Author Archives: Peter

winter break

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As friends know, I’ve been blogging almost daily here since Jan. 8, 2003 (with 3,313 posts so far). I usually try to rotate among political analysis, social theory, and some cultural commentary. While I expected Clinton to win the 2016 election, I looked forward to reducing the frequency of my topical political posts. Barack Obama is a leader for whom I feel unique regard and emotional commitment. I thought that once his eight years were over, I’d try to go a bit deeper into theory, while the US political system entered a period of–as I expected then–stalemate. Instead, on Nov. 8, we experienced the civic nightmare of a Trump victory. For the first time in nearly 14 years of blogging, I have focused essentially on one question every day: how to respond? Although this remains a comparatively low-traffic site, it saw enormous growth compared to any time in its history. Particularly popular posts (by my standards) have been:

We are about to take a family vacation, and I am also feeling the need for a mental break–not to retreat from political engagement (much as I would like to be able to consider that option), but to regroup and consider how to be most useful. Thus I am signing off until Jan. 2. Happy holidays!

the verdict on the Massachusetts Citizens Initiative Review

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Last summer, working with Healthy Democracy and the office of State Rep. Jonathan Hecht, we at the Tisch College of Civic Life organized the first Citizens Initiative Review in Massachusetts. A representative group of citizens deliberated intensively about a pending ballot initiative to legalize marijuana and co-wrote an informative statement about the initiative’s pros and cons that we helped to disseminate to voters. Watching them at work was a powerful antidote to the atmosphere of civic despair so prevalent in 2016.

Now a research team led by Penn State’s John Gastil has published an evaluation. These are some key findings (verbatim from this site):

The 2016 Massachusetts CIR panel achieved a high quality of deliberation, which enabled panelists to understand and consider key arguments for and against Question 4 (marijuana legalization ballot measure).

  • The 2016 Massachusetts CIR maintained either the same or a higher level of deliberation obtained in previous years and in other locations. The review provided participants with high quality information provided by strong teams of advocates and experts and created a respectful and open atmosphere for panelists to engage in deliberation.
  • The vast majority of participants reported learning enough about the measure, and most reported little difficulty processing information, arguments, and underlying values related to Question 4.
  • CIR panelists and neutral observers largely agreed in their assessment that the CIR was both analytically rigorous and conducted in a democratic fashion.

The 2016 Massachusetts CIR produced a clear and reliable Citizens’ Statement.

  • Claims made in the 2016 Citizens’ Statement generally were accurate and verifiable, though some elements reflected unchallenged expert testimony of indeterminate accuracy.
  • The 2016 Massachusetts Citizens’ Statement was clearly written in broadly accessible language, but the Statement could have been stronger with better direction in relation to the ordering of claims and the inclusion of values.

Voters rated the 2016 Massachusetts CIR Statement as useful and informative.

  • Nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) rated the Statement as “easy to read.”
  • The vast majority of voters rated the Statement as either “very informative” (42%) or “somewhat informative” (52%).
  • In deciding how to vote on Question 4, a third (32%) said the Statement was “very helpful,” and another 45% said it was “somewhat helpful.”

Voters shown the 2016 Massachusetts CIR Statement on Question 4 increased their issue knowledge and were eager to share its findings

  • Massachusetts voters were randomly divided into two groups—one reading just official information about Question 4 and the other reading those same materials, along with the CIR Statement. The CIR exposure group improved its knowledge scores on three of the four factual claims tested by becoming both more accurate in its beliefs and more confident in the correct knowledge those voters held.
  • Knowledge gains were found across three different voter groups, including those opposed to Question 4, those in favor, and those undecided on the measure.
  • A majority of voters (57-75%) said they would “probably” or “definitely” share these four pieces of information. This finding held true across all three voter groups (those opposed to, in favor of, or neutral on Question 4), though those in favor or opposed to the measure were somewhat more eager to share the information that aligned with their views.

When asked whether they would continue to believe findings in the CIR Statement even after being refuted by an alternative source, voters were divided. When the hypothetical refutation came from pro and con campaigns, roughly twice as many voters continued to trust the CIR versus those inclined to doubt it. When the refutation came from an “independent expert,” a plurality were more inclined to trust the expert.

save the date for Frontiers of Democracy: June 22-24, 2017 in Boston

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Frontiers of Democracy is an annual conference hosted by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University with partners.

In 2017, the frontiers of democracy are threatened around the world. Leaders and movements that have popular support–yet are charged with being undemocratic, xenophobic, and illiberal–are influential or dominant in the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, South Africa, France, Britain, and the United States, among other countries. Meanwhile, many peoples continue to face deep and sustained repression. Social movements and networks are confronting this global turn to authoritarianism. Please join us for a discussion of what we must do to defend and expand the frontiers of democracy.

You can enter your information here (shortlink: http://tinyurl.com/zp2qlpz) to let us know that you are interested in attending and to ensure that you receive additional information about the agenda and registering for Frontiers. (This is not a registration link.)

As always, the format of Frontiers is highly interactive; most of the concurrent sessions are “learning exchanges” rather than presentations or panels. We welcome proposals for learning exchanges for 2017. Please use this form to submit ideas (shortlink: http://tinyurl.com/jfdurwv).

