THE “MARXISTS, MANIACS AND LUNATICS” FIGHT BACK
The “Marxist, Maniacs and Lunatics” Fight Back. (That’s what the commander in chief is calling universities these days). Faculty, students, alumni, and staff have been loudly objecting to the Trump administration’s absurd Compact. On Friday the Rotunda felt some joy as it witnessed a large rally on the lawn in which almost every unit in the University called on the institution to refuse the compact. This was part of a National Day of Action. Over 1000 people gathered on the lawn. We made it onto the Rachel Maddow show!!!! Many faculty, students, and alumni did amazing organizing work on this. A couple of hours after the rally, the interim President released a very tepid no to the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
It is Better than the Alternative. Basically, Mahoney said, “we will not be bribed. However, we look forward to collaborating and we are doing this stuff anyway.” Prof. Mahoney studies securities regulations, corporate finance, banking and other such matters. He’s big into the Securities Act of 1933, which forced corporations to disclose financial information before selling. So, presumably, acquiescing to extortion would not help his scholarly reputation. But he concluded his response with “We believe that the best path toward real and durable progress lies in an open and collaborative conversation. We look forward to working together to develop alternative, lasting approaches to improving higher education.” He told the faculty senate executive committee that, “the administration wants to continue to engage in conversations about their concerns with higher education with the universities who attended Friday’s meeting and perhaps others. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has used the language “defining a shared vision.”
The Third Sentence Sucks. Mahoney writes that, “We also agree with many of the principles outlined in the Compact, including a fair and unbiased admissions process, an affordable and academically rigorous education, a thriving marketplace of ideas, institutional neutrality, and equal treatment of students, faculty, and staff in all aspects of university operations.” The last bit is good. BUT…. I prefer the Cavalier Daily’s interpretation.
Fair and Unbiased Admissions. When the Trump administration says this, they reference the Students for Fair Admissions supreme court case. This decision is a huge blow to systematic approaches to educational inequity. This is especially the case at UVa. The fight for integration and for coeducation was long and hard here and it can turn back real quick.
Institutional Neutrality is precisely the opposite of neutral. These bogus claims of neutrality usually supposedly defend free speech. If colleges and universities refuse to take stands on controversial issues, everyone can live happily ever after in the land of free-wheeling debate. They do not. They become tools for silencing critique. But as institutions of higher education, we should not be neutral. As popular authoritarian regimes take power, universities must take stands. As teachers, we must take stands. At the University of Virginia, are we to remain neutral on redressing centuries of racial inequity? And as it happens, I don’t particularly like statements. It is so much easier to say that you oppose racism than it is to actually do something about it…..
The Marketplace of Ideas. The first time I was really encouraged to experience the so-called marketplace of ideas was when Young Americans for Freedom with support from the Jefferson Council invited Mike Pence to give a talk called “Saving America from the Woke Left.” Also, in October of 2017, just a few months after Richard Spencer orchestrated a hatescape here, the University of Florida hosted him as part of the “marketplace of ideas.” The idea comes from John Stuart Mill’s 1859 “On Liberty.” Truth in his model is a good, and the competition occurs among rational economic actors. For the record, he had no problem with the marketplace of ideas running an idea out of business. Justice Holmes famously took this up in a 1919 dissenting opinion in which he referred to a “free trade of ideas.” He posited the marketplace of ideas as central to our constitution and imagined a neutral “free market,” devoid of ideology and error. He was writing against the supreme court majority, who supported lower courts in using the espionage act to convict antiwar protesters who distributed fliers criticizing the draft.
The Law School weighed in at the last minute. On Friday morning, a letter signed by 40 law professors was released. They said they signed in their “individual capacities.” Despite the fact that their former Dean (the now interim president) told the faculty senate that he saw no potential legal red flags in the compact, they said they’d limit the scope of their letter to, “a discussion of the constitutional issues we consider most pressing—the way in which the Compact (at least in its application) could (i) constitute a coercive exercise of conditional spending and (ii) prove offensive to freedom of speech and association. Ultimately, we are convinced that the Compact, in its totality, chills free expression, free association, and academic freedom in ways that the founder of our university, Thomas Jefferson, would have rejected.” They include details that we must remember because this fight is not over. They wonder how the Department of Education can legally police compliance. They point out that the Federal Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits federal agencies from keeping records “describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the first amendment.” Download this for later.
The Nine Schools were not asked to say yes or no by October 20th. They were asked to comment. As of today, MIT, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, UVa, Dartmouth, and the University of Arizona said no (in that order.) Vanderbilt didn’t say they would say no. They look forward to sharing more feedback. The chancellor Daniel Diermeier said their “North Star” has always been Academic Freedom. The Vanderbilt Hustler reports here. (yup that’s what the student paper is called) Dr. D has been on the “reform higher education” bandwagon for a while and loves “institutional neutrality.”
MIT Said No First. Sally Kornbluth said, “we already meet and exceed the goals of the compact. And she said in no uncertain terms, that MIT disagrees with principles in the document. Brown said no on October 15. Reading between the lines I hear something like, “we already gave up many of our principles as part of the voluntary resolution. And now you want to extract more? No F%$%$ way.”
The Commander in Chief is Not Happy As of October 14, the 47th President used his weirdo platform Truth Social to invite Universities to join in fighting the socialist, anti-American, discriminatory stuff that supposedly extra woke schools like UVa are doing. “But for those Institutions that want to quickly return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement, they are invited to enter into a forward-looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” I browsed Truth Social. Once again, my experience reading 17th century papal propaganda prepared me for this particular travesty.
