GOP And 'Free Expression'

Results of questions asked of the GOP identifiers in this poll ... interesting in light of events at UofR over the past several weeks [1] [2] [3]. Symbols of exclusion and oppression are just fine with Republicans. Symbols of inclusion and diversity not so much. I guess this goes to show what counts as "land of the free and home of the brave" for red-staters.

Confederate Flags and Cluelessness Revisited at the University of Rochester.

I recently posted here on the cluelessness of white boys displaying the confederate battle flag as though it were no big deal to anyone else. The post was prompted by an ongoing incident at the University where I teach. A student displayed the confederate flag in his frat house** residence hall window and, when compelled to remove it, predictably enough bellowed about the College infringing his free speech rights. The local Gannett newspaper, The Democrat & Chronicle, ran a report on the dispute last week and that has been picked up at outlets from Inside Higher Ed, to USA Today to The Daily Mail. And, of course, there are the inimitable propagandists at Fox News. This last report prompted the UR College Republicans to proclaim their support for "freedom" on Twitter:

I do not follow the UR CR (or anyone else) on Twitter. This was sent to me by a recent alumnus. Make that an irritated recent alumnus. But a couple of questions arise in all this.

First, why is the Confederate flag especially troubling to minority (and other) students on a college campus? Well, because from the late 1950s through the late 1960s the flag was a constant symbol of white resistance to integration of both public elementary and secondary schools as well as of Colleges and Universities. Often, of course, those protests were accompanied by rioting and violence against black students. Here are images easily discoverable on the web:

These press photos depict white students - usually, you'll note, white boys - acting out at the universities of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama respectively. In short, the confederate flag is indeed a symbol of the "Southern identity" and that identity is thoroughly inflected by racism. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

Second, what does "free speech" and its infringement have to do with all this? I think the fraternity boy** student in question at UofR should be allowed to display any symbol of his identity he wishes. But I think too that he ought to be prepared for others to talk back and to talk back frankly.Why? Because this is not a matter of libertarian self-expression, but of democratic self-governance. In short, the principle of free speech is a contested one - we can justify it in various ways. And knee-jerk individualist justifications are deeply problematic. Here is a passage making that point:

"The libertarian view – that the First Amendment is a protection of free expression – makes its appeal to the individualistic ethos that so dominates our popular and political culture. … Yet this theory is unable to explain why the interests of the speakers should take priority over the interests of those individuals who are discussed in the speech, or who must listen to the speech, when the two sets of interests conflict. Nor is it able to explain why the right of free speech should extend to the many institutions and organizations … that are routinely protected under the First< Amendment, despite the fact that they do not directly represent the individual interest in free expression. Speech is valued so importantly in the Constitution, I maintain, not because it is a form of self-expression or self-actualization but rather because it is essential for collective self-determination. Democracy allows people to chose the form of life they wish to live and presupposes that this choice is made against a background of public debate that is, to use the now famous formula of Justice Brennan, “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”*

If the College is meant to be self-governing, and if it is (rightly) protective of the free speech necessary to academic freedom, what we need on campus are forums (workshops, teach-ins, etc.) to address the sorts of conflicts the University now confronts. We are working on it.
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* Owen Fiss. 1996. The Irony of Free Speech. Harvard UP, page 3. 
** Correction: I have been informed that the student in question lives in a house on the fraternity quad, but that the house is not a frat house and that the student is not affiliated with any fraternity.

Erik Loomis and Free Speech on Campus

I generally do not write here much about happenings at the University of Rochester where I work. On occasion I complain about labor relations on campus. More often, I've offered my views on this or that episode of "controversial" speech. I tend to be libertarian about the right of people to speak on campus, figuring that the best response to remarks that are wrongheaded, silly, offensive or whatever is to talk back.

Having said that, I want to call your attention to a brewing controversy at the University of Rhode Island. Erik Loomis, an historian and blogger, has generated a fracas over intemperate remarks he made about Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, following the Newtown massacre last week. I do not know Loomis personally. I do know that even though LaPierre is a despicable excuse for a human being neither Erik Loomis nor I literally wish him dead. That said, the pathetic right wing attacks on Loomis - including calls that URI fire him - seem to be growing.  Anything to divert attention from the fact that a kid took guns and shot 27 innocent people to death last week. Over at Crooked Timber a move has emerged to speak in Loomis's defense. I urge you to sign on in support.

