Stuff reports:

The Midwifery Council of NZ has revised its midwifery scope of practice guidelines to entirely remove the words “woman” and “mother”.

The omissions are among a raft of changes to the document in an effort to be more inclusive and “address a detrimental imbalance of representation, understanding and appreciation of Māori knowledge, values and practice”.

Health researcher and former midwife Dr Sarah Donovan has questioned the move, saying it is likely to be out of step with public expectations about the profession of midwifery, including how it describes who it cares for.

Donovan said given that midwifery is arguably the most woman- and mother-centred of all health professions, the removal of the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ will likely not make sense to a lot of people.

“If this is about being inclusive, there is scope for terms to be used alongside each other.

“My understanding of what inclusive language in healthcare means is that it actually includes rather than excludes; it is additive of new terminology rather than removing widely-recognised and culturally cherished terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘māmā’.”

Exactly.

Clarification was needed on what evidence base and advice underpinned the decision to remove the words entirely, she said.

Evidence base – LOL

“A reasonable question to ask would be, has the Midwifery Council actually sought the views of the population they serve, and of the wider NZ public on removing the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ from midwifery care in New Zealand?

“Have they asked mothers-to-be as a group how they would wish to be described instead?”

Of course they haven’t.

To be consistent the Midwifery Council should also rename itself!

Stuff reports:

A new study has carbon-dated the arrival of Māori settlers to as early as the 13th century.

Mātauranga histories and current archaeological work are estimates only – thought to be some time between the 12th and 14th centuries.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, used updated radiocarbon technology at 436 archaeological sites in the North Island and 145 in the South.

Dr Magdalena Bunbury from Australia’s James Cook University, who led the study, said the estimated timeline of when Māori arrived in Aotearoa was initially between the 12th and 14th centuries.

“This study has narrowed that down and shown that early Māori settlement happened in the North Island between AD 1250 and AD 1275,” Bunbury said.

She said Māori reached the South Island a decade later between 1280AD and 1295AD where the population rapidly grew during a time when they hunted the flightless moa bird.

It’s incredible what you can learn from carbon dating.

So Maori have lived in the North Island for around 770 years and the South Island for around 740 years. Assuming earlier generations reproduced around age 20, then some Maori may have had 30 or so generations living here.

David Farrer states:
“I would like to see 20 hours “free” from age three to become 35 hours free from age one. There is no other policy which would have such a beneficial long-term impact on child welfare, on education, on providing opportunities to disadvantaged families, to closing the gaps between Maori and European.”

I simply do not believe children 0 – 5 are made to thrive in full-time child-care. I believe that one of the causes of our declining education statistics/systems is that we have professionalised pre-school education and much reduced the emphasis on great parenting, reading to your kids, family activity, etc. A significant portion of the reason that we have a major childcare system is for the adults not the children.

A couple of years back I spoke a good friend who was an incredible professional rugby player on this topic. He and his two siblings are lawyers and I asked how they had succeeded so well. They are Samoan. He told me that his parents valued education highly and that, even though both parents had great careers – they made sure one was always home. My wife and I did the same. I cannot imagine how my kids would have done with 35 hours a week day-care but I can assure you it would not have been as well as they have done. And I sat on the couch and read to them for at least 30 mins every night. No TV/Playstation, etc, and limits of 30 mins screen time.

If some parents are opting into child-care and are getting 20 free hours … an equitable policy would be to pay 20 hours per week to parents who stay at home to look after their children (I would add a house and care check as happens for each international student in NZ).

I don’t believe what David/Jacinda are advocating would have the long term benefits they suggest.

If I had a dream policy to see implemented after the next election it would be:

• Massive education and support for pregnant women/partners re care for their child in-utero. Huge counter programme to counter FASD and other harms.
• Massive parents as first (and most important) teachers programme age 0 – 5. Including health, reading, numeracy, movement, music, languages. See Eagleman: The Brain

This documentary is a wee bit dated but if you want a simply superb example of GREAT parenting without money – this is it and it is deeply inspiring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QQBj2EucZk

Since the documentary was produced I have always shown it to the students and families of schools I have been involved with.

(I could not load it as a video as it has an age restriction through a couple of surgery shots).

