Coyote Blog

Everybody is always trying to spend someone else’s money.  This kind of thing would really make me sick, except it is a little funny to see the kind of class warfare and redistributionist economics preached by elite universities come back to bite them:

Dr. Gravelle points out that endowment wealth is concentrated in the
upper ranks, much of it at 62 institutions with endowments larger than
$1 billion. But just three years ago only 39 schools had billion-plus
endowments. That’s a 38% increase in just a few years. In 2006, 125
schools had endowments over $500 million—a third more than in 2002. The
number of schools that can count themselves as endowment-rich or
super-rich is growing rapidly….

What the data shows is that endowment wealth is everywhere—except in
the hands of the students who need it today. Last year endowments
increased 17.7% on average—those larger than a billion increased 18.4%.
Yet, despite double-digit increases stretching back a decade or more
—endowment spending is at a nearly all-time low of 4.2%–down from 5.1%
in 1994, 6.5% in 1982, and 5.2% in 1975….

Tuition has been going up so rapidly for so long it has reached nearly
ungraspable levels. So let me put today’s tuition cost in concrete
terms. Senators, what would your constituents say if gasoline cost
$9.15 a gallon? Or if the price of milk was over $15? That is how much
those items would cost if their price had gone up at the same rate that
tuition has since 1980.

I believe that skyrocketing tuition is
undoubtedly the biggest “access” problem in higher education. What can
possibly be more discouraging to a capable student whose parents are
not wealthy than a school with a $45,000 price tag on the door?…

Congress should not hesitate to consider a minimum payout
requirement—and 5% should be considered a starting point. The 5% number
is a dated one—even for private foundations. Many schools have been
rolling over so much money for so long that they should easily be able
to accommodate a higher rate of payout. Possibly the most significant
challenge for policymakers will be to make sure that any newly directed
monies actually go toward aid or tuition reduction and don’t become
part of a shell game.

Seriously, is there no pocket of private money that socialists won’t stick their hand into?  In effect, at the same time Americans get lambasted for saving too little, this guy is going after private universities for saving too much?  And note the implicit assumption about government intervention he holds and expects all of Congress to hold in the third paragraph above:  It is just assumed that if prices go up enough to upset the constituents, then it is Congress’s job to act.

Far be it for facts to get in the way of good populism, but I do know what Princeton does with its 2nd or 3rd largest endowment:

• Every student who gets admitted gets a financial aid package from the University that will allow them to attend, no matter what their finances are.  Yes, the student may have to work his butt off, but if he really wants to go to Princeton he will be able to go.  Princeton’s wealth also allows it to be much more friendly in these financial assessments.  For example, many assets like the parent’s house are taken off the table when assessing ability to pay
• If a student graduates normally, then all of her debts are paid off at graduation.  Every student graduates debt-free, giving them far more flexibility in what jobs they choose our of college.  No longer must they eschew non-profit or low-paying jobs due to the burden of debt.
• Princeton has accepted that applying more money to increasing the educational intensity of its existing 4000 students by an additional 0.1% is not the best use of its investment.  It has committed (in too small of a way for my preferences, but that is another matter) to using its fortunes to increase its size and bring Ivy League education to more people.  This year, it increased its entry class size by 250, which may seem small to those of you from large universities but is about a 20% increase for Princeton.

Since all Princeton students get whatever aid they need and graduate debt-free.  So the tuition number is irrelevent.  And statements like "I believe that skyrocketing tuition is
undoubtedly the biggest “access” problem in higher education" are virtually meaningless. 

The Arizona Republic had this headline on the front of the business section this morning:

Arizona economy will get boost

Oh, is there some interesting structural change in the economy?  Did some local company get a big contract.  No, it turns out that the state government is going to reorganize some of its committees:

Gov. Janet Napolitano announced creation of a new non-profit on
Thursday aimed at improving the state’s economy and reducing its
dependence on housing and construction.

The Arizona Economic Resources Organization, or AERO, will bring
together the state’s "disorganized" business-recruiting efforts, she
said.

AERO’s board of directors will include representatives of government
organizations such as the Commerce and Economic Development Commission,
private enterprise and the state’s universities, the governor said.

Is there a single person who reads this and thinks to himself "Oh, that should help?"  Is this really what the Arizona Republic thinks boosts economies and creates value?  Some reorganization among the bureaucrats that run around doling out taxpayer money for relocations so the governor can claim to have boosted the economy, or God forbid, to have created jobs?  How about an income tax cut instead?

Just as an aside, I couldn’t help but note this hilarious quote:

"The governor has taken some important and bold steps, probably steps
that we should have taken 20 if not 30 years ago," said Barry Broome,
president and chief executive of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council,
which he said has discussed representation on the AERO board with the
governor.

It’s simultaneously "bold" and 30 years late.   Is that possible?

Update:  As to my last question, it probably is possible.  After all, actually limiting the Congress to the enumerated powers in the Constitution would be both bold and about a hundred years late.

McQ at QandO posts a number of examples of jihadi websites hosted on American ISPs, and goes on to urge:

If you’re doing business with any of these ISPs, you may want to advise
them of your displeasure that your fees are helping support a company
that is hosting websites of avowed enemies of your nation and culture.
Granted, because these are in arabic, the ISPs may not even know what
the sites are, but now you do. Point the ISPs to the MEMRI post. Tell
them that websites which call for the killing of Americans, waging war
against us and teaching radicals how to make bombs are unacceptable.
This is not something which you must wait on government to do. These
sites need to come down and they need to come down because of
grassroots and market pressure to do so. Shut them down.

I have a number of problems with this.  Of course, in a free society, one can choose an ISP any way one likes.  However, given the nature of the Internet, this is one of those suggestions that may sort of feel good but have no chance of having any kind of impact.  Even if wildly successful, all you are going to do is drive these sites to offshore hosts, and I sure hope no one is talking about setting up Chinese-type filters and firewalls at our borders.

Further, there is nothing I like more than having my ISP blissfully ignorant of, and apathetic to, whatever it is they are hosting for me.  I DO NOT want to gear up ISP’s to start reviewing and disallowing content.  That is a horribly slippery slope that will only end badly, as we have started to see with video banning at Google and YouTube.  In fact, given the precedents we have seen at YouTube, I would be willing to guess that if ISP’s did start** putting a filter on sites and start** banning them based on public complaints, that McQ is not going to be happy be my sense is that their political filters are different than his.  Just look at campuses today — many universities have defined a new right not to be offended that trumps free speech.  Do we really want to bring this horrible "innovation" to the Internet?

