On the ‘anti-conservative bias’ of academia

Wisconsin Republicans like to whine about the ‘anti-conservative bias’ of contemporary universities. Such complaints have been used to help justify their ongoing destruction of the University of Wisconsin system (including: the recent de facto prohibition of student protests by the [Scott Walker-appointed] Regents of the UW system; the attack on academic freedom through the evisceration of tenure two years ago; the massive budget cuts to the system over the course of Walker’s time as governor; etc.).

For a helpful explanation for why this ‘bias’ exists in academia, read this post by Joe Heath (a philosopher at the University of Toronto).

One of Heath’s key points is something that I’ve long held to be obviously true—viz., universities are inherently ‘pro-reason’ (broadly understood to mean an overall pro-evidence, pro-argument, pro-logic, etc., outlook). So insofar as much of political and social conservatism is anti-reason (anti-evidence, etc.), then academia inevitably is going to be a hostile environment for most political and social conservatives. And to the extent that anti-reason conservatives go to university and become less conservative as a consequence, this is not (or at least not primarily) due to ‘brainwashing’ by Marxist profs, but rather because they become acclimated to a rationalist way of seeing the world. (In contrast to anti-reason conservatives, libertarians are massively overrepresented in academia, especially in the US. But of course libertarians think that they have arguments for their positions; they’re ‘pro-reason’, like their liberal and left-wing interlocutors.)

Another thing that I like about this post is Heath’s take down of the irritatingly influential Jonathan Haidt. What I find most grating in much of Haidt’s work is its unargued premise of moral non-cognitivism. (Heath also criticizes Haidt’s ‘political moralism,’ which strikes me as fair, but is not something that causes me to tear my hair out in annoyance.)

Wisconsin Republicans' assault on academic freedom continues

This is getting tiresome, I know, but Republican legislators in Wisconsin seem to have a surfeit of enthusiasm when it comes to attacking the University of Wisconsin system, and especially the UW's commitment to academic freedom.

The most recent bit of nonsense is an inchoate proposal to somehow tie public funds for the UW system to more 'adequate' representation of right-wing ideas on UW campuses, irrespective of their intellectual or scientific merit, in the name of an ill-defined desire for greater 'intellectual diversity'. (I doubt that Republicans' concern for 'intellectual diversity' extends to the lack of leftish scholars and ideas at business schools...)

Helpfully, today's New York Times has a piece by Donald P. Moynihan (professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) -- "Who’s Really Placing Limits on Free Speech?" -- that does an excellent job in explaining what is happening in Wisconsin. Moynihan discusses the various policies that Republican legislators and Governor Scott Walker have used in the recent past (e.g., the evisceration of tenure), and in the future may use (e.g., the monitoring of course offerings at UW, allowing guns into classrooms), in order to stifle academic freedom. Worries about 'political correctness' (an 'issue' that I never have encountered during my 8+ years at UW-Milwaukee) are manifestly trivial in comparison to these real threats to free scholarship and intellectual liberty.

A creative way to address the prospect of guns in the classroom

In 2017 it looks like some Wisconsin GOP legislators will be pushing (yet again) for a law that would permit people to bring concealed firearms into campus buildings within the University of Wisconsin system. This is a terrible idea that just won't die (at least not while Republicans remain the enthusiastic thralls of the National Rifle Association).

Professor Larry Shapiro (UW-Madison), however, is planning on pursuing a rather innovative strategy for dealing with this problem (should the proposed bill eventually become law). He's preparing two syllabi for his "Introduction to Philosophy" course. The first syllabus includes a wide variety of topics, among them things like whether God exists, the moral permissibility or impermissibility of abortion, and conceptions of social justice. The second syllabus eliminates those topics and replaces them with philosophical debates less likely to provoke strong reactions in students.

