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Politics Short Essays Writings

It’s A Trap, or, Why Going to Congress Is a Bad Idea

Several high-profile university presidents went before Congress this week and got eviscerated for apparent latent antisemitism. These events, by themselves, are not notable or unpredictable, but I saw an interesting sidebar today in the Times on their attempts at prepping, via lawyers.

Top-level university administrators spend an inordinate amount of their work hours talking to legal counsel: some in-house, some private, but far more than the average faculty member would even dream of. At the level of Harvard, MIT, and Penn, well beyond my atmospheric altitude, that percentage may be even higher.

So, it might seem logical, natural, even advisable, for them to turn to such advisors before testifying before Congress.

But testifying before Congress isn’t, at least primarily, a legal proceeding. It’s always, first and foremost, political theater, designed and structured to score points – a place to display and exert power. While legal advice can certainly help a university official avoid saying something inadvertently illegal or inconsistent (and I wouldn’t say they shouldn’t have done such a briefing beforehand), employing only that thinking seems backward to me.

Why not start with a political, or dare I say it, rhetorical prep?

All large universities (at least the state ones) have multiple experts on public speaking, political science, and rhetoric amidst their faculty; indeed, there’s plenty of established analysis of just these kinds of rhetorical situations and the assorted pitfalls. Why not start there?

The best advice, of course, would have been not to go. There’s almost nothing to gain and a lot to lose.

University presidents are not typically, or practically, moral leaders; they are professional faces, fundraisers, occasionally visionaries, and always bureaucrats. Asking them to weigh in on an ongoing war in the Middle East, or, even just what their students are thinking and feeling, is frankly outside their skill-set. Combining that with the most poorly-understood-by-the-public concept in academia, the intersection between campus speech and academic freedom, well. I can’t think of a university president off the top of my head that would have the skill and gumption to turn the tables on a congressperson at their own game, on their own turf; their responsibilities, experience, training, and instincts all point to moderation and keeping everyone content. Those soft skills have real concrete value, but not in that arena.

Alas, the only current technique that works consistently in such situations is subversion and mockery. Flip the question, turn the tables, counterattack, refuse to play the game offered. Make them, or the game itself, the subject.

Restrictions on campus speech in the United States have not aged well. Censorship ultimately fuels the fire that it seeks to put out. The nigh-eternal patient tradition of allowing students and faculty to make fools of themselves has some hard-won wisdom to it.

However.

The complication now is that it’s become progressively harder for universities to guarantee everyone’s safety. Another shooting or bombing is always around the corner. Whose university will it be this week? This is the fear that drives behavior and policy, and its more cynical companion is the fear of lawsuits. Hence, the ever-present legal counsel.

Our social contract is frayed and worn due to its excessive use as a doormat in the last ten years. Safe physical spaces for real public deliberation, and even the notion and value of such spaces, dwindle. As always, it will take individuals with unwavering principles to democracy and free speech to preserve those spaces – and they will not need to consult with lawyers to do so.

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Politics

Noted War Criminal Dies

Nothing to celebrate or mourn. Entropy wins every time.

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Writings

NCTE hijinks

So an organization that I am a member of, the National Council of Teachers of English, released this statement yesterday. It’s not long, so I’ll reproduce it here. I also got it in an email.

This week NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English released a statement regarding the war in Israel and Palestine. The statement, as read, openly supports one side of the conflict and was unauthorized by NCTE leadership. We have received correspondence from members questioning who published the statement, what their role is, and wanting to make sure NCTE knew about it. This statement was not published by NCTE or its leadership team. Neither the Presidential Team of the Executive Committee nor NCTE staff were made aware of this statement prior to its publication.

As a leadership team, we deeply respect the varied opinions of our members. Intellectual freedom is critical to our organization, our members, and the students we serve.

We seek to ensure that members and the public are able to easily understand whose ideas are being espoused in statements and that NCTE and others are not intentionally or unintentionally misrepresented.

So, NCTE’s Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias In the Teaching of English apparently made “a statement regarding the war in Israel and Palestine,” but where? I can’t find it. Was it deleted? Did it only go out as an email, or on social media? It can’t be the “Celebrating Arab Narratives” post of 11/9, which doesn’t reference the war and was last week. Or is it? Who knows with this level of oblique reference.

Frankly, this is a really curious bit of rhetoric. It’s not a retraction. More of a disavowal. But there’s a sentence that is rather chilling: “We have received correspondence from members questioning who published the statement, what their role is, and wanting to make sure NCTE knew about it.”

This doesn’t make any sense. The members of the standing committee are public, unless that webpage is badly out of date, and even so, I don’t buy anyone innocently asking who wrote it, or what their role is, or even wanting to simply inform NCTE leadership about it.

Sure. Just some concerned citizens.

I wonder if anyone will clear this up. I can’t be the only confused and uninformed member of NCTE.

I also can’t be the only one worried about censorship. The 11/16 email/statement espouses academic freedom… but the tone says otherwise. It’s weird.

It’s not like I take my political cues from a gigantic organization like NCTE, or even my pedagogical ones, but many colleges and their respective organizations have let academic freedom slip into sixth or seventh place in the last couple of years, in terms of principles.

Update:

Ok, found a PDF circulating on social media. It seems to be an opening statement by the committee to be delivered at NCTE 2023 (Nov. 16-19). I am not confident I am reading the original, or the one to be actually delivered (or if it has been delivered orally), so I won’t reproduce it here; the file’s title is different from the title in the text, suggesting the language is/was in flux.

My earlier concerns about censorship hold. The PDF that I see names the committee, and as the members are public, the NCTE “response” remains… off.