Author Archives: Peter

how a university “covers” the world

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(Philadelphia) Here are the baker’s dozen Tufts faculty who are Tisch College Fellows for 2015-16. Their work involves active citizenship as a topic of study, a research method, or a mode of teaching. I work with a group like this every year; about 100 alumni of the program are still on the Tufts faculty.

Listening to the 2015-16 Fellows introduce their projects last week, I realized that the faculty of a research university resembles a global open-source intelligence service or a nonprofit news-gathering organization to rival a major newspaper. One of our fellows both studies and supports Muslim women leaders in the West African region where Boko Haram makes headlines by suppressing education for women. Another fellow spent this summer conducting detailed ethnographic research in Ferguson, MO. A third is inside the homes of elderly Somerville residents who have mobility problems.

These scholars investigate topics that may also appear on the cable news or the front page of The New York Times. Their methods are more systematic and deeper than those of reporters, although their products also tend to be less timely and (with some exceptions) less accessible. I don’t consider scholarship better than excellent reporting; we need both. But we also need ways to make more public the kinds of knowledge collected or created by scholars. The Conversation is one fascinating and promising effort to marry “academic rigor” with “journalist flair” by employing professional journalistic editors to solicit and edit articles by scholars. That begins to tap the tremendous potential of the academy for public knowledge.

See also Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication

the Citizens United decision and the inadequate sociology of the US Constitution

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It is a myth prevalent among liberals that the Supreme Court defined corporations as persons in Citizens United. Instead, the court observed that corporations are associations, cited previous rulings that associations have freedom of speech and that freedom of speech includes spending money on elections, and concluded that corporations may spend money on elections. I disagree with the decision and I blame a neoliberal (pro-corporate, anti-regulatory) ideology for it … in part. But Citizens United also reflects the limitations of the Constitution itself. At best, we can say that the Constitution offers scant protection against such rulings and the ideology that they reflect.

Written in the eighteenth century, the Constitution envisions certain political institutions: parliamentary bodies, courts, a president, an Army and a Navy, militias, a mint, ambassadors, ministers, and departments. The First Amendment adds a few more entities: religions, the press, peaceable assemblies of citizens, and–by implication–petitioners who press their claims before the government. The authors also knew about certain political institutions and actors that they associated with European corruption and hoped to avoid  in the new republic: parties, spies, and lobbyists (although that word was not yet coined).

The authors could not envision other essential components of a modern political system, such as limited liability corporations and corporations (in general) that don’t have specific charters, administrative and rulemaking agencies, unions, trade associations, schools and colleges, and security agencies. Since the Constitution is silent on all these organizations, courts have no way to distinguish among them.

For instance, the 2.6 million mostly unionized career civil servants who work in federal agencies get treated as employees of the president, as “inferior officers,” whose appointment may be vested by Congress “in the President alone.” In fact, they enjoy a great deal of autonomy and permanence and are busy making laws in the form of administrative decisions and rules, even though the Constitution assigns “all legislative powers” to the Congress. They should have their own article of the Constitution, defining and limiting their powers as if they were a fourth branch of government.

Likewise, security agencies are permanent paramilitary organizations with the power to spy and to kill, but they are not the Army or Navy of which the president is the Commander-in-Chief in times of war–alone. So should they answer to the president, the Congress, or (as we fear is actually the case) only to themselves? Courts treat them as arms of the president even though presidents may fear them.

Finally, the Constitution makes no distinction among types of association (a word that doesn’t even appear in the text). An association can be a bunch of people who peacefully assemble, a membership group with an elected president, or a company that trades on the NASDAQ. In the 1700s, corporations were perhaps the easiest associations to regulate because each one came into existence through a discretionary decision by the legislature, giving it a charter that strictly delimited its purposes and powers. Today, corporations are exceptionally hard to regulate because they are traded globally and they have the power to withdraw the investments on which prosperity depends.

