there was either research for the doctoral dissertation or a conference paper/article, or organizing and leading a total of seven Study Abroad trips with a group of undergraduates in tow. 

The trips with students meant offering course credit, and Curmie (unlike some of his colleagues, alas) wanted to ensure that there was a real academic quality to the process.  That meant not only concentrating on visiting culturally significant sites in Ireland, but also spending two weeks on campus before departure, not only reading and discussing a number of significant Irish plays, but also lecturing on Irish history and society. 

It’s said that the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to someone else… thus, Curmie learned far more about Strongbow (Richard de Clare), the Siege of Drogheda, the Penal Laws, the Great Hunger (the more accurate term for what is often termed the Famine), and the Easter Rising than he’d known prior to preparing for that first Study Abroad trip in 2006.  He learned the origins of the term “beyond the Pale,” and gained a deeper understanding of why an Irishman’s second-favorite football (soccer) national squad is whoever is playing England.    

Most relevant to this essay, however, was gaining at least an inkling of how the Irish government is structured today.  Most confusing to Americans—or at least to Curmie—was the function of the President.  This role, like, say, the monarch of the United Kingdom, is largely ceremonial, while the head of the government is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister).  But the Presidency is not inherited; presidents are elected by the citizenry for a seven-year term; the position is limited to two terms of office.  Candidates are, or at least can be, nominated by political parties, but the position is regarded as apolitical.

When Curmie was figuring all this out, Mary McAleese, a member of the center-right Fianna Fáil party, was in her second term.  Her successor, from the Labour party, was Michael D. Higgins, whom Curmie admires immensely.  He was everything one might want in a leader: intelligent, thoughtful (in both senses of the term), and resolute.  The facts that he was also a poet and a steadfast supporter of the arts, and that his absolutely adorable Bernese Mountain Dogs—Bród (“pride”), Síoda (“silk”), and Misneach (“courage”)—accompanied him virtually everywhere didn’t hurt, either.  It was no surprise that he was re-elected in 2018 with 56% of the first-ballot votes in a six-way race, winning literally all 40 constituencies in the country.

By the way, Higgins was 84 when he left office, but despite some health problems, he retained a keen and active mind, in contrast to a couple of recent octogenarian Presidents on this side of the Atlantic.  Replacing a figure of his stature wasn’t going to be easy.  That said, Catherine Connolly seems very much up to the task.  She had started her political career as a member of Labour, serving as a councilwoman and briefly as mayor of her native Galway.  She left the party in 2006 and has been an Independent ever since, serving as a TD (Teachta Dála, i.e., a representative of the lower house of parliament) for Galway West for nine years before she was elected President.

Her landslide victory in that election in 2025—winning over 63% of the votes in a three-way race—certainly suggested that the Irish public wanted someone to restrain the power of the Fianna Fáil-led coalition headed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin.  Connolly is self-described socialist pacifist, well to the left of Curmie, who isn’t exactly a die-hard conservative. 

She has been critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also of NATO, especially Germany’s plans to boost military spending, suggesting parallels to the 1930s.  She has railed against what she calls genocide in Gaza, and declared that “Genocide was enabled and resourced by American money.”  She insists that there should be a role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state.

In 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage by national popular vote; in 2018, another referendum overturned the Eighth Amendment to the constitution, allowing access to abortion at least through the first 12 weeks.  In both cases, Connolly was a significant proponent of what might be called the liberal view.  Both measures passed by nearly 2:1 margins, suggesting that the populace might be electing center-right governments, but there was a streak of left-leaning libertarianism at play, as well.

Anyway, Catherine Connolly about as far politically from Donald Trump as it is possible to be.  Since his visit to Ireland was not on official business, however, it was she, not Taoiseach Martin, who welcomed him to the country, meeting with him at Áras an Uachtaráin, the official presidential residence located in Phoenix Park in Dublin.  Asked in a presidential debate shortly before the election whether she would challenge Trump about the US support for Israel and the Gaza War, she replied, “If it’s just a meet and greet, then I will meet and greet. If the discussion is genocide, then that’s a completely different thing.”

Well, the meeting this week was in fact just a meet and greet, but it appears she gave him a piece of her mind, anyway.  Here’s her description of what she said:

As President of Ireland, I am very conscious that Ireland and the United States of America are bound by strong ties.

This is a deep connection, built over centuries, which allows us to speak openly to one another.

We are in a world facing the existential threat posed by war and climate change, both of which are inextricably interlinked.