Finally, I think its awesome and what makes America great that we are so tolerant of speech from even the nuttiest of our worst enemies.  I had kind of hoped that GoDaddy would be on his list, just to experience the cultural irony of GoDaddy girl meets fundamentalist Islam.

** Actually, "start" is not the right word, since some undoubtedly kill certain sites when people complain.  Usually but not always today this is based more on irritating Internet behavior (e.g. spamming) rather than content of speech.  It would be more accurate to have said "substantially increase the banning of sites based on content."

I have written a number of times about universities establishing a "right not to be offended" that supersedes free speech.  This is a bit old, but apparently our confused state of Arizona has done the same thing:

The Arizona Senate has unanimously passed
a resolution banning the "Bush Lied, They Died" t-shirts from sale in
the state. The shirts include the names of hundreds of U.S. troops
killed in Iraq in fine print, which legislators apparently find
unseemly, and which they say makes the shirts commercial speech,
instead of political speech, which the Supreme Court says enjoys more
First Amendment protection.

This theory is absurd.  Printing it on a T-Shirt and selling it for money no more converts this into commercial speech than printing Maureen Dowd’s column on paper and selling it for money makes her editorials unprotected.   The law makes it

punishable by up to a year in jail to use the names of deceased
soldiers to help sell goods. The measure, SB 1014, also would let
families go to court to stop the sales and collect damages

Here is a question – about every person in Phoenix, including me, has bought some sort of Pat Tillman shirt or jersey, to memorialize our local football player killed in action.  Are those now illegal?  The AZ Republic makes money selling papers in Phoenix that contain the
names of deceased soldiers all the time — are they going to jail?  Does this mean that no one can sell Glen Miller albums in Arizona?  And if it is determined to be OK to sell shirts memorializing soldiers or reporting on their deaths but not to criticize the president, well, that is pretty much selective enforcement based on political views, is it not.

As an aside, I have never really like the Bush Lied meme, though perhaps not for the reasons his supporters hate it.  I don’t like it because it’s purpose seems to be to relieve every other politician of both parties from any responsibility for the war;  ie, since they were all victims of lies, they bear no responsibility for their actions (or their votes).  I don’t buy that.

Update: Volokh has a much more complete analysis here, which include exceptions to the law.  It appears that at least the Arizona Republic and Glen Miller are safe, but Pat Tillman jerseys still seem to be in the gray zone.  However, interestingly, the law seems to exempt many forms of commercial speech but ban political use of the names.   Wither the first amendment.

I suppose this is going to be one of those nutty libertarian rants that help explain why libertarians do so poorly at the polls, but I am not really very comfortable with Ward Churchill’s potential firing from University of Colorado.  I can’t think of very many things Mr. Churchill has said that I agree with, but I still have this crazy idea about defending speech regardless of the content of the speech.

And it is hard for me to escape the sense that Mr. Churchill may lose his tenured position at a state-run institution over the content of his speech.  Yeah, I know, its nominally about his academic credentials.  But don’t you think everyone is winking at each other about this?  Yes, Mr. Churchill is an academic fraud, but he was a fraud when UC hired him and tenured him as well, and they should have known it.

Over a couple of decades, every major university in the country rushed to build, practically from scratch, racial and ethnic and gender studies programs and departments.  Had every university raced at the same time to build any discipline, talent would run short and in the hiring race, some under-qualified people would be hired.  Let’s suppose that every university decided at the same time they needed a climate department, there just would not be enough qualified climate scientists to fill out every position.  The rush to build ethnic studies programs was similar but in fact a bit worse.  Because while some people actually do have climate-related degrees, no one until recently had an ethnic studies degree.  What professional qualifications should a school look for?  And, in fact, in the rush to build ethnic studies programs, a lot of people of very dubious qualifications were given tenure, often based more on ethnic credibility and political activism than any academic qualifications.  Hell, Cal State Long Beach hired a paranoid schizophrenic who had served prison time for beating and torturing two women as the head of their Black Studies department.  And universities like UC patted themselves on their politically correct backs for these hirings.

I could go out tomorrow and find twenty tenured professors of ethnic/racial/gender studies in state universities whose academic credentials are at least as bad as Churchill’s and whom no one would dare fire.  This has nothing to do with Churchill’s academic work or its quality.  UC is getting exactly what it expected when it tenured him.  This is about an attempt to fire a tenured professor for the content of his speech, speech that has embarrassed and put pressure on the university, and I can’t support that.

FIRE points out yet another university that is attempting to restrict speech it does not agree with, in the name of, uh, freedom or something.  The university’s Student Union proposed to close down the campus humor magazine that made a joke about race relations.  The reason?

Specifically, in response to the “overtly racist, sexist, and generally
offensive articles, statements, and images published in the Spring
Issue of Gravity Magazine,” and because the publication of this joke
had caused “members of our community to feel ‘unsafe,’ ‘powerless,’
‘unsupported,’ ‘harassed,’ and ‘threatened;’”

Now, this university is private, so I suppose as a private body they can define acceptable speech in their private confines any way they want (just as my kids dropping F bombs is legal by the first amendment, but banned in my household).  However, I fear that the folks involved do not understand that they need to leave these attitudes behind when they leave their private little cocoon university, because speech that hurts your feelings is not illegal, thank goodness, in the rest of the country. 

Unfortunately, it is almost too much to ask nowadays that universities understand that, as Louis Brandeis wrote, the best response to speech you don’t like is more speech.  The rich irony comes from the fact that this occurred at … Brandeis University.  The freaking place was named after the man who wrote:

Those who won our independence believed… that freedom to think as
you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the
discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and
assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords
ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious
doctrine…

They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are
subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear
of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage
thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that
repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the
path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed
grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free
speech and assembly… To justify suppression of free speech there must
be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free
speech is practiced… [N]o danger flowing from speech can be deemed
clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so
imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full
discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the
falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of
education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.   (Emphasis added.)

Check out the FIRE article to learn much more about the events in question, including what the original joke was.

Arizona has a pretty strong libertarian streak, and we done some pretty good stuff, like electing Jeff Flake to Congress.  But from time to time, this weird code-of-the-wild-west streak comes out, and we elect a ridiculously self-promoting sheriff.  Or we give someone 200 years in jail for having for possessing (not producing) child pornography.  Or we take away the free speech rights of academics.  As to the latter:

The bill, whose chief sponsor is the Republican majority leader in the
Senate, would ban professors at public colleges and universities, while
working, from:

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.
• Endorsing,
  supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule
  under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.
• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.
• Advocating “one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”
• Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.

