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For Academic Freedom, the Baseline is Competence, not Neutrality

For God's sake, at LEAST stop "popping" your collar.

We all have our political pet peeves. For me, it’s the tendency of the far-right to misuse the word “censorship.”

Fused with the same group’s willingness to see persecution around every corner, it gets downright irritating. A few examples from just the last week – (1) liberals want to censor Thanksgiving/reinstate the fairness doctrine (straw men, resulting from an overactive persecution complex); (2) gays having websites is “censorship” (clash equals silencing); (3) editorial discretion, in choosing which stories to run in a newspaper, amounts to censorship (maybe bias; not censorship).

Oh, and remember, it’s not just the conservative “netroots” (read: old men who wear tin foil hats and drink in Human Events) that adhere to this definition – it’s also “real” politicians, from still-Governor Sarah Palin, to still-Senator Jim DeMint. By their usage, one would imagine that the term “censorship” is a veritable verbal talisman against defeat by logic: if you’re losing a fair argument on an issue otherwise central to your worldview (gays are evil; the world is 6,000 years old), the fact that defeat would implicate your sacred-yet-wrong beliefs transforms a fair clash of ideas into an affirmative assault on your religion. Drop the C-bomb, run for cover, and remember – illogic is strength.

Let’s get our definitions straight. “Censorship,” as commonly defined, requires three things: the (1) affirmative removal of a speech act, (2) by an authority figure, (3) for reasons relating to the viewpoint of the speech act. Kudos to The New York Times, then, for running an editorial responsibly addressing the real meaning of “academic freedom.” By way of background, since Expelled at least, creationists have argued that the exclusion from the academy of creationist “thinkers” violates (1) the professors’ free speech rights and (2) the principle of “academic freedom.” The Times, per Stanley Fish, is having none of it:

[Academic freedom] does not, however, protect faculty members from the censure or discipline that might follow upon the judgment of their peers that professional standards have either been ignored or violated. There is, Finkin and Post insist, “a fundamental distinction between holding faculty accountable to professional norms and holding them accountable to public opinion. The former exemplifies academic freedom: the latter undermines it.”

Holding faculty accountable to public opinion undermines academic freedom because it restricts teaching and research to what is already known or generally accepted.

Holding faculty accountable to professional norms exemplifies academic freedom because it highlights the narrow scope of that freedom, which does not include the right of faculty “to research and publish in any manner they personally see fit.”

Critically important to first amendment law – and the concept of “free speech” that underlies it – is the idea that a speech act “censored” for violating certain objective, universal norms is not censored it at all. Rather, it is validly removed pursuant to a rule of general application, provided the rule restricts all actors regardless of their viewpoint. Just so, jailing a man for yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theater is not censorship, because regardless of what is yelled, yelling anything to incite a riot or a dangerous crowd stampede is objectively dangerous. The general, abstracted message of the speech act is dangerous and proscribable, regardless of the specific message or “viewpoint” conveyed. To have any workable meaning, society’s injunction against censorship must include this exception, but must carefully construe it: otherwise, at one extreme, free speech subsumes the criminal code, and at the other end, the exception swallows the rule. Put simply: condeming a speech act because it runs afoul of either a rule of general application or an objective standard, not tied to any viewpoint, is not censorship: it’s responsible democracy.

Academia’s requirement that its professors meet certain professional standards before availing themselves of the defense of “academic freedom” is no different – it is a content-neutral limitation, narrowly tailored to the academy’s legitimate interest in protecting academic integrity, that preserves excellence but intrudes no farther into what the professor wants to say. For the professor, the zone of permissible speech is smaller in the university setting, but no smaller than necessary to ensure that the employer “gets what he pays for” from the employee. Accordingly, there’s no “censorship” or incursion on academic freedom in firing a biology professor who teaches creationism to his students; the professor has objectively failed to meet professional standards. In determining what is censorship, then, one must ask whether the censorsing party made legitimate & honest reference to objective markers of quality rather than the viewpoint of the censored act: if the answer is “yes,” there is no censorship problem. This was Ben Stein’s error, and Stanely Fish & Co.’s triumph.