Frontiers is a public conference that follows immediately after the Summer Institute of Civic Studies, a 2-week seminar for scholars, practitioners, and advanced graduate students. The Summer Institute requires an application, and admissions decisions are usually made in May. Prospective applicants should sign up on the Summer Institute’s webpage (shortlink: http://tinyurl.com/hgm64rb) to receive more information.

the bright side of one-party government: accountability

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Here’s an excerpt of Sarah Kliff’s interview with Debbie Mills, a Trump voter:

Are you surprised how much Republicans are talking about repeal [of Obamacare]?

No.

Did you expect — do you think they’ll do it, or do you think it’ll be too hard?

I’m hoping that they don’t, ’cause, I mean, what would they do then? Would this go away?

Yes, possibly.

The insurance?

It will go, if they repeal it. I mean, that’s what they promised to do in so many elections.

Right … so … I don’t know. … [snip]

Our interview began to make her a bit nervous.

You’re scaring me now on the insurance part … I’m afraid now that the insurance is going to go away and we’re going to be up a creek.

How could this happen? Why would vulnerable people vote against their own essential interests when they are aware of the stakes and have no altruistic or principled objections to the policy that’s at risk?

Kliff proposes that it was reasonable to doubt that Obamacare really would be repealed, since many political experts also predicted that it would become untouchable, like Social Security. Even to this day, there is a chance that Republicans will leave it alone. But, if we assume that Debbie Mills should have voted for Clinton over Trump to preserve Obamacare, then here are two familiar explanations for her choice:

  1. Trust. Nobody really knows that political leaders will do in the future. Nobody even knows what any given policy will accomplish. We all rely on information, interpretation, predictions, and promises from sources that we trust. I think many Trump voters did not trust Trump to do anything specific that he said, but they did trust his general competence and alignment with their interests. Meanwhile, they distrusted Clinton’s motivations. I believe they were wrong in these judgments, but the difference is not my superior rationality. Rather, we made different assessments of trustworthiness.
  2. Salience: Joseph Schumpeter observed in 1942 that “the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective.” This was true, Schumpeter said, of “educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life.” The reason was basically that each vote hardly counted, so it was irrational to spend a lot of time sorting through the “masses of information” that were already available in 1942–not to mention the vast masses today–to make careful judgments. In the absence of “immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist.” And voting, although a responsibility, is too small to compel much attention. Schumpeter originated this way of thinking about politics, but much subsequent psychological research has reinforced it.

I would add a third explanation, and this one is significant because it is likely to change.

  1. Divided government. For 28 of the past 36 years, the elected branches of the federal government have been divided between Democrats and Republicans. Even during the remaining eight years (two each under Clinton and Obama and four under G.W. Bush), Senate filibusters, opposing state governments, and courts have checked the majority’s power. This is one reason that net government spending–federal plus state plus local–rose by nearly 50% under a conservative-sounding president (Bush) and leveled off under under a liberal-sounding president (Obama). As long as the ideology of our most prominent leader is largely unrelated to the actual policies in place, voters get poor feedback from their choices at the ballot box. That makes them unlikely to learn.

I am not saying that it’s a Good Thing that we now face unified Republican government in most of the country. Mills will probably lose her health insurance, which could shorten or wreck her life. Many others will pay a severe price as well. It’s relatively easy for me to see the bright side, since I am not nearly as vulnerable.

But there is a bright side. If you believe in electoral democracy at all, you must acknowledge that voters will make mistakes severe enough to cost lives. The argument for electoral democracy is that voters will learn from such mistakes. But we have frustrated such learning for more than a generation. The political system has performed very poorly at times–killing half a million Iraqis, incarcerating 2 million Americans, allowing our industrial cities to whither wither away–but few citizens have had to rethink their prior assumptions about which ideology is better for them. The signal has been lost in the noise.

The signal is now about to be heard pretty clearly. Democrats and other progressives should amplify it by constantly drawing connections between the reigning ideology and its outcomes, and by refusing to mitigate the short-term damage. Then Trump’s 2016 victory will be Pyrrhic.

prospects for civic media after 2016

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Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice is a new book edited by Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis. I contributed the introductory chapter, “Democracy in the Digital Age.” On Nov. 16, I joined Eric, Paul, Ethan Zuckerman (MIT), Colin Rhinesmith (Simmons), Beth Coleman (University of Waterloo), and Ceasar McDowell (MIT) for a book-launch discussion that focused on the role of media in the 2016 election and the prospects for civic media in the near future. Here’s the video.

separating populism from anti-intellectualism

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I’m a populist, yet I advocate the life of the mind. I’d like to see less elitism (of certain kinds) along with more intense and widespread intellectual inquiry. Unfortunately, the most prominent varieties of populism today are anti-intellectual. This is a problem rooted in social structures. Some of the solutions involve changing the way formal educational institutions work. Others involve enhancing intellectual life in informal contexts.

Let’s define “anti-intellectualism” as a rejection of advanced, specialized, complicated thought, which is viewed as antithetical to common sense. According to Mark Fisher (The Washington Post 7/17), Donald Trump is an explicit anti-intellectual:

He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.” Trump said he is skeptical of experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.” He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: “A lot of people said, ‘Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.'” … Trump said reading long documents is a waste of time because he absorbs the gist of an issue very quickly. “I’m a very efficient guy,” he said. “Now, I could also do it verbally, which is fine. I’d always rather have — I want it short. There’s no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is.”