I am not sure this even needs an introduction.  Comparisons to "1984" are invoked in political discourse almost as much as those to Nazi Germany, and most are overblown, but the George Orwell novel is all I can think of when I see this:

It may be almost 2007, but it feels more like “1984” at Michigan
State University. The university’s Student Accountability in Community
Seminar (SAC) forces students whose speech or behavior is deemed
unacceptable to undergo ideological reeducation at their own expense.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is challenging
Michigan State to dismantle this unconstitutional program, which
presents a profound threat to both freedom of speech and freedom of
conscience.

 

“Michigan State’s SAC program is simply one of the most invasive
attempts at reeducation that FIRE has ever seen, yet it has been
allowed to exist at the university for years,” FIRE President Greg
Lukianoff said. “As bad as it is to tell citizens in a free society
what they can’t say, it is even worse to tell them what they must
say. Michigan State’s program is an immoral and unconstitutional
program of compelled speech, blatant thought reform, and
pseudo-psychology.”

 

According to the program’s materials,
SAC is an “early intervention” for students who use such
“power-and-control tactics” as “male/white privilege” and
“obfuscation,” which the university cryptically defines as “any action
of obscuring, concealing, or changing people’s perceptions that result
in your advantage and/or another’s disadvantage.” Students can be
required to attend SAC if they demonstrate what a judicial
administrator arbitrarily deems aggressive behavior, past examples of
which have included slamming a door during an argument or playing a
practical joke. Students can also be required to attend SAC for
engaging in various types of constitutionally protected speech,
including “insulting instructors” or “making sexist, homophobic, or
racist remarks at a meeting.” When participation in SAC is required,
“non-compliance typically results in a hold being placed on the
student’s account,” an action that leaves the student unable to
register for classes and thus effectively expelled from the university.
Students are required to pay the cost of the SAC sessions.

 

Once in the program, students are instructed to answer a series of
written questionnaires. In their answers, students must specifically
describe how they are taking “full responsibility” for their offensive
behavior and must do so using language that the director of the session
deems acceptable. Most students will be asked to fill out this
questionnaire multiple times, slowly inching closer to what
administrators deem to be “correct” responses.

PC indoctrination at our nation’s universities is alive and well.  It just astounds me that a group of adults thought this was acceptable.

"Shouldn’t Princeton students have the same rights as their counterparts down the road at Mercer County Community College?"

Princeton is a private institution, and has a greater ability than state institutions to set its own codes of conduct for its students.  That being said, as one who wants Princeton to remain a strong institution, I don’t understand what the university’s interest is in limiting free speech.  Particularly booing at a play.  The only exception I might make to this are efforts to make sure that invited speakers or scheduled performances can actually be heard and aren’t drowned out by protesters, but I don’t get the sense that this is what is going on here.

This "unwanted verbal conduct" standard that a number of universities have adopted is absurd, and is only harming students by releasing them into the real world believing that the government will protect them from encountering any criticism.  In this sense, Princeton and other universities are creating students in the modern Islamic mold, teaching them they should somehow be immune to criticism and that they should react with rabid outrage at the first person who says anything negative about them.  The only difference is that these students are being taught to respond with lawyers rather than explosive backpacks, but the outcome in terms of stifled free speech is the same.

I thought this article by Robert Johnson (via Instapundit) about the Duke Lacrosse case was interesting in that it highlighted how many people on the Duke campus believed that the actual guilt of innocence of the players involved was irrelevant.

First, there was the Duke administration.  I don’t think anyone can doubt at this point that the players’ guilt or innocence was irrelevant to the actions of the Duke administration, since they meted out their punishments long before the investigation into the facts of the case had even really begun.  Duke was clearly worried most about its reputation and about protecting itself from lawsuits, a not unreasonable fear given this.

It is the actions of the faculty that are truly amazing.  Johnson shows us the thinking of a number of members of the Duke faculty, known as the group of 88, that came out with public statements about the matter.

[Duke Professor Wahneema Lubiano] was pleased "that the Duke administration is getting the point”:
the banging of pots and pans had hammered home that a specific claim to
innocence in this case mattered little. "Regardless of the ‘truth’
established in whatever period of time about the incident at the house
on N. Buchanan Blvd.," she mused, "the engine of outcry in this moment
has been fueled by the difficult and mundane reality that pre-existed
this incident." To Lubiano, the "members of the team are almost perfect
offenders in the sense that [critical race theorist Kimberle] Crenshaw
writes about," since they are "the exemplars of the upper end of the
class hierarchy, the politically dominant race and ethnicity, the
dominant gender, the dominant sexuality, and the dominant social group
on campus."

Professor Alex Rosenberg added:

The sole defenders of the lacrosse players in this case, the professor
suggested, are extreme advocates of the economic status quo

Though its not really news nowadays, I guess, the article is a nice reminder that universities tend to have a hard core of faculty that see the world in terms of race, class, and gender rather than individuals and individual action.  Makes you wonder how they go about assigning grades.  In fact, their desire to see the Duke case cast in terms of race and gender apparently caused them to ignore outright political abuses one would normally expect them to decry:

Most stunningly, Rosenberg claimed that every member of the
Group of 88 believed that Nifong was motivated not by the pursuit of
justice but by the looming Democratic primary for D.A. If true, this
breathtaking assertion means that the Duke faculty, despite recognizing
that a local prosecutor was abusing his office to railroad their own
institution’s students, chose to go public instead with a mass
statement denouncing the students targeted by that very same prosecutor.

Both based on outside pressure (mostly from torts) and internal desire, universities are rapidly modeling themselves into mini-governments, really mini-super-nanny-states.  FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, observes of a recent gathering of University attorneys:

At one panel I attended, San Francisco lawyer Zachary Hutton explained
Williams v. Board of Regents, a recent case in which a University of
Georgia student alleged having been raped by two student-athletes while a third
student watched. The police charged the athletes with rape, and the university
decided not to conduct its own investigation until the criminal case was
resolved.

