Should the Great Food Transformation be Fake-Meat Free? Considering Strategies for a Future of Food that is Kinder to People, Animals, and the Planet

In 2019, former Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka infamously denounced advocates of the Green New Deal with the pithy admonishment, “They want to take away your hamburgers.” This rhetoric is ironic given that none of the politicians supporting the Deal have suggested widescale adoption of vegan diets, much less any laws or policies restricting the consumption of animal-based meat. However, given our species’ broken relationship to food, perhaps they should. The 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission Food in the Anthropocene report laid bare the scope of our current global predicament, warning that “[g]lobal food production threatens climate stability and ecosystem resilience and constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries. Taken together the outcome is dire.” The report argues that “global efforts are urgently needed to collectively transform diets and food production” and that, ultimately, “what is needed is rapid adoption of numerous changes and unprecedented global collaboration and commitment: nothing less than a Great Food Transformation.

I Want You To Panic: Leveraging the Rhetoric of Fear and Rage for the Future of Food

Humanity Is About to Kill 1 Million Species in a Globe-Spanning Murder-Suicide. Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change. Doomsday headlines like these are terrifying. But are they enough to make us act? The causes of the current climate crisis are many, but the science is clear that the meat and dairy industry shoulders much of the blame. Given the role the animal agriculture industry plays in perpetuating the climate crisis, combined with the harms the industry imposes on the animals and workers within it, politicians and governments—given their degree of power and influence—should ostensibly be leaders in setting policies that might set humanity on a course-correction. Instead, we see fear prompting politicians and governments to action—action designed to slow progress and thwart change

Duty to Rescue? Exploring Legal Analysis Through the Lens of Photojournalists’ Storytelling Dilemmas

In depicting scenes of tragedy, what happens when photojournalists become the story? Do photojournalists have a duty to rescue those they photograph? Should they? This article will use a series of iconic images – and the stories of the photojournalists behind the camera – to illustrate how exploring these questions can be a provocative vehicle through which to engage new law students in legal writing and analysis. The article focuses on an exercise that centers around a fictional “Duty to Rescue” statute modeled after European statutes of the same kind. The exercise is anchored by four images – three still photographs and one image that is part of a short documentary film – of people in tragic and near-death situations. The article explores ways to use the stories behind these images to engage law students in the question of whether the photojournalists who took the images had violated the fictional Duty to Rescue statute, and concludes with a discussion of ideas on how the basic exercise can be modified and/or expanded, including but not limited to raising issues of morality-based lawmaking, ethics, fairness, and differences in law across cultures

Making Workshops Work (for Everyone): Creating and Capturing a Student-Driven Writing Workshop Series

It\u27s not uncommon for new law students to arrive at law school anxious for support on their legal writing assignments and looking for strategies to improve their time management and exam preparation skills. At the same time, upper-level law students are often eager for opportunities to develop their public speaking, presentation development, and leadership skills. This article presents an overview of the 2009-10 Fall Writing Workshop Series, sponsored by the GW Law Writing Center, which successfully met both sets of goals. The article provides readers with concrete ideas for implementing a similar program at their law schools, and includes ideas for expanding and refining the program in future years

Making Workshops Work (for Everyone): Creating and Capturing a Student-Driven Writing Workshop Series

It\u27s not uncommon for new law students to arrive at law school anxious for support on their legal writing assignments and looking for strategies to improve their time management and exam preparation skills. At the same time, upper-level law students are often eager for opportunities to develop their public speaking, presentation development, and leadership skills. This article presents an overview of the 2009-10 Fall Writing Workshop Series, sponsored by the GW Law Writing Center, which successfully met both sets of goals. The article provides readers with concrete ideas for implementing a similar program at their law schools, and includes ideas for expanding and refining the program in future years

The World Is Not Flat: Conference Planning and Presentation as Part of a Multidimensional Understanding of Scholarship