More Silliness at U of R or, the Landsburg Fracas Continued

"Isn’t there some sort of contract violation here? If the students in class are paying to learn economics, is there any recourse that they have? Is it any different than buying a movie ticket to see Rocky IV and ending up being shown Chariots of Fire?"

That is the response of one of my colleagues, Michael Rizzo, to the fact that students showed up in the class of another colleague, Steve Landsburg, to protest the latter's idiotic attempt to channel Rush Limbaugh. First, let's be clear. Disrupting a class like this is inappropriate. Period. The students involved were wrong to do so. I will leave it to the Dean's to figure out how best to respond to the event.

But, second, what is wrong here has nothing to do with "market fundamentalist" nonsense about contract violations. This complaint would be laughable if it were not so sincerely asserted. Does Rizzo really want to compare his colleague's teaching to a couple of pretty crappy Hollywood films. He said it, folks, not me.

What is at issue is speech and context. Landsburg has a right to his ideas and a right to voice them. The protesting students do as well. But - to the best of my knowledge - Landsburg keeps his opinionating out of the classroom. He peddles his offensive views in other locales. The students ought to keep their protests out of the classroom too. That leaves open the matter of how they might more appropriately voice their dissent.
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PS: I will add that a Professor in our Business School - Ron Schmidt - has taken it upon himself to send an open letter (via an official list-serve) to the entire School deriding the University President Joel Seligman for publicly calling Landsburg out for his Limbaugh-Channeling.

Steve Landsburg (yet again)

Well, one notable fact about economists is that they live in model-land, and models are not always good at incorporating relevant features of reality. In fact, they are often best at distorting reality in ways that help us appreciate some feature of it more fully and clearly. I already have explained here and here why Steve Landsburg's inability to discriminate between the distorted world of economic models and actual life creates an intellectual and ethical mess for him.

Sometimes, though, models fail. That is especially so when they don't get the relevant matters right. Since Steve's model of reality places sex at the center of Sandra Fluke's world he gets things pretty systematically wrong. Because he was so concerned to endorse the views spouted by the sex-obsessed Rush Limbaugh, Landsburg neglected to notice this very basic feature of Sandra Fluke's initial testimony:

Fluke was not, as Limbaugh and Landsburg have suggested, "demanding" that taxpayers pay for her to have sex; her testimony was originally part of a debate about whether religious institutions should be required to provide access to contraception. Her argument focused primarily on the medical (and non-contraceptive) uses of birth control [source].

Of course, it was the Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee that prevented her from testifying in the first place. They preferred to elicit the insights of a bunch of old men, mostly clerics, on the matter. No matter.

Instead of simply writing a post that said "Here are a half dozen (or three or thirty seven) reasons why contraception should not be covered by medical insurance plans," Steve felt compelled to lead with an endorsement of Limbaugh's paternalistic, sexist attack on Fluke. This led him to endorse basically the same sort of paternalistic, sexist view of Fluke as did Rush. Dumb and dumber.

Steve Landsburg - Again

Earlier today I posted on the fracas growing up around the decision of one of my colleagues at the U of R, Steve Landsburg, to offer a defense of Rush Limbaugh and his name calling. I found the case he made pretty dumb. I thought his follow up to the initial post was pretty dumb too. I still do. So I am not taking back the earlier post. But talking to people on campus today I thought more about why I find Landsburg's views dumb. And, of course, Steve has been picking the scab so to speak. So what follows are a couple more reasons.

Before proceeding, however, I think it is important to say that people, even pretty smart ones, should be allowed to say dumb things. But they also ought to expect that, when they do, others will argue back. I don't take issue, in my earlier post or here, with Landsburg's remarks about legalizing prostitution or the little toy models he trots out to develop his argument or his long, pretty much unpersuasive attempt to deflate critics. That stuff is the side show. What has sparked the reaction on campus and commentary elsewhere [1*] [2] is his effort to endorse Limbaugh without actually appearing to be as crass. I simply do not think Landsburg comes at all close to steering clear of the big pile of crap Rush stepped in.

