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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion - Religious tests for federal judges are unconstitutional and un-American
The American Family Association Action's Center for Judicial Renewal doesn't particularly like it when you say that it wants to impose an unconstitutional religious test on appointees to the Supreme Court and other federal courts. But that's what it is. And this aggressive and exclusionary Christian nationalism, embraced by much of the religious right and the MAGA movement, is wrong, unconstitutional and un-American religious discrimination. The argument is that there's a big difference between a 'preference' for specific religions among judges and an actual 'religious test' for holding office. But that distinction means little when a political group uses its influence to pressure presidents and U.S. senators to treat their preference as a de facto religious test. The bottom line is that conservative organizations are delving into the religious beliefs and practices of conservative judges to decide whether they would be acceptable to serve on the Supreme Court. The Center for Judicial Renewal's site lists 'worldview' as the first of '10 Principles of a Constitutionalist Judge,' explaining that 'the greatest predictor of their faithful and constitutional performance on the bench is their 'worldview' or 'Christian faith.'' The organization has put several conservative judges considered potential Supreme Court nominees on its unacceptable 'red list.' The public version of its 'serious concerns' dossier on Judge Neomi Rao includes under a 'Faith and Worldview' heading the fact that Rao 'was raised in an immigrant family of Zoroastrian tradition and converted to Judaism when she got married.' So it appears that only Christians are acceptable to them, and then only Christians who meet the religious right's 'biblical worldview' standard. The change in the language on their website from 'biblical worldview' to 'worldview' after public criticism does not change the substance of the effort. The American Family Association tells prospective students of its biblical worldview training course, 'In order to make an impact in culture, we must first submit ourselves to the clear teaching of Scripture and acknowledge its authority to dictate every area of our lives.' As the association and its allies apply this definition to legal and public policy questions, their standard requires opposition to legal abortion and equality for gay and transgender people and same-sex couples. It means accepting an interpretation of the Bible that dictates right-wing social and economic policies. It means undermining the separation of church and state and enforcing a right-wing view of religious liberty as a sword to justify discrimination rather than a shield to protect freedom. This religious worldview test betrays the letter and spirit of the Constitution, whose authors put in writing that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.' In other words, no public official can be required to hold particular religious beliefs. Along with the First Amendment, it's a core of our constitutional guarantee of religious liberty. To demand judges 'have a relationship with Jesus' on the grounds that they will be fairer seems like not only a religious test, but also a smear against fair-minded people who don't share this religious worldview. I'm a Christian, and it offends me. It certainly does not show respect for the peaceful pluralism that is a defining characteristic of our nation, where one's rights as a citizen, including the right to serve in public office, are not dependent on having particular religious beliefs. Indeed, some of the nation's founders had unorthodox Christian views that some might view as falling short. One key characteristic of Christian nationalism is the belief that certain kinds of Christians should hold a privileged and dominant place in society. Right-wing groups are attempting to impose just that with their effort to hang a sign on our courthouses that says 'no Jews, Muslims, liberal Christians or secularists need apply.' Other Trump-aligned Christian nationalists want to impose explicit tests for anyone holding public office. These calls raise the question of which religious or government figures would be responsible for evaluating whether someone's Christianity passes muster. When it comes to judges, the opinion piece argues that the White House and Senate should outsource that evaluation to those who adhere to its beliefs. President Trump has recently created a Religious Liberty Commission whose ostensible mission is to protect every American's religious liberty. One test of its sincerity would be whether it would publicly reject and disavow this attempt to impose religious discrimination on our courts. Trump and every U.S. senator should do the same. Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
India Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
From the India Today archives (1981)