Why the two syllabi? Prof. Shapiro explains:

The reason for the second syllabus is this. The topics on the first syllabus that get my students so excited are also the topics that arouse the most passion. And, if some of our state legislators have their way, passion is the last thing I’ll want to provoke in my students. You see, my campus may soon become a concealed carry campus. This means that while I am presenting an argument in favor of a right to abortion, or against the existence of God, or in favor of tax policies that would strip these students of their inheritances (I also present arguments on the other side of these issues), I will at the same time be worrying that a depressed or disturbed or drunk or high college student is in the audience, armed, and fed up with what I or fellow students are advocating. 

It’s of course obvious that gun violence in my classroom is far more probable given the legal presence of guns than not, and even if the danger remains remote, why should I bother to keep on my syllabus those issues that promise most likely to incite gun violence? Why teach topics that increase the probability, however small, of provoking an unstable but legally carrying shooter? 

So, my plan is this. On the first day of the semester I will explain to my students that I have prepared two syllabi for the course. One they’ll find much more interesting than the other, but we’ll adopt it only if I receive a promise from the students that they will not carry weapons into my classroom.

(Read the whole piece by Prof. Shapiro here. [Hat tip to the Daily Nous.])

I formulated a less creative strategy to deal with this problem when the idea was proposed last time (during autumn 2015): (a) switch all my lower-level undergraduate courses to online only; (b) hold my office hours in an off-campus coffee shop with a 'no guns' policy; and (c) request all students in my seminars (mainly graduate students and 4th-year undergraduates) not bring guns to our meetings (I would trust that students that mature would honour this request). But perhaps I'll adapt a version of Prof. Shapiro's strategy as well.

(In an earlier post at this blog, I explained why the possession of firearms actually renders everyone within American society less free.)

The AAUP defends academic freedom in Wisconsin

The American Association of University Professors has issued a reply to the threat to academic freedom posed by GOP legislators in Wisconsin (as mentioned in my previous post). 

Here is a part of the AAUP's statement:

[T]hreats to the university by government officials related to instructors offering specific courses stifles the free exploration of ideas...
Further, by calling on UW-Madison to fire Professor Sajnani for his public comments, these legislators ignore one of our most fundamental rights as U.S. citizens: the right to speak freely, as guaranteed by the First Amendment. ...
This is not merely an issue of freedom for academics, but an issue of freedom for all citizens.

Read the full statement here (pdf).

More Republican contempt for academic freedom in Wisconsin

Yet again Wisconsin Republicans display contempt for the principle of academic freedom. Two fascistic legislators in particular want to exercise domination over the university, ensuring that it comply with their ideological preferences.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Two leading state Republican lawmakers are threatening the University of Wisconsin System that if it doesn't remove a course called "The Problem of Whiteness" from UW-Madison's spring semester offerings, the UW's requests for more state funding and a bump in tuition may be denied during budget deliberations next year. 

One of the lawmakers, Rep. Dave Murphy of Greenville, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that he also has directed his staff to look further into UW-Madison's course offerings to make sure "they're legit."
…
UW-Madison must drop the class, Murphy said. "If UW-Madison stands with this professor, I don’t know how the University can expect the taxpayers to stand with UW-Madison.”
…
Asked what exactly he would be looking for, Murphy did not elaborate. He said his staff would not need to look at many disciplines such as chemistry and business, but "we'll be looking at the humanities."
…
This is the second time in less than six months that a legislator has threatened UW System funding over course offerings at the state's flagship university. 

In July, Sen. Steve Nass, the vice-chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges and a frequent UW critic, warned in a letter to UW leaders and regents that UW-Madison lecturer Jason Nolen's decision to assign an "offensive" essay on gay men's sexual preferences in a sociology class could have budget ramifications.  

Not content to destroy the University of Wisconsin system through underfunding and the elimination of tenure, these malevolent ignoramuses want to conduct a witch-hunt to expunge anyone who dares to deviate from what they think universities ‘ought’ to teach.

It is clear that we should now speak of ‘freedom’ in Wisconsin in the past tense.

Is democracy coming to Wisconsin?

Finally, some good news for the sorry state of Wisconsin:

A federal court has ruled Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn legislative map unconstitutional, saying the plan constitutes a partisan gerrymander. 