Of course, this long discurso on academic freedom goes only to step three of my definition of censorship, while the far-right still seems hung up on steps one and two. “Human Events” & co. have bigger fish to fry before they even attempt to grapple with this problem.

Quote of the Day … Kinda Sad, but Mostly Awesome

The televised news conference, which came shortly after President Bush made brief remarks at the Treasury Department with Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., created a stark image of the transfer of power that is under way in Washington. Mr. Obama and his new team arrived in a room of dozens of reporters, while Mr. Bush stood nearly alone on the steps of the Treasury Department.

From the NYT.

Maybe Not Yoda, but Luke Skywalker is Close Enough

For the sake of all of our 401(k)s, let the force be with them.

I have to admit, when I first heard on Friday that Obama intended to name Timothy Geithner to Treasury, I was verklempt. After all, Geithner was an understudy to Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, and I thought he would be a rehash of leadership we have already seen. (Okay, okay … I was hoping for Volcker to take over, but that “rehash of leadership” didn’t bother me.)

I realize people can have different styles and viewpoints even though they work closely and effectively together. Geithner is his own man, and I set out to find out who that is, at least with respect to his potential leadership at Treasury.

Reporting on the Geithner leak, Andrew Leonard references a speech Geithner made in September 2006 regarding the benefits and challenges of the derivatives market. Apparently, Geithner’s position is quite different from that of Robert Rubin and, certainly, Alan Greenspan. Geithner acknowledges that institutional supervision and government regulation are both necessary to insure the stability (without quashing the reward) of the credit-derivatives market.

I decided to read the speech. (Leonard says the speech was delivered in New York; the speech I found was delivered in Hong Kong.) Geithner acknowledges credit derivatives are an innovation that has provided, ironically, a level of stability by spreading risk beyond the market’s banking-system center. Frankly, derivatives — as hocus-pocus as my limited understanding categorizes them — likely are here to stay.

We need someone in Treasury who can accept the development and innovation of financial products, but we also need someone who understands the need for regulation in the market and who is not afraid to push the envelope in terms of developing rigorous measurement instruments. In his speech, Geithner indicates he has the skills to meet these requirements.

Get to know hedge funds and derivatives after the jump!

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Look! Up in the Air! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s …

Barack Obama. Duh!

On Friday, just when the punditocracy was reaching a crescendo of “who’s-minding-the-store” worry, Barack Obama’s transition team leaked the president-elect’s pick for Treasury: Timothy Geithner. The leak hit the wires at about 3:00 p.m., sending the Dow into a 500-point rally.

On Saturday, Obama’s Weekly Radio Address (on behalf of the Democrats until he assumes office) focused entirely on his economic team’s efforts to devise an economic stimulus package to go before Congress presumably as soon as they convene in early January. This Economic Recovery Plan is geared to create 2.5-million jobs over a two-year period, and Obama puts the onus on Congress to act on his plan immediately. The recently (re)elected Republican House leadership is on notice: Let ideology get in the way at your party’s (continued) peril.

On Sunday, we learned that Obama’s spending and tax cuts are likely to far exceed those outlined during his campaign. Monday, we await formal introduction to Obama’s entire economic team. The cumulative effect of these activities should be a temporary salve to the skid burns currently being worn by global stock markets.

Once again, Obama is exhibiting masterful political skill. He is putting together a strong foundation team of experts that will craft and move his agenda through Congress. Obama is filling the perceived power vacuum, I believe, as quickly and as fully as possible. Remember: We still have a president … who — although he seemingly checked out months ago — is still in charge. And believe it or not, he is still very active, scrambling to get odds and ends of his perverse (yes, i said it!) agenda in place before he leaves office.

While Paul Krugman reminds us a whole slew of stuff can go to hell between now and January 20, I think calls to make unorthodox moves to rush Obama in the presidency, if by proxy, are unnecessary. A major reason we are in the mess we are in is that we, as a society, have forgotten how to wait … how to remain chill. For instance, the mad dash for immediate profits at least since the dot-com bubble has motivated behavior that panics first and thinks later. If institutional fund managers didn’t have to report on their P’s and L’s every five minutes, perhaps massive stock sell offs wouldn’t be de rigueur. If discipline and delayed gratification were norms in our country, we wouldn’t have the behemoth consumer debt we now carry, and we wouldn’t have increasingly esoteric financial instruments turning the market into a flimsy house of cards. We also wouldn’t swing between two extremes: despising government involvement when we are doing well and then throwing ourselves into its arms when the economy heads south, like a child who just had to touch the burner with his hand. (Defining an effective role for government to play in the economy will need to be a major focus of the Obama Administration.)

