For years, the mantra on the left was “reimagining” everything from policing to free speech to defense. Reimagining often was a synonym for defunding or limiting the subject matter. Now, Georgetown Law Professor Sherally Munshi and others are attacking border enforcement as “ethically indefensible.” Munshi calls it “defamiliarizing” the whole concept of borders, which she and others in higher education now find morally reprehensible.
Munshi’s talk, “Unsettling the Border,” is an example of how radical many law faculties have become. She is by no means a standout in such theories. While schools have purged their ranks of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty, there is no limit to faculty writing on the far left.
Munshi insists that “there is nothing natural or inevitable about the United States’ contemporary borders.” She mocked the whole notion of “the so-called border crisis.” Millions of unvetted people just walking over the border is not a crisis… at least not for the country. It is failure in ourselves; “a crisis of imagination.” Accordingly, she is calling for reimagining or defamiliarizing borders:
“Our task, as I put it, is to unsettle the border, to defamiliarize, disenchant, and recontextualize it by critically evaluating the historical processes, the legal developments, the discursive formations that naturalize and legitimate the border.”
It is, of course, racist to want to have secure borders:
“Rather than redress the fact that the international border regime is practically unsustainable [and] ethically indefensible, majorities in the whitest and wealthiest nations are embracing an increasingly authoritarian form of nationalism and exclusion.”
Borders, according to Professor Munshi, are just a construct “within the American imaginary, the southern border divides white from indigenous, purity from heterogeneity, civilization from savagery, settler from Indian.”
Of course, this reimagining of borders will have to extend back a tad further than the American founders. The concept of the nation-state with sovereign borders was recognized in documents like the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. It was credited with maintaining a Westphalian peace with nations able to maintain their own territory and governing systems. That, in turn, allowed nation-states to form international bodies and further stabilize global relations.
I have heard other faculty present papers along these same lines, dismissing the very concept of border enforcement as racist, privileged, or archaic. It is far more rare to hear conservatives on campuses arguing for border enforcement and deportations. It is even less common to find such advocates on both faculties.
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values.
The problem is not that there are radicals teaching at law schools, but that most faculties seem to run only from the left to the far left.
Perhaps it is time to . . . wait for it . . . reimagine or defamiliarize law school faculty appointments.
My God!
What a revelation!
Where do actual Americans go to school?
Or aren’t there any?
_______________________
“[We gave you] a republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin
_________________
You couldn’t.
________________
“We the People…secure the Blessings of Liberty to OURSELVES and our POSTERITY….”
– Preamble
______________
You didn’t.
Trump bankruptcies…
Trump Taj Mahal – $3 billion
Trump Plaza Hotel – $550 million
Trump Castle and Casino – $338 million
Trump Plaza Hotel: $550 million
Trump Casino Resorts: $1.8 billion
Trump Entertainment Resorts: $1.7 billion
United State of America: pending
Does Mushdick live in a home without doors, locks, walls or gates? Does Mushdick practice what she preaches and allow open access to her quarters, anytime? Mushdick has her borders as all of us do for the obvious. Our US borders are meant to protect all US citizens in the same manner Mushdick protects her and her family. Mushdick’s education proves once again degree’s don’t Trump common sense and reason. Radical’s never practice what they b***h about.
It’s a huge contradiction, isn’t it?
How is she/her/hers/it taken seriously, and why?
She should be deported for anti-American activities, subversion, treason, and “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Why do I sense that Robespierre is about to deploy the guillotines?
Actually, Munshi’s “Defamiliarizing” propositions go back to at least 2020. See, e.g., “Unsettling the Border,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3800947 and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3800947
She is well-credentialed with an impressive cv. I do not know if she was born in India, but British colonialism of India seems to have been/still be a major motivating factor imbued in her resentment of borders and sovereign “empires.”
See, e.g.,
“…the kinds of inequalities that are the continuing legacy of imperialism.
In other words, there are lessons we have yet to learn from the history of
imperialism…the proliferation of sovereign states was not a solution to the
problem of empire. The globalization of national borders would preserve,
even intensify the asymmetries wrought during the imperial era. Those
asymmetries, in turn, have made the pressure to move across national
borders greater than any other time in human history. Rather than consign
ourselves to the nationalism that continues to govern our immigration
policies, we might embrace an alternative vision, one that acknowledges
histories of entanglement, that the earth is a shared inheritance. We might
abandon the notion that our obligations are circumscribed by territorial
boundaries and instead embrace a wider ethic of reciprocity and
hospitality.” pp.103-04, openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/7531/Sherally_Munshi.pdf
As bright as she may be, I am immediately struck with how even the brightest amongst others can still harbor views and opinions wholly premised on their own personal empirical or academic biases, often premised on their own racial/ethnic identities.