In a 2-1 decision from a special panel of federal judges, authored by federal Judge Kenneth Ripple, the court agreed with a group of Democratic plaintiffs that the redistricting plan had systematically diluted the voting strength of Democratic voters.

(From Wisconsin's NPR website: "Wisconsin's GOP-Drawn Legislative Districts Unconstitutional." More information available at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.)

Thank Crom!

Update:

Key to the decision was this:

The Democrats contend that they have found a way to measure unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders that are designed to give an extreme and durable advantage in elections to one party, a measure that the U.S. Supreme Court has said it was lacking. The measure, called the efficiency gap, shows how cracking (breaking up blocs of Democratic voters) and packing (concentrating Democrats within certain districts) results in wasted votes -- excess votes for one party in safe districts and votes for losing candidates in those safe districts.

(From the Wisconsin State Journal.)

Update on the Wisconsin GOP's unending efforts to thwart democracy

This is just a quick follow-up to my earlier post on the real aim of the recent GOP-passed Wisconsin 'voter ID laws': namely, to suppress the franchise amongst Democratic-leaning voters.

These laws presently are being challenged in court, and the former chief of staff to then-Senator Dale Schultz (Republican), Todd Allbaugh, has named names and presented some of the comments made by key Republican legislators in a 2011 closed caucus meeting. As Allbaugh makes clear, preventing (practically nonexistent) 'voter fraud' had nothing to do with the law; rather, it was all about suppressing the ability of people to vote in Milwaukee and on college campuses. Apparently, many GOP legislators were 'giddy' at the prospect of preventing many citizens from voting. (Unsurprisingly, the dim-witted and contemptible Glenn Grothman said this: "What I’m concerned about is winning. [...] [W]e better get this done while we have the opportunity"[.])

Update 1: Some further coverage at The New York Times and Talking Points Memo.

Update 2: My favourite American political commentator, Charles P. Pierce, has weighed in on the matter: "Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has conspired with his pet state legislature to make it harder for Wisconsinites to vote."

The banana republicanisation of Wisconsin continues

[Cartoon from here.]

In recent years Republicans around the United States have been pushing for and passing demanding new ‘voter ID’ laws. Wisconsin, under the malign leadership of Governor Scott Walker, has been no exception. Republicans claim that such laws are necessary to deal with the menace of ‘in-person’ voter fraud. But such crimes are exceptionally rare: far, far more people are struck by lightning than commit voter fraud by impersonation. And implementing voter ID laws costs money (something about which Republicans often pretend to express concern). So what is the actual rationale for these laws? It is no mystery: to suppress the ability to vote of people who tend to support Democratic candidates, such as students, the poor, and members of minority communities.

Of course Republican politicians are careful to avoid making explicit the fact that voter ID laws are about disenfranchising their political opponents. But following last Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin, one especially nasty and dim-witted congressman, Glenn Grothman, noted that voter ID would help the GOP in Wisconsin this November: “now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well." Apparently Grothman forgot that he was not supposed to explain the real reason for Wisconsin’s voter ID law on television!

At the same time, former Republican Todd Albaugh explained that he had abandoned the Wisconsin GOP in disgust in 2011 over precisely this issue:

“[T]his was the last straw: I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American's constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”

(There is an interview with Albaugh here. And for an amusing takedown of these kinds of laws, check out this video by Seth Myers.)

Of course, the voter ID disenfranchisement strategy is but one symptom of Wisconsin’s collapse as a legitimate democracy under the Republican Party. The judicial election on Tuesday was pretty much decided by ‘dark money’ spending, which favoured the right-wing homophobe (and winner) Rebecca Bradley by 4:1.

Every day I find myself stunned (at least for a few moments) at how badly this state has declined since I began my job at UWM in 2008. It has been transformed from a reasonably politically progressive place (at least for an American Midwestern state) – one with strong anti-corruption institutions and laws, and the best protections of academic freedom within the country – into a corrupt, plutocratic, economically stagnant backwater with only faux tenure for professors within the UW system. The ‘Wisconsin Idea’ and the legacy of ‘Fightin Bob’ LaFollette and other Wisconsin progressives have been thoroughly shredded.

