In an aside from an article from 2014, the psychologist Steven Pinker mocked professors for “wearing earth tones, driving Priuses, and having a foreign policy.”
As I wrote at the time, I didn’t know any professors who wore earth tones or drove Priuses, but I bristled at the “having foreign policy”: as citizens of the United States (or as citizens of any other country), professors have as much right to political views as anyone else, and indeed I think it’s good for people to be informed on foreign policy and to participate publicly in politics.
There was some further discussion in comments, and that’s where that stood for me until yesterday, when I opened the newspaper and encountered this op-ed by Ezekiel “If I live to age 75, just kill me” Emanuel, on how “something is deeply wrong at America’s universities.” Along with recommending that every college student be required to take two ethics courses—I have some skepticism on that one, as I’m not sure where they’ll find the people to teach these classes—he writes:
The timidity of many university leaders in condemning the Hamas massacre and antisemitism more generally offers the wrong example. Leaders need to lead.
And now I see Pinker’s implicit point.
Let me explain. I have no problem with university leaders, or faculty more general, or anyone else condemning the Hamas massacre and antisemitism more generally. While they’re at it, I’d be fine for them to condemn aggressive war, unequal political systems (back in the 1980s they called it “apartheid” and it was a big topic of campus protests), illegal dumping of toxic waste, government and corporate corruption, university hospitals that cover up sexual abuse by their doctors, all sorts of things. I’m not joking here: lots of bad things are going on in the world and I’m glad that people are fighting bad things, not just in their backyards but also globally. And there’s no reason that atrocities should crowd each other out. I don’t want to be in the position of saying that people shouldn’t speak up about atrocity A because, what about atrocity B over there? There’s a division of labor in politics as in many other things.
So, yeah, I’m fine with professors, or university leaders, or anyone else, “having a foreign policy” in the sense of expressing opinions, trying to influence policies, etc.
My problem with Emanuel’s statement is that he’s arguing that this sort of statement should be some sort of norm. He writes, “Leaders need to lead.” The trouble is, there are so many issues out there? How much “leading” does he demand that university leaders do? As a minimum, I guess this would include condemning the Hamas massacre and antisemitism more generally, Israeli settlements and anti-Arab racism more generally, and also every other newsworthy bit of violence around the world. I guess if there is enough demand for such statements, university leaders will make them, with the main criterion being a judgment of whether they will suffer more hassle from not making an official statement than from making one. But then there’s the question of where to stop, which atrocities to condemn. You wouldn’t want a university president to become the equivalent of an outrage-of-the-week blogger.
I would actually like university leaders to be more active in condemning the bad things done on their own campuses. None of these bad things reaches anything close to the level of a massacre or an invasion, but, still, they are cases where the leaders can actually make a difference.
So here’s where I agree with Pinker. Or, to be more precise, where I agree with his implicit point. The problem is not with academic leaders “having a foreign policy” in the sense of expressing opinions and seeking to achieve political change; it’s with expectations or demands such as Emanuel’s that academic leaders should have a foreign policy, that it’s part of the job, that it’s a matter of leadership. It just seems like one more demand that political activists are pushing. Again, I don’t object to university leaders taking a stand on this issue; what I reject is the idea that doing so is a necessary part of their job.
P.S. After writing the above post, I did some googling and found that Pinker indeed has maintained his position on this general point. He writes:
Should a university have a foreign policy? Was it given a mandate to tell a grateful nation what emotions to feel in response to a national event, or what the correct moral position is? At Harvard, many colleagues & I will urge the university administration to shut up and do their job of providing an impartial forum for profs & students to argue these issues . . .
I see his point. Again, my problem is not with university leaders, or business leaders, or church leaders, etc., expressing views, but rather with the idea that this is what they are supposed to do.
P.P.S. I still think I was right on this one, however.
And then there is also the Sayre’s law…
I would like to add one point. Dr Emmanuel writes that ‘leaders must lead’. While this is true, it raises the question of who is a leader and who is not. I once heard a very interesting talk on the comparison between managers and leaders. One is a technocrat who takes (good) care of what has been entrusted to him, perhaps making incremental changes; the other is a pioneer who builds something new. The talk pointed out the impossibility of creating leaders by sheer force of will: educators (and especially military instructors) have been trying to do this for hundreds of years without success. I believe this because being a leader has a lot to do with choice and character.
