Politics – Page 54 – Common Infirmities

Cornpone opinions in academia

I was commenting recently on the attempt by University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Chancellor Phyllis Wise to explain to all of us addleheaded profs that her ability (and that of US employers more generally) to fire people for expressing their opinions really has nothing at all to do with freedom of speech or academic freedom:

People are mixing up this individual personnel issue with the whole question of freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Political scientist Corey Robin has taken up the same quote, and explained how pervasive it is, and how fundamental it is to the machinery of repression in the US. It seems like one of those dogmas that is patently absurd to the uninitiated, but for those inside the machine (and by “the machine”, I mean simply mainstream American thinking about politics) it is self-evident.

Robin has nothing on Mark Twain, who wrote more than a century ago:

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

He explained at greater length in his great essay “Corn-pone Opinions”, telling of a young slave whom he knew in his boyhood, who told him

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.”

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions — at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.

Mixing up the issues

The Salaita fiasco rumbles along. I have commented before on the case, where the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign took advantage of ambiguities in its hiring process to try to destroy the career of a tenured professor of American Indian Studies, whom they pretended to want to hire, and then fired after he had resigned his old job, but before his new contract had formally started. (Admittedly, by presenting it in these terms I’m pretending that it is not just a giant cock-up. This is what it looks like if you try to pretend that the people acting for the university have any idea what they’re doing. Depending on your perspective, I’m being either generous or unfair.) The current state of play is well summarised here. This was punishment for anti-Israel tweets that had attracted unpleasant attention of some of the university’s major donors.

Anyway, having made her university a place where senior academics need to consult with expert legal counsel before accepting a job offer — if they even want to challenge an international boycott and join an academic pariah — UIUC Chancellor Phyllis Wise (who insists, according to the Chicago Tribune, simultaneously that “she wished she had “been more consultative” before rescinding Salaita’s job offer, and said it could have led her to a different decision” and that “there was “no possibility” that he would work at the U. of I.”) has told the Chronicle of Higher Education that

“People are mixing up this individual personnel issue with the whole question of freedom of speech and academic freedom,” she said in an interview. “I stand by the fact that this institution and all of higher education stands on the bedrock of the importance of academic freedom and freedom of speech, and that we should be and are the place where we deal with the most contentious and difficult and complicated issues that face the world, and that we have to provide the platform where discussions that are difficult and contentious and uncomfortable and unimaginable happen.”

That’s the kind of careful thinking on challenging questions that we look to academic leadership for! Some confused people are mixing up the issues. UIUC stands foursquare behind the principles of academic freedom, and the open discussion of “difficult and contentious and uncomfortable” issues, while confronting the completely unrelated practical real-world challenges of firing a professor for openly making contentious and uncomfortable statements in a public forum.

Or, as the irrepressible Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith since before the Flood, more succinctly put it,

Donors give money and they expect certain things. There’s nothing wrong with them voicing their opinion.

Scotland, England, and Europe

I have no clear opinion about the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence — on the one hand, as a citizen of another former English colony, I understand the emotional appeal of revolution. On the other hand, as a current resident of England I fear the ensuing chaos, and rationally I really don’t think the negative consequences will necessarily — or even primarily — be felt south of the border. Furthermore, a UK without Scotland will be more conservative (and Conservative) and more xenophobic and anti-Europe.

This last point does suggest, though, a convenient resolution to one of the sticking points of Scottish independence — membership of the EU. The current UK government claims that an independent Scotland would have to negotiate membership like any other new applicant, and so would certainly lose the opt-out from the Euro, and other benefits, if secession-fearing members like Spain don’t block Scottish membership altogether; the Scottish nationalists say they would be negotiating a change of terms from inside the EU. But the Conservatives — who would doubtless attain a majority in a Scotland-free Parliament — have promised a referendum on withdrawal from the EU in the near future. Perhaps these could be coupled, and Scotland could simply inherit the UK seat in the EU. It would save everyone a lot of strife.

But saying that, it makes me wonder about the outcome of the EU referendum. I’d always assumed that Scottish independence would guarantee the UK’s exit from the EU. But would politicians in London really be willing to see their counterparts in Edinburgh and Dublin making European policy, and themselves excluded? It seems hard to imagine.

