Brad DeLong

Khan Academy

Khan Academy

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Alison Gopnik on John Tierney of the New York Times Department

It burns, it burns!

Alison Gopnik:

What the New York Times' John Tierney gets wrong about bias and women scientists: John Tierney suggested that a "taboo on discussing sex differences" has prevented frank discourse about the real reason why the ratio of male to female scientists is so skewed. He went on to cite a new paper by Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams... that, he claimed, contradicts the "assumption that female scientists [face] discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias." But, in fact, the paper's authors make a narrower argument, and some of the evidence they present suggests that female scientists almost certainly do face discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias.

Here's what Ceci and Williams show: That women with the same resources as men are just as likely to get their papers, grants, and job applications accepted. While this might appear to mean that women scientists don't face discrimination, in fact, it's quite compatible with the strong experimental evidence that there is bias against women....

[A]s every first year statistics course will tell you, is that correlation does not imply causation. Nicotine-stained fingers are correlated with lung cancer—people with yellow fingers are more likely to have cancer—but yellow fingers don't actually cause cancer. Also, just because you don't find a correlation between two factors, you can't conclude that there is no causal relation between them—it's possible that two causal factors cancel each other out. For example, you might fail to find a correlation between cholesterol and atherosclerosis because you lumped together two different kinds of cholesterol, LDL, which increases the problem, and HDL which decreases it.... [S]uppose you discover that there is a correlation between poverty and ill health, but this correlation disappears when you factor in health care and nutrition. The few poor people with high-quality health care and nutrition are as healthy as rich people—it's just that hardly any poor people have these advantages. It would be wrong to conclude from this that poverty has no causal influence on health. The right conclusion would be that poverty causes bad health care and poor nutrition, which cause ill health.

Ceci and Williams did not show, or claim to show, that there was no discrimination or unconscious bias against women scientists.... They found that when you factor in women's circumstances—for example, what kinds of teaching loads they have, whether they are at research universities, whether they have young children, and so on—then the correlation between sex and success goes away. Overall, female scientists have fewer resources than male scientists, just as poor people have less access to health care.... Ceci and Williams put it this way in their discussion of the number of journal articles women published:

The primary factor affecting women's productivity was structural position. When type of institution, teaching load, funding, and research assistance were factored in, the productivity gap completely disappeared (which is not to say discrimination has not influenced these factors in the real world).

Concluding from this that gender doesn't influence scientific success, however, would be like concluding that poverty doesn't influence health.... It's much more likely that gender causes the unequal resources, which causes the different outcomes....

Why does gender lead to unequal resources? Ceci and Williams accurately paint the big picture. Women drop out in ever greater numbers as they advance along the academic pipeline.... Ceci and Williams cite several studies showing that the conflict between female fertility and the typical tenure process is one important factor in women's access to resources. You could say that universities don't discriminate against women, they just discriminate against people whose fertility declines rapidly after 35.

But as Ceci and Williams admit, the unquestionable fact of unconscious bias, as revealed in the experimental résumé studies, is another possible reason women make choices that lead them to end up with fewer resources. Those studies show that women are subject to bias from the very start of their careers. Is it any wonder that many of them, keenly aware that their efforts are being downgraded compared to those of men, would withdraw from a competition that is systematically unfair?...

Science reporters are supposed to understand these complexities and explain them to their readers—not claim, in spite of the evidence, that sex discrimination is a figment of the biased liberal imagination.

Daniel W. Drezner: Plato and Dion in Syracuse; Thomas More and Henry Tudor at Hampton Court...

Dan Drezner, I think, gets it substantially wrong. Nobody is upset at people going to Libya to try to convince the regime to be more open and less oppressive. What people are upset about is political scientists flacking for the regime: telling people that they were succeeding.

It is a case of who you are working for. When Plato went to Syracuse he was working not for Dion but for the people of Syracuse--a laudable effort. When Aristotle went to Pella he was working not for the people of Macedon but for Alexander--not such a laudable effort. When Seneca went to Rome's Palatine Hill he was working not for the people of the Roman Empire but for Nero. And when Sir Thomas More went to Hampton Court he was--well, he was not sure at first who he was working for.

Dan Drezner:

Thoughts about IR scholars for dollars: an awful lot of high-powered academics and academic institutions have some 'splainin to do about their relationship with Libya's Qaddafi family. The Monitor Group ferried a number of high-profile international studies scholars, including... Benjamin Barber to the shores of Tripoli in an effort to burnish the regime's image. The London School of Economics and some of its faculty were deeply involved with Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, as he earned his Ph.D. there in 2007 with a dissertation on -- wait for it -- liberal democracy and civil society....

As the Qaddafi family has morphed from pragmatic strongmen to bloodthirsty killers.... Howard Davies resigned as the head of LSE in the wake of the Libyan revelations.... On the other hand, Benjamin Barber sounds totally unapologetic in his interview with FP. His basic message is that "second-guessing the past, I mean, it's just 20/20 hindsight." Then there's this response [from Barber]:

I mean, did LSE take Saif's money -- the Gaddafi Foundation money -- improperly? No, they all took it properly. And promised a scholarly center to study the Middle East and North Africa. And offer scholarships to students from the region. Just the way Harvard and Georgetown and Cambridge and Edinburgh have done -- not with Libyan money, but with Saudi money (look at Prince Alwaleed bin Talal). By the way, not just Monitor, but McKinsey, Exxon, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group -- everybody was in it. The only difference for Monitor was that it actually had a project that was aimed at trying to effect some internal change. Everybody else who went in, which is every major consultancy, every major financial group, went in to do nothing more than make big bucks for themselves. But now people are attacking Monitor because they took consulting fees for actually trying to effect reform and change.

Finally, there is an important background controversy here: It is about whether academics should stay in the ivory tower and do research and write books? Or engage in the world on behalf of the principles and theories their research produces? Do you simply shut your mouth and write? Or do you try to engage? This is an old question that goes back to Machiavelli, back to Plato going to Syracuse: Do you engage with power?...

My answer is that each person has to make their own decision. I don't condemn those who prefer the solitude of the academy, though they lose the chance to effect change directly; and I don't condemn those who do try to influence power, risking being tainted by it, even when power doesn't really pay much attention to them.... The notion that there is something wrong with people who choose to intervene and try to engage the practice of democracy -- that they are somehow more morally culpable than people who prefer not to intervene -- is to me untenable. Rereading his 2007 Washington Post op-ed, I think it's safe to say that Barber embraced sucking up to power juuuuuuuuust a wee bit more fervently than everyone else. That said, the man has half a point here...

Political Scientists Not Behaving Well Watch...

UPDATE: Joe Nye writes that Franklin Foer is simply wrong when he claims that Joe Nye did not disclose to TNR the circumstances of his trip to Libya:

It is important to emphasize that I disclosed my connection with the Monitor Group when I wrote the article.... When Mother Jones asked The New Republic if I had disclosed that Monitor had paid me as a consultant, TNR maintained that I had not.But this was mistaken. I dug out the first draft I sent to TNR, and it says clearly, “I was in Libya at the invitation of a former Harvard colleague who works for the Monitor Group, a consulting company which has undertaken to help Libya open itself to the global economy. Part of that process is meeting with a variety of Western experts whom Monitor hires as consultants.” The final sentence of this disclosure was dropped by the editors at TNR. I have sent the original to both TNR and Mother Jones and asked for a retraction of the false statement that I did not alert them...

---

Guys. Think as hard as you can. Remember that politicians are politicians because they are unusually persuasive. Say what you think. Don't trim what you say in the hopes of pleasing your paying clients or the politicians. It does not work.

And even if it does work, what are you then? You are the Attorney General for Wales:

It's really not worth it.

This is a old story: Plato and Dion in Syracuse; Aristotle and Alexander in Pella; Seneca and Nero in Rome; Thomas More and Henry Tudor at Hampton Court; Voltaire and Friedrich Hohenzollern in Potsdam; Sidney Webb and Stalin in Moscow; C. Wright Mills and Castro in Havana.

David Corn and Siddhartha Mahanta have a number of targets--a bunch of people who worked with Monitor but did not flack for the regime; Joe Nye, whose sin appears to have been insufficient disclosure rather than flacking for a tyrannical regime by saying something he did not believe; and then Barber, Giddens, and Moravcsik--who do seem to have gone far wrong not in that they engaged with a tyrant but rather that they flacked for him.

David Corn and Siddhartha Mahanta in Mother Jones:

From Libya With Love | Mother Jones: In February 2007 Harvard professor Joseph Nye Jr.... sipped tea for three hours with Muammar Qaddafi. Months later, he penned an elegant description of the chat for The New Republic, reporting that Qaddafi had been interested in discussing "direct democracy." Nye noted that "there is no doubt that" the Libyan autocrat:

acts differently on the world stage today than he did in decades past. And the fact that he took so much time to discuss ideas—including soft power—with a visiting professor suggests that he is actively seeking a new strategy.

The article struck a hopeful tone: that there was a new Qaddafi. It also noted that Nye had gone to Libya "at the invitation of the Monitor Group, a consulting company that is helping Libya open itself to the global economy"... [but not that] he [was]... as a paid consultant of the Monitor Group... orking under a $3 million-per-year contract with Libya... "to enhance the profile of Libya and Muammar Qadhafi."... [A] source familiar with the Harvard professor's original submission to the magazine notes, "It took considerable prodding from editors to get him to reluctantly acknowledge the regime's very well-known dark side." And Franklin Foer, then the editor of the magazine, says, "If we had known that he was consulting for a firm paid by the government, we wouldn't have run the piece."...

The two chief goals of the project, according to an internal document describing Monitor's Libya operations, were to produce a makeover for Libya and to introduce Qaddafi "as a thinker and intellectual, independent of his more widely-known and very public persona as the Leader of the Revolution in Libya."... [A] few of the "visitors," as Monitor referred to them, did write mostly positive articles, without revealing they had been part of the Monitor Group's endeavor to clean up Qaddafi. Some might not have even known they had been recruited for an image rehabilitation effort....

Benjamin Barber... took three trips to Libya as a paid consultant to Monitor.... "Did I realize that I was working within an autocratic regime and the odds of making change were low?" Barber remarks. "Yes."... [I]n August 2007, Barber wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post.... In the article—headlined "Gaddafi's Libya: An Ally for America?"—Barber wrote that his one-on-one conversations with Qaddafi had convinced him that the Libyan leader had arranged for their release to show his desire for "a genuine rapprochement with the United States":

Libya under Gaddafi has embarked on a journey that could make it the first Arab state to transition peacefully and without overt Western intervention to a stable, non-autocratic government....

But Barber did not mention in the Post piece that he himself had been a paid consultant for the Monitor Group. Was this an oversight? "I don't think so," Barber says, adding that he assumed he was on the payroll to help Monitor promote reform in Libya, not sell Qaddafi in the United States....

Other intellectuals squired to Libya by Monitor also chronicled their experiences in articles that bolstered the notion—for which there was a true basis at the time—that Qaddafi was heading in a positive direction.... Princeton University professor Andrew Moravcsik....

Kaddafi may have no desire to surrender power himself—but he has come to see that embracing modernization and globalization is the best way to assure his survival. Thus the historical irony: after three decades of isolation, Libya may be emerging as the West's best hope in the turbulent Middle East.

Asked about his trip to Libya and his relationship with Monitor—and whether he should have disclosed any connection in the Newsweek article—Moravcsik initially refused to comment; a spokeswoman for him said, "He is not available to discuss this issue."...

Anthony Giddens....

As one-party states go, Libya is not especially repressive. Gadafy seems genuinely popular.... Will real progress be possible only when Gadafy leaves the scene? I tend to think the opposite. If he is sincere in wanting change, as I think he is, he could play a role in muting conflict that might otherwise arise as modernisation takes hold.

The article did not mention the Monitor Group.... Giddens did not respond to an email request for comment.... Monitor did not reply to questions from Mother Jones about its intentions in Libya, about its payments to consultants, or about the various articles that were written by the academics it brought to Tripoli. "We do not discuss specifics of our work with any client," the Monitor statement says. "That said, we are deeply distressed and saddened to witness the current tragic events in Libya." The group did not say whether it regretted mounting, on behalf a brutal dictator who proved to be no reformer, a behind-the-scenes PR campaign that snared prominent intellectuals hoping for the best in Libya.

Files for December 6 Econ 1 Lecture

20101203 for 20101206 Econ 1.pdf

The Social Studies Major 50th Anniversary Celebration Party and Bitter Internal Ideological Power Struggle

By my rough count, one-third the people who had ever taught in and one-fourteenth of those who had ever graduated from Harvard's Social Studies major showed up in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the last Saturday in September this year for the major's fiftieth-anniversary celebration and bitter internal ideological power struggle. And that is not counting those graduates who did not attend but looked on via the Internet, or those outsiders--Nick Kristof, James Fallows--who felt compelled to comment on the exercise.

That is, I think testimony to the amazing intellectual strength of the program.

And, indeed, as one senior member of the faculty said, those who came to the party got just what they bargained for: serious engagement with political action and moral responsibility at a rarified intellectual level rarely seen on this green earth.

For example, the Q-and-A period of the afternoon panel:

Elliott Prasse-Freeman: This question is for Ms. Gorelick. I want to start with Professor Walzer's invocation to take "theoretical imperialism" seriously. While I do not agree with his rubbishing of Foucault, I do think that it is a good thing to do. I would like to do this in the context of Marty Peretz. I am going to read a Marty Peretz quote. And I want us to think: "what theory comes through here?"

So many of the Black population are afflicted by... cultural deficiencies. I would guess that in the ghetto a lot of mothers do not appreciate the importance of schooling...

What kind of theory comes through here?

Do we have an account of biopolitics, perhaps?

Differential access to resources and opportunities that, perhaps, makes education less desirable for certain populations?

Nope.

It's just either stupid, or racist, or both.

So now I turn my question to you, Ms Gorelick: a person who has that kind of model for the world--what kind of teaching can they really be doing? If they have that much hatred of one entire aspect of humanity, what exactly would they be teaching you?

I finish my little diatribe by asking you to defend such a disgusting person, and also to say that people like you allow him to have the power that he does. (applause)

Jamie Gorelick: He was a fantastic teacher. He was generous with his time. He encouraged debate. He encouraged us in our studies. And we honor him for that by creating a fund to help undergraduates continue their work. Most of us have known Marty for a long time, and we disagree with him on many of his opinions. This is not an endorsement of any particular view. I will tell you that, as Richard Tuck said at the outset, when we heard of this convocation we thought that this would be a nice way to honor a teacher who has meant a lot to many of us. And we sent out notes to people who had had Marty as a tutor, and they responded with contributions and a desire to fund the fellowship. It is pretty much as simple as that. Marty has been a loyal and good friend to many people. He has views that he has explicated and changed, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. And that is what I have to say. As E.J., who has been a partner with me on this on this effort has said, if anyone could hold two contradictory thoughts in his head at the same time, it should be people in this group, and you can honor someone as a teacher without endorsing everything that they have said.

Nisha Agarwal: I want to make a general comment on the theme of this panel--Social Studies and social change. Let me start by saying, how excited I was to be invited to this event. I did not go to my ten-year college reunion. But when I got the email about this, I signed up immediately (applause). The reason that I am part of a movement for racial justice is this program. So that is the love part that I am going to put out there, before I provide the alienation part. (laughter). Coming here today ,I felt somewhat disappointed and a little bit naive in thinking about the connection between Social Studies and social change. I have really enjoyed the panelists. But I do not feel that the selection of panelists throughout the day reflects the diversity of the communities that Social Studies cares about, writes about, and thinks about. I not think that the curriculum of Social Studies 10--though I saw that Franz Fanon has crept in there--is still very western-centric. And I think, most important, that the decision to honor Marty Peretz who has said things like the previous commentator said, and also said things like "Arab-Americans are hidebound and backwards," is really not my memory of what the Social Studies Committee is about.

I suppose that this is my recommendation for the next fifty years of the program. If there is a true commitment to Social Studies and social change, it will turn a well-developed critical gaze on ourselves. Realize that what happens in rooms like this: who we invite to speak, who we read, and certainly who we choose to honor very much impacts that product of social change that is happening out in the world today. That is my embedded critique. I urge Social Studies to rethink what is going on here today in terms of who is honored and who is invited to speak (applause).

E.J. Dionne: This was an effort to honor a great teacher. I have disagreed with Marty on all kinds of things over the years. I argued with him in a friendly way--and friends can argue, friends can passionately disagree about. Some of the recent comments. I understand the passion that has been aroused by this. I think there is a fascinating division here. It could be the object of some interesting social science. People who knew Marty a long time ago and have worked with him and argued with him and even had disagreements with him understood why people would honor him for the teaching. People who have never met Marty, who have seen some of the stuff that he has written which, as I say, I have disagreed with Marty only know him through that. They don't know that he stood up for the Roma. They don't know that he stood up for gays very early, when others were not. They don't know that he stood up for the Kurds. This is a very complicated person like most of us are. And I think that is the split here. Honoring Marty because we really loved him as a teacher and his passion.... In terms of our speakers, we should have had two days because we could have gotten more voices up here. I have enjoyed this so much and I would stay for a second if I could. Thank you very much. It seems that was a fair comment. (applause)

Michael Walzer: With respect to the previous questioner, I wonder if you have undertaken a survey of everything that every present member of the Social Studies faculty has said in postings, in footnotes, in lectures to make sure that nothing they have said is offensive or hurtful or embarrassing. If you are not doing that, well you had better start doing that because you will find a lot of things that you do not like.

Abdelnassar Rashid: My name is Abdelnassar Rashid and I am a junior in Social Studies. I would like to point out that Social Studies actually did make the decision to honor Martin Peretz. They did meet last Friday and over the weekend. They did finally come to the decision to honor him. It is not just his former students who are doing this. The Standing Committee made the decision itself. One thing to notice is that Marty Peretz has made a pseudo-apology for the latest bigoted thing that he has said. He took back his comment about Muslims not deserving first amendment protections. Since we have three friends on the panel, I would ask you for a commitment to ask him to apologize for twenty-five years of bigotry. Thank you (applause).

Richard Tuck: I let Abdelnassar Rashid speak because he is somebody that I have had dealings with and whose substantive views on this matter I respect. But I do not think it is appropriate for us at the moment to pursue these issues any further. If there is any other question about the substance of the panel I would be reasonable to have that. Otherwise I am afraid that we should accept that this has been a very difficult issue which has understandably throughout our meeting and we should reflect on its implications. Are there any other questions specifically to the points being raised by the panel?...

And Robert Paul Wolff's luncheon talk:

You see before you a coelacanth, a survivor from ancient days swimming up to the surface from the depths of time. I was there at the very start of Social Studies--I have with me the original reading list from 1960-1. Yet when I look at today's Social Studies 10 reading list--it is much the same.

Why is it that the core readings in Social Studies have not changed for fifty years? I will try to answer that question with yet another story from the early days of Social Studies, but it will take me a moment to sketch the background, so bear with me.

In the early '50s, a famous Swarthmore social psychologist named Solomon Asch did an experiment to study the effect of social pressure on belief and perception. [Asch published an article about his research in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. You can find it if you Google it.] Briefly, Asch put a small group of young college men in a seminar room and told them he was studying perception. In fact, only one young man was a real subject; the others were Asch's collaborators. Asch then showed the men two cards. On the first were three straight lines of very unequal length. On the second was one line, obviously equal in length to one of the three lines. He asked each student in turn which line on the card of three the single line matched. At first, as he went around the table, everyone gave the same correct answer. But then, as he showed them successive pairs of cards, everyone but the last to be called on [who was the real subject] gave the same obviously wrong answer. The first or second time around, the real subject, looking puzzled or troubled, gave the correct answer, but as the experiment continued, with everyone in the room giving a wrong answer, a significant percentage of the subjects -- more than a third -- started to go along with the group and give the wrong answer also. When Asch interviewed these men later -- the ones who had switched to the wrong answers -- some said they just did not want to "spoil the experiment." Some said that at first they thought everyone was wrong, but after a while they began to think something was wrong with their own judgment. And some even said that although the line chosen by the group looked unequal to the other line, when they looked closely they could see that it was really equal.

The experiment was much commented upon, and everyone took it as distressing evidence of the effects of social pressure on conformity of behavior. But I was interested in another aspect of the experiment. It occurred to me that in order to perform the experiment, Asch had first to take a position on what the correct and incorrect answers were. Otherwise, he would just have statistics about shifting public opinion, which would reveal nothing about the distorting effects of social pressure. Well, obviously, you will say. After all, Asch needed simply to put a ruler down next to the lines and measure them.

I first read the Asch experiment in the early Fall of 1960, just as Social Studies was starting. One day, in October, I ran into Barrington Moore on the street and we stopped to chat. This was during the run-up to the 1960 presidential election in which John F. Kennedy was running against Richard M. Nixon. Everyone at Harvard was mad for Kennedy, of course. He was a Harvard man, his wife spoke French, and he had even won a Pulitzer Prize -- although we did not know then that Ted Sorenson had written the book for which he won the prize. I talked excitedly to Moore about the campaign, and said that I hoped Kennedy would win. Moore looked down his long, aristocratic nose at me and then said, 'There's not a dime's worth of difference between them.' Then he walked on.

I thought that was just Barry being his usual contrarian self, but Kennedy got selected, and the first thing he did was to invade Cuba. The scales fell from my eyes and I realized Barry was right. Now, even back then, social scientists were doing a good deal of public opinion polling, but I thought, 'Wouldn't it be interesting for someone to do a study of why so many voters perceived Kennedy and Nixon as unequal when they were obviously equal?'

'Ah well,' you will say. 'To do such an experiment, the social scientist would have to be able to look beneath the surface appearances of society to the underlying socio-economic reality. AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT THE STUDY OF SMITH AND MARX AND DURKHEIM AND FREUD AND WEBER TEACHES US TO DO. Each of these authors, in his different way, goes beneath surface appearances to examine underlying social and economic realities. That is why those authors have been on the reading list for fifty years.

But, you will protest, it is easy enough for Asch to determine whether two lines are equal or un equal in length. He just lays a rule down next to them and measures them. But to say that Kennedy and Nixon are equal, the social scientist must take a political or ideological position. Any such investigation is, as the French used to say, guilty. That is, it is inseparable from some ideological stance. How will we as students know what ideological stance to take?

You are correct. And what is more, Smith and Marx and Durkheim and Freud and Weber cannot answer that question for you. I will give you an answer, by telling you another story, this time from my years teaching at Columbia. In 1968, as some of you will recall, the students occupied several buildings and brought the university to a screeching halt for two weeks. The next semester, I was teaching a course in which I was anguishing over my inability to find, in the text of Kant's GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYICS OF MORALS, an absolutely valid a priori proof of the universal validity of the fundamental moral principle, the categorical Imperative. After class one day, one of the students came up to talk to me. He was one of the SDS students who had seized the buildings, and I knew that he was active off campus in union organizing. 'Why are you so concerned about finding that argument?' he asked. Well, I said, if I cannot find such an argument, how will I know what to do? He looked at me as one looks at a very young child, and replied, 'First you have to decide which side you are on. Then you will be able to figure out what you ought to do.'

At the time, I thought this was a big cop-out, but as the years have passed, I have realized the wisdom in what he said. I want [I now said] to direct these next remarks to the undergraduates who are here today. [There were maybe two dozen among the 200 people at the lunch]. As you complete your studies and go out into the world, you have a decision to make. You must decide who your comrades are going to be in life's struggles. You must decide which side you are on. Will you side with the oppressed, or with the oppressors? Will you side with the exploiters, or with the exploited? Will you side with the occupiers, or with the occupied? I cannot make that decision for you, and neither can Smith and Marx and Durkheim and Freud and Weber. All I can do is to promise you that if you side with the oppressed, with the exploited, with the occupied, then the next time you decide to seize a building, I will be with you.

There is one more matter about which I feel I must say something. I refer to the controversy to which Richard Tuck referred in his opening remarks this morning [ed. Tuck, the current head of Social Studies and a splendid man, had said a few words about the controversy during his welcoming speech, distancing himself from the content of Peretz's statements.] I have anguished a great deal about this matter, at one point uncertain whether I ought even to attend the celebration. If I were a religious man, I could let my bible fall open at random, relying on The Lord to guide me to a chapter and verse in which I might find some wisdom. But since I am an atheist, that course was not open to me. So I did the next best thing. I took down my copy of Volume One of Das Kapital. As I turned the old, familiar pages, covered with my underlinings and notes, my eye fell on this famous passage from the great chapter on Money. Since you are all former or present Social Studies students, I am sure you will all recall it. Here is what Marx says.

Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other commodities, the result of their general alienation, for this reason it is alienable itself without restriction or condition. It reads all prices backwards, and thus, so to say, depicts itself in the bodies of all other commodities, which offer to it the material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the same time the prices, wooing glances cast at money by commodities, define the limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quantity. Since every commodity, upon becoming money, disappears as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself, how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may come.

Marx assumed that the working men and working women for whom he wrote this book all had a classical education, but since I did not, I was forced to look up the source of the Latin tag, non olet. It seems that in the time of the Emperor Vespasian, the Roman state raised a little extra money by taxing the public urinals. One day, Vespasian sent his son, Titus, to collect the taxes from the urinals. Titus was offended by the task, which he considered beneath him, and when he returned he flung the money at his father's feet. Vespasian looked down with equanimity and remarked languidly, "Pecunia non olet." The money does not stink.

In the realm of higher education, Harvard is an imperial power, so quite naturally it adopts Vespasian's point of view toward the money it accepts, Pecunia non olet. But from its founding, fifty years ago, Social Studies has held itself to a higher standard, and so I would hope that it will reject this money for a scholarship, because pecunia olet. The money stinks.

I, by contrast, think that there is much more than a dime's worth of difference between Kennedy-Johnson on the one hand and Nixon-Lodge on the other--and I marvel that Robert Paul Wolff, now 77, does not think that Medicare matters at all.

