June 2009
A Leak from Iran's Interior Ministry?
From heretac:
jill ian (heretec) on Twitter: Actual Iran election results-Iran's Interior Ministry leaked the following earlier today: Mousavi 48% Karroubi 28% Ahmadinejad 13%...
Tyler Cowen also Notes that Twitter Is a Better Source of News on Iran than CNN
Marginal Revolution: Iran links
That is all...
Mitch Daniels Did Not Do His Job
Oh dear. Only 52 hours in working for National Review, and the brainrot has gotten to Reihan Salam:
The Agenda on National Review Online: Daniels for Rushmore: Like NR's Mark Hemingway, I'm a slightly fanatical admirer of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels...
One of the threads of Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty is that Mitch Daniels simply did not do his job as Bush's OMB Director. The OMB Director is the principal--indeed, the only--voice inside the White House for fiscal prudence, for trying to ensure that the money the government spends is spent well and that the resources the government raises are adequate for the spending plans the White House evolves. While he was Bush OMB Director, Daniels simply did not do his job.
Page 219:
Mitch Daniels became agitated. He blurted out, "Well, yes, but if you can't do the right thing when you're at 85 percent approval, then when can you do the right thing? I think it's time to say no." Everyone looked with surprise at Daniels--he has a way of expressing what others are thinking but don't say. Often, he'd find himself doubling back when he got an arched brow from Cheney or Rove...
And page 296:
The Commerce Secretary echoed much of what had been said.... As usual, not a real discussion, O'Neill thought as he looked over at [Mitch] Daniels.... He knew Daniels was focused on the perils of rising deficits, but it would take gumption to air those concerns in a room full of tax cut ideologues. "I think we need to balance concerns," Daniels said.... "You need to be out front on the economy, but I am concerned that this package may not do it. The budget hole is getting deeper... we are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." From across the table came glares from the entire Bush political team. Daniels paused.... "Ummmm. On balance, then, I think we need to do a [tax cut] package... accelerate the rate cuts and the double taxsation of dividends..." O'Neill looked with astonishment at Daniels... turn 180 degrees in midsentence...
Surely we can do better? Surely we can find a Republican who has (a) held high federal office and (b) actually done his job?
When Deterrence Fails! "Wuthering Heights" Version
Rohan Maitzen writes:
Musical Versions: I was recently reminded of the Kate Bush song “Wuthering Heights.” I’ve learned, through the very scientific methods of chatting with friends and reading responses to posted videos on Facebook, that the song is haunting to some, unpleasantly whiny to others, and just plain weird to still others (actually, I expect all Kate Bush songs evoke at least this wide a range of responses). As it happens, I like “Wuthering Heights”...
and he posts a youtube version.
We must, in response, climb the ladder of esalation or lose all credibility when we make threats in the future. That would be intolerale.
So we escalate. If Rohan will post the white-dress version of "Wuthering Heights," we will in retaliation post:
The Puppini Sisters:
And Placebo:
What Is Happening in Iran?
The leading news edge really is: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23iranelection
Nico Pitney:
Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising: 3:22 PM ET -- Foreign media crackdown intensifying. ABC's Jim Sciutto tweets: "police confiscated our camera and videotapes. We are shooting protests and police violence on our cell phones." Alex Hoder tweets: "NBC offices in Tehran raided, cameras and Equipment confiscated. BBC told to get out Iran immediately. Cell/internet shut down" BBC publishes editorial: "Stop the blocking now."
3:10 PM ET -- Local Iran protests? If there are Iran demonstrations/events happening in your area, we'd love to know about them: email [email protected] with a short description of what happened (300 words or so if possible) and we'll compile them for posting tomorrow. I know about several protests planned in California today, but am sure there are plenty of others out there. Let us know.
3:02 PM ET -- Taking down Ahmadinejad's website. Via emailer Nick: The anti-Ahmadinejad Twitter user @StopAhmadi, who has been posting virtually nonstop over the last few days, mounted an apparently successful effort to swarm Ahmadinejad's website and shut it down. He's now targeting Khamenei's site.
2:58 PM ET -- BBC Persia hit by "heavy electronic jamming." Via emailer Sven, AFP confirms several foreign outlets being banned from reporting, and adds: The British Broadcasting Corporation said the satellites it uses for its Persian television and radio services had been affected since Friday by "heavy electronic jamming" which had become "progressively worse." Satellite technicians had traced the interference to Iran, the BBC said. BBC Arabic television and other language services had also experienced transmission problems, the corporation said.
2:55 PM ET -- More video of violence. Whoever posted this YouTube says the man in the video was beaten to death by the police. It's unclear if that's the case, but he is certainly beaten by several officers and is left, unmoving, on the ground...
Muhammad Sahimi:
Ayatollahs Protest Election Fraud: [TEHRAN BUREAU] Mir Hossein Mousavi’s, the main reformist rival to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, letter to the important ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom, asking them to protest the fraud and declare it against Islam, has sparked protests by the ayatollahs and clerics as well.
The Association of Combatant Clerics, which consists of moderate and leftist clerics and includes such important figures as former president Mohammad Khatami, Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoiniha, and Grand Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili, issued a strongly-worded statement, calling the results of the election invalid.
Grand Ayatollah Saafi Golpaygaani, an important cleric with a large number of followers, warned about the election results and the importance that elections in Iran retain their integrity.
Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei, a progressive cleric and a confidante of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, has declared that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not the legitimate president and cooperation with him, as well as working for him, are haraam (against Islam and a great sin). He has also declared that any changes in the votes by unlawful means are also haraam. Several credible reports indicate that he has traveled to Tehran in order to participate in nationwide protests scheduled for Monday (June 18). It is said that he has planned a sit-in in some public place, in order to further protest election fraud. His website has been blocked.
Credible reports also indicate that security forces have surrounded the offices and homes of several other important ayatollahs who are believed to want to protest election fraud. Their websites cannot be accessed, and all communications with them have been cut off.
The nation is waiting to hear the views of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most important ayatollah living in Iran and the strongest clerical critic of the conservatives. He has been asked to issue a clear statement, explaining his views about the election fraud.
Mr. Khatami, who campaigned strongly for Mr. Mousavi, is also under house arrest.
Hard as it may be to believe, some people are trying to claim that the Iranian vote count may be honest.
Gordon Robison writes:
What Happened in Iran?: Broadly speaking, there seem to be three scenarios...
Scenario One: Ahmedinejad and his supporters stole the election, plain and simple. The revolutionary old guard felt threatened by the reformists so it rigged the vote to guarantee a conservative victory.... This scenario sees the outcome, in effect, as a reassertion of power by the Supreme Leader and the religious old-guard. There is, however, another way of looking at things…
Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmedinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State.... Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy.... This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country...
Scenario Three: Ahmedinejad won. Really. At moments like this it is easy to forget that Tehran is not Iran....
So was it stolen? Are we watching a coup? Or did Ahmedinejad actually win? A decent case can be made for any and all of these scenarios and it is far too soon to say how the situation on the ground is going to play out.
Robison's scenario three seems completely wrong: Robert Waldmann reports:
Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli [had] said [on] Saturday that such a[n impression of a Moussavi] lead was a misimpression based on Mr. Moussavi’s higher levels of support in the capital, and that he had less backing elsewhere,"
According to Mahsouli's ministry (same Juan Cole link) Ahmedinejad won Tehran by over 50%.
And Robert criticizes Robert Worth and Nazila Fathi of the New York Times--and Bill Keller and the others who publish them--for High Journamalism:
Robert's Stochastic thoughts: It is absolutely clear that the official vote count in the Iranian presidential election is pure fiction. However, it is official and supported by the incumbent president, the supreme leader etc. This poses a problem for reporters who risk "opinions on shape of earth differ" if they follow standard practice. How exactly does one report the demonstrable fact that someone is lying without breaking the rules of Balance ?
ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI show how. One rule is that if one appears to favor one side in an argument (because the facts are biased against the other) then you give someone on the other side the last word. In advocacy one might present argument against the conclusion one favors, but one doesn't close with such arguments. Therefore in the rare cases in which the truth is so obvious that there is no other way to achieve Balance, one can close with an implausible denial of the facts. Or, if one really really can't stand to be Balanced, one can close with a statement from a supporter of the main benificiary of the lies such as this one:
There might be some manipulation in what the government has done,” said Maliheh Afrouz, 55, a supporter of Mr. Ahmadinejad clad in a black chador. “But the other side is exaggerating, making it seem worse than it really is.
Real-Time Coyote Blogging via iPhone
Wile E. Coyote on the driveway at 7:00 AM Sunday morning...
links for 2009-06-14
A Civil Discussion of Academic Incivility
Or is it an uncivil discussion of academic civility? I cannot tell. John Holbo writes on:
and many people respond. 112 comments as of this posting...
In Which Reihan Salam Moves to a Very Bad Neighborhood Indeed
Will the Revolution Be Twitterified?
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:
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."
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.
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.
Money Laundering
Is it illegal to carry forged large-denomination Treasury bonds across national borders without declaring their putative "value"?
