Author Archives: Peter Levine

the Meiers nomination and the opacity of political motivation

A a general rule, I strongly oppose the kind of political analysis and argument that asks about the motivations of decision-makers. People’s motives are often mixed or downright mysterious, even to themselves. Motives may be irrelevant: politicians often do good things for selfish reasons and bad things with good intentions. When we look for leaders’ motives, we must rely on insiders (who are powerful and rarely trustworthy). They become authorities, and citizens are mere spectators. If, in contrast, we consider whether a policy is good or bad on its face, we can make up our own minds based on public documents and evidence. Finally, the search for motives in a second-term presidency is genuinely baffling. GW Bush cannot be reelected; he may not care particularly about the outcome of the 2008 election; his financial backers have no leverage over him; he may not trust the “history books” to treat him fairly, whatever he does. So what does he want? You can go crazy guessing.

The nomination of Harriet Miers is, unfortunately, something of an exception to the rule that we shouldn’t think about politicians’ motives. That is because of what my Maryland colleague and friend Mark Graber calls the information advantage: “What both John Roberts and Harriet Miers have in common is that the administration knows a lot more about them than the rest of us.” Graber subscribes to “a political regime theory of the judicial function. On this view, the constitution may be plausibly interpreted in different (not infinite) ways so presidents (and senators) are authorized by election to seek federal justices who share their constitutional vision.” If that’s the case, then it’s crucial for presidents or their nominees to explain their visions, so that we can hold them accountable at the next election. But Bush won’t say what his vision is, beyond uttering “cliches about modest justices and judicial restraint. In short, President Bush is clearly moving the court in a particular direction. He just isn’t telling us what that direction is other than vaguely conservative.”

Since we cannot debate Bush’s or Mier’s theory of the Constitution, which is unknown, all we can do is speculate about the president’s motives. The blogosphere is great for such speculation, and in this case, it provides many options. For example:

Jack Balkin: The ruling conservatives want policies friendly to business, meaning “stability, comfort, predictability, and an agile, productive, submissive and demobilized population.” They don’t really care about divisive social issues that might mobilize voters. Hariet Miers is a corporate lawyer. While she may vote conservatively on issues like abortion, she doesn’t have a big plan for moving the country rightward on those questions–and that’s fine with business and with George W. Bush.

Kevin Drum: The President wants to avoid a fight; he wants to “fold.” If he picked a well-known moderate, that would be folding too obviously. Harriet Miers, because she is a cipher with no relevant record, gives him the opportunity to back down without actually saying “uncle.” (The implication, which Drum doesn’t spell out explicitly, is that Bush would be disappointed and surprised if Miers made controversial decisions from the Court on his watch.)

GreyBlog (and others): Meiers is personally loyal to the president. Bush’s biggest concern is a Supreme Court case involving his administration, say, on a matter of corruption or something to do with presidential powers. Miers is a safe vote if his interests are at stake.

David Bernstein: The President’s priority is the War on Terror (including Guantanamo and the Patriot Act), just as FDR’s priority was the New Deal. Roberts, because of his appelate rulings, and Miers, because of her work in the Bush White House, seem two of the most likely candidates to uphold the Administration on those issues.

These are some of the most interesting theories, but there is also plenty of speculation that … Miers is willing to overturn Roe and Bush knows it; Miers is a relatively uncontroversial woman and Bush wants a female appointee; Miers is nice and respectful to Bush and he just likes her. Who knows, and–I would normally say–Who cares? But in this case, it seems impossible to have any more intelligent conversation than the snippets quoted above. It is now up to the Judiciary Committee to force Miers into a discussion of the Constitution, so that we can stop worrying about what GWB wants.

resume-padding and risk

My friends Lew Friedland and Shauna Morimoto have published a new CIRCLE working paper (pdf) that ought to interest a broad audience. Friedland and Morimoto found that anxiety about college admissions is a major aspect of adolescents? lives, affecting almost all students, from those on the honor roll to ones who are having trouble staying in high school. This anxiety is so pervasive that it cannot be separated from other motives that are driving youth to volunteer in record numbers. In other words, young people do not simply volunteer in order to get into college, but that goal is so central to their lives, and so fraught with apprehension, that it colors and shapes all their choices. To a disturbing degree, they cannot articulate other values or purposes of the volunteering that they do.

Because our business is youth civic engagement, we have packaged this working paper as an exploration of service in high schools. But it could be read in a much broader sociological context. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck–whom, unfortunately, I have not yet read–argues that risk has been individualized. People individually bear the long-term consequences of their performance at each stage of their lives, including early adolescence. Families, communities, and associations no longer protect them as much as they used to. For “high-performing” students, including those who are female or members of racial minorities, opportunities have probably improved. But the obverse of opportunity is risk. There are serious disadvantages to raising young people under circumstances of high (perceived) risk, even if they have a chance to obtain excellent outcomes through hard work. One disadvantage of individualized risk is a kind of hollowing-out of adolescence, as activities that should be deeply satisfying become merely instrumental. Volunteering is just an example. Learning, athletics, and religious participation can also lose their intrinsic significance if students feel they must “perform” at optimal levels at all times in order to maximize their economic opportunities.

ideology and the professoriate

I’m in New Brunswick, NJ, for the Imagining America national conference. I’ll speak tomorrow. My assigned theme is “difficult dialogues.” The other panelists will discuss a large, Ford-funded initiative by that name that seeks to “promote pluralism and academic freedom on campus.”