Wisconsin's assault on academic freedom

Over at Slate, Rebecca Schuman does a solid job of summarizing the current assault on academic freedom within the University of Wisconsin system in her piece, "The End of Research in Wisconsin."

Some especially important bits:

“This past June, American academia went into an uproar over Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget in Wisconsin, which not only cut $250 million from higher education, but also severely weakened shared faculty governance and effectively destroyed professor tenure at state universities.”

“[T]he situation in Wisconsin is worse than your garden-variety corporatization. […] Academics, whether they have it or not, want some form of tenure to exist to protect the integrity of the knowledge that is produced, preserved, and disseminated.”

“Wisconsin professors simply do not want research limited by the whims of 18 people appointed by a governor with an openly stated anti-education agenda. And you shouldn’t, either. Think university research doesn’t affect you? You’re wrong. Hundreds of technological and social advances that you depend upon have been made thanks to the research of some brainiac at some university somewhere: what kind of cities to plan; how (and where) to alleviate poverty and hunger; what kind of diseases to treat; what kind of drugs to invent (or make obsolete); what kind of bridges and roads to build (and where). If professors are not protected from disagreeing with the agenda of their ‘bosses’—whether that be Dow Chemical, Gov. Walker, or President Trump—the consequences will go far beyond one person’s paycheck.”

“What’s happening in Wisconsin is a worst-case scenario come to life, and $9 million will do nothing to stop the demise of the integrity of research produced there—and everywhere else, too, if we don’t start electing lawmakers who actually value research.”

Unsurprisingly, morale at the place where I work, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, has been horrifically low this academic year.  

Walker still ruining Wisconsin

Those who follow American politics naturally have been focused on the presidential primaries in recent weeks. Yet one fellow who dropped out of the Republican presidential circus months ago -- a favourite puppet of the plutocrats, Scott Walker -- has not been idle. Apparently he has decided that destroying what is left of Wisconsin should serve as some kind of consolation prize. So now he has reinserted corruption and cronyism into the once well-respected state Civil Service system.

Wisconsin citizens thought they had abandoned the spoils system and patronage corruption a century ago when Civil Service was championed by Gov. Robert La Follette, the historic progressive who eloquently railed against the very abuses now being resurrected in the Wisconsin statehouse. Here it comes again.  […]

The patronage-friendly measure Mr. Walker signed in the name of better government is no more convincing than his presidential campaign. It undermines the welfare not only of the state’s 30,000 workers but of Wisconsin citizens who are losing an important part of their heritage of government fairness.

Of course, when Walker was busy crushing the union rights of public employees five years ago, he assured Wisconsinites that they did not need such protections given the state's fine Civil Service system, a system with which he professed no intention of meddling.

And of course he was lying through his teeth.

Unfreedom in Wisconsin

I always feel a certain dread when I have to return to Wisconsin after a break in Canada.  It’s not about the teaching (usually), but rather my sense that some further horrible decision will be made by the state government that will make life there even more unnecessarily unpleasant than it already is.

A New York Times piece from a week ago, “The Destruction of Progressive Wisconsin” by Dan Kaufman, does a good job in summarizing the transformation of Wisconsin over the past five years under Governor Scott Walker and his henchmen within the Republican-controlled state legislature; the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also is discussed.  (ALEC is one of my bêtes noires.)

Individual freedom is a central concern of mine, both politically and in my philosophical work.  So I find it fascinating, and at the same time deeply depressing, to see the ways in which pro-plutocracy organizations like ALEC, and the politicians that implement ALEC’s ‘model legislation,’ deploy the rhetoric of ‘freedom’ to justify their policies.  So-called ‘right-to-work’ laws are a perfect example of this: such laws, of course, do not ensure anything like a ‘right to work.’  Moreover, they do not remove a restriction on employment.  People always are free to accept or decline a job at a unionized firm.  Nobody is every ‘forced’ to join a union.  What ‘right-to-work’ laws do is restrict freedom of contract, encourage freeriding, and coercively (through the force of law) undermine the viability unions.  It’s an Orwellian term.

