Posted on by rjonakait

Do They Really Want Viewpoint Diversity?

The Trump administration is pressuring Harvard University to have greater “viewpoint diversity.” The Trumpistas have not defined the term nor is it self-evident. This is an administration that has sought to stop the consideration of certain topics in schools and elsewhere. We do know that they consider discussions of institutional racism and certain gender issues to be verboten in classrooms. Some people cannot enter the country if they have criticized Israel. Lawful residents may get deported if they speak out on behalf of Palestinians. The administration, apart from Harvard, is trying to prevent viewpoints from being heard, not expanding the diversity of them.

Many reports indicate that Harvard has few faculty members who identify as conservative. The inference from the right is that Harvard students are being indoctrinated with liberal thinking and that such indoctrination must change. If there is indoctrination, however, it is in a narrow curricular space. In many courses the political affiliation of the instructor does not matter. The content of math, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, molecular biology, and many other subjects will not be affected by whether the professor is conservative or liberal.

Of course, the political perspective of professors might intrude on certain subjects (political science, economics, etc.), but that does not mean that students are affected by those professorial views. I have not seen, but would like to, a good study of how student political thinking changes during one’s years at Harvard. This study would require the collection of similar data from other colleges to see if any shifts might be the result of Harvard’s education or is simply the normal maturation process that students go through everywhere. Of course, we already know that the supposed liberal indoctrination — if it is, indeed, there — does not always work. Many famous, adamant conservatives have gone to Harvard, including Ted Cruz, Steve Bannon, and Ron DeSantis. If they have escaped the liberal indoctrination and have learned to “think for themselves,” surely other Harvard students can do and have done the same.

A thought experiment: How effective is the so-called “indoctrination” by Harvard? If you personally know any Harvard graduates, how many are in positions that seek to radicalize the country? How many are commie-pinkos? As far as I can tell, Harvard has not been very successful in turning out cadres of radicals. The predominant choice for a starting job for Harvard undergrads is finance. They want to make money, not destroy the country. Something similar is the choice of business, medical, and law school graduates. This, perhaps, is not necessarily good for the country, but not in the way that the Trump administration fears.

And anyway, why should the Trump administration be able to dictate viewpoint diversity at Harvard or any other university? The Trump acolytes have not made that clear, but apparently it is because the federal government gives money to Harvard for research and programs, and they think that Harvard should toe the conservative line if they are to get those funds. That is not a sufficient reason. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which many conservatives opposed), specifically forbids discrimination by programs and activities that receive federal funds on the basis of race, color, or national origin. (It does not prohibit religious discrimination, but antisemitism has been seen as a form of discrimination on the basis of national origin. That is a story for another day.) However, that Civil Rights provision does not insist on “viewpoint diversity.”

If viewpoint diversity is required of an organization that gets money from the federal taxpayers. shouldn’t that mean that an activity or program that gets all of its money from us taxpayers should have to have viewpoint diversity, too? What entities get all  their funds from the taxpayers? Answer: any division of the federal government. If Harvard is required to have viewpoint diversity, surely the same should be required of the federal government Trump has tried to appoint right wing judges. That should end if his position on viewpoint diversity at Harvard is right. State Department appointments should be viewpoint diverse as should those in the Justice Department. And so on throughout the federal government. Perhaps the Trumpistas should be concerned about winning the day at Harvard. On the other hand, they have never been famous for philosophical consistency.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I told Lisa the librarian that I thought that all librarians should be named Marian. To my surprise, she did not know the reference.

Steve Bannon on his podcast said: “A lot of MAGAs on Medicaid. . . . Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.” How revealing. Bannon, and no doubt many like him, are not concerned about our healthcare system generally, and certainly not about healthcare for those in the country’s bottom economic quarter. (Almost 25% of Americans get assistance from Medicaid.) He is only concerned because many Trump supporters get Medicaid. (If they weren’t MAGA, would he describe them as on the government dole?) Otherwise, he would only want to destroy Medicaid.

Congressman Rich McCormick, a Republican from Georgia, said that the GOP could do a better job of showing “compassion.” Is there a compassion switch? Can you “show compassion” if you don’t have it in the first place?

“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.” John Arbuthnot.

The fired government workers do get compassion from many, as they should. Most government employees, like most Americans, live paycheck to paycheck, and the sudden loss of a job for them and their families is a tragedy many of us can immediately comprehend. What we don’t see is the harm down the road. What are the consequences if weather forecasts become worse, or if waiting times at VA hospitals are longer? How do you measure what is foregone from lost medical research or the increase in waste, fraud, and corruption that results from fired IRS workers?

We may not know precisely what is lost from the firings, but we know that foreseeable losses will come. On the other hand, there are always unintended consequences that are not foreseen. I was reminded of that from Troy Senik’s biography, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland. Senik writes that the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 sought to eliminate patronage for appointment to government jobs. Under the patronage system, those who got employment were assessed a portion of their salaries to kick back to the political parties who secured the positions. Senik says that it was estimated that up to 75% of party funding came from such assessments. With that spigot turned off, parties turned to wealthy individuals and interest groups to fund electoral politics. Thus, job appointments based on merit had the unintended consequence of providing more power to the rich.

V13: Chronicle of a Trial, a magnificent book by Emmanuel Carrère (translated from the French by John Lambert), contains compassion, but also horror, inhumanity, humanity, bewilderment, and much more. On November 13, 2015, jihadists launched attacks in Paris. Luckily, if there was anything like luck that day, suicide bombers arrived late to a packed football game and could not get in. They blew themselves up outside where the crowds were thin. Others allied with them shot randomly at restaurant terraces and cafes killing more, but the major carnage was at the Bataclan theatre, a concert venue of 1,500 hosting apparently a mediocre American rock group, Eagles of Death Metal. Nearly a hundred people were slaughtered in the hall. Six years later a trial started, which took on the name V13, for Friday (Vendredi) the Thirteenth, the day of the attack. Carrère reported on the nine-month trial for a French magazine, and those columns form the basis of the book. At times extremely hard to read (“confetti of human flesh”) but always compelling, V13 is remarkable. Reading it now, I could not help but think about October 7 and its aftermath. One of those on trial in Paris (the defendants were all second stringers since all those who did the actual killing were dead) maintained that the massacres were in response to the loss of innocent lives in Syria from French bombings and said, “Everything you say about us jihadists is like reading the last page of a book. What you should do is read the book from the start.”