And I think that the important thing is not to side with the oppressed as an attitudinal pose but rather to do something to enhance freedom. I side with Keynes against Trotsky:

Trotsky is concerned in these passages with an attitude towards public affairs, not with ultimate aims. He is just exhibiting the temper of the band of brigand-statesmen to whom Action means War, and who are irritated to fury by the atmosphere of sweet reasonableness.... "They smoke Peace where there should be no Peace," Fascists and Bolshevists cry in a chorus, "canting, imbecile emblems of decay, senility, and death, the antithesis of Life and the Life-Force which exist only in the spirit of merciless struggle." If only it was so easy! If only one could accomplish by roaring, whether roaring like a lion or like any sucking dove!

The roaring occupies the first half of Trotsky's book. The second half.... First proposition. The historical process necessitates the change-over to Socialism.... Second proposition. It is unthinkable that this change-over can come about by peaceful argument and voluntary surrender. Except in response to force, the possessing classes will surrender nothing.... Third proposition. Even if, sooner or later, the Labour Party achieve power by constitutional methods, the reactionary parties will at once Proceed to Force.... Fourth proposition. In view of all this, whilst it may be good strategy to aim also at constitutional power, it is silly not to organise on the basis that material force will be the determining factor in the end....

Granted his assumptions, much of Trotsky's argument is, I think, unanswerable. Nothing can be sillier than to play at revolution if that is what he means. But what are his assumptions? He assumes that the moral and intellectual problems of the transformation of Society have been already solved--that a plan exists, and that nothing remains except to put it into operation.... He is so much occupied with means that he forgets to tell us what it is all for. If we pressed him, I suppose he would mention Marx.... Trotsky's book must confirm us in our conviction of the uselessness, the empty-headedness of Force at the present stage of human affairs. Force would settle nothing no more in the Class War than in the Wars of Nations or in the Wars of Religion. An understanding of the historical process, to which Trotsky is so fond of appealing, declares not for, but against, Force at this juncture of things. We lack more than usual a coherent scheme of progress, a tangible ideal. All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists. It is not necessary to debate the subtleties of what justifies a man in promoting his gospel by force; for no one has a gospel. The next move is with the head, and fists must wait.

Keeping the Fourth Online-Learning Revolution from Flaming Out into Disaster

Most people do not know that our current online-learning revolution is actually the fourth. The first was made by Aristocles son of Ariston and Aristoteles son of Nicomachus when they created the philosophy book to help those who could not find or could not afford their own personal Sokrates to learn. The second came with the invention of the medieval university so that those who could not afford to buy and own all the books they needed could nevertheless meet in groups to hear them read aloud and take notes. The third came with Gutenberg's making books cheap enough so that intellectuals could own all that they wanted. And the fourth is today.

We will not manage the fourth revolution unless we first figure out why the third revolution--that eliminated the original raison d'etre of the medieval university did not destroy but rather strengthened the university. What, exactly, were the useful intellectual functions that the university performed that meant that it could not be fully replaced by sitting on a log under a tree surrounded by your stack of books?

My outline of the problem is here.

Commenters respond:

eightnine2718281828mu5 said: "What is it about the institution of the university that allowed it to survive the third online-learning revolution?" signalling

Omega Centauri said: Beyond signalling, which is important, I think we need some interactive intelligence. Its tough to get a deeply challenging subject mastered from online stuff alone. What if I don't really understand the Poincare conjecture? (Heck I can't even spell it). Will that mean that by about chapter 11 I'll hit some intellectual brickwall I don't know how to get through? If I had a sharp teacher, he could insure some crucial but tricky foundational principle is really mastered. But, online (and in a hurry usually), its just to easy to slip past something important, then find out too late that you've build your whole intellectual understanding of XXX -on a house of cards.... Now, even really good wetware computers (actual flesh and blood neuronal processors) have trouble doing this. Training a computer to..... Wish I had a clue.

jeremy said: I thought you were actually going to comment on how today's distance learning is 4th rate...I am thinking of the U of Phoenix, and other for-profit distance learning programs. There are some decent distance learning opportunities available. For instance, while I lived in Germany I used archives of recorded calculus courses from a university in North Carolina to learn 1st year calculus. I also took a 4th year statistics course online through Iowa State. Those courses served a very specific purpose, but the lecturer's impact was not very high. The interaction level was near zero for me, but I learned the material. I probably could have just read the books and done some of the problems at the end of each chapter and done just as well on the tests. It's really tough for a first rate mind to give you a first rate lecture through distance learning. I don't even think lecturers try; you might as well just find out what the book is, read it on your own, and later find a better class a few levels up at a campus nearby.

MBH said: "No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms." PF Strawson. As an online PhD student who studied undergraduate philosophy at a brick and mortar school, I agree with the above comments that signaling and interaction preserved the university after the cost of books could have made it obsolete. But not just any kind of signaling: hinting in the Wittgensteinian sense. For instance, if I start to read Kant -- online -- without any background, his metaphysics may baffle me. But if the facilitator presents a supplemental lecture that proposes "For Kant, phenomena is to software as noumena is to hardware..." then I can go on. And not just any kind of interaction either. To make sure the class understands, the facilitator may begin a thread in which every student must rephrase an aspect of Kant's metaphysics in their own words. Whether the rephrasing matches or mismatches the meaning, the facilitator can track the students' understanding. That would prevent the problem that Omega raises above.

Hopefuly Anonymous said: universities, and lectures for that matter, provide paternalistic structure for those that lack autodidactic discipline. We should make it easier for those with autodidactic discipline to get credentialed (licensing exams) without trying to extract wealth from them or creating other inefficient barriers.

Pat D said: I propose there were actually five revolutions. The first 3 are the same as what you propose above. But along the way, the quantity of first-rate thinkers increased due to earlier revolutions. Therefore, the fourth revolution is each classroom apprenticed to a (near-)first-rate thinker, rather than being read the work of a first-rate thinker. In other words, the best classrooms today are not following the lector style, but are instead akin to Socrates teaching a group of students. Your proposed fifth revolution is about decreasing the price of a service provided by the fourth revolution. In a broader sense of online learning, you don't need to worry about it going bust - Wikipedia is increasingly popular, and MIT provides free lectures via iTunes University. UPhoenix is just the "missing link" in this evolution, one that we should not worry about going extinct.

Jed Harris said: Why do these answers focus on the student - teacher or student - content relationship, when the student - student interaction looms so large in the actual experience? Teaching and content are useful, but peer interaction is an essential part of the process -- quite possibly the most essential part. Even for very content intensive domains. Look at the student groups studying together in the engineering library. Look at how graduate students spend time in their offices and labs. Even the university doesn't value or facilitate this mutual support nearly enough. Current distance learning makes it nearly impossible.

derek said: Books were cheaper than your own personal Socrates, but still expensive, and still not a substitute for your own personal Socrates. Universities arose to address the "still expensive" part, but they survived the printing press by evolving to address the "still no substitute for your own personal Socrates" part. (when i went to uni we really did have our own personal Socrates; that was his actual name)

bad Jim said: Perhaps it was the explosive growth of knowledge which accompanied the printing press that made the university even more valuable than before. Before Gutenberg, and the Reformation, the chief output of the university was clerics; afterwards the output included lawyers and physicians and most crucially teachers of all kinds, because learning had become valuable to accountants and mechanics and sailors and so on. With the invention of science universities became the place where science was mostly taught and mostly done, and it remains so to this day. It may not be beside the point that the work of a student is facilitated by living among other students whose lives are similarly devoted and governed by the same schedule, or that there are synergies produced by a concentration of bright and motivated young people. Although it's possible for a serious student to educate itself with nothing but a large enough library, it doesn't happen often enough to be considered a serious alternative. The internet hardly changes that.

Greg said: Different types of leverage. The book was a simple force multiplier, allowing the thoughts of the thinker to be absorbed by more people. The university system, as well as further multiplying force (at the cost of some imperfections), also had a large element of guidance. This guidance is the quality that guaranteed the survival of the university system when printed books came. The printed book was again a simple force multiplier, but vastly more powerful than the scribe-written book. It enabled the expansion of the university system among other effects. The next form of instruction must retain the guidance introduced with the university, and must require less labour from the teacher, who can then focus on the students for whom the regular guidance is not working. In this way, the work of the teacher will be leveraged. Aplia and companies like it are making a start on this. However, the next major step suggested by the "force multiplier versus guidance" analysis is a new guidance system: instructional software that can monitor the student's eye tracking and other behaviour in real time, ask questions, and adapt the instruction in real time to deal with incomprehension, loss of focus, and so on, in exactly the same way that a one-on-one tutor does now. It shouldn't be hard to get something that does 80 percent of the job and knows when to kick the problem upstairs. This "force multiplies" the guidance provided at universities. Obviously the above does not apply to leading-edge graduate study, which must still be operated on the apprentice/collegial system, but to undergraduate/early graduate teaching and to labour force skill acquisition.

Greg said in reply to Jed Harris: "Teaching and content are useful, but peer interaction is an essential part of the process -- quite possibly the most essential part." Yes, students learn from each other because they can't afford personal tutors. Affordable computation and machine vision should allow us to change this.

Neal said: The basis of learning to date is accountability. While there is nebulous blather about the importance of face-to-face, the real value of face-to-face was in accountability. You were there, you were expected to learn, and you were expected to produce evidence of your learning. People, and especially students, are weaselly creatures. I was a student, I know people who have students, and I am a father to students. They are weaselly creatures. The danger to the value of an on-line education is the pretending that the weaselly factor does not exist. The embedded nature of what was learned in the face-to-face accountability is replaced by what? I know how my children skitter and skate through the "inter-web net-tubey" thing and there is very little of value that remains after the interaction. Quick solutions seized from here and there, on-line boards and chats for the "smart" persons answer, "cut and paste", done, and on to another round of COD4.

The Fourth Online-Learning Revolution

We can only provide quality online and distance-learning experiences today if we understand that what we are living through is not the first but rather the fourth online-learning revolution.

Let me back up fifteen hundred years:

The best way to train intellectuals is, as the Phaedrus http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html of Aristocles son of Ariston called “Plato” claims that Socrates said, via discussion and apprenticeship to an excellent thinker. Compared to that any alternative—reading a book, say—was wanting. Books, Plato reports Socrates saying, are:

unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.... You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer.... [T]hey are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated... cannot protect or defend themselves.... [But] an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner... can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.... [H]e who knows the just and good and honourable... will not seriously incline to “write” his thoughts “in water” with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others.... [Rather] the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them... making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness...

However, there are not that many excellent thinkers. And they have too few apprentices. It is possible to train intellectuals via apprenticeship to a not-so-excellent thinker, of whom there are many. But Plato at least thought that such an apprenticeship was a third-rate experience, vastly inferior to the second-rate experience that is reading a book of the teaching of a first-rate intellectual. We know that Plato thought this, for he wrote the Phaedrus and his other dialogues—and that is the only way we know of Socrates.

Thus the first online-learning revolution, the first adaptation of technology to higher education, came in 390 BC when to cut the costs of education and allow for more students Plato invented the philosophy book and substituted it for the in-person teacher, thus leveraging the words and thoughts of Socrates (or at least of Plato’s version of Socrates) over many more people and many more millennia than Socrates could himself teach in person.

Books, however, were very expensive back in the days of manuscript production. According to “The Secret History of the Industrial Revolution” by U.C. Davis’s Gregory Clark, the price of books in the early fourteenth century was perhaps 100 times their price today. We in the post-industrial North Atlantic today are perhaps 100 times better-off in material things than were our medieval predecessors. Thus a single book in 1300 cost as large a share of a typical person’s income then as $50,000 is today: acquiring a single book was as great a relative investment and expenditure as a full year of a private college—tuition, fees, room, and board—is today. Plato’s invention of the philosophy book was a technological advance in education, but it was not a large enough advance.

It was not a large enough advance because in medieval Europe bishops and kings found that they needed staffs. Bishops needed theologians and experts in canon law. Kings needed judges and administrators. How best to train all these additional intellectuals? Providing each would-be theologian and judge and canon lawyer and administrator with the books they needed to study was prohibitively expensive. They needed an alternative

The solution that mid-medieval Europe hit upon was the system of the western university, the system that originated in Bologna and Paris. Assemble all those who wished to learn a book in one place. Have somebody—a reader, in Latin a lector, in modern English a lecturer—read the book aloud to them as they sat before him in a group and took their notes. At 4000 words an hour for twenty hours a week a student could absorb about thirty books a year in his time at university. Admittedly the notes he took away and the memory of hearing the book were third-rate compared to the second-rate possession of the book of a first-rate thinker. But it was good enough. And so the western medieval universities grew and flourished. This was the second online-learning revolution.

Then came the third online-learning revolution: the printing press of Johann Gutenberg, and the seventy-year explosion of print culture that followed. By 1500 a book was no longer the same share of income as $50,000 is today but was rather more like the share of $2,000 today. The extraordinary expense of books that had provoked the foundation of the western university and the institution of the group lecture was over. Now everybody could have their own copy of the books they needed. The necessity for gathering all would-be intellectuals together in a few towns and having them sit in groups listening to a speaker had passed.

Yet the university survived. The lecture class survived. They survive to this day. And they have grown and flourished—even though their original reason for being, the tremendous expense of books, is now more than 500 years in the past.

Today we are in the middle of a fourth online-learning revolution. To properly understand and manage it, however, we need to understand something crucial about the third online-learning revolution. What is it about the institution of the university that allowed it to survive the third online-learning revolution? For the fourth will be a catastrophic bust and distance-learning will die—unless we figure out how to replicate online those features of the university which kept it alive in the post-Gutenberg years after the third online-learning revolution.

Hoisted from Comments: Who Should Undertake the Social Function of Writing Papers in Empirical Finance?

Hoisted from Comments: d² is amazed at the antics of the colonials:

James Fallows on the Whinging Rich, as Exemplified by University of Chicago Law Professor Todd Henderson: dsquared said...:

Good Lord.

I've occasionally said in the past that one of the great things about America is that it's a country where a person can make a six figure income while still not understanding the concept of a marginal tax rate. But I really do think that the social function of writing working papers in empirical finance probably ought to be left to those who do.

And, let it be said, the University of Chicago will tenure you with you still not understanding the concept of a marginal tax rate...

John Scalzi has a somewhat different reaction:

Tax Frenzies and How to Hose Them Down: A question in e-mail based on all the recent “rich people feeling not rich” nonsense, and the associated commentary online:

Why is it that the people freaking out the most about taxes on the rich are the ones who don’t seem to know how the tax code works?

The answer is in the question: Because they don’t know how the tax code works. The major failing seems to be an incomprehension regarding marginal tax rates, but people also seem to fall down on the matter of taxable income vs. gross income (i.e. how deductions can work for you!), how to apply tax credits, and other various and fairly basic aspects of the tax code here in the US.

If you don’t know that stuff — if you basically wander through your life thinking the government taxes all of your income based on the highest possible percentage — then I suppose it’s no wonder you freak out. But it also kind of makes you the financial equivalent of the people who think that Darwin said we are all descended from monkeys, or that the Bible says “God helps those who help themselves.” In short, it means you’re a bit ignorant. You should stop being that. It’s easily correctable. In any event, at some point in time, real live grown-ups should understand the concept of marginal rates. It’s not that difficult to grasp.

There is another answer as well, which can be paired with the above or stand on its own, and it’s that there’s a certain sort of person who believes that all taxation (or all taxation outside of one or two very specific things of which they approve) is theft. Naturally that sort of person will fly to the defense of any who bleat about their taxes being too high, even if in point of fact, the wealthy in the US are currently being taxed at historically low rates (“but they’re still too high!”).

I really don’t know what you do about the “taxes are theft” crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally entitled, generally soft and pudgy asses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That’ll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools...

In the Words of the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus T. fil. T. fil.: "Pecunia Non Olet!"

Robert Paul Wolff:

There is one more matter about which I feel I must say something. I refer to the controversy to which Richard Tuck referred in his opening remarks this morning [ed. Tuck, the current head of Social Studies and a splendid man, had said a few words about the controversy during his welcoming speech, distancing himself from the content of Peretz's statements.] I have anguished a great deal about this matter, at one point uncertain whether I ought even to attend the celebration. If I were a religious man, I could let my bible fall open at random, relying on The Lord to guide me to a chapter and verse in which I might find some wisdom. But since I am an atheist, that course was not open to me. So I did the next best thing. I took down my copy of Volume One of Das Kapital. As I turned the old, familiar pages, covered with my underlinings and notes, my eye fell on this famous passage from the great chapter on Money. Since you are all former or present Social Studies students, I am sure you will all recall it. Here is what Marx says.

Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other commodities, the result of their general alienation, for this reason it is alienable itself without restriction or condition. It reads all prices backwards, and thus, so to say, depicts itself in the bodies of all other commodities, which offer to it the material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the same time the prices, wooing glances cast at money by commodities, define the limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quantity. Since every commodity, upon becoming money, disappears as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself, how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may come.

Marx assumed that the working men and working women for whom he wrote this book all had a classical education, but since I did not, I was forced to look up the source of the Latin tag, non olet. It seems that in the time of the Emperor Vespasian, the Roman state raised a little extra money by taxing the public urinals. One day, Vespasian sent his son, Titus, to collect the taxes from the urinals. Titus was offended by the task, which he considered beneath him, and when he returned he flung the money at his father's feet. Vespasian looked down with equanimity and remarked languidly, "Pecunia non olet." The money does not stink.

In the realm of higher education, Harvard is an imperial power, so quite naturally it adopts Vespasian's point of view toward the money it accepts, Pecunia non olet. But from its founding, fifty years ago, Social Studies has held itself to a higher standard, and so I would hope that it will reject this money for a scholarship, because pecunia olet. The money stinks.

On the Type of Intellect (Partially) Molded by Harvard's Social Studies Major

Hoisted from Comments: Aimai writes:

After Barrington Moore: Draft for September 25, 2010 50th Anniversary Conference - Grasping Reality with Both Hands: This post makes me sad I just gave away everything on my shelves that had the words "Africa" "Peasant" "South America" and/or "economics" in the title. I just broke down and looked at my shelves, and at my life, and said it was holding me back. I hasten to add that thinning the herd by 26 bags only means that I can still not fit the remainder on the shelves allotted to my stuff and other things remain boxed by project/idea in case I ever do anything with them.

But reflecting back on Soc Stud, even though I can hardly remember anything in any detail, it was well worth the doing. Especially compared to the narrow focus of the other departments. I remember, when I was pre-doccing at the American Bar Foundation with the legal studies people attending a sociology discussion and having the sociologists ask me "why I'd read some sociology book?" since I was an anthropologist. This question made absolutely no sense, to me. The Soc Stud question, I think, would have been "why didn't you read book X?" if it referred to anything that an educated person was supposed to care about: philosophy, sociology, history, linguistics, biology, anthropology.

After Barrington Moore: Draft for September 25, 2010 50th Anniversary Conference

20100921 Social Studies:

John Stuart Mill was perhaps the last who was substantially at home in and competent in all the branches of moral philosophy: political theory, psychology, history, public administration, political economy, sociology, etc.

Afterwards young scholars paying their dues found it simply impossible to learn everything and still have time to write anything. And since it is much easier to teach undergraduates what you know than what you don't, specialization in research drove specialization in curriculum as well. But dividing up the social sciences makes sense even for professors and graduate students only if the beast is cut at the joints, so that the problems in understanding the world that fall in the debatable lands between two disciplines are few and unimportant. And dividing up the social sciences makes no sense for undergraduates: What use are economics B.A.s who know no political science or history? None at all. What good is a government department where, in my day, an undergraduate without trying could find himself assigned Graham Alison's Essence of Decision five times in five different classes?

But to try to construct an undergraduate education with its foundation as a simple injunction to read widely in the social sciences would be an enterprise doomed to failure. We think in patterns--analytical classifications and narratives. A program needs a backbone, something to give it enough structure to make sense to the minds of nineteen year-old East African Plains Apes with our limited brains and yet not reproduce the narrowing blinders imposed by each of the disciplinary straightjackets? And how could such a program attract teachers when the incentives are all on the side of working on the core concerns of the disciplines in which they must eventually make their homes?

The project of building a Social Studies was "rescued," if that is the word, by history. The Eurocentric view of the world before 1914 was of one in which the wonders of science drove prosperity, prosperity drove order, order allowed the spread of liberty, and liberty promoted peace and thought, and peace and thought drove science. All was not for the best in the best of all possible worlds but, in the words of Lennon and McCartney, getting better all the time,

Then came World War I. Lenin. Mussolini. Stalin. Hitler. Franco. Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Augusto Pinochet. A host of others. The virtuous circle was not the natural path but instead a fragile accident. No discipline was designed to or qualified to think how to get the North Atlantic world at least back to its happy place, back to something like the society of progress in which people once thought they had lived--a world in which the extra-judicial slaughter of thirty-five Europeans at Kishinev excited horror and condemnation, even if they were Jews.

Call this problematic presented by the history of the world from 1914 to 1975 the "Barrington Moore problematic": it is to understand the historical and social origins of dictatorship and democracy, of slavery and freedom, of ideology and rationality, of poverty and prosperity. Humanity had moved from societies of illiterate farmers producing little more than subsistence dominated by thugs with strong arms and sharp spears to urban, literate, industrial orders. That produced Abraham Lincoln but also Vladimir Lenin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt but also Mao Zedong, Konrad Adenauer but also Augusto Pinochet. And Adolf Hitler as the sole member of the my-regime-killed-50-million club. Why? How? And what could be done to make it stop?

The Barrington Moore problematic provided the spine of the Social Studies major--of pretty much all the interdisciplinary social sciences majors on the North American continent for two generations. Few "majored" in it. It was too big. They found some other smaller, more manageable pool of issues. But in their gallop through the issues of the Barrington Moore problematic they had, as one early observer of Social Studies put it, read an awful lot of books that were very good to have read--if not fun to read. And so the major has been a fifty-year success--not just because budgetary restrictions capped it and the best Harvard students will gravitate like lemmings toward anything that promises to exclude some applicants.

Can the Barrington Moore problematic serve a role similar in the next generation to the one it has served in the past two?

I would say not.

Adolf Hitler is sixty-five years in his grave. Societies in transition to urban-market-mass political modernity and how to keep more Lenins and Hitlers from arising in them does not seem to be the globe's most urgent problem any more. And our most recent modern monsters seem of a different and perhaps older kind: Saddam Hussein reminded me more of the Caliph Uthman or of Mehmet II than of Hitler. Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah seem more like updated versions of the Assassins of Syria rather than of the Comintern. Rwanda seems more like the Sicilian Vespers with radios than like the terror-famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Outside we have demonstrators.

They are answering a question posed by Martin Peretz. "Do I have to pretend," he asked, "that I think Muslims are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which they are so likely to abuse?"

I take it that the demonstrators are saying that the answer is "Yes, he does."

But focus on the fact that the asking of that question and the ire of those who answer it is a powerful sign that the concerns of the Barrington Moore problematic are not our big concerns.

The demonstrators are not there calling for a more equal distribution of income. They are not calling for true participatory democracy. They are not calling for a reorganization of work or the abolition of the gulf between existence and essence or of an end to hierarchy and bureaucracy.

They are calling for a very different transformation.

So how then should Social Studies organize itself for the next generations?

What intellectual thread should you follow as a guide through the labyrinth that is the study of human society? You need to expose students to the broadest range of ideas and perspectives. You need to avoid dissolving into a blooming, buzzing confusion. And yet you need to avoid the narrowing--I would say crippling--straightjackets of our current disciplinary perspectives. And you still need to allow individual students to find and study their own ultimate interests.

We at Berkeley face the same problem.

We do not have good answers.

I occasionally play with "global history" a la Ernest Gellner, James McNeill, and Jared Diamond.

I occasionally play with a narrower dialogue of centralization vs. decentralization a la John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, and James Scott.

I have had only one really good idea: that is to invite your Chair Richard Tuck out to Berkeley this fall for our internal review of our Political Economy major, so that he can come down from the mountaintop, reveal the tablets, and tell us what the answer is.

---

SOCIAL STUDIES 50th Anniversary Celebration. September 25th, 2010

8:30. Continental Breakfast. Science Center Lobby

9:30. Welcome from Richard Tuck. Science Center B. Film of Stanley Hoffmann

10:00. Panel: Social Studies and the Social Sciences. Science Center B. Charles Maier, Chair. Seyla Benhabib, Yale University. Rogers Brubaker, ‘79 UCLA. J. Bradford DeLong ‘82, UC Berkeley. Sherry Turkle ’70, MIT

12:00. Lunch . Adams House. Welcome from Grzegorz Ekiert. Recognition of Head Tutors and Directors of Studies: Robert Paul Wolff, Richard Hunt, Martin Peretz, Michael Donnelly, Cheryl Welch, Judith Vichniac, Anya Bernstein. Principal Speaker: Robert Paul Wolff

2:00. Panel: Social Studies and Social Change. Science Center B. Michael Walzer, Chair. Jarrett Barrios ‘91, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. EJ Dionne ’73, Washington Post. Jamie Gorelick ‘72, Former Deputy Attorney General. Adele Simmons ’63, Chicago Metropolis 2020

4:00. Coffee Break. Science Center Lobby

4:45. Welcome From Drew Faust. Science Center B

5:00. Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture. Amy Gutmann ’71, President of the University of Pennsylvania

6:15. Reception. Northwest Science Building Atrium

The Harvard Social Studies Major's Fiftieth Anniversary Party...

Looks like it may be exciting!

You see, Harvard has a Marty Peretz problem. Here's Benjamin Sarlin: Harvard's Marty Peretz Problem.

Marty Peretz asks: do I have to pretend I think Muslims should have free speech?