(1) A grammatical observation: The words slut and prostitute are nouns. (Well, prostitute can be a verb, as in 'to prostitute oneself in the name of an inane ideology like libertarianism.') That surely is the way that Limbaugh used them when he claimed that Sandra Fluke is a slut and a prostitute. Steve Landsburg says this about Limbaugh's observations:

To his credit, Rush stepped in . . . with a spot-on analogy: If I can reasonably be required to pay for someone else’s sex life (absent any argument about externalities or other market failures), then I can reasonably demand to share in the benefits. His dense and humorless critics notwithstanding, I am 99% sure that Rush doesn’t actually advocate mandatory on-line sex videos. What he advocates is logical consistency and an appreciation for ethical symmetry. So do I. Color me jealous for not having thought of this analogy myself.

There’s one place where I part company with Rush, though: He wants to brand Ms. Fluke a “slut” because, he says, she’s demanding to be paid for sex. There are two things wrong here. First, the word “slut” connotes (to me at least) precisely the sort of joyous enthusiasm that would render payment superfluous. A far better word might have been “prostitute” (or a five-letter synonym therefor), but that’s still wrong because Ms. Fluke is not in fact demanding to be paid for sex. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) She will, as I understand it, be having sex whether she gets paid or not. Her demand is to be paid. The right word for that is something much closer to “extortionist”. Or better yet, “extortionist with an overweening sense of entitlement”. Is there a single word for that?

Two points are in order. Since extortion typically requires threats or intimidation, it is hard to see how Sandra Fluke is extorting anyone. (I return to this below.) So, we are back with Limbaugh's verbiage. Second, because slut and prostitute are nouns, they are statuses we attribute to other people. Hence Limbaugh called Fluke a slut and a prostitute. They are not words we attribute to a "position." That means that the fine distinction Landsburg seeks to draw - "While Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position - which is what’s at issue here - deserves none whatsoever. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty." - is pure crap. A position cannot be a whore or a hooker, a lady of the evening or a woman of ill-repute. Simply put, the dodge fails. Perhaps that makes me "dense and humorless," but I am not sure how. Unless, of course, referring to someone like Ms. Fluke as a slut or a prostitute might be defensible in this circumstance. Maybe Landsburg actually thinks so. Maybe not. I think there are good reasons why he shouldn't.

(2) A fable: Imagine a man, perhaps he is a clever economist, teaching at a rich, private University. He has a daughter or wife, or sister, or girlfriend; and his female loved-one has insurance. Indeed, she works for the same company as I and is covered by the same insurance carrier. That insurance covers contraception (among many other things). And perhaps the clever economist's female loved one takes advantage of that particular benefit. Perhaps she does not, but thinks she might, at some future time, do so.

Now, insurance plans are ways of pooling risk, in this case of various medical conditions including, say, pregnancy and childbirth. I, an unmarried man with only male children, may never actually use the contraception benefit. But, because I have to pay the same premium regardless of whether or not I do take advantage of it, some small part of my premium goes toward funding the contraception benefit. Hence, some part of my premium is going to fund the clever economist's female loved one's access to contraception. Similarly, some part of my premium will be going to underwrite the costs incurred by a lot of other people for a lot of other medical services of which I might or might not ever need to avail myself.

But let's stick to the contraception case. Does the fact that I am paying for the clever economist's female loved one's contraception, and hence for her ability to have sex without risk of pregnancy (actually reduced risk, since no contraception is 100% effective as far as I know) make her a slut or a prostitute? After all what is going on is third party payment for sexual activity. Why am I not free to harangue the clever economist's female loved one - and other women in similar circumstances - for not bearing the entire cost of their sexual activity, actual and/or potential? Am I not justified in muttering Slut! Whore! as I pass the clever economist's female loved on the street or at the market?

Of course no one is making me buy medical insurance. Indeed, the woman in question is not an extortionist precisely because she is not coercing me in any way whatsoever. Nor is she coercing the insurance carrier our employer contracts with. Nor is she coercing our employer (even though, as a member of the status of women in the company committee, she is an articulate, even ardent advocate for insuring that reproductive health care and contraception are covered in the standard insurance package with no special riders.) Nevertheless, she is quite clearly getting me - even if not intentionally - and our male co-workers to subsidize the coverage available to she and other female employees. Finding that difficult to accept, I might simply opt out of insurance. I might simply think that, should I need medical attention, I will go to the emergency room and get it without paying. The hospital is legally prohibited from turning me away. (The prospect of turning the uninsured away from medical providers is the sort of thing that elicited jeers and cheers at one of the Republican debates earlier this season.) And I figure I am old enough to be dead before the hospital would ever get it together to go to court to collect the debt, let alone collect a settlement. My decision would have an analogous effect to what I've sketched above. Someone else would be paying (via higher insurance premiums, higher hospital charges, or whatever) for my care or, if I was lucky enough to never need any, for my risk taking.