When it comes to university leaders, I think it is no coincidence that we call them administrators (= a form of manager). True and inspiring leaders are rare and may not necessarily find university administration appealing. If university administrators fulfil their responsibility to create a good environment for teaching and research on their campus, that is enough for me. That is already a tall order! There is no need for them to cure the all the ills of the world. That is what students are there for: University students have been a force for political change for centuries. I do not think that professors and administrators necessarily need to beat students in this regard. Or, to use Pinker’s words, I do not think it is necessary for professors and administrators to ‘have a foreign policy’.
Good point about the difference between managers and leaders. I had been taught that a managers aim to preserve the status quo (which is understandable since that is the efficient, effective method of continuing to function) whereas leaders aim to stretch beyond or change direction. Hopefully Universities have both!
Administrators (managers) are sorely needed to provide a stable foundation—they better not “lead” themselves. But hopefully others (leaders) throughout the University (students, dedicated faculty, or the president) can then be safe with this stability to then advocate for causes important to them.
I’d personally prefer to have an effective manager who can maintain the status quo of an environment in which open expression of ideas (and foreign policy) is able to be safely expressed. Rather than a hierarchy of leaders in control who all want to advocate for their foreign policy (while risking community stability.)
> My problem with Emanuel’s statement is that he’s arguing that this sort of statement should be some sort of norm. He writes, “Leaders need to lead.” …
.
Most of the calls for how college officials should “lead” here were nothing other than issue advocacy. It’s not merely that college presidents had to say “Hamas sucks,” but that they had to say it with some undefined level of force and with an undetermined level of speed. This was dictating not that college officials should “lead,” but that “leading” meant acting in ways that fit very specifically with particular political views. IMO, this wasn’t actually an issue of leadership at all. That was a red herring. This was about Emanuel expressing his views that college officials should express views in accordance with his own. Anything else would, by definition, be a lack of “leadership.”
.
Well put! This is what bothers me about Congress getting involved in these campus controversies. Sure, there is a public stake that gives Congress the right to get involved, but universities are homes for many diverse views. There are plenty of individuals willing and able to express these views and I believe a primary role for the president of a university is to protect the rights to express and discuss/debate these views. The requirement that a university president express any particular view is secondary, at best. In fact, I think it is somewhat ludicrous to think that Harvard needs their president to condemn Hamas, antisemitism, or any other particular horrendous view. Aren’t there enough capable people at Harvard to do this? Shouldn’t the president of Harvard strive to ensure that these individuals feel free to express their views, as well as ensuring that dialogue takes place where necessary – I offer that last thought as one way to deal with the issue of whether all views need to be protected. Having the right to express a view should not mean you have a right to express a view without others’ rights to challenge it. I think the university president should also be responsible to ensure that these views be expressed peacefully and without harassment. But insisting that the president be the voice of any particular viewpoint is fairly low on my list of priorities for that role.
The whole thing was a hypocrisy-a-palooza.
It was remarkable how uniformly so many in the “anti-cancel culture” and “anti-woke” crowd were now demanding that college officials, college faculty, and college students now needed to be expressing themselves in very particular ways in particular time frames, or be “cancelled” or defunded for failing to do so.
Then it was remarkable how people who said that “speech is violence” were now mocking other people for taking offense at something they said (i.e., mocking Jewish students for being upset if they made statements that the Jewish students found offensive).
Mix in the inherently subjective meaning of “Palestinians will be free from the River to the Sea” and the absolute certainty that it either meant “all Jews should be slaughtered” or that it meant nothing anyone should take any offense to (it was beautifully ironic that the Likud party platform said that only Jews should have sovereignty “from the River to the Sea” also”).
It’s almost as if some people are inherently incapable of holding their viewpoints consistent across vantage points. But that’s not really new. The difficulty of “cognitive empathy” is quite ubiquitous – even if not many contexts make that difficulty as anything that gets anywhere near the Israeli/Palestinian context. That said, I’ve been disappointed at how so many Jews have utterly failed to integrate cognitive empathy in this context.
That Jonathan Haidt, as a champion of the “anti-cancel culture” crowd so enthusiastically embraced calls for cancel culture from the likes of Bari Weiss, although not entirely surprising is still very discouraging.
As someone who grew up in a Jewish home, I lived under a belief that understanding others’ perspective was a fundamental component of Jewish identity. That belief has been seriously challenged.
should be…
…even if not many contexts make [difficulty with cognitive empathy] as obvious as anything that gets anywhere near the Israeli/Palestinian context.
> Mix in the inherently subjective meaning of “Palestinians will be free from the River to the Sea”
Is the reference to Palestinians instead of Palestine intentional?
According to google “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” is a thousand times more popular than “From the River to the Sea, Palestinians Will Be Free”.