David Cameron’s other operation

Headline in the Guardian:

David Cameron: I will not resign if Scotland votes for independence

It reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about hapless gangsters, the Piranha brothers:

they began to operate what they called ‘The Operation’. They would select a victim and then threaten to beat him up if he paid the so-called protection money. Four months later they started another operation which the called ‘The Other Operation’. In this racket they selected another victim and threatened not to beat him up if he didn’t pay them. One month later they hit upon ‘The Other Other Operation’. In this the victim was threatened that if he didn’t pay them, they would beat him up. This for the Piranha brothers was the turning point.

If Cameron really wants to preserve the union, he needs to switch to the other other operation, promising that he will resign if Scotland votes to stay in the UK.

Logical crisis in Parliament

One of my favourite logical paradoxes (What, doesn’t everyone have a favourite logical paradox?) is the Unexpected Hanging. I first read about it from Martin Gardner, but you can read a summary here. A recent article in the Oxford Times, about the career plans of a local MP, raised a corresponding problem in the political realm:

Conservative Tony Baldry MP has announced he will stand down at the next General Election.

In a statement Sir Tony said: “One of the consequences of now having five year fixed term Parliaments is that if I succeed in being re-elected at the forthcoming general election, given my age, most people will assume that Parliament will be my last.

“I think this creates a danger that I may be unable to be as effective as I would wish to be; and that the constituency will be distracted from more important issues by the need to choose my successor.”

We might summarise his argument as beginning with three axioms:

It is irresponsible for a politician to stand for parliament if the strong expectation is that this would be his or her last term.
There is a strong expectation that someone will not stand for parliament past age 70.
Terms are now fixed at five years.

Consider, now, the position of a responsible politician, whom we will call Tony65, who who will be, shall we say, 65 years old at the next election. He could stand for parliament now, but he will be 70 at the next election (axiom 3), and so the strong expectation is that he will not stand at the next election (axiom 2). Hence, by axiom 1, and the fact that he is responsible, he should not stand in this election.

But now consider Tony’s younger colleague; call him Tony60, who will be 60 years old at the next election. If Tony60 is elected, he will be 65 at the following election. As a responsible politician, like Tony65, he will stand down at that age. Thus this would be his last term, so by axiom 1 he will not stand at this election either.

By the same reasoning, Tony55 will not stand, since we know that he won’t stand again when he is 60. And so, we can keep backing it up to Tony20, who also can’t stand, because he won’t stand again when he is 25. (18 is the minimum age for election to the House of Commons.) Thus, we have proved:

Theorem: No responsible politician can stand for election to the House of Commons.

This theorem does not apply, for obvious reasons, to the House of Lords, so there will still be space for responsible (if unelected) government.

“For he is an Englishman…”

For, in spite of all temptations

to belong to other nations

he remains an Englishman.”

Bringing together my posts from last year about cases of US citizens being expelled from or denied re-entry into their country, with my recent remarks on a senior UK politician’s suggestion that British citizens who fight with Islamists in Iraq and Syria have their citizenship revoked. This is of a piece with my earlier observations that xenophobic excesses which would be confined to the tub-thumping fringes in other countries, very quickly find resonance in the British political establishment, with the major parties falling over themselves not to be outflanked in expressing their hostility toward the alien.

To be fair, though, some moderately senior German politicians have made similar statements. The German constitution makes it absolutely explicit that citizenship cannot be revoked (except when a new citizenship is acquired, or when citizenship was acquired by fraud), which may make the belligerent exploitation of anti-Islamist chauvinism in these terms more or less despicable, depending on your perspective. (The US constitution is slightly less explicit, but reasonably clear on the subject.) By contrast, the UK — lacking both a written constitution and the clarifying experience of Nazi and Communist dictatorships — clearly makes revocation of citizenship a live option: 20 British dual nationals had their citizenship revoked last year, and the law — originally a 2006 Labour government product — was recently amended to allow the Home Secretary to deprive even single-nationals of their citizenship, rendering them stateless, showing blatant contempt for the 1961 UN Convention on Statelessness.

The only requirement for a naturalised British citizen — which includes many people born in the UK — to be deprived of his or her citizenship is that

the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good.

Of course, “public good” is a pretty flexible concept, particularly when the Home Office is required to present neither an explanation nor evidence, and invariably takes the step when the individual is travelling outside the country, sending the notification to the home address in the UK (from which the person is known to be absent), allowing 28 days for appeal. Certainly the Nazi Home Secretary was satisfied that allowing Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann to return home would not be conducive to the public good. The GDR had the same trick of revoking citizenship when troublesome individuals were temporarily out of the country.