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 31, 1981)It was both inevitable and expected, but that did not lessen the shock. When Nargis, 52, unsurpassed First Lady of the Indian Screen, Member of Parliament and social worker, died early on May 3, the profound sense of shock in the country was not alleviated by the knowledge that she was suffering from a fatal form of pancreatic cancer. Of the last eight months of her life, she had spent almost six in New York's Sloan-Kettering Institute, battling the disease in a series of debilitating even in the anguished, protracted period of her illness, she possessed a dignity that had become over the years of her celebrated life a kind of hallmark. Whether as a raging sex symbol of the '50s or as a dedicated social worker and spokesperson for the film industry, she exuded a charisma compounded of not only her good looks and star status, but a superiority of integrity and conviction unusual in the glamour in her life, when there was talk of her marriage, Nargis is said to have casually remarked: "But who will marry the daughter of a tawaif?" Playful and provocative as the remark was, it was also without pretension in a woman who transcended her social origins, her image of a sex symbol, and her political career to become synonymous with motherhood and martyrdom as she portrayed it in her greatest role in Mother India 25 years Last fortnight, thousands of fans thronged the lane leading to her Pali Hill bungalow to catch a last glimpse of her. At the Chandanwadi Cemetery, where she was buried next to her mother, Jaddanbai, a famous singing girl of the 1920s, police was called to suppress the mob that gathered. Large sections of the crowd were too young to have seen her in her heyday, but this was typical of her extraordinary appeal. Her entry into the Rajya Sabha last year, her subsequent hospitalisation, and her long-drawn-out fight for life in New York, all of which have made their way into the national press, added volumes to the legend of last rites were performed by Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian and Christian priests but she was buried with Muslim honours. Said her husband Sunil Dutt who, in the last nine months, has been reduced to a gaunt shell of a man, his clothes loose and ill-fitting on his tall frame: "I wanted her to experience all the dignity in death which she was used to in life. She was such a great person. I wanted everyone, of whatever faith, to think of her and pray for her."National radio and television networks reacted with an admirable promptitude, and within hours of her early morning death the news was flashed across the country. Bombay Doordarshan cancelled its scheduled feature film and ran instead her last film, Raat Aur Din a brilliant portrayal of a schizophrenic ' Jekyll and Hyde woman who alternates between home-loving and But perhaps the most accurate measure of her standing, both within and outside the world of films, lay in the stream of tributes that poured into the Dutt household that Sunday. Outpourings of sympathy and grief came from all over the country, from the film industries of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, from ministers, the prime minister, civil servants and elder citizens, from those in the Government and those opposed to it. Possibly the greatest tribute came from Sharkat Hussain Fatmi, president of the Pakistan Film Trade Association, who called her "the subcontinent's top actress " In a front page editorial of Screen, the cinema's trade paper, editor B.K. Karanjia evoked her mystique by saying, "there must have been something great in her, in the woman more than the star, to have inspired such great, such undying love."In spite of her success and her wealth, Nargis, unlike many others, remained unchanged. Recalled Sardar Akhtar, wife of Mehboob Khan, the filmmaker, a well-known star of the '30s who coached Nargis: "When Mehboob sahab cast her in Taqdeer, she was a simple schoolgirl. We treated her like our own daughter and to the end she gave us the same respect and love she would have given her parents." Akhtar recalls how she used to give the young Nargis Rs 10 on the occasion of Id. And to the last, Nargis always made it a point of visiting Akhtar along with her children and demanding Rs 10 when Id came death of Nargis marks what posterity might record as the end of an era in Hindi cinema. Along with Madhubala and Meena Kumari, Nargis epitomised a remarkable period in the development of Indian films. She started the trend of female martyrdom that persists to this day, but the heady romance of her period has died with her. Nargis' classics, produced by Mehboob Khan and Raj Kapoor, live on in the foreign markets, where they are more sought after than many modern movies. The '60s and '70s saw a new type of popular movie, a type which laid more stress on looks than histrionics. But Nargis, in a timely move, had retired from films at the height of her own popularity after winning the 'Urnashi' for her last role in Rant Aur Fatima Rashid in 1929, she got her first film break only five years later, when Mehboob Khan cast her in a child's role in Talaash-e-Haq. At 14, she played her first leading role, as heroine of Mehboob's Taqdeer. Nargis, as she was now called, rapidly shot to the top with her next few films, including Romeo and Juliet, Daroga, Kismat, Lahore and Humayun, another Mehboob production. The prolific actress starred opposite leading male stars of the day, including Dilip Kumar (Jogan, Bahul, Hulchul among others), Ashok Kumar, Motilal and Raj love-pair: And it was opposite Raj Kapoor that Nargis made her greatest films, epoch-making romances which continue to thrill fans of the pair, even today. Kapoor's first film Aag which starred Nargis and Kamini Kaushal, marked the start of a partnership that was to last almost 8 and 15 movies. Barring Boot Polish, every film made by Raj Kapoor during this period starred Nargis opposite Kapoor's tramp or hobo. Mehboob's Andaaz, also filmed in the late '40s, had Kapoor and Dilip Kumar vying for her in the end. Every Raj Kapoor classic, including Aah, Barsaat, Awara, Shree 420 and Jaagte Raho included Nargis as female lead, and they also co-starred in outside