Italian Police Ask SEC to Authenticate Seized U.S. Treasuries: By Sonia Sirletti and John Glover: June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Italy’s financial police said they asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to authenticate U.S. government bonds found in the false bottom of a suitcase carried by two Japanese travelers attempting to cross into Switzerland.
The bonds, with a face value of more than $134 billion, are probably forgeries, Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Guardia di Finanza in Como, Italy, said today. If the notes are genuine, the pair would be the U.S. government’s fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the U.K. with $128 billion of U.S. debt and just behind Russia, which is owed $138 billion.
he seized notes include 249 securities with a face value of $500 million each and 10 additional bonds with a value of more than $1 billion, the police force said on its Web site. Such high denominations would not have existed in 1934, the purported issue date of the notes, Mecarelli said. Moreover, the “Kennedy” classification of the bonds doesn’t appear to exist, he said.
The bonds were seized in Chiasso, Italy. Mecarelli said he expects a determination from the SEC “within a few days.”
Nerd Tourism
Leila Abu-Saba sends us to Alison Chaiken's Technical Tourist's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area:
Technical Tourist: Sick of netnews? Caught up on all your blogs? You could always exercise, floss, call your mom or perform a breast self-exam. Nah. Perhaps you need:
The Technical Tourist's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area
Tour the Geysers, Calpine's geothermal generation plant in Middletown, Lake County. See giant turbines and clouds of sulfuric acid steam! The link is, ahem, optimized for a non-Mozilla browser, so you can also call toll-free (866)-GEYSERS for more information.
Visit the GM-Toyota NUMMI auto manufacturing plant in southern Fremont. There are fascinating robot welders and giant metal stampers. The tour is quite suitable for children in my unexpert opinion.
Particle accelerators are big fun. Consider an outing to the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley or the Stanford Linear Accelerator. The LBNL tour may also visit other facilities such as the National Center for Electron Microscopy, the Environmental Energy Technologies Division and the Center for Beam Physics.
For more gigantic steel structures, check out the Port of Oakland tour. Enjoy giant cranes and a boat ride too. (Thanks to Meg.) To get an even closer look at the cranes (and a fine view of San Francisco as well), walk around and have a picnic at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.
The Menlo Park branch of the USGS is a reliable source of entertainment. Every couple of years there's an Open House. In the meantime browse the quads, fault maps and satellite photos at the Earth Science Information Center, which is located in Building 3 at 345 Middlefield Road and is open Monday through Friday from 8 to 4.
Meditate on earthquakes while hiking the San Andreas Fault Trail in Palo Alto or seeing the Loma Prieta Epicenter in Forest of Nisene Marks. (I'll confess that the Nisene Marks hike is a bit dull: miles and miles of trail through dark second-growth redwood forest.) Many more earthquake-related outings are described in Geologic Trips: San Francisco and the Bay Area, which I highly recommend. Another book of interest is Geology Trails of Northern California, which I haven't yet had the chance to purchase. If you're really interested in local seismology field trips, send for the Field Trip Guidebooks from the Conferences on Earthquake Hazards in the Eastern San Francisco Bay Area that were sponsored by Cal State East Bay.
Take the ferry to Sausalito and view the San Francisco Bay Model. (Thanks to KML.)
While you're in Marin, visit the Nike Missile Base in the Headlands. (Thanks to KML.)
The Hiller Aviation Museum specializes in early helicopters which range from the admirable to the laughable. The annual Vertical Challenge should not be missed. (Thanks to KML.)
Speaking of aviation, the Moffett Field Museum is now open Weds-Sat from 10-2. Learn all about Moffett's history with lighter-than-air craft.
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is full of treasures. Besides the Visible Storage there's an excellent speaker series. (Until the interpretive material at the exhibits is expanded, this one really is for nerds only.)
The San Jose Astronomical Association will invite you to a star party. Alternatively drive up Mount Hamilton and take in the Lick Observatory. In the summer Lick has astronomical lectures and public viewing plus concerts. And the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland has free public telescope viewing every Friday and Saturday night. (Thanks to Leila.)
Arthur Frommer rates the San Francisco Cable Car Museum as "one of the top ten free attractions in the world." (Thanks to Leila.)
Take the Hazel-Atlas silica mine tour at the Black Diamond Mines in Antioch. There's also a lot of old mining equipment at Almaden Quicksilver County Park in San Jose. (Thanks to KML.)
We still haven't gotten around to visiting the Intel Museum in Santa Clara or the Exploration Center at NASA Ames in Mountain View. South San Jose hosts the Magnetic Disk Heritage Center but there's no indication when it's open.
A bit further afield, the California State Railroad Museum looks appealing. Of course you could take the remarkably scenic and comfortable Amtrak Capitol Corridor line to get there. Closer to home you can ride the Niles Canyon Railway in Fremont or the Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton. If you still have railfanning on the brain, consider the Western Railway Museum on Highway 12 between Suisun and Rio Vista. (Thanks to Mark.)
No matter how you feel about our California water politics, the acqueducts and dams are certainly an engineering marvel. The Sunol water temple is open 9 AM to 3 PM Monday through Friday. The similar Pulgas Water Temple, adjacent to the Crystal Springs Reservoir, has more reasonable hours but no longer has any water. (Thanks to Mark and, come to think of it, KML.)
The American Society for Mechanical Engineering has a Northern California Landmarks in Mechanical Engineering web site. Some of the sites can be visited in person while others just have cool photos. (Thanks to LSK.)
Visit the California Academy of Science in their temporary home at 875 Howard Street in San Francisco and be amazed by the ant colonies. The museum is open every day from 10 to 5. (Thanks to LSK.)
In the recent past I've seen advertisements for tours of the Altamont windfarm and the Cargill salt processing facility in Newark, but I can no longer find information about these excursions. Anyone?
If you care about engineering history, check out the local chapter of the Society for Industry Archeology.
If all else fails, go to Central Computer and hang out. CC employs staff who have actually used computers before.
Know of any Bay Area technical highlights that I've omitted? Have a similar web page highlighting nerdly landmarks in another urban area? Please send email.
What to Do to Help Iran: DeLong Smackdown Watch
Apropos of Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime, Daniel Davies writes:
"'Help'" appears to be a verb in the "superman conditional" tense here; as in, to simply have "help the people of Iran overthrow their corrupt regime" on your "to do" list would make a lot of sense if you were Superman, or God Almighty, but anyone else probably ought to make it a bit more specific than that. Care to make any slightly more concrete suggestions?
Good question! Anyone?
Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime
Juan Cole analyzes:
Informed Comment: Stealing the Iranian Election: Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen
It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.
Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.
It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.
Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.
Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.
The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.
I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud.... But... this... looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime. As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory. The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei... who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose. They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts. This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.
The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election. This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.... The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation. My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.
So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit....
I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be.
PS: Here's the data.... Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli: "Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)." He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent). Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent). Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent). He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent).
We Hicksian Economists Should Be Confident that We Know Something...
Looking at forthcoming U.S. Treasury bond issues:
I do understand why people who think about supply-and-demand expect this tsunami of bonds to push down the prices and push up the interest rates on Treasury bonds a lot.
The argument that it will not do so but will instead boost spending is an old argument--more than three-quarters of a century old--but it is somewhat subtle.
The fact that U.S. Treasury bond prices did not collapse the moment the magnitude of the U.S. government's 2009 and 2010 fiscal deficits became clear is the one thing that gives me substantial confidence that we Hicksian economists do actually know something about how the world really works.
A Sokratic Dialogue: Liquidity Preference, Loanable Funds, and European Hedge Funds that Fear the Collapse of U.S. Treasury Bond Prices
Meno: I haven't seen you since spring classes ended.
Adeimantos: I have been away: Paris. London. Frankfurt.
Meno: Oh. Pleasant? Interesting?
Adeimantos: Not really interesting--too jet-lagged, so I sit in my hotel room in my underwear, read the Economist and Financial Times,, and reflect on how if in my 20s I had been in a fancy hotel in central Paris with someone else paying I would have thought I was in heaven, but that now I am just tired. Thus not too pleasant either.
Meno: Middle age is a shipwreck?
Kephalos: It gets worse...
Adeimantos: However, it was somewhat lucrative: talking to European hedge funds.
Meno: And what do European hedge funds think?
Adeimantos: They look at things like this:
Then they demand that I tell them why U.S. Treasury bond prices have not already collapsed (and Treasury interest rates risen) in anticipation of this forthcoming tsunami of bond issues. Given that Treasury bonds have not yet collapsed they are very very bearish about U.S. Treasury bond prices and interest rates. Supply and demand. The supply of U.S. Treasury bonds is about to become huge, and when supply goes up price should go down.
Sokrates: But if that argument is correct, then rational profit-seeking traders should already have sold U.S. Treasury bonds and already have pushed their prices down in anticipation of the sudden increase in supply...
Meno: Are you Sokrates or Milton Friedman?
