E-Pluribus | June 4, 2024
Censorship by any other name; DEI takes a big hit; and three cheers (if not more) for liberalism.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
John Coleman: Here’s how Congress can help stop backdoor government censorship
The First Amendment is meant to protect free speech from government interference, but outright censorship isn’t the only weapon governments wield. John Coleman, legislative counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, writes at The Hill about how more subtle censorship methods can be thwarted.
The First Amendment prohibits government censorship of speech on social media in all but a few narrowly defined cases. But rather than censoring speech directly, officials discreetly contacted social media employees at Facebook and Twitter to get them to do their dirty work. And although this pernicious form of informal pressure, known as “jawboning,” went public, the damage was already done.
[. . .]
No matter who you vote for or what you believe, Americans should be able to agree on this: When government officials pressure social media companies to censor users’ speech, we should know about it. Federal employees and contractors should have to publicly disclose any content moderation requests made to social media platforms. And FIRE has unveiled model legislation to do just that.
This legislation will enable the public to know when the federal government is communicating with social media companies — and what it’s communicating about — within 72 hours. Not only would this help prevent overreach, but it would also empower Americans to challenge censorship the moment they see it has occurred. The bill’s requirements would also shine much-needed light on which social media companies government employees are contacting.
For years, social media users wondered if there was a censor behind the scenes manipulating what their followers could and couldn’t see. What sounded paranoid at the time ended up being true. To restore trust in social media and preserve Americans’ free speech rights online, Congress must require government employees to be palms up about communications with the platforms where America’s national conversations occur.
Read it all here.
Tilly R. Robinson and Neil H. Shah: Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Will No Longer Require Diversity Statements
Harvard’s student newspaper The Crimson reports the end of the relatively short era of the DEI statement for new faculty hires at the Arts and Sciences school. Although the decision only affects one institution, its significance shouldn’t be overlooked.
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences will stop requiring a diversity, inclusion, and belonging statement as part of its faculty hiring process, Dean of Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser announced in a Monday morning email.
[. . .]
Instead, the FAS — the University’s largest faculty — will require a service statement about an applicant’s “efforts to strengthen academic communities” and a teaching and advising statement about how an applicant will foster a “learning environment in which students are encouraged to ask questions and share their ideas.”
While the FAS previously required all candidates to submit a statement describing their “efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including past, current, and anticipated future contributions in these areas,” the two new statements will only be required from candidates who are finalists in the search process.
The updated requirements apply to the FAS’ internal promotion and review procedures as well as external hiring. Although candidates for some promotions were previously prompted to describe their contributions to diversity, inclusion, and belonging in “service/citizenship” statements, the handbook’s new language on service statements no longer asks candidates to discuss diversity efforts.
Harvard’s move comes as universities face increasing internal and external pressure to back away from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. MIT announced a similar decision last month, saying it would stop requiring diversity statements for positions across the university.
[. . .]
In her email, Zipser wrote that she and Hoekstra made the changes in consultation with the Academic Planning Group, an advisory body consisting of the FAS’ highest-powered deans. Zipser and Hoekstra also discussed the changes with FAS diversity officials and solicited feedback from two FAS committees: the Committee on Appointments and Promotions and the newly-convened Classroom Social Compact Committee.
Read it all.
David Boaz: Liberalism Once Saved The World—It Can Do So Again
In recent days, there have been reports that the Cato Institute’s David Boaz is close to death. Here, The UnPopulist reproduces a Boaz essay from 2023 originally titled What Does “Liberal” Mean, Anyway? While in the piece Boaz counseled libertarians not to give in to pessimism, people of all ideological stripes should appreciate and take heart from Boaz’s explanation and defense of classical liberal ideals.
[The] liberation of human creativity [beginning in the 17th century] unleashed astounding scientific and material progress. The Nation magazine, which was then a truly liberal journal, looking back in 1900, wrote, “Freed from the vexatious meddling of governments, men devoted themselves to their natural task, the bettering of their condition, with the wonderful results which surround us.” The technological advances of the liberal 19th century are innumerable: the steam engine, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, electricity, the internal combustion engine. Thanks to such innovations and an explosion of entrepreneurship, in Europe and America the great masses of people began to be liberated from the backbreaking toil that had been the natural condition of humankind since time immemorial. Infant mortality fell and life expectancy began to rise to unprecedented levels. A person looking back from 1800 would see a world that for most people had changed little in thousands of years; by 1900 the world was unrecognizable.
Toward the end of the 19th century, classical liberalism began to give way to new forms of collectivism and state power. That Nation editorial went on to lament that “material comfort has blinded the eyes of the present generation to the cause which made it possible” and that “before [statism] is again repudiated there must be international struggles on a terrific scale.”
[. . .]
Through the Progressive Era, World War I, the New Deal, and World War II, there was tremendous enthusiasm for bigger government among American intellectuals. Herbert Croly, the first editor of the New Republic, wrote in The Promise of American Life that that promise would be fulfilled “not by … economic freedom, but by a certain measure of discipline; not by the abundant satisfaction of individual desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and self‐denial.”
[. . .]
For all the growth of government in the past century, liberalism remains the basic operating system of the United States, Europe, and many other parts of the world, even if it is facing attacks. Those countries broadly respect such basic liberal principles as private property, markets, free trade, the rule of law, government by consent of the governed, constitutionalism, free speech, free press, religious freedom, women’s rights, gay rights, peace, and a generally free and open society—but not without plenty of arguments, of course, over the scope of government and the rights of individuals, from taxes and the welfare state to drug prohibition and war. [. . .]
As bleak as things sometimes seem in the United States, there are definitely worse problems in the world. In too much of the world, ideas we thought were dead are back: socialism and protectionism and ethnic nationalism, even “national socialism,” authoritarianism on both the left and the right. We see this in Russia and China, of course, but not only there; also in relatively liberal democratic countries such as Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela, Mexico, the Philippines, maybe India. A far‐right candidate—anti-immigration, anti‐globalization, anti–free trade, anti‐privatization, anti–pension reform—came too close for comfort to the presidency of France.
Read the whole thing.
Around Twitter (X)
The Communist Chinese government does everything it can to stamp out the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre. One survivor, Fengsuo Zhou, wants to keep its memory alive and revive its spirit in China. Click for video.
Harvard professor Jeffrey Flier calls out the scholarly journal Cultural Critique for its recent… “mistake”:
And finally, via Colin Wright, the state of the PhD as illustrated by one Penn State dissertation: