Authoritarianism and the GOP: One Example

This may or may not be a photo of Ron DeSantis 
responding to a question about how much he cares about
First Amendment guarantees.

This started as a comment, or to be more precise, a comment to a comment to a comment, on a post on Ethics Alarms. Curmie had taken issue with the idea, propounded in the original post, that no Democrat could legitimately call a Republican authoritarian. He was then challenged to support his position. Herewith, that argument, which has grown rather long for a blog post (even for Curmie), let alone for a comment. I’ll post the link to this post rather than clutter that page… and rather than writing a lengthy essay that doesn’t go on my own site. 

First point: let’s drop the nonsense about hearing about Republican authoritarianism “only by those who have no difficulty demanding that others bow to their desires.” I have no tolerance for slimy or authoritarian antics from the left, even if I (generally) agree with their goals. But arguing those shenanigans don’t also happen from the right suggests either willful blindness or mendacity. As I have suggested elsewhere, the tactics and targets are a little different; that’s all. 

Curmie could fill volumes with examples of Republican authoritarianism, but this is going to be long enough as it is; let’s choose one GOP pol and one topic: Ron DeSantis and education. 

We start with the decree a couple of years ago that all faculty and students at state universities must identify their political affiliation. Not only that, the forms were not anonymous. I could see some tortured logic by which tracking aggregate percentages of anonymous student responses might serve to prove “indoctrination” or whatever, but little could be less relevant than the political persuasions of faculty. 

I think in particular of two colleagues at the small midwestern college where I used to teach. A student couldn’t get a major in Political Science without taking at least a couple of courses apiece from the two of them. They were good friends who happened to disagree about which political party best represented the needs and desires of the citizenry. One was the county chair of the Republican party when I was there; the other ran for Congress as a Democrat a couple years after I left. Few students were unaware of their professors’ politics, but left-leaning and right-leaning students alike virtually unanimously sang the praises of both. That’s what is supposed to happen; more importantly, it’s what does happen far more often than not; it doesn’t make headlines because it is in fact so commonplace. 

Furthermore, as I wrote on my own blog, “Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?” 

Was this effort by DeSantis useless? Pretty much (but see below). Creepy? Absolutely. Authoritarian? Arguably, but not conclusively. 

So let’s move on to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. No, those words are never used in the bill. But the reality on the ground suggests serial repression. Literally every restriction of freedom of expression purports to be grounded in higher ideals. To some on the left, censorship is legitimized by resisting the spread of racism, homophobia, or sexism; to some on the right, it’s the need to promote American values or to protect children. 

To some degree, there’s validity in all of these points of view: those goals are admirable. There are, of course, places where certain kinds of dissent are inappropriate: think Fred Phelps protesting at military funerals, for example. But there is, and should be, a difference between that which is inappropriate and that which is illegal. 

More to the point: this particular legislation is (intentionally, I believe) so vague that virtually any action could be seen to be in violation. In the area of race, for example, Florida schools, inspired by DeSantis and his acolytes, have removed from school curricula or libraries books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, and a film about Ruby Bridges. It was enough that one (count ‘em, one!) mother complained that “It might suggest that white people hate black people.” (Guess what? They did.) Oh, also removed were books about baseball players Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. Make that make sense. (Yes, some of those books were subsequently restored to the shelves. That hardly legitimizes their initial removal.) 

A Florida teacher recently got into trouble for showing a Disney movie to her class. No one seems to dispute the fact that the actual plot of the film was relevant to what she was teaching. Ah, but the lead character appears to be gay. And according to the (il)logic of many on the right—some of whom have posted on Ethics Alarms—that makes it about sex, and we need to protect kids from the reality that gay people exist that. These folks may indeed truly believe that a romantic relationship between a man and a woman is based on love, but such a union between two men or two women is exclusively about sex. I don’t; indeed, I find it hypocritical at best, abhorrent at worst. 

Plus, of course, there’s the utterly irresponsible and indeed slanderous suggestion that simply recognizing gay people as human is “grooming.” If you’re really concerned about grooming, come back when you’ve cleaned up the Catholic Church. But, more to the immediate point, the words of a popular meme resonate: “Teaching kids about frogs isn’t grooming them to be amphibians.” 

I’d note further that whatever one may think of the propriety of same-sex marriage or the ability for such couples to adopt, one thing is irrefutable: it’s not little Johnny’s fault that he has two dads. Abusing him or even excluding him from the group, which is what denying his lived reality does, is reprehensible. 

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, wait! That’s not all! It may be a flimsy argument to say you’re protecting kids from fill-in-the-blank bogeyman, but at least it’s an argument. DeSantis, though, wants similar restrictions at the university level, where “protecting children” rings rather hollower as an excuse for censorship. There, the awful scourge on society is Critical Race Theory, which must not even be mentioned in passing.  Seriously? 