That turned out to be a mistake. The plaintiff then sued the university for
sexual harassment, and the 11th Circuit held this year that the university could
be liable because, by waiting to conduct an independent investigation until the
criminal case was resolved, it had exhibited deliberate indifference to the
alleged rape. “The court emphasized,” Mr. Hutton told the college lawyers, “that
the pending criminal trial . . . did not affect the university’s ability to
institute its own proceedings, and the criminal charges would not have prevented
future attacks while the charges were pending.”

There are excellent reasons for the university not to conduct its own
investigation. For one thing, instead of police detectives and professional
prosecutors conducting the investigation, you are likely to get Campus Public
Safety and the Associate Dean for Student Affairs. How having inexperienced
college administrators and college safety officers conduct a rape investigation
is likely to benefit either the victim or the accused is beyond me. The
potential for violating the Fifth Amendment, damaging evidence, and coming to
wildly inaccurate conclusions is immense, and if any of these things were to
happen, the university would risk botching an important criminal case. Rape is a
serious crime; victims and the accused deserve better than college justice.

In some ways, this was even more illuminating of the drive to mini-nanny-statehood:

The most entertaining discussion I heard at the lawyers’ convention
centered on what to do about facebook.com and myspace.com–how to prevent
slander, harassment and rumor-mongering on these online communities popular with
undergrads.

What these attorneys were talking about is wholesale regulation of online
speech. Slander is, of course, a tort, and engaging in slander or libel can get
a person sued. It’s hard to see how or why a college should be involved in this,
though. If I libel someone online, it’s the business of those affected, not the
college. As for harassment, one of its main characteristics is that the person
being harassed finds the harassing behavior hard to avoid. Unless the “harasser”
is hacking into the victim’s MySpace page, it’s hard to see how going to a
“harassing” website isn’t completely avoidable. As for “rumor-mongering,” horror
of horrors! Regulating that on a college campus will mean tripling the number of
administrators (and probably tuition), but I suppose no expense is too large to
make sure that everyone stays comfortable.

College campuses were probably among the first and most vociferous critics of GWB’s various domestic surveillance programs.  Its interesting to see that while opposing such programs at the national level, they are crafting far more far-reaching speech monitoring and restriction programs on their own campuses:

The room was evenly divided: Some lawyers recommended ignoring the students’ Web
sites unless something offensive was brought to administrators’ attention, while
others suggested taking aggressive action….

By my calculations, if half the lawyers thought that “offensive” speech that is
reported should be punished, and half the lawyers thought that administrators
should spend their time cruising the websites and proactively stamping out
“offensive” speech, that leaves ZERO lawyers who believed that perhaps merely
“offensive” speech should be protected, as the First Amendment (at public
schools), or respect for fundamental freedoms (at all schools), requires.

Jennifer Britz, the Dean of Admissions at Kenyon College reports that she is sad to say that she is admitting boys who are less qualified than female applicants in order to maintain gender parity.

Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any,
hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer,
they’re more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and
universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and
more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women.
Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate
degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

I have four reactions.

One.  Yeah!  Lets take a moment to celebrate a victory for women.  Its great to see us talking about "too many" qualified women flooding colleges, just a few years after feminists were still writing books about schools failing girls.

Two.  I finally get to say something that I have wished for decades to hear from members of various minority groups that have been the benficiary of affirmative action:  Stop giving us men a special break.  Boys in high school are falling behind girls in their achievement, and are not going to get the message as long as you keep taking less qualified boys instead of more qualified girls.  The colleges I attended 20+ years ago survived fine with 2/3 men, they can do the same with 2/3 women.

Three.  This just reinforces my advice I have been giving to Ivy League and other great schools: Find a way to grow!  The new challenge for the 21st century is not to spend an incremental 5% more on the same top students, but to recognize that there are so many more great, polished graduates that are Ivy ready than ever before.

Four.  In this article you can get a little peek at how the college admissions process has turned volunteerism from, well, volunteerism to a grim requirement.  Among eleven-year-olds in my son’s class, I saw kids get turned down for an honor society despite having 4.0+ grade point averages, playing multiple sports at a very high level, and doing about 20 hours of community service over the year.  Apparently, this level of community service was not robust enough — people with lower grades make it, people with no sports make it, people with no leadership activities make it, but NO ONE makes it without a lot more than 20 hours of community service – at the age of eleven.  Believe it or not, my son now keeps a log book of time spent on activities he can count as service — we have better documentation of this work than we do of his grades!  Volunteerism has become nearly the one minimum requirement that of all the various components is never waived in college admissions.

I must say I was not at all surprised that the Solomon amendment (requiring private universities that accept federal funds to also accept military recruiters) was upheld by the Supreme Court.  I predicted months ago that the left had made its bed on this issue with its strong support of Title IX.

Various law school faculties argued in the case that the Solomon Amendment unconstitutionally violated their rights to freedom of association (by taking away their choice of who can and cannot recruit on campus) and of speech (by forcing the university to support speech, such as military recruiting pitches, that it does not agree with).  I must say that I am both sympathetic and unsympathetic to their argument.  Sympathetic, because there are in fact free speech and association issues here.  The majority opinion notwithstanding, its impossible to make a razor-sharp distinction between prohibitions on "conduct" and prohibitions on expression.  I can’t accept Robert’s blanket statement that "unlike a parade organizer’s choice of parade contingents, a law
school’s decision to allow recruiters on campus is not inherently
expressive."  What if, say, Al Qaeda wants to set up a booth?  My accepting their booth would sure as hell be a form of expression, one that I am sure the Right would blast me for. 

I do understand that there is money involved, and the fatuous answer is that "well, they can just turn down federal funds."  Bullshit.  Like it or not (and I don’t) the feds have made themselves so ubiquitous, particularly in certain research areas where they have crowded out all private funding, that it is unrealistic to tell them to take a hike.  Though I must say that it is interesting to see the left, which built this huge federal machine, hoist on their own petard.  Besides, the majority opinion said that the funding tie-in was not necessary to pass constitutional muster — that the government had the power to just straight out compel private universities to accept military recruiters.

However, mostly I am unsympathetic.  Why?  Because these very same ivy league and faculty intellectuals have felt free in the past to step all over the free speech and association rights of the rest of us in similar ways.  As George Will asked in recent column, it would be fascinating to see what percentage of these same people who brought this suit in turn vehemently support, say, McCain-Feingold?  Or, public funding of election campaigns. 

