Tuesday Open Thread [12.22.2015]
NATIONAL—Quinnipiac: Clinton 61, Sanders 30, O’Malley 2
NATIONAL—Emerson College: Trump 36, Cruz 21, Rubio 13, Carson 7, Bush 6, Christie 6, Fiorina 5.
NATIONAL—Quinnipiac: Trump 28, Cruz 24, Rubio 12, Carson 10, Bush 4, Christie 6, Paul 2, Fiorina 2, Kasich 1, Huckabee 1, Santorum 1
SOUTH CAROLINA—AIF: Cruz 27, Trump 27, Rubio 12, Carson 11, Bush 7.
FLORIDA—AIF: Trump 29, Cruz 18, Rubio 17, Bush 10.
NEW HAMPSHIRE—AIF: Trump 24, Cruz 16, Rubio 14, Christie 13, Bush 9.
NATIONAL—Quinnipiac: Clinton 47, Trump 40 | Clinton 44, Cruz 44 | Clinton 44, Rubio 43 | Sanders 51, Trump 38 | Cruz 44, Sanders 43 | Rubio 45, Sanders 42 |
NATIONAL—PPP: Clinton 46, Trump 43 | Clinton 45, Cruz 43 | Rubio 44, Clinton 43 | Clinton 45, Carson 45 | Clinton 44, Bush 39 | Trump 43, Sanders 41 | Cruz 42, Sanders 41 | Rubio 42, Sanders 39 | Sanders 41, Carson 41 | Bush 42, Sanders 41
Jeet Heer says Hillary got the debate of her dreams last Saturday:
If Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley could control the circumstances and terms of Saturday’s debate, the third of the Democratic primary, it would have been a very different evening. It’s easy to imagine an ideal Sanders debate: a focus on how inequality is destroying the middle class and why Sanders, unlike Clinton, is willing to stand-up to corporate plutocrats and Wall Street. Martin O’Malley’s perfect debate would be one where his expertise in progressive wonkery could shine, and he would emerge as a sleek, plausible alternative. But world events, the unfolding strangeness of the Republican field, and the sensation-loving mindset of the media all conspired to create a debate that allowed Hillary Clinton to dominate, highlighting the areas where she has the most experience and is most comfortable discussing. Unfortunately for both of Clinton’s rivals, the actual debate felt almost scripted to allow her to present her most persuasive self, the confident and experienced master of a broadly supported centrist foreign policy.
[…] One striking fact about the argument between Sanders and Clinton was that both candidates were much more substantial and informed than the discussions of the same issues in recent Republican debates which have amounted to little more than competitive chest-thumping. The Republicans have made it clear that they plan to use national security and fears of terrorism to win back the White House next November. Perhaps one other advantage of tonight’s debate for Hillary Clinton is that it showed that she’s well armed for that fight.
Brian Beutler says Democrats understand Trump better than Republicans do, and not because he is a Democrat or a Clinton plant.
It’s intellectually shallow to pretend Donald Trump is vastly more reactionary than other candidates in the Republican primary. Trump lurks at the right-most edge of the field on the general question of how aggressively we should close American society, but only by an increment. Where most GOP candidates want to prohibit Muslim refugee settlement in the U.S., Trump wants to prohibit Muslim immigration more broadly. Where other candidates want to step up deportation of unauthorized immigrants quite a lot, Trump wants to step it up even more. Where Ted Cruz wants to carpet-bomb Iraq and Syria and “make the sand glow” there, Trump wants to target the families of jihadi fighters with violence. On other issues, like war-making and tax policy, Trump isn’t even the most right-wing candidate in the field.
It’s thus disingenuous for the media, and certain Republican officials—anyone, really—to treat Trump as an anomaly rather than a reflection of the largest segment of the Republican base. But when Democratic candidates do it, it’s also extremely clever. It’s a testament both to the fact that Trump stands a shockingly good chance of winning the GOP nomination, and that Democrats are more clear-eyed about the state of the Republican party than the Republican establishment is.