Having smashed the unions of Wisconsin – and thereby undermined the freedom of workers there – Walker and his minions have turned their sights on the state’s civil service.  Kaufman explains:

By adding the Civil Service bill [to previous ‘right-to-work’ legislation], Mr. Walker brings Wisconsin closer to the achievement of a long-sought goal of the libertarian right: universal “at-will employment.” Unlike union workers or state employees, whose collective bargaining agreements or Civil Service rules generally require employers to demonstrate “just cause” for them to be fired, at-will employees can be terminated at any time for any reason. At-will employment is promoted by the Heritage Foundation and American Legislative Exchange Council, which disseminates model bills to state legislators benefiting its corporate members and conservative private backers.

The ‘libertarian right,’ of course, interprets a law that permits ‘at-will employment’ as one that is ‘freedom enhancing’ in nature.  And at-will employment does increase freedom – but only the freedom of those individuals who already enjoy considerable wealth and power, namely, employers.  It increases their freedom to dominate others, by entitling employers to fire arbitrarily – and thus to threaten more generally – their employees.  The flipside of this kind of freedom for the powerful, of course, is unfreedom or subjugation for employees.   Employees are rendered even more vulnerable to the will of their employers under an ‘at-will employment’ regime. 

The less that employees are subject to arbitrary firing – and subject to ongoing threats of arbitrary firing – the more they enjoy what some political philosophers who write on liberty call ‘freedom as non-domination’ or ‘republican liberty.’  (The reference to ‘republican liberty’ by political philosophers such as Philip Pettit, it should be stressed, refers to the Roman Republic, where a freeman enjoyed a certain status under the law, and obviously is not a reference to the contemporary American Republican Party, which generally opposes republican freedom for most citizens.)  In contrast, the more that employees are subject to arbitrary firing – and thus subject to ongoing threats of arbitrary firing – the more they are subject to domination, and thus the more they are unfree.  

So while the libertarian right, and the contemporary Republican Party more generally, portrays itself as championing individual freedom through such policies, it in fact is championing only the freedom of the already powerful, whilst further restricting and undermining the freedom of most citizens. 

Professors such as myself hardly have been exempt from the Republicans’ assault on liberty within Wisconsin.  After all, the recent attack on tenure is precisely about undermining academic freedom and rendering academics more vulnerable to the will of the politically powerful. 

Sadly, the dark days in Wisconsin do not look to be ending any time soon… 

The anti-freedom Kochtopus

[Cartoon from here.] 

Ah the Koch brothers, America’s most famous plutocrats. They claim to love individual freedom and be ‘libertarians.’ But in addition to the usual right-wing economic causes to which they give millions of dollars (and which really are concerned only with the freedom of the wealthy, not the freedom of most citizens), are some distinctly anti-freedom organizations. Among them are organizations that oppose gay marriage and abortion rights (according to recent reports at the HuffPost and Politico). The Kochs’ ‘Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce’ also gave millions to the National Rifle Association, which champions turning the United States into a hellish Hobbesian state of nature.

Not content with pouring money into various right-wing political causes and politicians, the Kochs also have their own spy agency. Yes, a spy agency – because nothing says “I love individual freedom” quite like spying on people!

And for years now the Kochtopus has been spreading its tentacles into academia. (At least there is now a counter-movement called “UnKoch My Campus.”)

Whenever I read or hear libertarians praising the Kochs for their ‘virtuous’ commitment to liberty and their ‘enlightened social views,’ I invariably think of all the millions of dollars that they give to right-wing Republican politicians like Scott Walker. Whatever the Kochs may say about how much they love individual freedom, the fact of the matter is that they financially support causes and politicians that are anti-refugee, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-education, anti-environment, anti-voting, and so forth. Hence my loathing for them – and the headache that I invariably acquire whenever I encounter a libertarian ‘scholar’ trying to defend them. (But I’m sure that such defences have absolutely nothing to do with the money that so many of them receive form the Kochs. Oh no, nothing at all…)

[Cartoon from here.]