There are a lot of details left out here. (Note, for example, the ridiculous assumption that contraception is solely a women's concern. Men, after all, need not think about such things at all. Note the ridiculous assumption that shifting the time of pregnancy and childbirth might, in many instances, be an intelligent or ethical thing to do.) After all, this is a fable. And fables have morals. Here the moral is that calling the clever economist's female loved one a slut or a prostitute in this case seems pretty much wholly out of place. That is because insurance pools risk in order to compensate for the inability to make a simpler sort of market for medical care (or other quite risky eventualities).

The moral could be stated more bluntly: in the circumstances sketched in this fable my calling the clever economist's female loved one a slut or a prostitute would make me a jerk, perhaps even an asshole. Hence my view of Rush Limbaugh. I'll withhold judgment on those who are "jealous" of his reasoning and eloquence. Likewise I will withhold judgement on those who agree with the jealous 100%.
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* In The Democrat and Chronicle report, Landsburg is quoted as complaining that Fluke never seriously engaged in argument about her position. He seems to have forgotten that the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee prevented her from testifying at recent Congressional hearings, and hence being confronted with opposing views.

P.S.: Here is Landsburg's lament about being misunderstood and misrepresented.

On Steve Lansburg

I hardly am a fan of Rush Limbaugh. His recent bad behavior simply confirms my assessment. Turns out that calling Sandra Fluke a slut and prostitute are just the tip of the iceberg; he actually had a multi-day rant about she and her imagined proclivities. And then he offered a half-hearted apology. (I actually don't give a hoot about such apologies. They are empty ritual.) He is losing advertisers in droves. Good. The Republican elite has, predictably enough, basically stood by mumbling. To his credit Obama stepped up.

Now, one of my colleagues at the University of Rochester has decided he really needed to offer his insights into the debacle. Steve Landsburg, economist and peddler of opinion, has defended Limbaugh's language as "analytically astute." You can find a report here at the WSJ. Landsburg's own posts are here and here. The President of the University has made clear his views on Landsburg's screeds. According to the WSJ report, Landsburg insists:

“[While] Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatsoever. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered."

Actually, it is Landsburg who deserves the derision. His primary mistake? Like many economists he mistakes the real world for the fictions captured in economic models. The agents who populate such models are sociopaths. Literally. They lack moral sense. They lack emotion. They are hyper-rational. All that may be - actually it is - useful in making economic models, which are meant to explore the conception of narrow instrumental rationality. But in actual life, such characteristics reflect a genuine tone-deafness. It is just the sort of tone-deafness that we see in sociopaths. Landsburg seems unable to differentiate between living in his textbook and living in the world of actual people. (Do you think of your children as externalities? Do you talk about sex in terms of getting 'the incentives right'? Do you tell that to your kids or your actual or potential partners?) In his various opinion-makings, Landsburg seems to present such thinking as a virtue. That is more than reason enough to take a pass on his various writings.

If Landsburg is as concerned with consistency as he suggests, perhaps he might entertain the notion that one way of treating people with respect entails leaving them to make choices for themselves. Contraception is just a tool for allowing such choice. And calling people bad names when they make choices you don't like. Well, that is not respecting them.

It is easy to anticipate Landsburg's retort. He will point to his gambit of trying to differentiate Sandra Fluke and 'her position.' That is pretty weak tea even for an economist. It amounts to saying "I have nothing against you, it is simply that I don't like what you think or say." Given that speech is action, one is culpable or laudable for what one says just as for what one does. We may not want to toss you in jail for speaking (although there are some who evince no qualms on that score), but I assure you that there are views that make me consider someone an ass or a jerk. How do you reach that sort of conclusion and 'not have anything against' the person you attach those labels to? Good luck with that Steve. In the actual world, if not in some economic model of the world, pretending that for 'analytical' purposes you can treat - and speak publicly of - some actual person as a whore or a slut without demeaning them is an intellectual and ethical failing.