Republicans and the media are surprised. Democrats are not, because it turns out that the Republican Party is what we thought it was: racist, bigoted and fascist. We liberals were proven right. You want to prove us wrong? Give Trump not a single Republican vote in any election anywhere.
Nate Cohn on how Donald Trump could win the nomination, but he probably won’t.
Mr. Trump has emerged as a true factional candidate — much more like Howard Dean or Pat Buchanan than Herman Cain, or other candidates who have surged to the top of the polls only to collapse.
But it’s still too soon to say Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the nomination. He has a high floor but a low ceiling, and although he has weathered many controversies, the toughest days are yet to come.
The polls already show initial signs of those challenges, like Ted Cruz’s lead in Iowa; the number of Republicans who say they would not support him; his weakness in polls of verified voters; and his smaller or nonexistent leads in one-on-one matchups against likely rivals.
His chances of winning — which are real, even if not good — depend much more on the weaknesses of his opponents than his own strengths. The good news for Mr. Trump is that the opposition is flawed enough to entertain such an outcome.
Here is a pro-tip for neophytes in the audience — Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee. If a few major labor unions had joined the Communications Workers in risking the Wrath of Clinton by endorsing Sanders, I think he would qualify as a long-shot but as things stand he is a no-shot. That means Clinton’s goals in these debates are pretty simple: she needs to avoid gaffes, and she wants to evade without committing herself to anything that will be too problematic in a general election.
She pulled it off. When baited by David Muir and Bernie Sanders about whether corporate America “loves” her, Clinton stood up for her progressive record while also standing up for the notion that progressive economic policy would be win-win, including for business. It was a passable primary campaign answer, but most of all she delivered an answer that set her up for a general election rather than getting sucked into a leftier-than-thou bidding war with Sanders.
More than that, she once again reminded the world that debating is a format in which she excels. Clinton is not the greatest orator in contemporary politics, but she is among the wonkiest of major politicians — certainly the wonkiest one on the stage — and she’s an extremely effective public speaker for a wonk. Back and forth exchanges over things like the difference between debt-free college and tuition-free college highlighted her virtues as a politician far better than any setpiece speech or 30-second ad would.
Jeff Greenfield wonders whether Donald Trump could break the Republican Party:
“The most striking examples of party fissure in American politics have come when a party breaks with a long pattern of accommodating different factions, and moves decisively toward one side. It has happened with the Democrats twice, both over civil rights… In 1948, the party’s embrace of a stronger civil rights plank led Southern delegations to walk out of the convention… Twenty years later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace led a similar anti-civil rights third party movement that won five Southern states.”
“In two other cases, a dramatic shift in intra-party power led to significant defections on the losing side. In 1964, when Republican conservatives succeeded in nominating a divisive champion of their cause in Barry Goldwater, liberal Republicans (there were such things back then) like New York Gov. Rockefeller, Michigan Gov. (George) Romney, and others refused to endorse the nominee… Eight years later, when a deeply divided Democratic Party nominated anti-war hero George McGovern, George Meany led the AFL-CIO to a position of neutrality between McGovern and Nixon—the first time labor had refused to back a Democrat for President.”
“Would a Trump nomination be another example of such a power shift? Yes, although not a shift in an ideological sense. It would represent a more radical kind of shift, with power moving from party officials and office-holders to deeply alienated voters and to their media tribunes.”
The New York Times says Bernie Sanders struggles to appear “presidential:” “Most candidates evolve: Barack Obama and George W. Bush became better at communicating and campaigning during their first presidential races, and their agendas developed overarching themes. Mr. Sanders, by contrast, was repeating old talking points on Saturday night — like breaking up big banks and increasing taxes on the rich — without convincingly saying how he would achieve those goals or presenting them in powerful new language. As the debate demonstrated, he has yet to grow from a movement messiah into a national candidate whom many people can imagine as president.”