Oh, and DeSantis also tried to restrict state university faculty from testifying as expert witnesses in lawsuits or criminal trials. This is the proponent of diversity of opinion? Give me a break. 

Authoritarian? I think unquestionably. 

There is also DeSantis’s attack on tenure. He’s not alone in this pursuit, of course; a fair number of other GOP pols are similarly opposed to what is, after all, nothing more or less than a pledge on the part of a university to respect the academic freedom of faculty who have demonstrated sufficient excellence in teaching, research, and service to merit this consideration. (There are practical benefits to the university, too, of course, but few politicians from either party are either smart or curious enough to know this.) 

By the way, there are a host of reasons for which tenure can be revoked: gross incompetence, moral turpitude, financial exigency resulting in the retrenching of a program, and so on. Two points: 1). the burden of proof now rests with the university: they must prove their claim rather than the professors’ having to prove they should be retained, and 2). a professor’s legal (i.e., not libelous, seditious, violence-inciting, etc.) commentary is never a legitimate reason to revoke tenure. 

But I’m still not done. There was the takeover of New College, including firing trustees and replacing them with DeSantis minions whose first action was to fire the president. DeSantis wanted to turn the school into the “Hillsdale of the South.” Of course, that’s a marketing slogan rather than an actual desire. Indeed, he wants the anti-Hillsdale. Hillsdale is, first of all, a private college, which would mean that DeSantis couldn’t appoint its trustees. And he wants that ability more than Pooh wants honey. 

Hillsdale is also libertarian rather than conservative. Yes, in the current environment, there’s a fair amount of overlap, but if there’s one thing libertarians definitely don’t want, it’s to have a college or university controlled by the governor’s office. It’s pretty clear that DeSantis isn’t interested in diversity of ideas, but rather to have his views and only his views propagated, and he wants the state to underwrite the operation. He’s not yet Joe Stalin, but give him time to grow a mustache and we’ll see… 

The purge at New College is unprecedented to the best of my knowledge. Yes, it’s true that there is a recent trend towards governors’ appointing trustees (regents, councilors, whatever a particular institution calls them) based primarily on political affiliation, but I can recall no instances of firing existing trustees without cause. 

And the new trustees really are indeed nothing more than DeSantis minions. More ominously, they are exercising a level of interference in the day-to-day operation of the college that is also unprecedented. It is exceedingly rare to have any tenure recommendation coming from the school administration overturned—it might happen once or twice a year in the entire country. The case involving Nikole Hannah-Jones and the University of North Carolina made headlines for precisely this reason: that such events occur so infrequently. 

Even then, especially for existing faculty rather than new hires, it’s generally because there is not merely disagreement but profound disagreement among the various levels of input into the decision: department committee, department chair, college committee, dean, provost, president. It is quite rare that the de facto decision is made above the dean level. 

To have the majority of faculty recommended for tenure by the president denied by the trustees is outrageous. I started teaching (and reading The Chronicle of Higher Education) in 1979, and I’ve literally never heard of more than one tenure applicant recommended by the president of a college being denied by the trustees at any single college or university in a single year. New College this year: five. 

Would it be too paranoid to wonder if that collection of political affiliations of faculty mentioned above had some hidden and nefarious intent? Much as I am loath to accuse even an ultra-partisan narcissist like Ron DeSantis of such a thing, I’m afraid I can’t rule out the possibility. 

It’s also important to realize that applying for tenure is almost always a one-time event: you either get it or you get a one-year terminal appointment. Those five professors, then, who demonstrated their legitimate claim to tenure to their colleagues and superiors, are now going to be out of work because a gaggle of political hacks decided that obeisance to Ron DeSantis was more important than the good of the university they were pledged to support. 

As a longtime professor and a free speech advocate, I believe DeSantis’s actions with respect to New College are an abomination. You’re free to disagree with that assessment, Gentle Reader; it is, after all, only an opinion. Perhaps you think he was simply righting a wrong. But to suggest that his power play was anything less than authoritarian means our discussion is over, as I will simply label you incorrigible and move on.

The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression--They Just Do It Differently

Curmie, as anyone who has seen a handful of his posts will know, leans left on most issues, but is more civil libertarian than liberal. 

Those on the left think those on the right want to shut down freedom of expression, and vice versa. Trouble is, they’re both accurate assessments of current reality. It was, after all, the right that forbade doctors from giving their best medical advice to women seeking an abortion. Similarly, it was the left that rejoiced when the Twitter and Facebook accounts of a sitting US President were shut down by those social media corporations. But let’s confine ourselves to events of this month. 

Curmie offers two examples (there are undoubtedly more) on each side. I ask you to believe me that I literally just flipped a coin to decide which to talk about first. Liberals first, then. 