As a business person, this ship sailed years ago.  Freedom of association no longer applies to business people.  The reason?  Well, freedom of association implies the reverse right of not associating with anyone you choose.  But there are phone-book-sized bodies of legislation today with detailed regulations telling me all the people and circumstances in which I cannot choose whom I associate with, or don’t associate with (via employment decisions, for example).  For example, my business employs RV’ers who live full-time on the road and form a large transient labor force.  I have tons of applications every year from Canadian and Mexican citizens who would like to work for me, but I cannot hire them.  On the other side of the coin, I have had to actually go to court from time to time to justify why I chose not to hire or to fire someone who is a woman, or older, or handicapped.

And forced speech with which I don’t agree?  My company has to, by law, maintain bulletin boards full of posters, messages, statements, etc. that I don’t necessarily agree with but are legally required to post on my property as communication to workers.  And these bulletin boards have to be made a bit larger every year.  I don’t have to accept any federal money to be absolutely required, at the penalty of heavy fines, to post these communications.

I would be a bit more enthusiastic in my support for these law faculty if I didn’t suspect that they have been the very people out in the forefront of trashing my first amendment rights as a business person.

Postscript: By the way, is this even a problem anyway?  At Harvard Business School, the largest recruiters eschewed campus altogether, and conducted all their interviews at offsite hotels.  I would think the military could pretty easily work around these law schools prohibitions. 

Self-described "progressives" on the left have gone nuts over the past several years over creeping legislative and regulatory inroads made by religious conservatives.  Fascism! They are quick to reply.  The government can’t tell us what to do with our own bodies, or in the privacy of our own homes!  Abortion, homosexuality?  Hey, that’s our choice, its our bodies.  NSA eavesdropping, warrant-less searches?  Hey, those are our private phonecalls made from our private phones.  Searches of private cars without probable cause to enforce seat belt use?  Hey, what a great idea!

Boston Globe columnist Scot LeHigh editorializes against Massachusetts Democrats attempt to micro-regulate personal behavior:

THIS WEEK, the Massachusetts House of Representatives will face a telling test:
Can it resist a progressive Legislature’s ever-present impulse toward pesky
paternalism?

The issue is seat belts, and whether the police will be allowed to stop
motorists upon suspicion that someone in their vehicle is not wearing a seat
belt or only ticket them for that grievous offense if they have first been
pulled over for something else.

This is exactly why I am suspicious of progressives and resist making common cause with them, even on issues where we tend to agree.  For while they talk the libertarian talk pretty well when they want to (abortion with its "I should control decisions over my own body" defense being the most obvious example), progressives also have a very strong streak of "we are smarter than you are and sometimes will tell you what to do because it is for your own good".   As a result, for example, progressives support abortion because a woman should make decisions for her body without government intrusion, but oppose the legality of breast implants and vioxx because a woman should, uh, not be able to make decisions for her body without government intrusion (more on this here).

And what decision could be more about my own body than what level of protection I want to afford myself in a vehicle?  If I choose, for whatever reason, not to wear a motorcycle helmet or a seatbelt, who cares?  It may be a really, really stupid choice on my part, but its my decision for my own body, right?  (By the way, I know that some people will make the ‘taxpayers pay for your medical care argument’, which I dealt with earlier in my post about government health care funding as a Trojan horse for fascism).

But even beyond the issue of individual decision-making, what about the 4th amendment issues?  It is amazing but true that progressives and the Massachusetts legislature, who would never in a million years give the police, the FBI, or anyone under George Bush’s chain of command the right to stop a motorist without probable cause to check for evidence of terrorist intent, are actually endorsing that the police have this power to stop motorists without probable cause for freaking seat belt use.  Is this really the alternative we are being offered today – you can choose fascism to stanch the threat of terrorism or you can choose fascism to increase seat belt use? 

I predict that the left may come to regret setting this precedent, as they have come to regret other expansions of government power that their political enemies have used as stepping stones for their own agenda.  A good example is Title IX, which is beloved by the left for using the fact of federal funding to browbeat even private universities into changing their admissions policies, but has been used as a precedent by the right to browbeat private universities into accepting military recruiters.  Government micro-managing of individual decision-making is only fun as long as you and your gang are the ones doing the micro-managing.

I would love to see someone in Washington making a consistent case for freedom of decision-making for individuals when the decision affects only themselves or others with whom they are interacting in a consensual manner.  But I am not holding my breath.

I think that that FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, does a really nice job defending speech across the political spectrum on campuses.  I was struck in particular by this post on their blog, about Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a private university in Massachusetts.   Speech rights at private institutions (such as on the job) are often an area where "civil rights" groups trip over themselves.

I thought FIRE did a nice job with its WPI analysis:

as a private institution, WPI is not bound by the U.S. Constitution, and WPI
takes full advantage of that by stripping its students of their First Amendment
rights. WPI doesn’t try to hide this fact, either. Unlike many private
universities, its website makes no promises that students will have the
constitutional rights that they enjoy in society at large. Moreover, it prominently
advertises that “[s]tudents enter WPI voluntarily…If they do not like some
of the rules, regulations, traditions, and policies of WPI, they do not have to
enter,” and
that “membership in this particular academic community is freely sought and
freely granted by and to its members, and…within this membership group certain
specific behaviors that may be accepted by society in general cannot be accepted
within an academic community without hindering the explicit goals of that
academic community.” 

 

As a private institution, Worcester is acting within its rights: it
advertises its repression and censorship right up front.  WPI doesn’t promise
you free speech, and you won’t get it. That’s why FIRE doesn’t rate WPI a “red
light”— when a private university states clearly and consistently that it holds
a certain set of values above a commitment to freedom of speech, FIRE does not
rate that university. But we still think you should know what to expect when you
get there.

Good for FIRE.  It achnowleges that WPI as a private institution has the right to set its own rules and terms and conditions, as long as those are clear up front.  FIRE doesn’t like these rules (I don’t particularly either) but it limits itself to speaking out against them, rather than filing legal actions as it might in the case of public universities which, by law and by court precedent, can’t place artifical limits on first ammendment rights.

Every once in a while I post something off the cuff and find retroactively that I have tapped into a rich source of blogging material.  Such is the case with my post a couple of days ago about technocrats on the left regretting loss of control of the statist institutions they created.  In that article I cited examples of the left freaking out over a conservative-controlled FDA halting over-the-counter approval of the Plan B morning after pill and the injection of certain conservative dogmas (e.g. intelligent design) into public schools.  The moral was that the left is lamenting the loss of control, when they should be reevaluating the construction of the regulatory state in the first place.