All in all, the debate did nothing to change the dynamics of the Democratic contest, and much of what was said will soon be forgotten. There will be another debate in January, and then we will find out if Bernie Sanders really is counting on his field organization and an exceed-the-expectations strategy instead of any game-change-y debate moments to close the gap with Clinton. As for HRC, she’s already regained the “inevitability” factor she came into the Invisible Primary carrying. Even if Sanders somehow wins Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton still has a far more plausible path to the nomination, thanks to her standing in the many states that are not as honkified and activist-dominated as the first two. But the whole world will still be watching her for a stumble. It did not happen at St. Anselm’s College.
Republican foreign policy wouldn’t just needlessly kill untold numbers through needless military aggressions—it would also generate a massive increase in terrorism and instability just as George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq did. Republican tax policy wouldn’t just benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class—it would also bust the budget, create massive deficits and hurt the demand-side consumer economy. Republican climate policy wouldn’t just benefit fossil fuel companies and increase pollution—it would also put the entire planet at risk of eventual civilization and species collapse.
Republican candidates are catering to a furious and fearful population of resentful paranoiacs. Their policy platforms are predictably wildly irresponsible.
The Democratic Party may still have a way to go in becoming as progressive as it needs to be. But there’s no question that only one of America’s two parties can be counted on to do the basic job of running the government.
The White House is promising President Obama will deliver a “non-traditional” State of the Union address next month, “eschewing the standard litany of policy proposals for a broader discussion on the challenges facing the country.”
“Rather than fade into the lame duck phase of his presidency, the White House said Obama is eager to use 2016 to take steps that drive the debate in the 2016 race. He also expects to be active on the campaign trail, stumping for the Democratic presidential nominee and other party candidates.”
First Read: “This won’t be a typical SOTU, so we’re told. It will likely be aspirational that some political opponents will likely view as an attempt to throw down the gauntlet on a progressive agenda. And it will come just three weeks before Iowa.”
With President Obama giving his year end news conference today, it’s clear he’s no lame duck president. His accomplishments in 2015 are striking: The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, an Iran nuclear agreement, normalized relations with Cuba and a worldwide climate change pact. He also had two huge victories at the Supreme Court on health care reform and same-sex marriage. […] Obama’s ability to continually make progress on his agenda when he’s supposed to be a lame duck is a potential wildcard for the presidential race. The news that Obama’s State of the Union address will be “non-traditional” is also intriguing. I suspect he’ll give the kind of speech you would hear at a political convention: aspirational and entirely focused on the future. Obama is very good at these types of speeches and he’ll effectively set the stage for the ultimate Democratic nominee.
The fact that Obama’s address comes on January 12, three weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses, is also interesting timing. NBC News reports that the White House “has opened the possibility of an endorsement” of a candidate. That will almost certainly be Hillary Clinton. It’s a recognition that just as Clinton’s ambitions are tied to Obama’s success, the same is true of Clinton winning and Obama’s legacy. The two former rivals have never has their interests more closely aligned.
It’s quite possible Obama could endorse Clinton before the Iowa caucuses. An early endorsement would allow the Democratic party to focus on the general election for ten full months. Clinton has done her part by building a huge lead in the polls. Obama could seal the deal — and perhaps his own legacy — with an endorsement in January.
That would all be spectacular.
The New York Times wonders if Trump can turn out his vote: “Translating a personality-driven campaign to the voting booth is no easy feat, especially for a candidate who has never run before. But here in the state with the first nominating contest, about six weeks away, Mr. Trump has put off the nuts and bolts of organizing. A loss in Iowa for Mr. Trump, where he has devoted the most resources of his campaign, could imperil his leads in the next two nominating states, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where his get-out-the-vote organizations are even less robust.”
“A successful ground game is crucial in Iowa because of the state’s complicated method of caucus voting, but the Trump campaign has fallen behind some of its own benchmarks.”
Trump really doesn’t have that much of a campaign organization, let alone a voter outreach or Get Out Vote operation. Indeed, I wonder if we are heading for the upsets of upsets, where a candidate assumes polls actually mean real votes (and Trump talks that way) and thus his campaign just assume the voters will show up for him, while at the same time his voters see him crushing it at the polls and assume they don’t have to show up. It happens all the time. Hence, get out the vote operations within campaigns and canvassing. Is anyone canvassing for Donald in Iowa? I kinda doubt it.