Alwyn Poole

[email protected]

North and South has a really good article on the history of the (NZ) Free Speech Union. Well worth a read for those interested. An extract:

Perhaps more telling are the numbers supporting their cause — 1500 paid-up members and 70,000 supporters — and the amount of money they donate. Compare this to the 70-year-old NZCCL’s membership and funding, and it’s clear that whatever the FSU has done differently, it’s worked in recruiting members and money. Since 2021 the organisation has received enough cash from more than 4000 individual donors to fund two full-time staff in Wellington, as well as a communications specialist as needed. The average donation, FSU sources say, is $75 and fewer than 10 people have chipped in more than $1000.

This is grassroots funding at its finest – 4,000 donors who give an average of $75.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the one big idea she would have if money was not a factor would be to make early childhood education completely free.

Ardern was asked for one big blue-sky idea as part of the NZ Herald’s The New New Zealand: Rebuilding Better series – for what she would do if cost and the difficulty of putting it in place was not an issue.

Ardern said she had a long list, but if she had to pick one it would be in early childhood education.

“One of the things I know makes a difference to kids’ lives in the long term is their access to early childhood education.

I agree. I would like to see 20 hours “free” from age three to become 35 hours free from age one. There is no other policy which would have such a beneficial long-term impact on child welfare, on education, on providing opportunities to disadvantaged families, to closing the gaps between Maori and European.

“I’d make it completely free. Completely free. And when I say completely free, I’d also give choice to families about at what point and stage their child accesses it. Because for some we know it provides stability to kids that they might not have in their home life.”

Ardern said it was clear there was a price to be paid down the line if children did not get a good start in life.

“It also gives families choices. And it’s a massive cost of living issue. That’s what I’d do. It’s such a shame that it is just so expensive.”

It is hugely expensive, but it is about priorities.

Labour campaigned in 2017 not on making ECE free, but on making university free. They prioritised wealthy future doctors and lawyers and accountants over early childhood education. That is because they wanted students to vote for them.

They wasted billions on pet projects like the failed Auckland Harbour cycle bridge, Kiwibuild etc.

Think if Labour in 2017 had promised free early childhood education within ten years, and was now halfway to achieving that. They would be cruising to a second term.

So instead we have a Government that wastes money left and right on relatively unimportant priorities, and the PM laments they can’t afford to do more for ECE.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the prospect of steep rates rises is not acceptable and will not happen as a result of a huge financial hole in the council budget.

Brown was responding to a story in today’s Herald saying stubbornly high inflation, wage rises and interest costs have seen the projected budget hole of between $90 million and $150m balloon to $270m.

This is why we need a Mayor and Council who will work hard at reducing spending and costs, not just keep putting rates up by huge amounts.

Mayoral sources say Brown accepts inflation and falling council revenues are part of the problem, but he also blames head office overheads and inefficiencies in delivering services not just at Auckland Council but throughout the wider council group.

The Herald understands Brown will ask councillors to agree to a forensic, line-by-line analysis of the council, CCOs and port company. This work will have to happen in a hurry as the mayor has to publish the first draft of next year’s budget before Christmas.

Can we do this for central Government also?

The October 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 29.0% (-0.5% from September)
• National 32.0% (-4.0%)
• Greens 15.5% (+3.0%)
• ACT 12.5% (nc)
• Maori 3.0% (-0.5%)
• NZ First 3.5% (+2.5%)
• TOP 3.0% (+0.5%)
• New Conservatives 0.5% (nc)

Seats

• Labour 38 (-27 from election)
• National 42 (+9)
• Greens 20 (+10)
• ACT 16 (+6)
• Maori 4 (+2)

Governments

• Labour/Green 58/120
• National/ACT 58/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 62/120

Direction

• Right 42.0% (+4.5%)
• Wrong 50% (-1.5%)

This is the second poll to show Labour in the 20s, an extraordinary decline from the 50% they got at the election. They would lose a massive 27 MPs on this poll. However they could form a Government with the support of Greens and Maori Party/

This post is by PaulL, a regular commentor and occasional contributor. It is tangentially related to the series on effective marginal tax rates and incentives to work. The index to all posts in the series can be found here.

A slice of the effective marginal tax rate (EMTR) problem relates to the accommodation supplement. People who are not in receipt of accommodation supplement face lower EMTRs.