I conveyed the strong view of the Irish people that the normalisation of war and genocide can never be accepted.

As a country which has suffered famine, colonisation and the violence of the Troubles, but also the importance of the long and challenging road to peace, I emphasised the unique insight which Irish people can bring to the resolution of conflict.

I highlighted to President Trump the strong commitment which the Irish people have to international relations, to the importance of the United Nations, including the pride which Irish people feel in Ireland’s contribution to UN Peacekeeping since 1958, and to the obligations contained within Article 29 of our Constitution towards the peaceful resolution of international disputes.

I assured President Trump that the Irish people would strongly support all those who have the strength to build a shared peace in all those parts of the world currently suffering from such horrific war and violence.

One of the leftie sites in this country said she specifically mentioned “the genocide in Gaza.”  That’s almost certainly what she meant, but it’s unlikely that she’d have been that impolitic.

Anyway, she gifted Trump with a St. Brigid’s cross and two books: the Navigatio Sancti Brendani (The Voyage of St. Brendan) and the collected poems of Michael Longley, probably best known for his 14-liner (is it still a sonnet if it’s not in iambic pentameter?  Curmie has seen conflicting opinion on this point) “Ceasefire,” which views the Iliad within the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.  (Side note: Curmie actually once attended a lengthy poetry reading by Longley himself, but it was several years before that particular poem was written.)

Those items are intriguing.  There are few things more immediately recognizably Irish than a St. Brigid’s cross.  St. Brendan’s voyage was across the Atlantic to Newfoundland; the tale thus suggests one of the earliest links between Ireland and North America.

Longley, who died last year, was a Belfast-born poet.  A lot of the commentary about that particular book centers on the one poem at least as much for its title as anything else.  But it’s also worth mentioning that Connolly is outspoken in her desire for a united Ireland; there are certainly plenty of significant poets from the Republic whose works could have been used.  By the way, the prospect of a united Ireland seems to be one thing on which Connolly and Trump agree.

Of course, there’s a lot of speculation from predictable leftie sources that Connolly was taunting Trump because he is, shall we say, not an inveterate reader, especially of poetry.  Maybe, but probably not.  It’s certainly true that she’s no fan of Dear Leader, having accurately described him as “volatile” and “acting like a bully.”  But she doesn’t seem to be at all out of step with her constituents.

Curmie acknowledges that most if not all of his Irish friends are associated with the arts, a traditionally liberal group of folks.  That said, both what he reads in the Irish press and what he observed on the brief vacation in July suggest that Donald Trump is despised by the overwhelming majority of the Irish citizenry.  The huge sign reading “FxCK TRUMP” that couldn’t be missed on the approach to Shannon Airport is also an indication.  The massive protests throughout Dublin were another.  The country that has a portrait of JFK in their newest cathedral, that welcomed Barack Obama (or O’Bama, as many decided to call him) as one of their own, that restored the cobblestones at Dublin Castle when they heard Bill Clinton speaking wistfully of them… that country seems to have little use for this particular American President.

Curmie has indeed loved Ireland for a long time.  Maybe even a little more now...

 

There's a New “America’s Mayor”

Zohran Mamdani:
The New “America’s Mayor” 

Two items stood out on Curmie’s Facebook feed this morning.  Both referred not to the horrific events of a quarter century ago today, but to the aftermath, the response.  One post talked about the Canadian people, especially but not exclusively those of Gander, Newfoundland who took in stranded passengers, fed and housed them, and generally showed the kind of compassion and empathy that has since become anathema to Dear Leader and his minions.  The musical Come from Away, based on those events, has become an international hit.  (Curmie saw it London several years ago.)

The other post was a photo Curmie had never seen before, or at least had long forgotten.  What was pictured wasn’t from September 11, but from a full ten days later.  It shows an impromptu gathering on the pitcher’s mound of Shea Stadium, where the New York Mets had just defeated the Atlanta Braves 3-2 after a come-from-behind two-run homer in the 8th inning by Mike Piazza.  The game was the first sporting event to be held in New York since the attack, and was significant for that reason.  That the home team prevailed over their arch-rival in such a dramatic fashion was indeed a beacon of hope for a city that was reeling. 

But there was something special about that meeting on the mound.  It wasn’t just the Mets who were celebrating.  A lot of the Braves players were there, too.  And they weren’t just congratulating their opponents with a nod or even a handshake.  Star pitcher Tom Glavine is shown in the photo linked above hugging Mets reliever John Franco.  Even in defeat, they needed that game, that moment, that monodigital salute to those who would attack us, nearly as much as New Yorkers did.  Curmie has a couple of friends who are die-hard Braves fans.  They didn’t want to lose, but just this once, they were fine with the outcome, and the fact that the game even happened made the day a win for them.