I’m not convinced he really wants to win and this isn’t just some crazy game to him
That’s possible, and it may have started like that.
However, now he is in a crazy bubble of unalloyed positive reinforcement. He is surrounded by people who will keep getting paychecks as long as they continue to convince him that he can win this thing.
That could be a problem lol
I’m trying to imagine what it will look like if Trump totally tanks going in to Iowa.
Common “wisdom” holds that Sanders Supporters are wide-eyed millennials who aren’t registered to vote and will whine over their bongos and bongs when they get turned away at the booth, or forget to vote because the new Dirty Heads album came out, and once the primaries start, Leader for Life, Clinton will coast to her coronation. (that about right, DD?)
But what about the chowderheads who support Trump? What if he has a really low voter turn-out? Does he take is as a personal insult and start attacking the electorate? “yous people lied to me!” “there was a conspiracy!” Does he go full melt-down? a guy can dream.
I’m sure we’d hear something like “I’m confident the people of New Hampshire are a lot smarter than the folks in Iowa. Look at the polls. They love me!”
In the spirit of the daily open thread, I read this today & found it provocative.
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/22/yes-virginia-there-is-a-left-wing-reform-movement/
Does anyone have any thoughts about it? I’m interested.
Apologies if this has already been linked here (it’s from early December) but this Sean Wilentz piece in Rolling Stone on what the election of 2016 actually means should be required reading for everyone.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-2016-election-will-be-one-of-the-most-pivotal-moments-of-our-time-20151203?page=10
Dorian, I read the article and have mixed feelings. I think he’s right and wrong. Yes, the pendulum has swung and some complaints/outrages are silly and need to stop, but I also got a sense that he’s saying, “You’re doing it wrong because my priorities should be your priorities” or “This behavior makes me uncomfortable so could you guys change your ways?”
Every time we (general “we”) get into these discussions there’s always comments about the (real?) economy and these points always seem to come from white men. Maybe it’s a high tide lifts all boats sort of thing? I don’t think there’s a nastiness there, more of a not understanding that the economy is different for different people.
What I mean by that is issues like reproductive rights are directly linked to the economy. Having a (another) baby is a big economic expenditure. Racism and sexism impacts black and brown people’s economy. Education is ultimately about future economic earnings. It’s all connected.
Are there outrages that go too far? Sure, but that standard applies to everything. We seem to be able to separate the valid from the over-the-top from other things, so why not these things? What is it about social issues (that do, in fact, impact the individual’s economy) that’s so different? Why do we spend so much energy on the absurd (cafeteria food? Halloween costumes) and not the important? It almost seems deliberate – like focusing on the absurd allows us to discount everything else. It reminds me how people counter “black lives matter” with “all lives matter” and how “#YesAllWomen” was linked with “#NotAllMen” – both these examples were employed to dilute the point.
When reading the article (and I have to do so from memory since the page won’t load for me this morning) he cites issues like gay marriage. My first thought was that if the homosexual community had to wait for people outside their community to get on board they wouldn’t have achieved their goals. Hyper-focus of a group is necessary, especially when those outside the group don’t prioritize their concerns, or say your issue isn’t as important as my issue so can you guys please wait.
I also think he focuses on the systemic and discounts individual racism, sexism, etc.. Surely we can address both? And I would argue that the rhetoric he bemoans will lead to the systemic changes he wants.
His term, Realist Left Movement sorta baffles me. Realist compared to Unrealistic? That’s hardly building the bridges he claims to want.
His claim that people demand people “just listen”, no matter how absurd it is, is itself, absurd. I know no one who demands this on a factual level. On their own personal experiences, yes – and that’s valid and subjective.