Presumably, Trump’s anti-intellectualism was more of a political asset than a liability in the campaign, and that tells us something about our culture. (On the other hand, one of the most curious and thoughtful political leaders in modern America–and a very fine writer–won the two previous presidential elections, so politics is not a vast wasteland.)

Let’s define “anti-elitism” as a rejection of the superior position, entitlement, and power of some privileged group. This is different from anti-intellectualism because an elite needn’t be defined by knowledge or expertise: the business class, for instance, usually is not. However, the two ideas often come together, not only in Trump’s rhetoric but in many other examples from American history. For instance, in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), Richard Hofstadter wrote:

The kind of anti-intellectualism expressed in official circles during the 1950’s was mainly the traditional businessman’s suspicion of experts working in any area outside his control, whether in scientific laboratories, universities, or diplomatic corps. Far more acute and sweeping was the hostility to intellectuals expressed on the far-right wing, a categorical folkish dislike of the educated classes and of any thing respectable, established, pedigreed, or cultivated. The right-wing crusade of the 1950’s was full of heated rhetoric about “Harvard professors, twisted-thinking intellectuals … in the State Department; those who are “burdened with Phi Beta Kappa keys and academic honors” but not “equally loaded with honesty and common sense”; “the American respectables, the socially pedigreed, the culturally acceptable, the certified gentlemen and scholars of the day, dripping with college degrees .. . the “best people” who were for Alger Hiss”; “the pompous diplomat in striped pants with phony British accent”; those who try to fight Communism “with kid gloves in perfumed drawing rooms “; Easterners who “insult the people of the great Midwest and West, the heart of America; those who can “trace their ancestry back to the eighteenth century or even further” but whose loyalty is still not above suspicion; those who understand “the Groton vocabulary of the Hiss-Achcson group.”

The businessmen who distrusted independent intellectuals represented one elite quarreling with a different one–Wall Street and Detroit struggled for influence with the Ivy League and the State Department. But the “far right-wing” rejected elites that they defined in terms of social privilege rather than intellectualism. For these people, the problem with Groton School alumni was not their sophisticated ways of thought but their social pedigree and arrogance. These right populists were against Wall Street and Harvard. Although Hafstadter is writing here about the right wing, some left populists share the same targets.

I think anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism come together because educational institutions serve two functions simultaneously.

On one hand, schools and colleges are spaces for intellectual inquiry. They are the most prominent and best supported places where people address unanswered questions of public importance, conduct deep and sustained conversations about unresolved topics, and model and teach the skills and values required for those pursuits.

At the same time, schools and colleges confer social status. A college degree is a prerequisite for occupying many of the advantaged slots in our social order. Educational institutions at all levels teach not only intellectual skills, but also manners, modes of social interaction, and ways of writing and speaking that mark out the advantaged class. And despite their protestations that they admit students fairly, they are dominated by children of privileged groups. For reasons that I’ve explored in some length, I don’t think this situation is likely to change markedly.

To make matters even more fraught, the genuine search for knowledge can be conducted arrogantly or else responsively. One can pursue the truth by studying other people and their problems in order to change those people (for good or ill), or one can listen and create knowledge together. Finally, claims to advanced knowledge can be trustworthy or not. After all, highly credentialed experts are the ones who told us to blast highways through inner cities, minimize fat consumption, and invade Iraq.

I think several trends worsen the conflation of populism with anti-intellectualism today.

First, although advanced intellectual inquiry occurs in some spaces that aren’t educational institutions–community organizing groups, online magazines, some religious communities, and hip hop–the state of “informal” intellectual life does not seem to be strong today compared to the past. Most of the people who can spend a lot of their time reading, writing, and talking about complex issues work as teachers or professors.

Second, tools for data collection, analysis, and influence are giving frightening amounts of power to people who possess and deploy information.

Third, in a post-industrial economy, the workforce is increasingly divided between people who work with their hands in low-status roles, and others who work with symbols and data. The former understandably wonder why they must pay for the latter, whether directly or via taxation. University of Wisconsin professor Kathy Cramer describes how she would visit small towns in her state and introduce herself “as a public opinion scholar from the state’s flagship university.” When she asked citizens what concerned them most, they often “expressed a deeply felt sense of not getting their ‘fair share’ …. They felt that they didn’t get a reasonable proportion of decision-making power, believing that the key decisions were made in the major metro areas of Madison [where Kathy works] and Milwaukee, then decreed out to the rest of the state, with little listening being done to people like them.” It became clear to Cramer that when they complained about people who didn’t work hard enough, they were “talking about the laziness of desk-job white professionals like me.” Why did their tax dollars have to pay for someone to drive around the state asking people political questions so she could write her books?

Finally, today seems like a time of growing deference to high-status people. As I wrote last fall:

We live at a time when billionaires, celebrities, and CEOs are given extraordinary deference, especially in comparison to run-of-the-mill elected officials, civil servants, union leaders, and grassroots organizers. Politicians, for instance, are constantly in contact with their wealthiest constituents. First-year Democratic Members of the House are advised to spend four hours per day of every day calling donors. Meanwhile, many advocacy groups are funded by rich individuals, not sustained by membership dues, so their leaders are also constantly on the phone or at conferences and meetings with wealthy people.

