WHAT KIND OF POLITICAL PEOPLE ARE REPUBLICANS, REALLY?

In November 1964, for the first time in their lives, my 84-year-old grandmother and my 61-year-old father voted for a Democrat.  Their options were President Lyndon Johnson and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.  For them, there was no real choice.  I can still hear my grandmother exclaim, “that awful man!”  What would she say today?

 

I have no doubt about her answer; it is mine, except mine is much longer and more acerbic than hers.  The question which could not occur to her but does occur to me—so much has changed in six decades—is what is the moral and political kind of the people who follow, support, even worship Trump, given the kind of moral and political kind of person who he is.  What does it say about them that they accept him as their leader?

 

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In his acceptance speech at the Republican Party’s nominating convention, Goldwater famously declared, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”  “Remind”?  Goldwater’s message is clear: violence is a virtue if exercised in the presumed defense of liberty or freedom.  The Declaration of Independence implies as much, as it explains why the colonies were rebelling against an oppressive monarchy.  But aside from stressing his period’s strong anticommunism, Goldwater spoke vaguely about threats to liberty or freedom and said nothing about justice or civil rights.

 

Sixty years later, we face the likely presidential options of President Joseph Biden and former President Donald Trump.  The Republican Party seems nearly certain to nominate a presidential candidate who regards violence as a viable, acceptable, perhaps necessary, form of political action.  Trump has said that, if court proceedings do not go his way, there will be “mayhem” or “bedlam”; that, if the election goes his way, there will be “retribution”—terms with overtones of violence about whatever he defines as his way at the moment.  He has threatened that, if elected, he will use federal power to harass or harm, investigate or imprison, political opponents, and to use government force against other Americans, mostly minorities or non-Republicans, if they demonstrate against his administration’s actions.  How his proclivity to violence aligns with liberty, freedom, or justice is a question which Republican politicians and Party members do not ask, likely because they have no answer.  But, then, violence has become a part of the Republican Party’s modus operandi.

 

Some people appalled by the stark division between the political parties caution against regarding members of the opposition as evil.  Their advice is naïve.  Many Republican legislative policies and governing practices—the list is too long to offer—are harmful to people and the country.  Although most elected GOP officeholders may not be violent, many Trump followers are (and some BP, DEA, FBI, and SS agents, military personnel, and state and local police may be).  Most of the political violence in this country comes from the Right, whether from Republican-friendly individuals acting on their own or organized militant groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers.

 

The difference between elected GOP officeholders increasingly anti-democratic and militant, and Party members and others supporting the Party’s drift to autocracy and violence, is small and shrinking.  Those already abusive or aggressive by rudeness, name-calling, doxing, swatting, harassing, beating, etc.—all forms of violence—get increasing support from other Republicans and others who believe that violence may be required to right perceived wrongs and to redirect a country seen as going in the wrong direction.  In supporting positions which are evil because they are harmful to people, elected GOP officeholders, Party members, and others partake of evil and become evil themselves.

 

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My father more than once advised me that a person is known by the company he keeps.  He would have agreed that the company is known by the person it accepts.

 

So one question is what kind of company are Republicans and others accepting when they support Trump.  The evidence is copious and clear.  Anyone reading or listening between the lines of public commentary since Trump declared for the presidency in 2015 knows that many who have been business associates, political colleagues, and social acquaintances regard him in various unflattering terms, all encompassed by one word: trash.  The exceptions—among others, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Rudi Giuliani, Paul Manafort, Stephen Miller, Roger Stone—are also trash avoided by respectable people.  What used to be known as “polite society” in New York excludes members of Trump’s family.  Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner self-exiled to Florida because their crowd ostracized them.  Trump’s wife, Melania, is a virtual recluse in New York City.