This statement does two things:

1. It declares that Peretz believes that a billion Muslims should not have free speech.
2. It announces that any future declarations by Peretz that he thinks Muslims should have free speech are not to be taken seriously--are "pretense."

There are risks involved in a university honoring a guy who is out there with an unretractable statement that he thinks a billion people in the world should not have free speech rights.

As so often, the best thing on this is by James Fallows:

A Primer on Bigotry

Here is the Marty Peretz paragraph in The New Republic:

The New York Times Laments "A Sadly Wary Misunderstanding Of Muslim-Americans." But Really Is It "Sadly Wary" Or A "Misunderstanding" At All? | The New Republic: frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

It is worth noting--as a matter of communication--that Peretz has written a paragraph that it is logically impossible for him to ever recant. He asks his readers whether he needs to "honor" "these people" and "pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the first amendment."

Thus any statement Marty should make to withdraw or amend falls under the shadow of his "pretend." Any withdrawal or amendment becomes a statement that "yes, I do need to pretend--but I don't mean it."

I did warn them...

Brad DeLong to ejdionne, jamie.gorelick, dfaust
show details Sep 6 (10 days ago)

I have to ask: Have you thought about the long-term risks?

Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:42 AM, XXXXXXXX XXXXX@fas.harvard.edu wrote:

a number of our alumni, led by Jamie Gorelick and EJ Dionne, have created an endowed student research fund in honor of Martin Peretz, who taught in Social Studies for many years. The fund will support undergraduate thesis research, special projects, and the kinds of intellectual inquiry that Marty encouraged in his students. It is a wonderful gift for our students..."

September 6, 2010, Marty Peretz wrote:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/77475/the-new-york-times-laments-sadly-wary-misunderstanding-muslim-americans-really-it-sadly-w The New York Times Laments "A Sadly Wary Misunderstanding Of Muslim-Americans." But Really Is It "Sadly Wary" Or A "Misunderstanding" At All?: "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Yours,

J. Bradford DeLong

Can We Please Shut the New York Times Down Now?

And replace it with something with a little more self-awareness and a little less utter stupidity?

Outsourced to Dean Dad:

Confessions of a Community College Dean: When We Say “College,” We Don’t Mean You...: Sigh. The New York Times strikes again. This time it’s with a four-part colloquy of important people discussing “why are colleges so selective?” How is someone at a community college supposed to read the question “why are colleges so selective?”... Honestly, sometimes reading the Times I channel my inner Lou Ferrigno. “HULK SMASH PUNY RECORDING SECRETARY OF RULING CLASS!” What’s the difference between the New York Times and David Hasselhoff? One is a pathetic joke, and the other is David Hasselhoff. This story is so bad, it almost makes me long for the only-mildly-embarrassing musings of Stanley Fish...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

The Future of Education

Why does Matthew Yglesias use this picture:

rather than this one:

?

It is in a good cause, however, as he calls on the Ivy League alumni of the world to give to worthier causes than their several Almae Matres:

TED and Competition: [A]s Brad DeLong likes to point out the “get a bunch of people in a room to listen to some guy talk” model of education was an organizational response to the high price of books. In principle, it would seem to have been made obsolete by the printing press and the public library. Yet obviously that didn’t happen. Colleges and universities managed to make themselves indispensable sources of credentials and social prestige... they still engage in an incredible quantity of pre-Gutenberg educating.

Which is just to say that I think there’s a need to not just let this process play out, but for alumni of the richest universities—people like Salam and Kamenetz and myself—to take some direct action... people need to be told that giving money to fancy colleges mostly seems like a big waste.... Money should be given to educational institutions... that are doing good work helping children from underprivileged backgrounds (and, no, offering generous financial aid to kids from poor families and then not admitting any doesn’t count) or else to innovative programs aimed at diffusing knowledge much more widely than a pool of several thousand undergraduates. Institutions will change when people try to force them to. People give money to non-profits in order to elevate their social status—if we change social conventions about what constitutes praiseworthy donating, then things will change.

Harvard Law School 3L Stephanie Grace Apologizes for Having Previously Said that African-Americans Are *NOT* Predisposed by Genetic Endowment to Be Less Intelligent than Whites

To me, the remarkable thing about this email from Judge Kozinski's clerk-to-be is that she won't stick to her earlier claim that test differences between whites and African-Americans are not driven by gene differences--that she feels under considerable social pressure to retract:

I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position. I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that... they are... as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances.... [S]ome things are genetic.... I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner...

The scary thing is that there is a community of white guys hanging around Harvard Law School shunning people unless they agree that test differences are driven by gene differences.

It would be nice if Stephanie Grace had the courage to stick to her convictions, but she is just a canary in the coal mine.

---

The full email:

Stephanie Grace: I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.

In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.

Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,

Stephanie Grace

The Best That Has Been Said and Thought in the World...

A man of wealth and taste, Rufus F., writes:

Allow Me to Introduce Myself...: [W]hen you face a classroom of young people, newly paroled from the American high school system, and now stepping out of the blizzard of pop cultural nothingness, and start talking about “the canon” with them, it’s a bit like watching two alien life-forms encountering each other for the first time. There’s a total disconnect between their culture and their cultural patrimony. High culture--those elevating works of art and literature that have survived the test of time--are disdained as pretentious and elitist; and in turn seem to have been taken hostage by academics! And yet, while I am of the generation that remains steeped in pop culture, it’s hard not to feel increasingly that, in the words of David Cronenberg, “it just doesn’t feed me”.

How did enjoyment of and engagement with the canon become so specialized, narrow, professionalized, and soulless? Here the culture wars have obscured more than they’ve illuminated. Dating the “crisis of the humanities”: namely, academia’s divorce from the larger culture, only back to “postmodernism” or “the 60s campus protests” suggests that the humanities were in far better shape before that time. But reading the memoirs of people who went through the educational system in the 1800s, one hears the same complaints.... The political debates about the canon overlook the fact that back to the Renaissance roots, the humanities have gone through alternating periods of deadening specialization and thrilling revitalization; we’re just overdue for the second....

I propose to “blog the canon”; from Homer to Hitchcock, Wittgenstein to Warhol, and Plato to Passolini. I want to do is write in a lively, irreverent, and passionate way about “the best that has been said and thought in the world”, and how these works affect me, a relative pisher in many of these areas. I am no expert. (With any luck, I’ll win one of Andrew Sullivan’s “poseur alerts”!) But I do want to write about the Aeneid the way we bloggers write about Avatar--as a living part of our culture...

Unfortunately, he begins with Aeschylus's The Suppliants, which is not a terribly good play. Indeed, it is barely a play at all. It is much more a set of hymns and dances strung along a narrative arc: Danaos and his daughters arrive at Argos pursued by their Egyptian cousins, the King of Argos has to decide whether to recommend that the Assembly grant them asylum--thus risking bloody war--or turn them back--thus breaking their duty to and risking the anger of Zeus Xenios, protector of strangers and refugees. The King of Argos and Danaos go off to the Assembly. The daughters worry. The King of Argos and Danaos return with good news. The Egyptians arrive and are sent off.

The part of it that is a play--the decision on the part of the King of Argos to try to offer aid--is made very quickly:

Aeschylus, Suppliant Women (ed. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D.): King of Argos: And on many sides there are difficulties hard to wrestle with; for, like a flood, a multitude of ills bursts on me. It is a sea of ruin, fathomless and impassable, which I am launched upon, and nowhere is there a haven from distress. For should I not pay the debt due to you, the pollution you name is beyond all range of speech; yet if I take my stand before the walls and try the issue of battle with the sons of Aegyptus, your kinsmen, how will the cost not mount to a cruel price--men's blood to stain the ground for women's sake?

And yet the wrath of Zeus who guards the suppliant compels my reverence; for supreme among mortals is the fear of him. Aged father of these maidens, take these boughs straightway in your arms and place them upon other altars of the country's gods, that all the natives may see the sign that you have come in suppliance. And let no random word fall against me; for the people could complain against authority. It may well be that some, stirred to compassion at the sight, will hate the wantonness of the troop of males, and that the people will be more friendly towards you; for all men are well disposed to the weaker cause....

And its ratification by the Assembly takes place offstage, and its favorable outcome telegraphed--there isn't a lot of dramatic tension here:

Your father will not leave you here alone for long. I am going now to call together the people of the land, that I may make the masses friendly; and I will instruct your father in what things he should say. Now stay here and beseech the gods of the land with prayers to grant what you desire, while I go to advance your cause. May persuasion and efficacious fortune attend me!...

So, since we are bound to read it as a play--rather than as a succession of religious or quasi-religious hymns strung onto a narrative arc--we are bound to say "huh?!" when Rufus F. says that this is part of “the best that has been said and thought in the world.” It ain't.

It would have been much better to start with Antigone. Now there is a play! Hell, start with Jean Anouilh's version--or, indeed, with the best of all Antigone's, Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona's The Island...

Objects in Your Calendar Are Closer than They Appear...

Harvard Hilles Library Basement writes:

Dear Professor DeLong,

Greetings from Social Studies! We are celebrating our 50th anniversary on Saturday, September 25th, 2010. We are planning a day-long event, including a breakfast for current and former teaching staff, two panel discussions, a student-alumni lunch, a keynote speech by Amy Gutmann ‘73, and a reception and dinner. A committee is finalizing plans for the panel[s]... we are aiming to have one focus on Social Studies and the Social Sciences (with a possible sub-question: do we still need to read Marx, Weber, and Durkheim?).... I am therefore writing to invite you to attend the 50th anniversary and participate on this panel...

Scott McLemee FTW!

He reviews Cornel West and David Ritz (2009), Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud:

Decline of the West: Ten years ago, in the final pages of a collection of his selected writings, Cornel West gave readers a look at the work he had in progress, or at least in mind, for the years ahead. One would be “a major treatment of African-American literature and modern Greek literature.” Another was “a meditation on Chekhov and Coltrane that delves into the distinctive conceptions of the tragic in American civilization and of the comic in Russian civilization.” He would be writing an intellectual autobiography “modeled on black musical forms.” Nor had he given up on plans to complete a study of David Hume. There would also be a book on Josiah Royce. West described his projects as “bold,” “challenging” and “exciting.” These are adjectives, it must be said, better left in someone else’s hands. But the books did sound interesting, and I looked forward to them – especially the one on Royce...

Dog or Horse?

Matthew Kahn posts a picture:

He worries about its carbon footprint.

I think its footprint footprint may well be larger than its carbon footprint...

Objects in Your Calendar Are Closer than They Appear...

Reed College:

Reed College | Public Policy Lecture Series: Brad DeLong: “Financial Crisis and the Macroeconomy, 1825-Present”

Saturday, November 7, 2 p.m., Vollum lecture hall: J. Bradford DeLong, who served during the Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of economic policy for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is professor of economics at UC Berkeley, chair of UC Berkeley’s political economy major, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.. He has written on the evolution and functioning of the U.S. and other nations’ stock markets, the dynamics of long-run economic growth, the making of economic policy, the changing nature of the American business cycle, and the history of economic thought. Before joining the Treasury Department, DeLong was Danziger Associate Professor in the economics department at Harvard University. He has also been a John M. Olin Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an assistant professor of economics at Boston University, and a lecturer in the department of economics at MIT.

Presented in partnership with the economics department and Reed's Parent & Family Weekend. Sponsored by the Walter Krause Fund for Lectures in Economics.

Schools on a Quarter System Do Start Late, Don't They?

Mark Thoma:

Here We Go Again...: Teaching starts tomorrow. I thought I'd be used to it by now, but after all these years it still makes me really nervous.

On the Analysis of "Degraded" Popular Cultural Forms

Crypto asks Michael Berube:

Would your argument be different at all if you'd turned to the place of cultural studies in feminism?

And Michael Berube replies:

FWhat's the Matter With Cultural Studies?: Re: Knock, knock: Good question -- the answer would be, basically, yes and no. In The Left At War, I do mount a defense of feminists' work in cultural studies in the 80s and early 90s. Here's a snippet:

The 1980s witnessed an extraordinary profusion of serious academic books on degraded popular cultural forms: the romance novel, the soap opera, the slasher film, and, of course, the most degraded form of them all, pornography. In each case, the argument was made that the close analysis of these forms was important not because the forms themselves were as aesthetically satisfying as The Tempest or as intellectually complex as Paradise Lost, but because they offered representations of the world, however phantasmic, that attracted millions of people; therefore, so the argument went, it was only reasonable to try to discover and come to terms with the thoughts and impressions of the people who devoted significant portions of their lives to romances or soaps or slash films– or even porn.

Following the publication of Stuart Hall’s groundbreaking “Encoding / Decoding” essay and David Morley’s The Nationwide Audience in the U.K., and Tania Modleski’s Loving with a Vengeance and Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance in the U.S., many cultural studies theorists embarked on a kind of mass-media “ethnography” in which they sought the opinions of soap fans, romance readers, and TV viewers in order to try to understand how mass-cultural phenomena were actually “consumed” and understood by mass-cultural audiences. [Footnote here to Modleski, Radway, Carol Clover, Linda Williams, and Laura Kipnis]

It is difficult to overstate the amount of derision with which this project met, inside academe and out. When senior (male) scholars weren’t sputtering over what they considered books that should have been published as articles in High Times, mainstream (mostly male) journalists were guffawing at the idea that things like soap operas and romances merited a moment’s thought. [Footnote here to William Kerrigan writing, "People got tenure for writing about the imperialist fantasies of Marvel Comics or the gender rules in Harlequin Romances -- ideas that might have made decent articles for High Times but, driven by theory, got seriously out of hand." I just couldn't make that shit up.] That derision helped to reinforce cultural studies theorists’ initial point– namely, that certain mass cultural forms, and their audiences, are widely considered utterly unworthy of serious attention.

But unfortunately, it also confirmed cultural studies theorists’ convictions that they were doing something Deeply Important, something that would shake academe and mainstream journalism and culture to their very foundations. The problem with those convictions of the theorist’s importance, in turn, is part of the larger problem of studying mass culture from a left perspective that looks especially for moments of dissidence or subversion: for if there’s one thing mass culture produces aplenty, it’s moments of “dissidence” and “subversion” that are nothing but. And just as skateboarding and “slash” fanzines aren’t really a threat to global capitalism in the end, so too, the academic study of skate punks and “slash” fans doesn’t really amount to much of a challenge to the established order– save for the established order in a handful of academic disciplines whose established order changes once or twice a decade anyway.

...which, I think, gets back to your original question.

--MB

Cultural Studies Food Fight!

The Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis picks a fight with Michael Berube:

A Note from the Unicorns: A Cultural Studies PhD Program responds to Michael Berube: As students and faculty in one of the only PhD-granting cultural studies programs in the nation, we are prompted to respond to Michael Bérubé’s recent opinion piece, “What’s the Matter with Cultural Studies?” Located in the University of California system where we face dramatic program cutbacks, faculty and staff furloughs, a 40% tuition increase, and a general hiring freeze, and we know firsthand how the trend toward privatization systematically devalues scholarship that critiques profit rather than produces it and threatens the future of programs like ours.  The timing of an attack (couched as a lament) on something Bérubé calls “Cultural Studies” couldn’t be worse–our graduating PhD’s face not only hiring freezes but skepticism. A PhD in cultural studies: what can you do with that? Bérubé described the effect of cultural studies in higher education in the United States as equivalent to the “carbon footprint of a unicorn.” We disagree. On the one hand, we want to highlight the dangerous ways in which Bérubé’s critique obscures the more pressing issues facing scholars working in cultural studies.  On the other hand, we hardly recognize the field described at some length in Bérubé’s piece and that cannot pass without comment. Through claims unsupported by evidence beyond the anecdotal, Bérubé sketches out a caricature of a field as opposed to a set of dynamic, complex intellectual and institutional practices...

I don't know which is more disturbing:

1. That the level of reading in the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis is so low that they interpret Michael Berube's genuine ritual lament as some sort of concern-troll attack.

2. That the level of social, political, and cultural analysis carried out by the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis is so low that they think now is a good time to pick a fight with Michael Berube, in all likelihood one of their few potential allies anywhere on the globe.[1]

3. That the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis thinks that it ought to have a "party line"--rather than being composed of a number of different intellectuals who think somewhat differently--that is in some sense expressive of the positions of and in some sense binding on all members of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis--as though they were some sort of a "party of a new type."

4. That nine people[1] feel able to speak for the students, faculty, and staff of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis--and to do so without providing the rest of us with any clue as to how it is that all of the students, faculty and staff of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis authorized them to speak in their name.

Michael Berube is gentle in response--considering that his normal rhetorical mode is:

Fraudulent journalist, c’est moi: Professor Carby has indeed re-set the bar at the next level, and perhaps in another decade or so I will learn that my little New Yorker essay was the journalistic equivalent of distributing smallpox-infested blankets to the editors of Phylon and The Crisis.  Only worse, for being totally unselfconscious.

Here he merely points out:

Things I did not know: Actually, if you’re in one of the nation’s only Ph.D.-granting departments in cultural studies, then you’re really kind of making my point that “in most universities, cultural studies has no home at all..."

And

No, this isn’t right. Here’s what I actually wrote: “The situation is even bleaker if you ask about cultural studies’ impact on psychology, economics, political science, or international relations, because you might as well be asking about the carbon footprint of unicorns.” So it’s great to hear from the unicorns, but (a) I’m sorry they missed this point and (b) I wish them all the luck in the world with making some inroads into departments of psychology, economics, political science, and international relations.  Because I wish cultural studies had some impact on those fields. Indeed, it might serve as a nice rebuttal of my point if UC-Davis’s program had even a single faculty member (in a group of more than 80) from psychology, economics, political science, or international relations.  But it doesn’t....

And:

When I wrote, “I’m not saying that it has had no impact,” I meant, more or less, that it has had some impact...

And:

OK, now back to those dire financial conditions.... I am indeed privileged—absurdly so. Every day, I say to Moloch, “mighty and powerful Moloch, I can’t believe I have this job.” But despite that, cultural studies has no institutional home at Penn State.  And when I wrote that neoliberalism "has dominated the political and economic landscape for 30 years, and its effects on higher education are palpable, baleful, and undeniable—the corporatization of administration and research, the withdrawal of state financing for public universities, the enrichment of the student-loan industry" I actually thought I was calling attention to larger institutional structures and the undermining of the public education mandate.... Anyway, it’s good to hear that UC Davis has a vibrant cultural studies program that draws on 24 different departments, and I wish it—and all its students—well.

---

[1] Were Mark Yudoff to ask me, for example, I would have no hesitation in recommending that Cultural Studies at U.C. Davis be defunded--and the money transferred to U.C. Davis's fine History and Economics departments. And I am somebody who has occasionally openly avowed that I am a pupil of that mighty thinker Michel Foucault.

[2] Toby Beauchamp, Abbie Boggs, Marisol Cortez, Cathy Hannabach, Caren Kaplan, Liz Montegary, Magali Rabasa, Ami Sommariva, and Eric Smoodin.

DRAFT Henry George Lecture I: Recent Macroeconomic Thought as an Interrupted Three-Cornered Cage Match

Greenspanists, Producerists, Punchbowlers—and Nihilists

Download .pdf version: <20090921 macro thought >70.pdf

Open publication - Free publishing - More macroeconomics

Department of "Huh?"

This is a very, very strange time indeed to make such a move:

David Glenn: Notre Dame to Dissolve 'Heterodox' Side of Its Split Economics Dept.

Misplaced Charity Department

Matthew Yglesias begs the other alumni of our alma mater, Harvard:

Matthew Yglesias: America’s Mad Obsession With Giving Money to Already-Rich Universities: If you can’t think of a charitable institution that could use your money more than the already-richest university in the world—one that overwhelming educates the children of prosperous people—then you’re obviously not thinking very hard. If you want to support worthwhile education endeavors, find a charter school or an obscure local college that’s doing a good job with kids from underprivileged backgrounds. Or give money to improve public health in the third world, or to an effective politics/advocacy organization working to improve American public policy. Anything, really. Just not an outfit that’s already got way more money than every other nonprofit in the country.

Value Added by Universities

You want to know where donations would do the most good--what institutions of higher education are doing the most and would do the most with marginal dollars? I think the Washington Monthly has it about right:

Washington Monthly: Below are the Washington Monthly's 2009 national university college rankings. We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country)...

Lunch with Neel Sinhababu

Lunch with the Ethical Werewolf...

Sample sentence: "If the provost last year had resigned his job this summer, the provost would probably still be eating lunch here."

I find myself more and more impressed by how close people's real selves are to their virtual selves...

Subject of conversation: "swordfish".

I Simply Do Not Have the Chops to Play in Their League...

When the English professors eat their wheaties and get their game on I just cannot compete. The levels of irony and indirection here leave my head spinning. I don't know what is going on.

Michael Berube:

The futility of the humanities: Deresiewicz’s essay contains a bunch of things I wish I’d said, like the conclusion of this piquant paragraph:

Again and again, Darwinian criticism sets out to say something specific, only to end up telling us something general.... Boyd devotes a hundred pages to the Odyssey without saying anything he couldn’t have said with Anna Karenina or Middlemarch or Proust. The discussion is nothing more than an illustration of Darwinian ideas, not an explication of Homeric meanings.... I have read any number of Darwinian essays about Pride and Prejudice (one critic calls it their “fruit fly”), but I have yet to read one that told me anything interesting. The idea that the novel is about mate selection does not count as an original contribution.

...I’m encouraged to see that Deresiewicz says that Boyd is “a clearer and more careful thinker than most of these other writers,” because those other writers are people like Denis Dutton, whose work has always seemed to me to be a variation on “the giraffe has a long neck, and the elephant has a long trunk, and therefore humans make abstract sculptures, just so!  Thus I have refuted Judith Butler!”  But... I do love Deresiewicz’s final sentence, the idea that the novel is about mate selection does not count as an original contribution.  Besides, everyone knows that Pride and Prejudice is not about mate selection.  Hart Crane’s The Bridge is about mate selection, as is Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” and that’s where your literary Darwinism really comes in handy...

And then it starts:

alex 06.24.09 at 3:06 pm: “Besides, everyone knows that Pride and Prejudice is not about mate selection.” Sorry, can’t resist: I thought that was a truth universally acknowledged? But then I’m not a lit crit…

dsquared 06.24.09 at 3:10 pm: "The idea that the novel is about mate selection does not count as an original contribution." Ahhh those naive Darwinists! I am currently working on a massive book-length essay on Pride & Prejudice, analysing it for the first time from the standpoint of Freakonomics. You see, what the “humanities majors” have never really paid attention to is that Mr Darcy[1] is very rich, and this fact shapes a great deal of the other characters’ social interactions with him.

[1]I think that’s the right one; if he was in Sense & Sensibility then someone else, these books are all basically interchangeable.

Michael Bérubé 06.24.09 at 3:11 pm: Dang! A twofer. I am pwned with regard to Jane Austen and Darwinism, and pwned again with regard to objective knowledge. Thanks, Alex! I will go home now.

Chris 06.24.09 at 3:20 pm: "Honest to Moloch, I’m beginning to think nobody takes me seriously when I cite the Digest of Higher Education Statistics, and that makes me sad." Well, if it doesn’t contain any objective knowledge, why should they? It’s just a tool of the mathematical empire, or something. Their perception that the field is in decline is just as valid as the statistics that purport to prove it isn’t. Theory says so....

Michael Bérubé 06.24.09 at 3:25 pm: Good point about Darcy’s wealth, dsquared! People do tend to overlook these little things. Except for the Marxists, bless their hearts! Speaking of which, here’s another of the false notes in Deresiewicz’s essay: “If Marxist criticism is always about the rise of the bourgeoisie, literary Darwinism is always about mate selection or status competition.”...

John Quiggin 06.24.09 at 8:25 pm: What stuns me here is the literary Darwinist stuff. Is this some sort of elaborate Bérubé hoax speaking through an invented Deresiewicz? Or are there really humanities academics recycling 1970s-style sociobiology (the quoted examples don’t even make to the dismal level of 1990s-style Ev Psych) as lit crit? I’d lean to the first, except that everyone in comments seems to be playing it straight in this respect...

In My Inbox: Public Economic Argument

A corresopondent writes:

Dear Professor DeLong:

This fall I am teaching a section of the required freshman writing course at Malefactor of Great Wealth University, a course that emphasizes the analysis of argument and other related rhetorical skills, as well as instruction and practice in academic writing. All sections are organized around a single issue, and I have chosen to focus on public argument on the economy leading up to and following the events of late 2008.

I have been enjoying your blog and the fine array of links. My main question for you is this: can you recommend any good, short primers that can provide my students with enough economic literacy to be able to follow the public arguments made by, say, Alan Greenspan or Paul Krugman?

I would also be curious to know your answer to the following: What would you as an economist say to a member of the public who did not have an extensive economic education but nevertheless was trying to decide, say, what public economic policies to support? Is it a matter of picking the right experts to trust?

Thanks very much for your time and consideration!

Candidate for MA in Rhetoric and Freshman Writing Instructor
Malefactor of Great Wealth University
Sunny City, USA

My answer:

Oyyyy...

The problem is that everything I can think of takes a side (the fact that I think one side is clearly right is not of much help for your purposes)...

I can think of three things to do:

1. Set them to read, as preliminary background, one nineteenth-century book, Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street, and one early twentieth century book, John Maynard Keynes's Tract on Monetary Reform. There is a possibility of some confusion: when people today say "Keynesian" they mean late Keynes, and the Tract is early Keynes. But if that is made clear, it should work well: those two lay out pretty much all the issues and do so in a historical context divorced from today...

2. Set them to read, as preliminary background, the paperback macroeconomics half of Krugman and Wells's introductory economics textbook...

3. Set them to read, as preliminary background, the macroeconomics half of Cowen and Tabarrok's forthcoming introductory economics textbook...

As to your second question, all I can say is that I am trying as hard as I can in lots of different forums, with as best as I can see no success...

Better suggestions, guys?