One solution is to identify, strengthen, and lift up informal spaces where people who haven’t attended college–at least, not recently–engage in intense intellectual work. When I interviewed the great community organizer Ernesto Cortés, Jr. (Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) co-chair and executive director of the West / Southwest IAF regional network), he told me this was his organization’s strategy:

Building talented, committed, enterprising relational organizers through recruitment, training, and mentoring. We develop their capacity to be reciprocal, relational organizers. Ask–what do Aristotle and Aquinas say? Explore the different traditions. Offer all kinds of seminars with a wide range of scholars from left, right, center. Develop their intellectual capacity, which is the capacity to be deliberative. Help them to understand labor, capitalism, the various faith traditions, strategic thinking. We offer what amount to postgraduate-level seminars in how to create effective leaders in an institutional context–not lone celebrity activists–people who build institutions that can then be networked together. …

Another example is the impressive array of liberal arts programs now being taught in prisons on a pro bono basis by professors. For instance, the Jessup Correctional Institution Scholars Program explains:

Our Program is dedicated to a simple concept: no one in society should be deprived of access to ideas. This has led all of us, through different paths, to seek opportunities to teach and learn outside the walls of the academy, built to keep people out on the basis of their social standing and financial means. And it has ultimately led us to bring intellectual discussion inside the walls of the prison, a space that too many people consider radically separate from society. We see society as a whole riddled with locked doors and those of the prison are just one more set that we hope to open.

Everyone in the program is a scholar, and we think of ourselves as on equal moral and intellectual footing – we strive to create course content as a collaboration between teachers and students, and to make classes free-ranging discussions and workshops more than lectures.

Another solution is to do the intellectual work of the university in ways that better engage laypeople. Guided in part by Albert Dzur, I argue that the way to accomplish this is not to teach graduate students and PhD researchers to be more modest and humble. That message never sticks with an ambitious group, and it’s not really the ideal, anyway. We actually need more courageous and enterprising research. Instead, we can recognize that engaging members of the public in creating and using knowledge requires highly advanced skills–it’s a form of democratic professionalism. We should teach, evaluate, and reward excellent democratic professionalism in the academy.

A third solution is for the academy to take more responsibility–at the institutional level–for communicating research and intellectual life. It used to make some sense to assume that academics conducted research and professional reporters selected and translated the most relevant findings for their readers or listeners via mass media. If that model ever worked, it doesn’t work now that 30% fewer people are employed as professional reporters. Just as institutions of higher education created public broadcasting, so they must now launch new forms of communication.

None of these three strategies will solve the underlying problem completely. The social underpinnings are problematic and require reform. Meanwhile, there are tempting political payoffs for politicians who demonize intellectual life. But these are three ways of fighting back.

Levinson and Fay, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics

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Meira Levinson’s and Jacob Fay’s edited volume Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries is enormously valuable. It not only addresses problems that confront educators every day but also suggests how moral reasoning can be revitalized in academia.

The book is organized around seven business-school-like cases. Each case poses a common dilemma. For instance, should a team of middle school teachers choose to promote a student who is far behind grade level? She will struggle and probably fail if she goes on to high school, but if they retain her, she will doubtless drop out. Each case ends at the point of decision. It is followed by half a dozen short reflective essays contributed by a mix of scholars and practitioners (although I noticed no systematic differences between the academics’ and educators’ chapters, which is interesting in itself).

Dilemmas of Educational Ethics represents a mode of thought that can fill a gap left in the tessellation of our current disciplines.

Social and behavioral sciences help to illuminate what is going on and predict what will happen as a result of various strategies. Management disciplines provide advice about how to operate as administrative leaders. And philosophy/political theory offers frameworks for asking “what is justice?” or “what should be done?”

But none of these disciplines directly addresses the question “What should we do?”–if “we” means a concrete group of responsible actors who have limited options and imperfect information. They face not only a practical question but also an intellectually challenging one. Practitioners would benefit if scholars thought from this perspective, and scholarly disciplines would be stronger if they addressed what is often a much harder question than “should should be done?” Social science misses the mark by bracketing the value aspect of the question “what should we do?”, and most philosophy/political theory loses the active agent (“we”) by focusing on justice as a virtue of social systems rather than an outcome of concrete action.

As advertised, the cases in this book are “richly described” and “realistic” (p. 3). The writing isn’t pretentious or mannered, but it is literary in the sense that various characters’ goals, emotional states, and interactions are described. The narratives build genuine suspense and force the reader to decide what she or he would do. This is a difficult form of writing that is unusual in most disciplines. In particular, it differs from the thought-experiments popular in moral philosophy: trolley problems and the like.

Philosophers prefer stylized situations that force a choice among theories that are revealed to be incompatible. For instance, whether to change the track of a runaway trolley forces a different response for a utilitarian or a Kantian. This is a dilemma in the sense of a choice between two bad options. A third choice is either defined as impossible or rejected as question-begging. You’re not allowed to ask, “Isn’t there something else the onlooker can throw in front of the trolley?” But many responses to the scenarios in this book do suggest a third or fourth option. Jeffrey Smith calls this move “breaking out of the binary” (p. 83). 

As Jal Mehta writes (p. 19), the cases in Levinson and Fay make you want to “diminish rather than ignite conflicts among first principles” and satisfy as many constituencies as you can, not necessarily for uniform reasons (p. 19). Mehta notes that that’s how skillful administrators think. It is, he adds, “diametrically opposed” to how “political philosophers” teach us to think. I’d say it is political thinking, in the best sense. Yet it is just as intellectually demanding as mainstream philosophy, if not more so.