All of us who are old enough to remember that particular 9/11 will remember where we were when we heard the horrible news—each of the four terrible events of the day.  But, like the hope that remained in Pandora’s box after the evil had escaped, there was a feeling of resolve, a sense of shared purpose to an extent that Curmie had never seen before.  From Canadians opening their homes to terrified strangers, to the entire crew of a German destroyer flying an American flag and declaring solidarity, to playing the Star Spangled Banner at the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (King Charles repeated the tribute this morning, by the way), to countless other manifestations of condolence and support from around the globe, it became very clear very fact that people and governments worldwide were aghast at what had happened and determined to help us get back on our feet as a nation.

Here in the States, as Curmie wrote on his Facebook page last year, “If anything good came out of that nightmare, it is that, for a brief interval, we were Americans first and everything else--religion, race, political orientation, etc.--was secondary.”  We even granted Rudy Giuliani the unofficial title of “America’s Mayor” for what seemed at the time, at least, to be his adept handling of the aftermath of the attack.  He had overwhelming support from New Yorkers, was named Person of the Year by Time magazine, and even got an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.

Unfortunately for Giuliani’s political ambitions, however, George W. Bush was in his first term and ran for re-election in 2004.  That meant it was 2008 before Giuliani could seek the presidency.  He was the favorite to get the Republican nomination when he declared his candidacy early in 2007.  He’d been a leading figure in the GOP, after all, and had been a key supporter of Bush’s campaign.  By this time, though, there were questions about a series of extra-marital affairs, conflicts of interest and other scandals.  More importantly, perhaps, some of the luster had worn off his response to 9/11. 

It was reported that a fair number of things for which Giuliani had taken credit were actually performed by someone else.  More significantly, shortly after his candidacy was announced, the International Association of Fire Fighters declared that Giuliani’s actions in the recovery operation:

meant that firefighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like so much garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills landfill…. Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them…. What Giuliani showed is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them.

Moreover, EPA chief (and former Republican governor of New Jersey) Christine Todd Whitman asserted that her efforts to get Ground Zero workers to wear respirators and haz-mat suits were blocked by Giuliani, who (and this part is Curmie’s reading of the situation) seemed more interested in making things look normal than in getting them to be normal.  She even suggested that illnesses killing first responders could be attributed, at least in part, to the city’s actions (or lack thereof).

After that 2008 presidential campaign collapsed in a series of 3rd, 4th, and 5th place finishes in primaries and caucuses, Giuliani has become increasingly irrelevant.  He still makes headlines occasionally—sometimes for yet another scandal in his personal life, sometimes for his sycophancy to Dear Leader, sometimes for his alleged criminality, sometimes for some rather misapplied hair dye, sometimes for… well, what the hell was that Four Seasons Landscaping business all about, anyway?

Most recently, in one last (we can hope it’s the last) attempt to get his name in the papers, the one-time America’s Mayor goes full-out Islamophobe and says he’s offended by the fact that current mayor Zohran Mamdani would do his damned job and attend the commemorations.  He launches into a despicable racist attack, claiming that “They want to dominate us.… Mamdani is a clear—a clear—supporter of that.  All of the Muslims he supports are murderers.”  If Rudy Giuliani ever deserved our respect or even our empathy, those days are now long behind us.  Whether he was always a bigoted asshole or not, he sure as hell is now.

Curmie has often noted that one of the basic principles taught in the Political Ideals class he took in college a little over a half century ago is that, generally, conservatives tend to think in terms of individuals and liberals think more in terms of group identities, often in demographic terms.  Liberals still think that way, sometimes with reason, sometimes without.  But conservatives like Giuliani, Trump, Hegseth, et al., are more than ready to characterize anyone who isn’t a straight white male Christian nationalist as simply The Other and therefore unworthy of respect or even notice, irrespective of what an individual person says or does. 

Look, Gentle Reader… you can agree or disagree with Mayor Mamdani’s politics are.  Curmie generally likes what he sees; you needn’t.  But the chances are you wouldn’t have found your way to this blog if you weren’t perceptive enough to know that octogenarian demagogues would be just as loud in denunciation had Mamdani decided not to attend: “See?  He won’t even show respect to those who lost their lives on 9/11!”