Kephalos: There are two supply-and-demand arguments that can be made here. The first is that the supply of U.S. Treasury bonds is about to jump enormously--and so by supply-and-demand the price will be low once the extra bond issues hit the market, and should be low now in anticipation of this low-price Treasury bond market equilibrium. The second is that the inverse of the price of U.S. Treasury bonds--the Treasury nominal interest rate--is the price of liquidity: the amount of interest income you forego by keeping your wealth in cash rather than in securities. According to this second argument, the supply-and-demand is the supply and demand for cash: when the supply of cash is high, the price of liquidity is low, and since the price of liquidity is the short-term Treasury interest rate the short-term Treasury interest rate should be very low.
Adeimantos: Which it is...
Kephalos: And the long-term Treasury interest rate is the average of expected short-term future Treasury interest rates. Since the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with cash and will keep flooding it with cash for the foreseeable, Treasury interest rates should be low which means Treasury bond prices should be very high--which they are--and stay high.
Adeimantos: Loanable funds vs. liquidity preference.
Sokrates: So, Kephalos, with your impeccable logic and deep wisdom derived from a long career financing expeditions to the shores of the Black Sea, you have presented us with two different supply-and-demand arguments, one saying that Treasury bond prices should be low and hence are about to collapse, and the other saying that Treasury bond prices should be high and are likely to stay more-or-less where they are for some time to come.
Meno: Which argument is right? Is the price of bonds the price that balances the supply and demand for bonds in the bond market? Or is the price of bonds the inverse of the interest rate which balances the supply and demand for cash in the money market? Both cannot be true, can they?
Adeimantos: Ah. But both arguments are true...
Meno: Why do I get the feeling that I am being cast as the dumb straight man in this dialogue?
Sokrates: Because you are a sophist and we are philosophers. We write the dialogues, and we write them to make ourselves look good so that everyone thinks that philosophers are the roxxor and sophists are lame...
Meno: What have I ever done to you?
Glaukon: Tried to take our students and their fees, perhaps?
Sokrates: And we have won. There are now departments of philosophy everywhere. But when was the last time you saw a department of sophistry?
Meno: OK. I will take up my role: Kephalos: Can you explain to me how two perfectly-coherent supply-and-demand arguments lead to opposite conclusions? And if both arguments are coherent, why do European hedge funds all believe the first?
Kephalos: I can answer the second question but not the first: European hedge funds live in the bond market and they see the supply and demand of bonds all day, so that is the market they believe is most important...
Adeimantos: That is true about European hedge funds. But, Meno, the way you have posed the issue is somewhat misleading. It is not which supply-and-demand argument is correct--for both are: the price/interest rate on Treasury bonds clears both the bond and the money market, both loanable funds and liquidity preference. It is how does the economy adjust in order to make the Treasury bond price/interest rate clear both these markets.
Meno: And I have the feeling that you are about to tell me...
Adeimantos: Let's start with an economy in equilibrium--where Treasury bond prices are such as to satisfy both loanable funds and liquidity preference, so that everyone is happy to hold the bonds given their current price and everyone is happy to hold the economy's cash supply given the current interest rate. Now suppose the Treasury issues a huge honking tranche of bonds (and Obama spends the money hiring the unemployed to give people cholesterol screenings on the street and hand out statins). Now the supply of bonds is greater than demand at current bond prices. So what happens?
Kephalos: The prices of Treasury bonds fall--interest rates rise...
Adeimantos: And what happens in the money market as interest rates rise?
Kephalos: People are no longer happy holding the economy's cash--it's too expensive; it's burning a hole in their pocket. So they start spending it faster...
Adeimantos: And as they start spending it faster?
Kephalos: This puts upward pressure on prices and employment, as businesses find that they can charge more and make hire profits and so hire more people...
Adeimantos: Incomes rise, and as incomes rise savings rise because people don't spend all of their increased incomes, do they?
Sokrates: Very true, Adeimantos.
Adeimantos: And what happens as savings rise?
Kephalos: People want to park those savings somewhere. They want to park those savings in Treasury bonds. And so demand for Treasury bonds rises...
Adeimantos: And the economy settles back at its new equilibrium, with (a) somewhat higher interest rates and (b) higher spending and income so that (c) people are happy holding the economy's cash at the current interest rates and rate of spending, and (d) people are happy holding the bonds at the current bond prices and level of income.
Kephalos: So both supply-and-demand arguments are true...
Meno: And the way that they can both be true is that there isn't just one quantity--the bond price--that adjusts to match supply and demand in the bond and the money markets...
Sokrates: But there are two quantities that adjust: the bond price and the level of spending...
Adeimantos: Yes. You have just derived things that were well-known 72 years ago. See John Hicks (1937), "Mr. Keynes and the 'Classics': A Suggested Interpretation."
Sokrates: But which adjusts more?
Adeimantos: Once again back to Hicks (1937). When the unemployment rate is high and the nominal interest rate on Treasury bonds is very very slow, adjustment comes in the form mostly of changes in spending and only slightly in changes in interest rates--the world is then "Keynesian." But when the unemployment rate is normal or low and the nominal interest rate on Treasury bonds is near its normal levels, adjustment comes in the form mostly of changes in interest rates and only slightly in changes in spending--the world is than "Classical." That's why the title of the article is "Mr. Keynes and the 'Classics'."
Meno: So when European hedge funds predict the collapse of U.S. Treasury bond prices as the new issues hit the market and ask where is the extra demand to hold all these new bonds come from, the answer is...?
Adeimantos: That even as the government issues the bonds it is also spending the money, and as the money it spends is parked in the bank accounts of the businesses the government is buying things from, the banks in which the money is parked take it and use it to buy Treasury bonds.
Meno: That sounds like sophistry...
Sokrates: You should talk...
Glaukon: Actually, it's just general equilibrium...
Meno: But is this doctrine--that the government's issuance of a fortune in bonds and spending of a fortune in money will show up primarily not as a collapse in bond prices and a spike in interest rates but as an expansion of spending--true?
Sokrates: We will see. Keynesian--or maybe I should say Hicksian--economists would say that bond prices/interest rates and spending/income levels are the two quantities that together adjust to jointly clear the bond and the money markets, to satisfy both loanable funds and liquidity preference equilibrium; that sometimes the principal movement is in interest rates; that sometimes the principal movement is in spending levels; and that right now it is likely that spending will adjust by much more than interest rates.
Adeimantos: And there is a little bit of empirical evidence that the Hicksian economists are right. Tim Fernholz http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2009&base_name=compare_and_contrast_economic sends us to Nelson Schwartz, who writes:
Europe Lags as U.S. Economy Shows Signs of Recovery - NYTimes.com: There was more evidence Thursday that the United States economy might be stabilizing, if not rebounding, even as economic reports in Europe remained gloomy. The American news — showing slight growth in retail sales and a dip in first-time jobless claims, as well as rising stocks — was not enough to end the disagreement between bulls and bears over how soon the economy would improve. But the apparent divergence of fortunes between America and Europe highlighted the different approaches to solving the financial crisis, and why some economists say the more aggressive American strategy may be working better, at least for now. It is a debate that is likely to be one of the issues dominating discussions when finance ministers from the eight largest economies meet in Italy this weekend.
Some private economists are even predicting that the American economy will resume growth in the fourth quarter, while Europe’s economy is expected to remain in recession well into 2010, after contracting an estimated 4.2 percent this year compared with an expected 2.8 percent decline in the United States. “The shock originated in the U.S., but Europe is paying a higher price,” said Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former top financial adviser to the French government who is now director of Bruegel, a research center in Brussels. Almost from the beginning of the crisis, the United States and Europe chose largely different paths to aiding their economies. The most stark was Washington’s willingness to commit hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulus spending — in addition to moving aggressively to shore up banks and keep credit flowing — versus Europe’s worry that similar spending would increase inflation in the future. Just as the policies pursued during the Great Depression have been dissected ever since by economists, the fate of the United States and Europe as the two regions emerge from the global crisis will be analyzed for decades to come.....
One crucial concern about America’s increased deficit spending — that it would lead investors to demand higher interest rates on United States debt, making it far more expensive to borrow and slowing the economy — has been allayed, for now. An auction on Thursday of $11 billion in 30-year Treasury bonds found enthusiastic buyers, helping to push the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to a seven-month high...
Meno: And the Chicago School economists who say that government borrow-and-spend logically cannot increase overall spending? The Robert Lucases who say: "[W]ould a fiscal stimulus somehow get us out of this bind...? I just don't see this at all. If the government builds a bridge... by taking tax money away from somebody else, and using that to pay the bridge builder... then it's just a wash.... [T]here's nothing to apply a multiplier to. (Laughs.)... [And] taxing them later isn't going to help, we know that..."? And the John Cochranes who said: "[W]hile Tobin made contributions to investing theory, the idea that spending can spur the economy was discredited decades ago. 'It’s not part of what anybody has taught graduate students since the 1960s. They are fairy tales that have been proved false. It is very comforting in times of stress to go back to the fairy tales we heard as children but it doesn’t make them less false.'" To borrow money to pay for the spending, the government will issue bonds, which means investors will be buying U.S. Treasuries instead of investing in equities or products, negating the stimulative effect, Cochrane said. It also will do nothing to unlock frozen credit..."?
Sokrates: I, at least, find myself unable to understand them. They say they believe in the quantity theory of money--that spending is equal to the economy's cash times its velocity. And they say that they believe that velocity is interest elastic--that people respond to incentives and spend the cash in their pockets more rapidly when nominal interest rates are high. They say that they believe that bond prices/interest rates are such as to balance saving and investment and make people willing to hold the stock of bonds. That's all you need to be a Hicksian. Yet they also claim that Hicks is wrong, somehow--without giving arguments. I can trip up and make foolish anybody who makes an argument, but if they don't make an argument I cannot make them look any more foolish...
Recommended Software: WriteRoom
Less is more department:
Programmer Jean GrosJean (why do I want to write Jean ValJean?) writes:
WriteRoom — Distraction free writing software for your Mac: For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a distraction free writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you're used to, WriteRoom lets you focus on writing. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Walk into WriteRoom, and watch your distractions fade away. Now it's just you and your text. WriteRoom is a place where your mind clears and your work gets done. When your writing is complete, exit WriteRoom and re-enter the busy world with your work in hand...
And a review:
"But if, when it comes right down to it, full screen is your holy grail, and the ultimate antidote to the bric-a-brac of Word, then you must enter the WriteRoom, the ultimate spartan writing utopia." — Virginia Heffernan, New York Times
It's not "the bric-a-brac of Word" that is the problem. The problem is the entire internet--just one click away from the text window.
Now if only WriteRoom would have a "jail full screen" mode that would not let you leave the window for 30 minutes...
links for 2009-06-13
Net Treasury Bond Issues to Be Held by the "True' Public, since 1980 and Projected
Bonds held by the Federal Reserve are not part of debt held by the public, no matter what OMB may say.
It's really too bad that I don't have to give a lecture on liquidity preference vs. loanable funds right now...
The U.S. Treasury-Eurodollar Interest Rate Spread (TED) Spread Is Back to Normal
(Small) Interest Rate Increases Are Good News, Not Bad News (Washington Post Crashed-and-Burned-and-Smoking Watch)
Over at the Financial Times, the careful, insightful, and highly intelligent Martin Wolf writes:
FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Rising government bond rates prove policy works: Is the US... on the road to fiscal Armageddon? Are recent jumps in government bond rates proof that investors are worried about fiscal prospects? My answers to these questions are: No and No.... [T]here are... right now and strong reasons for welcoming recent moves in the bond markets....
The jump in bond rates is a desirable normalisation after a panic. Investors rushed into the dollar and government bonds. Now they are rushing out again. Welcome to the giddy world of financial markets.... What has happened is a sudden return to normality.... [W]hat about the other concern caused by huge bond issuance: crowding out of private borrowers? This would show itself in rising real interest rates. Again, the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.... [A]s confidence has grown, spreads between corporate bonds and Treasuries have fallen (see chart). One can also use estimates of expected inflation derived from government bonds to estimate real rates of interest on corporate bonds. These have also fallen sharply (see chart). While riskier bonds are yielding more than they were two years ago, they are yielding far less than in late 2008. This, too, is very good news indeed.....
[T]he last concern: the fear of inflation.... People need to believe that the extraordinarily aggressive monetary and fiscal policies of today will be reversed. If they do not believe this, there could well be a big upsurge in inflationary expectations long before the world economy has recovered. If that were to happen, policymakers would be caught in a painful squeeze and the world might indeed end up in 1970s-style stagflation. The exceptional policies used to deal with extreme circumstances are working.... It is irresponsible to insist either on immediate tightening or on persistently loose policies. Both the US and the UK now risk the latter. But their critics risk making an equal and opposite mistake. The answer is both clear and tricky: choose sharp tightening, but not yet.
Over at the Washington Post, the , , and _ Neil Irwin writes:
Spike in Interest Rates Could Choke Recovery: Rising long-term interest rates are making it more expensive for home buyers, corporations and the U.S. government to borrow money, threatening to further stifle an already weak economy. In just the past two weeks, the rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage has risen to 5.6 percent from 4.9 percent, ending a boom in refinancing and working against a budding recovery in the housing market. Rates on corporate borrowing have also risen, making it more expensive for companies to expand. And the government has been forced to pay more to finance its deficit.
Since the beginning of the year, historically low mortgage rates have had a twin benefit for the economy: They have allowed homeowners to refinance about $1.5 trillion worth of mortgages, thus lowering monthly payments and leaving people with more money to spend on goods and services. Low rates have also created greater incentive for people to buy homes, despite continuing troubles in the housing market. The abrupt rise in rates has removed that key stimulant for the economy.
The rise has many causes, some of which reflect good news. As investors have grown more confident about the future, for example, they have become more inclined to put money in risky investments, such as the stock market, rather than lending it to the U.S. government and to government-backed mortgage companies. But other causes give more reason for worry. Investors around the world are increasingly fearful that Congress and the Obama administration will be unwilling to bring taxes and spending in line in the years ahead. That makes the U.S. government appear to be a riskier borrower, leading those who lend to it to demand higher interest payments.
The Federal Reserve now finds itself in a box. It could try to lower rates by buying government debt. It has already said it would buy $1.5 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-related securities this year to try to stimulate growth. But doing so would likely only deepen fears that the Fed will print money to fund government deficits in the future. That possibility -- while rejected by Fed officials and many mainstream economists -- means that expanding purchases might not have the intended effect of lowering rates. It could even drive them up further...
General equilibrium. Long-term interest rates have risen because banks expect that four or five years from now the economy will be stronger than they thought two months ago and so they will be able to lend their money out more profitably then--even with higher interest rates. The rise in interest rates is the result of a stronger anticipated recovery, not the cause of a weaker one.
Neil Irwin's economist sources are:
- Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo: "Households really have no capacity to afford higher rates at this point.... It affects the cost of any long-term borrowing a consumer or business might do, whether it's auto loans, mortgages or business credit..."
- Jay Brinkman, chief economist of the MBA, who says "The increase so far has not really been enough to choke off home buying..."
In short, Neil Irwin did not find an economic forecaster who would agree with his headline--"Spike in Interest Rates Could Choke Recovery"--yet he wrote the article anyway.
Think about that.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
links for 2009-06-12
No Upward Pressure on Interest Rates Here. Move Along...
Paul Krugman:
Private borrowing is still negative: Flow of funds data out today. I won’t have time to do a careful analysis for a few days, but a quick check shows that the Setser point — high government borrowing is more than offset by net negative borrowing from the private sector — remains true.
The Debt and the Deficit in Historical Perspective...
Debt-to-GDP Graphs:
Note: Debt held by the public, excluding debt held by the Federal Reserve.
Change in Truly-Public-Held Federal Debt, Divided by GDP
Note: Not the change in the debt-to-GDP ratio; rather, the change in debt, then scaled by GDP.
Robert Reich Writes About the Debt Scare
Reich:
Robert Reich's Blog: The Great Debt Scare: Why Has It Returned?: It’s the kind of thing I expect to hear from deficit hawks and chicken littles -- from the self-described "fiscally responsible" right, from the scolds Ross Perot and Pete Peterson, from my former cabinet colleague Bob Rubin.... The Great Debt Scare is back. Odd that it would return right now, when the economy is still mired in the worst depression since the Great one. After all, consumers are still deep in debt and incapable of buying. Unemployment continues to soar. Businesses still are not purchasing or investing, for lack of customers. Exports are still dead, because much of the global economy continues to shrink. So the purchaser of last resort -- the government -- has to create larger deficits if the economy is to get anywhere near full capacity, and start to grow again.
Odder still that the Debt Scare returns at the precise moment that bills are emerging from Congress on universal health care, which, by almost everyone’s reckoning, will not increase the long-term debt one bit because universal health care has to be paid for in the budget.... Even odder that the Debt Scare rears its frightening head just as the President’s stimulus is moving into high gear with more spending on infrastructure. Every expert who has looked closely at the nation’s crumbling infrastructure knows how badly it suffers from decades of deferred maintenance -- bridges collapsing, water pipes bursting, sewers backed up, highways impassable, public transit in disrepair. The stimulus, along with the President’s long-term budget, also focus on the nation’s schools, as well as America’s capacity to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. These public investments are as important to the nation’s future as are private investments.
First, some background: Deficit and debt numbers mean nothing in and of themselves. They take on meaning only in relation to something else.... Pay close attention, in particular, to the debt/GDP ratio. True, that ratio is heading in the wrong direction right now. It may reach 70 percent by the end of 2010. That’s high, but it’s not high compared to the 120 percent it was in 1946, after the ravages of Depression and war. Over time, the basic way America has reduced the debt/GDP ratio is by growing the U.S. economy.... That growth path, by the way, will be faster and stronger if the nation invests in our infrastructure, our schools, and our environment -- which is exactly what Obama aims to do. In this respect, national budgets are like family budgets. It’s dumb for an indebted family to borrow more money to take a world cruise. But it’s smart even for an indebted family to borrow money to send their kids to college.... Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about when it comes to long-term deficit and debt projections. I'm just saying now's not the time to worry, and we ought to temper our worries by understanding the larger context...
Back in 1992 the real interest rate on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond was 5% per year. Right now the real interest rate on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond is more or less zero. Borrow back in 1992 thinking that the government is going to repay its borrowings ten years down the road and ten years down the road you find yourself paying back $1.65 in real purchasing power for each dollar you borrowed in 1992. Today you find yourself paying back just $1 in real purchasing power ten years from now for each dollar you borrow today. As Commander Whorf would say if he were an economist rather than a Klingon professional practitioner of coercive violence: "Today is a good day to borrow," for the government at least.
There are worries about the long-run deficit to the extent that we are unable to bend the curve on government health-care expenditures, but those demand policy actions to raise taxes or change the medical-care system not today but in the 2012 time frame and beyond.
And of course there is the real way to cure destructive long-term deficits: stop electing Republicans like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan who don't care about the quality of the economic policies they pursue. Elect Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who do care about the quality of their economic policies instead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
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).
We Need to Be Who We Can Be--and That Means We Need to Not Listen to the LIkes of Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen
Adam Serwer asks:
TAPPED Archive: I think Paul Campos' response to the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday is worth pondering.... Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book defending the internment on the basis of race in the case of Japanese internment during World War II. Cliff May argued that torture is justified against Muslims because they're Muslim. Republicans have opposed the transfer of terrorists to American prisons on the grounds that our prison facilities might not be able to hold them, and Ed Morrisey is apparently planning his vacation around avoiding the recently relocated Chinese Uighurs. Imagine what attempting to close Gitmo, banning torture, or even withdrawing from Iraq would look like in the aftermath of three attacks perpetrated by Muslim rather than right-wing extremists. Campos' post implies an unsettling question. How much of the call for "extraordinary measures" in fighting terrorism has to do with the unique challenges of fighting global terrorism, and how much of it has to do with an irrational, orientalist fear of all things Arab and Muslim?
Duncan Black answers:
Eschaton: To answer Adam's question, much of our response to terrorism has been based on irrational fear of The Other. Though there was no justification, our response to terrorism included invading Iraq. We did that because Thomas Friedman thought some brown people needed to "suck on this," and because Richard Cohen thought violence would provide him with needed therapy. We should never forget that these people are racist monsters whose personal psychodramas could only be soothed by the indiscriminate killing of people they obviously do not see as human.
The fact that the New York Times and the Washington Post continue to believe that the likes of Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen are people who need prominent platforms in our national discussions is perhaps the biggest reason why it would be a good thing to greatly diminish the size of the megaphones that arethe New York Times and the Washington Post.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Somewhere in Philadelphia, an Opossum Is Having a Very Weird Time...
If this is genuine, that is:
Getting Financial Incentives Right Through Government Regulation of Finance Compensation
Gene Sperling on Financial Industry Executive Compensation:
Opening Statement before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services.
As I have said many times, shareholders ought to have fixed the problem that the financial-sector compensation system has systematically fed Wall Street hotshots the wrong incentives via short-term options-based compensation packages.
But shareholders haven't. And the problem is serious enough and has bad enough consequences for the rest of us that we need to fix it.
Living Standards at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Literary Evidence from Emile Zola
Erich Auerbach (1946), Mimesis (trans. Willard Trask; Princeton University Press) on Emile Zola (1888), Germinal:
We have chosen a passage from Germinal (1888), the novel which describes life in a coal-mining region of northern France. It is the end of the second chapter of part 3. It is kermess time, a Sunday night in July. The workmen of the place have spent the afternoon going from one bar to another, drinking, bowling, looking at all sorts of shows. The day ends climactically with a ball, the bal du Bon-Joyeux, at the estaminet of the fat, fiftyish, but still usty widow Desir. The ball has been going on for several hours; even the older women are coming to it now, bringing their small children.
Jusqu'a dix heures, on resta....
(It was ten o'clock before anybody left. Women kept arriving to find and take away their men; bands of children followed at their heels; and the mohters no longer troubled about appearances took out long blond breasts like bags of oats, smeared their fat-cheeked babies with milk; while the children who could already walk, gorged with beer and on all fours under the tables, relieved themselves without shame. It was a rising sea of beer, Widow Desir's casks broached, beer swelling out bellies, flowing from all sides, from noses, from eyes, and from everywhere. People swelled up so, in the press, that everyone had a shoulder of a knee digging into this neighbor; all were made cheerful, at ease, by feeling one another's elbows in this way. A continuous laugh kept mouths open, gaping to the ears. It was as hot as an oven, everyone was roasting, all made themselves comfortable, their flesh exposed, gilded in the thick smoke of the pipes; and the only difficulty was to move, a girl got up from time to time, went to the back, near the pump, tucked up her skirts, then returend. Under the garlands of colored paper the dancers no longer saw each other, they were sweating so--which encouraged the pit-boys to knock over the haulage-girls by promiscuous thrusts of their haunches. But when a strapping girl fell with a man on top of her, the cornet covered their fall with its furious sounds, the swing of feet rolled them, as if the dance had collapsed on them.
Someone passing by told Pierron that his daughter Lydie was sleeping at the door, across the sidewalk. She had swallowed her share of the stolen bottle, she was drunk, and he had to carry her home in his arms, while Jeanlin and Bebert, more resistant, followed him at a distance, finding it very funny. This was the signal for departure, the families left the Bon-Joyeux, the Maheus and the Levaques decided to returtn to the mining village. At that moment, Pere Bonnemort an old Mouque also left Montsou, both with the same sleep-walking gait, stubbornly maintaining the silence of their memories. And they all went home together, for the last time they passed through the carniaval, the solidifying pans of fried stuff, the bars from which the last mugs were pouring in streams, even to the middle of the road. There ws still a storm threatening, laughter rose as soon as they had left the lighted houses to lose themselves in the dark countryside. A hot breath poured from the ripe wheat, many children must have been conceived that night. When they reached the village, they felt let down. Neither the Levaques nor the Maheus supped with appetite, an the latter fell asleep finishing their morning boiled beef.
Etienne had taken Chaval to drink somre more at Rasseneurs's.
"I'm on!" said Chaval, when his comrade had explained the matter of the reserve fun to him. "Shake! You're all right!"
A touch of drunkenness made Etienne's eyes flame. He cried, "Yes, lets be together... As for me, I tell you, for justice I would give everything, drink, and women. There's only one thing that warms my heart, it's the idea that we are going to get rid of the bosses"...)
The passage is one of those which when Zola's work first appeared... aroused disgust and horror, but also... admiration. A reader... could believe for a moment that he had before him a literary form of the coarse realism whih is so well known from the Flemish and especially the Dutch painting of the seventeenth century... a lower-class orgy of dancing and drinking... found or imagined in Rubens or Jordaens, in Brouwer or Ostade. To be sure, these are not peasants... but factory workers; and there is also a difference in the effect produced, in that the especially brutal details impress us... as more disagreeable and painful than they would as elements in a painting.... The flowing beer the haze of sweat, the grinning and wide-open mouths likewise become visul impressions; acoustic and other sensory effects are also produced....
But... [a]mong [Zola's] enemies... were doubtless many who accepted the grotesque or comic realism of earlier epochs... with equanimity or even delight. What excited them was... that Zola by no means put forward his art... as comic. Almost every line he wrote showed that all this was meant... seriously and morally... the true picture of contemporary society as he--Zola--saw it....
The first line--Jusqu'a dix heures, on resta--would be inconceivable in a [comic] grotesque mob orgy. Why are we told of the end of the orgy at the start? For a purely amusing or grotesque purpose, that would be much too sobering. And why such an early hour? What sort of an orgy is it which reaches its end so early? The coal miners have to be out of bed early on Monday morning, some of them at four o'clock.... And once we have paused, there are many other things that strike us. An orgy, even among the lower classes, calls for plenty. And plenty there is, but it is poor and frugal--nothing but beer. The whole thing shows how desolate and miserable the joys of these people are.
The real purport of the passage.... Lydie is a girl of twelve who has spent the evening running aorund with... Jeanlin and Bebert. The three of them already work as haulers in the mine. They are prematurely depraved.... [T]wo old, worn-out pitmen, Bonnemort anf Moque... hardly sicty years old but already the last of their generation--used up and apathetic....
Crude and miserable pleasures; early depravity and rapid wearing out of human material; a dissolute sex life; and a birth rate too high for such living conditions since intercourse is the only amusement that costs nothing; behind all this, at least among the most energetic and intelligent, revolutionary hatred is on the verge of breaking out--these are the motifs of our text. They are unreservedly translated into sensory terms....
If Zola exaggerated, he did so in the direction which mattered; and if he had a predilection for the ugly, he used it most fruitfully. Even today, after half a century the last decades of which have brought us experiences such as Zola never dreamed of, Germinal is a terrifying book. And even today it has lost none of its significance and indeed none of its timeliness. There are passages in it which deserve to become classic... because they depict, with exemplary clarity and simplicity, the situation and the awakening of the fourth estate...
