Monthly Archives: May 2014

the commencement speaker controversies

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IMF chief Christine Lagarde, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Colorado state Sen. Michael Johnston (D) are among the commencement speakers who have drawn objections from students this year. Several have withdrawn from speaking or been disinvited in the face of such criticism.

Compared to the people who decry student bigotry in these cases, I take a relatively complex, three-part view.

First, protesting a commencement speaker is not a violation of free speech; it is an act of free speech. Joel Whitney argues that point well in The New Republic. A commencement podium is not an open forum like Hyde Park Corner or a public access cable channel. It is allocated as a high honor to one person whom the institution explicitly endorses. Students may contest that endorsement.

For example, in announcing the choice of Johnston to be the Harvard Ed. School’s speaker, the dean said, “As a teacher, principal, and entrepreneur, Mike’s leadership has made a real difference in the lives of countless students.” (I can’t resist noting that the previous sentence contains a dangling modifier.) Dean Ryan continued, “As a legislator in the Colorado State Senate, [Johnston] is a nationally recognized advocate for school finance reform, fair teacher evaluations, and education equity. I believe that our community will be inspired, as I have been, by his passion and his willingness to find solutions to notoriously difficult challenges in education.”

That was a substantive statement and a prediction. The dean stated that the invitee was great and the whole community would be inspired by him. I have no objection to Sen. Johnston, but students are entitled to contest these claims.

Smith President Kathleen McCartney is right that “an invitation to speak at a commencement is not an endorsement of all views or policies of an individual or the institution she or he leads. … Such a test would preclude virtually anyone in public office or position of influence. Moreover, such a test would seem anathema to our core values of free thought and diversity of opinion.” But an invitation to speak at a commencement is a claim that the invitee is excellent in some respect, and the institution should expect objections if members of the community are known to disagree.

Second, when students protest a commencement speaker, neither the invitee nor the institution should back down. To withdraw in the face of criticism is to frustrate free speech. After Smith College invitee Lagarde, and some students objected, the IMF chief withdrew, saying, “In the last few days, … it has become evident that a number of students and faculty members would not welcome me as a commencement speaker. I respect their views, and I understand the vital importance of academic freedom. However, to preserve the celebratory spirit of commencement day, I believe it is best to withdraw my participation.”

If a commencement is just a celebratory occasion, spoiled by controversy as easily as a picnic by rain, then colleges should invite completely uncontroversial figures to share pabulum from the podium. If a commencement is an opportunity for learning, then it will draw dissent, and both the institution and the speaker should expect that. If they drop the speaker to avoid controversy, they don’t care about free speech.

Third, being exposed to views you disagree with is valuable. It’s educational and challenging. It is most valuable when the views are forcefully expressed by someone who genuinely holds them. Thus liberal students may benefit from hearing Lagarde, Rice, Ali, and Johnston, even if they don’t enjoy these talks all that much on their graduation day. There is a valid principle implied in the claim that these speakers have “free speech,” even if it’s wrongly interpreted to mean that they have some kind of individual right to give a commencement address. (If we have such a right, I’m cashing mine in and speaking next year at the University of Hawaii). “Free speech” doesn’t mean a right to give a commencement address, but it is shorthand for the value of exposure to challenging views.

Therefore, I don’t think students should express their objections in this form: “We despise the invitee and demand that she not speak here at all.” Instead, I think they should say, “We despise the views of the invitee for the following reasons and plan to make our arguments known during commencement.” That reflects an embrace of free speech rather than a fear of it. One model is the critical letter that Catholic University professors wrote to John Boehner after he was invited to speak there. They first offered a strong, substantive, moral critique:

Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.

That was actually a devastating rebuke. But the professors went on to welcome him to campus and held out hope that the interchange might influence him:

We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America. It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching. We write in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that every group of angry students must use exactly this model, but it is one worth considering. And then they should get their money’s worth on graduation day by engaging an interesting speaker, actively and critically.

a different take on coherence in ethics

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There have traditionally been two families of answers to the question: How can a moral belief be justified? Foundationalists think that beliefs are justified if they follow from beliefs that are somehow “foundational.” As Geoffrey Sayre-McCord writes, “traditionally, foundational beliefs have been credited with all sorts of wonderful properties, with being, for instance, infallible, or indubitable, or incorrigible, or certain” (p. 154). Foundational beliefs are also frequently assumed to be big: very general in scope and application. So the belief that all humans are created equal may be considered a worthy candidate to be foundational. Skepticism about foundationalism usually takes the form of asking: How can you tell that such beliefs are true? What justifies them?