productions like Amber and 1956, at the peak of her career, Mehboob cast her in his colour remake of Aurat titled Mother India. She was awarded, for this role, the Padma Shri, another Filmfare award to add to her collection, and the top award at the Karlovy Vary film festival of the USSR. She fell in love with Sunil Dutt, who played her son in the film, and soon after they got married. Although her brilliant performance in Raat Aur Din came after her marriage, her marriage marked her retirement from the medium she had dominated for 15 now threw herself into social work, though she continued to be associated with the film industry in Bombay. For a short while she was president of the Indian Motion Picture Producers' Association and, in the early '60s, she helped start the Ajanta Art Group for the entertainment of army troops in border areas. Says Raj Kapoor, who wooed her for almost 8 years before she finally chose Dutt: "She took upon herself the sufferings of others, forgetting her own She was a great artiste and a greater soul."Combining motherhood with social work, Nargis worked with various groups engaged in the rehabilitation of spastics and handicapped persons. Her life after retiring from films is best described by Maharashtra Governor O.P. Mehra: "She has left behind a glorious chapter of service to art and also to the people of the country, especially the handicapped. Nargis represented the best in Indian womanhood-a devoted mother, an ideal wife -and a champion of women's rights."Last wish: With her nomination to the Rajya Sabha last year, Nargis became the first actress MP in India, even though she could attend only a single session of Parliament. Accompanied by Sunil Dutt early in March, she returned to Bombay from New York, but started developing complications almost immediately. Two weeks later she was in the Breach Candy Hospital, where her condition gradually deteriorated. Although there was never any real hope of her recovery, her death, when it did come, seemed like a cruel twist of fate against one who had suffered enough only son, Sunjay, was scheduled to make his debut in Rocky later the same week, and it had been Nargis' express wish that the film be released with all the fanfare necessary to launch him into stardom (in and out of coma during the last few days she is reported to have said that she wanted to see the premiere, if she could. Since she had insisted on it, the film's release was not delayed and, at mid-fortnight, Rocky was released as planned, though Nargis was not present at her son's coming of age on the to India Today Magazine
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Religious tests for federal judges are unconstitutional and un-American
The American Family Association Action's Center for Judicial Renewal doesn't particularly like it when you say that it wants to impose an unconstitutional religious test on appointees to the Supreme Court and other federal courts. But that's what it is. And this aggressive and exclusionary Christian nationalism, embraced by much of the religious right and the MAGA movement, is wrong, unconstitutional and un-American religious discrimination. The argument is that there's a big difference between a 'preference' for specific religions among judges and an actual 'religious test' for holding office. But that distinction means little when a political group uses its influence to pressure presidents and U.S. senators to treat their preference as a de facto religious test. The bottom line is that conservative organizations are delving into the religious beliefs and practices of conservative judges to decide whether they would be acceptable to serve on the Supreme Court. The Center for Judicial Renewal's site lists 'worldview' as the first of '10 Principles of a Constitutionalist Judge,' explaining that 'the greatest predictor of their faithful and constitutional performance on the bench is their 'worldview' or 'Christian faith.'' The organization has put several conservative judges considered potential Supreme Court nominees on its unacceptable 'red list.' The public version of its 'serious concerns' dossier on Judge Neomi Rao includes under a 'Faith and Worldview' heading the fact that Rao 'was raised in an immigrant family of Zoroastrian tradition and converted to Judaism when she got married.' So it appears that only Christians are acceptable to them, and then only Christians who meet the religious right's 'biblical worldview' standard. The change in the language on their website from 'biblical worldview' to 'worldview' after public criticism does not change the substance of the effort. The American Family Association tells prospective students of its biblical worldview training course, 'In order to make an impact in culture, we must first submit ourselves to the clear teaching of Scripture and acknowledge its authority to dictate every area of our lives.' As the association and its allies apply this definition to legal and public policy questions, their standard requires opposition to legal abortion and equality for gay and transgender people and same-sex couples. It means accepting an interpretation of the Bible that dictates right-wing social and economic policies. It means undermining the separation of church and state and enforcing a right-wing view of religious liberty as a sword to justify discrimination rather than a shield to protect freedom. This religious worldview test betrays the letter and spirit of the Constitution, whose authors put in writing that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.' In other words, no public official can be required to hold particular religious