Exhibit A, we’ve already discussed: the Hamline University case in which adjunct professor Erika López Prater was dismissed because she showed a couple of images of the prophet Muhammad. The artworks were shown in a course in global art history. They were by Muslim artists, celebrating the prophet. Students in the course were warned in the syllabus and immediately prior to showing the images in class exactly what was going to happen; they were given the opportunity to opt out of the viewing. No one did. 

Ah, but one student claimed to have been grievously wounded by seeing an image she was given every opportunity to avoid, and every administrator you could mention rushed to appease her tender sensibilities. The professor did nothing wrong, but became a pariah anyway, because pretending to believe the victimization claims of anyone who can claim any kind of minority status is easier for those with no ethical compass, no moral courage, and no actual belief in their protestations of academic freedom. 

Ultimately, with virtually the entire academic community piling on, the administration issued an “oops” statement. But it was too little, too late, and López Prater is suing. Curmie hopes she wins big. Also too little, too late, the Hamline faculty is now asking President Fayneese Miller to resign. 

Exhibit B comes not from a “where’s that?” school like Hamline, but from one of the most respected universities in the world, Stanford. Let’s just say Curmie is glad he didn’t end up there after they recruited him for their PhD program forty-something years ago. 

Anyway: the story. It seems that an as yet unnamed (but apparently identified) student was photographed reading a copy of Mein Kampf, and that photo was circulated on Snapshat. 

The book, by the way, has been required reading in at least one Stanford course of late, albeit only a single chapter, and as a linked pdf. The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) website suggests that the book is available for loan from the university library; Curmie checked, and can see no copies of the book per se except in the original German. Literally scores of analyses, but no copies of the book itself in English. In other words, the student in question apparently purchased the book. The question “So what?” presents itself here. 

Reading a book, any book, is an exercise in freedom of expression. Curmie supposes this idea could be contorted to excuse actual unethical (but still probably legal) conduct, but barring the specific intention of offending onlookers (a variation on incitement), the student in question is guilty of nothing more than accidental rudeness. 

Of course, as might be expected from those who are never happier than when they can claim to be abused, a Protected Identity Harm (PIH) report has been filed with university authorities. The PIH may or may not be well-intentioned—Curmie doubts it, but you know how he is, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The idea is that anyone can nark on their friends conflate the university with the Stasi “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.” 

Here, as at Hamline, the censorious asshats were urged on by university-employed religious leaders, in this case Rabbis Jessica Kirschner and Laurie Hahn Tapper, who couldn’t resist the siren song of victimhood: “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.” FFS, literally no one is suggesting otherwise. What is being not merely suggested but screamed from the metaphorical rooftops is that students who want to know what Hitler actually wrote instead of what someone else said he wrote don’t belong at Stanford. Intellectual curiosity used to be considered a good thing. Not anymore, apparently. 

Of course, FIRE is right in declaring that “the process is the punishment”: “Administrators with disciplinary authority formally notifying students they’ve been accused of ‘harm,’ when they’ve done nothing more than read a book, and asking them to ‘acknowledge’ what they’ve done and ‘change’ their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech.” 

It might be going a bit far to suggest that the author of Mein Kampf would approve of Stanford’s tactics (not their overt political stance, of course), but that suggestion is not far off the mark. 

OK, let’s look at the other side of the ledger: Exhibit C. We all know that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is positioning himself for a presidential run.  Those of us of a particular political disposition might be tempted to suggest that he’s trying to be the sane and not senile version of Donald Trump.  Curmie, to say the least, has never been impressed: he objected to DeSantis’s obviously phony rationale in demanding that everyone—faculty and students alike—at state universities declare their political affiliations. No rational being believed the rhetoric about “competing ideas and perspectives,” especially when there was a not-so-veiled threat of withholding funding if not enough of his acolytes were hired. 

Curmie also wrote:

Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

As for Gov. DeSantis… he's baaaaaack, and he continues his mendacious ways. We knew that because he’s Ron DeSantis and his lips were moving, but just for verification’s sake, let’s look at his desire to make New College of Florida into a “Hillsdale of the South.” (To be fair, Curmie can’t find anywhere those precise words were uttered by DeSantis himself, only by his minion, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. Kinda doesn’t matter, though.) 

The point is that DeSantis hasn’t the slightest interest in making New College into a Hillsdale. How can Curmie be so sure? Two reasons: 1). Curmie has a dear friend of long standing who teaches at Hillsdale, and we’ve had more than one discussion about life at our respective institutions, and 2). Hillsdale is a private college whose defining characteristic isn’t its conservatism, but rather its libertarianism and self-styled independence from government interference. The government says “your students can’t get Pell Grants unless you do this,” and Hillsdale replies, “Okay, no Pell Grants.” The college is breaking no rules by their refusal, it’s just that the government is flustered by their inability to impose demands. 