It is now a virtual consensus that the constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly depend upon associations. A classic case is NAACP v Alabama. Almost everyone would say that the NAACP has constitutional rights as a body, or else its members would not be able to speak, assemble, or petition the government. But note that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is, in fact, a corporation–incorporated on May 25, 1911 under the laws of the State of New York, with W.E.B. DuBois as the first signatory on its Articles of Incorporation. If it has free speech rights, why don’t the NCAA and Nokia?

I can offer reasons why for-profit corporations should not, in fact, have the same rights of speech and petition that not-for-profit membership organizations enjoy, even though both kinds of organizations are incorporated. My reasons would arise from a political sociology that specifies the functions, advantages, and dangers of various kinds of organization that exist in the 21st century. The problem is that our written Constitution has a political sociology appropriate for 1789. Our judges and justices could still decide more wisely than they did in Citizens United. But the Constitution offers no guidance or protection if they are unwilling to make the necessary distinctions.

See also:  liberals, conservatives, and love of the Constitution; constitutional piety and the Supreme Court reflects the “degeneracy of the times”.

voices

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(in St. Paul, Minn.)

Why does the owl, her nest turned into flames
By an errant fire balloon, shriek as she flees?
As the solo goose flaps his steady beat,
Sea-bound, whom does he think will hear his honk?
An eagle chick pecks to a slow death her
New-hatched twin so that the fitter one will last.
It’s clear why the weaker chick pecks back, but
Why have a voice and to whom does he bleat?

PACE Webinar on America’s Civic Renewal Movement

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Today, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) hosted a webinar on “America’s Civic Renewal Movement.” I was a speaker along with:

  • Eric Liu, Citizen University
  • Kelly Born, Hewlett Foundation
  • Joan Blades, Living Room Conversations
  • Kristen Cambell, PACE

Archives:

Webinar Description: A recently released paper, “America’s Civic Renewal Movement,” explores current sentiments toward civic engagement and identifies opportunities and challenges to expanding our civic infrastructure. This webinar explored philanthropy’s role in supporting and engaging in this movement, and how practitioners perceive foundations’ willingness to partner on these efforts.

 

qualms about Effective Altruism

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Effective Altruism is a growing movement that will surely make some valuable contributions. But I have my doubts about its main direction.

This is a prominent summary from the Effective Altruism website:

If you are reading this, you are in an extraordinary position. 

It has never been more possible for you to have a meaningful, positive impact on a massive scale. With the rise of evidence-driven interventions, we each have an unprecedented opportunity to save lives and prevent unnecessary suffering.

Effective Altruism is a growing social movement that combines both the heart and the head: compassion guided by data and reason. It’s about dedicating a significant part of one’s life to improving the world and rigorously asking the question, “Of all the possible ways to make a difference, how can I make the greatest difference?”

Here is one interpretation of the movement: It is about guiding the allocation of discretionary assets (mainly, charitable contributions) to improve other people’s welfare, which is measured in utilitarian terms. Utilitarians disagree about the appropriate proxy measure of welfare (subjective happiness, preference-satisfaction, purchasing-power, Disability-Adjusted Life-Years, etc.), but Effective Altruists can sidestep that debate by focusing–appropriately–on the world’s poorest people, who score low on all those measures.

My objections to this version of Effective Altruism:

  1. Discretionary philanthropic decisions aren’t very consequential. Americans give about 2% of disposable income to charity. Our choices as voters, political activists, investors, and consumers are hugely more important than our decisions about where to give money.
  2. Effective Altruism seems to be about a donor affecting other people. (“How can I make the greatest difference [to them]?”) But in making unilateral decisions, even with the best intentions, I am exercising power over fellow human beings. I am deciding what counts as a good end for them and good means to that end. I am also influencing their longer-term capacity to make decisions themselves. I could help them with that–for instance, by subsidizing the education of young girls in poor countries, I might boost their voice and political agency. But I could also undermine their capacity for self-government while assisting them in an immediate, material way. For instance, I could build dependence and reduce autonomy. In Self Reliance, Emerson says about his own charity, “Though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.” Emerson took the argument far further than I would, but there was truth in it.
  3. The definition of altruism seems to be that person A will try to improve the situation of persons B, C, and D without regard to A’s interests. But social improvement typically comes from people acting in their own interest, albeit effectively and wisely–with an eye to the longer term and a broad definition of interests. I am highly skeptical of any large-scale social strategy that relies upon altruism, especially since the only people in a position to be effectively altruistic at large scales are the ones with a lot of resources. At best, I doubt they have enough leverage. At worst, I don’t trust them to work in other people’s interests. Witness the arguments by some Effective Altruists that we ought to protect humanity against asteroid strikes. That sounds like a fun way for a tech. billionaire to allocate tax-deductible charitable contributions, but not exactly what the world’s poorest people would ask for.

An Effective Altruist can acknowledge all those criticisms and respond that the movement is not just about the allocation of discretionary philanthropic resources. If, for instance, the best way to improve lives is to enhance the political agency of poor girls in developing countries, that’s what the Effective Altruist should invest in. If a US citizen can do more good by supporting a given political campaign than by giving money overseas, then the former is the right choice. And if a donation would create a relation of dependency, the Effective Altruist can refrain from spending money that way.

In short, I have accused Effective Altruists of ignoring politics and power, but they can reply that their analysis should (or does) include just these issues.

My objections to that broader version of Effective Altruism:

  1. It doesn’t seem original in the way implied by its slogans: e.g., “It has never been more possible for you to have a meaningful, positive impact on a massive scale.” If questions of governance, politics, power, agency, and culture are also relevant, then we have been debating how to have a “positive impact” at large scales for two millennia. I believe that we know less about 21st century political-economic systems and how to change them than we knew about the issues that faced industrialized nation-states in 1950. For instance, there may be no more important question today than how to reduce endemic corruption without resorting to authoritarianism. I don’t believe there are any “evidence-driven interventions” for that problem.
  2. If power and agency matter, then decisions ought to be made by groups that include the poor as well as the rich, and that requires a different set of ideas and skills than the ones that Effective Altruism offers. I say that the right question is not “How can I make the greatest difference?” but “What should we do?” An Effective Altruist could reply that what I should do is always fundamental, because I have to decide what groups to join and how to interact within them. For instance, in a deliberation, what arguments should I personally offer–and to whom–and what responses should I find persuasive? I agree, to a point, that my choices are a primary concern for me. Yet Effective Altruism puts the focus on the wrong intellectual skills. It is all about means/ends rationality to guide individual choice: what are the consequences of my actions? If instead we ask, “What should we do?” then we need skills of listening, interpretation, diplomacy, responsible persuasion, and inspirational leadership.
  3. This version of Effective Altruism still seems vulnerable to the critique J.S. Mill leveled against the early British Utilitarians: it overlooks the cultivation of the inner life. The classical utilitarians had defined the goal of life as happiness and had argued that a society could maximize the happiness of its members by getting its laws right. Mill grew up in that milieu, as the son of a great classical utilitarian. As a young man, he became deeply depressed. He asked himself:

“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, “No!” At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

I elaborate Mill’s point as follows: it seems to be necessary for human beings to be involved in making themselves happy or satisfied; no one can simply do that for us. Some people who know no physical pain and have plenty of money are nevertheless miserable to the point of suicide. Poor villagers who live under a repressive government can be happier than wealthy suburbanites who are well treated by the state. Even if the goal were to maximize everyone’s happiness, that couldn’t be accomplished by a world of individuals who were concerned only with others. They would also have to be responsible for themselves. Pure altruism or other-regardingness is not the ideal, because there would then be no one in a position to make each individual happier.

Mill’s ultimate response was to reemphasize the inner life. “The important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances.”