Yours,

Brad DeLong

A Civil Discussion of Academic Incivility

Or is it an uncivil discussion of academic civility? I cannot tell. John Holbo writes on:

Philosophy: Mind and Manners

and many people respond. 112 comments as of this posting...

The Duties and Privileges of an Academic Speaker

Eszter Hargittai writes:

Clueless? Rude? Neither? Both?: [A]n incident I experienced years ago. I was surprised economists didn’t get more of a mention in the thread following John H’s post earlier given what I’ve seen in their colloquia. I have close-to no experiences in philosophy exchanges... but I’ve attended quite a few talks among economists so I’m used to their style of Q&A.... [I]t often starts a few slides in – or in some famous cases the speaker doesn’t get to proceed past the title slide for most of the time allotted – and being rather aggressive seems standard. If that’s the local norm, they are likely used to it and it doesn’t raise any eyebrows. However, what if you put such an economist in a room full of sociologists? Is it okay for him to import his style or should he take a moment to familiarize himself with the local norms?

What struck me as rather curious was the way an economist behaved during a job talk I attended in a sociology department.... The economist engaged in the usual norms for his own department’s culture: interrupting at pretty much every slide. He didn’t take any cues from the rest of the group.... [S]ociologists don’t tend to interrupt a speaker, certainly not a slide or two in, and certainly not for questions that are more than mere points of clarification.... [T]his was a job talk, which in... this particular department meant that people would... more courteous [than] usual. (Do not confuse courteous with lack of very serious and difficult questions, of course.) The audience was listening intently and the room was quiet for the most part except for the economist’s questions.... [I]t is a bit surprising that he did not pick up on the fact that his approach was not in line with local norms. Perhaps he did, but just didn’t care. I was clearly not the only one bothered by the economist’s style. The uneasiness in the room was palpable. In the end, a senior sociologist stepped in. She turned to the economist and explicitly stated that this is simply not how we do things and asked that he hold his questions until the speaker had finished his talk. You could tell that everyone (presumably other than the economist) in the room was quite relieved to have had her do this...

Eszter seems to me to be getting three things wrong:

1. Economists are used to situations in which you are supposed to be quiet until the paper-giver has finished speaking, only those are not "workshops" but rather "conference presentations." A conference presentation would, typically, have the presenter speak for 30 minutes, an assigned discussant speak for 10, the presenter respond for 5, and then 15 minutes for questions from the floor and answers by the presenter. It's not a discipline-wide norm that economists follow in workshops, but rather one specific to the format of the "workshop."

2. The difference between interrupting and non-interrupting cultures is not a simple and arbitrary choice of social norm, but instead reflects a judgment about whose words are likely to be most valuable to hear. In an "interrupting culture" the presumption is that everyone has read and thought about the paper beforehand, and that to spend half or more of the available time with the presenter simply summarizing the paper (or, worse, reading large chunks of it) is a waste of everybody's time. Much better to have people raise and argue the points that puzzled them or that they think need to be expanded at their appropriate place in the argument. Moreover, when questions are asked in non-interrupting cultures at the end of the seminar, they don't lead to any discussion: questions come in response to things the presenter said 15, 30, or 45 minutes ago, and lead to formulaic thrust-and-parry-and-end rather than any more complex discussion. Now in a conference, where the presenter and the discussant are up at front for a reason, and where many in the audience have indeed not read the paper, the noninterrupting culture format makes a certain amount of sense. But in a workshop it does not.

3. The noninterrupting culture format is, in the last analysis, one that does even the presenter no favors. It greatly diminishes the fraction of the audience that will read the paper beforehand--for everyone knows that the presenter is going to eat up the lion's share of the time going over it with everyone else sitting around like bumps on a log. A good presenter is more interested in what an intelligent and thoughtful audience thinks of his or her argument than in listening to himself or herself summarize the paper one more time. And if for some reason the presenter gets off on the wrong foot and does not make contact with the audience, then an interrupting culture gives the presenter clues that may allow him or her to adjust on the fly and reconnect. In a non-interrupting culture--no chance of that.

This last was brought home to me when I heard about a job talk in another discipline than mine at... let me call it Potlatch State University...

The young presenter was, the story goes, making an argument that the British classical economists in fact had as much of the milk of human kindness and as much of a desire to build a better world as any group--but just found themselves by their observations and by the logic of their discipline led to conclude that lots of policies that you might think of as good were in fact counterproductive. And he went through example after example, while the audience sat silently. And then he got to the end of his presentation with ten minutes left, because he had gone over. And, the story goes, one of the most senior people asked the first question, which was:

It is said that Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, was seated at High Table next to British classical economist Nassau Senior during the Irish Potato Famine. And that Jowett asked Senior how many people would die in the famine. And Senior replied: "About one million--and that is not nearly enough..."

Now if there is a better anecdote to back the claim that the British classical economists were Enemies of Humanity--shills for the ruling classes, social darwinists before Darwin, who sought to exalt the wealthy while gleefully grinding the bones of the poor into meal in the Dark Satanic Mills of the Industrial Revolution--I don't know what it is.

If this question had been raised at the start or even in the middle of the seminar, the speaker could have scrambled to recover--qnd would have had a chance of fitting that story into his broad argument. He would have said that Nassau Senior:

• believed that Irish land was good enough to support 4 million people at a reasonable standard of living, but that at the start of the Potato Famine it had 8 million.

• thought that at a population of 4 million average labor productivity in agriculture would be high enough that children could be released from farmwork to go to school, where they would learn self-respect and the fear of God, that as a result the people of Ireland would be prudent and chaste and marry relatively late, and the population would be stable and the island prosperous.

• thought, on the other hand, that at a population of 7 million average labor productivity in agriculture would be so low that children too would have to work digging potatoes and would grow up illiterate and unchurched, that not fearing God they would have sex as often and as young as possible, and that the population would then grow back to its pre-Potato Famine level of 8 million--at which Ireland was starving even when the potato harvest was good, and at which population was kept from growing further only because babies were so malnourished that their immune systems were compromised and women so thin that they stopped ovulating.

Senior believed that Ireland was trapped in a bad poverty-stricken Malthusian subsistence equilibrium at a population of 8 million, and that while a fall in population to 4 million would knock it out of that bad equilibrium and put it on the road to a better one, that a fall in population to 7 million would not and thus, as Jowett later quoted Senior, "would scarcely be enough to do much good." This was, Jowett said, why he had "always felt a certain horror of political economists."

Now Senior was wrong: Ireland in the mid-1840s was no longer hopelessly trapped in a bad Malthusian equilibrium. And Senior's policy advice was wrong because his analysis of Ireland was wrong. You can judge Senior harshly: he ought to have figured out that the Age of Malthus was over. But Nassau Senior did not think that with each Irish famine death an angel got its wings.

That was the argument that the presenter could have made had he been embedded in an interrupting culture and figured out that the most senior people he was talking to were starting from Jowett's High Table at Victorian Balliol. But in a noninterrupting culture in which you have two minutes to respond to each question at the end because there are ten other senior faculty members who want to ask their questions that they have been nursing since minute 20? In a noninterrupting culture you are dead if your audience is starting at a different place than you think they are starting.

Ernst Kantorowicz: The Fundamental Issue: Documents and Marginal Notes on the University of California Loyalty Oath

The Fundamental Issue: Documents and Marginal Notes on the University of California Loyalty Oath:

The Fundamental Issue was already printed and ready to be sent to interested parties, in the fall of 1950, when the lawyers for the group of tenured non-signers of the loyalty oath advised against making the essay public while the case was being litigated.

Kantorowicz had resigned from UC Berkeley and joined the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, when the court decision was finally rendered; with his cause vindicated he saw no reason to distribute the pamphlet, and so the whole lot was thrown away.

Although published a few years ago in German translation, the 1999 reprint of the 1950 original thus amounts to the public debut of the work in English, prepared for the benefit of those attending the 50th Anniversary Retrospective of the loyalty oath.

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PREFATORY NOTE

"If you are not a Communist, why can't you sign the oath?" How often has this question been asked and still is asked? The answer is that from the very beginning it was true that "The issue is not Communism; it is the welfare and dignity of our University" (Alumni Letter, August 17, 1950). The forcibly imposed oath with its economic sanctions and encroachments on tenure, rejected almost unanimously by the Faculties of the University of California, was at first one of the most thoughtless and wanton, later one of the most ruthless attacks on the academic profession at large. In order to enforce the oath which "is not required by Law" (Governor Warren: February 28, 1950), the faction of the Board of Regents headed by Regent Neylan has not only violated the rules of tenure; bit by bit they have succeeded in virtually abolishing the very idea of tenure as well as that of trial by jury. Finally those gentlemen, victors pro tempore, could allow themselves to put their foot on the prostrate body of what has been one of the world's proudest and most renowned Faculties. They could assume the power to dictate what was crime and what not, demand of the Faculty unconditional obedience to the Board of Regents even in matters of conscience, and crush non-conformists by an open "breach of faith" (Governor Warren and his group: August 24, 1950).

Why I did not sign the oath-‑although, or because, I am not and never have been a Communist, and although, or because, I am genuinely conservative and never have been taken for anything else--I shall indicate in the following pages. This is not intended to be the history of "The Year of the Oath." This subject has been admirably dealt with by Professor George R. Stewart. I merely wish to illustrate, by a few documents and a few marginal notes, some aspects of the oath controversy and its fundamental problems.

What the fundamental issue is has been obvious to me from the minute the controversy started. Perhaps I have been sensitive because both my professional experience as an historian and my personal experience in Nazi Germany have conditioned me to be alert when I hear again certain familiar tones sounded. Rather than renounce this experience, which is indeed synonymous with my "life," I shall place it, for what it is worth, at the disposal of my colleagues who are fighting the battle for the dignity of their profession and their university.  

Nothing would have been easier for me than to sign, sit back, tend my garden, books, and manuscripts, and be that "naïve professor" that has been caricatured once more during the oath controversy. However, where a human principle, where Humanitas herself is involved I cannot keep silent. I prefer to fight.

The true nature of the problem has since been recognized by many individuals as well as learned societies of the country. The American Psychological Association has recommended that its members not accept positions at the University of California "until such time as tenure conditions meet acceptable standards." Other professional associations have announced, or are ready to announce, similar actions, and the haze shrouding the affair is about to vanish. With the present paper I wish to support also our supporters.

The first of my documents is my own warning to my colleagues, delivered to the Academic Senate on the first meeting in connection with the oath. It is, so to speak, an expression of my convictions as a historian. The second illustrates, if in shorthand, my personal experience. The third, a letter from my friend Walter W. Horn, Acting Chairman of the Department of Art, who kindly agreed to its publication, illustrates the grave conflict of conscience and savage economic coercion to which, after fifteen months of pressure and struggle, he had finally to yield. He shared the fate of hundreds of colleagues, highly respectable and upright men, who for the sake of their families and for lack of economic independence could not afford to hold out to the last.

In the "Marginal Notes" I shall try to bring into focus what appears to me as "The Fundamental Issue." They do not exhaust the matter. The documents in the "Appendix" speak for themselves. They refer to the problem of tenure.

The quotes reproducing the words used at the meeting of the Board of Regents on August 25, 1950, are taken from the transcript printed as Appendix VI of the "Petition for Writ of Mandate" filed by Mr. Stanley A. Weigel, Attorney for the "Non‑Signers," at the District Court of Appeal, State of California, Third Appellate District, in Sacramento, California.

For the reader's convenience I give here the names of the Regents. The Board is divided into two groups, one led by Governor Warren, the other by Regent Neylan.

Governor Earl Warren, Earl J. Fenston, Farnham P. Griffiths, C. J. Haggerty, Victor R. Hansen, Edward H. Heller, William G. Merchant, Chester W. Nimitz (absent at August meeting), Roy E. Simpson, Robert Gordon Sproul (President of the University), Jesse Steinhart;

John Francis Neylan, Brodie E. Ahlport, John E. Canaday, Sam L. Collins, Edward A. Dickson, Sidney M. Ehrman, Maurice E. Harrison, Fred Moyer Jordan, Goodwin J. Knight (Lieutenant Governor), Arthur J. McFadden, Edwin W. Pauley, Norman F. Sprague.

Berkeley, California, October 8, 1950.

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DOCUMENTS

I. STATEMENT READ BEFORE THE ACADEMIC SENATE NORTHERN SECTION

June 14, 1949

As a historian who has investigated and traced the histories of quite a number of oaths, I feel competent to make a statement indicating the grave dangers residing in the introduction of a new, enforced oath, and to express, at the same time, from a professional and human point of view, my deepest concern about the steps taken by the Regents of this University.

1. Both history and experience have taught us that every oath or oath formula, once introduced or enforced, has the tendency to develop its own autonomous life. At the time of its introduction an oath formula may appear harmless, as harmless as the one proposed by the Regents of this University.1 But nowhere and never has there been a guaranty that an oath formula imposed on, or extorted from, the subjects of an all‑powerful state will, or must, remain unchanged. The contrary is true. All oaths in history that I know of, have undergone changes. A new word will be added. A short phrase, seemingly insignificant, will be smuggled in. The next step may be an inconspicuous change in the tense, from present to past, or from past to future. The consequences of a new oath are unpredictable. It will not be in the hands of those imposing the oath to control its effects, nor of those taking it, ever to step back again.

2. The harmlessness of the proposed oath is not a protection when a principle is involved. A harmless oath formula which conceals the true issue, is always the most dangerous one because it baits even the old and experienced fish. It is the harmless oath that hooks; it hooks before it has undergone those changes that will render it, bit by bit, less harmless. Mussolini Italy of 1931, Hitler Germany of 1933, are terrifying and warning examples for the harmless bit-by-bit procedure in connection with political enforced oaths.

3. History shows that it never pays to yield to the impact of momentary hysteria, or to jeopardize, for the sake of temporary or temporal advantages, the permanent or eternal values. It was just that kind of a "little oath" that prompted thousands of non-conformists in recent years, and other thousands in the generations before ours, to leave their homes and seek the shores of this Continent and Country. The new oath, if really enforced, will endanger certain genuine values the grandeur of which is riot in proportion with the alleged advantages. Besides, this oath, which is invalid anyhow because taken under duress, may cut also the other way: it may have the effect of a drum beating for Communist and Fascist recruits.

4. The new oath hurts, not merely by its contents, but by the particular circumstances of its imposition. It tyrannizes because it brings the scholar sworn to truth into a conflict of conscience. To create alternatives--"black or white"--is a common privilege of modern and bygone dictatorships. It is a typical expedient of demagogues to bring the most loyal citizens, and only the loyal ones, into a conflict of conscience by branding non‑conformists as un-Athenian, un-English, un-German, and--what is worse--by placing them before an alternative of two evils, different in kind but equal in danger. The crude method of "Take it or leave it"--"Take the oath or leave your job"--creates a condition of economic compulsion and duress close to blackmail. This impossible alternative, which will make the official either jobless or cynical, leads to another completely false alternative: "If you do not sign, you are a Communist who has no claim to tenure." This whole procedure is bound to make the loyal citizen, one way or another, a liar and untrue to himself because any decision he makes will bind him to a cause which in truth is not his own. Those who belong, de facto or at heart, to the ostracized parties will always find it easy to sign the oath and make their mental reservation. Those who do not sign will be, now as ever, also those that suffer--suffer, not for their party creed or affiliations, but because they defend a superior constitutional principle far beyond and above trivial party lines.

5. I am not talking about political expediency or academic freedom, nor even about the fact that an oath taken under duress is invalidated the moment it is taken, but wish to emphasize the true and fundamental issue at stake: professional and human dignity. There are three professions which are entitled to wear a gown: the judge, the priest, the scholar. This garment stands for its bearer's maturity of mind, his independence of judgment, and his direct responsibility to his conscience and to his God. It signifies the inner sovereignty of those three interrelated professions: they should be the very last to allow themselves to act under duress and yield to pressure. It is a shameful and undignified action, it is an affront and a violation of both human sovereignty and professional dignity that the Regents of this University have dared to bully the bearer of this gown into a situation in which--under the pressure of a bewildering economic coercion-‑he is compelled to give up either his tenure or, together with his freedom of judgment, his human dignity and his responsible sovereignty as a scholar.

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II. October 4, 1949.

President Robert G. Sproul
University of California
Berkeley 4, Calif.

Dear President Sproul:

Dante, quoting Aristotle, has remarked that "every oblique action of government turns good men into bad citizens." I deeply deplore that under the impact of the recent events I feel compelled to reckon myself--perhaps self-righteously--among the "bad academic citizens," since I cannot conform to the demands of the Board of Regents to sign a political oath.

My political record will stand the test of every investigation. I have twice volunteered to fight actively, with rifle and gun, the left-wing radicals in Germany; but I know also that by joining the white battalions I have prepared, if indirectly and against my intention, the road leading to National-Socialism and its rise to power.

I shall be ready at any moment to produce sworn evidence before the court of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has admitted me to citizenship during the war. But my respect for the University of California and its tasks is such that I cannot allow myself to believe that the base field of political inquisition, which paralyzes scholarly production, should be within the range of its activities.

Yours very respectfully

ERNST H. KANTOROWICZ
Professor of History

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III. August 23, 1950.

President Robert G. Sproul                                                                                
University of California
Berkeley, Calif 

Dear President Sproul:

In compliance with your directive of August 4th to Chairmen and Administrative Officers requesting information as to prospects of reactivation of members of their staff who have Reserve status in the Armed Services, I am communicating to you that I was reactivated, on August 21, for the purpose of a final physical examination and that I expect to receive a call for active duty as Captain, Infantry, for a minimum period of 21 months as soon as my physical examination report has been reviewed.

Being thus confronted a second time with a disruption of my academic career, and feeling unable to expose my wife and my son to the consequences of being denied continuance of my civilian occupation upon return from military duty, it is with profound regret that I find myself compelled to yield to the pressure which the Regents saw fit to exercise in order to extort from me a declaration concerning my political beliefs. I am enclosing the requested statement, signed.

I should like to make known that, in doing so, I am acting against the better precepts of my conscience and for no other reason than that of protecting my family against the contingencies of economic distress. In a letter addressed to you on May 12th, I have set forth as one of my essential reasons for opposing the oath and its contractual equivalent the fact that their imposition has coerced, under the threat of dismissal, hundreds of honorable men and women to lend their signatures to a form of employment which they consider detrimental to the welfare of the University and an insult to the academic profession at large. It was in avoidance of pressures of this type that I left Germany in 1938 and came to this country. And it was in the desire of contributing to the eradication of such methods that I volunteered during the last war to take up arms against the country of my birth.

I am expecting my recall to active duty in the present conflict with the bitter feeling that, this time, I shall be fighting abroad for the defense and propagation of Freedoms which I have been denied in my professional life at home.

A report on the department as a whole with regard to expected enlistments and reactivations will follow prior to September 1st and as soon as the last answers have been received from members who are out of town.

Yours sincerely

WALTER W. HORN
Acting Chairman
Art Department.

[1] The original text of the so-called Loyalty Oath, as suggested in June, 1949, read: ". . . I do not believe in and am not a member of, nor do I support any party or organization that believes in, advocates, or teaches the overthrow of the United States Government by any illegal, unconstitutional means."

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MARGINAL NOTES

I. Sanior Pars. Mediaeval Canon Law has developed a curious theory of evaluating votes, that of the maior vel sanior pars. Usually the majority (maior pars) would decide an issue. A minority, however, had nevertheless some chance to defeat a nonsensical decision if that minority proved to be the "saner part" (sanior pars). The votes, in that case, were not counted but, so to speak, "weighed." They were weighed according to the prestige and authority (auctoritas) of the voter, his intellectual faculties (ratio), his moral qualities (pietas), the purity of his motives (bonus zelus), and the fairness of his judgment (aequitas).

Much can be said against this principle; but had it prevailed at the meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of California on August 25, 1950, the group headed by Governor Warren, including Admiral Nimitz and President Sproul, would probably have carried the day by auctoritas as the "saner part." Since, however, votes in a democracy are not weighed but counted, which has its great advantages too, the faction headed by Regent John Francis Neylan decided the issue. Thirty-one professors were ousted by a 12‑10 majority, thus reversing the decision of Governor Warren's 10-9 majority in July. Had Admiral Nimitz been present at the August meeting, the majority would have been 12-11; for he wired he would have cast his vote with Governor Warren--as it were, with the "saner part."[2]

If "sanity" in the sense of Canon Law has anything to do with logic and consistency, those qualities were heavily clouded on many occasions at the August meeting. "Gentlemen, that does not make sense," said Governor Warren. "While it is inconsistent, I shall vote for it," declared President Sproul. "You are asking me to vote for a motion now that reaffirms the policy that I have voted against," complained Regent Steinhart. The lack of "sanity," it seems, was very obvious to the "saner part."

Communism Not the Issue.

For fifteen months the oath controversy had been carried on. The battle-cry was to purge the University of California of Communists. Various methods were subsequently applied to implement that clearly expressed purpose: a Loyalty Oath, a treacherous "Equivalent," a Faculty declaration expressing itself against the appointment of Communists, finally a statement inserted in the annual "contract" and, as an alternative for that statement, a hearing of non-signers before a jury of equals, the Faculty Committee on Privilege and Tenure.

As might have been expected, Communists have not been found on the Faculty, either among the non-signers or, so far, among the signers. Thus, when Regent Heller, at the August meeting, repeatedly asked the crucial question whether "it is understood by all Regents that there is no accusation of Communism made against any of the thirty-two that we are about to fire," even the most adamant members of the majority group agreed or kept silent. Regent Neylan himself, on another occasion, could even heckle: "Does anybody here want to--Regent Heller, or anybody--want to charge them with being Communists?"

"Obedience."

The matter of Communism and the fiction of screening Communists, which so long had befogged the fundamental issue as well as public opinion, was quite cynically dismissed from further discussion. "Whether they are Communists or not is now a secondary matter," said Regent Ehrmann. "No Regent has ever accused any member of the Faculty of being a Communist," echoed Regent McFadden. "There is no longer an impugning of those individuals as Communists," summarized Regent Haggerty of Governor Warren's group and, clarifying the stand of his opponents, continued: "It is now a matter of demanding obedience to the law of the Regents."

"Obedience" of the Faculty to the Board of Regents, "discipline," and "conformity" to the Regents became the new issue. Governor Warren described it correctly: "We are discharging these people because they are recalcitrant and won't conform."

Conformity.

Vice-President and Provost emeritus Monroe E. Deutsch, in a letter to the Regents of July 17th, has emphasized that the issue rests on the one point: "Is he a Communist?" On August 25th, however, the issue changed completely when the old charge, or implicit accusation, of "Suspect of Communism without self-signed affidavit" had to be dropped. Instead a new charge was introduced, "Non-conformity to the Board of Regents." The crime of being one of a non-conforming minority was considered grave enough to justify dismissal without trial or hearing, to justify the suspension of the autonomous rights of the Faculty and the elimination of jury trial before the Faculty Committee on Privilege and Tenure.

"Conformity" To Whom?

What the Regents demanded was conformity in view of a highly controversial matter. The Presidents of practically all the great Universities of the country, also Phi Beta Kappa, the American Association of University Professors and innumerable other highly respectable individuals and associations have publicly taken a stand with Governor Warren and his group. But to conform with The Board of Regents of the University of California is a next to impossible task. The present Board of Regents is hopelessly divided, and since the split goes right down the middle, the Board's working ability may be seriously questioned. The Board is ready to reverse its decisions monthly, and the August decision may be challenged in October or November. There will, perforce, always be non-conformity to either one or the other faction. In that situation it is extremely difficult to tell what "conformity" means, or to tell why conformity to Governor Warren and the sanior pars should be deemed morally so inferior to conformity with Regent Neylan's one-vote majority group that it furnishes a reason for dismissal.

Conformity in Controversial Matters a Condition of Appointment.

To what, so we may ask, does that see-saw nonsense of everchanging one-vote majorities lead except to destruction? A professor can be legally dismissed for "gross incompetence," which is not the issue here, or for “moral turpitude." Are we now urged to acknowledge that non0-conformity to Regent Neylan (= conformity to Governor Warren) is "moral turpitude"? The Regents' August majority had obviously not thought the matter to its proper conclusion when they decided to make, implicitly, conformity a condition of appointment, and non-conformity a reason for dismissal. Nor have they, with regard to "conformity in a matter of conscience," drawn the ultimate consequence of their verdict which would suggest that only a conscience forced to conformity with some faction, or otherwise violated and perjured, promises to produce the ideal teacher and to guarantee the proper amount of "impartial scholarship and free pursuit of truth" which the Regents themselves demand. Are we going to introduce again subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles or to some political faith as a requisite to taking a university degree? Do we need again a "University Test Act" to abolish such outmoded customs? Experience has shown long ago that a university forced to conform to a factional orthodoxy is in danger to end in sterility.

Legislature.

Things become rather involved for the majority group once they themselves have admitted that "Communism is not the issue." In fact, it has never been the true issue. It has been suggested that without a loyalty oath the legislature would threaten to refuse to vote the budget or that, were the non-signers retained, the legislature would not appropriate money for the University. To others this suggestion appeared as highly improbable (Max Radin in The American Scholar, July, 1950).

Propaganda.

The real issue was, from the very beginning, an irresponsible exploitation of the true and genuine dangers of Communism for propaganda purposes of politicians with, unfortunately, the University of California as the victim. The "purge" of the University, resulting in the detection of not a single Communist on the Faculty, was not important. What was important was the advertising campaign, the propaganda value of the purging activity itself--important, obviously, for political, and not academic, purposes although the statutes wisely demand that the University be kept clear from political interference and machinations.

To anyone who has lived through the bitter experience of Hitler Germany, the use and abuse of the Communist menace for political and propaganda purposes is a familiar device. It leads, whether so contemplated or not, almost automatically to the establishment of absolute power, to totalitarian management and the demand for unconditional obedience in the name of anti-Communism. It leads, which is worse, to fictitious "victories" over Communism and entails a dangerous and frivolous underestimation of the true power and genuine danger of Communism.