Two Black Men, Two Honorary Degrees ~ Or, How Universities Compromise Their Principles (2)

"I think everyone recognizes that Colin Powell has had a remarkable,
really extraordinary career of service to the country for more
than four decades in Vietnam, from the White House, to the
State Department. The honorary degree today recognizes that
career of public service."
~ Larry Arbeiter, University of Rochester

“Commencement at Northwestern is a time of celebration of the accomplishments of Northwestern’s graduating students and their
families. In light of the controversy around Dr. Wright and to ensure that the celebratory character of commencement not be affected, the university has withdrawn its invitation to Dr. Wright.”
~ Alan Cubbage, Northwestern University*

I have no particular commitment to Jeremiah Wright, to his church, nor, really, to Barack Obama, the member of his church who has caused Wright so much grief lately. But I saw Wright on Bill Moyers the other evening and he seemed like a lucid, reasonable man. I did not agree with everything he said. Nor was I offended by anything he said. Indeed, I have not been offended by any of the things he has said in the various clips or sound bites the media have been pre-occupied with lately. Yesterday, Obama insisted that much of what Wright recently has said, or been accused of saying, would "rightly offend all Americans." Obama is wrong. He needs some spine on this. You can disagree with someone without taking "offense" at what they think or say. The only folks who seemingly cannot do so are ideologues, mostly of the right. And, of course, political candidates afraid to take an independent stand in the face of media manipulation.

Well, Northwestern University has rescinded an offer to award an Honorary Degree to Jeremiah Wright. They are doing so, according to the University, not because of the content of his views but because of the anticipated controversy that his presence at commence would create. In other words what the NU administraiton is worried about is the media frenzy, the possible bad appearances and not the substance of what Wright says or whether what he says accurately captures reality. In the meantime the Northwestern University Law School has invited Jerry Springer to be its primary commencement speaker this year. I will not comment on that. Instead I will point out that the controversy here has to do solely with things Wright has said, or allegedly said. Moreover, it revolves around things that he has said (or allegedly said) as a private citizen. The President at Norhtwesern and his staff, like Obama, need some spine.

A comparison might help here. Last fall my own employer, The University of Rochester, granted an honorary degree to Colin Powell [*]. Talk about a man who has not just said but done truly offensive things! As a public official he lied repeatedly about the grounds we allegedly had for invading Iraq.** As a direct result, perhaps a hundred of thousand or more men and women and children have died. Jeremiah Wright, to the best of my knowledge, has never said anything that resulted in people dying. And of course the more recent news is that Powell was among the group of high-ranking administration officials who sat around designing the "harsh interrogation" of prisoners by American military and intelligence personnel.*** Powell, of course, did not himself directly torture anyone. Neither did he have the integrity to resign or to forthrightly and publicly condemn the conversations in which Condi and Don and Dick, et. al. decided how to torture specific individuals. His behavior was and is morally repugnant and, more importantly for current purposes, clearly complicit in the violation of U.S. and International Law. Of course, there is little or no controversy surrounding Colin Powell. So, the fact that as part of his official duties Powell actively took part in activities that are egregious and abhorrent should not be troublesome at all. Since there was no controversy, granting him an honorary degree did not interfere with the "celebratory character" of our alumni events last fall.

The point of the comparison is really quite simple. We ought to look at what people do and the consequences of what they do. We should be less reactionary, try to keep our "offense" in check, and at least try to listen to the views of those with whom we disagree. That is not easy. We should worry less about "controversy" and more about substance. And we should not honor those who have participated in the abhorrent. Neither the administration at NU nor that at UofR, albeit in different ways, seem to have mastered these lessons.
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* Full disclosure: My first faculty position (1989-91) was at Northwestern.
** As documented by the Center for Public Integrity, find links here.
*** Find links here and here.

Mr. Gandhi & "the Jews" (3)

It seems as though Arun Gandhi has severed his ties to the University of Rochester in the aftermath of the anti-semitic comments he made in the Washington Post - the story from the local paper is here, a comment from the President of the University here.

Mr. Gandhi & "the Jews" (Again)

Not long ago I posted on the outrageous public statements made by Arun Gandhi and urged people on campus to speak out in response. I am happy to say that there has been additional movement on the score. The day before yesterday the Faculty Senate at the University, of which I am a member, unanimously endorsed this resolution:

Resolved: The Faculty Senate of the University of Rochester deplores the statements concerning Jewish identity, the Holocaust, and the culture of violence made earlier this month on the Washington Post website by Arun Gandhi, president of the board of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence housed at the University. While we recognize his right to free speech, we find the religious, ethnic, racial, and cultural stereotyping fundamental to his statements offensive, aggressive, and in direct conflict with our other core values and those of the University, and therefore unacceptable.