David Bernstein at Volokh brings us another example with the Solomon Amendment, the legislation that requires universities that accept public funds to allow military recruiters on campus.  Folks on the left hate this act, many because they oppose the military at all junctures while others more narrowly oppose recruiting as a protest against the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy law brainchild.  Eskridge and Polsby debate the pros and cons at the ACS Blog.  I tend to be sympathetic to the private universities, who rightly don’t feel like acceptance of federal money or research grants should negate their control of their institution.

But my point is not the merits of the Solomon Amendment, but to point out the irony, very parallel with the FDA and public schools examples previously:  The Solomon Amendment is built sturdily on the precedent of Federal Title IX legislation, legislation that is a part of the bedrock of leftish politics in America.  Title IX first established the principal that the Federal government could legally override the policy-making and decision-making at private universities if they accepted any federal cash.  It was the left that fought for and celebrated this principal.  The left ruthlessly defended the state’s right to meddle in private universities in substantial ways, and passed legislation to shore Title IX up when the Supreme Court weakened state control (from the Bernstein post):

The Court’s attempt to preserve some institutional autonomy for universities
from anti-discrimination laws caused uproar among liberal anti-discrimination
activists. They persuaded Congress to pass the “Civil Rights Restoration Act.”
This law ensured that if a university receives any federal funds at all,
including tuition payments from students who receive federal aid, as in Grove
City’s case, all educational programs at that university are subject to Title
IX.

The Solomon Amendment is modeled after the Civil Rights Restoration Act’s
interpretation of Title IX.

In fact, in the linked articles, Solomon is being attacked by the left precisely because it does not allow universities the freedom to set their own anti-discrimination policy (in this case, banning recruiters judged discriminatory to gays), when the whole issue of Title IX was precisely to override a university’s chosen anti-discrimination policy (or lack thereof).  So again we have the case of the left building an government mechanism to control private decision-making, and then crying foul when their political enemies take control of the machinery.

In my naive youth, I would have assumed that this contradiction would quickly be recognized.  However, the left (and the right too, but that is for another post) has been able for years to maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary to support the FDA’s meddling in every single decision about what medical procedures and compounds a person can have access to while at the same time arguing that abortion is untouchable by government and that a woman should make decisions for her own body.  In this case, it will be interesting to see if the left is able to simultaneously decry state control of discrimination policies at private universities in Solomon while continuing to support state control of private university discrimination policies as essential in Title IX.

Correction: You learn something every day.  I called don’t-ask-don’t-tell a “policy, as I had assumed that it was merely an internal military policy.  Apparently it is a law.

I am a big supporter of the work FIRE does to support openness and individual rights in universities.  Today, FIRE turns its attention on Phoenix’s own Arizona State University:

State-sponsored racial segregation has found a home at Arizona State University
(ASU).  ASU’s ironically named ‘Rainbow Sections’ of English 101 and 102 have
been advertised on flyers and on the university’s website as being open to
‘Native Americans only.’

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has written to the
university to demand that the classes be opened to all students. Shockingly,
this marks the second time in less than four years that FIRE has been forced to
protest a racially segregated course at ASU.

It is appalling that ASU would resurrect segregated classes five decades
after Brown v. Board of Education,” stated David French, president of
FIRE.  “The idea that a class can be ‘separate but equal’ was discredited long
ago.

The ‘Rainbow Sections’ of English 101 and 102, ASU’s freshman composition
courses, were advertised as “restricted to Native Americans only” on the faculty
webpage of Professor G. Lynn Nelson, the course instructor.  A flyer
addressed to ‘Native American Students’ states that they ‘are invited to enroll
in special Native American sections of ENG 101 and 102.’  It also discusses some
of the differences between the special sections and the ‘standard First Year
Composition classes,’ making it clear that the special sections offer a
different educational experience.

Anyone heard of Brown vs. Board of Education here?  I wouldn’t have a particular problem with private groups offering such education with these restrictions, after all I have said many times that the right of free association implies a right not to associate with whoever you want.  But public institutions have different obligations in this regard.  Its actually not that hard to deal with, and even ASU knows what the solution is:

FIRE last wrote
to ASU in April 2002 to protest a segregated Navajo history class that
limited enrollment to Native American students. At that time, ASU simply dropped
the racial restriction in response to FIRE’s letter.

Its OK to have different versions of the same coursework, and probably OK to advertise one version as specially targeted at a particular group, as long as you let individual students make the final decision on which of the University-sanctioned versions are right for them.

Several times on this blog I have found myself defending "hate speech".  Not because I agreed with it, but because I am deeply concerned that the effort to label certain speech "hate speech" is part of a general campaign to limit first amendment rights.  If speech limiters are successful in establishing the principal that certain speech is so bad that it is not protected by the first amendment, then we are suddenly at the mercy of whoever is in charge of defining "bad" for our speech rights.  Universities, ironically at the forefront of the "free speech" movement of the 60′s, have been at the forefront of "hostile environment" limitations on speech in this decade.

There are many such examples.  The group FIRE, which fights speech limitations on campus, has a blog and a university rating system that is a great resource.  One recent example from their files is of Mr. J. Daniel at William Patterson University in New Jersey.  A couple of facts first, and then a fantastic letter in his defense from Rutgers professor Norman Levitt.  The background:

Mr. Daniel was one addressee of a mass mailing from Prof. Scala publicizing a
film she was about to show, a documentary that presented a positive view of
lesbian relationships. Mr. Daniel, who espouses religious doctrines deploring
homosexuality, responded with a request not to be sent similar notices in the
future, along with a few brief sentences summarizing his general views. It is
notable that he did not threaten Prof. Scala directly or by implication, nor did
he deny her right to show the film. He did not publicize the exchange. He did
not use the incident to launch a campaign of ridicule or vilification against
homosexuals or anyone else. He merely counterposed his ideas to those she was
presumably promoting, in a purely private way and in response to an unsolicited
message directed to him.

