Liberty, antisemitism, authoritarianism

 

NPR says that the government will monitor immigrant social media for signs of antisemitism.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/g-s1-59149/immigrants-social-media-antisemitism-dhs

I do not accept this trading of our liberties for supposed increased safety for Jewish people. America has been a very hospitable place to Judaism, in my view due to a robust pluralistic society. Transforming away from democracy towards dictatorship does not increase security. One group gets targeted at a time in an autocracy, and the Jews will end up targeted as well as immigrants, and other minorities that are starting to be targeted, with legal frameworks for protection deteriorating.

My great uncle David Bernstein was the president of a commission tasked with celebrating 300 years of the Jewish people in the US in 1954-55. This inspires me to think more broadly about the Jewish people beyond the context of Israel, i.e. in the diaspora. I still don't quite know what to think about Israel. I've never been there and never felt very connected to it. I do know it's an important ritual aspect of Judaism and the Levant is indeed the origin place for the Jews (probably emerging and differentiating from the Canaanites, as far as I have understood.)

 

https://www.jta.org/archive/jews-to-celebrate-300th-anniversary-of-their-settlement-in-u-s

https://www.jta.org/archive/david-bernstein-to-direct-jewish-tercentenary-celebration

 

I want peace in the middle east. I've been wary of reading too much about the Israel-Palestine conflict since it seems like such a no-win situation. Some criticize this attitude as supporting ethnic cleansing. That may be a valid interpretation of what's going on, though I do also feel support for Israel as an imperfect supporter of the Jewish people, born out of a conflicted Zionism (a conflicted term) tied up in complex geopolitics in 1948 and the holocaust. One touch point for me was the book "The Lemon Tree", a true story about the complexity of a friendship between a Jew and a Palestinian. This direction of seeking common ground and reconciliation is where I put my support. The Palestinian nation may be new, coming out of the broader Arab population with mostly Islamic foundations, and they don't have the same length of history as the Jewish people with their several thousands of years. And, just as I don't support the Netanyahu government of Israel, Hamas is a brutal organization, poorly reflecting aspirations for a Palestinian people. But it is a time in the world where we need all the tools we can to solve our problems. The Jewish experience with history and continuity and traditions of memory (such as Passover), should be used generously to support other peoples and not used aggressively. When the Tibetan people were exiled, the Dalai Lama convened a group of Jewish leaders to seek advice on how to maintain culture in exile. I'd like to see Jewish culture and tradition continue to be used in such helpful ways such that we can all live together and respect the multiplicity of stories making up our world today, at such a time of transformation, in particular.

A good series of videos explaining the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is Dr. Henry Abramson's "Origins of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poopqMOd5o

 

 

I'm inspired to keep thinking about Jewish history as one thread amongst the many threads of world history. This was a painting I did a few years back when I was reading about Jewish history at the time. These issues are so complicated, but I believe there is a great richness in the Jewish tradition and I want to hold on to that, while also affirming my beliefs in broader human rights- something I've come to understand as consistent and supported by Judaism and many Jewish thinkers through the centuries.

Town hall meeting during dangerous times

Town hall meeting at Monarch High School in Louisville today with Colorado Representative Joe Neguse and Senator Michael Bennet.

They didn't seem to have that concrete of a plan for how we get out of this mess, but it felt great to be in a packed auditorium with thoughtful, enthusiastic people concerned about where our country is going. There was a feeling that at least so far, things are not falling apart at a local level.

 

And Neguse and Bennet were very aware that we are not in normal times. They seemed to really get the danger of the moment and were engaged and willing to listen to try to do what they can. I appreciated Bennet's historical perspective in which he said that he didn't actually think this was the worst moment in American democracy. He encouraged everyone to get involved, reminding us that "there is nothing in democracy that is self executing." Neguse's message regarding what we can do to make a difference is to try to make sure that everyone who is badly impacted by Trump's policies tells their story. He said that many of the executive orders have been walked back after push back and outcry from the public.