Mamdani’s response was, to be sure, a political gesture, but it also had substance: the release of 170,000 pages of documents suggesting that the Giuliani administration (and, indeed, all the subsequent ones) knowingly lied to the public about air quality concerns.  One example, from the CNN article linked above: 

an internal memo written by Associate Health Commissioner Kelly McKinney on October 6, 2001, warning that “air quality [for asbestos] at those locations is not yet suitable for reoccupancy,” came the same day that Giuliani publicly declared the air to be safe, the documents say.

Curmie isn’t going to read all 170,000 pages.  You won’t, either, Gentle Reader, but someone will.  It may turn out that allegations of a cover-up are unfounded, or that the evidence is sufficiently complex or contradictory that judgment calls were reasonable at the time, even if they look wrong with the benefit of hindsight.  If so, we’ll at least know.

One more thing: all but one living POTUS attended the commemoration, willingly agreeing not to speak, lest the event become political rather than a solemn remembrance.  The one who wasn’t there, of course, is the one who is pathologically unable to allow literally any event or discussion to be about anything but himself, the one whose fish stories about his own activities in the aftermath of 9/11 have now reached great white shark territory.  He is best remembered for his unwillingness to remember.

We close, then, with Mayor Mamdani’s comments in a statement (not at the event per se, remember).  Here it is:

September 11th was a horrific act of terror, a day of immeasurable loss.

2,753 parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and colleagues.

2,753 universes gone in an instant, and in the years since, 1000s more have died from illnesses caused by the toxic air they breathed and the months they spent working on the pile.

We remember 9/11 as the darkest day in our city's history, but we also remember what so many New Yorkers did in that darkness.

We remember the 1000s upon 1000s of New Yorkers who lined up for hours to donate blood.

We remember the people who opened their homes to those who could not get home.

We remember the workers who carried their colleagues down hundreds of stairs, then turned around and went back up to find someone else who needed help.

25 years later, we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage, a city where we run toward one another.

That is how we remember.

Gentle Reader, as noted above, you can agree with Mamdani’s politics or not... or sort of.  But this statement is what the sitting mayor of the nation’s greatest city is supposed to say on an occasion like this.  He has picked up the title of America’s Mayor from the sputtering old man whose outrageous prejudice made him unworthy of the appellation.  And that, at least, is unquestionably a good thing.

It’s All in the Timing

Brigitte Bandit with the rhinestone-covered
guitar Dolly Parton sent her.

Sometimes the convergence of events is almost unbearable.  It was particularly unsettling to lose icons like Dolly Parton and Tim Curry on the same day (Curry’s death wasn’t announced until the following day), for example.  But sometimes, sometimes, the stars align the way we want them to.  If we’re going to face a world without Dolly, at least let there be something else that gives us a little hope. 

And indeed on the very day Dolly died, an 87-year-old Reagan appointee named David Hittner struck down a remarkably stupid Texas law against drag performances.  That bill, SB12 from the 2023-24 session, is strikingly similar to one in Curmie’s former state of Iowa that he wrote about in early 2025, declaring it “heinous, bigoted, incompetent, [and] hypocritical.”  Why he didn’t write (or even know) about the case in his current state of Texas, he doesn’t know.

Hittmer had already declared SB12 unconstitutional once, back in September of ’23, declaring that SB12 “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech.”  Texas governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, however, appealed that ruling, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unblocked the law and returned the case to District Court, mostly on procedural grounds.

Here’s where things get complicated, for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s important to note that the 5th Circuit didn’t overturn Judge Hittner’s ruling; they argued the some of the multiple plaintiffs didn’t have standing because they couldn’t show that they intended to engage in “sexually oriented performance,” and therefore wouldn’t be hurt by the law.  This does seem to suggest, as Alex Nguyen writes in the Texas Tribune article linked above, that “the federal judges don’t believe all drag shows are sexually explicit.”  In a rational universe, this would mean that events like Drag Queen Story Hours would be unaffected by the law.  Does this look like a rational universe to you, Gentle Reader?

True, the law as amended doesn’t specifically mention drag performances, but both Abbott and Paxton have made it clear that the target is, indeed, drag.  Of course, as Curmie argued with respect to what Iowa tried, a vague description of what is forbidden opens the door to selective enforcement.  Were Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that’s the whole idea.  The fact that minors could see an R-rated movie if accompanied by a parent or guardian but there’s some question about even the most innocuous performance of someone in drag sort of says it all.