Naïveté

The non-signers, it has been said repeatedly, are distinguished by "a naïve ignorance of what Communism is" because as scholars they are "inexperienced in the ways of the world." This is the old pattern of lampooning the "professor" of bygone times. It is an insult to the historian whose knowledge of the ideological conflicts of the past gives him a rather clear insight into the ideological conflicts of the present. The argument of "naiveté" moreover, has a rather stupid ring in the ears of one who has lived in Communist occupied cities and areas and has actively fought against, and been wounded by, those very radicals about whom allegedly he knows nothing. The matter which indeed is often not recognized distinctly enough is what generation of vipers can originate from "White Battalions," once they don the brown shirt.

On the other hand, talking about naïveté, is there anything more naïve than the belief of those Regents allegedly "experienced in the ways of the world" that by means of tom-fooleries and mummeries a danger so grave as Communism can effectively be fought? "Children are to be deceived with toys, men with oaths" (Plutarch).

II. Religious Scruples and Conscience. At the August meeting some Regents made statements to the effect that the hearings before the Committee on Privilege and Tenure were intended only for non-signers whose religious scruples made them conscientious objectors. Utterly inaccurate though these statements are with regard to the general purpose of both the hearings and the Committee, they imply a fallacy worth exposing.

Conscience is not the private property of any particular denomination. It is inter-denominational, and its violation is painful no matter whether that conscience belongs to a Lutheran or Roman Catholic, to a Quaker or Unitarian, or even to a scholar who may claim to have a professional conscience. It is obvious that the scholar's conscience, though non-denominational, is as "religious" as the professional conscience of the judge and the minister; and it should be equally obvious that it is his conscience which makes the scholar what he is, and that to act according to his professional conscience is indeed the function of the University professor.

A Debate.

Functions and rights of the university professor were the subject of a somewhat heated debate at the same August meeting of the Regents. The discussion, mainly between Regent Ehrman and Governor Warren, is so crucial and the clash of opinions so illuminates the general problem that some rather lengthy excerpts from the transcript are warranted here. The argument pivoted around the question whether the analogy of a legal case--MacAlister vs. Baker--as relevant to the case of the thirty-one professors.

Regent Ehrman: I want to point out that it seems to me . . . that there is this point of distinction: Firstly, the professors, employees, or whoever they are, recommended under the President's motion to be accepted for employment, are not officers, in any sense of the word, of the university. They are employees. . . . In the second place, it seems to me that if we assume that they have been employed, what does that mean? Do they have any vested rights to the position? It merely means that they have the right to enjoy the salary for the year . . .

They [the dismissed professors] would be entitled to their salary, and that is all, if they had a vested right in the appointment, which I doubt very much because they are merely employees of the Board of Regents and they are not officers . . . The Baker case refers to people who are entitled to a public office. It has no reference whatsoever to people who are employed.

If this doctrine of the Baker case applied to the university, it would mean that a man who was employed as a gardener on the grounds, a janitor in the buildings, would have a vested right to the office. I cannot see [that], whether a man is employed in one capacity, such as I have used for purpose of illustration, [or is] employed as a professor or an instructor, that there is any distinction between them.

Governor Warren: Regent Ehrman, as far as I am concerned, I am of the opinion that whether these people are public officers, or whether they are executing a public trust, is a distinction without difference. We recognize that these people are performing important public functions. That is the reason we are having this discussion today; and the importance of the appointment of a President of this University, or a Vice President, or a Dean, or the head of a department, or a professor or even an instructor, it seems to me, is of equal importance to the public as the appointment or election of any other public officer; and I don't believe that we have the right to consider here that these people don't rise to the dignity of a City Councilman or a constable or other public officers who come under this rule. They are performing a public function just as much as I am as Governor of this State. And I believe that their rights and their prerogatives and their status before this Board should be treated with equal solemnity and consideration.

We cannot, I think, be grateful enough to Governor Warren for his fine defense of the status of the profession. But our thanks should go also to Regent Ehrman, who, being himself the founder of a professorship (and not a janitorship) on the Berkeley campus, has certainly given many a thought to the academic profession and to whose generosity the present writer personally is greatly indebted. We are grateful to him for having made his views so perfectly clear.

Janitors and Professors.

Regent Ehrman said he cannot see that there is any distinction between janitors and professors, since both are "employees of the Regents." With all due respect for the duties of gardeners and janitors, we may ask whether there is really no difference between their occupation and that of university professors. Are they really undistinguishable and equally exposed to being "hired and fired" at the will of the Regents?

Unions.

One great difference between janitors and professors stood out very distinctly during the recent strike of the janitors at the University of California: the janitors, who have no annual contracts and may claim "permanent tenure," are unionized and therefore can press their demands against the Regents almost to the last penny. But there is no union of university professors to back up even the loudest outcries and most unanimous protests of a Faculty. Nor, for that matter, is there a union of judges or of ministers and priests.

Why have unions of those professions not been formed? Is that omission due only to the naiveté of those professions, or are they too conceited to join organized labor? Why should not the judges form the Honorable Union of Court Employees, and the ministers establish themselves as the Holy Union of Church Employees, followed by the professors' Enlightened Union of University Employees? Why is it so absurd to visualize the Supreme Court justices picketing their court, bishops picketing their churches, and professors picketing their university?

The answer is very simple: because the judges are the Court, the ministers together with the faithful are the Church, and the professors together with the students are the University. Unlike ushers, sextons, and beadles, the judges, ministers, and professors are not Court employees, Church employees, and University employees. They are those institutions themselves, and therefore they have certain prerogative rights to and within their institutions which ushers, sextons, and beadles or janitors do not have.

Accessory and Essence.

Moreover, the comparison between gardener-janitor and professor is misleading because it is fundamentally wrong. A university could exist without gardeners and janitors, who are accessory; it could hardly exist without professors and students, who are essential, actually the only essential part of a university. According to the oldest definitions, which run back to the thirteenth century, "The University" is the universitas magistrorum et scholarium, "The Body Corporate of Masters and Students." Teachers and students together are the University regardless of the existence of gardens and buildings, or care-takers of gardens and buildings. One can envisage a university without a single gardener or janitor, without a single secretary, and even--a bewitching mirage--without a single Regent. The constant and essence of a university is always the body of teachers and students.

Why Not a Professors' Union?

This answers also the question why there is not a union of university professors. The professors, hitherto, did not need to form a protecting professional organization because, similar to judges and ministers, they--were a corporation anyhow--a corporation which in this case was identical with the body corporate which they served, the University. This again distinguishes them from gardeners and janitors whose unions are bodies which do not coincide with the corporation they happen to serve.

Vested Rights.

For the same reason the professors have certain vested rights in the institution which they both serve and constitute. They have certain rights which gardeners and janitors, who serve the comforts of the institution, have not. The fact that gardeners and janitors as well as professors receive their wages from the same public purse and through the agency of the same trustees of the People of California does not reflect upon absence or presence of vested rights.

Employees of the Regents.

Above all, it would be putting the cart before the horse to maintain that the professors do not serve the University but serve the Regents, and that consequently they are not officers of the University but employees of the Regents. Has a spectre or has megalomania wrought havoc with proportions and contours? Does the University exist for the sake of the Regents, or do the Regents exist for the sake of the University, of a public institution constituted by the body of teachers and students?

In a private business corporation it might be said that the Board of Directors constitutes also the corporation especially if the Directors are also the shareholders. In a State University, however, the Regents are neither shareholders nor paid directors. They are unpaid trustees. They are the intermediaries and administrative agents of something they are not identical with--the People of California--and for something they are not identical with either the body of teachers and students. These agents honoris causa can never claim, nor do they normally claim, to constitute "The University." They are those who, along with many other functions, have to protect the University against attacks and keep unrest from their "ward." They are, in that respect, the police of the University. But where, except in the caricature of the Prussian "Police State," does the police constitute The State or The People?

Public Institution.

Moreover, the University of California is a public institution. The professors serve a public institution. They receive their salaries mainly from public funds, from the People, if through the agency of the People's trustees, called Regents. And they receive their salaries in fulfilment of public functions or of functions for the public, but not to fulfil under a private contract private functions for the private benefit of the Regents. They do not serve a private whim of "employers" who might hire and fire, for their private stage, actors and clowns as they please. The Faculty members are, one way or other, public officers, or officers of a public institution and public trust, but not the private employees of the Regents. And therefore the right to "hire and fire" those officers cannot be an undisputed prerogative of the Regents alone. "What touches all shall be approved by all." The Faculty will not accept an inept teacher forced upon them by the Regents without or against Faculty approval, and they cannot allow the dismissal of an able teacher without or against Faculty approval, because either action would mean an infringement from without upon their own body corporate; and because, to quote President Harold E. Stassen, "the faculty is the judge of its own membership" (San Francisco Chronide, October 7, 1950)

Business Corporation.

The great confusion of these complicated relations, which need clarification by the law courts, apparently derives from the superficial similarity of modern business corporations with the very much older corporational structure of a University. Governor Warren has obviously felt those difficulties when, distinguishing also between employees and Faculty members," he defined the University of California very ably as "a quasi-public institution with practically all the attributes of a private corporation organized for a public purpose" (Oakland Tribune, Sept. 22, 1950). In the case of an ordinary business corporation the hiring and firing, within the limitations of the law of contracts, is indeed completely at the will of the Directors. If, for example, the manager of the gambling casino "Cal-Neva," on the Nevada-California border, sees fit to require all his employees--"dealers, pit bosses, waitresses, janitors, and even the nude model who poses in a champagne glass for the customers" (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1950, p. 2)--to take an anti-Communist loyalty oath before a Reno judge, telling them in a truly Regential fashion "Sign or get out," he is acting doubtless within his legal competences. However, the "employer-employee" relationship does not apply to the teaching staff of a university, least of all to that of a State University.

Dangers.

In fact the application of business analogies to a University has some socially serious aspects, and I wish to state most emphatically that the radicals among the Regents, who are trying to undercut the traditional structure and the prerogatives of the University of California, are playing a very dangerous game damaging what politically they wish to preserve.

The hitherto unquestioned University structure would be overthrown completely if indeed the professors were, by definition, nothing but "employees" of the Regents and the Regents their "bosses." For only so long as certain vested and autonomous rights of the body of teachers and students are respected can the professors refrain from forming a "union." If the professors are nothing but hirable lecture machines and firable employees, who, above anything else, have to obey and conform, regardless of their qualities as men and as teachers; that is, if really they are hired on a business basis, then they will have to organize in a business fashion and establish their union. Actually, the present intransigent and shortsighted policy of the anything but conservative radicals among the Regents of the University of California might very easily touch off a general movement aiming at unionizing the American university professors. But from that moment onward the aspect of American universities would change profoundly. Mass decapitations of professors such as have taken place monthly in California's academic abattoir (157 + 6 + 31), would unfailingly lead to statewide, perhaps nationwide, refusal to work on the part of the unionized professors, and little opportunity would be left to any Regents to exercise absolute power.

However that may be, the Regents' effort to make teaching a trade is entirely revolutionary. Should they succeed, their inconsiderate experiment would violently transform one of the few remaining conservative institutions, the University, and it would uproot one of the few relatively conservative sectors of modern society, that of university professors.

Trade and Profession.

It is obvious that in the argument about janitor and professor some fundamentals have been hopelessly confounded, above all the difference between a trade and a profession.  

The janitor is paid by the hour. He has his shift during which he is held to perform certain well described duties. His work is clearly defined and definable. Once he has performed his daily duties and has left off work he is a completely free man. Additional work is neither expected nor demanded, except by special agreement and with special pay.

The defined duties of a university professor are few. His classwork at the University of California may consist in five hours of lecturing and in a seminar of two hours. In addition, the professor will have to do some committee work, sit on examination boards, have conferences with his students during office hours, guide their work for advanced degrees, and may run through the catalogues of second-hand book dealers to order books for the University Library. If we except the registered classwork, his duties are anything but clearly defined. Nor is he paid merely for the seven hours during which he meets his classes and seminars. The amount of time and effort he wishes to invest in preparing for his classes, is left to his own judgment. Whether it takes him two days to prepare a single lecture, or two hours, or two minutes or less, is left to him. Whether he revises his lectures by integrating his own research work and that of others, or simply rehashes some textbook, is left to him. Whether he devotes much or little of time and care to the M.A. and Ph.D. theses of his pupils, is his own business. It is left to him whether he indulges in research work from which his classes would profit and his university would reap fame. And it is left to him how much time and energy he puts into his committee work, into his conferences with students, or into the aggrandizement of his university's library. In short, it is entirely up to him how much of his life, of his private life, he is willing to dedicate to the University to which he belongs and which he, too, constitutes. The exact amount of time he invests is bound by no regulations. It is purely a matter of Passion, of Love, and of Conscience.

And here there emerges yet another difference between janitor and professor: you can buy labor, but you cannot buy Passion and Love nor the scholarly Conscience. For once there is something that is not marketable, and the poorly informed Regents should know that by trying to make our conscience venal they kill our passion and love for our institution because we cease to be one with it.

Conscience.

Through the sheer existence of this conscience, which is undefined and undefinable, the scholar ceases also to be an "employee" of the Regents in any sense whatsoever of business language. It is through his conscience that he acquires vested rights in his office. By this conscience, which is inseparable from his genuine duties as member of the academic body corporate, he is clearly distinguished from gardener and janitor. That almost criminal superficiality of the comparison between janitor and professor breaks down at this point. Trade and profession are not identical. A profession, as the word itself would suggest, is based upon conscience, and not upon working hours as in the case of modern trades, or on Time in general. In this respect the scholar resembles the judge whose duties are not disposed of by sitting in court, or the clergyman whose duties are not exhaustively described by the mention of ritual performances and sermons on Sundays. The conscience is actually the essence of the scholars "office" (officium) which he is entrusted with and through which he becomes truly a "public trust."

From whatever angle one may look at the academic profession, it is always, in addition to passion and love, the conscience which makes the scholar a scholar. And it is through the fact that his whole being depends on his conscience that he manifests his connection with the legal profession as well as with the clergy from which, in the high Middle Ages, the academic profession descended and the scholar borrowed his gown. Unlike the employee, the professor dedicates, in the way of research, even most of his private life to the body corporate of the University of which he is the integral part. His impetus is his conscience. Therefore, if you demoralize that scholarly conscience, that love and passion for research and for teaching, and replace all that in a business fashion by strictly defined working hours, prescribed by the "employer," you have ruined, together with the academic profession, also the University! Only the culpably naïve ignorance on the part of malevolent Regents, not knowing what a scholar's life and being is, could venture to break the backbone of the academic profession--that is, its conscience in order to "save the University," nay, --to dismiss a scholar for that very conscience which makes him a scholar.

Folly, like the spirit, bloweth where it listeth. All that stupid destruction of genuine values and valuable human beings is carried on for the sake of a hysterical demand the utter folly of which has been attested to nationwide; it has been attested to also by the professors' new company, the gambling-house nude, who takes her loyalty oath to pose in a champagne glass for the customers. Folly knows no limit. We can only pray with Erasmus: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis!

Why Reduce the Status of Professors?

There remains one last question to be answered: For what reasons did the majority of the Board of Regents try to reduce dignity and self-respect of the Faculty of the University of California and thereby of the academic profession at large? Why did those Regents try to blur the lines of distinction prevailing between janitor and Faculty member and deprive the professor of his vested rights in his own body corporate? After all, those gentlemen have been entrusted with preserving the University, not with revolutionizing and radicalizing it. They as guardians should have been eager to defend their ward and to raise the reputation of the academic profession to the highest possible level instead of doing their best to whittle down the self-respect of the Faculty.

The answer, again, is simple: that strange attitude of the majority Regents is the direct outcome of their efforts to enforce high-handedly a special loyalty oath. In order to enforce that oath and to establish that unspeakable alternative "Sign or be fired" two main obstacles had to be removed. The first was constitutional; the second referred to tenure.

The Constitutional Obstacle.

The additional oath "is not required by law." It may be even unlawful. The Constitution of the State of California prescribes the taking of an oath to the Constitution of the United States and the State of California, and then continues:

"And no other oath, declaration or test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust" (Article XX, Section 3).

Whether or not an additional oath could be imposed upon the Faculty at all, would depend upon whether or not the term "office or public trust" applied to the members of the Faculty of the State University. It would be, writes Max Radin, "a question of chopping and paring and refining and adjusting verbal symbols. But surely no one who can read can doubt the general purpose of the constitutional inhibition."

On August 25th, Governor Warren held that it was a distinction without difference whether Faculty members are public officers or executing a public trust, but he maintained unambiguously that they "are performing a public function just as much as I am as Governor of the State." He finally claimed that "their rights and prerogatives and their status before this Board should be treated with equal solemnity and consideration”--that is, "equal" to that of public officers.

Governor Warren's opinion was not shared by his opponents. The loyalty oath, as demanded before April 21, 1950, could be enforced without violation of the Constitution only if the professors had no public status whatsoever and if they were like hired hands private "employees" of the Regents, which "merely means that they have the right to enjoy the salary for the year."

The constitutional issue explains sufficiently the endeavors to reduce the status of the professors from men having public functions to private employees. Once the Faculty member has become the private employee of the Board, hired like the nude in the champagne glass for entertaining the customers, probably students, those Regents were free to demand any additional oath, any declaration or color of hair they desired. The Constitution, at least, with its impractical inhibition, no longer barred the way 

It is not quite impossible that the law courts, at one time or another, will make a decision concerning the status of professors in accord with the view of Governor Warren, meaning that the Constitution (Article XX, Section 3) actually does apply to professors. In that case the Regents would have coerced, by means of economic threats and moral pressure, hundreds of Faculty members to commit an unlawful act. Aggravating would be the fact that acquiescence to the demand of the Regents on the part of those Faculty members might appear as an equivalent of the money paid to a blackmailer for not revealing a discreditable secret, that is, for not divulging the discreditable slander intimating that the non-signer was a Communist.

Tenure.

The loyalty oath, after it had haunted the Faculty for eleven months, was rescinded on April 21, 1950. It was replaced by the so-called "contractual equivalent." During that Spring campaign the second obstacle, the problem of tenure--though always active--came to the fore.

Where tenure is violated, academic freedom goes. If a professor is not sure of his permanent tenure, if he has to fear dismissal for unorthodox opinions or non-conformity, he loses his freedom of action and speech. The same is true with regard to the judge who loses his conscientious freedom and freedom of prejudice if his judgment were impaired by the fear of losing his job. Hence, there can be no true academic freedom unless tenure is assured.

The oath as well as its contractual equivalent could be imposed, and the Faculty forced into submission, only if the rules of tenure were flouted. So long as the rules of tenure prevailed the alternative "Sign or be fired" was meaningless because it could not be put into effect. Therefore tenure had to disappear: a tampering with the so-called contracts began and, at the same time, the Faculty Committee on Privilege and Tenure was frozen out.

Rules of Tenure.

At all American Universities it is customary to recognize a claim to tenure, in one way or another, of all professors and associate professors, including usually also other instructors who "have attained tenure by reason of length of service" (Manual of the Academic Senate). Many universities, including State Universities, acknowledge explicitly a right to tenure. The State University of Iowa, for example, declares quite specifically in the letter of appointment how many years an instructor or assistant professor has been appointed for; and in the case of an associate or full professor the formula reads: "with tenure extending continuously" (Appendix A).

At the University of California the legal right to tenure seems to have been kept vague, nor was it ever so clearly defined as in Mid-Western and Eastern Universities. Nevertheless there were certain rules of tenure. The Manual of the Academic Senate makes it perfectly clear that professors and associate professors possessed a claim to tenure, and that others acquired tenure through length of service, that is, after eight years. The Instructions to Appointment and Promotion Committees, valid in 1943, made it no less clear that tenure was respected for the grade of associate professor and above that rank. The instructions read:

"The Committee should bear in mind that normally the University will terminate appointments of assistant professors who do not qualify for promotion after two terms (six years) of service in that grade. Associate professors, however, who do not qualify for further promotion will be retained indefinitely [!] in that grade."

The Committees were held to consider promotion to the grade of associate professor most carefully because that rank implied tenure.

Accordingly, in 1940, the Vice-President of the University, Provost Dr. Deutsch, acting for the President, could congratulate a Faculty member on the promotion to associate professorship, and write: "This not only marks an advance in itself but places you on the permanent status which is so important in the academic career" (Appendix E). Similarly, the ninth year of appointment to one of the lower grades of the academic hierarchy was considered of special importance because after eight years a Faculty member acquired tenure "by length of service."

Nothing would be easier than to assemble more material evidencing the existence of tenure de facto. The Manual of the Academic Senate reproduces a Senate resolution to the effect that the tenure members of the Faculty are understood to be appointed "continuously during good behavior and efficient service." This rule, valid since 1899, was laid down, at the latest, in 1919. It was adopted by the Academic Senate in 1920, and was re-adopted in 1939. The rules of tenure have not been challenged by the Regents and have been generally observed for thirty years or more. There was, to say the least, a "tacit understanding" according to which tenure existed and was observed even though it was not expressed in unambiguous legal terms. However, a "tacit understanding" is as binding among honest men as a legal stipulation; and if a "tacit understanding" remains uncontradicted by either party over a period of thirty years or more, there accrues a moral obligation and an obligation in equity to observe that understanding which is hardly less binding than a legally stipulated obligation.

The Faculty, therefore, confident in the fairness and loyalty of the Board of Regents could rightly assume that in view of tenure they were just as secure, and certainly not worse off, than their equals at the other great Universities of the country.

Painful Awakening.

It was, under those circumstances, a most painful awakening for most professors when, at the meeting of the Academic Senate on April 22, 1950, a furious and indignant Faculty was told quite bluntly by President Sproul that no Faculty member on the University of California's eight campuses enjoyed any rights of tenure whatsoever. The President declared that even professors and associate professors were appointed for one year only and no more.

In other words, to enforce the oath or its equivalent by threat of summary dismissal the Regents had to abolish a, perhaps not legally codified, but morally existing right to tenure guaranteed by custom, tradition, and by certain rulings which had not been contested, or had even been agreed to, by the Regents over a long period, and which were rightly considered a powerful obligation on the part of the Regents. But what are moral obligations! Did not Regent Giannini even wish to organize against the Faculty a gang of "20th century vigilantes" and, contemning the courts, take the law in his own hands 

Contracts.

The Faculty now realized that it was unprotected against any arbitrary action on the part of the Regents. Nor did it take its members very long to learn what the new concept of "non-tenure" was like.

Until May, 1950, the Faculty members of putative "tenure status" received annually a salary acceptance form which they had to sign. It read:

"At the annual meeting of The Regents of the University of California, your salary for the year ending June 30, 1950, as Professor of . . . was fixed at $ . . ." (Appendix B).

This traditional form was changed surreptitiously. The new forms, distributed at the height of the oath controversy, in May, 1950, and now containing the anti-Communist statement, as well as the most recent forms for the year 1950-51, showed the following text:

"This is to notify you that you have been appointed Professor of . . . for the period July 1, 1950, to June 30, 1951, with a salary at the rate of $ . . . per annum" (Appendix D).

The Confidence-Trick.

This new contract form appears as a masterpiece in the art of prestidigitation. While the eyes of the Faculty members receiving that new form were fixed, sadly perhaps and certainly with disgust, on the obnoxious loyalty statement, very few noticed that the true trick was pulled, and the genuine venom found, in the preamble. And very few noticed that they were signing not only a most unpleasant document, but that actually they were signing away their claims to tenure. By acknowledging that they were appointed for the well defined period "July 1 to June 30" with a salary rated explicitly per annum they had put in jeopardy their tenure. Now even the fiction of tenure, that "tacit understanding," had gone. The Faculty had been taken in by a skilfully managed confidence-trick.

But what had actually happened? For a mediaeval historian it is daily bread to study, compare, and handle forged, falsified, garbled, or tampered documents. It did not take the present writer very long to discover the model draft or prototype of the new substitute "contract" and to unravel, on that occasion, the threads of a texture the woof of which was mala fides, "ill faith."

Here are the results of that little investigation in the field of modern diplomatics.

Two Forms.

The University of California had two letter forms which, at the beginning of the academic year, went out to members of the Faculty. We may call them the "Appointment Form" (Appendix C) and the "Salary Acceptance Form" (Appendix B). The Appointment Form referred to Lecturers, Visiting Professors, with slight variations to Teaching Assistants, and perhaps to others as well who were appointed--as President Sproul termed it repeatedly on August 25th --"on a strictly annual basis" or for one semester only. The Salary Acceptance Form referred to those who were termed by President Sproul as having "Senate status" including tenure, but usually excluding instructors and assistant professors.

For those Senate members with tenure the form was used which began: "At the annual meeting, etc." It seems to have been the form originally used for all Faculty members; around 1914 even a young assistant professor would receive that letter. It is a simple notification about the salary for the coming year; it contained neither the word "appoint" nor "reappoint" and took continuity for granted.

For the strictly annual appointees, very reasonably, the "Appointment Form" was used. It began with the words: "This is to notify you that you have been appointed, etc." It fixed the salary at a rate "per annum" and clearly defined the period "July 1, 19 . . . to June 30, 19 . . ., only."

The difference of forms made it perfectly obvious that there was also a difference of matter and substance involved and expressed. The Salary Acceptance Form ("Your salary for the year ending June 30, 1950, was fixed at . . .") did not imply an appointment, even less a completely new appointment. As mentioned before, it notified a person permanently attached to the Faculty of the salary he could expect for the coming year. The form itself implied one thing only: Tenure.

Tampering with Contracts.