New College is a state institution, and DeSantis wants to be able to appoint its board members; if it were a private college, he wouldn’t be able to get his grubby mitts anywhere near its day-to-day operations. He’s a megalomaniacal narcissist, not the slightest bit interested in diversity of perspectives; he wants his own views presented to the exclusion of others, and he wants the state to pay for it. 

Curmie has made the point repeatedly that for the last generation or more, boards of state colleges and universities are appointed for their adherence to the political philosophy of the governor. The state university from which Curmie recently retired had dozens of Regents over the last two decades; nary a one, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, was a Democrat. Indeed, being active in Republican politics far outstripped any particular skillset or interest in education in the selection process. So whereas DeSantis is less than ethical, he at least has, or, rather, had, the lame but commonplace excuse that everybody does it. 

This is different, though. As Peter Greene writes at Curmudgucation, “Taking the liberal and successful New College and targeting it to become the ‘Hillsdale of the South’ is not about creating more choices, and nobody is even pretending that it is. It’s about silencing one set of voices and amplifying another set.” 

Greene continues by arguing that “School choice advocates who hold Florida and DeSantis up as examples of forward-thinking awesome school choice advances are being disingenuous—Florida is on a road to impose a more ideologically focused authoritarian model of education in which only ideas approved by the governor may be included in schooling.” 

Curmie agrees, and notes also that DeSantis wants to overthrow the tenure system, audit money spent on DEI programs (this could actually be legit, but it’s Ron DeSantis, so we’d be wise to expect the worst, especially in terms of an attempt to suppress Critical Race Theory), block AP courses on African American Studies (newsflash, Ron, it’s not your call)… well, you get the idea. This is the “free speech” guy conservatives salivate over? Seriously? 

And so we move on to Exhibit D. Now we’re in the great (or perhaps not so great) state of North Dakota. Needless to say, Curmie is not an expert on things in the Peace Garden State (yes, Curmie had to look that up). There are actually two stories here, but Curmie is going to lump them together because of their chronological propinquity. The first to catch Curmie’s attention wasn’t in the form of a news story per se, but in a post by the above-mentioned Peter Greene. His post is titled “ND: Actual Anti-Furry Legislation. Really,” which sort of borders on clickbait because the essay is really about some pretty creepy manifestations of transphobia. 

You should check out Greene’s post in its entirety, Gentle Reader, but there are two specific points that need to be emphasized. First, North Dakota (like Missouri, apparently) clearly has no real problems to solve or no sane person would be wasting time on stuff like this. Second, like Texas’s abortion bill of a couple years back, there’s money to be had for narking on your neighbors. At least the left only encourages this kind of crap; they don’t provide monetary incentives. 

The other North Dakota story concerns proposed legislation being pushed by the House majority leader to give university presidents the right to fire tenured faculty pretty much at will. A decision to do so could not be appealed by the faculty member, and “the president and any administrators designated to assist the president shall fulfill these duties without fear of reprisal or retaliation. No complaint, lawsuit or other allegation is allowed against a president or other administrator for actions taken pursuant to these provisions.” 

This idiocy makes tenure meaningless, of course, and completely ignores both the advantages of a robust tenure system and the obligations owed to faculty who took a position or didn’t leave because they believed the state and the university would behave ethically. 

More to the point: the governor appoints the board, the board appoints (and fires or rewards) the president, and the president is to be granted absolute, unrestricted (by internal appeal or lawsuit) authority to fire even tenured faculty. (Curmie notes that Kansas tried this crap a couple of years ago, disingenuously invoking financial exigencies caused by COVID. Guess what party controls Kansas’s government.) What could possibly go wrong? 

Neither the left nor the right, then, really give a damn about free expression. Curmie won’t bother to link all the examples he’s written about over the years, but there have been a lot of them, from both sides, and scores of others he didn’t get to. As Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up. Both sides want to control what happens in the classroom; Curmie was about to say the left is more interested in what happens outside the classroom, the right in controlling the curriculum and the faculty… but that really isn’t true, at least universally. 

The one difference is the strategy. Most of the repression from the left comes from the campus per se, generally from idiot administrators at both the university and secondary school levels. The right prefers to legislate from outside the institution itself, citing often imaginary problems that need to be solved. 

Neither side seems willing to allow faculty to teach and students to learn. ‘Twas not ever thus, and the future of education and indeed of the nation depends on returning to free expression in and out of the classroom, to the quest for truth rather than the dubious claim to have found it, and to finding an appropriate balance between encouraging disparate perspectives and believing (or pretending to believe) that they’re all equally valid.