Category: op-ed

Banning Chinese from buying land has a racist past

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Jan. 24, Leo Yu,  clinical professor of legal writing, advocacy and research at the SMU Dallas Dedman School of Law, for a piece critical of the proposed SB 147 in Texas, legislation that would ban Chinese (and other) immigrants from owning real property in the state. Published in the Houston Chronicle under the heading Banning Chinese from buying land has a racist past: https://tinyurl.com/4u6sb48s 

Last week, I received an urgent email from Dr. Daniel Lee, my colleague from SMU’s biology department. Lee asked me if I was aware that Texas is to ban Chinese immigrants from owning real properties in Texas. Lee, a permanent resident with Chinese citizenship, came to Texas three years ago after finishing his postdoc at Stanford Medical School. He likes Texas for its friendly, warm ambiance. Now, he is questioning his decision.

Lee’s concern is legitimate. Last November, Texas Sen. Lois W. Kolkhorst, R-Brenhan, introduced SB 147, a bill prohibiting entities and citizens of four countries from owning real properties in Texas: China, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted that he would sign this bill into law because it follows a law he signed “banning those countries from threatening our infrastructure.”

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Lethal Injection Was Once Considered a “Less Barbaric” Form of Execution. Now It’s Clear It’s Inhumane

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Jan, 13, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a piece that condemns capital punishment and the practice of lethal injection in Texas and elsewhere. Published in Texas Monthly Magazine under the heading Lethal Injection Was Once Considered a “Less Barbaric” Form of Execution: https://tinyurl.com/hphv5j27

​More than 40 ago, during the first week of December in 1982, the U.S. executed its first prisoner using lethal injection. On December 7 of that year, six years after the death penalty was revalidated by the Supreme Court, Charles Brooks Jr., who had been convicted of murder, was executed in Huntsville, here in Texas. To date, 1,380 others have been executed via lethal injection, comprising nearly 90 percent of all death row executions. In 2023, eight more Texans will be executed by injection.

Just days ago, on January 10, Robert Fratta, who was sentenced for hiring two men to kill his estranged wife, was put to death in Texas’s first execution of 2023. He was part of a lawsuit brought with three other inmates alleging that the execution drugs used in Texas are long past their expiration dates, thus forcing the condemned to suffer inhumane and painful executions. Texas courts have consistently rejected all such inmate claims, despite a history of botched and painful executions in this state, and they let Fratta’s execution proceed.

 

 

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Give trust and grace to others. It’s the holidays

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Dec. 24, Anthony Elia, director of Bridwell Library and associate dean for Special Collections and Academic Publishing at SMU Dallas, for a commentary about how we should be more forgiving and understanding during the holidays. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: Give trust and grace to others. It’s the holidays: https://tinyurl.com/mr3k33hk

​Last Christmas, I attended a Sunday service at one of our local big congregation churches. During the sermon, the lively preacher spoke in that folksy cadence and animating spirit to deliver the weekly message. In the pew in front of me sat a distinguished-looking man in a storm-gray suit, with a shock of white hair. After listening to the preacher for a bit, the man bent toward his wife, rolled his eyes, and mouthed the word “faker!”

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Without Accords, Goals to Curb Global Warming are Toothless

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Dec. 20, Jo Guldi, data scientist, historian and professor at SMU Dallas, for a piece critical of ineffective efforts to gain acceptance for laws and initiatives that could reduce the impact of climate change. Published in Inside Sources under the heading Without Accords, Goals to Curb Global Warming are Toothless: https://tinyurl.com/3w8c9uha

​A month ago, COP 27 (the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference) had its last session.  What did it accomplish? A fund was set up for rich countries to pay for climate-related disasters in poorer nations. But the basic answer to the question of what COP 27 accomplished, now as in previous years, is still this: not much.

No new climate targets were agreed on. Meanwhile, most nations fail to meet the climate targets they agreed on in 2021. At COP 27, representatives at the congress released statements praising the potential of the renewables sector, essentially engaging in public prayer that the invisible hand of the market will present a solution. They frittered away a long and expensive opportunity for states to do something.

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The more we think of AI as human, the more we think of ourselves as machines

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Oc. 16, Robert Hunt, director of global theological education at Perkins School of Theology on the SMU Dallas campus, for a commentary cautioning against blurring the lines between artificial intelligence and humanity. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: The more we think of AI as human, the more we think of ourselves as machines: https://tinyurl.com/mwnt4crs

The student in my doctoral seminar almost snorted when someone referred to Amazon’s Alexa as an Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

“It’s nothing but a voice activated database query system. There’s no intelligence involved at all,” she scoffed.