Scholarship. For many academics, the word is filled with a combination of excitement, anticipation, obligation, and dread. Academics are expected to reliably produce scholarship, much like sculptors are expected to produce art, baristas cappuccinos, and stockbrokers profits. While “scholarship” has perhaps traditionally been viewed as strictly words on a page, some scholars view it to be a multidimensional enterprise, something that encompasses the many aspects of the life of a scholar. The idea of scholarship as comprising more than just the generation of a tangible written product is taken up in Maksymilian Del Mar’s Living Legal Scholarship, which asserts “five responsibilities of legal scholarship: the responsibility of reading, writing, teaching, collegiality, and engagement.” Del Mar emphasizes that “[t]he five responsibilities must be understood holistically: they work together to provide a picture of the ethical life of a legal scholar.” This article tells the story of how the authors’ journey has led them to the belief that planning and presenting at legal writing conferences is a powerful way to engage in many (and at times perhaps all?) of Del Mar’s “five responsibilities of legal scholarship.” The article concludes with practical guidance based on the authors’ experiences on how seizing the opportunity to do your own conference planning and hosting can benefit you, your school, and the broader legal writing community

From Rice Eaters to Soy Boys: Race, Gender, and Tropes of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a wide range of material from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as a qualitative media analysis of #SoyBoy tweets posted between October 2010 and August 2018. It argues that, given that we live in a world steeped in ‘coloniality’ (Grosfoguel), it is no wonder that sexist and racist colonial-era tropes are alive and well today, packaged in a 21st-century digital culture form. In the digital politics of the alt-right, dairy milk has become a symbol for racial purity, connecting pseudo-scientific claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity. The term ‘soy boy’ provides a discursive counterpoint, relying heavily on colonial-era stereotypes of so-called ‘effeminate’ plant eating, often linked to Asian and other non-white cultures. The article concludes by arguing that for those working to reframe centuries-old norms and tropes related to race, sex, and humankind’s relationship to other animals, part of that work may take place online using the tools of social media and reappropriation of derogatory language. However, ultimately the power of social media to change norms and minds depends on the power of the social movements driving those changes; success is likely to only come through a robust anti-racist, color-conscious, and gender-conscious vegan movement (Harper

Duty to Rescue? Exploring Legal Analysis Through the Lens of Photojournalists’ Storytelling Dilemmas

In depicting scenes of tragedy, what happens when photojournalists become the story? Do photojournalists have a duty to rescue those they photograph? Should they? This article will use a series of iconic images – and the stories of the photojournalists behind the camera – to illustrate how exploring these questions can be a provocative vehicle through which to engage new law students in legal writing and analysis. The article focuses on an exercise that centers around a fictional “Duty to Rescue” statute modeled after European statutes of the same kind. The exercise is anchored by four images – three still photographs and one image that is part of a short documentary film – of people in tragic and near-death situations. The article explores ways to use the stories behind these images to engage law students in the question of whether the photojournalists who took the images had violated the fictional Duty to Rescue statute, and concludes with a discussion of ideas on how the basic exercise can be modified and/or expanded, including but not limited to raising issues of morality-based lawmaking, ethics, fairness, and differences in law across cultures

From Rice Eaters to Soy Boys : Race, Gender, and Tropes of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a wide range of material from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as a qualitative media analysis of #SoyBoy tweets posted between October 2010 and August 2018. It argues that, given that we live in a world steeped in ‘coloniality’ (Grosfoguel), it is no wonder that sexist and racist colonial-era tropes are alive and well today, packaged in a 21st-century digital culture form. In the digital politics of the alt-right, dairy milk has become a symbol for racial purity, connecting pseudo-scientific claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity. The term ‘soy boy’ provides a discursive counterpoint, relying heavily on colonial-era stereotypes of so-called ‘effeminate’ plant eating, often linked to Asian and other non-white cultures. The article concludes by arguing that for those working to reframe centuries-old norms and tropes related to race, sex, and humankind’s relationship to other animals, part of that work may take place online using the tools of social media and reappropriation of derogatory language. However, ultimately the power of social media to change norms and minds depends on the power of the social movements driving those changes; success is likely to only come through a robust anti-racist, color-conscious, and gender-conscious vegan movement (Harper