NY Times turns squarely to issue of class and the Presidential race

By Lisa R. Pruitt

Richard W. Stevenson reports on the front page of today’s New York Times under the headline, “On the Tricky Terrain of Class, Contrasting Paths.”   Here’s an excerpt that sums us up a lot about Obama and Romney in relation to class:

The contrasting images of the week could hardly have been more evocative.

There was Mr. Obama on Thursday at a carefully scouted location, the Kozy Corners diner in Oak Harbor, Ohio, downing a burger and fries and chatting with a group of working-class voters about pinochle and trips to Disney World. The next day, as he continued a campaign swing, he reminisced about a Greyhound-and-train trip he took around the country with his grandmother when he was 11, staying at Howard Johnson and getting a thrill from leaping into the motel pool and fetching ice from the ice machine.

And there was Mitt Romney on Thursday, roaring across Lake Winnipesaukee on a powerboat large enough to hold two dozen members of his family who had gathered for a weeklong vacation at his estate in New Hampshire. On Sunday, Mr. Romney will raise money among wealthy Republicans in the Hamptons, with his final stop a $75,000-per-couple dinner at the home of David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who with his brother Charles has been among the leading patrons of the conservative movement.

Stevenson goes on to suggest that these images and the way the respective candidates spent the week are “vivid manifestation[s] of calculations made by both camps.”

Yes, I’m sure both campaigns have thought out the messaging of these appearances, though neither is talking explicitly about class.  Indeed, Stevenson quotes David Alexrod, a senior advisor to Obama’s campaign, who is also seems to be trying to deflect any express discussion of class:

The viability of the middle class is not a class issue.  It’s an American issue.

Stevenson’s story also reminds me of Obama’s ability not only to project “everyman,” but indeed to be “everyman” because of his modest upbringing.  This is in spite of the extraordinarily distinctive–indeed, just plain extraordinary–person he is.  And part of what makes Obama extraordinary is where he came from and what he has achieved out of that background.  The story of Obama’s journey is, to my mind, as much one of class as it is one of race.  I’m glad to see Obama “working” the class part of his personal narrative.

Of course, even though Obama was not a silver spoon baby, he is now a wealthy man, and as Stevenson points out, the Democrats are trying as hard as the Republicans to cultivate donations from the 1%.  But Democratic strategist Bob Shrum focuses on the distinction between being rich on the one hand and being rich and out of touch on the other.

I’m glad Obama is tying hard to look “in touch.”  It could make all the difference in what is shaping up to be a very tight election.

P.S.  A few days after this post, Timothy Egan offered these thoughts on the events described above.

New AAUP guidelines on academic-business ties: more Field Notes on the Political Economy of Academia

Kudos to classcrits colleague Risa L. Lieberwitz, Cornell ILR and labor law scholar, for her work with AAUP on new draft guidelines governing academic conflicts of interest and integrity, quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ambitious AAUP Effort to Guide Relations Between Academics and Industry Meets Resistance by Peter Schmidt, June 13, 2012.

How might these proposals for academic policy affect law and economics centers at law schools that receive private funds from interested businesses, sometimes with governing boards comprised of representatives of those interests?  The Chronicle reports that the proposals include: “The admission of graduate students and the appointment of medical residents and faculty should not be based on their potential to work under a particular donor agreement or as part of a given research alliance. It also urges that faculty and other academic investigators be prohibited from soliciting research funds from outside sponsors with the promise, or implied suggestion, of predetermined research results.”

For discussion of some of the ways in which outside private interests shape legal scholarship (to the detriment of critical feminist legal theory) in Martha T McCluskey, How Money for Legal Scholarship Disadvantages Feminism (Legal Feminism Now symposium, edited by Kathryn Abrams).

Also see  Fracking Research and the Money that Flows to it(NYT June 12) and University Diaries, which notes “the venerable tendency of some units of some universities to conceive themselves – not evolve into, but define themselves from the word go – as handmaidens to commerce. To put it genteelly.They’re not made up of researchers with established interests. They’re made up of people who look around at government and industry and say Whaddaya want us to say?”
Also on University Diaries check out the interesting collection of posts on financial law violations by business school faculty, under its Beware the B-School Boys category.