beliefs. Along with the First Amendment, it's a core of our constitutional guarantee of religious liberty. To demand judges 'have a relationship with Jesus' on the grounds that they will be fairer seems like not only a religious test, but also a smear against fair-minded people who don't share this religious worldview. I'm a Christian, and it offends me. It certainly does not show respect for the peaceful pluralism that is a defining characteristic of our nation, where one's rights as a citizen, including the right to serve in public office, are not dependent on having particular religious beliefs. Indeed, some of the nation's founders had unorthodox Christian views that some might view as falling short. One key characteristic of Christian nationalism is the belief that certain kinds of Christians should hold a privileged and dominant place in society. Right-wing groups are attempting to impose just that with their effort to hang a sign on our courthouses that says 'no Jews, Muslims, liberal Christians or secularists need apply.' Other Trump-aligned Christian nationalists want to impose explicit tests for anyone holding public office. These calls raise the question of which religious or government figures would be responsible for evaluating whether someone's Christianity passes muster. When it comes to judges, the opinion piece argues that the White House and Senate should outsource that evaluation to those who adhere to its beliefs. President Trump has recently created a Religious Liberty Commission whose ostensible mission is to protect every American's religious liberty. One test of its sincerity would be whether it would publicly reject and disavow this attempt to impose religious discrimination on our courts. Trump and every U.S. senator should do the same. Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Defense of Academic Freedom
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic's archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. Why defend academic freedom even when the ideas in question are wrongheaded or harmful? 'It is precisely because any kind of purge opens the gate to all kinds of purge, that freedom of thought necessarily means the freedom to think bad thoughts as well as good.' Those words, written in 1953 by Joseph Alsop, an alumnus of Harvard who later served on its Board of Overseers, are relevant today, as the Trump administration cancels the visas of foreign students for viewpoints that it deems 'bad.' And they were relevant in recent years as institutions of higher education investigated and disciplined members of their communities for expressing views that ran afoul of various progressive social-justice orthodoxies. But Alsop wrote them in response to the McCarthy era's efforts to identify and punish Communists who were working in academia. Hundreds of professors were summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, forced to appear as witnesses, and pressured to name names––that is, to identify fellow academics with ties to the Communist Party. Many were then censured or fired and blacklisted by their employers. 'I have been profoundly and actively anti-Communist all my life,' Alsop declared in a letter to the president and fellows of Harvard, published in The Atlantic. 'Unfortunately, however, the question that confronts us is not how we feel about Communists and ex-Communists. The question is, rather, how we feel about the three great principles which have run, like threads of gold, through the long, proud Harvard story.' The first principle he listed was the freedom to make personal choices within the limits of the law. The second principle was 'unrestricted freedom of thought.' And the third principle was one's right to due process when accused of breaking the law. 'A member of our faculty is not to be penalized for any legal choice he may make, however eccentric or controversial,' Alsop wrote. 'He may become a nudist or a Zoroastrian, imitate Origen or adopt the Pythagorean rules of diet. If called before a Congressional investigating committee, he may seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and refuse to testify on grounds of possible self-incrimination. However much we disapprove, we may not interfere.' By standing for 'unrestricted free trade in ideas,' Alsop sought to conserve the university's ability to extend the frontiers of human thought and knowledge at a moment that has long been regarded as one of the darkest in the history of American academia. But as Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), documented in a 2023 Atlantic article, the threat to academic freedom today arguably surpasses the threat that existed in the 1950s. 'According to the largest study at the time, about 100 professors were fired over a 10-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties,' he wrote. 'We found that, in the past nine years, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was closer to 200.' More recently, FIRE has objected to the Trump administration's infringements on academic freedom, including the unprecedented demands that it sent to Harvard last month. Supporters of academic freedom have every reason to fear that more colleges will be similarly targeted in coming months. One defense should involve consulting similar situations from bygone eras. Doing so can help identify principles and arguments that have stood the test of time—and it can be a source of hope. After all, the authoritarian excesses of McCarthyism, which intimidated so many, did not long endure. 