AAUP statement against campus carry laws

The American Association of University Professors has come out with a very strong statement opposing 'campus carry' laws (such as the one currently being considered in Wisconsin, which I mentioned in my previous post).

The statement emphasizes this key point:

Colleges and universities … regard the presence of weapons as incompatible with their educational missions. College campuses are marketplaces of ideas, and a rigorous academic exchange of ideas may be chilled by the presence of weapons. Students and faculty members will not be comfortable discussing controversial subjects if they think there might be a gun in the room.

For the full statement go here.

An armed society is an unfree society

[Image from here.]

Having decided that they haven’t quite ruined the University the Wisconsin system enough yet, the Republicans in Madison are now are considering a bill that would allow students (if they have ‘conceal and carry’ permits) to bring guns into campus buildings.  Students sitting in classrooms during lectures and seminars, or in offices meeting with professors, may soon be packing heat.

This is a horrible idea, one manifestly harmful to the educational mission of universities, including especially the free and vigorous exchange of controversial ideas and views.  Moreover, it is premised on false beliefs about the role of guns in reducing violent crime, and a misguided conception of the relation between guns and freedom in society.

It sometimes is claimed by American gun advocates (including the two legislators pushing this bill) that the presence of guns reduce violent crimes.  The reasoning seems to be that guns act as deterrents to criminals and/or can be used by ‘good guys’ to stop ‘bad guys’ (to use some technical terms favoured by the NRA) in the process of harming or killing innocent people.

That this claim is false should be obvious to anyone who bothers to look at other liberal democratic societies.  The United States has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and over fifteen times as many as Australia and New Zealand.  The reason for this is clear: “The US is an outlier on gun violence because it has way more guns than other developed nations.”  An American gun advocate might acknowledge this fact, but claim that guns nonetheless reduce the overall homicide rate.  That is, perhaps once homicides not caused by firearms are taken into account, it turns out that the United States has a lower homicide rate than, say, Canada thanks to the deterrent effect of all those guns.  But this is not the case either.  The homicide rate of the United States is three times that of Canada.  Again, this should be no surprise.  It’s a lot easier to kill people with guns than with hockey sticks.  Simply put, the idea that citizens legally permitted to carry concealed firearms are an effective force in reducing homicides is a myth.

Guns are inherently threatening.  If students are allowed to bring guns into classrooms, many other students will feel less safe.  It already is quite difficult to help students feel comfortable enough to discuss freely – and disagree openly with each other over – contentious issues like race, gender, and economic inequality, or the moral permissibility or impermissibility of abortion and euthanasia.  The presence of guns lurking in the background of future such discussions invariably will make them even more difficult.

The debate over gun control, at least within the United States, often is cast as a conflict between the values of ‘freedom’ and ‘welfare’ (or security).  Even defenders of robust gun control frequently characterize the debate in this way.  This is a mistake.  The debate instead should be construed as one concerning the distribution of freedom.  Should the freedom of gun owners take priority over the freedom of citizens in general?

The science fiction author Robert Heinlein once famously declared, “An armed society is a polite society.” But the reason such a society is ‘polite,’ of course, is fear.  (The second sentence of the Heinlein quote is: “Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”)  The reality is that an armed society is an unfree society.

The threat of gun violence is coercive.  While easy access to firearms may expand the scope of (what the political theorist Isaiah Berlin famously called) the ‘negative liberty’ of those who like to carry around guns (such citizens can do something that they could not do, or not do as easily, in a society in which access to firearms was restricted), it restricts the scope of all citizens’ negative liberty.  It does so by introducing a coercive threat into all citizens’ public interactions.

To connect my discussion here with my previous post, a society in which guns are widely available is one that more closely resembles Thomas Hobbes’s ‘state of nature’ than do societies in which guns are rare.*  That is, making guns readily available creates a more miserable and insecure condition, one in which everyone becomes a potential threat to everyone else.  Such a society is less free overall; its citizens face a greater range of interferences (potential threats) than citizens in unarmed societies.