When the disruption of tenure, nay, of the semblance of tenure, became imperative in order to enforce the "Sign-or-be-fired" command of the Regential firing squads, the Salary Acceptance Form disappeared completely, and there is no hope for its reappearance under the present régime. Now all Faculty members were treated equally, for now all of them received the Appointment Form hitherto used exclusively for "strictly annual" appointments. So far as the contracts were concerned there was no difference between a professor of 30 years service and a new Teaching Assistant, and only the janitors formed an exception because they receive no annual contracts but enjoy permanent tenure during good behavior and efficient service. The "Appointment Forms" were generally sent out to tenure members of the Faculty after the so-called "Compromise" of April 21, 1950, although in individual cases they had been foisted upon Faculty members throughout the year of the oath. One professor, thinking it was a clerical error, actually returned the "Appointment Form" and asked for the normal "Salary Acceptance Form."

With those manipulations the former "tacit understanding," based upon mutual confidence, fairness, and good faith, to the effect that tenure existed and was respected, was radically wiped out. And with the old "Form" there went confidence, fairness, and good faith.

I do not know whether it is legal to change contracts without notifying the contracting party of the intention--an impossible act as to union members---or whether it is considered fair to substitute for a good contract an inferior one, which cuts out all the prerogatives and privileges of the contracting party, in the hope "to get away with it." However this may be, it is a clear case in which unbridled absolutistic might bends and deceives moral right. Although I am sure that very much stronger words would stand a libel suit and would be appropriate to characterize that kind of procedure it may suffice here to call it an act of misdemeanor and a breach of faith, perpetrated against unsuspecting honest men now delivered, hopelessly and without protection, to arbitrary will, economic pressure, and implicit bribery.

Conditioned Appointments.

This, however, is not yet the whole story. Tenure had been, in the golden age of the University, unconditioned "during good behavior and efficient service." With the new and strictly annual appointments, as many conditions could be inserted into the contracts as pleased the Regents. It was evidently to make possible the insertion of new conditions that the formulae were changed. It would not have made sense to inform a professor politely that his salary for the coming year was fixed at a certain rate, and thereafter to add some novel conditions. They could not be enforced and would have been irrelevant in the face of tenure. It was, therefore, for the sake of inserting the anti-Communist loyalty clause that the normal Salary Acceptance Form was found inappropriate and was supplanted by the Appointment Form. It proved necessary to stress henceforth the fact that every professor, tenure professors included, was quite newly appointed at the beginning of every academic year. Only if tenure was disrupted, a conditional reappointment became possible, allowing also for the insertion of the clause:

"I understand that the foregoing statement is a condition of my employment (!) and a consideration of payment of my salary."

It will be noticed that the word "employment" now has crept into the appointment form.

The disruption of tenure, as expressed by the new forms, was an act indispensable for the introduction of the new pattern of “conditioned appointment," conditioned not by the character and professional qualification of the appointee, but by his obedience to the Board of Regents, by his conformity in matters of conscience, and by his willingness to make a completely empty political statement the voidness and wantonness of which have been stressed in recent months--so as to mention only two names--by General Eisenhower and by Archbishop John J. Mitty of San Francisco.

Constitutional Oath.

The sabotage of the idea of tenure, inseparable from the new form of "contract," may be gathered from yet another monstrosity contrived by the creative genius of those concerned and responsible. For almost ten years the custom has been observed to let every newly appointed member of the Faculty take the standard oath as prescribed for officers and public trusts by the Constitution of the State of California:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my office, according to the best of my ability."

Whether the taking of this oath would mean by implication that the university professor is considered an officer or public trust, is of minor importance here. Important is the fact that this oath had to be taken once and for all at the time of the first appointment to the Faculty. According to the newly introduced practice, however, this oath has to be taken annually.

Repetition of Oaths.

It would be easy to argue that the repetition of an oath that binds man for all times, is superfluous and damaging; that an oath either binds for all times or not at all, but that it never expires; and that the annual repetition does not duplicate or triplicate the effects of an oath, but devaluates the very institution of the oath which is a sacred thing. Such arguments would be completely beside the point. The barbarous monstrosity of an annually repeated oath is merely another symptom of the sabotage of tenure. It stresses the fact that the professors are appointed for one year only, "on a strictly annual basis"; that by the end of the academic year the office expires so radically that the whole procedure of initiation has to be repeated all over again; and that there originates every year, from June 30th to the date of signing the new contract and repeating the constitutional oath, a vacuum or interregnum during which the whole Faculty is technically dismissed without being as yet reappointed. The professors are, for that period, without a job.

Interregna.

It goes without saying that the legal consequences of such interregna are unpredictable, especially when good faith does not prevail. Since every professor would be supposed to know that his connection with the University expires radically, and legally is severed, by June 30th of every year, the Regents would not even be obliged to tell the man that they do not intend to reappoint him which is exactly what happened to the group of non-signers whose salaries were withheld without notification. 

Escheat.

The professor's reappointment thus becomes a "charity" on the part of merciful Regents, and it depends upon the arbitrary will of those Lords whether or not they are inclined to invest a man again. What it really amounts to is, in feudal terminology, an annual "escheat" of office and tenure. The professor forfeits annually office and tenure--normally the punishment for felony--because both lapse to the feudal lord, in this case to the Regents as the self-assurned Lords of the University. If it pleases those feudal Lords, a new infeudation and investiture may take place at the beginning of every academic year, including homage and oath of fealty, to which soon some feudal "incidents" may be added such as a dagger for every Lord as "Relief" on investiture day and an ass on New Year's.

At any rate, the new procedure as introduced in 1950 A.D. by Regents and Administration of the University of California indicates the intention of those responsible for the new arrangement to abolish completely the remnants of continuity and of tenure.

Committee on Privilege and Tenure.

The final step taken by the majority group of the Regents falls in perfectly with, and follows logically from, (as we now may say) the "intention" to do away with tenure, and therewith implicitly with academic freedom: the Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure, too, had to be killed or, at least, be frozen out and condemned to inactivity. What do the Regents need a Committee on Privilege and Tenure for if "Tenure" is gone and the professor's chief privilege consists in being fired! Why resort to a clumsy cross-questioning if a little double-cross, or two, can do the job?

Meaning of the Committee.

What does the Committee on Privilege and Tenure mean to a Faculty? Dean Prosser, of the U.C. Law School, at Berkeley, has answered that question (San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1950):

"They [the rules of tenure] provide that no professor may be discharged without specific charges made and proved against him, at an open hearing at which other members of the Faculty sit in judgment.

They are the professor's right to due process and his day in court. They are his only protection against false accusations, which are all too easily made, against malice, against politics, and against other men who merely want his job. To a professor they are the most important things in a university be cause they mean the security for which he has given up all other things in life . . .

Whether the Regents intend it or not . . ., it places the Regents in the position of asserting the arbitrary power to fire from the University of California any man they please with no hearing at all.

If the authority exists to discharge a professor because he will not sign this oath on demand, then it exists to fire him because he will not sign an oath that he is not a Catholic, not a Mason, not a consumer of beer. Once the only barrier that stands in the way of arbitrary discharge is swept away, there is no place to stop."

Committee Disregarded.

That only barrier has now been swept away. The Committee on Privilege and Tenure has been disregarded by the Regents, and not only once. The findings of the Committee did not impress those gentlemen. They paid no attention to the results of the Committee's work of many weeks. They accepted the scandalous recommendation of President Sproul to fire six members of the Academic Senate. They rejected the guilt-conscious recommendation of President Sproul to retain the thirty-one members of the Senate. And they decreed on their own authority that no Faculty member was a Communist, regardless of the recommendation or non-recommendation of the Committee on Privilege and Tenure.

There followed the new double-cross: overriding customs, statutes, regulations, and standing orders governing appointment, tenure, and dismissal, they fired the thirty-one members of the Academic Senate, not because they were Communists, but for disobedience and non-conformity to the slender majority of the Board of Regents. Those Senate members have been discharged "without specific charges made and proved against them, at an open hearing at which other members of the Faculty sit in judgment." They have been discharged without even being given an opportunity to defend themselves against the false charge of "disobedience," itself a slander detracting from the character of those dismissed and seriously affecting and damaging their reputation as educators. They have been discharged, arbitrarily and capriciously, on the sole authority of the Regents who, by eliminating the authority of the Committee on Privilege and Tenure to hear a charge, have violated also the fundamental right of citizens to due process and trial by jury.

Why I Did Not Sign.

It will be easy now to realize why I did not sign either the oath or its "contractual" equivalent. These are the reasons which I mentioned also before the Committee on Privilege and Tenure:

Because I refused to act under duress, work under the threat of supervision by vigilantes, yield to compulsion, intimidation, and economic pressure, or even respond to an alternative comparable to an intellectual and moral hold-up;

Because I refused to buy and sell my academic position and scholarly dignity at the price of my conviction and conscience;

Because I was shocked by, and disgusted with, the lack of honesty, decency, fairness, and the tendency to pettifogging and trickery which those responsible for the procedure against the Faculty have shown from beginning to end.

In addition to all that there was, I admit, some professional curiosity. I had the historian's curiosity to see how far the Regents were willing to go; whether really they would fire the non-signers against law and reason; and who, in the long run, would prove the stronger--Regents or Faculty. Should it really be possible in a free country that a small ruling group, split in itself, is entitled to enslave the will of 2000 mature scholars; to disregard, override, and rule against the articulate will of the repeatedly protesting Faculties of the world's largest University; to refuse to listen to the tortured voices of hundreds of honest men under their guard, and thus to act in an "un-Christian, un-democratic, and un-American" fashion (Professor E. V. Laitone: San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 1950)?

Conclusions.

Theodor Mommsen, with his great human wisdom and with the historian's insight into human affairs and public relations, once wrote: "It is far easier to dethrone a Cabinet Minister than it is to dismiss a full professor." What he alluded to were those vested rights of the professor which cannot easily be attacked or ignored by those in power without assailing, at the same time, certain mental rights of society. This was true in imperial Germany; it is true also in this country, and the Regents of the University of California will have to learn a lesson, whether they like it or not.

A policy which starts from a fundamentally false human premise is doomed a priori. It is a bungling over the most elementary rules in the primer of statesmanship to place mature men before an impossible alternative--"Sign or be fired", with no way out, because such action unfailingly hits back. The moment they chose to decree that childish alternative the Regents, not the Faculty members, had lost their freedom of action. The Regents themselves now were faced with the impossible alternative of either carrying through their threat or losing face and authority. They did not realize that they had lost face and authority by creating that alternative, and that the best they could do was to regain face and authority by stepping back. And there were several occasions on which the Regents could have stepped back in an honorable fashion, the last time on August 25th. They chose to "save face"--what a face!--instead of saving the University, and sought, like other weak people before them, to compensate for lack of wisdom and truly human experience by unjustified violence and brutal power.

It cannot be pleasant for the Regents of the University of California to find--broadcast over the whole nation and beyond--their dignified corporation serving as a school model of "political stupidity." Professor R. E. Fitch, of the Pacific School of Religion, at Berkeley, defined stupidity "as a talent for not doing what you set out to do, and for doing what you want to avoid to do."

"According to this definition (said Dr. Fitch) the loyalty oath at the University of California is a classic instance of political stupidity. It is supposed to keep Communists off the University Faculty. There is no clear evidence that it has done so. It is not supposed to expel loyal and patriotic Americans from the Faculty. There is evidence that it has done just that" (Berkeley Gazette, September 15, 1950).

Similar judgments have been passed on the Regents from many sides and by scores of prominent citizens. It all reflects unfavorably on the University of California itself.

It probably was this humanly weak disposition of the majority group of the Regents which the late Dixon Wecter, my colleague in the Berkeley History Department for far too short a time, may have had in mind and alluded to when, in a public speech at Sacramento, in connection with the California Centenary celebration, he said:

"As a native Texan perhaps I feel this peril with peculiar alarm having witnessed the lasting havoc wrought upon the largest institution in that state by a group of regents determined to trim down the university to a size they can comprehend."

Those perils have been outlined also by the President of Hiram College, quoted by Professor Ralph H. Lutz, at Stanford University. (Western College Association, Proceedings, Spring Meeting, April 1, 1950, p. 22) as follows:

"It is a truism that no stream rises higher than its source. Likewise it is true that no college rises above the level of its trustees. . . . This is apparent when trustees invade the prerogative of any administrative officer or faculty member, or interfere with the established program or educational policy of the college."

It was exactly one of those inroads into the prerogative of the Faculty which has brought about the present scandals at the University of California. The State University is far too precious an institution to become instrumental to the political ambitions and aims of its Regents or others. It was the idea of the founders of this University when they entrusted it to the care of a body of Regents to keep that institution out of the whirlpools of daily shifting political constellations, of ephemeral political campaigns, electoral or ideological, and of political hysteria. Now the trustees themselves have dragged the University into the eddies of political contingencies. The University regulations demand that Faculty members "always respect, and not exploit, their University connection" by making it a platform for unqualified propaganda. The same restraint has to be expected on the part of the Regents. They are the natural protectors of academic freedom; but in their endeavor to protect academic freedom they have destroyed it when they attacked the right of tenure.

Other State Universities are contemplating bills to their legislatures defining academic freedom, making acts restricting such freedom unlawful, and providing penalties for violating academic freedom (Appendix F). Whether it would prove useful to prepare a similar step in the present case is a question that shall not be discussed here. But unless the Regents give certain guarantees concerning tenure and the strict observation of the right of tenure, which includes academic freedom, there will be no peace between the Faculty and the Board of Regents, and unpredictable damage will continue to be done to one of the hitherto most democratic State Universities of the country.

[2] Whenever, in the following pages, I am talking about the "Regents" without qualification, I am always referring to the August majority, thus excluding the sanior pars.

---

APPENDIX A

By the authority of the State Board of Education
THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
has appointed  

                                                                         

to the rank of
PROFESSOR
with tenure extending continuously.

 

                                                                                   

President

---

  APPENDIX B

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Berkeley 4, California
Oct 3 1949

ROBERT M. UNDERHILL
Secretary and Treasurer

My dear Professor X:

At the annual budget meeting of The Regents of the University of California, your salary for the year ending June 30, 1950, as Professor of                             

was fixed at $                           

subject to deductions as provided in the Retiring Annuities System adopted by The Regents of the University of California and in force at the date hereof, and Sate and Federal tax deductions.

Will you kindly sign the enclosed letter and return it to me before the first of the next month.

Yours very truly,
R.M. UNDERHILL

---

APPENDIX C

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Berkeley 4, California Oct 3 1949

ROBERT M. UNDERHILL Secretary and Treasurer

My dear Mr. X:

 

This is to notify you that you have been appointed Lecturer in                                for the period July 1, 1944 to June 30, 1945, with salary at the rate of $                              per annum.

Appointment is subject to such deductions as may be required under the Retiring Annuities System or the State Employees' Retirement Act, and State and Federal tax deductions.

Before this appointment can become effective it will be necessary for you to sign and return the enclosed letter of acceptance. Please do so at the earliest possible date.

Yours very truly, W.W. HOLSTROM Assistant Secretary of the Regents

---

APPENDIX D

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Office of the Secretary and Treasurer

May 1, 1950

 

ROBERT M. UNDERHILL                                                           240 ADMINISTRATION BUILDING Secretary and Treasurer                                                                      Berkeley 4, California GEORGE D. MALLORY Assistant Secretary and Treasurer MARJORIE J. WOOLMAN Assistant Secretary GEORGE F. TAYLOR Assistant Secretary

 

My dear Professor X:

This is to notify you that you have been appointed Professor of                              for the period of July 1, 1949 to June 30, 1950 with the salary at the rate of $                             per annum. 

Salary is subject to such deductions as may be required under the Retiring Annuities Systems or the State Employees' Retirement Act, and State and Federal tax deductions.

It will be necessary for you to sign and return the enclosed letter of acceptance of the position and salary in the form prescribed by the Regents on April 21, 1950; and subscribe and swear to the enclosed oath before a notary public.

Yours very truly, GEORGE D. MALLORY Assistant Secretary

---

APPENDIX E

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

Dr X:                                                                                                                            June 14, 1940 Faculty Club Campus 

My dear Dr. X

Let me congratulate you most warmly on your promotion to the grade of Associate Professor. This not only marks an advance in itself but places you on the permanent status which is so important in the academic career. Such a decision resting upon the careful study by various academic bodies should be a source of greatest satisfaction to you. My warmest of congratulations and all good wishes for the future.

Cordially, MONROE E. DEUTSCH Vice-President and Provost

---

APPENDIX F

Proposed House or Senate Bill

A Bill

For an Act Defining Academic Freedom for Members of the Teaching Profession; Making Acts Restricting Such Freedom Unlawful; and Providing Penalties.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of                                                   

Section 1. Definitions. As used in this Act, the phrase Academic Freedom shall mean the right of a member of the teaching profession, including any person employed as a teacher in any public school, college or institution of the State of [                          ] supported by public funds of this state, to engage in all lawful civic activities acknowledged to inhere in the civic duties, responsibilities, and privileges of the private citizen, and to belong to, any lawful political party, labor union, or other lawful organization of teachers in this, state or any subdivision thereof.

Section 2. Certain Acts Prohibited. Any person who shall interfere with the Academic Freedom of any teacher as above defined, or who shall intimidate or threaten said teacher by reason of said teacher's exercise of said Academic Freedom, or who shall in any way impede said teacher in the exercise of said freedom, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Any member of a school board or of the State Board of Education, officer or employee of the State Department of Education, President or officer of any State School, College or Institution, Superintendent or other administrative officer of any public high school or elementary school, who shall individually or as a member of said board, interfere with the exercise of Academic Freedom as above defined, or who shall make any teacher's employment or discharge contingent upon the exercise or the non-exercise of said teacher's Academic Freedom as above defined, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Section 3. Certain Contracts Unlawful. Any contract of employment between a teacher and any employing authority, school or board of this state, which makes it a condition of said employment that said teacher surrender his Academic Freedom as herein defined, is unlawful, null and void, insofar as it provides such a condition for employment.

Section 4. Penalties. Any person found guilty of a misdemeanor for violating the provisions of this act as defined in Section 2 hereof shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for not less than thirty days and not more than ninety days, and by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars and not more than five hundred dollars.

Section 5. Repealing Conflicting Acts. All acts or parts of acts in conflict herewith are hereby repealed.

---

Source: Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. The Fundamental Issue: Documents and Marginal Notes on the University of California Loyalty Oath (San Francisco: Parker Printing Co., 1950).

Online Economics Courses--Video, etc.

Mark Thoma: http://www.youtube.com/user/markthoma

Josh Hausman writes:

Dear Brad,

Berkeley is a clear leader in this area. Most schools have nothing online except course syllabi and perhaps some problem sets. In almost every google search I tried, http://econ161.berkeley.edu/macro_online/, http://delong.typepad.com/berkeley_econ_101b_spring/, and/or Berkeley webcasts http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ came up at the top of the results....

[W]hat some other schools do have:

1. MIT OpenCourseWare: A disappointment. None of the economics courses on the site have any audio or video of lectures. And most of the course materials are a few years old. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Economics/index.htm

1. Yale's 'Open Yale' site may be better than MIT's OpenCourseWare. There are two economics courses online: Shiller's Yale course on financial markets. It has a very complete website with audio and video of lectures: http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/financial-markets; Ben Polak's course on game theory: http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/game-theory/contents/sessions.html.

1. Audio or video of Timothy Taylor lecturing on economic history is available for purchase here: http://www.teach12.com/storex/professor.aspx?ID=24.

2. From the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, a video game that teaches introductory microeconomics (students can receive credit for successfully playing the game!): http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/econ201/. Also see this article about the game: http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2006/09/ECON-201-A-University-Economics-Course-as-an-Online-Computer-Game.aspx?Page=4&p=1. And Online Economics College Courses at UNC Greensboro.

3. 'World Lecture Hall', out of UT Austin, has links to dozens of courses with online materials. But only two of the economics courses (both micro) seem to have video attached: http://web.austin.utexas.edu/wlh/browse.cfm.

4. Utah State has five economics courses online with audio of each lecture: http://ocw.usu.edu/courselist.

5. I like how the AEA combined video and slides in these webcasts: http://www.aeaweb.org/webcasts/assa2009.php.

Tyler and Alex's Big Adventure

It is a Principles of Economics book. I want one:

Marginal Revolution: How our macro book differs: Alex already has suggested some points related to economic growth; I'll add to that:

1. We make macroeconomics as intuitive as microeconomics.  Our macro is based on the idea of incentives, consistently applied.

2. We cover the current financial crisis.

3. We show a simple -- yes truly simple -- way of teaching the Solow Growth model.  I call it Really Simple Solow.  But if that's not simple enough for you, you can skip it and just call it Long-Run Aggregate Supply.

4. We offer equal and balanced coverage of neo Keynesian and real business cycle models.  Most other texts emphasize one or the other.

5. We offer an intuitive way of teaching real business cycle theory.  No intertemporal optimization representative agent models.  Can you explain to your grandmother why swine flu has been bad for the Mexican economy?  If so, you also think that real business cycle theory can be taught simply and intuitively.

6. Our version of the AD-AS model actually makes sense.  We don't mash together real and nominal interest rates into the same diagram, we don't treat the Taylor rule as an assumption for deriving an AD curve, and we do the analysis consistently in terms of dynamic rates of change.  (On the latter point for instance it is the rate of inflation which influences economic behavior, not the absolute level of prices per se, yet so often "p" rather than "pdot" goes on the vertical axis.) The AD-AS analysis covers both neo Keynesian and RBC models and can be done with three simple curves in one simple graph.  There is only one (consistent) model which needs to be taught for presenting the major macro ideas.

Alex and I vowed we would not stop working on this book until macro ceased to be the "ugly sister" of the micro/macro pair.  Modern Principles: Macroeconomics is the result of that Auseinandersetzung.

Cosma Shalizi Takes Me to Probability School. Or Is It Philosophy School?

After I accuse Cosma Shalizi of waterboarding the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bayes, he responds:

Cosma Shalizi: Cosma Shalizi Waterboards the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bayes: Hoisted from Comments: I am relieved to learn that the true model of the world is always already known to every competent statistical inquirer, since otherwise it could not be given positive prior weight. I would ask, however, when our model set became complete? And further, when did people stop using models which they knew were at best convenient but tractable approximations?

Less snarkily, these two examples are out-takes from what I like to think is a fairly serious paper on Bayesian non-parametrics with mis-specified models and dependent data:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.1342

described less technically here:

http://bactra.org/weblog/601.html

The examples were simple sanity-checks on my theorems, and I posted them because they amused me.

Thus Cosma Shalizi takes me to probability school. Or perhaps he takes me to philosophy school. It is not clear.

Let me give an example simpler than one of the ones Cosma Shalizi gave. Rosencrantz is flipping a coin. Guildenstern is watching and is calling out "heads" or "tails." It is a fair coin--half the time it comes up heads, and half the time it comes up tails. Before Rosencrantz starts flipping, Guildenstern's beliefs about what the next flip of the coin will bring are accurate: he thinks that there is a 50% chance that the next flip of the coin will be heads and a 50% chance that the next flip of the coin will be tails.

Because Guildenstern starts with correct beliefs about what the odds are for the next flip of the coin, you might think that there is nothing for Guildenstern to "learn"--that as Rosencrantz flips, Guildenstern will retain his initial belief that the odds are 50-50 that the next flip of the coin will be heads or tails. But there is a problem: Guildenstern is not a human being but rather is a Bayesian AI, and Guildenstern is certain that the coin is biased: it thinks that there is a 50% chance it is dealing with a coin that lands heads 3/4 of the time, and a 50% chance it is dealing with a coin that lands tails 3/4 of the time, and its initial prediction that the next flip is equally likely to be heads or tails depends on that initial 50-50 split.

What happens as Rosencrantz starts flipping? The likelihood ratio for an H-biased as opposed to a T-biased coin is 3^z, where z=h-t and h is the number of heads and t is the number of tails flipped, which means that the posterior probabilities assigned by Guildenstern after h heads and t tails are:

P(H | z) = 3^z/(3^z + 1)

P(T | z) = 1/(3^z + 1)

And the estimate that the next flip will be heads is:

(3/4)P(H | z) + (1/4)P(T | z) = (3^z+1 + 1)/(4(3^z + 1))

If the number of heads and tails are even, then Guildenstern (correctly) forecasts that the odds on the next flip are 50-50. If the n flips Rosencrantz has performed have seen two more heads than tails--no matter how big n is--then Guildenstern is 90% certain that it is dealing with an H-biased coin and thinks that the chance the next flip will be heads is 70%. If the n flips Rosencrantz has performed have seen ten more heads than tails--again, no matter how many flips n there have been--Guildenstern is 99.9983% sure that it is dealing with an H-biased coin and will forecast the odds of a head on the next flip at 74.9999%.

How will Guildenstern's beliefs behave over time? Well, this passage from Shalizi's more complex example applies:

Three-Toed Sloth: The sufficient statistic z [for P(H)]... follows an unbiased random walk, meaning that as n grows it tends to get further and further away from [zero], with a typical size growing roughly like n^1/2. It does keep returning to the origin, at intervals dictated by the arc sine law, but it spends more and more of its time very far away from it. The posterior estimate of the [probability of an H-biased coin thus wanders from being close to +1 to being close to [0] and back erratically, hardly ever spending time near zero, even though (from the law of large numbers) the sample mean [fraction of heads] converges to zero...

So Guildenstern spends all of its time being nearly dead certain that it is dealing with an H-biased coin or nearly dead certain that is dealing with a T-biased coin--but it switches its belief occasionally--even though there is almost surely never any statistically significant evidence for H-bias against the null hypothesis that the coin is fair and 50-50. There is an allowable set of beliefs for Guildenstern that will lead it to make the right 50-50 forecast of the odds on the next flip: if Guildenstern simply continues to believe that there is no evidence either way for H-bias or T-bias. But Guildenstern's beliefs are not those beliefs and do not converge to those beliefs: look far enough out into the future and you see that Guildenstern is almost sure either that the coin is H-biased or that the coin is T-biased, and has virtually no chance of being unsure about in which direction the bias lies.