Sayre-McCord divides the turf a bit differently, so that a foundationalist is simply someone who holds that some moral beliefs have a special status. They are “privileged.” They may nevertheless be fallible and modest in scope. They may, for example, be concrete judgments that we draw from experience. But they are privileged because their justification is not the support that they receive from other moral reasons. A foundationalist thinks that a given moral belief is justified only if it is foundational or it follows from foundational beliefs.

Coherentists say, instead, that all moral beliefs are on par. There is no privileged class. Any moral belief is justified by the other beliefs that relate to it. The reasons we give for a belief take the form of connections to other beliefs. By the way, the fact that a moral worldview (such as utilitarianism, or Judaism) coheres is not a reason to hold each of its component beliefs. Rather, the reason for each belief just is the support it gets from other beliefs. The more such support exists, the more we say that the whole coheres (p. 170). But we shouldn’t believe something just because it belongs to some coherent system.

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Boston, recovering city

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(On the train to NYC) It’s my sense that the second half of the 20th century was hard on America’s oldest city, but Boston is recovering from the wounds it sustained then.

Boston entered the 1900s as the hub of the first region in the United States to industrialize. It had its own factories, but mainly it provided the harbor and the financial and managerial center for a ring of manufacturing cities from Lowell to Fall River. Founded early and always prosperous, Boston had assembled cultural resources that made it a claimant to being America’s intellectual capital. Politically, it was a battleground between WASP Republicans and Catholic European working-class Democrats–not a pleasant struggle but sometimes a dynamic one. People of color were largely marginalized, but their communities had impressive assets. The city was especially attractive thanks to its architecture and its location at the mouth of the Charles. It had its own distinctive businesses that were points of civic pride, from Filene’s Department Store to the Red Sox.

But the industrial base largely collapsed. The harbor lost most of its business and became notoriously polluted. That meant that the city lost its traditional face to the sea. I-93 was blasted through the central core, and a terrible brutalist City Hall also marred downtown. Because the city was relatively small, each bad large building was a blow to the whole. The department stores faltered and ultimately closed. As in other cities, white middle class residents moved out and left a declining post-industrial economy to African American migrants and new immigrants. In Boston, white resistance was especially explicit and violent. The rest of American grew two- or three-fold while Boston shrank as a proportion of the nation’s economy, cultural leadership, and population.

Although I liked Boston when I first encountered it in the mid-1980s, I think it was a wounded city then. Having lived in the metro area continuously since 2008, I would now describe it as recovering. The Big Dig buried I-93, and the city is stitching together over it. The harbor is clean and graced by some fine new buildings, private and public. Boston again has a face to the sea. Biotech is flourishing. Certain de-industrialized zones, such as east Cambridge, are now massive building sites. The metro area has become multiracial and multicultural. Racial injustice is certainly not resolved, but I sense positive momentum. Boston’s fifth century should be much better than its fourth (unless we sink under the seas because of polar melt).

Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Picketty

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In the earlier times of the colony, when lands were to be obtained for little or nothing, some provident individuals procured large grants; and, desirous of founding great families for themselves, settled them on their descendants in fee tail. The transmission of this property from generation to generation, in the same name, raised up a distinct set of families, who, being privileged by law in the perpetuation of their wealth, were thus formed into a Patrician order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their establishments. From this order, too, the king habitually selected his counsellors of State; the hope of which distinction devoted the whole corps to the interests and will of the crown. To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.

—Thomas Jefferson, recalling his own Bill for the Abolition of Entails, August 11, 1776

Thomas Picketty has become the world’s best-selling economist with a simple argument. Normally, he says, the people who own capital not only become richer (which would helpfully encourage investment), but their wealth grows consistently faster than the economy. Thus, even if they lounge around–even if they fall into comas–their share of GDP will grow, giving them disproportionate political as well as economic influence. That pattern was suspended for most of the 20th century but is now returning.

