Kaan Ulgen

RC '13 / UChicago '17 / Duke Law JD & LLM '20 - now lawyer in DC

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@onurerpul Mostly agree on the outrage. I like the Economist, overall, but this is seems to be an unwarranted broadsided attack in his entire work. They should have criticized his AI views directly, which clearly was their motivation and not devote half the piece to saying he is undeserving

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

A remarkable essay.

https://t.co/kNDYDDX71f

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

It's fascinating how many on the right reject collective guilt while treating birthright like a personal achievement.

If you aren't culpable for your ancestors owning slaves—and I agree, you aren't—you don't get credit for their successes, either. You won the geographic lottery.

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@murthylawfirm I am reading the updated proposed form to only require that if you are changing your address and also have a pending/approved be efit request. Otherwise, you seem to not be required to fill the new sections for merely changing addresses as a non-citizen.

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@NavyStrang I think UT, WI, and MO are also wrong. Would expect UT to be D+1 (cannot be R+2 given R's control all seats), WI to be D+2 (for an equal delegation) and MO to be D+1 (didn't do the math but 5-3 looks right given topline results). Still a a great thought exercise.

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

I think the discussion around this keeps unhealthily conflating two different things.

America was founded by weird Protestant splinter groups fleeing oppression, and protecting religious freedom is in fact fundamental to what it means to be an American. There is very little more American than deciding everyone else is doing religious practice wrong and moving out to the middle of nowhere to do it according to your own deep principles. I think that many American groups that are not specifically Christian (or whose Christian-ness is contested) should be understood as inheritors of this tradition.

But this commitment to religious liberty and to pluralistic tolerance of a wide range of different practices only functions if there is a bedrock, shared governing ethos that allows us to navigate these object-level disagreements. That ethos - the defining thing that it means to be American - includes freedom of religion, the commitment that everyone else's right to their beliefs must also be defended, and defended even at significant personal cost; freedom of speech, an understanding that you have the right to offend and no right not to be offended, a deep suspicion of state exercises of power; commitment to equality under the law and to the idea that much of virtue must be defined and pursued outside the law.

It makes no sense to demand people assimilate in the food they eat or the clothes they wear. It is downright unAmerican to insist that people assimilate by adopting an existing American church instead of by following in the deep American tradition of freedom of conscience. But it is absolutely necessary that everyone adopt - 'assimilate to', if you'd like - the underlying commitments that make America the world's most successful pluralistic society.

Nothing I've said here disagrees with Hamid's column; I think in many ways it's the exact same point he's making. The examples he gives of not assimilating are examples of not secularizing - for example, not accepting gay marriage, or not thinking that it's good for women to work outside the home. Those are the kinds of disagreements the American project can endure and does endure every day.

But I think that people often talk past each other when it comes to assimilation, in a way that makes "we should stop expecting assimilation" a statement that'll sow enormous confusion.

I think there's some of this confusion in Hamid's observation that Muslims say 'homosexuality should be discouraged by society' at a much higher rate even than Republican Americans.

Does every American have the absolute right to practice a faith that teaches their super loving perfect god will torture me eternally because I have a wife? Yes. I will defend their right to do so, whether that faith is Christian or Muslim.

Do they have the right to try to use the state to impose that view - say, by making it harder for me and my wife to own property, get custody of our children, leave our possessions to each other, etc.? I would argue that they do not!

I know a lot of people opposed to gay marriage. Some of them are deeply and fundamentally committed to the American vision of pluralism, and some are not. The ones who are not are far, far scarier. If someone is a sincere pluralist, it is not threatening at all for them to believe that homosexuality is gravely evil; if they're not, then it's really quite a big deal.

So the more that immigrants assimilate on the important stuff - the conviction that they may not use the state to impose their religion and it would be abhorrent to try, that other people have the right to believe differently, that people have the right to deconvert - the less of an issue it is if they have different views from mine on the object-level stuff.

But when someone says "immigrants don't need to assimilate", I don't know whether they mean "immigrants do not need to agree that it is the absolute right of every individual to deconvert from Islam and go around vociferously criticizing it in a strident and offensive way" (immigrants, like all Americans, do need to agree on that) or if they mean "immigrants do not need to agree on whether homosexuality is sinful" (certainly true).

Or more generally, whether people talk about the importance of assimilation some mean, "you need to have the same views as me", and some mean, "you need to be essentially persuaded of the pluralistic American project and willing to sacrifice to protect it where it protects views you disagree with". The first is bad and the second is just true.

Now for the good news: The data says that in fact Muslim-American immigrants are assimilated in the important sense - opposing political violence at higher rates than other groups, believing in freedom of speech and religious liberty. Hamid references that very data! But he should say clearly "this is good" rather than "this is unnecessary", and then point out that this (good) assimilation is why we can all graciously live alongside one another while our views vary greatly, and why we are able to sustain a society in which it is not an emergency that my neighbors think my lifestyle is sinful.

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@jsidman @whignewtons Went through the records since 2016 and I stand corrected, it didn’t! I was one of those people thinking it did have it. Still, think this overheard fits Fiola Mare though. Thinking Reverie does takeout would be so bizarre, even in our bizarre times.

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@jsidman @whignewtons Guessing it is Fiola Mare, formerly Michelin starred and won’t be surprised if people still think it has one.

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@YavuzYigit İstanbul halkının çoğunluğu bir dönem gördü kendisini, daha fazla oy yeniden seçti. Tamam halkın takdirini yanlış bul, seni susturan zaten yok (ülkedeki birçok insanın aksine) ama “belki kazanabilecek” kişiyi bırak aday gösterebilsin farklı düşünenler…

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@beritanarikk Amin!🙏

[Latham & Watkins LLP @lathamwatkins]

A Latham team led by partners Julia Thompson and Jason Licht, and counsel Chris Cronin, advised the precision technology company in the offering. #LathamTECH
https://t.co/crELw3m5bd

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

As usual, Turks will spend half an hour thinking about which boxes to check here and have a minor identity crisis during that time.

[Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang]

BREAKING: The #2030Census and federal surveys are getting new checkboxes for “Middle Eastern or North African” & “Hispanic or Latino” after White House’s @OMBPress approved the first changes to U.S. government standards on racial & ethnic data since 1997
https://t.co/m9rdcwnyBz

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@yunuserdolen Bahsettigin konuda kritik degil ama Rutte halen basbakan (hukumet kurulana kadar "caretaker" rolunde ama olsun, sonra insanlar Wilders veya Yesilgoz basbkan sanacak).

[Kaan Ulgen @kaanulgen]

@DecisionDeskHQ This is wrong. JFK lost Ohio to Nixon in 1960. FDR lost it to Dewey in 1944. Cleveland lost it twice while winning the presidency in 1884 and 1892. Also, Buchanan lost it in 1856. However, still no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.

[BBC News Türkçe @bbcturkce]

Türkiye’de asgari ücret Avrupa ülkelerine kıyasla ne durumda, 500 dolar sözü tutulabilir mi?

@OnurErem'in haberi

https://t.co/qxoIPcPd6c

[Timur Kuran @timurkuran]

A creative measure of the Eastern Mediterranean’s historical complexity and cultural richness. Dozens of countries (mainly in Western Europe and the Americas) have NO neighbor that uses a different alphabet.

[Ben Swain @TheBenSwain]

Yes we are out here dropping deep cut Game of Thrones jokes in 2023