Does Curmie think the Texas GOP really wants to shut down productions of Shakespearean comedies like Twelfth Night or As You Like It?  No, that would be stupid.  One wonders, however, how much stupider it is than legislating against story time for kids just because Miss Priscilla has male dangly bits under her skirt.

Anyway, the case ended up back in Judge Hittner’s courtroom.  He made the changes required by the 5th Circuit, such as limiting the number of plaintiffs to a single person, and then proceeded to re-affirm his earlier decision, writing that the appellate court’s ruling “did not disturb” that ruling, and that “The vast majority of the law’s numerous applications violate the First Amendment because all the performances that it has an actual impact on are constitutionally protected and are targeted for prohibition based on content and viewpoint.”

He suggested that cheerleaders, cosplayers, swimming athletes, and live theatre performers might be threatened by an overbroad interpretation of prurience.  He said that if someone is offended by a performance, the solution is simple: “Just don’t go.”  And he twisted the knife.  On the day when Dolly Parton was the name on virtually everyone’s lips, Judge Hittner delivered a decision in which he noted that Dolly was sometimes regarded “as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure.”  It wasn’t just Dolly impersonators the law sought to punish; it was Dolly herself, too.  That observation, Gentle Reader, is gonna leave a mark.

Infomercial time: That’s Not All!

The one plaintiff who remained in the suit challenging the law was a drag performer named Brigitte Bandit, who does a Dolly impersonation as part of her act.

That’s Still Not All!

In December of 2023, Bandit had just completed a show at Oilcan Harry’s in Austin shortly after testifying at the Texas capital about the anti-drag legislation.  She was made to sit and watch a five-minute long video thanking her for her work on behalf of the LBGTQ+ community.  She was then presented with a package.  She thought it might be a Dolly costume.  It wasn’t.  It was a rhinestone-covered guitar, signed by Dolly herself.  There’s a story behind that, but what matters is that there was a clear link between the two.  It’s common knowledge that Dolly was loved by the LGBTQ+ community, and she loved them back.  It all sorta fits, timing-wise.

There’s a good chance that Judge Hittner’s decision, unquestionably correct though it is, will ultimately be overturned, politically-motivated appointments being what they are.  But Brigitte Bandit will be doing a show in honor of Dolly on Saturday, and she’s bringing that guitar.  There’s just something perfect about Dolly somehow showing up for people who need her help even after death.  Everyday people don’t exercise influence from beyond the grave.  Dolly, though, wasn't quotidian in any way.  Curmie just might be convinced that she was an angel on earth.

On the Loss of Dolly Parton

 

The last meeting of a seminar Curmie took in grad school was held at the prof’s house.  We’d all read everyone else’s final research paper for the course, and we gathered to discuss them: to think of ways the essay could be improved, to ask questions, to contemplate what the next step in the process might be.  Asked what he had to say about one fellow student’s work, Curmie started by saying, “This is the paper I wish I’d written.”  He feels that sentiment today in reading the multitudinous encomia to the recently deceased Dolly Parton.  There were many he appreciated; the one he wishes he’d written was by Rebecca Solnit.

Solnit points out many of the reasons that losing Dolly (it’s significant that we think of her by her first name) hit so many of us so hard.  She was a woman of faith and most of the songs she wrote and/or sang would be classified as “country,” making her seem to align with right-wing values.  But she also wrote songs that could be regarded as feminist, and there was certainly some of that philosophy in what is probably her best-known film role, in “9 to 5.”  She supported the BLM movement and seemed genuinely confused that there would be any objection to gay marriage.

Perhaps it was all an act, a carefully coordinated strategy to avoid controversy and thereby be about as universally beloved as anyone on the planet.  But Curmie has a reasonably well-tuned BS detector, and he doesn’t see anything inauthentic there; she was just, well, a particularly good person.  Perhaps he’s just appreciating her wit and self-deprecating humor.  One of her most famous lines was that she was unconcerned with people calling her a “dumb blonde”: “I know I’m not dumb… and I know I’m not a blonde.”  Curmie absolutely believes her when she said, “My boobs are fake, my hair’s fake but what is real is my voice and my heart.”

Curmie has often said that the difference between theatre and politics is that theatre is about telling the truth in a fictive world and politics is about lying in the real world.  (Cynical?  Moi?)  In this sense, Dolly was nothing if not theatrical, both shying away from overt political statements, or at least from partisanship, and creating her own little universe in which she could dress “trashy” (her word, not Curmie’s) and be a savvy businesswoman while maintaining something of the aura of an ingenue.

