E-Pluribus | April 21, 2023
Nation states still rule the day; the college campus fear factor; and, oops - a DEI study is retracted.
A round-up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Daniel Kochis: Europe’s Westphalian Triumph
Since at least the days of the League of Nations, a certain segment of political and societal elites have pushed for more centralization of power. While that push continues today, Daniel Kochis writes at Discourse Magazine that recent events in Europe demonstrate that nation states remain the most effective global political structure to deal with both perennial conflict as well as new challenges facing humanity.
. . . EU elites have sought to harness a decade and a half of crisis to advance toward the goal of “ever closer union.” A recent example this was the unprecedented scale with which the EU issued common bonds in 2020 to respond to the economic impact of the Covid pandemic. Now that this Rubicon has been crossed, you can be sure that EU officials will relentlessly try to push through future expansions of common debt issuance to fund a host of priorities. In fact, it’s already happening: while the initial decision was explained as a temporary, one off plan to respond to an unprecedented pandemic, the EU bureaucracy has since floated ideas about new common debt to fund other priorities, including supporting member states’ green energy plans, before backing off in March.
But these schemes have thus far been dashed on the rocks of the nation state, as countries like Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands have squelched new rounds of common debt for now. However, you can be sure that the EU elites will be back and that we have not heard the last of these plans. The reason of course is that Brussels views these financial decisions primarily through the lens of politics; they are yet another way to force greater EU integration and expand the authority of the bureaucracy, which is why the very same bureaucracy will seek a third, fourth, even twentieth bite at the apple.
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Nation states in Europe still matter, because they remain the main power centers within Europe and are nearly always more capable of decisive and effective action than the EU. While Brussels elites will still try to consolidate more power in the corridors of the EU, I suspect the crises of the last 15 years have underscored the importance of strong nation states, accountable to their citizens for decisions both good and bad. It is this dynamic that will keep these states in the forefront of European affairs and arrest the drive toward EU centralization.
Read it all.
Christopher Nadon: Fear of a Liberal Arts Education
Claremont McKenna College professor Christopher Nadon writes at City Journal about his concerns over the one-time leader in free speech in higher education. While Nadon recalls that although Claremont McKenna was once number one on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) list of colleges and universities for free speech, the administration now seems intent on backsliding into censorship and suppression of disfavored points of view.
Claremont McKenna [College] is home to a program called the Open Academy, an organization “dedicated to fostering a culture of healthy debate, constructive criticism and intellectual openness.” Its charter, approved by the Board of Trustees, states that “CMC has developed an intensive orientation program for incoming students that focuses on both academic freedom and methods and strategies for effective dialogue.” It promises that “freedom of expression will be continually reinforced through all of our programming, including freshman/transfer orientation” (emphasis added). On paper, this sounds good. Yet the very need for such an organization at an institution of higher education suggests the existence of a problem of considerable magnitude.
The college is also home to a program called CMCListens, the tip of an enormous bureaucracy centered in the Dean of Students office that aims to control discourse inside and outside the classroom. An online guide instructs students how to submit anonymous reports “to the appropriate senior staff” about anything “they find troubling at CMC, in just a few easy steps.” Such a reporting mechanism obviously generates “intelligence” of poor quality. That is beside the point. The design conditions students to think of themselves (and others) as minders and informants. No one can be sure who is listening and who is snitching. The practical effect is to place a member of the Dean of Students office in every classroom as a monitor between student and teacher, and, worse, between every student, at any time and place.
Despite the clear mandate in its charter, the Open Academy did not speak at freshman orientation this fall. Its defense of academic freedom stands in the way of cultivating informants. Its concerns demand virtues of our students and faculty that the Dean of Students office considers vices. The organization was allowed only to make a presentation to the upperclassmen selected by the Dean of Students office to help run this year’s orientation. This was done, of course, under the supervision of staff from the Dean of Students office. It did not go well.
Read the whole thing.
Matt Lamb: Woke professors’ DEI study withdrawn for inaccuracies
A paper on diversity, equity, and inclusion impacts in health research written by University of Minnesota professors has been retracted, reports Matt Lamb of the College Fix. While the school and authors deserve credit for initiating the retraction after evidence of mischaracterizations in the paper were found, the retraction is nonetheless a blow to the University of Minnesota’s efforts to push a DEI/health research link.
“Transactional and transformative diversity, equity, and inclusion activities in health services research departments,” first published on Jan. 8 in Wiley Online Library and then in March in Health Services Research, contained problems acknowledged by the authors.
One of the authors works for the school’s “Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity.” The lead author is Professor Janette Dill (pictured, right) who works in the School of Public Health with co-author Stuart Grande (pictured, left). The third author is Tongtan Chantarat, a research scientist at the “Antiracism Research” center.
The health equity research center was started with seed money from insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. It is run by an academic who does not have a medical degree.
“The retraction has been agreed following concerns raised by the authors following publication that their characterisation of specific data (personal narratives and experiences) was either inaccurate, misleading, or false,” the notice stated. “The final submitted manuscript unintentionally contained content that mischaracterised the authenticity of experiences represented, and the authors have requested retraction.”
[ . . . ]
The University of Minnesota has leaned in heavily into linking health and DEI research together, as previously reported by The College Fix.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
Biologist Colin Wright is speaking this Saturday in Davis, California, and activists tried to get the event cancelled. Can we call this an attempted booking ban?
In December, Robert Tracinski mentioned the seed of an idea for an essay on wokeness based on his reaction to the word’s use and abuse. Today, the seed bore fruit:
It’s hard to tell when Elon Musk is being serious at times, but the “government-funded media” tag that prompted NPR to stop using Twitter is now gone… along with ALL media tags, and the reason is apparently… author Walter Isaacson…