Gonna add one more piece and then I’ll shut up.
Of course part of the context was a perceived hypocrisy – that the same college officials who were quick to weigh-in on political issues such as the George Floyd death weren’t equally quick to “condemn Hamas” (and denounce any criticism of Israeli policy).
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to argue that there was a double-standard. I think there prolly was some inconsistency, and that any inconsistency could be explained by political worldview. However, I think the (1) actually quantifying that double-standard is pretty complex, (2) not disregarding that complexity, my view is that the assertions of double standard were mostly overdrawn, (3) the determination than the only explanation for any double-standard was antisemitism was facile, and crossed over with the facile argument that criticism of Israeli policies is necessarily a function of antisemitism (e.g., anti-Zionism = anti-semitism). That’s not to argue that antisemitism doesn’t weave its way into these issues to some extent.
Joshua, Dale:
Advocating against an organization that ruthlessly slaughters civilians reflects a particular political point of view? Who knew!? I always thought that, at least here in the US, or maybe in the West in general, or maybe most of humanity, murder has generally been viewed as universally unacceptable. But I guess in your pantheon there’s a legitimate “pro murder” political position?
Andrew: do you get it?
It’s cool for administration, deans, faculty and staff – whether you call them “leaders” or not – to sit by and let students and faculty fight it out over the capital gains tax. It’s not cool when students are advocating the slaughter of innocent people. Sorry, that is the time for *all faculty and all administrators* to demonstrate that they are civilized adults and take control of the situation away from the children.
That’s why I was happy to see Congress get involved. Amazingly Congress took the adult role away from the university sophisticates and forced some non-leading non-adults out of their jobs. Hopefully more firings will follow, right down into the faculty – and I predict that will be the case.
It’s amazing that so many university employees can still breath with their heads burried so deeply in the sand.
Your head is buried all right. Why do you think it is necessary for a university president to condemn Hamas? I have nothing against them expressing that, but I don’t see why it is necessary. Is it necessary that every faculty member do so as well? What about every staff member? Should all university presidents condemn murder? What about racial discrimination? Why not hand them a list of all the evils in the world and then insist that they recite them or be fired?
Don’t mistake my view for being indifferent to Hamas. I find their actions inexcusable, regardless of how complex the history of that region is. I have no objection to university presidents saying that, but what I don’t like is the Congressional litmus test applied to university presidents, and selectively at that. Further, what really bothers me is that I don’t view the university president’s role as publicly declaring all evils in the world. There are plenty of famous people at Harvard perfectly capable of expressing their views. Exactly why the university president is needed to do that before Congress is something I don’t understand. Of course, this was all about politics anyway, so I have no illusions that this was a matter of principle for the Congressional inquisitors.
When I was in school, college Republican groups invited Richard Spencer to speak on campus and it was ruled legally that universities HAVE to allow students to invite him and HAVE to facilitate the speaking event. Richard Spencer was famous for saying to “party like it’s 1933” about Trump’s election, leading a “Heil Trump” salute, and writing the following passage
The University’s obligation to facilitate Spencer’s speeches were, at the time, championed by the Republican party specifically. So without commenting on the accuracy of your representation or expressing my own opinion, I’m submitting to you that your opinion is the direct opposite of the Republican party’s circa 2017.
Spenser endorsed Biden over Trump, so Spenser is not a Republican. When someone invites Spenser or anyone else to speak, it does not mean agreement with all his opinions.
I did not claim that Spencer was a Republican, nor did I claim that Republicans as a whole endorse his views. I am saying that the University is legally mandated to allow him, in collaboration with students, to promote his views, and that Republicans were arguing that that is a good thing.
Furthermore, Spencer’s endorsements after his self described “rebirth” are irrelevant to the drama under discussion which occurred in 2017
Free speech is a good thing. On some issues, such as the Gaza War, a free exchange of ideas will necessarily bring in people that have taken positions that the other side considers too offensive to argue.
+1
Chipmunk –
What Dale said, I think is key.
> Don’t mistake my view for being indifferent to Hamas.
The problem is that people can overlay whatever they want to to what people day. Criticism of Israel can and has been deemed as support for terrorism and beheading babies. Calling Hamas terrorists can be seen as endorsing the deaths of thousands of Palestinian children. Calling for Palestinians to have freedom becomes a desire for all Jews to become slaughtered. Supporting Israel’s right to defense becomes endorsement of genocide and war crimes.
In some cases those can even be accurate assumptions. But blanket assumptions are dangerously unfalsifiable.