He’s very concerned with being shamed, cruelty and character assassination and yet doesn’t seem to worry about those things being applied to others. Look, I get his complaints, I just find his scope of the problem very limited and very personal. He’s not as above the fray as he thinks.
What’s wrong with arguing that some priorities are more important than others? Seems like that is an important part of intellectual discourse, no? This goes beyond the Oberlin thing. DeBoer gave various examples.
I didn’t think deBoer was saying he was uncomfortable with any of this campus activism. In fact he himself is an academic and university activist. He said the current focus is ultimately unhelpful in the grand scheme. It’s become disconnected politically. It’s driven by 19 year-old undergrads and university committees rather than say labor unions. He says important arguments won’t be won doing it this way. You think he’s wrong and I think he’s right.
He didn’t discount an individual’s freedom to be offended. He said that fighting those “micro” battles does very little broader good.
So, to answer a question you’ve asked a few different times, yes, you’re doing it wrong and he explained why.
Um… okay. So much for building bridges.
I’m fine with doing both things – systemic and individual – like I said above. And I’m not sure why the ridiculous college student antics get so much attention, other than deflection from more serious issues these kids are addressing.
And… if we wait for the over thirty crowd to mobilize we’ll be waiting forever. Perhaps us older folks could help the younger ones organize?
This conversation has me going back to the lyrics of David Bowie’s song Changes.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
If “these children” are immune to my consultations why would you think “building bridges” is possible or helpful? How can we help them organize in this case? We are the teachers and they are the students. They seem to have it the wrong way round.
Also, and importantly, I think perhaps you should read the final line in those lyrics and consider more carefully what it may mean.
The problem is getting both sides on the same page. Which really means writing a brand new page.
@DG in response to the Bowie quotes.
We should give the younger generation credit, because they know more than we think they know. They could teach us a few things!
Sometimes it’s hard to notice, but we’re winning:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-moving-left/419112/
I don’t question their motives generally. I think their collective hearts are in the proper place for the most part (in whatever way a collective heart can be adjudged in this way).
I am giving them credit actually. I’m giving them the respect of taking their ideas seriously and challenging those ideas directly. I can’t think of any greater respect than that. I’m considering what arguments are being made, thinking about them (the arguments) in a larger context, and calling them out as counterproductive, egotistical* nonsense as needed.
—
*For an apt and very moving metaphor on the egocentric nature of this, see the final line of the Bowie lyrics.
It seems to me that what Fredrik is looking for is a young army to implement his priorities because the group that should be standing up for the priorities he lists aren’t standing up.
Young people are idealistic – we become cynical with age! We learn (hopefully) through our mistakes (personally, professionally, activism, etc.). The kids arguing against cafeteria food, etc. are simply looking around their environment and wanting to make change due to a larger movement. Their heart is the right place, but predominately wealthy, non-diverse universities will work with what they got.
And the last part of Bowie’s lyrics can be interpreted several ways.
We can’t change the past.
Pardon the length of this reply, but once I began reading Dr. deBoer it was hard to stop.
My first thought on reading the deBoer piece is that he reminded me of all those libertarians I met in graduate school who had just discovered “the common man” and “Joe six-pack” were the future of successful libertarian political change rather than the Frederick Hayeks or Milton Friedmans of the ivory tower. They’d go to meetings and hold forth on the necessity of mobilizing these guys with “plain talk” about their rights and the evils of social welfare. Then they’d go back to their dorm rooms after the meetings and play drinking games and call up Mommy and Daddy to fund their next trip to Cancun.
Enter Frederick deBoer with his newly minted PhD in Rhetoric and Composition (May 2015) in his first temprorary academic appointment telling us about the new reform movement that will save the Left–not so much artsy-fartsy intellectual wrangling at the universities but get out there with the guys in flannel shirts in the labor unions, and oh yeah fuck all those elitist students with their perceived micro-aggressions. I know how we can win. We gotta get pragmatic and stop talking about language and start some real economic activism. I’ll spare you quotations from his think piece.