 

No one has to follow the political news or read the society pages to recognize Trump’s sociopathic character.  His psyche is a machine of narcissism trying, out of desperate insecurity, to control the world around him and to fill a void, from a loveless childhood, of insatiable demands for power without moral principle or personal compunction.  All his interactions with the world are transactional.  He has no friends or pets because he has no empathy or loyalty, no regard for personal boundaries or political limits, no self-control, and no respect for decency, honesty, norms, or the rule of law.  He lies and distorts the truth habitually and ceaselessly.  His abusive, threatening, bigoted, and vulgar language, his cruel, belittling attacks on critics and others displeasing to him, and his support of violence by police or right-wing mobs are common coin of his public communications.  His words and deeds are clear warnings of his political intentions and vivid indications of his character.  The man is trash.

 

The other question is what are Republicans and others like who keep company with—that is, support—Trump in conversation, trolling remarks, media posts, bumper stickers, placards, rallies, and the ballot box.  If their words or deeds resemble his, they resemble him.  If they extenuate or excuse his conduct, or explain their support—say, by claiming that Biden, Democrats, Progressives, or liberals are worse—, they are trying to whitewash the blackness of Trump’s evil or to claim that Trump is the lesser of two evils.  They are no different from him.  What he is, they are: trash.

 

“Trash” is an ugly word to use about anyone, not to mention a former President of the United States, much less his political supporters.  But the word befits anyone whose moral values, personal demeanor, and political conduct are debased and undisciplined.  Anyone who can hear, see, approve, or imitate how Trump speaks and acts, yet believe him sensible, responsible, respectful, decent, and honorable; or prefer him to any alternative in any major political party, is someone without proper political standards for himself or a president.  Only Trump’s kind admires a person, not to mention a former President, who brags about groping women, mocks the physically impaired, disrespects disabled or dead veterans, and insults their families.  Only his kind attacks immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, Muslims, and Jews, most of whom, like most other Americans, live good lives and harm no one.  Only his kind enjoys his humiliating defeated opponents and cruelty toward others.  Only his kind supports a person whose fake piety mocks their religion, in the hope that he will support their pseudo-religious positions on abortion and other sex- or gender-related issues.  Only his kind resents those easily stereotyped, like New York liberals and Ivy League professors, whom they regard as elitists scornful of them.  Only his kind resents that elitists do not look up to them and admire the uncivilized and barbaric speech and conduct which they extol in Trump and exhibit in themselves.  Only Trump’s kind, like Trump himself, relishes being trash.

 

Yet all Republicans are not the same.  Like my grandmother and father, some are loyal to the Party because of its traditional positions on small government, low taxes, strong defense, little regulation, etc.  Like them, some are loyal to the Party because of a family tradition of Party affiliation.  But they were loyal only up to the point at which continued loyalty threatened their integrity and self-respect.  Only a lack of integrity and self-respect can prevent Republicans from transcending Party loyalties in the 2024 election for the sake of American democracy.  Those who cannot remain in the persisting minority who started with traitors supporting the English monarchy and slavery; who continued with those still supporting slavery and then sustaining white supremacy by the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and White Citizens’ Councils; and who have remained loyal to the country only as long as they, white racists, could control it and its direction.

 

However, if they wish to remain Republicans and be good Americans, there is a way: their vote.  They have only to vote in secret—they have a secret ballot, after all, and can say what they will outside the voting booth—for Biden and other candidates not aligned with Trump or MAGA in 2024.  After supporting Trump’s defeat, they can then change parties, try to restore the Republican Party, or work to supplant it with a new party based on traditional Republican principles and positions.  Otherwise, vote for Trump, be trash.

THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF DECLINING CONFIDENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

After the 5 December hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, elite universities, most notably Harvard, have been attacked from all sides.  But, from long before that hearing, higher education has suffered a decline in respect by the American public, as Josh Barro noted in his 12 January article in The Atlantic.  His title says it all: “American Universities Are Post-truth: Neither conservatives nor liberals trust academic institutions, because they are dishonest.”  According to Gallup, from 2015 to 2023, Republican confidence in higher education declined from 56% to 37%; Independent confidence, from 48% to 32%; Democratic confidence, from 68% to 59%.  The causes of the decline go back about another 35 to 40 years, to about 1975 to 1980.