And, of course, the coal miners of northeast France had it relatively good: these were towns that were growing, not shrinking, in the late-nineteenth century and as a result jobs for which bosses had to pay enough to attract young workers from outside.
links for 2009-06-11
Demagoguery and the Responsibility of a Bureaucrat
Todd Gitlin asks a question of Council on Foreign Relations head Richard Haass:
Demagoguery of Choice | TPMCafe: I was present at a conference in Maryland sponsored by the NewsHour in November 2002 when Mr. Haass, then head of policy planning at the State Department, issued a ringing defense of the impending war, which evidently he now maintains that he already opposed as a war of choice, not necessity. At the time, he stirred together, in Cheneyesque fashion, claims about Saddam and al-Qaeda, about Iraqi WMD, and the rest. I arose to argue with him and called his presentation "demagogic," but my protest did not attract his interest or sympathy. I'm curious to know if Mr. Haass believed what he was saying to this audience of foreign policy influentials at the time; if his presentation was a presentation of necessity or of choice; if he agrees that he was demagogic; and if he has any regrets.
There are hard questions as to how one should act when one works for an administration that is making a mistake on matters of policy. One could resign--and see one's place taken by somebody who will make the mistakes even better. One can be a good soldier and argue publicly for the mistaken policies while arguing privately for the right thing, in the belief that:
But it has always seemed to me that the minimal requirement imposed on the "good soldiers" is this: you don't tell lies in public.
From what Todd Gitlin reports, it looks as though Richard Haass--a man whom I have never heard praised in his role at the head at CFR--told things that he knew to be lies or that he could easily have determined to be lies in public.
Can Anybody Tell Me Why Ross Douthat Rather than Megan of Jezebel Writes an Op-Ed Column for the New York Times?
Megan:
Jezebel - Op-Ed Writer: Pro-Choicers Have George Tiller's Blood On Their Hands - Ross douthat late term abortion: I'm starting to suspect that the New York Times is giving increasingly ill-considered and poorly written conservatives column space in an effort to undermine the idea that Republican ideology has any intellectual validity. Otherwise, I don't really see what the papers' editors are thinking, between hiring neocon idiot Bill Kristol and then replacing him with slut-shaming, supposedly new-idea-having former Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat. Having already definitively determined that feminism makes women unhappy by reading one study abstract, today, Douthat turns his attention to late-term abortion.
You see, Douthat totally understands why late term abortions might be necessary, and the courage it took for Dr. George Tiller to continue performing this vital health service for women... he just thinks the late doctor was an amoral baby-killer who didn't understand God. As for all the women who have written testimonials about their experiences with late-term abortions, Mr. Douthat read them, and he thinks they're all assholes.
They help explain why Tiller thought he was doing the Lord's work, even though that work involved destroying something that we wouldn't hesitate to call a baby if we saw it struggling for life in a hospital bed.
And let's not forget the amoral part: Douthat's been listening to the very people who advocated violence against Tiller, his patients, his staff and the clinic, and so he knows that Tiller was just willy-nilly performing late term abortions on perfectly healthy fetuses and mothers all the time. How does he know? Because the anti-abortion movement told him and the state government, over and over again, to try to get Tiller jailed.
But his critics were convinced that he performed them not only in truly desperate situations, but in many other cases as well. Over the years, they cobbled together a considerable amount of evidence - drawn from the state's abortion statistics, from Tiller's own comments, and from a 2006 investigation - suggesting that Tiller abused the state's mental-health exemption to justify late-term abortions in almost any situation. This evidence is persuasive, but not dispositive. We may never know how many of George Tiller's abortions were performed on healthy mothers and healthy fetuses.
Well, I mean, the courts found it "dispositive," which is why on what few charges the anti-abortion movement managed to gin up against him, Tiller was acquitted. But, by all means, lets continue to smear Tiller as an amoral baby-killer. It'll help strengthen Douthat's argument! Douthat also understands why, having read the real stories of women who endured the sorts of pregnancies that needfully ended in late term terminations, why pro-choice types think abortions should remain legal. He just thinks we're wrong, i.e. causing needless social strife and even violence. I mean, most abortions are elective, Douthat says! (And even most late-term ones, he additionally asserts without evidence!)
The same is true of the more than 100,000 abortions that are performed after the first trimester: Very few involve medical complications of any kind. Even the now-outlawed "partial-birth" procedure, which abortion-rights supporters initially argued was only employed in the direst of dire situations, turned out to be used primarily for purely elective abortions.
Now that last bit is a careful bit of language on Douthat's part. Because, in reality, there's no evidence even in the Slate article that Douthat links to that the abortions were elective; the best that the article's author Franklin Foer can muster is that the procedure known as "intact dilation and extraction" was "safer and more convenient" than alternative methods (because, really, why would you want to use the method least likely to cause the death of the mother?) and that two newspapers concluded, after speaking to a couple doctors, that second-trimester intact dilation and extractions were "mostly" performed on poor women who were unable to get into a practitioner in time for a first trimester abortion — which doesn't necessarily make them "elective."
Douthat then sets up his pro-choice strawman to knock down: as far as he's concerned, pro-choicers people deny that a fetus has a "claim to life" — i.e., is already a human being — and that's why we don't care whether a fetus is healthy or the mother was simply too lazy to use birth control. And in our zeal to protect the right of every woman to make the best choices for her (and, yes, in some cases, the fetus she is carrying), it's our fault that we've made abortion politics so controversial.
If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be. One reason there's so much fierce argument about the latest of late-term abortions - Should there be a health exemption? A fetal deformity exemption? How broad should those exemptions be? - is that Americans aren't permitted to debate anything else. Under current law, if you want to restrict abortion, post-viability procedures are the only kind you're allowed to even regulate.
In other words, since Roe v. Wade protects women's right to any abortion pre-viability, the "debate" over late term abortions — as epitomized in Douthat's own column by one George Tiller — is so "fierce" because poor anti-abortion activists have nothing else to fight about. Apparently, Douthat has missed the efforts by South Dakota to make abortion illegal, the efforts by Colorado to pass a personhood amendment, the efforts activists in states like Mississippi to drive all clinics out of business (thus, eliminating abortion in the state) through over-regulation and all the other various things anti-abortion activists are actively doing to overturn Roe v. Wade in addition to fueling hate-filled and violent rhetoric against all abortion providers, including late-term providers like George Tiller.
Douthat's final argument is — I swear — that pro-choice people who want to prevent violence against abortion providers should simply accept the end of Roe v. Wade and allow states to make abortion illegal. I wish I was kidding.
If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester - as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions. The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases - and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller's murder.
To sum up: if we just roll over, accept the end of abortion access, and let them teach us about respect for human life, they won't kill any more abortion providers. Good to know whose hands Douthat thinks Tiller's blood is really on.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Can Anybody Tell Me Why Ross Douthat Rather than Hilzoy Writes an Op-Ed Column for the New York Times?
Hilzoy:
Obsidian Wings: Ross Douthat Makes No Sense: Ross Douthat has a very peculiar column on abortion in the New York Times. In it, he asserts, falsely, that "under current law, if you want to restrict abortion, post-viability procedures are the only kind you’re allowed to even regulate": in fact, it is possible to regulate abortions before viability, and the Supreme Court in Casey upheld precisely such restrictions. He claims, also falsely, that "Americans aren’t permitted to debate anything" besides post-viability abortions (which would surely come as a surprise to the First Amendment), and that abortion needs to be "returned to the democratic process." As Freddie at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen notes:
Setting aside the banal fact that the judicial system is a part of our democratic process, there is a clear, straightforward and well-known way to overturn Roe v. Wade– pass a constitutional amendment criminalizing abortion. That’s how you override Supreme Court decisions; that’s how Dred Scott was effectively overturned. That’s how the federal income tax was passed. There’s a method for overturning Supreme Court law you don’t like, it’s well known, it’s time tested, and it’s as open to abortion foes as it is to anyone else.
But what's really odd is his reasoning. Try, if you dare, to make sense of this:
The argument for unregulated abortion rests on the idea that where there are exceptions, there cannot be a rule. Because rape and incest can lead to pregnancy, because abortion can save women's lives, because babies can be born into suffering and certain death, there should be no restrictions on abortion whatsoever. As a matter of moral philosophy, this makes a certain sense. Either a fetus has a claim to life or it doesn't. The circumstances of its conception and the state of its health shouldn't enter into the equation. But the law is a not a philosophy seminar. It's the place where morality meets custom, and compromise, and common sense. And it can take account of tragic situations without universalizing their lessons.
First of all, the claim that "where there is an exception, there cannot be a rule" does not make sense as a matter or moral philosophy. If it's possible to distinguish clearly between the exceptions and the other cases, there's no problem at all with having a rule. This is why we can have such rules as: No parking in a handicapped spot, unless you have a handicapped badge. When it's not easy to tell the exceptions from the rest, whether or not it's OK to have a rule depends on how bad it is to miss those exceptions, and how bad it is not to have a rule. There are surely circumstances in which it would be fine to drive on the left, but we do not normally think that these should prevent us from having a rule about which side of the street to drive on. On the other hand, the existence of people who have been falsely convicted of capital crimes is a much more compelling argument against capital punishment: even one mistake is a horrendous injustice.
More importantly, consider this sentence:
Because rape and incest can lead to pregnancy, because abortion can save women's lives, because babies can be born into suffering and certain death, there should be no restrictions on abortion whatsoever.
How on earth is that supposed to be evidence for this?
Either a fetus has a claim to life or it doesn't. The circumstances of its conception and the state of its health shouldn't enter into the equation.
The whole point of bringing up cases of rape and incest is to argue that the circumstances of a fetus' conception are relevant to the question whether abortion should be legal. If we were convinced that a fetus was a full person, they wouldn't be: we do not think it's OK for a mother to kill her five year old child on the grounds that it is the product of rape or incest. Likewise, the point of bringing up the fact that "babies can be born into suffering and certain death" is to say that the state of the fetus' health is relevant, not that it isn't. What Douthat wrote makes about as much sense as saying: "The argument for not hitting yourself on the head with a hammer is that it would cause you a whole lot of pain. As a matter of moral philosophy, this makes a certain sense: hitting yourself on the head with a hammer is either right or wrong regardless of how it makes you feel." To which the only possible response is: Huh???
Douthat's column begins with a rather lovely meditation on the hard cases that George Tiller had to deal with: abortions on "women facing life-threatening complications, on women whose children would be born dead or dying, on women who had been raped, on "women" who were really girls of 10." He doesn't actually say much about how we should deal with these cases, other than the part I already quoted: the law "can take account of tragic situations without universalizing their lessons." How it should take these cases into account, and why it shouldn't universalize their lessons, are left shrouded in mystery.
And yet, somehow, he ends up here:
If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester -- as many advanced democracies already do -- would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions. The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases -- and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller’s murder.
Because, as we all know, giving terrorists what they want is the surest way to prevent more terrorism.
There are arguments for making abortion illegal. I don't accept them, but they exist. Douthat should try making them sometime.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
In Which Conor Friedersdorf Succumbs to Stockholmm Syndrome...
He writes:
The Man with the Golden Microphone | Politics | The American Scene: Americans regard Rush Limbaugh as the face of the Republican Party, he is able to drive the agenda of the conservative movement, and a lot of people on the right don’t find that problematic. Okay, it is what it is. Mr. Limbaugh isn’t going away anytime soon, and I wouldn’t want him to stop doing his radio program even if I could choose it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to quietly stand by while Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck or Mark Levin jockey to be his successor. Should this be the last time that a talk radio host breaks the 10 percent barrier in a poll like this, the GOP and the conservative movement will be a lot better off, and so will our country, which suffers when its public discourse is largely driven by a medium that rewards bombast, oversimplification, the vilification of political opponents, and engaging paranoid straw men rather than the strongest arguments offered by the other side...
But if Rush Limbaugh were to stop doing his radio show today, move to the Upper Amazon, and take up a life of anonymous service to others--well, then, the country and the Republican Party would be much better off: there would be less "bombast, oversimplification, the vilification of political opponents, and engaging paranoid straw men..."
So why doesn't Conor wish that Limbaugh stop? I can understand "I wouldn't want to shut him down even if I could..."--free country, free speech, et cetera. But I cannot understand "I wouldn't want him to stop..."
It looks to me like Conor Friedersdorf has succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome...
A Pretty Good but Not Excellent Story from David Leonhardt on the Deficit
David writes:
Economic Scene - How the U.S. Surplus Became a Deficit: There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years. The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested. The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.
Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes. The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years...
There are two things wrong with the story. First, David doesn't say what part of the $1.2 trillion deficit is a problem. My estimate is that the U.S. could run a $500 billion annual deficit in an average year without incurring any chance of getting into any serious economic problems (although I would wish that the cyclically-adjusted deficit were smaller), and that an additional $400 billion of annual deficit is justified by the recessionary state of the business cycle over Obama's first term. So the serious deficit problem seems to me to be, today, at $300 billion a year.
Of course, it will grow unless taxes are raised by 2012 or health-care costs contained...
Second, this "[the deficit] could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it..." needs to be balanced by the observation that a worry that foreigners will prove unwilling to buy U.S. Treasury bonds at reasonable prices is, like, worry #927 on our list of worries. It's just not up there...
In Which I Am Embarrassed to Share a Universe with the New York Times...
Maureen Dowd: "The 'Pretty Woman' romance of [President and Mrs. Obama's] New York tableau..."
You have to ask: doesn't Maureen Dowd have any friends inside the NYT building who will say: "Ummm... Do you know what 'Pretty Woman' is about?"
Will no one have pity and stop this person before she writes again?
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
links for 2009-06-10
And Now the Poultry Have Moved in...
By the edge of the driveway, in the blackberries:
Berkeley Political Economy 101: Reference Document SECOND DRAFT
Title:
Modern Theories of Political Economy
Prerequisites:
Completion of PE 100 and IAS 45 are required before students can register for the course.
Sequence:
Students intending to become Political Economy majors will ideally complete PE 101 by the end of their sophomore year.
Objectives:
PE 101 examines modern approaches to the interaction between economics and politics--what in an earlier age would have been called "moral philosophy." Building on the knowledge of world history covered in IAS 45 and the thinkers of the classical political economy tradition covered in PE 100, it focuses on the usefulness of alternative theories of political economy, both the classical theories covered in PE 100 and the modern theories of the 20th and 21st centuries in the their historical context. The course is explicitly interdisciplinary: theories of political economy cannot do their job if they are constrained by discipinary boundaries. It is a thoeretical course: empirical and historical facts are used as aids to theoretical comprehension and yardsticks to assess the usefulness of alternative theoretical perspectives.
The first two-thirds or so of the course will introduce students to general theoretical works and current intellectual debates in political economy. The last third or so of the course will specialize. Political Economy majors here at Berkeley tend to concentrate in one of six areas:
- the political economy of post-industrial societies,
- economic late develpment and political democratization,
- international relations and globalization,
- comparative political and economic systems,
- historical issues of the Great Transformation,
- modern China.
The last third or so of each course should focus on those aspects of political economy theory that will be most useful to students concentrating in one (or at a pinch two) of these areas.
Topics:
Political economy and war, market and non-market systems, distributive justice, libertarianism and communitarianism, liberal democracy and regulated capitalism, social democracy and mixed economy, international economic orders and American hegemony, globalization, public choice, late development successes, late development failures, worlds of welfare capitalism, neoliberalism and its discontents, market reforms in post-industrial economies, transitions from communism, political economy and the digital age.
Authors:
Tentatively and provisionally, the teaching staff believe that all versions of the course taught should cover the thoughts and approaches of John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Friedrich Hayek, Charles Lindblom, Anthony Downs, James Buchanan, Mancur Olson, Carl Schmitt, Georg Lukacs, Juergen Habermas, Antonio Gramsci, and Dani Rodrik--not necessarily through intensive reading of the works of the social scientists and moral philosophers themselves, but at least through readings that apply their theories and approaches to issues in 20th and 21st century political economy.
Authors whose works and approaches have been assigned recently in PE 101 include: George Akerlof, Benedict Anderson, Norman Angell, Hannah Arendt, Benjamin Barber, Robert Bates, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaiah Berlin, James Buchanan, Nancy Chodorow, Ronald Coase, Milovan Djilas, Anthony Downs, Barry Eichengreen, James Fallows, James Ferguson, Betty Friedan, Michel Foucault, Robert Frank, Milton Friedman, Francis Fukuyama, Alexander Gerschenkron, Peter Gourevich, Antonio Gramsci, Juergen Habermas, Peter Hall, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Heilbroner, Albert Hirschman, John Hobson, Stephen Holmes, Tony Judt, Terry Karl, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Kindleberger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Janos Kornai, Paul Krugman, Timur Kuran, Vladimir Lenin, Arthur Lewis, Charles Lindblom, Georg Lukacs, Charles Maier, Hyman Minsky, Mancur Olson, George Orwell, William Pfaff, Karl Polanyi, John Rawls, Robert Reich, Dani Rodrik, Elaine Scarry, Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, James Scott, Amartya Sen, Robert Shiller, Judith Shklar, Jessica Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Gordon Tullock, Michael Walzer, Eugen Weber, Fareed Zakaria. Instructors are certainly not expected to cover all of the topics or assign all the authors listed, but they should discuss enough topics and assign enough authors to span the space of political economy.
Course Boundaries vis-a-vis PE 100:
This course covers the twentieth century world since the Great Depression, which is where PE 100 ends. At most a week should be spent on pre-Depression theorists and events in this course, allowing students to see the ways in which the project of classical political economy set the stage for new kinds of theory to be discussed in PEIS 101. John Maynard Keynes and Karl Polanyi are social scientists/moral philosophers whose thoughts straddle the boundary of the courses.
Assessments and Assignments:
The material lends itself to in-class exams, take-home exams, and research papers. Each instructor cam generate those kind of assignments that work best with that instructor’s teaching. At least three written assignments/exams should be required over the course of the semester, in order to observe student improvement. Provide studente with as many opportunities as possible to reflect upon tbe course content: it will be new and strange to many.
Course Instructional Support:
Since the last budget crisis this course is without GSI-led section support, but with readers/graders. The hope is that capping PE 101 sections at 50 will allow for meaningful interaction to take place in the lecture itself.