Philosophers’ principles sometimes enter the discussion usefully. Christopher Winship addresses a case about school assignment rules by invoking John Rawls’ “Difference Principle” (any differences are legitimate only to the extent they are necessary to improve the situation of the least advantaged.) In turn, the Difference Principle emerged from Rawls’ highly abstract thought experiment of an Original Position, in which we shed knowledge of our own circumstances. But Winship doubts that “specific policy directives follow” from the Difference Principle for this case (p. 175). The best choice depends on predictions of the effects of various policies. Like other contributors, Winship thinks the best approach is to consider a “broad set of policy options” in case there’s a way to avoid the dilemma (p. 178).

Some of the authors balk at the focus on individual or small-group choices. Melissa Aguire, for instance, notes that the teachers in the first case study face a tragic choice that would be avoided entirely if the system were just. Her point is true and relevant; it should be made. At the same time, describing how things should be instead of what we must do can evade responsibility. Yes, systems should be just, but they aren’t, and what are we going to do about that? Many authors explore the constraints that teachers and others face in an unjust larger context, but they repeatedly insist that the specific actor is not powerless (e.g., 127). In the classic debate about structure and agency, they emphasize agency–not because it solves everything, but because it is the main concern of an actual agent.

Responding to a case about a teacher in a zero-tolerance school who thinks a vulnerable teenager has committed theft (which will result in a prison sentence), Tommie Shelby objects to the narrow focus on her “professional responsibilities.” “What matters first of all are the injustices that pervade society.” Still, Shelby doesn’t resort to calling for those injustices to be solved by someone else. Rather, he would “focus on her more general duties as a relatively privileged member of a profoundly unjust society.” That is to treat the teacher as an individual citizen, not just an individual professional. Shelby adds, “she can’t reform society on her own. She needs allies, and perhaps even a social movement, to be able to fundamentally change things.” (79, 81).

Needing a social movement is a problems of collective action. Jennifer Hochschild makes explicit references to the literature on collective action problems as she responds to a case about pervasive grade inflation in a private school. When everyone inflates grades, each teacher and school is forced to as well. But Hochschild’s brief review of the tragedy of the commons neglects more recent work by Elinor Ostrom and many others about how people actually solve collective action problems. They are not inexorable tragedies but suspenseful drams. Many of the suggestions in this volume are plausible solutions.

The scale gradually grows as the volume progresses–from choices made by one or a few teachers up to policies considered by school districts and states. As the scale grows, the active agent becomes more obscure. After presenting a case about comparing charter schools to other schools, Levinson asks, “would you support legislation that restricts charter school expansion?” (p. 185). Here the actor (“you”) is a voter, one of more than a million. The impact of each vote is infinitesimal, and the ballot question will be already framed by others. But Andres A. Alonso objects to a narrative that treats the Boston Public Schools (BPS) as the agent that chooses a school assignment plan. “Districts are hotbeds of internal and external politics. Virtually every decision is fought over by multiple stakeholders” (p. 165). His political analysis puts people’s agency back into the picture. 

Some of the authors suggest strategies at an important midsize scale that is usually overlooked in philosophy. Ethics focuses on individual choices, whereas the most influential political theories consider the ideal structure of a whole society; but here the focus is on purposeful groups. For instance, Toby N. Romer notes (p. 37) that as long as each teacher decides whether to send each student to a violence-prone “alternative” school, the right answer may be not to. But if all the teachers in the same middle school send all the relevant kids to that school, it will immediately improve, thanks to the broader range of enrollees. This is an example of collective action by a group, a “we,” that is small enough to make decisions and act together.

Authors cite Aristotelian phronesis (practical wisdom), Bent Flyvbjerg’s revival of phronesis, and pragmatism as methodological precedents. I share those enthusiasms, but I’m not sure that we yet have a satisfactory philosophical apparatus to clarify how people should think about what they should do. We must go beyond vague references to judgment or practical wisdom. We must face questions of agency and structure, relations between individual and group intentions and responsibilities, and challenges of collective action at various scales. I think this is an important frontier for philosophy and social theory.

See also Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis; community organizing, community-engaged research, and the problem of scale; a different approach to human problems

don’t confuse bias and judgment

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“Even good and, at bottom, worthy people have, in our time, the most extraordinary fear about making judgments. The confusion about judgment can go hand in hand with fine and strong intelligence, just as good judgment can be found in those not remarkable for their intelligence.” — Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, Dec. 29, 1963, translated by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
–W. B. Yeats

(Dayton, OH) A bias is a manifestation of cognitive limitations or weaknesses. It reveals that a person has failed to see the whole picture, to weigh evidence appropriately, to revise prior assumptions, to counter the influence of self-interest, or to grasp other perspectives. We are all subject to bias, constantly. It is wise to scrutinize our own and other people’s positions and opinions for signs of it. Certain professionals–reporters, researchers, teachers–are taught to acknowledge bias and to counter it. They are held accountable for any bias they appear to show. Anyone who writes in a public forum and purports to be a scholar or a teacher will sooner or later see the comment: “You’re biased!” (Or, just as likely, “Your bias!”, since grammar is not always the strong suit of the affronted.)

At the same time, each of us must make good judgments. Faced with almost any situation of any consequence, we can judge wisely and well, or judge badly, or fail to judge at all and thereby display negligence. Even journalists, scholars, and educators who advertise themselves as minimally biased must make constant judgments: what to cover, study, and teach, how to present information, whom to address, whom to take seriously, what counts as a legitimate position in a debate, and so on.