What Prof. Scala actually did was engage her university president in a joint effort to censor and punish Mr. Daniel.  I have read Mr. Daniel’s comments, which I don’t happen to agree with.  However, the response he got to his very reasonable actions is very scary.  Prof. Levitt describes the rest:

Prof. Scala, however, seems to regard disagreement with her position as a
punishable offense. In this respect, she has embraced peculiar dogmas that have
become all too prevalent on campuses throughout the nation. These hold that
there are certain groups who, by reason of a presumed history of oppression, are
to be safeguarded from opinions that they find distressing or uncomfortable. The
rights of others to hold, or at least to express, such dissonant views are
supposedly nullified by the new-minted “right” of the protected groups to be
shielded from discomfort and distress. Both the ethic of free speech and the
constitutional guarantees that bolster it are supposedly trumped by the duty to
shield the tender sensibilities of the officially recognized victim class. If,
by chance, someone utters a sentence or two, even in the context of private
discussion, that affronts these sensibilities, terms like “harassment” and
“hostile environment” are immediately trotted out to justify retribution against
the offending speaker. In short, the assumption is that colleges and
universities have both the right and the positive duty to require students,
faculty, and employees to uphold official doctrine on these matters, if only by
silencing themselves if they happen to disagree.

Wow, I wish I could write like that.  There is much more, all on point and very well written here.

The NJ Attorney General has chimed in and said… wait for it … that Ms. Scala is entirely in the right and that Mr. Daniel is probably guilty of harassment and discrimination under NJ law as well for expressing his opinions.

By the way, if you think that Professor Levitt was exaggerating for saying that speech is condemned merely if it hurts the feelings of someone in a protected group, here is a very typical quote from a college speech code (I just grabbed the first one I found on the FIRE site):

The Albertson College
Student Handbook’s harassment policy states that “[a]ny comments or conduct
relating to a person’s race, gender, religion, disability, age or ethnic
background that fail to respect the dignity and feelings of the individual are
unacceptable.” The Handbook also provides that “[a]ll inappropriate behaviors
may not be specifically covered in the misconduct definitions, and students will
be held accountable for behaviors considered inconsistent with the standards and
expectations described in this handbook.”

Just to prove this is not an aberration, here is another:

The Rhodes College Policy on Discrimination and Harassment states
that “[f]reedom of expression does not include the right to intentionally and
maliciously aggravate, intimidate, ridicule or humiliate another person.” Now,
we at FIRE know that all too many university administrators believe this
statement to be true; this is apparent from the way speech codes are enforced on
campuses across the country. However, few colleges and universities are bold
enough to make an explicit statement about free expression that directly
contradicts U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The administrators of Rhodes College
need to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, in which the Court upheld
Hustler’s right to publish a parody suggesting that Jerry Falwell’s first sexual
experience was a drunken tryst in an outhouse with his own mother. Parody and
satire—which often intentionally and maliciously ridicule and humiliate their
targets—enjoy the strongest constitutional protection.

Update:  By the way, here is the whole text of the email in question.  Don’t agree with him, but I have a hard time seeing anyone threatened and certainly can’t fathom kicking the guy out of school and threatening him with prosecution for it.  More evidence that the promotors of diversity don’t actually want diversity.

Campus liberals rightly get a lot of heat for their attacks on free speech and expression at universities via speech codes and the like.  I have piled on a number of times.  However, the impulse restrict speech you don’t agree with is not limited to liberals (though it may be more prevalent due to leftist control of most campuses).  Take this story via Volokh:

Vince Finaldi points me to the affidavit justifying the arrest of a student for asking a rude question at an Ann Coulter speech.  If the facts in the affidavit are accurate, then it looks like the student has an excellent First Amendment defense.

Basically, the student asked Ms. Coulter her opinion of a married man and woman engaging in sodomy.  Granted that he asked the question in a fairly profane manner, but he seems to have followed the Q&A rules by getting up, asking his question, and quietly waiting for the reply from his seat.  So why are the police hauling him away?

I could easily have chosen nearly any university in the country as the example for this post, but I will choose my alma mater Princeton. 

Like many universities, Princeton has a speech code.  Like many universities, Princeton’s speech code is an affront to the First Amendment and an open license to selectively apply administrative punishments based on political beliefs.

The Princeton speech code says, in part:

Abusive or harassing behavior, verbal or physical, which demeans, intimidates, threatens, or injures another because of his or her personal characteristics or beliefs, is subject to University disciplinary sanctions…

And further defines sexual harassment as:

verbal or physical conduct [that] has the effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work, academic performance, or living conditions by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.

This is the worst kind of arbitrary legislation.  In no part of the guidelines are any of these terms defined.  In fact, both as written and as practiced, the definition of these terms is left entirely up to the victim, with outrageous consequences.  Basically we have gotten to the point where hurting someones feelings, or even disagreeing with them, is a crime. 

This would be bad enough if enforced even-handedly, but in practice, speech codes become a tool of the University faculty and administration to squelch speech they don’t agree with.  One of my pet peeves is the term "hate speech", which is used frequently in political diatribes by both the left and the right.  While this term may have at one point had some utility in narrowly describing the most extreme racism, today in its common usage it has come to mean "speech I don’t agree with".  In a similar manner, campus speech codes are effectively enforced as banning speech that the ruling orthodoxy of the university does not agree with.  If a gay rights activist and a conservative Christian get into an
argument on campus and use similar invective against each other, you
can bet only one is probably going to get sanctioned.  And, given the typical politics of universities today, you can guess what speech is protected and what is sanctioned. 

Here is my rule of thumb:  unless speech meets the (narrow) definition of libel, no legally or
administratively actionable harm can be claimed as a result of it.  Or, as we were taught as kids, sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.  In the adult world, this should translate to:  Physical assaults are actionable, verbal assaults are not. 

The Princeton Tory has a nice article on these policies, as well as the really bad idea to extend this to a "social honor code".  And, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is the leading defender of free speech on campus and has a great web site.

Postscript:  Speech limitations are a very slippery slope.  So much so that I have never encountered speech or expression by adults aimed at other adults that I would limit.  Nazis, communists, birchers, pornographers, racists, revolutionaries, militia, muslims, atheists:  Have at it.  Even Congressmen.  And even this.

Update:  One other thought.  I have never understood why so many people think that the right approach to people who have stupid, awful ideas is to keep them from being heard.  This applies not only to speech codes but the increasingly frequent attempts to ban speakers from campus or, if that is unsuccessful, drown their speech out with chants and interruptions.  Why?  I have always thought that Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant not just for government proceedings but for bad ideas as well.  Let them be heard and ridiculed.  After all, Hitler "called his shots" more than a decade before he began his horrible reign.  The world would have been better off if he had been listened to carefully in those early years.

I have tried to resist the temptation to blog much on the whole Ward Churchill situation.  In part this is because it has been kicked around so thoroughly in other venues, and in part because I just knew I would get emails purposefully misunderstanding my point.  I have instead tried to focus some positive attention on emerging examples of scholarship where none existed before.  That said, I would like to try to add my own postscript on the whole Churchill fiasco.