Of the four countries that I’ve lived in as an adult – Canada (where I’m from), England, Ireland, and the United States – I’ve felt the least free within the U.S., despite its self-conception as ‘the land of the free.’  And the prevalence of guns in the U.S. is one of the main reasons for this.  In Canada, if an argument breaks out in a coffee shop, a pub, or on a street, I think: “Ugh – How annoying.”  In the U.S., when the same sort of thing happens, I think: “Bloody hell! What if one of those idiots has a gun?!”  And I flee.

Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioural medicine at Stanford University, describes precisely this phenomenon: “In the U.S., whenever there is a angry argument, whether over a traffic accident, someone being fired from their job, or for that matter over nothing of any consequence, it always lurks in one’s mind that someone could have a gun and could start shooting.”  He describes this as “the oppressive psychological weight of America’s gun violence,” and explains how (perversely) this psychological weight “is part of what makes some gun owners scared of gun control (If I don’t have a gun, how will I defend myself against those who do?).”  (Notice the paradigmatically Hobbesian reasoning of the gun owner described by Humphreys.)

And now some Wisconsin legislators want to allow guns into university buildings, including classrooms.  Classrooms in which controversial ideas are debated, and feelings can become intense.  Classrooms in which professors sometimes have to give students bad grades.

Well, at least explaining Hobbes's version of the state of nature will be a bit easier in my political philosophy courses if the legislators who cravenly are doing the bidding of the NRA in Madison get their way…

[* Allow me address a potential nitpick for any Hobbes scholars who might be reading this.  The state of nature, according to Hobbes, is a state of complete freedom, as there is no political authority to establish and impose laws upon persons.  But if we employ Berlin’s notion of negative liberty – according to which, roughly, interferences to potential courses of action count as restrictions on one’s freedom, irrespective of whether they are brought about by the state or by non-state agents – then people are quite unfree within the state of nature, as they face all kinds of interferences on what they can do, namely, continual threats from others.  It is this fear of others that compels rational individuals within the state of nature to act in certain ways (namely, to take pre-emptive actions against others whenever possible).  This is why within the state of nature there is “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  If we employ something like Berlin’s concept of negative liberty, then, the Hobbesian state of nature is a radically unfree condition.]

Plutocrats pull the plug on perennial political puppet Walker

As I have noted earlier here, the current political system within the United States, to a great extent at least, is a de facto plutocracy.  And one would be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of this than Scott Walker.  Almost all of his important political decisions since becoming governor of Wisconsin in January 2011 have furthered the interests the plutocratic class, and harmed the interests of everyone else, especially the poor, women, and workers.  Much of Walker’s harsh right-wing legislation is pulled directly from ALEC. 

(If you would like to witness some vivid examples of Walker’s craven appeasement of the wealthy, there is this video of his interaction with Wisconsin billionaire Diana Hendricks, as well as the prank phone call in which Walker mistakenly believed that he is speaking with David Koch.)

And now Scott Walker has dropped out of the race to become the Republican nominee for president. 

While I always thought that is was unlikely that he would become the GOP nominee, let alone win the presidency, it never struck me as impossible.  Even a 1-in-50 chance of Walker becoming most powerful person on earth terrified me.  In recent weeks, fortunately, his odds of winning the nomination declined precipitously, driving him to increasingly desperate measures, such as promising to ‘wreak havoc’ on Washington, and doubling-down on his ongoing anti-union crusade.  But, thankfully and unsurprisingly, these manic and malevolent gestures were to no avail.

Amusingly, in his exit speech, Walker said: “Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race.”  Simply put, he is ‘leading’ by quitting.  Well okay then!  I very much hope that he exercises such leadership again soon as governor of Wisconsin.

As the plutocratic candidate par excellence, it seems clear that Walker decided to abandon his quest for the presidency once his wealthy funders told him that the gig was up.  Following two lacklustre debate performances, some bizarre policy statements (e.g., considering a border wall with Canada to be a ‘legitimate issue’), and numerous flip-flops (e.g., his various positions concerning birthright citizenship), Walker’s stock was in free-fall.  Throwing more money at the Walker team would not help at this point.  Money may be far too powerful in contemporary politics, but it couldn’t help Walker’s intrinsic shortcomings as a national candidate, such as his aggressive lack of charisma and his dim-witted demeanour.  So, as Josh Marshall points out at TPM, Walker “lived by the Koch,” and now has “died by the Koch.” 