Accommodation supplement expenditure has increased substantially in recent years. In 2017 it cost $1.1 billion per annum, in 2021 it cost $2.3 billion.  Accommodation supplement applies to accommodation costs that are more than 25% of the base benefit. This is therefore even more striking given that benefit rates have increased substantially in recent years. Accommodation costs must have been rising faster than benefits have.

The accommodation supplement has an abatement rate of 27%, and that abatement is on top of any abatement already occurring for family tax credits.  This is a big driver of the high EMTRs for people at around 20-30 hours of work per week.

The best way to solve this problem would be to reduce housing costs. If people paid less for accommodation then fewer people would need accommodation supplement. In my opinion the increase in people receiving accommodation supplement is an important contributor to the higher EMTRs people face today than they did 5 years ago.

The Herald reports:

After a grim Newshub-Reid Research Poll for Labour saw the party trailing National by 8.4 per cent, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told interviewers on her weekly morning media round that Labour’s internal polling had the two parties effectively neck and neck – and appeared to goad supporters into making those tightly-held polls public.

“Now in our polling, which is regular, National and Labour are neck and neck. And so that feels like a fairly accurate representation right now,” Ardern told TVNZ’s Breakfast programme, noting that media companies tend to poll less frequently than political parties.

Ardern made similar remarks on RNZ’s Morning Report and expressed some surprise that the figures had not entered the public domain, presumably by being leaked.

“I’m surprised they haven’t come out because they are often party of corporate briefings by the company that does ours [polls]. I’m sure they’ll find a way out,” Ardern said.

The Herald later obtained the most recent figures from Labour’s internal pollster, Talbot Mills. They are from the organisation’s October poll.

The poll had Labour and National on 35 per cent each, with Act on 11 per cent and the Greens on 9 per cent. NZ First were on 4 per cent while Te Pati Maori were on 2.2 per cent.

This is almost hilarious. Because the Newshub Reid Research poll conducted in late October and early November was bad for Labour, she demanded someone leak the Talbot Mills corporate poll to refute it. The only problem is that poll was done almost a month earlier, in late September and early October.

I did wonder why the PM didn’t simply release her own internal polling, which is done daily?

Bernard Hickey writes:

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of our political economy, finance minister Grant Robertson yesterday defied the publicly stated objections of the opposition and reappointed Adrian Orr as Reserve Bank governor for a full second five-year term, effectively destroying what remains of the bank’s record since 1989 of it being seen to be politically independent and above the partisan politics of the day.

That 33-year-long era of neither major political party either publicly attacking the bank or expressing a lack of confidence in its governor is now over, leaving financial markets to hope that if National-Act is elected next November that Orr either stands down immediately, or is dismissed and replaced without too much fuss before he has to make any big decisions that clash with the new government’s views.

National tried to avoid this scenario by proposing a one year extension to allow the next Government to consider the issue. But Robertson has appointed Orr through to March 2028 – past the 2023 and 2026 elections.

The Reserve Bank’s decisions essentially added $1 trillion to the wealth of home-owning households and it was clear in public to everyone except the Reserve Bank, Treasury and the finance minister’s office.

The repeated denials that anything much had changed or was wrong became laughable. A range of Treasury and Reserve Bank papers even went so far as to say it was not clear that quantitative easing had widened inequality, even though both Robertson and Orr were advised in those frantic days at the beginning of covid that QE would make the wealthy much wealthier.

The refusal of both Adrian Orr and Grant Robertson to acknowledge any mistakes or publicly have any regrets has been the final straw.

They’re still trying to blame everything on others.

The moment it broke in public was earlier this year when inflation refused to cooperate with the plan and blew out to 7.2%. It is not expected to get back down into the legislated and agreed target range of 1-3% for another couple of years.

The Reserve Bank’s recent annual report and statement of intent don’t even mention the failure to hit the bank’s inflation target. It’s as if it never happened. It also wasn’t mentioned in Robertson’s reappointment letter.

Incredible – not even a mention of their biggest failure!

A good profile of James Meager at Stuff.

His first memory is of police coaxing him out from under a bed. Now James Meager, who grew up in a Timaru state house, wants to be Rangitata’s next MP. …

He grew up in south Timaru, with the Road Knights around the corner and cousins in the Mongrel Mob.