But I digress. I believe Obama is doing all within his power to project control and understanding. Of course, don’t get me wrong: I want Obama in office yesterday. It is the current administration which has — as usual — let down the American people. Still, the best prescription we have is to stop panicking. Believe me, we would rather have a cohesive recovery plan instituted by a prepared team two, three, or four months from now than a see-if-anything-sticks approach that changes every day between now and January 20.

Happy Holiday Season, and Sideblog Hiatus

As surely as the holiday season brings happiness and relaxation, for those of us still entangled in the academic world, it also brings stress, late nights, and a truly discomforting number of textbooks. Common to both situations, though, is a tendency to restrict free time for better or worse. Therefore, though the “sideblog” feature provided an opportunity to showcase more major news events per day during election season, we’ve decided that it should be the first feature trimmed to conserve the time of our two writers, and not tax the attention of our readers. The sideblog feature will be back, no doubt, after the New Year, but until then, happy holiday season to one and all, and good luck on exams to we few, we happy few. Until then, please feel free to comment on this thread with any exciting, developing, and uncovered news stories – we love tips.

Bobby Jindal & the GOP: Forward, Into the Past

While Louisiana Governor Bobby “Exorcisms are Fun” Jindal prepares to speak to a political interest group in Iowa, the press wonders whether he’s the face of the new GOP. Let’s hope not. Mired in corruption and firmly dedicated to a narrow conception of the American experience (his trip to Iowa centers around an event styled, “Celebrating the [Straight] Family”), Jindal has nothing to offer America that wasn’t already offered in 2008 by Sarah Palin.

Persecution Today: Atheists are the New Jews

Truly, humanity has come a long way. In the early Muslim states, when economic or military woes beset the empire, the state’s stance on Judaism (and its Jewish subjects) went from a surprising level of egalitarianism to outright persecution, beheadings, you name it. Europe was no better. All levels of society, from villager to Bishop, blamed the evils of the day (war, plague, economic collapse) on Jews, Muslims, and anyone who didn’t toe the particular religious line. It was a bad way to live: persecution and scapegoating dignify neither the persecuting majority, nor the persecuted minority.

Since those days, the world has seen where the road of persecution leads, and it’s not happy. After the horrors borne from hate of the twentieth century, you would have thought that the world learned its lesson: you would be wrong. A new editorial by Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal proves that the lesson is, at most, half-learned: rather than taking from the dark periods of human history an acknowledgment that persecution and scapegoating are themselves wrong, we’re apparently still comfortable to run with that idea, and only shift our targets.  Oh, didn’t you hear? America’s current economic crisis is not a result of complex and multi-layered factors. It’s actually quite simple: atheists and secularists did it.

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Apparently, conservatives are all for personal responsibility, until blaming society gives them a chance to stigmatize unpopular elements on the left.

FAIL.

Henninger’s willingness to myopically oversimplify global trends to a narrow culture war blame-game is nothing short of shocking: I expect this type of idiocy out of Human Events on a bad day, and from Phyllis Schlafly ever day, but the Journal? Are we finally seeing Murdoch’s influence creeping in on the Times? At the risk of sounding too much like Olbermann, Henninger should resign; his “article” is unscholarly and needlessly inflammatory, and the Journal shouldn’t be either.