President Trump has ordered flags to be at half-mast in her memory.  There are those on the left who are righteously indignant that he would do so: that it’s hypocritical for the head of a political party that slashed funding for her Imagination Library program would suddenly choose to honor her.  Curmie is shocked (shocked, I tell you!) that any politician might behave hypocritically, but regards the gesture as, at worst, a stopped clock moment.  And those detractors would no doubt be similarly outraged if Trump hadn’t done so, having done it for a far more divisive figure like Charlie Kirk.  Such, alas, is the way of the world.

Dolly was about as close to a polar opposite of Trump as it’s possible to be, of course.  She grew up in poverty so severe that most of us can’t imagine it, let alone contemplate enduring it; Trump was coddled all along and got tens of millions of dollars from his father, one way or another.  She avoided publicity unless, as in the Imagination Library case, her popularity might generate more support for a good cause; Trump wants credit for anything positive even if he had nothing to do with it, and splashes his name on any edifice he can. 

She told self-deprecating jokes; he is incapable of even attempting humor except in the form of insulting someone else.  She has donated millions of dollars to educational and medical causes; he stole millions from a charity he’d established.  Most of all, her driving passion was love: a love that manifests in everything from paying special attention to her LGBTQ+ fans to praying for Trump himself.  She knew he was flawed; so are we all.  Trump, of course, came to political power by sowing hatred.  It didn’t matter against whom: Muslims, Latinos, gays, whoever happened to be handy at a particular moment.

At the end of a piece on Cynthia Erivo’s intervention when her friend and co-star Ariana Grande was grabbed by a young man at the Singapore premiere of “Wicked: For Good,” Curmie wrote this: 

No one can solve every problem or prevent every bad thing from happening.  And it’s easy to be empathetic if it doesn’t cost us anything more than a few hollow words.  What’s harder and far more admirable is to recognize what can be done and to do it.  Female singers don’t have a monopoly on this stuff, but a lot of them sure do seem to be good at it: Dolly Parton.  Taylor Swift.  Ariana Grande.  And now Cynthia Erivo.  Whether we’re fans of their music or not, we need to recognize that the world is a better place for their presence in it.

It’s no surprise that Dolly topped the list.  Curmie also notes that he’s not a particular fan of any of them as singers.  He knows only a handful of the songs that launched Dolly to superstardom whether as songwriter or singer or both: “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5”… there are probably a couple more he could think of if given the time, but not a lot.  But that doesn’t matter.  Curmie, who can’t sing a lick, isn’t going to judge anyone by whether he likes their voice or their choice of musical styles.  But in a world in which “multi-millionaire” and “asshole” are all but synonyms, Dolly was different.  She will be missed.  A lot.

A final note: Dolly’s family has encouraged those who wish to remember her to consider supporting the Imagination Library.  This was the program Dolly established in 1995, inspired by her father’s illiteracy.  To date, this project has placed something on the order of 325,000,000 books, free of charge, in the hands of children in five English-speaking countries.  Getting kids interested in reading is our best hope for a future that is not dominated by AI slop and the amoral moneygrubbers who churn it out.  Curmie made a contribution.  If you have a few dollars to spare, Gentle Reader, please consider doing so, as well.

On the Jason Arday Saga

Jason Arday, 1985-2026

Curmie is a little late to the feeding frenzy around the case of Jason Arday.  Arday is, or rather was, a Cambridge University professor of sociology of education (whatever that means), and a lightning rod for allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation in one direction and racism in the other.  He resigned from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion on August 5 after the university re-opened the plagiarism investigation, and he was found dead in his apartment on the 14th.  As of this writing, no cause of death has been released, but of course there is the unspoken likelihood of suicide.

Back in 2023, when Cambridge made Arday the youngest black professor to be hired in that venerable institution’s over 800-year history, a couple of things became clear.  First, the university was really interested in bragging about their new hire as an effort “to do everything it can to address this [“the barriers faced by many under-represented groups across higher education and especially at leading universities”] by creating academic spaces where everyone feels they belong.”

Second, even usually responsible news outlets bought Arday’s tales of perseverance and extraordinary accomplishments without the slightest hint of skepticism.  The Guardian, for example, breathlessly exclaimed that “he did not learn to speak until he was 11” and that he was “unable to read or write until the age of 18.”  (Both of these assertions have subsequently been at least challenged if not outright disproven.)  Shortly before Arday’s resignation, The Guardian was calling him a “superstar academic.”