It’s essential to separate the language of bias from the language of judgment. They have different grammars: for instance, we say “good judgment” but not “good bias.” We accuse people of bias but not of judgment. A person can make the right judgment despite being biased; in fact, her bias may alert her to what really is the right conclusion. Or a person can somehow counter his own biases and yet make poor judgments. A typical example of the latter is a person who decides that taking a position would evidence bias and therefore fails to act–e.g., in response to a presidential candidate who is violating fundamental norms. Bias is empirically demonstrable, but demonstrating it does not prove that the speaker has reached the wrong conclusion. Judgment is wise or poor, but the difference is not empirically demonstrable in a straightforward way.

I think confusion between bias and judgment is one of the reasons that “even good and, at bottom, worthy people have, in our time, the most extraordinary fear about making judgments.” And that leaves the worst of us to display the most passionate intensity.

perspectives on identity politics

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One of the many debates that has intensified after the 2016 election concerns “identity politics.” Some liberals blame it for the Democrats’ loss. Mark Lilla writes, “If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions.” Others, like German Lopez, reply that politics is always about identity, that racial and sexual oppression are inescapable issues requiring explicit attention, and that the alternative to progressive identity politics is simply white nationalist identity politics.

The syllabus of my current philosophy class–planned months ago–concludes with a unit about identity and justice that we are entering right now. It follows a set of readings from political philosophy that are all egalitarian–in their various ways–and against discrimination, but that don’t delve deeply into questions of identity. And most (not all) of those writers have been White men. Now we turn to:

Some arguments from these readings in favor of identity politics:

People from oppressed groups must speak for themselves, not be the subjects of research or help from advantaged groups. Meanwhile, more differences need to be recognized. In current terms, justice requires acknowledging the “intersectionality” of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc., and hearing directly from people at each intersection. These two themes come together in a sentence by Lorde: “It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.”

People from oppressed groups need their “own strong solidarity,” built in somewhat separate spaces that are free from domination, so that they can “respond as a cohesive group” (Biko). Note that Biko uses “the black man” as a category that explicitly encompasses Zulus, Xhosas, Vendas, and South Africans of Indian origin, and implicitly includes black women. The logic of identity politics would suggest that he acknowledge more differences.

It’s not the job of oppressed peoples to educate their oppressors. “This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns.” For instance, to say that women of color must educate white women “is a diversion and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought” (Lorde). White women must educate themselves. This point seems somewhat in tension with Biko’s argument that “no group, however benevolent, can ever hand power to the vanquished on a plate. … No amount of moral lecturing will persuade the white man to ‘correct’ the situation.” Biko implies that oppressors will never educate themselves about oppression. But the two authors may agree that White people can and will change in the interests of their own liberation.

Oppressed peoples demonstrate better values than their oppressors. Biko celebrates traditional African religion (in the singular–presuming a unity across ethnic/national lines), in contrast to the “irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural background” who dominate South Africa. Identity politics of this type is not a form of cultural relativism but rather a call for better values.

Oppression is internal, psychological, implicit, and internalized by the oppressed. It’s not mainly about explicit power and rights. Therefore, changing explicit power and rights won’t solve matters. Biko depicts Black Consciousness as “the realisation by blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

Identity politics is a path to deep transformation and revolutionary change for all. It is not a matter of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” to use the current terminology popular in corporations and universities–i.e., accommodating or serving more people more fairly. Lorde might call that approach “the grossest reformism.” True identity politics is about liberation from current institutional arrangements. It is creative and innovative, “seek[ing] new ways of being” (Lorde).

What critics of identity politics hear as resentful complaints is often actually the sound of human beings flourishing. “Far from being constituted solely by their oppression and exclusion, group identities may be cherished as a source of strength and purpose [that] sustains us in struggle and makes political action possible” (Bickford.

Identity claims challenge supposedly universalist understandings of justice and the common good, since those were always “particular, biased, and selfish” (Bickford).

Oppressed peoples must devote attention to their own communities rather than mainly studying and seeking to change the dominant group. “Let us talk more about ourselves and our struggles and less about whites” (Biko). One reason is that there is simply much to learn and celebrate when one begins to look more closely at the marginalized group, its history and values.

Some arguments from these readings against identity politics:

Emphasizing differences divides people politically and prevents the construction of large coalitions. For that reason, it is simply a losing political strategy (unless, like Biko, one happens to live in a country where one oppressed group constitutes the majority). Further, no one will join a coalition for change as a result of being told that he or she is an oppressor. Being reminded of one’s privilege usually reinforces a desire to protect it. A winning strategy is to offer explicit benefits to all members of a large majority. That is the main argument of both Gitlin (1993) and Lilla (2016); and cf. Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” Commentary (February, 1965).

The left is the heir to a tradition of explicitly universalistic values, whether those are liberal, Marxist, or Christian-inflected (e.g., in the Civil Rights Movement). “Universal human emancipation” (Gitlin) is the core of all authentically revolutionary and reformist politics. Its enemy is the kind of conservatism that prizes traditions, indigenous values, and social differences. Identity politics is a version of that kind of conservatism. Yes, progressive movements must address injustices related to sexuality, gender and color–not merely economics–but always in the explicit pursuit of a common good.

