Talk:Steven Menashi

Ethnonationalism
Where's the ethnonationalism stuff that Rachel Maddow talked about on her show tonight? He wrote an article titled "Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy".

AllThatJazz2012 (talk) 01:24, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * He argues democratic countries work better when everyone is the same ethnicity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.14.104.254 (talk) 04:15, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Yeah. A possible Trump pick for the circuit courts (just under the Supreme Court) is advocating for a Nazi-like ethnostate. No biggie? AllThatJazz2012 (talk) 22:04, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * AllThatJazz2012 - sources, sources, sources (and reliable ones, of course). If the New York Times or the Washington Post or another major US newspaper or USAToday or Bloomberg have published articles about this issue, then sure, it belongs in the Wikipedia article. But if the only one talking about this is Rachael Maddow, then sorry, it's not newsworthy, just as analyses by Rush Limbaugh aren't newsworthy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:29, 23 August 2019 (UTC)


 * There is no doubt he wrote the stuff he wrote. The stuff he wrote is in the public record. The only issue you seem to raise is the lack of coverage in the press. I do not see that as a requirement. We are not citing commentary. We are citing the documents themselves. --&#39;&#39;Paul, in Saudi&#39;&#39; (talk) 01:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)


 * &#39;&#39;Paul, in Saudi&#39;&#39; - Picking out specific text to put into a Wikipedia article, from primary sources, is a violation of WP:NOR. We don't let editors decide that something is important enough to go into this encyclopedia (which is supposed to be an overview). Rather, editors have to point to reliable sources that consider the information to be important.


 * That may not seem to make sense. But consider this - non-fiction writers and political commentators and talk radio hosts and celebrities probably have the equivalent of several thousands of pages of text that they have written or spoken, available publicly. Inevitably some of that is controversial or obviously wrong. There is no way to get consensus on exactly what should be extracted from those thousands of pages, if we let editors pull out anything they want. And it would be a major disservice to readers if any editor could add any bit of information that he/she finds (from primary sources) to an article and it would remain there - because then articles would be filled with content that reliable sources never considered important.


 * If the above is still not clear as to why "citing the documents themselves" isn't acceptable for controversial information, please see WP:V (specifially, "Articles must be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", WP:RAWDATA, and WP:UNDUE. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:11, 25 August 2019 (UTC)


 * An encyclopedia article on a lawyer could not possibly be complete without listing his publications, much as articles about musicians are not complete without a discography. If you feel I cherry-picked the articles mentioned, we can easily fix that by doubling or tripling the list of titles. &#39;&#39;Paul, in Saudi&#39;&#39; (talk) 13:47, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

[unindent]I hope no one is objecting to the list of publications that is currently in the article, which includes Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy"; I'm certainly not. The issue, I thought, was whether it's appropriate for Wikipedia editors to pull things out of publications, as for example, "Regarding X, Menashi wrote 'A' and 'B, and also 'C', 'D', and 'E', where 'A' through 'E' are cherry-picked sentences. I'm firmly in the camp of "No, it's not okay."

But regarding reliable sources, there are definitely a few out there. Using these to build out the Wikipedia article would be absolutely okay. The ones I came across, doing a fairly cursory search, were:


 * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-appeals-court-judge-nomination-ethnic-diversity-article-steven-menashi-racism-a9063371.html


 * https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-pundits-court-pick


 * https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/18/steven-menashi-trump-judicial-nominee-opposed-cair/

(I'm not a huge fan of Fox News or the Washington Times, but I believe that both of them are considered reliable sources, as long as what is being used is not an opinion piece or commentary or editorial.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:51, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

We should have an ethnonationalism section already. This is not some minor technical point. Trump is likely days away from putting his super-partisan fascist hack on the second highest court in the land. This is not "normal" or "trivial" or - for Chrissake "unimportant". And if you don't like the three out of the four words in "super-partisan fascist hack" - that's fine. The extra three words are just accurate gravy. This site is continually marred by a tiny percentage of its users: the editor-police.

AllThatJazz2012 (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Members (from both parties) of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), interviewing Steven Menashi on 11 September 2019, raised his "Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy" article as a controversy for the record. Politico's article "Republicans and Democrats hammer Trump's judicial nominee" also notes: "In the weeks leading up to his confirmation hearing, liberal judicial groups railed against Menashi for his earlier writings, highlighting his comments on 'ethnonationalism.'" The existence of the public controversy is not in doubt. The article itself is freely available as a PDF from upenn.edu, its publisher. – •Raven .talk 18:55, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

American Bar Association rating
Menashi was rated "Well Qualified" by the American Bar Association on September 9, 2019. I added it to this and included the link to the ABA itself, but someone removed it for no reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:AD08:EC00:D38:F401:B180:25B (talk) 05:23, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * @2607:FCC8:AD08:EC00:D38:F401:B180:25B The citation for the ABA letter had been malformed (only a URL inside the template brackets), so I filled in the rest of the "cite web" template and data. Your addition is otherwise accurate and should be approved; likewise your previous addition of the word "maternal" regarding his relatives killed in the Holocaust, citation correctly formed in that case. Well done! – •Raven .talk 07:57, 16 September 2019 (UTC)