'From the perspective of the sixties, the whole period has an air of unreality' for many students, a 1965 Harvard Crimson article—written in an era of 'sit-ins, summer projects, and full page ads criticizing U.S. foreign policy placed in the Times by hundreds of academics'—declared. But just several years prior, it pointed out, 'tenured professors thought long and hard before risking a statement on public issues; teaching fellows, fearful of antagonizing Governing Boards, were politically inert; and students retreated into silence and inactivity.' I hope that, circa 2030, incoming college students will have trouble understanding the mounting attacks on academic freedom that began about a decade ago. Perhaps this period, echoing the Red Scare's aftermath, may yet be followed by a new flourishing of academic freedom. A renaissance of that sort will require defending people's rights—no matter how abhorrent one may find a given opinion. As Alsop put it, 'In these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
In Defense of Academic Freedom
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic 's archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. Why defend academic freedom even when the ideas in question are wrongheaded or harmful? 'It is precisely because any kind of purge opens the gate to all kinds of purge, that freedom of thought necessarily means the freedom to think bad thoughts as well as good.' Those words, written in 1953 by Joseph Alsop, an alumnus of Harvard who later served on its Board of Overseers, are relevant today, as the Trump administration cancels the visas of foreign students for viewpoints that it deems 'bad.' And they were relevant in recent years as institutions of higher education investigated and disciplined members of their communities for expressing views that ran afoul of various progressive social-justice orthodoxies. But Alsop wrote them in response to the McCarthy era's efforts to identify and punish Communists who were working in academia. Hundreds of professors were summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, forced to appear as witnesses, and pressured to name names––that is, to identify fellow academics with ties to the Communist Party. Many were then censured or fired and blacklisted by their employers. 'I have been profoundly and actively anti-Communist all my life,' Alsop declared in a letter to the president and fellows of Harvard, published in The Atlantic. 'Unfortunately, however, the question that confronts us is not how we feel about Communists and ex-Communists. The question is, rather, how we feel about the three great principles which have run, like threads of gold, through the long, proud Harvard story.' The first principle he listed was the freedom to make personal choices within the limits of the law. The second principle was 'unrestricted freedom of thought.' And the third principle was one's right to due process when accused of breaking the law. 'A member of our faculty is not to be penalized for any legal choice he may make, however eccentric or controversial,' Alsop wrote. 'He may become a nudist or a Zoroastrian, imitate Origen or adopt the Pythagorean rules of diet. If called before a Congressional investigating committee, he may seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and refuse to testify on grounds of possible self-incrimination. However much we disapprove, we may not interfere.' By standing for 'unrestricted free trade in ideas,' Alsop sought to conserve the university's ability to extend the frontiers of human thought and knowledge at a moment that has long been regarded as one of the darkest in the history of American academia. But as Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), documented in a 2023 Atlantic article, the threat to academic freedom today arguably surpasses the threat that existed in the 1950s. 'According to the largest study at the time, about 100 professors were fired over a 10-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties,' he wrote. 'We found that, in the past nine years, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was closer to 200.' More recently, FIRE has objected to the Trump administration's infringements on academic freedom, including the unprecedented demands that it sent to Harvard last month. Supporters of academic freedom have every reason to fear that more colleges will be similarly targeted in coming months. One defense should involve consulting similar situations from bygone eras. Doing so can help identify principles and arguments that have stood the test of time—and it can be a source of hope. After all, the authoritarian excesses of McCarthyism, which intimidated so many, did not long endure. 'From the perspective of the sixties, the whole period has an air of unreality' for many students, a 1965 Harvard Crimson article —written in an era of 'sit-ins, summer projects, and full page ads criticizing U.S. foreign policy placed in the Times by hundreds of academics'—declared. But just several years prior, it pointed out, 'tenured professors thought long and hard before risking a statement on public issues; teaching fellows, fearful of antagonizing Governing Boards, were politically inert; and students retreated into silence and inactivity.' I hope that, circa 2030, incoming college students will have trouble understanding the mounting attacks on academic freedom that began about a decade ago. Perhaps this period, echoing the Red Scare's aftermath, may yet be followed by a new flourishing of academic freedom. A renaissance of that sort will require defending people's rights—no matter how abhorrent one may find a given opinion. As Alsop put it, 'In these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything.'