In her opening pages, Munshi quotes two persons as markers for where she wants to go with this:
“…Rai observed that while the world was changing, one thing remained constant: ‘the claim of the white
man to possess the earth.'”
“…we hear the distinct echoes of W.E.B. Du Bois’s more famous prophesy, one that should sound familiar to most students of American history: ‘the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.'”
p.52, supra, quote citations contained therein.
Apologies for the lengthy post.
(forgot to mention that the above quotes predated her paper mentioned by Turley; -they are from “Immigration, Imperialism, and the Legacies of Indian Exclusion,” her paper published in 2016.)
Defamiliarize Foreign Invasion And Reimagine The Naturalization Acts Of The American Founders
Antithetical and Anti-American Global Communist Professor Sherally Munshi is against borders because the American Forefathers, seen at the top of this page, the American Founders, would not have admitted her to become a citizen per their legislated immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, the first of the Acts that, incidentally, were never legally abrogated but dispatched out of existence by an illicit, unconstitutional., brutal, and tyrannical military dictator.
Think outside the box. When a left wing, liberal, democrat says this, they mean think outside our constitution.
Hey Professor Munshi, how many criminal aliens are in your household, sleeping in your beds, eating your food and using your money and resources, with or without your permission? What? None? Thought so.
Oh, this is so easy. Find out where these professors live, tear down their fences and camp out. Or go inside and squat. They will quickly learn the virture of borders.
I would suggest to the good professor Munshi that re-imagining borders might begin at home. She, and here like minded, could demonstrate how life without boundaries is beneficial as well as enlightening by “unhinging” the outside doors of their houses, condos, or apartments. This along with a personal policy that anyone who wants to may stay as long as they like, enjoy the contents of the pantry, and otherwise utilize the living spaces as their own when ever they want. This would certainly demonstrate that a personal life without boundaries is so much richer and fulfilling than with boundaries. Then one could get one’s wealthy followers (perhaps the Soros foundation could fund this exciting concept) to apply this to whole apartment complexes without doors.
Surely no one could doubt that this assuredly wildly successful experimental demonstration could be broadly scaled up to a nation state.
So essentially she’s saying that the successful countries should have no borders, but if these same countries decided to expand their successful forms of government and economic systems to failing Third World countries that are rich in resources, that they would be colonizers and imperialists. She’s also admitting that the inhabitants of these failing countries can’t make it on their own, and need to invade “white” countries in order to survive.
Well, this is quite interesting, as a theory. By Professor Munshi’s reasoning, why should Russia not invade Ukraine? Nor do the people of America’s indigenous nations any kick against European settlers.
And where would that leave Palestinians, or indeed anyone complaining of “colonizers?” If borders are immoral by definition, then no given people or culture has any right at all to any particular land.
I suspect, though, that she has not thought her argument through – beyond its application to the unique evil that is the US (LOL) Which proves a non-degree holder can extrapolate for logica better than at least one law professor.
There is no such thing as “America’s indigenous nations.”
Asiatic nomads were the first to arrive on this continent, in the last megaannum anyway.
Those itinerant tribes conducted no surveys, delineated no legal boundaries, generated no deeds, preserved no records, established no corpus juris, and maintained no courts.
Those people arrived long before 1789, when America came into existence.
Nothing can be confiscated from a clan that licitly possesses precisely that.
It’s a courtesy term; I do actually know they migrated here.
No borders, oh good. Let’s see Israel erase the border and end Gaza as an entity, rush up to the middle of Lebanon, get a little more space in Syria and maybe even Jordan.
The US can then officially make Canada the 51st state by erasing that “border”. Who says Denmark owns Greenland? Looks like it is up for grabs now. Panama canal…America Canal.
Ahh, life without borders. Granted we may lose Taiwan and South Korea, but it looks like it is every man for himself now and might makes right. Hey Cuba, how ya doin’? Monroe Doctrine on steroids here we come. Wait until Mexico sees how big Texas can get!!!
In the most recent years of American history you had the call to fundamentally transform the United States; a call from revolutionaries. T O D A Y , you have the America First Movement of, by and for the people wanting to revitalize our constitutional republic.
They say that the American border should not exist while at the same time they are willing to pay 350 billion dollars to protect the Ukrainian border. It would be interesting to see an optional donation check box on your tax form for the funds to protect the Ukrainian border and just below it a request for funds to protect the United States border. But what the hell, we already know where the Democrats stand on the Ukrainian border and our border. They just keep digging a deeper trench pit so just give them an endless supply of shovels.