Rational Expectations, Efficient Markets, and Economic Welfare
I think Robert Waldmann is using the internet to carry on an argument among sometime roommates.
Robert Waldmann:
The REH vs the EMH: I think I should explain a claim I made in the post below. I assert that the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) does not imply the rational expecations hypothesis (REH). The EMH states that asset prices are the same as they would be if everyone had rational expectations. The strong form EMH adds the assumption that everyone has complete information. The semi-strong form, like the REH has implications only for expected values conditional on public information. The EMH makes no statement about individual portfolios. It is absolutely not assumed or implied that each investor has an efficient portfolio.
In contrast, the rational expectations hypothesis says that the expected value of expectational errors conditional on public information is zero.... As used it definitely amounts to much more the assumption that observable aggregates have the values they would have if everyone had rational expectations.... This use of the phrase "rational expectations" to refer to individual behavior not aggregates is common and, as far as I know, uncontroversial....
[T]he first welfare theorem requires the assumption of rational expectations. It is absolutely not sufficient for aggregates to be the same as they would be if people had rational expectations.... I think an extremely elementary proof might be useful...
Me:
- There are 2 time periods t = 1 and t = 2.
- There is a coin which is flipped. It comes up heads in period 2 with probability 0.5.
- There are 2 assets:
- A is a risk-free asset, the numeraire: One unit of risk-free asset gives one unit of consumption good in period 2.
- B is a risky asset that gives one unit of consumption goods in period 2 if the coin comes up heads. It sells for an equilibrium price p.
- There are a continuum of agents indexed by i over [0.5-z,0.5+z] who maximize their expected value of the log of their consumption in period 2.
- Each agent is endowed with one unit of the risk-free asset.
Rational expectations implies that agents know that the probability the coin comes up heads is 0.5. If everyone has rational expecations, then the market will clear with a period-1 price p = 0.5. Each risk averse agent will find it optimal to invest 0 in the risky asset. there is 0 net supply of the risky asset. Markets clear. This outcome is Pareto efficient and maximizes total utility. The EMH therefore is satisfied if the price of the risky asset is 0.5.
Now relax the assumption of rational expectations. Assume that agent i believes that the probability that the coin will come up heads is i.
The market clearing price is 0.5. At p = 0.5 agent i's net demand for asset B is:
x(i) = [i - p]/[p - p2]
The EMH still holds in equilibrium. Supply equals demand for the risky asset at its fundamental value of p = 0.5.
The welfare outcome, however, is different. In period 2 agent i's consumption is either 1+x(i) or 1-x(i). The outcome is no longer ex-ante Pareto efficient: people bet on their beliefs, and because their beliefs are wrong utility-subtracting risk enters the world. The expected utility of agent i is:
(1/2)ln(1+x(i)) + (1/2)ln(1-x(i))
(1/2)ln(1+4[i-0.5]) + (1/2)ln(1-4[i-0.5])
If z is small so that we can approximate ln(1+y) by y - y2/2, then the approximate expected utility of agent i is:
E(U(i)) = -8[i - 0.5]2.
In the model with rational expectations, the optimal policy is laissez faire.
In the model with efficient markets but without rational expectations it would be preferable to ban gambling--to impose a 100% tax on net trading profits, and redistribute the proceeds (if any).
Robert again:
I think it is safe to say that... [the] difference...between a model in which the optimal policy is laissez faire and a model in which the optimal policy is confiscation and equal [re]distribution of all [trading profits is of interest to economists]. I do not see how it is possible for anyone who can understand the model above to conflate rational expectations and efficient markets. Oddly, however... well known economists have done exactly that...
What If GM Were to Be Liquidated?
The threat point in the GM deal.
Andrew Ross Sorkin:
Imagining a G.M. Fire Sale - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com: It’s hard to envision a company as large and complex as General Motors being sold off for scrap. But that’s just what the restructuring pros at AlixPartners had to do for their liquidation analysis of the company, which was filed in federal bankruptcy court in New York late Thursday.
Of course, G.M. is reorganizing in Chapter 11 and has no plans to liquidate. Bankrupt companies regularly perform this kind of exercise to give creditors a point of comparison as they consider a reorganization plan.
As a hypothetical exercise, though, the analysis is interesting: It found that in a fire sale, the largest United States automaker would likely yield less than $10 billion in net proceeds.
The costs of liquidating would be huge, according to the analysis — from $2 billion to $2.7 billion, the document says. Taking that into account, the amount left for creditors would be from $6.5 billion to $9.7 billion.
A large part of the value (from about $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion, before costs) would come from G.M.’s foreign subsidiaries, according to the analysis. These include G.M. Europe, which the company expects to sell anyway, and its units in Asia and Latin America, which G.M. has said it generally plans to keep.
And what would G.M.’s creditors get?
Bank lenders owed $5.4 billion would recover from 26.3 to 77.1 cents on the dollar. The United States Treasury, on the hook for $20.5 billion, fares even worse under this scenario, getting just 12.7 cents to 23.7 cents on the dollar for its claims. Unsecured creditors would get nothing.
Of course, there’s room for debate about many of the assumptions in the analysis, and AlixPartners readily concedes that there are plenty of unknowns. There hasn’t been a major United States automaker in liquidation in recent history, the document said, so there’s “no relevant precedent.”
For more details, take a look at the document below. The liquidation analysis starts on page 6.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16156458/AlixPartners-Declaration-and-Liquidation-Analysis-
links for 2009-06-09
DeLong Smackdown Watch (Reconciliation Bill Version)
Apropos of Fiscal Policy in the Second Half of 2009, Stan Collender emails:
FYI…Reconciliation can’t be used to increase the deficit. The Democrats passed a rule when this Congress began that says it can only be used to decrease the deficit.
Ooops.
links for 2009-06-08
Up and Down the Coast Blogging
They Are Getting Bolder...
It's 40 yards from my kitchen six hours after dawn...
This Means Interdisciplinary War!
Neil Sinhababu calls for the Revolt of the Moral Philosophers:
The Ethical Werewolf: Taking political philosophy back from the economists: The take-home message for you and me is that economists have managed to convince people of indefensible views on normative topics such as what it's rational for individuals to do, what's an appropriate object of moral criticism, and what would be a good distribution of resources. I don't know how many of them would, when pressed, defend these sorts of claims -- their discipline isn't supposed to be one that makes normative claims.
Saying you're not making any normative claims is, of course, a good way of getting people to accept the normative claims you make. A lot more in this sort of thing depends on the sorts of emotions that get communicated as people talk about stuff and the loaded words you use. Pareto optimality, for example, has 'optimality' built into it, and who doesn't like optimality? Of course, as Rawls tells us, a distribution where one person owns all tradable goods and services while nobody else has anything is Pareto optimal.
In any event, this is the kind of thing we ought to be concerned about, both as citizens and as philosophers. While ideas from other parts of academia can't get out to the public, economists are convincing people of ridiculous theses in moral and political philosophy that their research doesn't even support. (It probably helps that widespread social acceptance of these theses is favorable to the interests of very wealthy people.) I'm not really sure what we can do about the spread of bad political philosophy through economics 101, but there's got to be something.
He is responding to Matthew Yglesias:
Matthew Yglesias » Ideas Matter: [A]s Brad DeLong pointed out yesterday, economists’ protestations that they’re doing value-free social science actually embeds an implicit idea that “that shifts in distribution are of no account–which can be true only if the social welfare function gives everybody a weight inversely proportional to their marginal utility of wealth.” In other words, under guise of eschewing values, economics has adopted a philosophical value system which says that the well-being of rich people is more important than the well-being of poor people. Nobody ever says “social welfare function” when engaging in practical political debate, but the idea that not caring about distribution constitutes some kind of neutral middle ground is an important underlying premise of much practical political debate, and it’s viability stems from the fact that everyone remembers being taught that this is true in their Economics 101 courses.
As a third example, as a society we’ve become accustomed to the idea that when empirical evidence seems to contradict basic economic theory—as when the United States experienced rapid economic growth under conditions of widespread unionization and a high minimum wage—that we ought to accept the theory as true. This, again, is usually a claim you hear being made by economists, but its social prestige ultimately is a kind of idea in epistemology or the philosophy of science. And all this, of course, is to say nothing of the specific influence of particular empirical claims in economics which hold that high levels of taxation and government spending are everywhere and always economically destructive....
I do think that these big ideas matter.... They’re enormously important in terms of setting the terms of political debate, in terms of influence what’s considered “possible” and what kinds of people have standing to have their views taken seriously. Building a better world ultimately requires getting people to understand that both the empirical and philosophical underpinnings of America’s free market society are much weaker than is generally understood. That doesn’t mean these questions will ever be debated by politicians at a live town hall. But it does mean trying to press a better understanding of these issues on the mass elite who set the tone for much of American political life.
If any of those fighting on the anti-economist side of this disciplinary war want to contact me to ask me to serve as a spy reporting to them the plans of the inmost secret counsels of the economist, the password is "swordfish"...
DeLong's Grasping Reality © J. Bradford DeLong 1995-2019