Identity politics has become apolitical because its practitioners are disconnected from elections, parties, unions, and reform movements and focus more on “symbolic representation” in places like universities and Hollywood (Gitlin). Also, they tend to depict “the oppressed [as] innocent selves defined by the wrongs done to them” and therefore demand protection from the government or institutions like universities and companies. That stance overlooks their own potential power and encourages them to ask others to manage and administer fairness, understood as a set of rules and regulations. Instead, they should be building power (Bickford, summarizing a view that she doesn’t hold).

Identity politics treats a short list of socially constructed labels as fixed, and thereby (ironically) reinforces the power of these labels. Identity is a “term thick with meanings” whose definition is rarely clarified (Bickford). It’s very unlikely that any particular identity is stable, uniform, or exclusive. Yet one sees in works like Biko’s a tendency to treat a given identity as essential. (However, as Bickford notes, wrestling with this problem has been a central focus for feminism for half a century now.)

I’d add some thoughts of my own:

First, we must consider the ways that identities, interests, and opinions can diverge. A person may have the identity of a woman, an objective interest in equal pay for equal work, and the opinion that this would make a just policy. These three things may be related in various ways, but they are also separable. Likewise, groups can be defined by identities, interests, or positions on issues.

Interests are valid and important. In fact, whose interests are served in a policy domain like health care can determine who lives and who dies. Nevertheless, we recognize that interests will conflict, that they require negotiation and compromise, and that, even in a reasonably just society, everyone’s interests will sometimes be outweighed.

In contrast, to assert an identity is to imply a right to be recognized and treated accordingly. After all, you can’t change your identity, yet you have a place in the society. No one should ask you to compromise your identity, only the interests that you assert. Finally, you are supposed to take other people’s interests and identities in mind as you critically reflect on your opinions. Most people should probably adopt opinions that are less predictably related to their identities and interests.

Interests, identities, and opinions are all “constructed” and malleable, but we are supposed to be maximally open to revising our opinions, yet protected against having to change our identities. The hard part is deciding whether a given claim is an expression of identity, interest, and/or opinion. The lines are very unclear, even to the person who makes a claim.

To make matters even more complicated, an identity can be something mostly embraced or mostly imposed. And it can be a name for a group that gives you strength or for a group to which your fate is tied, or both (Bickford, p. 120).

Second, practitioners of identity politics can miss the chance to be citizens in a particular sense. In this fascinating dialogue between Black Lives Matter leader Julius Jones and Hillary Clinton, Jones echoes Lorde’s argument that African Americans shouldn’t have to tell White people how to change. Complaining that the oppressed haven’t proposed specific solutions–as Clinton does–is “blaming the victim.”

The difference that is salient in Jones’ mind (understandably) is race: he is Black and Clinton is White; and she is asking him to solve the problems that White people have caused. But I think Clinton has a different difference in mind when she asks Jones to state his policy demands. She sees him as a citizen, and herself as a would-be leader. Citizens petition government for the redress of grievances–it even says so in the First Amendment.

To be sure, Jones is both a Black man and a citizen, so both perspectives are valid. But a danger inherent in identity politics is the suppression of one’s identity as a citizen. It is both a responsibility and a power of every citizen to advocate solutions to problems that others have created. As Biko argues, creators of injustice are unlikely to invent solutions themselves. It’s a political act to say what must be done.

Third, “intersectionality” can take forms that are hyper-individualistic. If many different factors constitute one’s identity–not just a short list like race, gender, and class, but also occupation, denomination, country of origin, region, linguistic dialect, birth order, party identification, age, generation, body type, and more–then each person has the grounds to assert a unique intersectionality. Perhaps nobody’s array of characteristics is actually unique in a nation of 323 million people, but within a given small group, everyone can claim her own niche.

In a culture that is generally individualistic, this potential is both attractive and a pitfall. As the concept of identity broadens beyond characteristics that have been used for brutal oppression, intersectionality offers an excuse to focus on everyone’s uniqueness at the expense of political solidarity and the distribution of basic rights. However, it’s hard to limit the characteristics that constitute identity when a huge range of factors do cause implicit bias. For instance, the same methods that demonstrate the pervasiveness of racial bias also show that we’re biased by partisanship, body type, age, etc. So why stop with race–or anywhere else? (This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m inclined to think that we should stop with race, gender, and sexual orientation, and treat other differences as ones of opinion and interest, not of identity. But I would owe a defense of that view.)

Finally, we may need to think about new constructed identities. When historically marginalized people achieve hard-won and deeply valuable recognition, the traditionally dominant group is often left with an identity crisis. To take a foreign example: as Scots, Welsh people, Irish people, British West Indians, British Asians, and others assert–appropriately–their separate identities within Great Britain, Englishness is left to mean being a person whose ancestors lived in England. Since that group was exclusively White and traditionally dominant, it’s hard to celebrate one’s Englishness without being racist and xenophobic.

My point is not that we should sympathize with older White men who are struggling with their identities for the first time. Rather, we are all at risk unless they find identities that they can celebrate inclusively. A common response is to retell our national narrative so that everyone can feel inspired. This seems to me Barack Obama’s strategy and one of his great gifts as a national leader. But nations are awfully large and abstract. A different possibility that intrigues me is a city or metro area, because many people already feel loyal to their own cities, which are internally diverse. In the US, states with smaller populations may have the same value for rural people. So maybe we can reinforce identities as New Yorkers or Montanans, not to the exclusion of other identities, but as the basis of broader political coalitions.

should civic educators modify their neutral stance?