“I think about that sometimes, whether there is a thing in my life that made me go down one pathway and not the other,” he says.

“My first living memory is being sort of coaxed out from underneath the bed by a police officer.”

His parents separated when he was 4, and his mother left to raise three kids, of which he was the eldest.

50 years ago National MPs came from relatively privileged backgrounds and Labour MPs did not. Now it seems to have reversed with many National (and ACT) MPs coming from very challenging backgrounds, while more and more Labour MPs are from the comfortable middle class.

He is upfront about the time he woke up to find a letter delivered to his room at Selwyn College, in Dunedin, while he was a second year student.

The letter requested he leave the college that day, following an incident the previous night when he threw a drink over a student, frying their laptop.

Meager is upfront about his time at university, describing himself as loud-mouthed, obnoxious and opinionated.

Some of that behaviour came after drinking alcohol – which incidentally he hasn’t touched for two years – and included sleeping in people’s gardens rather than walking home after a night of binge-drinking in his high school days.

And I once vomited in a church (during a service) because I had drunk three bottles of Baileys the night before, when I was at Otago. Many students had experiences at university that do not define them.

One News reports:

An Auckland homeowner who says she was advised to sell up and move out to get away from unruly Kāinga Ora neighbours has taken a complaint to the Ombudsman.

After enduring five years of illegal drag racing, loud parties and street fighting, the woman said she was horrified when a Kāinga Ora representative suggested she move because there was little the housing agency could do to help her.

They are the worst landlords in New Zealand – terrible for tenants and terrible for neighbours.

She estimated she and her husband had called noise control more than 50 times and contacted police about 30 times since 2017.

Earlier this year, police told her they were Kāinga Ora properties and to seek help from the agency.

The woman said an agency representative told her it was difficult to move the tenants.

Don’t move them. Evict them. It’s what happened before Labour took office. Bad behaviour should have consequences.

“She said ‘we can’t move them. It’s really hard – where are we going to move them? It’s just moving the problem somewhere else.

“‘And, you know, it’s just kinda how it is. We don’t have a lot of places to put these people and we’ll just try and get them to sort it out.

“‘It’s the government policy which makes it just about impossible for us to move difficult tenants’.”

The woman said a Kāinga Ora staff member rubbed salt in the wound – suggesting she move out.

“She kinda said to me ‘why don’t you move?’, and I said ‘because I own my bloody house that’s why and why the bleeding heck would I move, I’m not the one causing trouble’.”

The sad thing is this damages the reputation of all state house tenants – the vast majority of whom are great law abiding tenants.

Ten years ago I’d happily live in an area with state houses, as the then Housing NZ would require good behaviour from tenants. Now is it any surprise there is huge hostility to new developments when existing home owners realise that Kainga Ora will do nothing.

This post is by PaulL, a regular commentor and occasional contributor. It is the sixteenth post in a series on the financial incentives to work and the impacts of our tax and transfer system on household formation, and the ninth post on the “what could we do” subsection. The index to all posts in the series can be found here.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time (some would say an interminable time) articulating what I see as the current disincentives in our tax and transfer system, and some options for what we’d do about them.

To my mind the current system has too many people on a benefit at a time when work is plentiful, and we’re getting worse not better. This is saving up trouble for the future – we need everyone to have a productive life, and contributing to society is part of that. We also cannot be serious about people having equal opportunity if some people fundamentally cannot even get on the first rung of their working life.

If National in particular are serious about a social investment approach, then surely this area is one of the best social investments we can make? If we can get people off a benefit and into work then we change their lives.

This post covers to what I’d do to make progress on this problem if I was leader of a major political party. 

Morgan Godfery writes:

Last week ANZ, New Zealand’s largest bank, posted a $2.3 billion profit. For that kind of cash the Government could double operating funding for the education system, it could hire the 4000 nurses the health system desperately needs and then some, and it could settle historic Treaty of Waitangi breaches all over again.

The “good” news is that ANZ pays tax on its before tax profit.. Sadly it probably won’t see 1,000 more nurses or a 25% increase in education funding – but that is because of Government priorities.

I’m surprised Morgan seems unaware of corporate tax.

Or maybe he is aware and is advocating that the tax rate on companies should be 100% – as trialed so successfully in the USSR and North Korea.