Thus Guildenstern's processing of the data is not sensible, is not smart, is not rational, is not human--but it is Bayesian. For positive values of z, Guildenstern thinks "there are fewer heads than I would expect for an H-biased coin, but this could never come about with a T-biased coin; the coin must be H-biased: I am sure of it." A sensible agent, a smart agent, a rational agent, a human agent would think: "Hmmm. Right now I am sure that the coin is T-biased, but 100 flips ago I was sure that the coin was H-biased. I know that as I get more evidence my beliefs should be converging to the truth, but they don't seem to be converging at all. Something is wrong." But there is nothing in the Bayesian agent's little brain to allow it to reason from the failure of its beliefs to converge to the conclusion that there is something badly wrong here.

But it seems, intuitively, that Guildenstern should be able to make good forecasts. The the prior that Guildenstern started with does admit of beliefs that would lead to accurate forecasts of the next coin flip: all Guildenstern has to do is to doubt that it has enough information to decide about the bias of the coin. Indeed, Guildenstern's initial beliefs generate the right forecast of probabilities for the next flip. So, given that Guildenstern starts out with a set of beliefs that supports and generates the "right" forecast probabilities, given that there really isn't enough information to decide about the bias of the coin--there can't be, for the coin is not biased--and given that Bayesian learning is a kind of learning, why doesn't Guildenstern simply keep its original beliefs and keep making good forecasts? Shalizi has identified a case in which it seems that a Bayesian agent should be able to learn enough to make good predictions, but cannot in fact do so.

Shalizi has gotten his Bayesian AI Guildenstern to confess. But has he done so by legitimate means? Or by waterboarding? The probability theory question, or perhaps the philosophy question, is: Is this a problem for the Bayesian way of looking at the world? Or only a demonstration that torture elicits confessions?

Economics Graduate School in Barcelona

Hans-Joachim Voth:

Director's Blog: Financial Crisis Course: I am Joachim Voth, the director of the new M.Sc. in International Trade, Finance and Development at UPF-BGSE. This blog will keep current and prospective students updated with news and reflections. I'll also try to give people a taste of what (intellectual) life is like down here by the Med.

It looks like he is getting into the business of training monetary-financial-trade-accounting technocrats for the twenty-first century.

More Marshall Sahlins Blogging...

An interesting discussion going on at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/08/more-milton-fri.html It fails, I think, to distinguish between the four arguments that might be made against the establishment of the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman Institute:

1. The MFI will produce not good intellectual work but instead propaganda for a powerful and exploitative interest group--think of the Heritage Foundation, or Stanford's Hoover Institution. This is my objection to the MFI.

2. Even if the MFI follows the academic norms of scholarly discourse, such an organization is inherently an enemy of humanity: the questions that define the disciplines of classical, neoclassical, and liberal economics have answers that are oppressive, hence these disciplines should not be allowed to expand or even tolerated but repressed and suppressed. This is, I think, Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" risen, Dracula-like, from its coffin.

3. It's fine for the economists to get more slots, but only if everybody else gets more slots too. Freezing the relative sizes of disciplines is the prime objective. This is, I think, the objection of Professors Hussein Agrama, Muzaffar Alam, Yali Amit, Clifford Ando, Leora Auslander, Ralph Austen, Lauren Berlant, Michael Bourdaghs, et al..[1]

4. The MFI is illegitimate for the same reasons that George Soros's Open Society Institute is illegitimate and that the Friedrich Engels Institute of Political Science that funded Karl Marx's work on Capital was illegitimate. This is, I think, Marshall Sahlins's objection.

As I understand it, the answer to (1) is that the University of Chicago is aware of the dangers, and will not establish a MFI with the freedom from norms of intellectual excellence and from academic procedural quallity checks found at Heritage and Hoover--but if it were to allow such a carve-out that would, I think, be a decisive argument that the MFI was a bad idea. I am confident that UC understands what has gone wrong with Hoover and Heritage, and guards against repeating those mistakes.

As I understand it, (3) is beneath contempt and unworthy of notice and discussion.

These leaves (2) and (4). What struck me as interesting about Marshall Sahlins is that I expected him to make the Marcuse argument (2), but instead he made (4)--expressly said that the Friedrich Engels Institute of Political Science was as illegitimate as the MFI would be, and that the arguments against the MFI were equally strong arguments against Soros's OSI. I understand (2), but I think that it is wrong. However, I genuinely do not understand (4).

---

[1] "In the interests of equity and balance, many of us feel that the University ought to reconsider contributing to the proposed Milton Friedman Institute, which will inevitably be a powerful magnet for scholars and donors who share a specific set of interests.... Still others believe that, given the influx of private contributions to the MFI, the University now has the opportunity to provide roughly equivalent resources for critical scholarly work that seeks out alternatives to recent economic, social, and political developments. Virtually all of us are distressed by the position the University has taken and by the process through which decisions have been made..."

More Milton Friedman Institute Blogging...

Tyler Cowen points us to University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins's denunciation and condemnation of George Soros's Open Society Institute as:

Marshall Sahlins: an exclusive rich-man's club of millionaire members entitled to special academic privileges. That sort of participation of the wealthy is discriminatory, and perhaps the most obvious clue to the ideology behind the promoters' assurances of free empirical inquiry.... [The] Institute... [is] the vanguard of an intellectual coup d'état in the academy of the same nature as the one the Chicago Boys helped pull off in Latin America.... By rendering the production of knowledge dependent on the highest financial bidders, the institute would literally transform the university into a free market in ideas — wherein those ideas backed by the most capital will be the most true. That is not intellectual diversity but academic perversity because it fundamentally subverts the disinterested pursuit and dissemination of knowledge for which universities were founded...

Marshall Sahlins also, for good measure, denounces Friedrich Engels's funding of the work of Karl Marx as illegitimate. For Engels's funds established a:

Friedrich Engels Institute for Political Science... [a] radical... approach to society and the economy... directly subsidized by private funds... an academic instrument of a certain ideology... an extremist version... that has proven to serve the welfare of the ruling elite in a number of countries at the cost of whom it may concern — notably the society in general and the poor in particular...

Forgive me if I do not find Marshall Sahlins's principle to be a neutral principle. It seems to be that wealthy philanthropists should only be allowed to fund lines of work in subdisciplines if senior anthropology professors approve.

Sahlins's true purpose, of course, is not to denounce as illegitimate either George Soros's funding of democratization efforts and scholars around the world or Friedrich Engels's funding of the work that became Capital. Sahlins's true purpose is, rather, to denounce the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman Institute. I must say that Sahlins doesn't think much of the power and robustness of his own "substantivist" ideas about economic anthropology:

[P]romoters' defense of the Milton Friedman Institute on the grounds of freedom... academic freedom, individual freedom, or free enterprise... is... a recipe for tyranny, since it would consist mainly of their ability to dominate the academy by virtue of the assets in cash and clout they command in the larger society. The Milton Friedman Institute will provide the rich and powerful with the best self-promoting ideas their money can buy... the university will be compromised by this commodification of knowledge in which a certain orthodoxy about free markets and self-serving individualism easily proves to be the highest bidder.

In fact, neither markets nor individualism of this sort are present in the majority of societies known to history and anthropology — even as the study of these societies provides an understanding of our own family existence, where the relations between goods are likewise governed by the relations between persons. Yet along with much else, such understandings of economy and society are destined to be buried by the behemoth Friedman Institute, whose so-called scientific work... is committed to the elimination of all such alternative forms of the human condition...

I must admit I never got much out of the work of Marshall Sahlins...

Sahlins's claims http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/Sahlins.pdf that hunter-gatherers lived in "the original affluent society" where all their wants were easily satisfied seemed to me a dishonest evasion of the fact that many people in all societies want to see their grandchildren grow up--and relatively few hunter-gatherers do. Sahlins's claims that it was "the market-industrial system [which] institutes scarcity, in a manner completely without parallel... [because where] all livelihoods dependon getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity..." seemed to indicate a total, willful, and culpable ignorance of practically all of the non-market settled agricultural societies of the past ten thousand years.

And it had always seemed to me that Gananath Obeyeseke had a good point in his debate with Sahlins: Obeyeseke maintained that British insistance that the Hawai'ians regarded Captain James Cook as a living avatar of a God had little to do with Hawai'ians imposing their myths about Lono on Captain Cook. It had, he said, more to do with the British imposing on the Hawai'ians their myths about how the British acquisition of technological knowledge had made them "like God":

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying... of the tree of knowledge... thou shalt not eat of it.... And the serpent said unto the woman: 'Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God...

Tyler Cowen Directs Us to John Cochrane

John Cochrane has things to say about many of his colleagues at the University of Chicago. As far as polemic goes, I don't think I will ever see a better one:

Comments on the Milton Friedman Institute Protest letter:

As usual, academics need to waste two paragraphs before getting to the point, which starts in the first bullet. To really enjoy this delicious prose you have to first read it all in one place.   * Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image. The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive. Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population, leading to the weakening of a number of struggling local economies in the service of globalized capital, and many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of “market democracy.”    Yes, there are people left on the planet who write and think this way, and no, I’m not making this up. Let’s read this more closely and try to figure out what it means.  

Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image.   If you’re wondering “what’s their objection?”, “how does a MFI hurt them?” you now have the answer.  Translated, “when we go to fashionable lefty cocktail parties in Venezuela, it’s embarrassing to admit who signs our paychecks.” Interestingly, the hundred people who signed this didn’t have the guts even to say “we,” referring to some nebulous “they” as the subject of the sentence.  Let’s read this literally: “We don’t really mind at all if there’s a MFI on campus, but some of our other colleagues, who are too shy to sign this letter, find it all too embarrassing to admit where they work.” If this is the reason for organizing a big protest perhaps someone has too much time on their hands.   Global south   I’ll just pick on this one as a stand-in for all the jargon in this letter.  What does this oxymoron mean, and why do the letter writers use it?  We used to say what we meant, “poor countries. ” That became unfashionable, in part because poverty is sometimes a bit of your own doing and not a state of pure victimhood.  So, it became polite to call dysfunctional backwaters “developing.” That was already a lie (or at best highly wishful thinking) since the whole point is that they aren’t developing.  But now bien-pensant circles don’t want to endorse “development” as a worthwhile goal anymore.   “South” – well, nice places like Australia, New Zealand and Chile are there too (at least from a curiously North-American and European-centric perspective).  So now it’s called “global south,” which though rather poor as directions for actually getting anywhere, identifies the speaker as the caring sort of person who always uses the politically correct word.    The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades…   Notice the interesting voice of the verb. Let’s call it the “accusatory passive.” “Has been put in place...” By who, I (or any decent writer) would want to know?  Unnamed dark forces are at work.   Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population... weakening … struggling local economies   I can think of lots of words to describe what’s going on in, say, China and India, as well as what happened previously to countries that adopted the “neoliberal global order” like Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Billions of people are leading dramatically freer, healthier, longer and more prosperous lives than they were a generation ago.   Of course, we all face plenty of problems. I worry about environmental catastrophes, and their political, social and economic aftermath.  Many people are suffering, primarily in pockets of kleptocracy and anarchy.  Life’s pretty bleak about 5 blocks west of the University of Chicago. In my professional life, I worry about inflation, chaotic markets, and their possible death by regulation. There is a lot for thoughtful economists and social scientists to do. But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their “local economies,” trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death.   This is just the big lie theory at work. Say something often enough and people will start to believe it. It helps especially if what you say is vague and meaningless. Ok, I’ll try to be polite; a lie is deliberate and this is more like a willful disregard for the facts. Still, if you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and the [economic] opening of China and India are “negative for much of the world’s population,” you just don’t have any business being a social scientist. You don’t stand a chance of contributing something serious to the problems that we actually do face.     the service of globalized capital..   was wondering who the subject of all these passive sentences is. Now I’m beginning to get the idea. This view has a particularly dark history. I’ll give you a hint:  “Globalized capital” has names like Goldman and Sachs.    many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of 'market democracy.'   What a doozy! What can this actually mean? Given the counterpoint “market democracy” (what we live in, I presume) I suspect “democratic” here means “democratic” as in “people’s democratic republic”, i.e. the government runs everything.  Monetization is democratization; it means things are accessible to anyone, not just the politically connected. That observation was, among many other things, Milton Friedman’s genius.   Once again, the verb tenses and subjects are telling. “The substitution.” Who did this substitution? Maybe globalized capital, or the international banking conspiracy? Maybe it’s the trilateral commission.    The closing bullet point is fun as a reminder of how petty academic squabbles can be after we strip off all the big words, fancy pretentions and meaningless jargon.   * In the interests of equity and balance, many of us feel that the University ought to reconsider contributing to the proposed Milton Friedman Institute, which will inevitably be a powerful magnet for scholars and donors who share a specific set of interests and values to the exclusion of others, whether this is openly acknowledged or not.   Translation:  we publicly charge the faculty committee who put this thing together, and promise a non-partisan non-directed research institute (me included), with lying through their teeth.  This sentence adds a – well let’s be polite and call it a “factual inaccuracy.” The whole point is not “University contribution.” The whole point is to try to get private donors who see the benefits of Milton Friedman’s legacy to support economics research here.   If the writers understood the first thing about money, that it is fungible, they might understand which side of their bread is buttered.   Still others believe that, given the influx of private contributions to the MFI, the University now has the opportunity to provide roughly equivalent resources for critical scholarly work that seeks out alternatives to recent economic, social, and political developments.     Finally, we get to the point! We can get over our “distress” at admitting where we work, but what we want is to do some of our own “substitution of monetization for democratization.” And with none of the niceties about non-partisan, non-ideological, open-minded research in the Milton Friedman founding documents either – this money is reserved for people who can get the right answers and belong to the right clubs.  And we’re not planning to ask our sympathizers to pony up money either. Basically, we want the Friedman Institute money.     Virtually all of us are distressed by the position the University has taken and by the process through which decisions have been made.   And we end with good old “process.”   When you can’t really complain on the merits, you can always gum up the works by complaining about “process.” Now you know why it takes so long for a university ever to do anything.   If it’s sad to see what 101 professionally distinguished minds at the University of Chicago think about free markets at all, it is to me sadder still how atrociously written this letter is. These people devote their lives to writing on social issues, and teaching freshmen (including mine) how to think and write clearly.  Yet it’s awful.   The letter starts with two paragraphs of meaningless throat-clearing. (“This is a question of the meaning of the University’s investments, in all senses.”  What in the world does that sentence actually mean?)  I learned to delete throat-clearing in the first day of Writing 101.  It’s all written in the passive, or with vague subjects.  “Many” should not be the subject of any sentence. You should never write “has been put in place,” you should say who put something in place. You should take responsibility in your writing. Write “we,” not “many colleagues.”  The final paragraphs wander around without saying much of anything.     The content of course is worse. There isn’t even an idea here, a concrete proposition about the human condition that one can disagree with, buttress or question with facts. It just slings a bunch of jargon, most of which has a real meaning opposite to the literal. “Global South,” “neoliberal global order,” “the service of globalized capital,” “substitution of monetization for democratization.” George Orwell would be proud.   I’m not a good writer. I admire great prose, and I attempt to fill the spaces between equations of my papers with comprehensible words. But even I can recognize atrocious prose when I see it.  Really, guys and gals, if a Freshman handed this in to one of your classes, could you possibly give any grade above C- and cover it with red ink?   I was quoted as saying “drivel,” and I meant it, not as an insult but as a technically correct description of a piece of prose. We can – and should – happily disagree on all sorts of matters of fact and interpretation, clearly stated, and openly discussed. But there’s nothing here to discuss, it’s just mush. The saddest aspect of this whole sorry affair is that 100 faculty at such a distinguished institution can sign their names – and with them their intellectual reputations and their sacred honor -- to such utter drivel.   Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible.  He favored, among other things, legalizing drugs, school choice, and volunteer army. To call him or his political legacy “right wing” is simply ignorant, and I mean that also as a technically accurate description rather than an insult.  (Of course, he also has a legacy in the economics community as a first-rate researcher, which is what the MFI will do and honor.)      So here’s my question: If you’re embarrassed by this legacy, if you worry that it will tarnish the University’s reputation, just what is it that you good-thinking guys and gals have against human freedom?

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The Harvard Crimson Writes...

The Harvard Crimson writes:

Would you be free either tomorrow or Friday for an interview? If so, what time would work best for you?

I reply:

Don't know what I can say that I haven't already said:

The population of people qualified and wanting to go to elite American colleges has multiplied between five and tenfold over the past half century. During that time the University of California has scaled itself up roughly from 4,000 to 40,000 undergraduates a year. Harvard has received roughly $15 billiion or so in gifts to carry out its mission as a charitable philanthropy and yet has only managed to scale up from roughly 1200 to 1600 undergraduates a year.

As an alumnus, I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

I had a very good time as a Harvard undergraduate because I found a niche in it--Social Studies--that functioned like a small liberal arts college and because I very quickly found my way as a sophomore into the graduate economics classes (which I had the math to handle). But many others I know did not, and my years as a junior faculty member and as head tutor of economics make me think that there is an enormous disproportion between resource inputs and educational outputs. This is a place where the ethos of the senior Arts and Sciences faculty--well, I remember one dinner at one New England college where a political science professor just back from a semester visiting Harvard said that his first week there Harvey Mansfield had stopped by, looked into his office, and said: "You should close your door. If you don't, undergraduates may wander in."

I would suggest that you talk to the ex-presidents: Bok, Rudenstine, and Summers. Ask them how things looked from Massachusetts Hall over the past forty years, and why they made the choices they did. It would be interesting to hear...

Yours,

Brad DeLong

Alma Mater Blogging...

Greg Mankiw's desire to move Harvard to someplace better adapted to human life than Massachusetts was triggered by:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Time for Harvard to Move?: The Wall Street Journal reports one of the most pernicious ideas I have heard of late: "Massachusetts legislators, demonstrating a growing resentment against the wealth of elite universities in tight economic times, are studying a plan to levy a 2.5% annual tax on the portion of college endowments that exceed $1 billion. The effort takes aim at one of the primary economic engines of the state, which is home to nine universities with endowments that surpass the $1 billion level, led by Harvard University's $35 billion cache, the nation's largest.... Supporters said the proposal would raise $1.4 billion a year. Based on the most recent size of Harvard's endowment, the university would have to shell out more than $840 million annually..."

There is an important underlying issue here with respect to America's private universities...

Let me put it this way: in 1960, the University of California--then overwhelmingly UCB and UCSF and UCLA--was about four times the size of Harvard, 5000 vs. 1200 undergraduates a year, with graduate students and faculty roughly in proportion. Clark Kerr, as president of the University of California in the 1960s, took a look at space constraints in Berkeley and Westwood, took a look at the rising population of California, took a look at increasing wealth, took a look at increasing educational attainment, took a look at the increasing attractiveness of American universities to people abroad, and conclude that the number of undergraduate students who could and would want to take full advantage of a UC education was going to grow eightfold over the next fifty years. So he decided to go all-out to clone UCB and UCLA.

And he did it.

Today we have UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Sunnydale, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego which together with UCB and UCLA graduate 40,000 undergraduates a year. Quality of education at UCB and UCLA has suffered a little bit as this cloning process has diverted resources away from us--but only by a very little bit. And the other UCs are damned good--with Davis and UCSD now being, I think, equal to the flagship campuses (although we don't admit it in bureaucratic system wars). And the Cal States do an impressive job as well. And the community colleges provide remarkable educational value for the money. The high administrators of the University of California starting with Clark Kerr have an extraordinary, remarkable accomplishment to look back upon. And they should be very proud--especially as they have accomplished it in the face of declining relative levels of support from the state legislature in Sacramento.

Harvard, over the same fifty-year time span... Harvard has gone from 1200 undergraduates a year to 1600, and has done so in spite of starting with a substantial endowment and receiving $15B of private charitable gifts. Harvard does a great many things well--and I am impressed by the fact that Larry Summers's presidency seems to have had the effect of creating a large brand-new science building on every block. But it is hard to think that the production function from resources to outcomes is an efficient one or something to be particularly proud of: I think presidents Pusey, Bok, Rudenstine, Summers, and Bok again were beaten by the system. At meetings of high academic administrators Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and his ilk can hold their heads up high as proud successors to a highly capable group of administrators who made a lot of lemonade out of the lemons that they were handed, but I don't think Harvard president Faust can do the same.

Somebody last week--was it Jan de Vries? John Ellwood? Somebody else? I forget who, but it is not original to me--said that the right model for Harvard over the past century is Yugoslavia. Remember the story of the Yugoslavian socialist worker-managed firm? If you add another worker to the firm, that worker gets a pro-rata share of the firm's value added. The firm's value added has a component attributable to the firm's capital stock, a component attributable to the ideas embedded in the firm, a component attributable to the firm's market position, and a component attributable to the workers. Hire another worker, and only the last of these goes up: the first three do not, and so average compensation falls.

This means that a worker-managed firm is likely to shrink whenever it gets good news that makes it more productive--the larger is the value added due to ideas, capital, or market position, the more expensive does it become for the existing workers to replace workers who leave, let alone hire enough workers to expand. While a competitive market capitalist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by increasing employment, a Yugoslavian-model market socialist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by shrinking. On this analysis, the very success of Harvard over the past two generations together with its degree of worker management has created enormous internal pressures not to expand, the better to share out the surplus among the existing stakeholders.

If this story of Harvard-over-the-past-two-generations-as-the-socialist-Yugoslavia is correct, then a bunch of hard questions to which I do not know the answers are raised about:

• The judgment of those who have tried to satisfy their charitable impulses by giving $15B to my alma mater over the past two generations.
• The proper incentives that the government should try to present to the institution--and to those who might try to satisfy their charitable impulses in the future by adding to its endowment.
• The responsibility of alumni like myself to try to influence the future governance of the institution: corporation members like Bob Reischauer know what is going on at least as well as I do, but seem to have been unable to move the institution.
• The question of how Harvard should expand if indeed it should expand: it doesn't seem to be nearly as good as the small liberal arts colleges or even its rivals Yale and Princeton at undergraduate education (I did very well, but only because I quickly found two places--Social Studies in Hilles basement, and the graduate economics program--where Harvard was, effectively, a small college); the medical school and the biomedical complex that surrounds it appears to do very well indeed as research institutions; the public policy school seems to have been an experiment worth trying that did not fulfill Derek Bok's hopes, but that I cannot fully evaluate; few of the many people I know who went to the law school say many good words about it; et cetera.

Greg Mankiw Wants to Move Harvard

Greg Mankiw wants to move Harvard to someplace better adapted to human life than Massachusetts:

Here is what I would consider.... Harvard could create a second campus in another state. Call it Harvard South. (Put it in a better climate than Boston, and I would be one of the first faculty to volunteer for the move.) Transfer much of the endowment to Harvard South. Support Harvard North by slowly selling off land in Massachusetts. Eventually, make Harvard South the main campus, and Harvard North the satellite. If Massachusetts state lawmakers remain hostile, close Harvard North down entirely.... I have often wondered what the efficient scale of a university is and, in particular, whether it would be better to create a second Harvard with the university's wealth than to expand the first one. Maybe the Massachusetts state legislature will give the powers-that-be at Harvard an incentive to consider more radical expansion plans.

There may be a Pareto-improvement possible here. Extrapolating from how much it cost to get Tom Campbell here at Berkeley formally called the Bank of America Dean of the Haas School of Business, I am confident that it would cost relatively little--perhaps 5% of Harvard's current endowment--to get us to be willing to rename this campus the Harvard University of California at Berkeley. And while I haven't talked to department chair Hermalin or personnel chair Shannon about this, I do think their judgment would be that adverse selection problems are low enough and Harvard's standards in economics high enough that we would be willing to issue a blanket offer to its faculty (but this would not, I understand, be the case in some other fields, computer science and chemistry for example). For Greg I'd even be willing to give up my office, with its $10M view of the Golden Gate, San Francisco, and its bay from its perch 100 feet above Berkeley's faculty glade. (Although if he wants both the west and the south view, he would have to strike a deal with Maury Obstfeld.)

There is one important proviso. Harvard's administrators--everyone who works in Massachusetts Hall, University Hall, and whatever that atrocity on the south side of Harvard Square is called--would have to stay behind. Even if we had not been certain of this point before, this month's Harvard ad-hoc committee personnel decisions have fixed our resolve. I had always thought that "when they heard the news, they couldn't stop laughing" was hyperbole. But it took John Quigley five full minutes before he could say an intelligible word...

Mark Graber, John Yoo, and the Problem of Academic Evil

Law professor Mark Graber--who we last saw using Martin Luther King Day weekend to blog about how Dred Scott was rightly decided by Roger Taney, and how Taney's opinion was legally correct when it stated that no Black man had any rights that the white man was bound to respect--pokes his head out of his whatever-it-is and becomes the first man I have seen who comes to the substantive defense of John Yoo:

Balkinization: Having just excerpted the Yoo memo... let me suggest that the claims are constitutionally plausible or as plausible as most of what I read when I read legal materials.... I was no more impressed by the Roberts opinion in Parents Involved (the Seattle school district case) then the Yoo memo.

The notion that Yoo ought to be disciplined for his involvement in a criminal conspiracy also strikes me as a bit strange. I confess to thinking that both that Yoo probably knew he was facilitating torture, but that there was no conspiracy in the non-legal sense of the word.... President Bush and the Republican Party, however, repeatedly and publicly declared that their philosophy during the war on terrorism was "whatever it takes." Of course, there were occasional denials... but I suspect they were not believed or even intended to be believed.... If there is a conspiracy, we probably should arrest about 60% of the country.... [T]he Yoo memo provided constitutional justification for what may be the majoritarian constitutional understanding in the United States.... [A]s a legal matter, you could still confine conspiracy to Yoo and a few others, but there would be an awful lot of unindicted co-conspirators.... [T]he constitutional support for Yoo's position is gaining strength.... Constitutionalists who disagree had better spend more of their time explaining to their fellow citizens what is wrong with torture than suggesting the problem might be cured by better legal methods courses in the first year of law school.

