AEI has a new proposal to silence academic associations
Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?
The Tocquevillian view that civil society, including it’s associations, are essential bulwarks to protect democracy is such well-worn truism as to be incontestable.
Or so you would have thought.
But we live in an age where serious people, serious advocates of free speech mind you, are very anxious to shut down such speech they disagree with. They are not just happy to lobby government to use its power to shut down such speech, but are entirely indifferent to grotesque hypocrisies as they use their own speech rights to silence others.
Trump and his supporters are already threatening civil society with investigations, lawsuits and intimidation. In the aftermath of student protests, leaders of higher education are increasingly retreating to a position of “institutional neutrality.” Studied indifference to the issues of the day makes a great deal of sense for those seeking to manage organizational reputation and avoid blame, but it is a less than inspiring vision as higher education as a set of institutions willing to speak truth to power.
The right wing wants to go further, and is now targeting professional academic associations from making public statements. The American Enterprise Institute is leading the charge. A recent report presents it as a scandalous that many academic associations have made some sort of statements about race, affirmative action, climate change, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, or immigration. To be more precise, AEI views such actions as problematic because “these statements almost uniformly reflect progressive orthodoxy” and it calls on government to not allow public funds to allow people to join professional associations.
This idea might seem outlandish, but it was featured in some of the standard right wing locations, such as The College Fix, The Washington Examiner, and The Wall Street Journal. And we are in a moment when Republican officials are looking for ideas to undermine academic freedom. So, if you are an academic, or just a citizen uncomfortable with the idea of silencing some very specific associations because of the content of their speech, you should be worried about this.
I want to address this attack on professional associations on three levels. First, the basic logic that AEI is proposing is simply false. Second, it is not based on any true defensible principle beyond “free speech for me, but not for thee.” It is a call for government to target speech by associations that AEI disagrees with. And third, it is massively hypocritical. AEI, and other organizations trying to silence professional associations are doing precisely what they say should be forbidden: taking taxpayer dollars to engage in issue advocacy.
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First, academic associations have professional expertise on certain topics. And because those associations are centered on scholarly values, that expertise is usually anchored in legitimate scientific values. You can find exceptions, of course, but when the American Political Science Association talks about democracy, or when environmental associations weigh in on climate change issues, you should probably listen to them. On their domains of expertise, they are more likely to be credible relative to AEI or other associations that present themselves as engaging in research, but whose activities are heavily tilted by an ideological lens.
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Second, academic associations are representative organizations. They are typically run by elected officers who seek to represent the views and interests of their membership. The structures of our institutions is inherently more democratic than, say, the structure of the AEI or other think tanks, which are necessarily more responsive to donors and partisans. We hear from individual members who express concerns on certain issues. It is incredibly rare for an association to engage in a public statement without prior pressure from their membership, or at least without the knowledge that the vast majority of their members share the expressed views. Again, this is perfectly Tocquevillian.
In some cases, the concerns members raise are not about abstract political values but about how public policies directly affect them. For example, members of an association might raise a concern about hosting events in states they can be prosecuted for going to the bathroom, or where they cannot count on reliable health care if their pregnancy runs into trouble. Academic associations are increasingly global, and US immigration policies can directly affect their ability to participate in their profession. For example, AEI singled out the American Statistical Association for raising concerns about President Trump’s travel bans from majority Muslim countries. Is this unreasonable? Not really if you consider that “one out of nine ASA members resides outside the U.S.” This is a straightforward case where associations are drawing attention to how a policy decision directly and negatively affects its membership. After all, what is the point of being a member of a professional association that refuses to represent you?
Don Moynihan with a banger of a piece on academic freedom.
AEI has a new proposal to silence academic associations