When I think about “difficult dialogues” in relation to the arts and humanities, the dialogue that strikes me as the most difficult and most necessary of all is a conversation between academics–who tend to be liberal or radical–and the 62 million Americans who voted for George W. Bush last November. I plan to argue that:

1. Academics are overwhelmingly liberal, especially in the arts and humanities. (I’ll cite some data to this effect.)

2. The gulf in attitudes between academics and the median US voters is causing tangible problems for intellectual culture and academia.

3. We can take some constructive steps to improve the situation.

I’ve covered several of those points on this blog before. However, I haven’t previously considered the following explanation for the gulf in attitudes between academics and median American voters. In global perspective, it is the US electorate, not the American professoriate, that is out of the mainstream. American professors are cosmopolitan, and thus share more with foreign peers and colleagues than with the ideological outliers back home.

Indeed, on a one-dimensional ideological scale from left to right, the median American voter is quite far to the right compared to the world’s population, and the median American academic is closer to the global middle. But this one-dimensional scale conceals all kinds of complexities. There are ways in which American voters-?populist, anti-authoritarian, libertarian, multiculturalist, and rights-oriented?-can be more “radical” than Europeans. There are certainly homegrown traditions of radicalism that are concealed if one applies the international definition of the “left.”

Besides, even if it’s true that American academics are centrists in the global dialogue and outliers only in our own country, that’s still a problem. Our country is where we live, earn our salaries, find our students, and?-in many cases?-hold citizenship. The gap may not be out fault, but it is our problem, because no one else is going to solve it for us.

I believe that a solution lies in an idea that Harry Boyte is developing. Boyte wants us to see ourselves as “culture makers” in a democratic society. Many Americans consider mass culture to be coarse, commercial, celebrity-driven, and violent. It’s very slick and doesn’t provide openings for ordinary people to create anything for a public audience. Culture also feels dangerously uncontrollable. You can’t shield yourself or your children from the vulgar aspects of mass culture without also insulating yourself from the news and public life. Hollywood and the music industry occasionally respond to targeted protest campaigns, but they don’t seem in general to care about people’s thoughtful and deliberative opinions about quality.

Democratic action through the state probably can’t make much difference. The First Amendment rightly protects media companies, even if they create coarse and violent material. But there is great potential for partnerships between lay citizens and professional “culture-makers” who want to create alternatives that are more responsible, ethical, and serious. Academics, along with clergypeople, entertainers, journalists, and other professionals in the knowledge and communications business, can exercise powerful leverage.

I don’t imagine that there is consensus about what’s wrong with pop culture. For some people, it’s the pervasive anti-gay prejudice; for others, it’s the increasingly tolerant representation of homosexuality. But we don’t need consensus; we just need more chances to reason together about what culture should mean and to create things–not in one big, homogeneous group, but in diverse and sometimes overlapping communities. Universities should be at the heart of this work.

the trial of William Penn

I was looking for a quote (which I didn’t actually find), and I ended up reading an entire account of William Penn’s trial in 1670. I believe the account–available with modernized English spelling on a University of Texas website–was written by Penn himself, so it is not unbiased. In fact, I find it somewhat hard to imagine that the wicked judge would actually mutter to himself, “Till now I never understood the Reason of the Policy and Prudence of the Spaniards, in suffering the Inquisition among them: And certainly it will never be well with us, till something like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in England.” Nevertheless, the story makes gripping theater and has contemporary resonance. (I recommend skimming until p. 4, where the action really starts.)

For background: Penn (a Quaker) had been preaching in violation of the Conventicle Act, which forbade “all meetings of more than five persons beyond a household, if any, for worship other than that prescribed by the Liturgy.” The Sheriff of London and other authorities were afraid to charge Penn under the Act, lest it be overturned. Instead, they arrested him and William Mead on undisclosed charges. The two Friends were subjected to Newgate Prison’s “Bale-dock, and Nasty-hole, nay, the menace of a Gag, and Iron Shackles too.” They were brought before a Middlesex (London) jury. The trial itself shed no light on whether the defendants had broken any law, but it did (according Penn’s account) involve such entertaining exchanges as the following:

Clark: Bring William Penn and William Mead to the Bar.

Mayor: Sirrah, who bid you put off their Hats? Put on their Hats again.

Observer [Penn himself]: Whereupon one of the Officers putting the Prisoners Hats upon their Heads (pursuant to the Order of the Court) brought them to the Bar.

Recorder: Do you know where you are?

Penn: Yes.

Recorder: Do not you know it is the King’s Court?

Penn: I know it to be a Court, and I suppose it to be the King’s Court.

Recorder: Do you not know there is Respect due to the Court?

Penn: Yes.

Record: Why do you not pay it then?

Penn: I do so.

Record. Why do you not pull off your Hat then?

Pen: Because I do not believe that to be any Respect.

Record: Well, the Court sets forty Marks a piece upon your Heads, as a Fine for your Contempt of the Court.

Penn: I desire it might be observed, that we came into the Court with our Hats off (that is, taken off) and if they have been put on since, it was by Order from the Bench; and therefore not we, but the Bench should be fined.

The judge demands that the jury find Penn guilty, although without stating the charges. Penn makes a stirring defense of the jurors’ rights as Englishmen. I won’t spoil the suspense by relating the conclusion, in case you don’t happen to know what happened. The official US Court system website provides a summary of the whole event that concludes–rather surprisingly–with a positive account of jury nullification.