But, as they say in the infomercials, That’s Not All! 

Tyler Austin Harper, a former academic currently writing for The Atlantic, describes a pattern of “systemic, ritualized, dishonesty.”  In an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, Harper says, 

He lied about a number of elements of his background, his medical history.  He plagiarized a number of his various academic works.  On the athletic achievements front, he claims to have run 600 miles in six days, which would put him 50 miles shy of the world record, which would make him a really world-class endurance athlete.  He claims to have been mute until age eleven and then had a miraculous turn-around, an illiterate until age 18….  So, any one of these things may have perhaps been believable, but the sheer accumulation of implausibilities made it pretty apparent that he was a serial fabulist.

“Fabulist” has got to be the classiest term for “liar” that Curmie has heard in a long time.  There are, by the way, a host of other claims that rather strain credulity, enumerated in the Times of London, and the New York Times, as well as The Guardian.  Asked by that newspaper about some of his more outrageous assertions, Arday responded, “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.  Why would I lie?” 

The answer to that question is rather obvious; Occam’s Razor would seem to apply.  He wanted the adulation and the benefits of someone who had actually done those great things.  If, Gentle Reader, you think that sounds rather like an obese octogenarian currently living in this country’s most expensive public housing, you are not alone.

Harper notes that the initial accusations regarding the alleged plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral dissertation were set in motion someone whom Harper says “is fairly described as a racist.”  That would be Nathan Cofnas, whose comment that in a true meritocracy, “Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” would seem to provide sufficient evidence for that assertion. 

Cofnas, who was fired by Cambridge’s Emmanuel College in 2024, has now been suspended from his research position at Ghent University, who must, of course, have known of his views when they hired him.  But Arday’s death somehow changes things in the minds of cowardly university administrators.  (Curmie offers the usual apologies for redundancy).

Importantly, however, whatever motivated Cofnas’s allegations, he seems to have had a case.  Just as Mark Fuhrman may have been a bad cop but that didn’t make OJ innocent (as opposed to “not guilty”), the allegations against Arday cannot be ignored just because he’s black and the accuser is a racist.  Viewed with skepticism, yes; automatically rejected, no. 

It is true that Arday’s PhD school, Liverpool John Moores University, cleared him of plagiarism charges, but if the New York Times is correct that “Dr. Arday’s published papers and his thesis had dozens of grammatical errors, along with identical quotes attributed to different people,” then anything that university says should be disregarded in its entirety.  The thesis is available here; you’re welcome to check it out for yourself, Gentle Reader.  Curmie has neither the disciplinary expertise to evaluate the originality or validity of Arday’s arguments nor the time to search out those grammatical errors.

What Curmie can tell you is that when he submitted his dissertation, the committee did their jobs.  In a study of late 20th-century Irish adaptations of Greek tragedies, Curmie had made a passing reference to a play by a Nigerian playwright, and seemed to imply that it was written by someone other than the actual dramatist.  A committee member pointed out the error. 

Curmie had also quoted one of the classical Greek tragedians.  He provided the English translation for the entire passage he wanted to cite, but inadvertently left out a few words of the original Greek.  The classicist on the committee caught that one.  Needless to say, the corrections were made before the document was printed and bound.  That dissertation represented not just Curmie, but the department and the university.  It was going to be accurate.  Apparently, the standards at Liverpool John Moores are a little more… erm… lax.

Fact is, no one looks good here.  Not Arday, not Liverpool John Moores, and certainly not Cambridge, who chose Arday over more senior scholars, including other “global majority” finalists with apparently better credentials, both qualitatively and quantitatively.  Arday was, in the words of the New York Times article linked above, “underqualified, by the school’s own standards.”  Ah, but hiring any old black scholar wouldn’t make headlines the way The Youngest Ever would.  The search committee included someone whose research into autism and related conditions should have set off alarms about just how unlikely Arday’s claims about his medical history truly were.

Plus, of course, the university immediately rushed to his defense even after they themselves re-opened the investigation into his alleged transgressions.  It’s understandable that a university of Cambridge’s stature wouldn’t want to admit they’d been taken in, but that sure looks like what happened.  Jason Arday may indeed have been a brilliant man, an outstanding lecturer, and a researcher capable of cutting-edge work.  He may have had colleagues, students, and friends who liked and admired him.  But, beyond the proverbial reasonable doubt, he was also a fraud, a liar, and a plagiarist.