I confess I don't see an argument here.

Of course, I didn't really see an argument in Graber's applause for Roger B. Taney either. If there was an argument it seemed to be: "The southern slaveholder aristocracy would never have ratified the Constitution if they had thought that its proper interpretation would ever piss them off, so the first principle of interpreting the Constitution of 1789 must be to interpet it in a way that doesn't piss the southern slaveholder aristocracy off." And this was profoundly stupid--it leads to the conclusion that no constitution can ever be interpreted to mean anything that pisses anybody off (except slaves, women, the propertyless, subsequent immigrants, etc.--all those who didn't get to vote on it--it's OK to piss them off). And this was empirically false: in the Nullification Controversy Andrew Jackson and the Democratic congress interpreted the tariff clause in a way that pissed the slaveholding aristocracy of South Carolina off mightily--and made it stick, with President Jackson reportedly swearing that if the legislature of South Carolina did not back down he would seize its leading politician and his own Vice President John C. Calhoun and hang him on the south lawn of the White House.

---

Time to hoist my earlier views of Mark Graber from the archives:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/08/law-professor-m.html

Mark Graber is back: This time it is one of the most bizarre ripping-of-quotations-from-context I have ever seen, asserting that the differences on slavery between Roger B. Taney and Abraham Lincoln were "almost trivial." In making this argument, Graber lets Lincoln speak for one single clause before silencing him and hustling him offstage:

Balkinization: A good case can be made for tearing down the bust of Roger Brooke Taney that stands in front of the city hall in Frederick.... Taney wrote the opinion for the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856)... that persons of color could not be American citizens and that slavery could not be prohibited in American territories.... While the bulldozers are rented, we might get our money’s worth and tear down all statues honoring Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln insisted he "never complained especially of the Dred Scott decision because it held that a negro could not be a citizen..."

From a contemporary perspective, the differences between Lincoln and Taney seem almost trivial. The sixteenth president opposed making persons of color citizens of Illinois, advocated federal fugitive slave laws, endorsed slaveholding in the nation’s capital, and insisted that the federal government had no power to interfere with slavery in any state in which human bondage was legal. Their only serious dispute was over whether slaveholders could take their human property to North Dakota, a place few if any slaveholders had expressed interest in settling...

Let us bring Abraham Lincoln back on stage, and let him say more than the nineteen words from his Alton speech that Graber lets him say. Here is what Lincoln said about the "almost trivial" differences between him and the anti-anti-slavery Democrats like Stephen Douglas (let along the pro-slavery Democrats like Roger Taney):

Last Joint Debate, at Alton. Mr. Lincoln's Reply. Lincoln, Abraham. 1897. Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas: Judge Douglas... says he “don’t care whether [slavery] is voted up or voted down” in the Territories. I do not care myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in slavery; but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it, because no man can logically say he don’t care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. He may say he don’t care whether an indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have, if it is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong.... You may turn over everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments, it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in [slavery].

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—-right and wrong—-throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle...

Mark Graber may think this difference is "almost trivial." I cannot find anybody else who does.

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"To Secure the Blessings of Liberty" by reiterating his claims that (i) Dred Scott v. Sanford was rightly decided, and (ii) it was Lincoln and the Republicans in the 1850s--rather than either Roger Taney with his southern power grab in 1857 or the slavemaster secessionists firing on Ft. Sumter in 1861--who broke the constitutional order set up in 1857. It's an interesting way for him to celebrate Martin Luther King holiday weekend

As you may or may not remember, I read Mark Graber's Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil as making seven claims:

1. The 1787 Constitution intended "contested constitutional questions... be settled by the bisectional coalitions."
2. The framers thus set John C. Calhoun's principle of "concurrent majorities" in the Constitutional bedrock
3. The Republicans of the 1850s, who stuck to the letter of the Constitution, refused to admit that they were undermining its spirit.
4. In Dred Scott, Roger B. Taney replaced failing the political protections of slavery provided by sectional balance in numbers of states and populations per section with legally-enforceable protections.
5. In violating the letter of the Constitution, Taney was being faithful to the spirit of the Constitution, and so was preserving it.
6. In criticizing Taney for violating the letter of the Constitution, Lincoln was being unfaithful to the spirit of the Constitution, and so was destroying it.
7. Dred Scott was rightly decided.

Claim number two, especially, struck me as simply weird. Read John C. Calhoun's Discourse. John C. Calhoun himself did not believe that his principle of concurrent majorities was part of the 1787 constitutional order. He believed that it would have been wise for the framers to have made it part of the order. He believed that the constitution should in his day be amended to make it part of the order. He believed that without this principle the country might disintegrate. But he did not believe that the North had any sort of constitutional responsibility or obligation to treat his principle of concurrent majorities as part of the 1787 constitutional order.

Mark Graber has gotten himself to the right of John C. Calhoun. This is a position painful and ludicrous for a twenty-first-century American legal academic to assume. It is a position so painful and ludicrous that it should induce any twenty-first-century American academic to undertake an agonizing reappraisal--particularly over Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

But Mark Graber doesn't. Let's turn the mike over to him:

Balkinization: [A] fundamental principle of an empirically realistic constitutional theory ought to be that constitutional bargains survive only when interpreted, however creatively, in ways that create opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation.... Of course, members of [the North] will have the luxury of knowing, as civil war wracks their country, that [the slavemasters of the South] was the party responsible for abandoning the constitution. This, however, is unlikely to reduce their casualities....

[C]onstitutional bets made by one generation... should not be enforceable against the next when the result is a sharp imbalance in the benefits... constitutions are best interpreted in ways that enable all parties... to believe that they are better off continuing to cooperate than going at matters alone (or engaging in civil war)....

I think DeLong is mistaken when he insists that northerners ratified on the basis of their belief that slavery would diminish over time (while most hoped so, the best evidence indicates that concerns with slavery were not central for most northern proponents of ratification). But even conceding the point for argument's sake, the more vital constitutional consideration is that as a political matter people are not going to pay off constitutional bets made by their ancestors when the payment requires a sacrifice of crucial interests with inadequate present payoffs.... [T]he constitutional bargain was likely to continue only if the winner, in this case the free states, did not collect. The Constitution of the United States... could survive only when all crucial parties believed that cooperative served their interests, as they presently defined their interests...

I want to make two points in response.

My first point: pacta sunt servanda. Agreements should be kept. We use analogies derived from the law and practice of private contracts in our reasoning about public moral and legal constitutional obligations. Whether it makes sense for us to use these analogies is a deep question well above my pay grade. But we do use them: it is the style of constitutional reasoning that we have. And it tells us that pacta sunt servanda: agreements should be kept.

Oftentimes prudence, empathy, the desire to make additional agreements in the future, et cetera will lead both parties to agree to renegotiate a contract when circumstances change. But that doesn't mean that a dissatisfied party has the right to unilaterally change it. In private law a dissatisfied party's options are to fulfill the terms, to breach and renegotiate, or to breach and litigate. The breach-and-renegotiate option between say, Target and a supplier of electric toothbrushes entails an acknowledgement of breach and negotiations among the parties, with mediation a welcome aid. It doesn't entail the guy who has the job of monitoring compliance--the guy driving the truck and checking in the shipment at Target's loading dock--saying "There are only 100 gross of toothbrushes here, but we'll say there are 144 gross because the original contract turns out to have been unfair."

In this analogy, Roger B. Taney in Dred Scott is not the mediator at the renegotiation. He is the truck driver checking in the shipment. He was not acting as the agent of the High Contracting Parties in their renegotiation. If he were, there would not have been such anguished cries from the free-soil north in resonse to his ruling.

My second point: Go back to how Mark Graber opens his post this Martin Luther King holiday weekend. He opens with an analogy. He sets forth what he regards as a situation capturing the key aspects relevant to Dred Scott of the evolution of the United States over 1787-1860. Here's what he says:

Suppose two tribes who have some reason to cooperate but whose members do not like each other very much ratify a constitution that grants the northern half of their territory to Tribe A and the southern part to Tribe B. Each party is rather happy with the bargain. Each believes that, in the next hundred years, climate changes are likely to enhance the value of their land and make the other tribe’s land nearly uninhabitable. As a result of this constitutional bargain, members of both tribes are able to form an army that provides for the common defense and make mutually beneficial trade agreements with other nations.

After 100 years of no apparent changes, evidence conclusively indicates that Tribe A has won the constitutional bet. The soil on the northern half of the continent is becoming increasingly fertile, while the soil of the southern half of the continent (for natural reasons) is slowly killing the members of Tribe B...

There are two parties to the constitutional contract in Mark Graber's imagination. There is Tribe A--the North. There is Tribe B--the slaveholders of the South. Notice anybody missing? Yep. There is no Tribe C--the slaves. One of the most ancient principles of any law worthy of the name is that, at some appropirate level, quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet. And the slaves of the United States America were certainly in the direct object of the verb tangit, as far as contemplated revisions of the 1787 constitutional order were concerned.

Mark Graber says that if changes in circumstances greatly disadvantage how a constitution impacts some group, that constitution should be revised and amended so that the losers should not have to pay up the full amount of the constitutional bet that they have lost. Well, there were powerful changes in circumstances from 1787 to 1860. In 1787, with the exhaustion of tobacco soils, Thomas Jefferson believed he would someday free all his slaves. In 1860m, with with the profits of cotton and sugar, Jefferson Davis was damned sure he would not free any of his. These changes in circumstances greatly, greatly disadvantaged Tribe C. Does not Graber's argument that the free-soil North should not have collected on its victorious bet from the slavemasters of the South have further consequences? Doesn't it carry with it a much stronger argument about relations between slavemasters and slaves? Doesn't it entail that the slavemasters of the South--transformed by the profits of cotton from seeing slavery as a temporary evil to seeing slavery as a permanent good--should not have collected on their victorious bet from the slaves?

But in the world of Mark Graber's imagination there is no "Tribe C." There are only Tribes A and B: only free-soil Northerners and slavemaster Southerners. The slaves have vanished. They are socially dead. They, you see, have not made a constitutional bet because they are not parties to the constitution. They are not and never can be citizens of the United States. They are not among the people who have inalienable rights. Governments are not instituted to secure their rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness: they have none. Their claim that they are among the "we the people" for whom the constitution is supposed "to secure the blessings of liberty" is null and void, if not simply laughed out of court.

We don't have to think about the impact on Tribe C. For, as Roger B. Taney wrote, African-Americans are:

beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

But I maintain the contrary. I maintain that we do have to think about Tribe C. I maintain that everybody doing politics and law in the United States--today or in the 1850s, whether Roger B. Taney or Mark Graber--ought not to pretend that Tribe C is absent from the table. Tribe C has a seat at the table, for as Abraham Lincoln said in 1858:

I agree with Judge Douglas that [the Negro] is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color--; perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man.

---

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/01/to_secure_the_b.html

Consider Mark Graber (2006), Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil. At the start of his book, Mark Graber sets out seven propositions:

1. The original Constitution of 1787 intended that "contested constitutional questions... be settled by the bisectional coalitions."
2. The framers thus set John C. Calhoun's principle of "concurrent majorities" in the Constitutional bedrock: the framers regarded it as substantively unconstitutional for legislation affecting slavery to be passed by a section-specific majority.
3. The Republicans of the 1850s, who stuck to the letter of the Constitution, refused to admit that they were undermining its spirit, which was the "original constitutional commitment to bisectionalism."
4. In Dred Scott, Roger B. Taney replaced failing the political protections of slavery provided by sectional balance in numbers of states and populations per section with legally-enforceable protections acceptable to the "Jacksonians" (who were the people who counted).
5. In violating the letter of the Constitution, Taney was being faithful to the spirit of the Constitution, and so was preserving it via his little Constitutional Moment.
6. In criticizing Taney for violating the letter of the Constitution, Lincoln was being unfaithful to the spirit of the Constitution, and so was destroying it.
7. Dred Scott was rightly decided.

For example, see pp. 4-5, 12-13:

Confident that population was moving southwestward, the persons responsible for the Constitution assumed that representation by population, the electoral college, and the three-fifths clause would ensure Southern control.... [T]he antebellum regime disintegrated when an unexpected northwestward population explosion undermined these power-sharing arrangements....

[...]

The framers expected that contested constitutional questions would be settled by the bisectional coalitions they anticipated would be elected.... The framers never considered [that]... the letter of the constitutional rules [might subvert]... the bisectional contitutional purposes underlying those rules.... [The] real debgate [in the 1850s] was whether the original constitutional commitment to bisectionalism should be modified or abandoned.... In Dred Scott the Supreme Court fostered sectional moderation by replacing the original Constitution's failing political protections for slavery with legally enforceable protections acceptable to Jacksonians.... Republicans[']... refusal to acknowledge the constitutional commitment to bisectionalism... [was] a de facto renunciation of the original constitutional understanding that slavery would never be left to the mercy of Northern majorities.... Taney was more faithful to the original Constitution [than Lincoln] when [Taney] championed policies that could be supported by Jacksonians throughout the nation...

But there is an alternative, a more conventional story: that at the original Constitutional Moment slaveholders were betting that their power would increase over time (hence the Constitution was worth ratifying even though it did not include unneeded long-run explicit protections of slavery) and those who wanted to preserve the possibility of future abolition were betting that slaveholders' power would diminish over time (hence the Constitution was worth ratifying as long as it did include dangerous long-run explicit protections of slavery). According to this more conventional story, the abolitionists won their bet and the slaveholders lost theirs. According to this more conventional story, there was nothing in the Constitution that said that slaveholders got a "do over" if they lost their bet. In this story, Roger B. Taney's little Constitutional Moment in Dred Scott was illegitimate: an effective amendment of the Constitution that did not have the overwhelming support that whatever your theory may be of "Constitutional Moments" requires.

This more conventional story seems much stronger to me than Graber's story. At least, I didn't find anything in Graber's book that seemed inconsistent with it. And on p. 101 ff, Graber appears to sound a lot like this alternative, more conventional story--the story not of a bedrock constitutional principle of concurrent majorities but of different expectations about what the future was likely to hold:

The framers thought it "wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men."... Slavery was [thus] protected by political arrangements.... [F]ramers... assumed that population increases would be greatest in the South and Southwest... [and] guarantee to the slave states the control of the House of Representatives and the executive branch necessary to secure slaveholding interests.... [T]he framers self-consciously rejected more explicit textual restraints on federal power over slavery... opposed Roger Sherman's proposal... that "no state shall without its consent be affected in its internal police."... [I]n the bill of RIghts, no slave state's representative demanded a ban on federal laws interfering with slavery....

The confidence with which the most fervent supporters of human bondage believed population was flowing southward explains their willingness to accept a mere twenty-year moratorium on federal laws banning the international slave trade.... Federalists in some Northern states and in Virginia declared that this clause [allowing the Congress to prohibit slave imports in 1808 and thereafter] doomed slavery, which required continuous importation.... Deep South representatives expected their political strength in 1808 would render unnecessary the legal protection for slavery demanded in 1787....

Certainly John C. Calhoun did not believe that the 1787 Constitution enacted his principle of "concurrent majorities." He thought that the principle of concurrent majorities was wise. He believed that it was probably necessary if the United States were to survive. He believed that the framers had made a mistake by not incorporating it--perhaps through a two-person presidency. But he was very clear in his Discourse that he did not believe that it was a bedrock principle of the pre-Civil War Constitution: he believed that the Constitution ought to be amended to enact it.

Mark Graber, in his assertion that Calhoun's concurrent majority principle--"bisectional coalitions" he calls it--was bedrock in the pre-Civil War Constitution has managed to get himself to the right of John C. Calhoun. Whenever any modern academic gets himself to the right of John C. Calhoun, it is time to check your wallet and count the spoons. Nice try.

What was really going on? Those who set up our original Constitution had lots of hopes. To create a fit instrument of government for the advance of human liberty was one. To avoid sectional strife was a second. There were a lot of others. Lots of unexpected things happened between 1787 and 1860 that caused Constitutional history to flow in unforeseen channels. Let me list four:

1. Many more people than expected voted with their feet for the institutions of the free-soil North than of the slave-soil South.
2. The coming of the cotton gin and the British industrial revolution greatly raised the value of American slaves and thus greatly increased the attachment of slaveholders to their Peculiar Institution: Thomas Jefferson wanted to emancipate his slaves; Jefferson Davis did not.
3. The existence of a written Constitution and the structure of the Supreme Court, coupled with the difficulties of formal amendment, created a situation in which by far the easiest way to amend the Constitution is to choose five justices who then have a Constitutional Moment.
4. Even after the abolition of the international slave trade in 1808, the slave population of the United States continued to increase as births to slave women outnumbered deaths, manumissions, and runaways--something few if any expected beforehand, as history teaches that slave populations do not maintain themselves.

Each of these caused American constitutional history to flow in different channels than the framers of 1787 had expected, and presumably called for some adjustment to bring the Constitution back to its intended order and purposes. So what are the principles to guide that adjustment? Which of these hopes were the bedrock principles that determine the Constitution's intended order and purposes? There is only one paragraph that tells us:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I read this paragraph and see "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" as having pride of place. Abe Lincoln thought so too. Mark Graber and Roger B. Taney have a different view. I'm happy where I am.

Cowwedge: A Dweam within a Dweam...

It looks like the seventeen-year-old's live college options are going to be Reed, Johns Hopkins, and (if he gets in off the wait list) Wesleyan. Any non-obvious information relevant to his decision would be welcome...

2008 SIEPR Economic Summit

Critical Issue Sessions and Panelists: March 7: 4:30-5:45pm....

Session II: Is Free Trade Fair Trade? * Moderator: Dixon Doll, SIEPR Board member * Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley * Alan Taylor, Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis * David Dollar, Country Director, China and Mongolia, World Bank

http://siepr.stanford.edu/SummitAgenda2008.pdf

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, 326 Galvez St., Stanford Campus

Presentable Conservatives

Jacob Levy responds to my "I say cut the Gordian knot. THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!" by saying:

Jacob T. Levy: [F]eh. Scoring points is fun and all, but the point being scored here is entirely beside the, well, point. Brad has no difficulty finding classic teaching texts for views he considers unattarctive--say, Marxism....

John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights and Robert George's Making Men Moral are major, intellectually serious statements of a social conservatism I find deeply unattractive. But for current purposes my problem is not that they're unattractive, it's that they're unteachable--pitched at too high a level, too drenched in literatures undergraduates in political theory courses won't have read, too Raz-ishly dense (and Raz is hardly teachable to undergraduatess in the first place).

Schmitt's Concept of the Political and Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy [also] provide teachable, cogent, serious statements for a position I trust Brad finds "unattractive." So does Maistre. Why is it easier to find enduring reactionary texts than enduring texts that state the basic position of conservatives in liberal democracies? That's the puzzle.

I think Jacob has already solved his own puzzle higher up in his post, where he writes:

One of the problems is that history keeps right on going--and so any book plucked from the past that was concerned with yelling "stop!" tends to date badly to any modern reader.... This is a particular problem because of race in America--no mid-20th c work is going to endure as a real, read-not-just-namechecked, classic of political thought that talks about how everything will go to hell if the South isn't allowed to remain the South.... This is a special case of Tyler [Cowen]'s depravity point--but in the context of 20th c American conservatism, an important special case. And note that Oakeshott has his own version of these problems; doesn't "Rationalism in Politics" end up feeling faintly ridiculous by the time he's talking about women's suffrage?...

Levy is happy assigning de Maistre and Schmitt because he doesn't mind that they convict themselves out of their own mouths of being Monster Raving Loonies. His problem with Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind and Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and, indeed, Oakeshott's "Rationalism and Politics" (and, indeed, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and Letters on a Regicide Peace cto the extent that one reads them not as expressions of a mood but as a call to crown the Comte de Paris at Reims next Easter) is that they too have acquired the tinge of looniness with the passage of time.

I wager that Robert George and John Finnis will seem similarly tinged with looniness in another half a generation. Had they been writing a century ago one of the "powerfully seductive and corrupting vices" that they think should be suppressed by the state with dungeon and manacle would be the idea that women have a role to play in the public sphere; had he been writing half a century ago one of the PSaCVttTSBSbtSwDaM would have been miscegenation, and votes for Negroes; but they are writing today and so they concentrate their fire on heterosexual sex outside of marriage, on--indeed--heterosexual sex "not of the reproductive kind" inside of marriage, and on homosexuals:

Source: David Paul Morris/Getty Images.

But in all likelihood history will continue to progress toward the light, homosexuality wiill become more broadly accepted, some Pope will endorse artificial birth control, and some future Jacob Levy will complain that George and Finnis are unacceptable not just becuase they are rarified but because what they claimed would cause the sky to fall came to pass, and the sky did not fall.

Conservatism and Its Absence of Contents

Jacob Levy thinks he has a problem: he cannot present conservatism attractively in his classes because there are no attractive modern conservatives:

Jacob T. Levy: Tyler Cowen... makes the insightful point that "none [of the 20th century American conservatives] have held up particularly well, mostly because they underestimated the robustness of the modern world and regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be."

It's a real problem--one I've often talked with people about in a teaching context, because there's no modern work to teach alongside Theory of Justice and Anarchy, State, and Utopia that really gets at what's interesting about Burkean or social conservatism.... The problem isn't... that the conservative temperament isn't easily reduced to programmatic philosophical works.... One of the problems is that history keeps right on going--and so any book plucked from the past that was concerned with yelling "stop!" tends to date badly to any modern reader who does not think he's already living in hell-in-a-handbasket. This is a particular problem because of race in America--no mid-20th c work is going to endure as a real, read-not-just-namechecked, classic of political thought that talks about how everything will go to hell if the South isn't allowed to remain the South.... Oakeshott has his own version of these problems; doesn't "Rationalism in Politics" end up feeling faintly ridiculous by the time he's talking about women's suffrage?...

I don't see any great answers in the comment thread yet. I guess I might say Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, but the former isn't really distinctively conservative enough and I'm not sure the latter is a classic.

I say cut the Gordian knot. THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!

You can see this most clearly if you take a close look at Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke does not believe that Tradition is to be Respected. He believes that good traditions are to be respected. When Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France makes the argument that Britons should respect the organic political tradition of English liberty that has been inherited from the past, he whispers under his breath that the only reason we should respect the Wisdom of the Ancestors is that in this particular case Burke thinks that the Ancestors--not his personal ancestors, note--were wise.

Whenever Burke thought that the inherited political traditions were not wise, the fact that they were the inherited Wisdom of the Ancestors cut no ice with him at all. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that they would conquer, torture, and rob wogs whenever and wherever they were strong enough to do so. That tradition cut no ice with Edmund Burke when he was trying to prosecute Warren Hastings. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that all power flowed to Westminster. That tradition cut no ice with Burke when he was arguing for conciliation with and a devolution of power to the American colonists. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that Ireland was to be plundered and looted for the benefit of upwardly-mobile English peers-to-be. That tradition, too, cut no ice with Burke.

Even in Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke doesn't argue that Frenchmen should build on their own political traditions--the traditions of Richelieu and Louis XIV, that is. He argues--well, let's let him talk:

Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France: We [in Britain] procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men; on account of their age; and on account of those from whom they are descended.... You [in France] might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your constitution... suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations, of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built on those old foundations. ... In your old [E]states [General] you possessed that variety of parts corresponding with the various descriptions of which your community was happily composed; you had all that combination, and all that opposition of interests, you had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe.... Through that diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views.... [B]y pressing down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have been prevented from warping and starting from their allotted places.

You had all these advantages in your antient [E]states [General].... If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom.... Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French as... a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789.... [Y]ou would not have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage....

Would it not... have been wiser to have you thought... a generous and gallant nation, long misled... by... fidelity, honour, and loyalty... that you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile disposition... [but] by a principle of public spirit, and that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be understood... that you were resolved to resume your ancient [liberties,] privileges[, and immunities]... you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth...

Burke's argument is not that France in 1789 should have followed its ancestral traditions. Burke's argument is, instead, that France in 1789 should have dug into its past until it found a moment when institutions were better than in 1788, and drawn upon that usable past in order to buttress the present revolutionary moment. This isn't an intellectual argument about how to decide what institutions are good. It is a practical-political argument about how to create good institutions and then buttress and secure them by making them facts on the ground.

What are good institutions? Burke sounds like Madison: checks-and-balances, separation of powers, rights of the subject, limitations on the state. Burke's views on what good institutions are Enlightenment views--that branch of the Enlightenment that took people as they are and politics as a science, that is, rather than the branch that took people as Rousseau hoped they might someday be and politics as the striking of an oppositional pose. Because he finds that the English past is usable as a support for his Enlightenment-driven views, Burke makes conservative arguments in Reflections. But whenever conservative arguments lead where Burke doesn't want to go--to Richelieu or Louis XIV or the plunder of Ireland or the Star Chamber or Warren Hastings or imperial centralization--Burke doesn't make them and they have no purchase on him. England's inheritance of institutions and practices is to be respected wherever it supports Burke's conception of properly-ordered liberty, and ignored wherever it does not. For Burke, conservatism is a sometimes useful rhetorical weapon, not a set of principles.

Dani Rodrik Doesn't Think Much of "Mr. Kristol"

Dani Rodrik has been waiting a long time--decades, in fact--to give William Kristol a grade:

Mr Kristol, you get a C in economics!

I think that Dani is being really generous: a C is a real gift here.

Most interesting, perhaps, is Dani's report of William Kristol's teaching methodology, which appears to have involved giving lots of unmotivated Cs to a man who is the finest political economist of my generation. It is an interesting method--but I would classify it not as a way of teaching but as an exercise in Herrschaft...