Academic corruption at George Mason University ('Koch U')

Finally, the corrupting influence of the Charles Koch Foundation at George Mason University has been publicly acknowledged:

"Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents.
The release of donor agreements between George Mason University and the foundation follows years of denials by university administrators that Koch foundation donations inhibit academic freedom."

(From: "Documents show ties between university, conservative donors" [AP]. See also: "George Mason president: Some donations ‘fall short’ of academic standards" [WaPo].)

*Sigh*... As someone who has been following the growing pernicious influence of the 'Kochtopus' in American academia for many years now, this is thoroughly unsurprising. But I'm glad that a court compelled this public university to at least be honest about its past academic corruption.

(It is worth noting that the GMU Economics Department is where the libertarian misogynist Robin Hanson works. Small world...)

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.

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…