 

I go back to the origins, to the causes, of this decline in confidence.  But first, I must say that, to this trained, published, independent scholar, Barro’s article, one of those now appearing in a few media, is disheartening but not surprising.  I long expected a reaction to what I knew was a corrupt approach to scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, with a corrupting influence on instruction in higher education.  Luckily, my education predated the onset of the new fashions in these fields, and my publications reflect that education.  It stressed accuracy and inclusiveness (all sides of the subject); it required crediting the ideas and words of others’ work on which one’s own work was based (plagiarism the academic sin).  More older than younger scholars still adhere to traditional norms, so I do not accuse all scholars of the modern sins now committed.

 

The conditions for the corruption of scholarship were inadvertently created by the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.  The Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement made race and gender primary political issues.  The Vietnam War highlighted class differences, with middle-class draftees claiming conscientious objector status, fleeing to Canada, or seeking academic deferments.  Those granted deferments and others with these political concerns carried them into major colleges and universities, mainly into the humanities or the social sciences.  Some remained as professors in academe, to which they had fled with their political commitments, not their love of learning.

 

In English, their political concerns led them to replace the previous critical approach to literature, New Criticism, with another, New Historicism.  The difference between these approaches is significant.  New Criticism views a literary work as an object of art, to be interpreted by the internal dynamics of its component parts; New Historicism, which dates to the late 1970s, views a literary work as a tacit expression of social forces, particularly the influence of race, gender, class, and, to a lesser extent, colonialism.  The difference is between a work of literature as a unique literary representation of human experience or as a political statement about the distribution and operation of power in society.  Unlike New Criticism, New Historicism has a political agenda.  Almost invariably, it finds literary works subverting established authority or indicting the social order as racist, sexist, classist, or colonialist.  Since most students take one or more English or social science courses, most students are exposed to this political instruction.

 

Instances of politically shaped criticism would burden my readers with critiques necessarily detailed to argue that politicized scholarship is not scholarship at all.  For anyone interested, my critiques appears on Humanities Commons, a website for scholars: “Some Maladies of Early Modern Race Study in Shakespeare” (6 pgs.), “Race: Political Correctness vs. Scholarship in the Humanities (6 pgs.), or “Critical Race Study, Traditional Literary Scholarship, and Othello’s Jealousy” (12 pgs.).

 

Consider an article in a special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly on race study (2016).  In “We Are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies,” Professor Ian Smith (Lafayette College) attacks historical scholarship and impugns the motives of scholars who approach race in Shakespeare on that basis.  “Fetishizing historical accuracy is to claim the high moral ground of sound scholarship, a position from which to disguise resistance to race work, from which to promote a singular perspective and methodology as acceptable while placing firm restrictions on others” (pg. 120).  I have read no other academic statement packed with so many objectionable points.  I mentioned a few in a letter invited, then rejected, no reasons given, by the SQ editor.  “Smith caricatures and sneers at ‘sound’ scholarship but asserts no alternative.  Is it ‘unsound’ scholarship?  Would it claim low moral ground?”  The alternative is, as others label it, “politically engaged scholarship,” which is necessarily distorted by its orientation or objectives.  Soon after this article appeared, Smith was elevated to the SQ editorial board.

 

Insinuations of racism aside, Smith’s statement is an undisguised attack on traditional scholarly standards.  Labeling a commitment to “historical accuracy” as “fetishizing” disparages scholarly work to ascertain the truth and implicitly prefers work masked as scholarship to advance received political opinion on race.  Deviations from such opinion prompt accusations of racism.  Thus, despite a conference seminar’s favorable response to my history- and text-based paper “‘Othello Is Not about Race’,” the conference journal’s editor rejected it.  Despite my request to see the readers’ withheld reviews and despite the previous editor’s support, the editor refused because, so he said, they were “inflammatory”; he meant that they accused me of racism.  But, when I complained to the journal’s board, he claimed they were “entirely professional”; several board members responded by resigning.  The article is my most popular one at Humanities Commons.