I suppose an Effective Altruist could deflect Mill’s critique by saying: “We don’t attach exclusive importance to outward circumstances; we just try to make other-regarding efforts more effective. As long as Americans give just 2% of disposable income to charity, they are hardly at risk of neglecting themselves. They can cultivate their internal cultures all they want. We just help them to spend that 2% better.” And I think that’s fine–as far as it goes. I am just not sure it offers any hope of addressing the problems that keep me up at night, such as:

  • Corruption (writ large), meaning the capture of public goods for private profit.
  • Massive collective-action problems, especially global warming.
  • Hatreds of various kinds: religious, racial, national.
  • Discouragement about democracy and the potential to improve the world from the bottom-up.
  • The global shift to oligarchy.
  • Authoritarianism, especially of the macho, xenophobic, militaristic variety that unites Putin and Trump as well as many others.

See also: qualms about Behavioral Economics; qualms about a bond market for philanthropy; and why is oligarchy everywhere?

we are hiring!

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Come work on my team. We actually have two new jobs posted, one for a graduate student. Click the links for considerably more information about both.

  1. Researcher – The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) – (15001652)

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) is a leading research center that studies young Americans’ civic development and participation. CIRCLE is the premier source of information—facts, trends, evaluations, and best practices—related to youth civic learning and engagement. CIRCLE shares the results of its research with policy makers, practitioners, journalists, and scholars in various disciplines.

CIRCLE is seeking a full-time Researcher to conduct research and to help manage some of CIRCLE’s research and evaluation projects. Reporting to the Director of CIRCLE and based on the Medford/Somerville Tufts University Campus, the Researcher will work as part of the CIRCLE team on CIRCLE products and activities. The Researcher will also interact with a larger group of colleagues at Tisch College, and will be expected to participate in various college-wide initiatives such as college-wide events and assistance with student program evaluations. Specific responsibilities include:

  • Serving as an Researcher on a range of research projects that may include secondary data-analysis, literature reviews, field experiments, program evaluations and other original data collection (via survey or other methods);
  • Curating and preparing datasets of various sizes and formats for research use;
  • Producing reports, fact sheets and press releases on timely and relevant topics, often in close collaboration with CIRCLE colleagues;
  • Providing feedback, assistance, and support to colleagues at Tisch College and CIRCLE on research-related tasks, as needed;
  • Representing CIRCLE at a wide range of events including research conferences;
  • Answer queries from reporters about CIRCLE research;
  • Performing administrative duties as needed, as they pertain to CIRCLE operations; and
  • Participating in activities and meetings that involve Tisch College staff.

2. Quantitative Researcher for NSLVE (the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement)

To join a team of researchers working on the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts University. NSLVE is a service to colleges and universities nationwide, providing colleges and universities with their students’ voter registration and voting rates, broken down by individual student characteristics (e.g., field of study). Currently, the database consists of nearly 700 colleges and universities and 6.7 million de-identified student records.

Responsibilities:

  • Support data analysis of a large national dataset: Calculate tailored campus-level data for participating institutions. Respond to internal data requests for data for presentations and resources
  • Resource development: Support the development of the resources and tools for colleges and universities. Support the development of publications, both peer reviewed and self-published, on college student political engagement

PhD candidate preferred; MA candidate will be considered based on quantitative research experience

two degrees of Christopher Marlowe

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In The Reckoning (1994), Charles Nicholl carefully investigated the 1593 murder of Christopher Marlowe, arguing that it resulted from a struggle between the rival spy networks of Walter Raleigh and Robert Devereux (the 2nd Earl of Essex). It’s a compelling read and a brilliant use of scattered historical records to reveal hidden connections. But The Reckoning predated the current enthusiasm for actually mapping networks and crowd-sourcing the data. Now we have Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, a network map of documented figures from English history, 1500-1700. Using that tool, one can quickly create a map that shows the networks of Christopher Marlowe and Essex, with Raleigh appearing as an intermediary.

Screen Shot 2015-09-16 at 7.57.44 PM

The diagram is by no means complete. For instance, Thomas Kyd is in the database but not linked to his former housemate, Marlowe; and the man who probably stabbed Marlowe, Ingram Frizer, isn’t on the map at all. But that isn’t a criticism, for the organizers ask visitors to add data. How many more stories will come to light as the map grows and historians use it?