Gee.  It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving puppet.  

Happy Labour/Labor Day

I’m back in Wisconsin now, where in recent years the Koch-puppet governor of this declining state, the college dropout and life-long politician Scott Walker, has implemented ALEC-written legislation to eviscerate the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsinites.  (Walker seems to enjoy championing Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, including riding a Harley motorcycle around Iowa and New Hampshire.  Unsurprisingly, he seems oblivious to the fact that Harley-Davidson is a government-supported union shop, and ‘union made’ is proudly stamped on their products.)

Of course, Walker merely is one loyal pawn within the larger force assaulting working people within the United States.  In this piece from two years ago, Zaid Jilani notes five kinds of hard-fought benefits – namely, pensions, the right to organize, income equality, access to healthcare, and fair working hours – that presently are under attack from plutocrat-funded right-wing operatives like Walker.

Perhaps surprisingly, Labour Day has a Canadian origin.  In the United States, its emergence as a holiday was rather violent.  Very roughly, recognition of Labour – er, ‘Labor’ – Day as a federal holiday was pushed for by President Grover Cleveland in the immediate aftermath of the violent suppression of the Pullman strike in 1894.  Cleveland hoped that this move would mitigate any political backlash against him and his actions.  (A brief explanation of the origins of the holiday within the U.S. by Prof. Ben Railton can be found at Talking Points Memo.)

In a just society – something like what John Rawls (drawing upon the work of the British economist James Meade) calls a ‘property-owning democracy’ – wealth and political power would be widely and roughly equally dispersed amongst citizens.  There would be little or no need for unions in such a society (though as voluntary organizations they certainly would be legal). 

However, we do not live in anything like a just liberal egalitarian society.  There is no property-owning democracy anywhere within the world today (though, of course, some existing capitalist welfare-states fare far better in terms of justice, equality, and freedom than others; for instance, the Scandinavian countries are considerably less unjust than the United States).

Given the overwhelming political power of the extremely wealthy within capitalist societies, unions have played a necessary role in promoting the interests, rights, and wellbeing of workers of all kinds since their emergence in the 19^th Century.  The existence of weekends and 8-hour workdays were not granted to citizens out of the kindness of capitalists’ hearts!  It is no coincidence that that the re-emergence of the political power of the plutocratic class, and the parallel stagnation of most citizens’ income and wealth, within the United States has coincided with the decline of union membership in recent decades.

Societies in which union membership is common and widespread enjoy higher levels of wellbeing than societies in which union membership is minimal.  It is hard to see how the United Stated might become a more equal and just society without a reinvigorated labour movement.  And the prospects for such a movement, sadly, seem quite bleak today.  But perhaps ‘millennials’ might be a source of optimism on this front?  (The hope strikes me as a rather faint one, alas.)

APA statement on the erosion of tenure within the University of Wisconsin system

Kudos to the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association for its criticism of the recent (entirely spiteful and politically-motivated) undermining of tenure by the Wisconsin State Senate, Assembly, and Governor:

Tenure is the most important safeguard of academic freedom, and academic freedom is a bedrock principle of philosophical inquiry. The Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association deplores the assault on academic freedom in Wisconsin, whether it affects the flagship University of Wisconsin-Madison or the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or any other universities in the UW System, and we deplore the precedent it sets. We call on legislators, regents and other campus administrators to work towards restoring recognized standards of tenure in Wisconsin.

Read the full statement here.

What has been happening in Wisconsin since Scott Walker's election as Governor and the seizure of control of the State Assembly and Senate by the Republican Party in 2010 -- especially, from my perspective as a professor, the evisceration of a once-excellent public university system -- has been incredibly depressing. Morale at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where I teach, is at an all-time low. I'm dreading returning to Milwaukee next week...