 

Professors experience pressures to take shortcuts to conduct research and publish results, secure funding and expand programs, get promotions in a competitive market with unclear or inconstant standards of advancement.  Results may include deficient evidence, flawed methods, fallacious arguments, and plagiarism.  The case of Professor Claudine Gay, former President of Harvard, is not an anomaly.  Now added to this mix of motives are political ideologies concerning race, gender, class, and colonialism which pervade academe and demand conformity by any means necessary.  Recent attacks on traditional scholarship for political purposes enable a disregard of its standards.  The price paid is the loss of scholarly integrity, the abandonment of the pursuit of truth, the advancement of political agendas, declining respect inside and outside of academe, and instruction which is intellectually, morally, and politically corrosive.

 

These failures in academe are not merely “academic” issues.  Corrupt scholarship will corrupt instruction to students, and their thus-corrupted education will influence their decisions which will affect their lives, their communities, and their country.

24-01-20 note: The corruption of political scholarship has spread corruption to university administration.  One reason why Gay found herself unable to condemn antisemitism in student protests is that such a condemnation would imply the condemnation of the political biases of so much of what passes for scholarship and suitable instruction in academe.

ADDENDUM TO "IDENTITY POLITICS: WHERE PROGRESSIVES AND MAGAs MEET"

In this previous blog, I addressed the issue of affirmative action/identity politics from a political standpoint, to show that the underlying principle of the Left is corrupt, and similar to and no less corrupt than the principle underlying the bigotry of the Right.  Although I am sympathetic to the motive of the Left’s approach, namely, to devise ways whereby equality can be achieved not only by rights, but also by improvements in education, employment, housing, and other social assets.

 

The segregationists’ “never” is a long time; steps to eliminate racial discrimination and its effects must shorten it.  But haste can make waste, or at least not hoped-for results.  Affirmative action has attempted to speed up the process (identity politics has not been around long enough to achieve results).  No one denies that it has narrowed or nearly eliminated the gap for some Blacks.  (I use “Blacks” as shorthand for all people of color and women of color or not.)  But I deny that it has succeeded for millions more left behind (just as tax credits do nothing for those too poor to pay taxes) for whom little or no action has been affirmative.  We have accelerated the process for some, but we have stalled progress for many.  The hare has led the tortoise, but we know who wins the race.

 

Group-based discriminatory programs intending good results have not achieved—and, I think, cannot achieve—the widespread results needed to attain rough equality in society.  To put it bluntly, affirmative action/identity politics is a partial, cheap way out because it costs nothing to enroll or hire someone on the basis of birthright or biology and avoids the costs of fixing the underlying problems.  It is an easy way to feel better about a problem which it does not and cannot solve.  Witness the millions living under current conditions in Black big-city ghettos.  Also witness conditions on reservations and in Appalachia—the latter suggesting that the inequalities affecting minorities and women extend to millions of Whites as well.

 

A better way is to address the problems of poverty.  Its concomitant conditions—poor education, under- or unemployment, poor nutrition, poor housing, poor health care—affect millions of disadvantaged citizens in rural and urban areas.  An approach to address these conditions would be programs based on needs, not identity.  As such, this approach would be holistic in perspective and integrated in implementation, in contrast to the patchwork of welfare programs for this or that group.  Still, such an approach would not require any program to be one-size-to-fit-all; government programs can be designed to be flexible enough to accommodate regional and even local differences.  Moreover, this approach would give more political power to all groups united by common interests than a patchwork of programs which may be reasonably suspected of keeping groups divided, politically weak, and dependent on favors (in return for votes).  Of course, such coordinated programs would cost billions more than we currently spend, but they would be fair and, properly implemented, effective.  An additional benefit is that they would reduce the resentments which affirmative action/identity politics fosters, with the political consequences from which the polity is presently suffering.