Yet that $2.3b – made from the mortgage interest, credit card fees and other bank charges that ordinary people pay – will accrue to the world’s very wealthiest few. In a country where inflation is running at 7.2%, and the cost of living continues to increase, multibillion-dollar profit-making is obscene.

Actually that profit will go to anyone who has a KiwiSaver account or retirement fund that has shares in ANZ. ANZ is not owned by a few billionaires. All of the top 10 shareholders are fund managers who represent tens of millions of investors.

And profit alone is almost meaningless without context such as the size of the company, and what the return on capital is. A $2 billion profit on $4 billion equity is a huge profit, but a $2 billion profit on a $15 billion equity is not as large.

ANZ operates in a tiny market of a mere 5 million people, but its profits would make financiers in London and New York blush.

Not really. Banks in Australia have had profits of $6 billion, in the UK around $20 billion and US around $66 billion.

But 2022 is different. The Reserve Bank is increasing interest rates sharply, meaning rents and mortgages are becoming more and more expensive. The cost of borrowing for business increases too. The cost of servicing business debts rises while cashflow falls as struggling households slash their spending on consumption. Jobs could soon be lost.

As the OCR rises, it is true mortgage rates increase and bank revenue, but so does the cost of their borrowing. Also defaults sadly probably increase.

The answer to that issue though isn’t Marxism, but maybe looking at the policy advocated by Trevor Mallard where the Reserve Bank can change KiwiSaver contribution rates as an additional tool, rather than only have the OCR as a lever.

Steve Todd kindly sent me details of the STV count in Wellington. Thought people would be interested in some of the details.

1. 1st preferences – Whanau 43%, Eagle 17%, Foster 16%, Chung 14%
2. McDonald preferences went 32% Whanau, 16% Chung, 13% Foster, 12% Eagle
3. Blake preferences went 42% Whanau, 12% Eagle, 11% Foster, 9% Chung
4. McKenzie preferences went 42% Chung, 14% Whanau, 11% Eagle and Foster
5. Hastie preferences went 37% Whanau, 20% Foster, 16% Eagle and Chung
6. Dudfield preferences went 58% Chung, 18% Foster, 12% Whanau, 11% Eagle
7. Chung preferences went 49% Foster, 28% Whanau, 23% Eagle

Whanau was in 1st place at every preference.

Eagle was in 2nd place on the first five counts and slipped to 3rd place on the 6th and 7th count.

Foster was in 3rd place on the first five counts and then 2nd for the last two counts.

Auckland University released:

However, the academics’ research within four New Zealand-based organisations, which involved worker observation, in-depth interviews, document collection, and ad hoc discussions with participants, uncovered a culture around humour within one business that wasn’t entirely funny.

“I didn’t want to get into what I call the dark side of humour, but I found it, and our paper investigates the relationship between humour and bullying and suggests that this type of bullying can be even more insidious and difficult to address because the use of humour creates a smokescreen, which to some extent protects the perpetrator,” says Dr Plester.

In the (now defunct) business, which had less than 30 employees, the researchers observed sexualised, dominating, and hierarchical humour. However, all of the employees said they didn’t consider it to be bullying.

If none of the 30 employees thought it was bullying, then maybe it wasn’t?

I recall working in my 20s at an advertising agency where the Friday night drinks conversation was reasonably sexualised, but mainly by the women. One staffer asked all the guys if we were circumcised or not. Other times they would talk about how size does matter.

A notable feature of the company in which humour appeared to cross a line, says Plester was the ‘culture of fun’ that prevailed, and that was explicitly recognised by all staff. Jokes, pranks, physical horseplay, banter, and many so-called fun and humorous interactions were constantly enacted and displayed as part of the workplace culture, according to the study.

On the surface, life in the organisation seemed to be a whirlwind of fun and laughter. However, in confidential interviews, Plester heard some staff admit that some of the humour went too far, had the potential to cause harm, and in some instances, employees said that humour and fun had resulted in physical and psychological harm.

“There were people that got picked on more than others, they didn’t say they were being bullied, but there are reasons why you would do that. Belonging was more important than calling out humour that they found confronting or distasteful.

“Although the interactions we looked at were unanimously identified as humour by all staff members, our interpretation and construction suggest that these joking social behaviours can be perceived as bullying.”