She had a point and missed the point. Finding more user-friendly ways to access data has always been important and, over the years, technological upgrades have included a leap from specialized languages (secret codes that only the computers and their overlords understood) to natural language interfaces (“Alexa, turn on the lights.”) While impressive, these advances are not artificial intelligence.

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The 5th Circuit got it wrong in Texas social media case

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Oct. 2, Jared Schroeder, associate professor of journalism at SMU Dallas and a specialist in social media and First Amendment issues, for a commentary critical of a federal court ruling that upheld some Texas social media legislation that many deem unconstitutional. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading The 5th Circuit got it wrong in Texas social media case: https://tinyurl.com/3bt86kf5

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Texas’ social media law on Sept. 16. All it had to do was ignore nearly a century of precedent.

The appeals court, which is one step below the Supreme Court, turned a legal no-brainer into a meandering 113-page grab-bag of ideas.

Among other things, the Texas law prohibited large social media platforms (those with more than 50 million active users) from censoring content based on the users viewpoint.

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The Army of 2022: We’re in a bad place if soldiers can choose what mandatory training they complete

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Sept. 27, Chris Jenks, professor of law who teaches criminal law and law of armed conflict at the Dedman School of Law, SMU Dallas, for a piece questioning the casual stance of Army leaders who seem to look the other way instead of compelling troops to complete all mandatory training. Published in Stars and Stripes under the heading: The Army of 2022: We’re in a bad place if soldiers can choose what mandatory training they complete: https://tinyurl.com/yzxk37ed

Earlier this month Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston publicly espoused willful disobedience as the solution to a problem: more mandatory Army training requirements than time to complete them.

The solution, according to Grinston: “Don’t do it.” He was referring to Army mandated online training requirements including: anti-terrorism training; ethics; equal-opportunity; sexual harassment, assault, response prevention (SHARP); and threat-awareness, along with half a dozen more subjects.

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Cheer up. Inflation’s up and stocks are tanking, but it’s not as bad as you think

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Sept. 14, Michael Davis, economics professor at the Cox School of Business at SMU Dallas, for an op-ed explaining U.S. economic challenges, but pointing out the country is better prepared now than in 2008. Published in the Houston Chronicle under the heading Cheer up. Inflation’s up and stocks are tanking, but it’s not as bad as you think: https://tinyurl.com/4y8utme6

What happens in California doesn’t always stay in California, and that’s why Texans tracking the disruption of bots and other non-humans ought to be concerned that California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law last week that criminalizes using unlabeled bots for political gain. The law is also almost certainly unconstitutional. Yes, the law addresses a problem regarding the influence of AI (artificial intelligence) actors and the misleading information they often carry. Yes, the law is worded to avoid halting all AI expression; it merely requires that AI disclose that they are bots.

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COVID’s hidden victim: economic freedom

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Sept. 8, Robert Lawson, Fullinwider Chair in Economic Freedom at the SMU  Dallas Cox School of Business, for a piece measuring the impact of the pandemic on  economic freedom indicators. Published in the Orange County Register under the heading COVID’s hidden victim: economic freedom: https://bit.ly/3qmJooL

The COVID-19 pandemic swept over the planet in early 2020, resulting in more than a million deaths in the United States and many millions more around the world. Unfortunately, these lives weren’t the only casualties. The pandemic also walloped economic freedom – that is, our freedoms to buy, sell, move, hire, fire, invest and earn income and keep it.

Economic freedom took a big hit in the global financial crisis of 2007-09 – but this time the blow was three times worse. The potential impacts of economic freedom’s decline range from lower incomes and greater poverty to shorter life expectancies, fewer years of schooling, and less overall happiness.

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Is Biden’s student debt handout worth it? Nobody knows

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Sept. 7, Michael L. Davis, economics professor at the Cox School of Business at SMU Dallas,  for an op-ed questioning the math and rationale behind President Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative. Published in FoxNews online under the heading Is Biden’s student debt handout worth it? Nobody knows: https://fxn.ws/3TQYEHR

President Joe Biden’s proposal to forgive a huge chunk of student debt isn’t a done deal. There’s a serious question about whether this is the sort of thing a president can do on his own. Those of us who endured elementary school civics classes (or, even better, learned about such things from watching “School House Rock”) might have the quaint idea that such epic levels of spending — and make no mistake, this is epic spending — require more than the whim of the president. Doesn’t all that stuff they taught us about checks and balances, Article I of the Constitution, and the need for revenue bills to originate in the House of Representatives mean anything at all?

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