Arun Gandhi and "the Jews"

I work at the University of Rochester. Last October I posted on the deeply troubling decision on the part of the University to award an honorary degree to Colin Powell - the man who as Secretary of State lied to the world in order to rationalize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is, in my view, an embarrassment to the University that Powell was granted a degree. In large part my criticism of that decision reflects my view that a University ought to be an instrument for pursuing truth. And Powell will go down in history as a liar, a liar who has now been honored by the University of Rochester. At the time scarcely any objection arose from members of the University community - students, faculty, alums, staff, administrators.

Having missed one opportunity this academic year to take a principled stand, the University community now has another opportunity. You may have noticed recent reports at NationalReviewOnline, InsideHigherEd.com, The Jerusalem Post, Commentary and even our local Democrat and Chronicle [1] [2] concerning Mr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, and director of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence located at the University of Rochester. Gandhi is being (mostly) assailed for this comment that he published last week (7 January 08) at WashingtonPost.com. There he not only bemoans the "culture of violence" that seems to characterize much of the "modern world," but insists that "Israel and the Jews are the biggest players" in creating and sustaining that culture. Gandhi subsequently offered this apology but has, even more recently, been quoted as saying “I stand by what I have written, although I concede that it might not have been couched in diplomatic language.” Given the chance to reflect and reconsider, to think again, it seems he has refused.

Mr. Gandhi clearly has a right to think and say whatever he chooses. But, especially when his views are as outrageous as those he expressed last week, he has got to expect that others who think differently will talk back and forcefully challenge him. Joel Seligman, President of the University, has issued a statement expressing dismay at Gandhi's views. I think he is right to do so. Reasonable people may differ regarding the policies of the Israeli government or even of the actions of particular Jews, acting alone or in concert, under whatever self-description, whether in the U.S., Israel or elsewhere. That is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is the outrageous suggestion that Mr. Gandhi makes and continues to embrace that "the Jews" are primarily or uniquely responsible for the perverse violence in the contemporary world.

The difficulty with Mr. Gandhi's views arises not simply because it flies in the face of the banal empirical observation that violence of all sorts takes place in all sorts of places and is perpetrated by all sorts of people. Nor is the problem that he ignores the fact - if less general empirically, observable nonetheless - that there are Jewish peace activists in Israel who embrace precisely the sort of non-violent response to Israeli government policies in the Palestinian territories that Mr. Gandhi presumably would endorse. I have posted here on just that matter before. And it points to the real difficulty.

The difficulty is that when Mr. Gandhi speaks of "the Jews" as a homogeneous group with which he then identifies with the government of Israel and its policies, and to which he then attributes special responsibility for out modern "culture of violence," he is himself doing violence to the people he claims to address. By Mr. Gandhi's own ethical and political lights this is simply indefensible. As an advocate of non-violence Mr. Gandhi surely understands that our words, our speech acts, have consequences. Indeed, any non-violent stance must rely on the effectiveness of language. Yet his own way of speaking, his way of expressing his thoughts, does violence to Jews as individuals and, yes, as members not just of a religion with diverse manifestations, but as members of various ethnicities, as citizens different polities, and so forth.

In other instances, of course, such a mode of speaking would do violence to the reality of those belonging to whatever group the speaker might single out. In this instance, Mr. Gandhi's rhetoric homogenizes and thereby caricatures the lives, experiences, actions, motivations, beliefs, commitments, attachments and achievements, to say nothing of the shortcomings and faults, of Jews, seen not as cutouts but as actual persons replete with all their religious, political, social and cultural differences. It shows him as prejudiced, as bigoted. It raises questions in my mind about whether he grasps the purpose of a University as an instrument for pursuing truth. I hope other members of the University Community will speak up and ask him.

How a University Compromises Its Principles ~ Not Quite Totally

"Guernica," Pablo Picasso (1937)

About two weeks ago I heard Debra Satz, a friend who teaches philosophy at Stanford, on npr. She was interviewed as part of this report on faculty and student opposition to having former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appointed as a "distinguished fellow" at the Hoover Institution which is located on the Stanford Campus. I admire Debra's work ~ especially her series of extremely smart papers on markets and equality* ~ and her politics. It seems to me that faculty ought to speak out when their University seeks to appoint someone like Rumsfeld, who arguably is a war criminal, to some position or other.