Picketty has been called Marxist and anti-American, but Thomas Jefferson shared his concerns. In colonial Virginia, capital took the form of land and slaves. Some of the earlier settlers had put their families on course to dominate the colony by writing wills that passed their estates to their first-born sons and prevented their land from being sold or divided. Since the British were blocking westward expansion, holding together a large estate meant gaining a growing share of the colony’s wealth as the population expanded. Jefferson thought this was a recipe for an “aristocracy of wealth” that was incompatible with republican government. He passed bills to abolish the “entails” that kept family estates from splitting.

Scholars seem to disagree about the economic and social consequences of his legislation. But he saw his own bills as radical efforts and as components of a multi-pronged strategy:

I considered 4 of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth in select families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain. The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these too might be added, as a further security, the introduction of the trial by jury, into the Chancery courts, which have already ingulfed and continue to ingulf, so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our property.

Jefferson certainly should have favored (instead of opposed) the abolition of slavery. But note his explicit class theory; his concern with “future” as well as “antient” aristocracy; and his willingness to use a combination of economic, cultural, legal/governmental, and educational strategies to produce the “foundation … for a government truly republican.” I think the nation’s third president would view today’s proposals for combatting oligarchy as but weak and tentative.

See also: why is oligarchy everywhere? and why is oligarchy everywhere? (part 2).

defining civic engagement, democracy, civic renewal, and related terms

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My post entitled “What is the definition of civic engagement?” gets lots of traffic. It does not actually present my definition but a compendium of alternative versions. I have volunteered to draft some new definitions for a particular purpose. This is what I am thinking:

Active citizenship: Working to improve a nation or other community, independent of whether you have legal status as a member of that community. (“You were an excellent active citizen in Massachusetts while you visited here from South Africa.”)

Civil society: The array of nongovernmental organizations and networks that address public issues. Sometimes the definition introduces a qualitative dimension, so that civil society is an array of associations and networks marked by peacefulness, mutual respect, trust, and other virtues. Civil society may include for-profit enterprises as well as nonprofits. (“The government worked with civil society groups to help victims of the storm.”)

Civic education: Any process that strengthens people’s capacity for civic engagement and political participation, at any age and in any setting. (“Newspapers traditionally provided some of the best civic education in America.”)

Civic engagement: Any act intended to improve or influence a community. Often, the phrase has positive connotations, so that engagement is viewed as “civic” to the extent that it meets such criteria as responsibility, thoughtfulness, respect for evidence, and concern for other people and the environment. (“Informed voting is an example of civic engagement.”)

Civic health: The degree to which a whole community involves its people and organizations in addressing its problems. (“Minneapolis/St Paul has the best civic health of large American cities, thanks to a long tradition of strong civic organizations and responsive local government.”)

Civic institutions: The organizations and associated norms and rules that people use for civic engagement. (“Political parties and volunteer groups are two examples of civic institutions.”)

Civic life: For an individual, a life in which civic engagement has an important place. For a community, all the acts of civic engagement and associated norms and values of its members. (“A service experience prepared her for civic life.” “The civic life of Somerville, MA is vibrant.”)

Civic renewal: Efforts to increase the prevalence, equity, quality, and impact of civic engagement. (“Attending a public meeting is civic engagement, but making such meetings work better for the whole community is civic renewal.”)

Democracy: Any system for making decisions in which all the members of the community or group have roughly equal influence, whether they exercise it directly or through representatives. Voting is common in democracies but is not definitive of it. Other means–such as reaching consensus or choosing representatives by lot–can also be democratic; and voting requires other elements to be satisfactory, such as free expression and civil peace. (“An elementary school is not a democracy, but it helps prepare students for democratic participation.”)

Democratic participation: Civic engagement that involves democratic political institutions. (“Petitioning Congress is a form of democratic participation.”)

Politics: Broadly, the means and processes by which people govern themselves and others, using power and influence. One important setting of politics is government, but politics also occurs in other institutions. Politics is not necessarily contentious or zero-sum. (“The Marshall Plan was politics at its finest.”)

Political engagement or political participation: Civic engagement that emphasizes governmental institutions and/or power. (“Voting is a touchstone of political participation in the United States.”)