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There's now an "author's note" appended to the @tabletmag hit job on California's Ethnic Studies Curriculum, which fails to address the seemingly core sin that the author falsified key pieces of evidence. Indeed, it tacitly double-down. (Thread) https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/california-ethnic-studies-curriculum
As I recount here, the article falsely claims a particular antisemitic quote is found in the curriculum. This is objectively false--neither the quote, nor the source from which the quote comes from, is in the curriculum. This falsehood remains uncorrected. http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-antisemitic-quote-that-wasnt-in.html
Simply put, if there really was content in the model ethnic studies curriculum that was harmful to Jews, the author would not have had to invent it.
But in the author's note, we see a new argument for why it doesn't matter that there's no actual significant bad content in the current draft. The author expressly says that the actual content of the curriculum is *irrelevant* to the case of whether it should be supported.
The author's new position is that it doesn't matter what's in the current draft bc the problems in the prior iterations irretrievably poison it. This argument is fatalistic if not bizarre, suggesting that nothing can ever be improved or changed for the better.
After all, if the taint was indelible, then it should not be difficult to find things to object to in the current draft. The fact that the author scarcely can find anything *currently* problematic in the draft is not so much irrelevant to her thesis as it does falsify it.
Denying the relevance of the current draft is an understandable argumentative choice, if not an ethical one, once one recognizes that the author does not and cannot provide more than trivial potshots at the substance of the actual, current draft under consideration.
Unfortunately, the author seemingly cannot help indulging in deliberate elisions in timeline to impute sins in the older drafts to the present one--clear misrepresentations meant to mislead the casual reader.
She tells us that "first draft is *right now* being peddled to school districts across the state" (emphasis added), implying that the new draft is being ignored. But the article she links to is from May--at that point not even the 2nd draft, let alone the 3rd, had been released!
Indeed, if there is a risk that districts will simply adopt "off-the-shelf" (her phrase) ethnic studies curricula w/out independent judgment, all the more reason to care a lot about what draft is actually placed on the shelf, and make sure this draft is the one approved!
Likewise, she quotes a letter from Clarence Jones to argue that the ESMC is inherently harmful. But Jones' letter is from October -- two months before the current draft was released -- and specifically directs its attacks on content in the 2nd draft then under consideration.
Jones opposed that draft of the ESMC "unless and until" pieces of offensive content were removed. And they were! But Tablet dishonestly presents him as critiquing the *current* draft, or arguing that *any* draft would be problematic and should be rejected.
Ultimately, the author is forthright about one thing: She thinks an ethnic studies course is bad no matter what's in it. It doesn't matter what it says about Jews. It doesn't matter what it says about antisemitism. Content doesn't matter. She doesn't want ethnic studies taught.
Which, if that's your position, go ahead and make the case. But don't pretend (literally, in the sense of falsely claiming content is the in the curriculum that isn't there) that your problem is with antisemitism. Have the guts to be honest.