(See also the murder of Marlowe and my version of “come with me.”)

Q&A for Constitution Day

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It’s Constitution Day. Thanks to an amendment included at the behest of the late Robert Byrd in 2004, every educational institution that receives federal money–from a kindergarten to a graduate school–must offer programs on this day that concern the Constitution. Eight years ago, I posed some gently subversive questions that could be the basis of a discussion on Constitution Day. Here are my questions again, with–for what they’re worth–my answers:

  • How, under our Constitution, can legislation be passed on the sole prerogative of one US Senator?

The Constitution leaves it up to each house of Congress to organize its own procedures. (Article 1, sec. 2: “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.”) The Senate can basically construct bills any way it wants.

There is no ideal way to legislate. Any parliamentary body faces a severe challenge in aggregating the opinions of its many members on the many topics that come before it. No legislature can discuss and separately vote on everything. Still, the Senate’s rules give an awful lot of power to individual members to insert provisions. I suspect the reason lies with the Senate’s filibuster rules, which make the passage of legislation extraordinarily difficult. To prevent even more filibusters than we actually have, Senators are allowed to slip in special provisions they especially care about.

Legislating this way is not “unconstitutional” in the sense of violating the text of the document. But we could say that in the broader meaning of the phrase “constitutional system,” our system includes the rules of the US Senate, which are very problematic.

  • How can Congress pass legislation without hearings or debate?

See above. But this second question underlines a particular disadvantage of the Senate’s rules: many decisions get no deliberation whatsoever. No teachers were asked to testify about the pros and cons of a Constitution Day mandate. Again, no process is prefect, but the Senate’s procedures seem to neglect the deliberative value that our constitutional order was meant to uphold: “the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest.”

  • Is it a constructive and appropriate use of federal power to determine the content and timing of educational instruction?

Strong conservative constitutionalists will say that Congress has no business in education at all, because education is not among the enumerated powers of Article 1, Section 8. Students should learn and consider that argument. For my part, I think we long ago rightly settled that the Congress may raise taxes and spend the money on education and may put certain conditions on the funding. I would especially argue for a federal role in supporting education for republican self-government, on the ground that this is “necessary and proper” for the survival of our system.

But that doesn’t mean that micromanagement from Washington is wise. To pick a day–right at the beginning of the conventional academic year–when every school (k-20) must teach the Constitution is a good example of meddling. It’s unlikely to yield positive results. Conservatives make a valid point that needn’t be rooted in an originalist reading of the Constitution: Congress should generally avoid micromanaging, especially in an ad hoc way, because it is too distant from local concerns, too likely to make one size fit all, and too remote from accountability. Characteristically, when the Senate passed a Constitution Day mandate, no one even dreamed of empirically evaluating the impact–whereas a school district that tried such an experiment might have to show that it was cost-effective and a “research-based best practice.” Congressional micromanagement violates the spirit of the Constitution, even when it passes legal muster.

Finally, I do think some good comes from the Constitution Day mandate. It gives an annual boost to the wonderful organizations that provide materials, lesson plans, and professional development for civics, and it yields an annual crop of articles and social media about civic education. Still, if I had to teach a lesson on Constitution Day, it might be about how the legislation that launched it is constitutional yet also problematic–so maybe we need some reform.

See also liberals, conservatives, and love of the Constitution; is our constitutional order doomed? and constitutional piety.

missing the civic empowerment messages of a Pope and a President

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Michelle Boorstein compares the enthusiastic responses to Pope Francis in 2015 and Barack Obama in 2008 and collects several explanations for both:

  1. People have “an undeniable, sweeping affinity, a gut reaction to a new leader to whom we attach huge expectations …,  even though most Americans don’t know much about Francis.”
  2. “Does the pope’s all-embracing commentary, which seems to exclude no one, have particular resonance in an increasingly diverse country?”
  3. Does “Francis offer people hope of rescue with his confident proclamations about what needs to be done to fix the world? Cartoonists and graffiti artists have often drawn him as a caped superhero.”
  4. “Francis is an accessible father figure at the helm of one of the world’s largest organizations.”
  5. “People love the blank slate.”