Of course, Stanford has no real control over the folks at Hoover, which is a quasi-autonmous entity. But, I have to agree with the folks there who object to Rummy's appointment. Unlike BushCo minions like John Yoo ~ he of the infamous 'torture memos' ~ who now teaches law at Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), Rumsfeld was not just a mouthpiece for putrid policies. He was directly in the chain of command. I would object to having Yoo on faculty where I teach but fortunately we have no law school! This is not "left-wing intolerance" as Conservatives (or Liberals who are free speech fundamentalists) are wont to proclaim; it is simply talking back to those who have said things in public that are both dangerous and stupid.** It is an attempt to hold Universities to their own principles. Would I urge the administration at Rochester to deny Yoo an academic appointment? No, but I likely would make clear that I find his rationalizations for torture contemptible. Would I ask the administration at UofR to deny Rumsfeld an appointment? Yes, just as I would in the case of other war criminals like, say, Henry Kissinger. Yoo rationalized torture in his speeches/writings, Rumsfeld actually implemented various dispicable policies.

All of that brings me round to the good old University of Rochester. This past weekend was "Meliora Weekend," part of the PR/Development campaign by which the University seeks to cultivate relations, both intellectual and economic, with alumnae and alumni. Nothing wrong with that. But the Keynote event on campus was an address by none other than former Secretary of State Colin Powell, he of the deceptive BushCo campaign to justify our invasion of Iraq.


This official-style head shot is how the University PR materials depict Powell. That makes sense since, according to the University, Powell is a "fervent purveyor of democratic values." This, unfortunately, seems to me to be considerably more than a stretch. Powell is a liar. In his 2003 testimony before the United Nations Security Council, Powell lied with a straight face about the alleged WMD in Iraq. He did not "mislead" or "dissemble." There is no need to sugar-coat the testimony he offered. He lied. He lied to you and me and the world. And he has admitted as much himself. It is deeply embarassing that the UofR invited Powell to speak on campus. Accordng to the University, while in office Powell "used the power of diplomacy and the universal ideal of democracy to" among other things "build trust"; it escapes me completely how lying to the American people, and to our allies and adversaries, enhances trust either domestically or internationally. Quite the contrary. And to the extent that our premise is that healthy democracy presupposes a reservoir of political trust, Powell seems to me an enemy of democracy.

Here is a far more appropriate photograph of Powell. It is a still taken from the video of his perfomance at the U.N. in the winter of 2003. This is the defining moment of Powell's career in public service. Here he is peddling lies. He is peddling lies that it seems quite disingenuous to suggest he did not know were lies at the time. Why didn't this image appear on our Meliora Weekend web page?

Call me an "absent-minded Professor." I do not pay much attention to Meliora-like events. The only evidence I had that there was a special event on campus last Friday was my inability to find a place to park. So I didn't even know Powell was on the schedule. I didn't know there was a schedule. Had I known I would've objected in advance. As it is, I am objecting now. I'm sure there will be those who chastise me, claiming that Powell has a right to speak. That, of course, is true. But let's be quite clear about what has happened. As part of the Meliora events we didn't just offer Powell an audience; we granted him an honorary degree. That is simply pathetic. It tarnishes the reputation of the University ~ to put it very mildly ~ to lend its name to the "achievements" of an admitted liar. Allowing someone to speak is one thing. Honoring him and his ignominious achievements is another.

I started this post with a reproduction of Picasso's Guernica because it bears witness to the evils of unjust and duplicitous regimes and the consequnces their policies generate. It also is relevant to Powell's defining moment, because the copy of this work that hangs at the U.N. Headquarters in NYC appropriately was covered over during Powell's testimony. Picasso's is a work of testimony. And ironically enough another of the speakers invited to address our alums this past weekend was Barbara Olshansky (BA, Rochester ’82; JD, Stanford '85 ~ how is that for a coincidence?) who, as the Deputy Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, successfully fought the Bush administration's ongoing efforts to shred the Constitution in the name of this or that ill-conceived and deceitful policy. Olshansky now is on the faculty of Stanford Law School and is Litigation Director for the International Justice Network. She is a truly distinguished alumnus.

As far as I know the UofR bestowed no honorary degree on Olshansky; she simply was offered an audience to whom she could provide a report on her honorable work trying to counteract the lies and actions of those like Colin Powell. So our compromise, I suppose, was not total.
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* You can find a draft of one of these papers here.
** Steve Holmes dismantles Yoo's views (pardon the rhyme) in this essay in The Nation.