I’m much more interested in how this guy managed a PhD at Purdue with a dissertation that pretty much only examined the impact of a single standardized test being administered to undergraduates at Purdue and its impact on writing programs at Purdue, from which he reached the following generalized conclusion:
I also documented the history of the higher education assessment movement in American educational policy, tracing the economic and political origins of recent efforts to implement more evidence-based, interoperable assessment of learning within the American university system. I found that writing programs are uniquely vulnerable to this movement, as our resistance to traditional empirical methods leaves us unable to influence these policy developments. I argue that we can introduce more empirical scholarship without sacrificing our theoretical, pedagogical, or political ideals.
If this sounds like abstract academic hair-splitting of the finest variety, that’s because it is. And there’s a lot more of it on his research page.
What Dr. deBoer has done is manage to hit the range for writing trendy “tea party of the Left” short pieces for the New York Times, Harpers, New Republic, almost all of which have been published in the equivalent of “Delaware Voice” columns as op-eds not articles, as well as a number of blog posts.
This is not to say that his arguments should be ignored, but to make the point that the man who writes this:
[I’m] tired of the prioritization of the symbolic over the substantive; of the ever-more-obscure left-wing vocabulary; of the near-total silence on class issues; of the abandonment of labor organizing as a principal method of political action; of the insistence that people who aren’t already convinced must educate themselves, when convincing others is and has always been the basic requirement of political action; of the confusion of pop culture ephemera with meaningful political victory; of the celebrity worship; of the clumsy Manicheanism that divides the world into all good and all bad; of the use of cruelty, shaming, and character assassination; of the insistence that people within a political movement should “just listen” when someone makes a claim, no matter how outlandish, misguided, unfair, or wrong; of the expectation that everyone should know how to speak and act in perfect congruence with obscure and elitist conceptions of righteous behavior … [and that’s only part of the sentence …]
Is also the guy who writes this:
My research reflects the hybridity that I have always pursued as an academic. I believe in the practical, theoretical, and empirical value that can be derived from working within the intersection(s) of rhetoric and composition, literacy education, and applied linguistics. Rhetoric and composition gives us the traditional values of the humanities, such as the value of narrative and skepticism towards universalizing and certain knowledge claims, as well as a focus on tailoring our communicative acts towards particular audiences and purposes. Literacy education research allows us to better educate students from across the age range, and to influence policy decisions in a way that protects those students and traditional values of liberal education and humanism. Applied linguistics provides techniques and technologies that help us to investigate language use in large samples, helping direct our teaching and our administrative policies in a way that benefits students and educators alike.
If you missed the congruence, all he has “discovered” [“re-packaged” would be a better word] is George Lakoff’s concept of “framing,” dressed up in a lot of academic doublespeak. The irony of a guy condemning the postmodernist approaches of current Left politics who earned his PhD and his making his living by engaging in exactly those approaches is quite delicious.
This is a very bizarre comment, Professor Newton, and not because of its length. Is it more productive and more appropriate in this space to reevaluate deBoer’s Doctoral dissertation or discuss the argument he made in the linked essay? So you don’t like the writing style and the ideas remind you of the so-called Libertarians student you met in Graduate school. I fail to see how 98% of what you wrote isn’t a non sequitur.
You did say that the argument shouldn’t be ignored and that the post is basically a trendy think piece. Other than those direct criticisms you gave us what I can only guess is some is a manifestation of some strange repressed feelings you have that stem from your work in the academe. Why else spend so much time with attacks on deBoer’s scholarship and Purdue’s perceived lack of doctoral review rigor?
So, to sum up, you think deBoer’s writing is pretentious and overwrought and you hold some odd grievance against Purdue specifically and/or the academe generally. Got it. Look, I’m all about personal grievance and grudges. Love ’em. It just seems like an odd place to air it.
Any thoughts about the focus of campus “activists” on policing language and food and culture and social media and ensuring safe spaces and protecting people feelings rather than like the political tasks closer at hand? You know, the premise of the thing? Like the importance of championing progressive economic ideas rather than attempting to eliminate all manner of perceived cultural and gender insult?