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(Washington, DC) I’m here for the National Council for the Social Studies annual convention. Right after the election, the NCSS sent a “post-election message” that talked generally about the importance of teaching about government and civic engagement:

As social studies educators, we teach and learn about our system of government, about controversial and timely issues, and about making informed decisions as active participants and defenders of our democracy. Our civic duty did not end at the voting booth; in fact, it has just begun. We can share instructional practices about the electoral process, the upcoming transition plans for newly elected leaders at all levels, and the new teams that will play a central role in our conversations for the next several years. We teach the principles of our U.S. Constitution.

This message could have been sent after any presidential election in the past century. There was no mention of Donald Trump or anything unusual about the campaign or the condition of the republic. I am not necessarily critical of this stance, which reflects a deep-seated and well-grounded commitment to a certain form of political neutrality. Many other schools, districts, universities, and nonprofits have taken a similar stance. However, civic educators must at least consider whether a different set of principles should apply in 2016.

Here are some arguments for neutrality:

  1. It’s dangerous for an arm of the state, a public school, ever to take sides on political issues. Citizens are forced to pay for public education and face considerable pressure to turn their kids over to these institutions. Children form an impressionable, captive audience in the classroom. Teachers have great power over students’ life-prospects. It’s unethical for them to use that power to change children’s political views.
  2. If teachers take–or imply–critical positions about any particular party or leader, elected officials and electoral majorities can press them to take different positions. Neutrality is no longer a shield.
  3. We are all subject to bias. Teachers split their votes between Clinton and Trump, but a majority preferred Clinton, and in big city districts on the coasts, the ratio was no doubt very high. Like everyone, Trump opponents need to remember that they could be wrong. Lots of people believe that Barack Obama is a dangerous enemy of American values. I heartily disagree, but this disagreement shows that judgment is fallible. A critical estimate of Donald Trump is a judgment, not a simple matter of fact. The “text” that we must interpret is the vast quantity of his statements over many months. People hear different points and take different messages from all this verbiage. Those of us who think Donald Trump is a profound threat to the republic could be wrong; and teachers shouldn’t communicate uncertain ideas as if they were truths.
  4. One of our worst problems is political polarization, a failure to interact with and understand people who disagree with us. We don’t learn or practice deliberation enough in the US today. But there is always some ideological diversity in a social studies classrooms, and teachers can advance deliberative values by creating spaces for open conversations. Further, if a particular group (such as Trump voters–or Trump opponents) happens to be missing from a given classroom, teachers can help students to understand the absent perspective. However, if the teacher takes a position, that can chill deliberation.
  5. Schools teach civics and social studies in the first place because elected officials tolerate it. Civics is rarely a high priority and is often on the list to be cut. Yet students benefit from civics. Therefore, the responsible course is for educators–and especially associations like NCSS–to keep their heads down. The last thing they should do is appear to oppose the incumbent administration, because it will be easy for federal and state governments to eliminate civics entirely.
  6. Since individual teachers will bear the brunt of any criticism and retribution, administrators and nonprofit organizational leaders should adopt a tone of complete neutrality to protect them.

But here is the opposite argument:

  1. We teach civics to instill republican, liberal, democratic, and humane values. We ask our students to preserve the republic against threats, both domestic and foreign. The acid test of good civic education is whether every graduate would “stand up” instead of “standing by” when a would-be dictator appeared on the scene.
  2. Yes, it is a matter of judgment, not a demonstrable fact, that Trump poses a threat to republican values. But some major Republican intellectuals and GOP political opponents have called Trump an authoritarian and a racist. One can give reasons, evidence, and arguments for these conclusions. Uncertainty remains, but uncertainty does not excuse us from having to decide. As Hannah Arendt would have said, “Ven zee cheeps are down, ve must make yudgments.” Judgment under uncertainty is exactly what citizenship demands. If we’re wrong, we pay the consequences, because–as Arendt would say–“politics is not a nursery.” Incidentally, Trump needn’t be remotely like a Mussolini or a Franco to pose a real danger. A Putin or a Berlusconi would be bad enough.
  3. To teach “standing up” or (as postwar Germans call it, Civil Courage) needn’t be partisan. In fact, if you think that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, then most of us liberals should have been more vigilant during the Obama years. We should have stood up when the current president executed people extra-judicially by drone strike. In other words, Civil Courage would support criticism of Trump, but it would extend far beyond him.
  4. Schools aren’t and shouldn’t be neutral, anyway. Among the values that they must defend are pursuit of truth and basic decency for all. Any political leader who exhibits a lack of regard for truth or bullying behavior violates principles that schools must uphold. They can’t give kids bad grades for using false information, or make them stay after school for bullying, and yet ignore such behavior by the president.
  5. Many teachers have students who are directly threatened by Trump–or feel that they are–and it is wrong for adults to ignore their sentiment by treating the President Elect as a normal leader. By extension, in a class where everyone feels safe, the students should be made aware of how others feel.
  6. If we refrain from exercising Civil Courage because of possible budget cuts or other political consequences, we are abandoning free speech. That is exactly how republics fall.

I actually think the the choice between these two approaches is fairly hard. Individuals and groups can reasonably reach various conclusions. I write only on my own behalf and do not know what I would say if I represented something like the NCSS or a school district. But, at a minimum, everyone involved in educating the next generation should consider this choice.