@sraponi
Philosophy professor, Honors faculty. JD, PhD. Political & legal philosophy, global justice, international human rights law. Working on human rights-based climate litigation, right to food, right to water, refugees, online speech. Zen Buddhism.
Reuters Exclusive
"U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school."
"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East."
from a standpoint epistemological view you have to take this view particularly seriously
War powers highlight the problem where we have to stop conflating nonjusticiable with legal. Courts are not going to intervene in this kind of thing, nor should they, but parts of the Constitution dependent on the president and Congress to follow and enforce are still real parts of the Constitution.
Wars of choice kill those who have no choice. "Mistakes" like the reported strike on a girls' school that killed forty civilians are the predictable result of poor planning and execution.
For more on "Mistakes" in War, read this by me and @azmatzahra.bsky.social
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...
Now is the time to join your university's AAUP chapter.
Nationwide attacks on academic freedom and on our democracy are growing. The AAUP offers the resources to fight back.
Chapters are open to faculty of all ranks as well as graduate workers.
For more details about how to join, see below ⬇️
Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.
As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.
Here's what happened:
I’m the Prime Minister of Spain. This Is Why the West Needs Migrants. Gift link
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...
Walk for peace: Buddhist monks arrive in Washington after 2,300-mile journey reut.rs/4kqhinI
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.
Hundreds of kids are still detained.
We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
We are seeing what Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.” For most, life is routine and the rule of law exists. But if you interact with ICE, you face the full force of the prerogative state, which is marked by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
An essay as beautiful as it is insightful from @michaelpollan.bsky.social on the self & consciousness. The Buddhists figured out a good deal about how the mind works centuries ago, and there are few better guides than @joanhalifax.bsky.social, as Michael discovered.
Jessica Hauser 17h • • • • I was Alex Pretti's final nursing student. He was my friend and my nursing mentor. For the past four months, I stood shoulder to shoulder with him during my capstone preceptorship at the Minneapolis VA Hospital. There he trained me to care for the sickest of the sick as an ICU nurse. He taught me how to care for arterial and central lines, the intricacies of managing multiple IVs filled with lifesaving solutions, and how to watch over every heartbeat, every breath, and every flicker of life, ready to act the moment they wavered. Techniques intended to heal. Alex carried patience, compassion and calm as a steady light within him. Even at the very end, that light was there. I recognized his familiar stillness and signature calm composure shining through during those unbearable final moments captured on camera. It does not surprise me that his final words were, "Are you okay?" Caring for people was at the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. He lived a life of healing, and he lived it well. Alex believed strongly in the Second Amendment and in the rights rooted in our Constitution and its amendments. He spoke out for justice and peace whenever he could, not only out of obligation, but out of a belief that we are more connected than divided, and that communication would bring us together.
Jessica Hauser 17h • O • .. I want his family to know his legacy lives on. I am a better nurse because of the wisdom and skills he instilled in me. I carry his light with me into every room, letting it guide and steady my hands as l heal and care for those in need. Please honor my friend by standing up for peace, preferably with a cup of black coffee in hand and a couple of pieces of candy in your pocket, just as he would. He would remind you that caring for others is hard work, and we must do whatever it takes to get through the long shifts. Step outside with your dog, breathe in the world, hike or bike as he loved to do, and let yourself find peace in the quiet moments within nature. Stand up for justice and speak with those whose views differ from your own. Hold your beliefs with strength, but always extend love outward, even in the face of adversity. Take one step, no matter how small, to help heal our world. Through these acts, carry his light forward in his name. Let his legacy continue to heal. Photo of tall white man with brown hair, glasses and a kind smile, wearing a hat in the forest
“Hold your beliefs with strength, but always extend love outward, even in the face of adversity.
Take one step, no matter how small, to help heal our world. Through these acts, carry his light forward in his name. Let his legacy continue to heal.”
For many in the Trump regime it seems incomprehensible or a scam of sorts that those not categorically under attack by ICE are so committed to solidarity with their neighbors who are, and thereby to universal human rights, to standing up on principle, and will risk their lives to do so.....
I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc...
Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.
And what are they learning? Experts on the formation of internal security services in authoritarian regimes point to a sense of impunity as a warning sign. Regime officials abuse their power when they know they will be protected, and even praised, for doing so. Over the course of weeks and months, we have seen images of DHS officials abusing American citizens and immigrants alike, including killing them. What we do not hear is regime officials calling for credible investigations into such abuses, or even expressing any concerns. Renee Good’s killer was announced innocent, and both Good and her wife was instead the subject of an investigation, a perversion of justice so obvious that an FBI agent and half-dozen career Department of Justice prosecutors assigned to Minnesota resigned.
What we are watching is a paramilitary force learning that they can kill with impunity, that the regime will smear the victim and defend them. Unless politicians and the legal system exerts accountability, it will not stop. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...
In his first year back in the White House, President Trump has presided over a sweeping expansion of executive power while eroding democratic norms. n.pr/3YVl5Q3
ICE’s new policy directing agents to ignore the 4th Amendment is one of the most frightening things we’ve seen yet. And there’s no telling where it could end up. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026
🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!
ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.
Appreciate this from @dandrezner.bsky.social, and it was an honor to co-author with him.
“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact: …the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.”
You're paying for this.
Trump's Big Ugly Bill gave BILLIONS to ICE and giant corporations—using money meant to lower your health care costs.
Instead of helping your mom get cancer treatment, your tax dollars are being used to terrorize communities.
My recent conversation: What Is Engaged Buddhism? with the great @joanhalifax.bsky.social now available on The Road Home podcast.
You can subscribe to the substack or download wherever you get your pods (please *don't* use Spotify, thank you deep bows).
ethannichtern.substack.com/p/ep-164-wha...
Why Donald Trump is telling such obvious lies on the ICE Minneapolis killing
Philosophers Tim Keyon and Jennifer Saul on authoritarian discourse
#philsky
theconversation.com/why-donald-t...
semi-regular reminder that ICE was only created in 2003
when you are asked to imagine a world without ICE, you're basically being asked to remember where you were when Lilo & Stitch came out