I actually have a theory on this. Intelligent, liberal minded adults with children at university or who work in the academe (or both) get sucked into these little kids games and have trouble applying the proper amount of criticism. I have no idea why this is and anything would be speculation, but I see it regularly.
I’ll say this. I actually take a lot of the point you made about deBoer’s writing and his scholarship, but I think it’s a huge delectation for the matter at hand. So he came up in the milieu of postmodernism and now may be thinking all that has go too far. So? Is there something wrong with that necessarily? Aren’t smart people suppose to continually question where their heads are?
My apologies for the typos/syntax errors. I was ripping through this and noticed them after they posted.
Sentence 2 paragraph 2 should read: “Other than those direct criticisms you gave us what I can only guess is some manifestation of some strange repressed feelings you have that stem from your work in the academe.”
Sentence 2 final paragraph should read: “I actually take a lot of the point you made about deBoer’s writing and his scholarship, but I think it’s a huge deflection from the matter at hand.”
Aren’t smart people suppose to continually question where their heads are?
Of course they are. But deBoer doesn’t. I read all but two of his items in “popular” outlets (I could not find good links for them), and his writing is full of this same insider-baseball post-modernist bullshit that he decries. The difference is that he is using the rhetoric (which is incredibly inaccessible to most readers) in service of what appears to be a “left reform” orientation, but really isn’t. It’s really, if you boil it right down, a fairly conservative approach. His article of Rachel Dozeal is instructive there. He blames academia and leftist activists for her ease in “passing”:
She might not have attempted such a deception if not for another aspect of academic and activist culture: the notion that race does not equate to skin color, complexion or other physiological markers. I have attended many academic conferences where speakers have passionately argued against the notion of someone “looking black,” that you can ever tell by looking at someone what their racial identity might be.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0614-deboer-rachel-dolezal-20150614-story.html
Although he then disingenuously follows up with I have no opinion on this issue; it’s not my question to answer. He does have an opinion and it undergirds his entire article: there are skin color, complexion or other physiological markers that do, for deBoer, equate to race. His usage of race is so far removed from what biologists tell us about ethnicity and speciation as to be resurrected items from the late 1950s. And this is the guy you want presenting ideas to change political activism?
deBoer has fed your own perceptions that Intelligent, liberal minded adults with children at university or who work in the academe (or both) get sucked into these little kids games and have trouble applying the proper amount of criticism. I’m not sure where you see this, but it is not the working reality of faculty today at anything other than our most elite flagship universities where job security and salaries are not an issue. The rest of us in higher education are dealing with the complete evisceration of the liberal arts/humanities core of a college education; the outsourcing of as many teaching jobs as possible to underpaid (and lacking benefits) contingent faculty; endless reams of “assessment instruments”; and the “bleeding” of all other academic programs to feed a relentless corporate/government-driven emphasis on STEM technical education.
deBoer is bizarre exactly because he is trying to maintain his cred within the world you disdain while at the same time pillorying it by pretending to accept at face value the right’s characterization of nearly all university professors as effete, ineffective liberal postmodernist deconstruction theorists. This is crap. The corporate elite, not the university elite, has been in charge of “the Left” for several decades now.
What is disappointing here is that deBoer keeps throwing his paint against a wall for the purpose of using ultra-left liberal jargon (the man cannot write a simple sentence) in order to promote nothing more novel than the Bill Clinton/Al Gore “New Democrats” movement of the early 1990s. Maybe the Democrats and the Left needs to get back to that to win–it’s possible.
But if the Left in any incarnation is down to dishonest pseudo-intellectuals like deBoer then don’t hold your breath waiting. Ultimately, he’s to the right of Hillary Clinton, which is a strange place to be looking for liberal leadership.
Oh, and as for this: Other than those direct criticisms you gave us what I can only guess is some manifestation of some strange repressed feelings you have that stem from your work in the academe …
Don’t give up your day job for psychoanalysis. Among other things, I’ve actually been working in labor movement politics for nearly two decades now. What I’m sick of, quite frankly, is the “new wave” hyperbolic crap that he’s throwing out and you’re accepting as something other than early-academic career self-promotion.
