Just Like a Tree Planted by the Waters, I Shall Not Be Moved : Charles Ogletree, Jr., and the Plain Virtues of Lawyering for Racial Equality

It was a moment of unbelievable risk, a precipice of career suicide, a decision that would challenge the careful planning of more timid lawyers. His wife urged caution; a Harvard colleague explored back channels with the Senate Judiciary Committee to telegraph warning to him of unseen torpedoes that might lie in his path. Even he hesitated in the face of the immediate demands of the substantial scholarly writing required to earn tenure at Harvard. Yet, at the end of the day of October 10, 1991, Charles Ogletree, Jr., known as Tree to his friends, chose to step into a role for which he is now most remembered: counsel to Professor Anita Hill during her testimony about Judge Clarence Thomas\u27s inappropriate sexual behavior when she worked for him as a government lawyer. It was a defining choice that made visible to the world the deep character traits that have made Tree a well-loved and respected figure in the legal academy, a fixture on the front lines of the legal fight for racial equality. This Essay is a personal reflection on the character traits and public commitments to racial equality that I have observed since I first learned who Charles Ogletree was

Crossing the River of Blood Between Us: Lynching, Violence, Beauty, and the Paradox of Feminist History

Understandably, early feminist legal theory and history focused almost exclusively on establishing white women\u27s autonomy against white male dominance. The vehicles of nineteenth century women\u27s liberation included elements of public equality such as ownership of property, the right to vote, access to male dominated occupations, equal education and employment opportunity. Twentieth century feminists extended the equality project by penetrating the private sphere and attacking the very notion of a separate zone of family relations which was immune from government intervention to protect women from male abuse. Cultural feminists like Carol Gilligan took another approach, arguing that women\u27s experiences as sexual subordinates gave rise to a distinctive moral sensibility. The portrait of white men as victimizers thus became central to advancing the psychosocial and legal agendas for white women\u27s autonomy in this century. This largely bi-polar account of gender relations was a necessary, yet woefully defective, model for true autonomy. If the feminist dialogue is to mature, the complex story of the violence that underlies white women\u27s power as distinct from the power of white men must move from the parenthesis to the central thesis of a new debate about the uses and abuses of power among women. A healthy next stage of feminist discourse will include engagement and accountability for the dual role of victim and victimizer. This will require exploration of the paradox that a subordinated group could at once be the target of violence and disadvantage, while at the same time be the perpetrators of pervasive racial and sexual violence. This Essay seeks to explore the meaning of the complex history of lynching for understanding the relationships between black women and white women today

The Non-Monetary Value of Reparations Rhetoric

I have several comments to offer on the subject of reparations. Reparations is not a single idea. The forty acres and a mule that General Sherman promised to the slaves was the beginning of the idea of reparations in America, but not the end. Reparations is a multi-part idea; until we get that straight, we are vulnerable to the feeling that we are lost again. There are at least three arenas in which the reparations issue may be contested. One is the political arena. In the arena of legislation and political maneuvering, bills must be submitted for majoritarian acceptance. It is no surprise that the current reparations bill has not gained the majority acceptance necessary for success. Thus, success in the political arena requires personal and collective political activism. The second arena is legal. In this arena those wronged can bring lawsuits. There is a coalition currently working on these lawsuits. As a lawyer, I must confess that the legal arena is probably less promising than the political arena. Although several legal precedents serve as barriers standing in the way of success in the courts, lawsuits are not, however, without value. One must simply understand their limited value. Lawsuits create the platform for the third, most important and powerful arena: the intellectual challenge to the history of racism. This arena allows us to challenge, to document, to read alternative stories, and to give those stories to our children-stories that help reposition Blacks from economic parasites to economic contributors unfairly deprived of their wealth. The intellectual arena provides an important strategic difference. When we address tired debates such as whether affirmative action is reverse discrimination, a different perspective emerges; reparations offers that positioning. Reparations as an intellectual project is most promising because it engages us all and gives us an opportunity to challenge the idea of racism - to challenge it as an idea that governs the way goods are distributed in society

Cluster simulation of relativistic fermions in two space-time dimensions

For Majorana-Wilson lattice fermions in two dimensions we derive a dimer representation. This is equivalent to Gattringer's loop representation, but is made exact here on the torus. A subsequent dual mapping leads to yet another representation in which a highly efficient Swendsen-Wang type cluster algorithm is constructed. It includes the possibility of fluctuating boundary conditions. It also allows for improved estimators and makes interesting new observables accessible to Monte Carlo. The algorithm is compatible with the Gross-Neveu as well as an additional Z(2) gauge interaction. In this article numerical demonstrations are reported for critical free fermions.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures: tiny changes, mainly typo

Hidden Lorentz symmetry of the Hořava–Lifshitz gravity

In this Letter it is shown that the Hořava–Lifshitz gravity theory admits Lorentz symmetry preserving preferred global time foliation of the spacetime

Toll-like receptor signaling and stages of addiction

Athina Markou and her colleagues discovered persistent changes in adult behavior following adolescent exposure to ethanol or nicotine consistent with increased risk for developing addiction. Building on Dr. Markou's important work and that of others in the field, researchers at the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies have found that persistent changes in behavior following adolescent stress or alcohol exposure may be linked to induction of immune signaling in brain. This study aims to illuminate the critical interrelationship of the innate immune system (e.g., toll-like receptors [TLRs], high-mobility group box 1 [HMGB1]) in the neurobiology of addiction. This study reviews the relevant research regarding the relationship between the innate immune system and addiction. Emerging evidence indicates that TLRs in brain, particularly those on microglia, respond to endogenous innate immune agonists such as HMGB1 and microRNAs (miRNAs). Multiple TLRs, HMGB1, and miRNAs are induced in the brain by stress, alcohol, and other drugs of abuse and are increased in the postmortem human alcoholic brain. Enhanced TLR-innate immune signaling in brain leads to epigenetic modifications, alterations in synaptic plasticity, and loss of neuronal cell populations, which contribute to cognitive and emotive dysfunctions. Addiction involves progressive stages of drug binges and intoxication, withdrawal-negative affect, and ultimately compulsive drug use and abuse. Toll-like receptor signaling within cortical-limbic circuits is modified by alcohol and stress in a manner consistent with promoting progression through the stages of addiction

Vertex Operators in 2K Dimensions

A formula is proposed which expresses free fermion fields in 2K dimensions in terms of the Cartan currents of the free fermion current algebra. This leads, in an obvious manner, to a vertex operator construction of nonabelian free fermion current algebras in arbitrary even dimension. It is conjectured that these ideas may generalize to a wide class of conformal field theories.Comment: Minor change in notation. Change in references