 

One of the best aspects (that I also experienced in Denver yesterday) is the conversations in line, and while waiting in the bleachers. There just seems to be palpable relief to talk to other people about this and not feel alone in the fear of what Trump is trying to do. Neguse reminded us that Trump's strategy of "flooding the zone" is supposed to make us feel helpless and to give up. Events like this pierce through that feeling of hopelessness that Fascism requires to succeed.

 

Kudos to Neguse and Bennet for doing these events, in contrast to the many Republicans who are hiding from their constituents. Neguse told us that he did several town halls in strongly Republican districts and got a big turn out with a lot of engagement. He seemed hopeful that at some point some Republicans may feel concerned about their election possibilities and do something. Of course, so far this doesn't seem to have happened, and Trump has been remarkably successful at cultivating a cult of personality amongst the Republicans.

Electron beams, stochastic processes and quantum mechanics

As the US government is taken over by Musk, Fascism solidifies and plans are carried out to destroy government infrastructure and our world-class science as well as undermine civil rights. Meanwhile I'm stuck inside, w/ a minor cold (snow and low temperatures in Colorado). I'm trying to get an application done for Denver University physics department by Saturday. I didn't succeed with the CU Boulder application, which was disappointing, though not so surprising. There are also some open positions at Colorado School of Mines I may apply for. Of course, the political changes make all of this a lot more uncertain.

Meanwhile, I'm reading a lot about stochastic processes to go back to my PhD thesis and try to give a clearer formulation of intrabeam scattering and synchrotron radiation for spin depolarization in high energy electron storage rings. I'm reading books and papers on stochastic differential equations: white noise, Ito calculus, Wiener process, Fokker Planck equation, etc.

I've also been trying to understand Jacob Barandes' "Stochastic Quantum Correspondence"  https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778
It gives a mapping between a quantum system with a Hilbert space, Hamiltonian and unitary maps, and a general stochastic process with transition probabilities. If the stochastic matrix factorizes at a given time, then you get classical behavior, if not you get quantum behavior (so-called divisible/indivisible processes). There are still interpretational questions about what types of things are actually going through this process, and Barandes is agnostic on the ontology. Still, a lot of difficult questions, like measurement, local causality, etc. are given easier, less murky explanations. I still think there may be some connection to consciousness, but the discussion is shifted and it feels more solvable. I'm appreciative of Barandes bringing this question into a more fruitful and deep conversation with philosophy.

Some additional commentary and possible critique on Barandes' work I've been trying to understand:
https://coexactly.github.io/blog/posts/stochastic-quantum/

Since I don't have a job for now, I may as well try to dig deep in various topics. Shoring up my understandings of stochastic processes and quantum mechanics is something I've long wanted to do. Of course, the dangerous developments of our government can take up a lot of my attention. I'm trying to not let that take over.

I'm hoping this material may help me with my research statement in my application. They want someone to support a program on quantum materials and information science, and this stuff, together with my experience with synchrotron light sources, beamline modeling and machine learning could make a strong application. I put a lot of time into the climate science research statement for CU, but this material may be less of a stretch for the committee, and maybe gives me a better chance to succeed, even though I was excited to try to move ahead on the climate science front.

American Identity

 

I'm watching the Star Trek: Next Generation episode "Birthright" about Worf finding a group of Klingons and Romulons who have learned to live together. Worf brings the Klingon kids their stories and traditions and this disrupts the balance with the Romulons.

 

What I wonder is how new stories and identities are created. Losing history and tradition isn't the answer, but one must also create new traditions.

 

I think about what the American identity is. I think we are being over-run by a limited, small idea of American identity right now.

 

How do we braid the threads of tradition together to form an American identity that can hold us together, but deny no one's history? The attempt to say that whiteness and Christianity is the American identity, is too cheap, too crude, and too disrespectful of so many people's histories. Jewish history must be part of what it is to be American as well as Islamic, Chinese, European, South American, and all other histories and ethnicities that make up the American people.

 

Multi-culturalism is part of the answer, but we also need a stronger answer about what it means to be an American. How else do we all feel a commonality with which we can work together?

 

Probably more reconciliation and reparations are necessary. The native American and African American histories and identities have been disrespected. My intuition is that part of what brings us to this moment of break-down is our failure to find a just integration of all our histories in the US.