I’m not accepting it. I’m trying to discuss it. I do have a strong opinion but it isn’t a fixed opinion.
You seem fixated on evaluating the techniques and the writing and theoretical stuff (postmodern, new wave, etc.). Furthermore you claim that this is just a young academic self-promoting. Even if I were to concede on every single of these points you still haven’t mentioned the actual criticism. I’ll state it, plainly, again and let’s take deBoer out of it:
Campus activism seems to be overly focused, wrongly in my view, with identity and cultural issues, on avoiding any perceived ethnic, cultural or gender insult, and the strict policing of language. Any misstep is punishable by shaming, protest and the potential sack. I say this is unhelpful, counterproductive and ultimately a waste of time. You?
I never questioned your work and participation in the labor movement. I wonder why people making this argument (like yours truly) get so much resistance. I also pointed out that the pushback I get is almost entirely from university students, the parents of university students or people who work in the academe. I suppose this is coincidence.
These college kids are doing way more than their elders. Are they doing it right? Maybe, maybe not – but at least they are doing something. These college activists are learning and I expect they’ll learn and grow as they move through the process. I’m not sure what calling them out accomplishes. Other than them tuning out.
To me a discussion that comes down to “you’re doing it wrong and you need to do what I think is important” isn’t really productive. If the problem is these kids focusing on the “wrong” things and that they “should” focus on other things then I don’t see deBoer as helping to achieve that end. In fact, he’s policing language, too. If his end game is really about change (and I don’t think it is) then he’s doing it wrong. 🙂
Social issues tend to matter to those most impacted by them.
Still fixated on the man rather than the message. (Also, redirecting scarce resources where they are most needed is very productive.)
My wish for university campuses in 2016.
Rather than protesting the cultural significance of dining hall food…
and rather than bringing a Title IX case against Laura Kipnis for writing an essay in a scholarly journal…
and rather than shaming a Yale instructor into resignation over a comment about potential Halloween costumes…
and rather that boycotting commencement speakers…
and rather than turning incorrect pronoun usage into an unspeakable insult
…the activists organize for Immigration reform or for the $15/hour minimum wage.
A man can dream.
Happy Christmas and best wishes for the year ahead.
I remaining, sincerely,
Dorian Gray
Dorian
You listed five examples of ridiculous student protests. There are over 6,000 colleges and universities in the US. In many of them the students do protest and organize for the minimum wage, for voting rights, against police brutality, for dealing with climate change, and even for gun control among hundreds of other causes.
Those don’t make headlines, I guess, so you–like many others–have been duped into mistaking the froth for the liquid.
But the fact is that hundreds of thousands of college students across the country are becoming involved in those activities … usually inspired by the same faculty you fairly consistently deride. People start where they are. At my university (a Tier 4 university in which the kind of academe fru-fru you so disdain is conspicuous by its absence), students organize food drives (all year round), do volunteer work in high-poverty schools/neighborhoods, and actually organized several on-campus rallies against police killings of young African-American men. They do internships with state and federal legislators to learn how the system works. They go stumping door to door handing out literature for General Assembly candidates. Most of them do this while working 1-2 jobs to avoid high student loan debt and trying to help their families out financially.
I’m sure you’d be welcomed if you’d actually like to become involved in the stuff you don’t think is going on.
What I don’t get is why–since you portray yourself as well-placed to observe “academe” close up, you don’t see any of that. I believe that’s called the “representational fallacy.”
Have a wonderful Christmas.
I was too young to be at college at the time, but I seem to recall that the radicals of the ’60s were doing it wrong, too.
As Prof. Newton’s professional study of history has probably taught him, the one constant in human nature across the millenia is that, no matter what, most of us most of the time are almost certainly doing it wrong.
We shall overcome. Representational fallacy, one of them there liberal catch phrases lol. Nah ha
What happens when we run out of all this oil?