These are inherently tricky issues. What is or isn’t appropriate for university officials to make as political statements is inherently subjective. People can read them in whichever way that aligns with their views. Condemning Hamas can be seen as endorsement of killing Palestinian children in the same way that calling for a ceasefire can be seen as endorsing slaughtering Jews.
So are university officials then obligated to condemn Hamas? Are they obligated to call for a ceasefire? Are they obligated to condemn the death of George Floyd or to condemn the rioting in Minnesota? Who gets to say what they are or aren’t obligated to say?
I think in the end, the answer is that they shouldn’t be obligated to say anything in particular, nor should they be obligated to NOT say anything in particular. They are free to interpret what they feel is appropriate to say as leaders in their community. Their communities are free to give them feedback about how what they say has impact.
I think it’s incumbent for people inside and outside those communities to implement principles of perspective taking and cognitive empathy. To understand that calling for a ceasefire may or may not be an endorsement of Hamas. That condemning Hamas may or may not be an endorsement of a a policy where thousands of Palestinian children are being blown apart.
What’s unacceptable for me is for people of all stripes to ignore the inherent ambiguities and instead to use what university officials say as tools for issue advocacy and political expediency.
When it comes to leadership and responsibility of a teacher, here is what Max Weber said in Germany in 1917 (!) in the midst of World War I:
“The American’s conception of the teacher who faces him is: he sells me his knowledge and his methods for my father’s money, just as the greengrocer sells my mother cabbage. And that is all. To be sure, if the teacher happens to be a football coach, then, in this field, he is a leader. But if he is not this (or something similar in a different field of sports), he is simply a teacher and nothing more. And no young American would think of having the teacher sell him a Weltanschauung or a code of conduct.”
And, for good measure, in that same speech he remarked,
“If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation [tenure], the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni 3peranza.”
Well, of course, Weber is long gone but he sure seems to have nailed it long before any contributor to this blog was born. And before the highest paid public employee in most states was a football coach.
During the 1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, we just wanted to administration not to interfere with our right to protest the denial of civil rights. We didn’t ask the administration to condemn it for us.
The danger is that self-described “ethicists” like Emanuel would be put in charge of the curriculum and the ethical positions taught in these recommended required ethics courses. He has no special insight into moral norms that should be adopted by others. His recommendations about rationing healthcare according to his particular way of computing the number of life years you’ve consumed or whatever had an impact during the Covid pandemic, and not a good one.
I believe that science is the best way to understand the world, and science requires data. There is no way that I can easily determine the automobile preferences nor the foreign policy positions of professors. However, by doing a GIS I can check their garment palette. I looked at the Harvard faculty, the MIT crew, the University of Indiana, and Florida State. The most common shirt color is a bland shade of blue. If you wish to see an example of this color, do a GIS for “Andrew Gelman.” This isn’t really an “earth” tone, more of a sky tone.
I should acknowledge that I am pretty old and know that the ability to perceive blue declines with age. If a young person tells me that Dr. Gelman’s shirts are vibrant blue, I will accept the correction.
This isn’t about asking leaders to lead; it’s about pressuring them to be followers of a particular point of view, and threatening them with their jobs to comply.
A high-level administrator of a large flagship university told me the three most common types of messages sent to the president’s email address are:
1) complaints from parents about their child’s grade in a class
2) complaints over the university’s decision to close or not close in inclement weather or after some local or national event
3) demands for statements and complaints about statements — not mentioning atrocity B, mentioning atrocity B, writing 8 more words about atrocity A than atrocity B, etc.
Since Oct 7, anonymous hate mail arrives pretty much daily, and death threats at least once a week.
I don’t think the line of reasoning in the post and from some of the commenters is valid. It seems to be a slippery slope argument and it goes like this: If university leaders should condemn Hamas now, then what else should they condemn? Were to stop? There is so much injustice in the world, they can not be pushed to condemn everything.
I don’t really know a lot about the discussion in the US. As far as I understand though, some people urge university leaders to condemn Hamas not simply because Hamas committed atrocities, but because students on campus seem to be uncritical of it and maybe even sympathize with Hamas. I think this is a different situation. Imagine students start celebrating murder, racial injustice, antisemitism or what ever. Should university leaders then condemn these world views? I think they should not be forced to do it, but appealing to them seems okay to me
>> Again, my problem is not with university leaders, or business leaders, or church leaders, etc., expressing views, but rather with the idea that this is what they are supposed to do. <> …nor should they be obligated to NOT say anything in particular <<
No, they should be obligated to NOT say anything in particular. The Kalven Committee of the University of Chicago got it right:
https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/KalvenRprt_0.pdf