Let me suggest an alternative. Both the president and the Pope talk explicitly about how we, active citizens, can and must address problems. These two men may have been caricatured as caped superheroes, but they are as clear as one can be that they are not the solutions to our problems; we are.

This was the main theme of Obama’s Springfield speech announcing his candidacy in 2007, an important note in his Grant Park speech on Election Night 2008, and a recurrent topic throughout the campaign. When he accepted the Democratic nomination in 2012, he put it concisely: “As citizens,” Obama said, “we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government.” I have collected many more similar quotes here.

As for the Holy Father, he said recently, “the future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize.”

I believe that people hear and are moved by these invocations of their power, agency, and responsibility. They do not treat Obama and the Pope as blank slates or as accessible personalities; they feel moved to take action.

Meanwhile, the press completely ignores these leaders’ talk of civic engagement. That theme was never covered in the 2008 presidential campaign, and no one mentions it when they cover the Pope. Obama’s critics especially misunderstand his civic appeal, thinking that it is narcissistic. (“We are the ones we have been waiting for” is literally misheard as “I am the one you have been waiting for”). And we see basically patronizing explanations of why these leaders strike a chord.

See also how to respond to a leader’s call for civic renewal; the encyclical Laudato Si and the power of peoples to organize; and Taking the President Seriously About Citizenship.

thoughts on the College Scorecard

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collegecost

The College Scorecard began as a promise/threat to rate US colleges and universities, but for now, it offers some digestible nuggets of information on more than 3,500 institutions. The results for Stanford are shown to the right, as an example.

I like some things about this. Mainly, it tells a prospective applicant’s family not to be put off by the sticker price. Tuition plus room & board at Stanford costs $64,477, but the average student pays much less than that, graduates quickly, and earns a lot of money. That makes it a good deal (in strictly economic terms) for most people who can get in. In contrast, Cambridge College costs an average of $23,792 and yields an average salary of $36,500 for those who graduate–who represent two percent of those who enroll.

I have three main concerns. First, the average cost overstates the relevant price for a lot of students. Stanford completely waives the parental tuition contribution for families with incomes up to $125,000 a year and waives the whole cost for most families earning below $65,000 (which is about 60% of US households). The average cost is $15k because a lot of Stanford undergrads come from families in the very top tier of the income distribution. If you have a median family income, Stanford will probably be free.

Second, this kind of presentation can mislead about the business model. It can suggest that the real price of a Stanford education is $64k, but thanks to alumni gifts, the university subsidizes attendance for needy students (who, in this case, may be upper-middle-class). I think the following is closer to the truth: there are a lot of highly academically proficient students whose families can easily pay $64k and want to go to Stanford. Their kitchen counters cost more than a year’s tuition. So Stanford charges that much and uses the income to help subsidize all the operations of a research institution. It uses a sliding scale, however, so that all of its students aren’t rich. I don’t necessarily think this is wrong: it depends on how much public good comes from the research. But the numbers give a somewhat misleading impression of the financial model.

Third, the measure of “salary after attending” is very problematic if we see education as a public good. The lowest-paid majors for recent college graduates are “early childhood education ($39,000); human services and community organization ($41,000); studio arts, social work, teacher education, and visual and performing arts ($42,000); theology and religious vocations, and elementary education ($43,000); drama and theater arts and family and community service ($45,000).” A college that produces a lot of preschool teachers, clergypeople, and community organizers is going to score a lot lower on the measure of “salary after attending” than Stanford does. The average salary for recent Hampshire College graduates is $30,800, much less than half as much as Stanford’s figure, but it would be misleading to infer that Stanford offers more value than Hampshire.