First, while he has made some truly egregious statements that point to his moral bankruptcy,such as those he made about the 9/11 attacks and victims, I don’t think that UC has grounds to fire him for these comments, at least based on the accepted rules and purpose of tenure.  One of the reasons for tenure is to give academics the freedom to pursue scholarship in any direction, without threat of political retribution.

However, Churchill should be fired for his complete lack of quality scholarship or principled academic research.  Churchill, through his poor scholarship, plagiarism, and outright fabrications have helped to set back historic studies about Native Americans and their tragic interaction with Western Civilization.  Churchill has become the poster boy for one of the leading problems in academia today, that is the ability of certain individuals to substitute vocal leftist politics and minority status for intellectual rigor and true scholarship in getting tenure at major universities.   A non-protected group white male of moderate politics with the same body of academic work as Churchill couldn’t get a job teaching at any self-respecting university, but put the same work under the banner of radical leftist native American, and suddenly he has tenure at the University of Colorado.

Anyway, Victor David Hanson has a great piece in NRO summarizing why Ward Churchill represents what is wrong in academia today.

Many universities over the last several decades have created race and gender studies programs.  One of the problems with many of these programs has been the appalling quality of scholarship.  The recent broohaha around Ward Churchill at Colorado is but one example — there are many others.  For example, look how Cal-State Long Beach chose the head of their Black Studies Department:

On September 17, 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. The charges stemmed from a May 9, 1970 incident in which Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to kill him by placing "crystals" in his food and water.
       

A year later the Los Angeles Times described the events: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."       

The shooting at UCLA caused Karenga to become deeply paranoid and spurred his bizarre behavior. At his trial, the question of Karenga’s sanity arose. The psychiatrist’s report stated, "This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment." The psychiatrist observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons and believed that he had been attacked by dive-bombers.

Eight years later California State University at Long Beach made Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department.

Or, check out the scholarly discussions around choosing the head of Black Studies at UCLA:

In 1965 Karenga founded the United Slaves Organization (US), a group that would rival the Black Panthers on the UCLA campus. The US was more radical than the Panthers, setting off quarrels between the two.
       

The biggest dispute between the US and the Panthers centered around the leadership of the new Afro-American Studies department at UCLA; both groups backed a different candidate. On January 17, 1969, 150 students gathered to discuss the situation. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice Carter used the meeting to verbally attack Karenga, much to the dismay of his followers. Two US members, George and Larry Stiner, confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway after the meeting and shot and killed them.

Universities all raced to create new race and gender-based studies departments, and tenured many  based on their strong opinions and the positive response they would get out of the relevant community, rather than normal academic guidelines.

Anyway, I have, as often happens, gotten away from the point of my post.   The NY Times has a good article on Roland Fryer, who appears to be the leading edge of a new generation set on bringing real scholarship and fact-based analysis to these programs.  (hat tip:  marginal revolution)  I don’t necessarily agree with him, for example on paying cash for good grades in school, but I am happy to see his dedication to real analysis and challenging conventional wisdom.

For years, women at Harvard argued there needed to be more women on the faculty to support "diversity".  I have always thought that diversity meant that you had a lot of difference – in this case different kinds of people with different skills.  Now, Larry Summers is getting attacked by the female faculty for implying that women are, uhh, perhaps different from men.  Women are insisting that there is no justification for even studying the question of whether women are different than men.  They maintain that women are the same, no argument allowed.  But if they are the same, how is hiring more women contributing to diversity?

My guess is that the comeback of those involved is that women don’t have a genetic difference from men, but they have a difference in perspective (political, philosophical, etc).  There are two obvious problems with this:

• If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints then why don’t they hire for and measure diversity based on background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints, rather than the imperfect proxy of black/white, man/woman, etc.
• And, If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of
  background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints — they are doing a really crappy job, because universities are pretty dang homogeneous, at least in political viewpoint as compared to the population.

By the way, I was initially negative to Summer’s comments myself here.  I still support my criticism that as a leader of a leading, in fact uniquely influential, educational institution, he has an obligation to his institution to be careful what he says.  A CEO today who speaks his mind on political issues is not only ill-advised, but may actually be violating his/her fiduciary responsibility by bringing public censure on the company’s shareholders.

However, that said, the degree of hysteria over Summer’s comments is mind-boggling, especially when you read what he actually said in context rather than just accept the media summary (basically, he did not say that men were better at math on average than women, he said that men MAY have a higher standard deviation in their skills, leading to a disproportionate number of men being both dolts and geniuses at math and science).  To some extent, the women driving this hysteria actually seem to be publicly reinforcing stereotypes of women being delicate (some silly woman actually said she almost fainted at Summer’s remarks)  overly emotional (given their hysterical reaction) and, ironically enough, non-scientific (given the fact that no one has thought to take on Summers scientific query with facts rather than political intimidation).

In my experience, a confident mature woman can make the average man feel bumbling and childish, and have an ability to rise above the fray to bring sanity to a confused situation.  Why can’t the grown-ups among the female gender be heard in such arguments? Never mind, the first sentence answers the second.  Besides, I think most confident intelligent women are giving up on woman’s organizations anyway.

I am all for restructuring the whole social security system, but, as I have written before, we cannot let the government invest social security funds in private equities.  The potential for manipulation and creeping socialism are astronomical.  Its easy to picture fights over whether the social security funds should be invested in tobacco makers, gun makers, hospitals that conduct abortions, Domino’s Pizza (that donates funds to oppose abortion), Haliburton, etc. etc. 

I have always used government-funding of universities as an example — the government uses the leverage of this funding (and the threat of its withdrawal) to force all kinds of regulations on universities.  Today, we have a good case example that is even more directly applicable. 

Over the past several years, Calpers (the California state workers retirement fund) has been a great example of how government control of equity investments can be a disaster.  In the case of Calpers, their huge pension investments automatically make them one of the largest investors in each company in their portfolio.  Calpers has used that power wisely at times, promoting improvements in corporate governance, but has also used it astronomically poorly. 

Under Sean Harrigan, Calpers portfolio has been unbelievably politicized, up to and including having the portfolio use its ownership in several grocery chains to support striking members of the grocery union run by… Sean Harrigan.  Professor Bainbridge has a couple of good roundups here and here.

If we are change how social security funds are invested, let individuals make their own investment choices.