In that NPR interview, Harper also argues that recent efforts to achieve a more inclusive professoriate “in some cases has led to a lowering of standards, but also has led to the sense that black and brown folks are on campuses to be black and brown first and foremost, and scholars and educators second.”  He then describes “what is often being described as cancel culture is actually a culture of cowardice…. No one has the stomach to say something that’s going to get them yelled at.” He’s referring here to hiring Arday, to the George Santos affair, and to his own experience as the “token black professor” at Bates College.

Curmie has occasionally mentioned that his views are not uniformly “liberal.”  He tends towards a Confucian belief that every case is different, and towards what is often regarded as a traditional conservative view that people are individuals first and representatives of a group second.  From this perspective, the situation Harper describes is doubly problematic in that it tends to isolate black scholars, making them akin to mascots, uncomfortable in their roles in the academy, and that a single incident like Arday’s apparent unfitness is taken as representative of other members of his demographic, thereby questioning the credentials of hundreds (at least) other black academics who got their positions simply by excelling.

This latter phenomenon, suggesting that most if not all black (or brown, or female, or LGBTQ+, or…) scholars got ahead simply by DEI or some variation on the theme, has been propagated not merely by racist idiots like Cofnas (or, in a different area, by buffoons like Pete Hegseth), but by far too many everyday conservatives.  (Curmie antiphrastically does not mention that most of the whiners had no objections when those who got unearned benefits were straight white males.) 

Let’s be real for a moment.  If Curmie were to identify the three academics he has known whose example he hoped to follow, people whose scholarship, integrity, and interest in helping those lower on the proverbial totem pole were all exemplary, there would be a black man on the list.  If he were to identify three academics he least wanted to emulate, there’d be a black man on that list, too.  And, of course, there are others at about every point along the continuum.  Something similar could be said for any other demographic.  None of this ought to surprise anyone.  Individuals are individuals.

Arday’s misrepresentation of himself in terms of medical history and athleticism tells us something about him as a person, not as an academic per se.  But other than serious abuse of students, there is no greater offense committed by a professor qua professor than serial plagiarism.  There is no excuse.  None.

Shaun Harper (not to be confused with Tyler Austin Harper) writes in Inside Higher Ed, “Even if he plagiarized his work, how can we best extend support to him as the investigation carries on and his reputation is being ruined across continents?”  Sorry, that’s utter nonsense.  It’s pretty clear that Arday did indeed plagiarize, and it’s more than a little smug to say that “Death should not be the price of academic celebrity” as if not everyone believed that.  Give me a damned break.

The whataboutism argument that white academics have gotten away with plagiarism in the past is simultaneously (often) true and irrelevant.  There’s at least one well-known white scholar in Curmie’s field whose career did indeed blow up after a plagiarism charge, but Curmie also knows about some pretty unethical behavior that went largely unpunished.  That said, what should happen is that there are serious consequences for all plagiarists regardless of race.

And don’t get Curmie started on arguments like “there are things he himself may have felt under pressure to exaggerate. But you have to remember always that he was trying to say, ‘Look what we can achieve. Look what black people can achieve and do.’”  Sorry, to talk legitimately about what you can accomplish requires you to actually accomplish something, not just say you did.  Such excuses do more to de-legitimize Arday than to defend him.

There are, in fact, plenty of reasons to suggest that Cambridge has a lot to answer for.  They were certainly lazy, craven, and predictably hypocritical.  But the more profound problem for Jason Arday was… Jason Arday.  It may be a bit much to call him a “turbo-fraudulent serial fabulist whose crime spree has discredited one of the world’s oldest academic institutions, as Tyler Austin Harper  does, but, frankly, not by much.

The coda to all this is that there’s apparently software that says that the chances Arday’s resignation letter was AI generated are 100%.  You may recall, Gentle Reader, that last year Curmie asked ChatGPT to write an essay about Elon Musk in Curmie’s own style.  It did so rather frighteningly well.  Some time later, Curmie fed that composition to one of those programs that purports to determine whether an actual person wrote something.  He was assured that it was 100% certain that it was written by a human.  Oops.  Maybe we ought not to be too trusting of computers’ conclusions?

Another program says that it’s only 3.5% likely that Arday’s resignation was computer-generated.  That’s a pretty wide range!  If the allegation is correct, it provides a sadly ironic conclusion to the whole affair.  If not, it serves as a reminder that whatever his faults, Dr. Arday was also an injured party.

Actually, he’s both perp and victim, however that letter was created.