#74. I don’t believe United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 1923, ever actually existed but it’s fun to imagine it did for discussion.
Those professors are so smart that they do not understand that, without borders, they would have no way of making an income.
It used to be possible to take a bar exam after an apprenticeship. Perhaps it’s time to use that system again.
Edward, even then universities would hire Marxists as law professors. They would simply drop any requirement that the applicant be a member of the bar.
TBH I’m not even sure that’s a requirement today for law school faculties. Passing the bar exam and being a member of the bar just means the person has a license to practice law, which is very different from teaching law.
Oh, nvm, I just got what you’re saying: for the sake of the students, so they can become lawyers without having to suffer the fools on law faculties. My bad.
Buffoon
OT
“PONZI”
Elon Musk stated that SOCIAL SECURITY is a PONZI scheme, “a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors,” per Wiki.
Social Security may not be taxed for or funded per Article 1, Section 8, as it is not debt, defense, or “general Welfare”—it benefits merely 18.7% of the population, distinctly not “general,” which is defined as all or the whole.
As is the case with the communist American welfare state, including related agencies and departments:
– Social Security must have been struck down at its inception.
– The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Jonathan: There was a time when we welcomed immigrants. My ancestors came here from Scotland and England as immigrants. They helped build this country and fought in its wars. For a hundred years Mexicans came and also helped to build the country. They came on work visas–working in the fields, in construction and other industries. Taking jobs that white Americans didn’t want.
Under DJT’s insane policies immigrants are no longer welcome. DJT falsely claims all recent immigrants are “criminals”, “rapists”, “drug dealers” or are being released from insane asylums. But DJT’s lies play well with the MAGA crowd.
I have no problem with deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes. But DJT’s wholesale roundup of immigrants means thousands are being deported who have committed no crimes, and have being living peaceful and productive lives. Now their lives are being disrupted and family members separated. That’s not human. Immigrants should be given an opportunity to regularize their status without the threat of immediate deportation. Let’s put sanity back into our immigration policies!
Thanks, Dennis. Trump and the MAGAs have never considered the extent to which our economy depends on migrant labor–and not just in agriculture-in which they have played a vital role for decades, planting, picking and packing perishable fruits and vegetables. They also work in meatpacking plants, nonunion construction, especially roofing, the hospitality industry, including hotels and restaurants, and landscaping, nanny and houskeeping jobs. We don’t have anyone to replace these people, so wages will have to be dramatically increased in order to attract American citizens to do these jobs, so prices will go up. Trump spoon feeds lies to his MAGA base about migrants being criminals, rapists, drug dealers, and traffickers, but that’s simply not true–most of them came here for a better life and future for their children. If Trump is actually able to deport millions of them, our economy will suffer even more than it is suffering now because of his stupid tariffs. Trump will just lie and try to blame Biden and Democrats and the MAGAs will believe it. We are in big trouble.
You and Dennis make a cute couple, Natacha. By all means, keep sniffing each others exhaust then tell us all how sweet the other’s scent is.
The crime, dear Dennis, is the knowing-illegal circumvention and thumbing-of-noses to the legal and proper application for admission into the United States.
Those who continue to commit more substantial/heinous/violent crimes, following illegal entry, are the ones that Trump and ICE have focused on.
Lin,
Well said. And, as always, done with such elegance in so few words! As much as Dennis believes in his own intelligence, time and time again he proves himself wrong. But, when has he ever been right?
THE LAW OF THE NATION’S FOUNDERS CAN’T BE WRONG
Because workers are allowed in as labor does not rationalize a “path to citizenship” and the inevitable invasion and conquest of the nation of the American Founders.
You and your ancestors came to America to what, destroy it? That doesn’t make any sense. You replicate the idiocy of Barack Obama, who swore to “fundamentally transform the United States,” which should have compelled his deportation and exile. You replicate the idiocy of Lincoln, who, rather than enforce existing legal and constitutional immigration laws, installed an adversarial, foreign, 4-million-man, standing army on U.S. soil.
The American Founders required specific characteristics for those admitted to become citizens, which have never been legally or constitutionally abrogated, but dispatched by the illicit brutal military force of an unconstitutional tyrannical dictator, which, I suppose, you support.
Dennis, how about the Guatemalan human trafficking ring that was just busted by ICE. They smuggled 20,000 Central American illegals at 18,000 per head. In case you didn’t do the math, $360,000,000 dollars. Not a bad haul for these thugs.