It is hard to judge this workplace without details, but fun should never cause harm. But what is harm? At Parliament one of my colleagues (who may or may not have gone on to be a National Party Deputy Leader) was terrified of spiders. I changed her screen saver to a full size photo of a scary tarantula and she ran out of her office screaming and wouldn’t go back in until I removed it. Did that cause harm? Probably less harm that when I persuaded her to attend a fundraising premiere of LOTR: Return of the King with me!

The 2022 mid terms were basically terrible for the Republicans. They have gone backwards in the Senate, backwards with Governorships and they look like they will only pick up half a dozen seats net in the House.

This is atypical. On average the party not holding the Presidency gains 28 House seats and five Senate seats. Add into the mix that there was a cost of living crisis and a President with very low approval rating and you would normally expect them to have gained 35+ House seats.

The Dobbs decision on abortion was no doubt a factor, but it is clear from the results that candidate quality was also a large factor. There was a huge amount of ticket splitting where people voted differently for Governor and Senate.

In Georgia Brian Kemp was re-elected with a 7% margin while Walker trails by 1% in the Senate. No coincidence that Trump campaigned against Kemp and endorsed Walker.

The problem for the GOP is that Trump has a binary test for endorsements – do you support my fantasy that I actually won the last election. So you have candidates for Governor and Senate who lost what should have been easy races to win. Even worse is that Trump spent large on the primaries but spent almost nothing on the actual general election.

And this week he is going to announce his candidacy for 2024. Six months ago I thought he would win the nomination and win the general election in 2024. Now I think the Republicans will lose if he is the candidate. Yes Biden may be dementing slightly, but we saw in Pennsylvania voters will select an impaired Democrat over a bad Republican candidate.

Trump is obsessed with his loss in 2020, In 2024 he will campaign on just one issue – that he never really lost. This is not how you will win the electoral college.

And he will spend half the campaign attacking anyone in his own party who does not swear fealty to him. A few days before the election he starts attacking Ron DeSantis and since the election Glenn Youngkin.

And now there is a clear alternative in Ron DeSantis. His 20 point victory in Florida was mammoth. He won the Latino vote. Put a 46 year old DeSantis up against 81 year old Joe Biden, and he would crush him.

DeSantis, like Trump, is exceptionally good at fighting the culture war, but unlike Trump he can also govern competently.

The problem for DeSantis is that even if he beats Trump in the primary (if he stands), Trump will either set up a third party and split the vote or attack DeSantis from the sidelines non-stop. So by Trump standing, he possibly guarantees Biden being re-elected.

The best outcome for the Republicans would be Trump gets indicted and convicted for breaching national security laws and DeSantis becomes the candidate.

This post is by PaulL, a regular commentor and occasional contributor. It is tangentially related to the series on effective marginal tax rates and incentives to work. The index to all posts in the series can be found here.

I’ve had some question from commenters on how big the problem is. This post summarises how many people we’ve had on benefits over time in NZ.

MSD have good publications on this, and the material in this post is drawn from their latest fact sheet.

We can see a steady upward trend from the start of this Labour government, then a jump with COVID. Since COVID there has been a steady decrease, but we’re nowhere near the levels prevalent pre-COVID.

The Facts analysed:

• Based on probability, candidates in the first three positions should have won 30% of the elections.
• However, they won 57% – almost twice as many.
• In other words, those 105 candidates in the top three positions won 20 out of 35 elections (a 1 in 5 chance) vs the other 323 candidates who only won 15 of the elections (a 1 in 22 chance).

This is why candidate order should be random, not alphabetical. The surname advantage is quite huge in elections where candidates are not well known.

Kenneth Marcus writes:

Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.

It is worth noting that there are around 100 groups at the School of Law, so those banning are a minority.

A Zionist is simply someone that believes Israel should exist as a Jewish state. It doesn’t mean you support any particular Government of Israel or their policies. It doesn’t mean you support settlements on disputed territory or any particular borders. It just means that you support Israel existing.

Anti-Zionism is flatly antisemitic. Using “Zionist” as a euphemism for Jew is nothing more than a confidence trick. Like other forms of Judeophobia, it is an ideology of hate, treating Israel as the “collective Jew” and smearing the Jewish state with defamations similar to those used for centuries to vilify individual Jews.

Exactly.