IDENTITY POLITICS: WHERE PROGRESSIVES AND MAGAs MEET

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order calling for affirmative action to end discrimination, the first effort of its kind.  In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order requiring affirmative action by federal contractors to address disparities in employment based on race, religion, or national origin.  In 1968, the order was expanded to include women.  (In what follows, I consider only race.)

 

In the summer of 1963, in a back porch discussion about affirmative action, both Dr. Kenneth Clement, a distinguished Black doctor, and my mother, a mental health worker, supported the idea.  I demurred without having to explain that I was no racist; they knew that I was not.  I had three objections.  One, affirmative action discriminates on the very basis that it proposes to remedy discrimination, namely, race.  Two, it is a zero-sum solution; whatever action is affirmative for Blacks is negative for Whites.  Three, it would be perceived as unfair and create or increase racial resentment and conflict.  Both objected to my alternative: appropriate race-neutral, merit-based or means-based allocation of benefits.  Sixty years later, the balance of gain and loss has still not been reckoned.  It has possibly enabled the growth of the Black middle class; it has certainly enabled the growth of the racist “base” since 1964, with GOP opposition to most civil rights legislation and its support for the “silent majority” and Trump’s MAGA base.

 

I was reminded of this discussion when I read Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time (Penguin Press, 2023).  Mounk bases his analysis on traditional liberal universalist assumptions about individual freedoms, political and legal equality, collective self-determination (aka, democracy), among others.  He opposes separatism, even if voluntary, by race, sex, gender orientation, religion, and national origin because it promotes in-group versus out-group conflict contrary to the need for respect, empathy, and shared commitments in a democratic society.  My views, precisely.

 

Language often changes though the underlying phenomenon does not or very little.  Just as “political correctness” has gone out of fashion, to be replaced by cognates of “woke,” so “affirmative action,” though still in use, has also gone out of fashion, to be eclipsed by “identity politics.”  Mounk does not relate identity politics to affirmative action but analyzes the former in ways suitable to the latter.  I relate them because both respond to the reality of racial discrimination and its persistent, pernicious effects.  They are different in their approaches to discrimination.  Affirmative action aims to eliminate discrimination and integrate disadvantaged groups by stressing housing, employment, and education; identity politics, despairing of achieving these goals, supports groups by encouraging self-separated independence from other groups, self-esteem of individuals, and group appreciation of their culture.  They are similar in using the political power of identity groups as leverage for distributing social assets to disadvantaged groups to compensate for the effects of discrimination.

 

We have been here before.  Identity politics is a latter-day and all-embracing version of earlier efforts to make membership in minority groups the basis of individual self-respect and group worth.  The focus then was, and the emphasis now is, on Blacks.  The thrust remains to bring Blacks together, to enable Blacks to isolate themselves from Whites as isolation seems necessary, to celebrate their blackness (“Black Is Beautiful”) and to assert their strength (“Black Power”).  The goal of celebrating has been to support the idea of deserving social assets, and the goal of asserting strength has been to seek compensatory distribution of social assets.

 

Since we have been here before, it makes sense to ask if prospects for change are any better.  I have my doubts.  For, as a separatist version of affirmative action, identity politics copies past deficiencies and creates new ones.  One deficiency is the resurrection of the discredited “separate but equal” doctrine which long justified discrimination, effected segregation, and enabled the unequal distribution of social assets to Blacks.

 

Another deficiency is the possibly equal applicability of the principle of identity politics to all groups, with the resulting political instability of group-based policies or programs for the distribution of social assets.  Political parties favor different constituencies over others and often base decisions on which constituency benefits from the distribution of social assets.  Because political power shifts from one party to the other, policies or programs compensating Blacks for the effects of discrimination can be weakened or terminated; they could even be reversed to compensate Whites whose social assets have been reduced by the compensation for Blacks.  If current policies and programs supported by the Progressive Left were reversed by the MAGA Right, the Progressive Left would have no principled objection to shifting priorities.