While the article isn’t really worth a merit’s debate, I’ll do Henninger the courtesy of meeting his arguments partially on substance: the “social decay” narrative he’s invoking is as old as civilization, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. Ever since Livy and Plutarch, reactionary forces have invoked the notion of chronological primitivism – “things were better back then, when we stuck by tradition!” – to argue against progress, both social and physical. It’s never told the whole story, and Henninger’s iteration is no better. I can concede quite happily that, for some, religion does keep individuals within “the chalk lines”: for even fewer, perhaps, it’s sadly the only force capable of checking wanton criminality. But religion has just as often allowed irrational actors to draw “chalk lines” to justify actions clearly contrary to any notion of objective morality: kill the Jews, enslave the blacks, burn the witches, stone the gays, sack Constantinople. At worst, then, religion is an excuse to ignore the “chalk lines” inherent in the human condition. But even at best, religion is incomplete as a moral code to bind an entire civilization together. No society has ever been stable because of its religiosity – arguing to the contrary either misstates and romanticizes history, or reduces to a “No True Scotsman” fallacy (“well, they weren’t religious enough to be truly stable”). A healthy society should inculcate a sense of civic responsibility independent of individual, subjective, private beliefs while supplementing a strong objective moral code with laws and regulations to check the outliers. Henninger’s solution and resort to the blame-game does neither.

Perhaps the saddest thing about Henninger’s article, though, is that it admits of no remedy other than “kill the secularists.” If that’s the best solution that we as a country can think of, then perhaps we’re in worse shape than I thought.

Bob Jones University Is Sorry. We Agree.

Per MSNBC, Bob Jones University today apologized for its history of racist policies, including a delayed response to desegregation (1971) and a ban on interracial dating that persisted until just three eight years ago. Read the full statement at their site. Of course, BJU still lags in a few key areas, from continuing to brand gay students as aberrational and ill, to promoting creationism over evolution. Judging by this overdue statement on race, expect an apology for those around 2051… provided the Rapture hasn’t happened yet.

Hill at State

BREAKING: NYT says that Hillary Clinton has agreed to take the position of Secretary of State in the Obama Cabinet.

Barack Obama’s Art of War

A whopping 12 MPG and as bloated as its maker

There was a bloodless revolution in Congress this week. It made the main pages of news websites, but I suspect it was filtered as a “So what?” by most Americans, who have plenty on their plates as it is.

I am talking about the replacement by the Democratic Caucus of John Dingell (D-MI) with Henry Waxman (D-CA) as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Dingell has represented the 15th District of Michigan (adjacent to Detroit) since 1955. There is no doubt about his party allegiance: Dingell is and has been a reliable and powerful liberal Democrat his entire career. But Dingell has also worn a hefty albatross for most of his career: the U.S. auto industry. No one can blame him. He is a Michigan representative. As longtime chair of the energy committee, Dingell’s loyalty to the industry motivates his historical foot-dragging on stricter emission and fuel-efficiency standards and legislation.

A major thrust of Obama’s campaign was the retooling of the U.S. auto industry as part of his plans to move the country towards energy independence and to create jobs with infrastructure spending. Nothing about Dingell’s record suggests he would oppose most of Obama’s efforts. There is undeniable evidence, though, Dingell wouldn’t necessarily be the greasiest skid effecting immediate legislation on many key issues.

Enter Henry Waxman (D-CA). Waxman represents a large chunk of West Los Angeles, including Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. As a powerful member (often chair) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Waxman has been a thorn in the sides of presidential administrations for many years. Most recently, he got Alan Greenspan to admit the free market doesn’t work as well as Greenspan originally thought. He has also served on Energy and Commerce subcommittees, and has been an ardent supporter of strict environmental legislation, much of which Dingell opposed or stalled in deference to the auto industry.

Both Dingell and Waxman serve their constituencies vigorously. Dingell protects the auto industry, but Waxman represents a geographical area that has suffered as a result of Dingell’s efforts. When Detroit is protected from integrating environmental protections in their production chains, air quality in Los Angeles (and Houston … and Atlanta … and St. Louis … and New York …) declines and global (including Detroit) warming increases. The country’s reliance on Mid-East oil continues, and innovation in the domestic auto industry stagnates compared to European and Japanese companies.

I agree with Waxman that he is better able to move Obama-platform legislation forward through the energy committee, legislation that will help the environment and provide critical foundation support to any economic-stimulus package and, certainly, any auto-industry bailout that passes in the next year.

Dingell’s ouster sends a very strong message that “change we can believe in” is coming.