Lest anyone think the UK is recapitulating the march of tyranny, though, the Home Secretary has promised that this power will be used “sparingly”. That should be enough of a bulwark against fascism to satisfy anyone. And unlike the Nazi law on deprivation of citizenship, property is not confiscated, so it’s something completely different.

Betrayal

After the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many physicists felt that their discipline’s principles had been betrayed. Oppenheimer said that physicists had “known sin”. Their abstruse subject, seen as a pure source of enlightenment, had revealed its enormous destructive potential. The healing arts, the quintessence of noble pursuits, have also been showing their dark side, as the power to cure disease is inseparable from the power to cause disease. An Oath Betrayed was the title of a recent book on the role of U.S. physicians and psychologists in facilitating torture in Guantanamo. And now, yet another betrayal: The BBC reports that

What of goodness and purity remains in the world, when even English accents may also be deployed for nefarious ends? (Of course, in Hollywood films they are used for almost nothing else.)

More profoundly, two thoughts occur to me: Continue reading “Betrayal”

“Strong support for Johnson”

According to The Guardian, people want Boris Johnson to be the next leader of the Conservatives. They don’t say it explicitly, but they suggest that “next” means, like, tomorrow, and not after the next election. After citing a poll finding that 29% of voters want Johnson to be the next Tory leader (are those Conservative supporters? I might want Johnson to be the next Tory leader because I think he’ll lead his party to disaster…), they write

The strong support for Johnson feeds into the party standings. The poll finds that Labour’s seven-point lead would fall to three points if he led the Tories. The Tories would see their support increase by three points under a Johnson premiership to 34% while Labour would see its support fall by one point to 37%. Johnson would also hit support for Ukip,. which would see its support fall by two points to 8%.

Before the Tories dump Cameron, they might want to check whether this 3% boost is statistically robust. This looks like an elementary statistics exercise, but it’s not quite so simple. If D is the Tory support under Cameron, and B the Tory support under Johnson, then B-D might be expected to be about 3%. But how confident should we be that Johnson is really better than Cameron? Unfortunately, we can’t know that without knowing the correlations: in this case, that means we need to know how many people supported the Tories only with Cameron, and how many supported them only with Johnson, and how many supported them with either leader. Continue reading ““Strong support for Johnson””

Mutually reinforcing headlines in Munich

I’m spending a couple of weeks in Munich, and I had to burst out laughing when I saw this tabloid on sale from a stand. The headlines seem to be unintentionally commenting upon one another:

New war in Iraq

followed by

This is your true legacy!

(I have to admit that my translation above, while literally more or less correct, and corresponds to the way I first read it due to the juxtaposition, is not really idiomatic. In the context of large tabloid headlines it’s clear that an appropriate translation would be “This is the right way to leave an inheritance”, and the article is all about how to write your will and avoid paying inheritance tax.)

Imprisoning rich criminals is mindless populism…

… says rich journalist/politician-felon Chris Huhne in the Guardian.

Just in case you haven’t been following this, Andy Coulson masterminded a criminal conspiracy to eavesdrop on private conversations and bribe public officials. His minions basically vandalised a police investigation into the murder of a 13-year-old. Now, his culpability as director of the operation has been difficult to establish in court, so unlike those minions he has been convicted only on a single relatively minor charge. He has been sentenced to just 18 months in prison, of which he will likely only serve one quarter.

But Huhne thinks the fact that the sentence is so short proves that he shouldn’t go to prison at all. He compares current penal practice to “the 1723 Black Act, which introduced 50 new hanging offences, including one for “hiding in a forest while disguised”.” He seems to think that the only proper purpose of prison is to restrain violent criminals. The rest is just playing to the tabloid-aroused bloodlust of the crowd. It’s one thing to lock up the evil people — BBC star pedophile Rolf Harris is his favoured example — but normal upstanding rich people like Coulson (and, by implication, Huhne himself) are much more useful on the outside. Merely being labelled criminals is enough suffering for their tender egos, unlike the hardened chavs who need to be sent to prison for looting a bottle of water, or receiving a single pair of looted underpants from a friend.

It’s depressing to be reminded of how primitive the thinking often is of people at the highest levels of government. Continue reading “Imprisoning rich criminals is mindless populism…”