 

Ultimately, any productive debate would return to the issues involved: among others, availability of housing, fairness in employment, and access to quality education—issues which involve most or all groups.  Focusing only on race and racial discrimination makes it hard to recognize that other groups also suffer from poor housing, unfair employment, and poor schools.  The reason for suffering is no entitlement; the suffering itself is, or should be, sufficient reason for a reformed distribution of social benefits.

 

Conceptually, both the Progressive Left and the MAGA Right share the principle of distinguishing among people on the basis of their membership in groups defined by race, sex, gender orientation, religion, national origin, etc.  Progressives favor non-Whites in programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); the MAGA base favors Whites and opposes wokeness and DEI.  Both political factions incline to bigotry.  Both are antisemitic, Progressives on elite campuses, the MAGA base in Charlottesville, VA.

 

Practically, the Progressive Left and the MAGA Right share some tactics to advance their objectives.  One instance: both try to limit free speech or free press to approved content.  The Progressive Left, notably on the campuses, is known for a “cancel culture,” whereby speakers of unfashionable or unpopular ideas are not invited or are disinvited, or are heckled; professors or students expressing such ideas in class or in publications are harassed; speech codes are imposed; “safe spaces” are established, and alleged offenders of group-identity standards of acceptable speech or conduct are denied due process in pseudo-judicial hearings.  The MAGA Right is equally known for a “cancel culture” of its own, in its efforts to ban books from school or public libraries, to revise curriculums to serve its political ideologies, and to regulate what teachers can discuss, sometimes even in their off-duty communications.

 

Such parallels point to similar motivations and dispositions.  Both the Progressive Left and the MAGA Right seek to impose standards of speech and conduct according to their political ideologies; they do not tolerate dissent or permit discussions of these standards.  Both demand a purity of allegiance and conformity in dogma in all particulars.  Both regard or define those who disagree with them as variously ignorant or immoral, even evil.  The result is personal antagonisms within both camps and between them, which antagonisms make reasonable discussion of basic policy issues difficult, if not impossible.

 

In today’s political climate, hard-core Progressives and die-hard MAGAs are unlikely to moderate their stances.  Extremists on both the Progressive Left and the MAGA Right will continue to place paramount value on group identity based on biological or birthright conditions.  Meanwhile, Liberal moderates of the center-left and center-right need to transcend these innate or inherited factors to unite to preserve democratic principles and values.  As centrists, they should promote the common humanity and respect the individuality of each of us.  The best that can be hoped for is that reasonable, resolute moderates in the middle, people who are aware of the dangers of identity politics and support America’s constitutional democracy suited to a pluralistic society, will have their chance in 2024.

THE TRAGIC SAGA OF CLAUDINE GAY

Claudine Gay, the black woman who was President of Harvard University for slightly more than six months, resigned and has returned to her previous position on the faculty in her field, government.  Her resignation followed her testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and revelations of plagiarism in her dissertation and other scholarly publications.

 

During the Committee’s hearing on antisemitic demonstrations at some leading universities, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked Gay whether statements calling for the elimination of Jewish people amounted to bullying or harassment under campus policies.  Gay’s answer, that such statements had to be evaluated in context with regard to free speech, was, I assume—I have not read Harvard’s policies—, technically correct.  It was also—I have to consider a widespread response—emotionally, morally, or politically incorrect because it was insensitive to antisemitism and the feelings of Jewish students.  In the aftermath of her testimony, Gay found herself defended and attacked for her response, the adequacy of which was debated by friend and foe.

 

Scrutinized after her answer, Gay became the target of allegations of plagiarism in her dissertation and later scholarly papers.  Her response to the first disclosures was to admit to carelessness and to offer corrections.  These disclosures were followed by later instances of plagiarism.  All instances were documented but, though numerous, are trivial and, indeed, odd; none seems important to her work.  They consist of passages quoted nearly verbatim—in most cases, with a few words removed, added, or changed—without any indication of scholarly indebtedness by punctuation, supernumerary citation, or page-and-phrasing reference in the endnotes.

 

The ensuing controversies reflected sides taken: Republicans deplored Gay’s legalistic answer and her plagiarism; Democrats defended her lawyerly answer as accurate and dismissed her plagiarism as insignificant.  Some major donors pledged to withdraw or withhold gifts to Harvard.  Although the Harvard Corporation, a Harvard governing body, stood by her, she resigned in the best interests of the university.  A debate now rages about whether she was right to resign or was hounded from office.

 

This summary of the basic facts hardly does justice to the complexity of the issues, central or peripheral, raised by them.  In a blog, I can hardly mention, much less discuss them all.  So I shall address only a few salient points.

 

First, it is not obvious that the Committee had a proper legislative justification for its investigation into campus policy on campus speech or, more broadly, on the educational environment and codes of conduct at three leading universities.  The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”  So a hearing on antisemitic speech in relation to a campus code of student conduct seems beyond the reach of a proper legislative purpose.

 

Second, it is not apparent that the three universities—Harvard, Pennsylvania, and MIT—are legally obliged even to have codes of conduct respecting speech.  All three are private, not public, institutions, which, as such, are not constitutionally required either to ensure or to regulate free speech.

 

Third, although antisemitic speech is repugnant, speech which is repugnant, offensive, even intimidating, is constitutionally protected.  In a relevant ruling in 1978,

 

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidate[d] a city law passed in Skokie, Ill., home to 5,000 Holocaust survivors, to prevent a neo-Nazi group from holding a march there. The Court rule[d] in Collin v. Smith that the group should be permitted to march in their uniforms, distribute anti-Semitic leaflets and display swastikas. The court [did] not deny the group’s symbols are offensive to many observers, but conclude[d] that “public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” The U.S. Supreme Court [refused] to review the case. (edited for tense; Annenberg Classroom)

 

Regrettably, Gay’s answer addressed none of these considerations.  Gay might have done better to question the propriety of the hearing, to assert the right of campuses to have or not have policies on speech, and to defend all speech, offensive or otherwise, in campus debates, with a personal statement of abhorrence at antisemitic expression and of sympathy for those offended or intimidated.  Ultimately, she seemed to lack convictions pertinent and persuasive at the hearing as well as the competency and decisiveness required by her position.  Gay failed the leadership test.

 

About Gay’s plagiarism, there is much more to reprove than regret.  Gay has no excuse, none whatsoever, for plagiarism.  I do not know the details of her education, but I am sure that she received instruction about plagiarism in her high school and college English classes, and in a methods course in graduate school.  It is not a difficult concept: it is the unacknowledged use of the ideas or words of another.  All writers know when they are using others’ ideas or copying others’ words.  It is a significant concept because it implies the debt to others for the knowledge or insight on the basis of which one advances one’s own work.  Some of her defenders suggest that she was just careless in omitting some quotation marks or citation references, but they do not explain her changes from the original texts.  Worse, from a scholarly perspective, they offer up a shabby excuse for sloppy work, academic theft, and undeserved credit.

 

A final word.  The motives of Gay’s defenders or detractors do not matter; her race and gender do not matter.  Gay cannot be excused or accused because she is a black woman (e.g., a DEI appointee).  (If you are not for diversity, equity, and inclusion, are you for homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion?)  Only what she did or did not do matters.  Yet Gay can be regarded, as I regard her, as a person deserving sympathy.  She is a smart, capable black woman whose great sin may have been trying too hard to make it too fast in a challenging, if not hostile, environment, as academic environments often are.  If so, she may have done so because of “the talk” in her home, that, as a black and a woman, she had to be better than those not black or not female.  Sadly, she has likely made it more difficult for the next smart, capable black woman to ascend to the highest levels in academe.