And also check out Classcrits affiliated faculty Gerald Epstein’s recent co-authored work on ethics and economics, advocating improved policies regarding disclosure and conflicts of interests for scholarship and public policy work by economists.

 

Distinguishing science from “market” power? Field notes on the political economy of academia

It’s become common wisdom in the U.S. that non-transparent big money largely drives elections, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and much of the judicial system, eroding the public trust and reinforcing perceptions that law and politics, as well as economics, operates largely for the benefit of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.   Academia appears to be the next frontier in big money’s conquest of public institutions.   Perhaps much of that territory has already been ceded, often for a pittance.

How can intellectual integrity retain meaning when increasingly academic institutions measure scholarly merit by dollars transferred (grants in, businesses-enhancing  “deliverables” out)? Economic history scholar Tiago Mata insightfully mulled over this question on INET (Institute for New Economic Thinking), as part of that organization’s effort to rise to the challenge to ethics in economics posed by Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job film.  Ferguson documented how some economics scholars hugely influential in public policy routinely fail to disclose that they get paid to speak and write as seemingly independent experts by directly interested business clients.  In his new book, Predator Nation Ferguson further develops this disturbing picture of economics scholars simultaneously acting as academic experts on the public interest and as sellers of this expertise to the highest private bidder.  

Mata writes:

As a citizen I am interested in the stakes of this controversy, perhaps more so than economists. I want voices that I can trust in the dust of factious debate. I want my taxes to pay for their independence and public service. But as an historian my intuition is that these wishes are both naïve and quaint. The professoriate’s extramural commitments are no longer an exception, liable to policing and containment. … We have neither the “Multiversity” nor the politically engaged professor, we have an entrepreneur scholar of uncertain loyalties.

Here, cross-posted from the Center for Progressive Reform, are my own comments from one field skirmish in the struggle over academic territory, where perhaps Mata would say I cling too tightly to this quaint notion of intellectual value separate from economic and political power.

CPRBlog: Scientific Integrity at Risk in Fracking Policy Debate

 

 

 

VAWA is not enough: adding economic and racial justice

A statement from leading domestic violence scholars explains why the Violance Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization must go further beyond a focus on criminalization to put economic justice and racial equality at the center of policy reforms.

“…while we applaud much that is in the bill, we are concerned that like its predecessors, the bill focuses a significant amount of funding on criminal justice responses and much less on economic and racial justice initiatives that would support efforts to stop domestic violence. We urge Congress to do more to address economic and racial inequalities that make poor women–particularly poor women of color, undocumented women, and Native American women, more vulnerable to intimate violence. We urge Congress to recognize that economic policies that result in widespread unemployment and downward mobility increase domestic violence. We further urge Congress to recognize that as important as criminal remedies may be for some victims, a focus on criminal justice remedies will never be sufficient to empower women. Many women who experience domestic violence do not want the current limited menu of criminal justice responses. We urge Congress, therefore, to consider and support programs that explore alternatives to the current criminal adjudication models, and that address the underlying causes of abuse.”

The scholars include Donna Coker, Deborah Weissman, Julie Goldscheid, Valli Kalei Kanuha, Leigh Goodmark Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, and James Ptacek. For more information, see VAWA remake updated 3 2 27 12

Call for Papers: Teaching about Domestic Violence

Teaching About Domestic Violence
Special Issue
CALL FOR PAPERS
Original manuscripts sought for a special issue of Violence Against Women entitled
“Teaching About Domestic Violence.” The special issue will be edited by Madelaine
Adelman (Justice & Social Inquiry, Arizona State University) and Donna Coker (Law,
University of Miami).
With this special issue we seek to reveal how and why domestic violence remains an area
of pedagogical interest at the college and university level, and to take stock of the state of
the art of teaching about domestic violence. In doing so, we hope to document the
movement against violence against women, and share innovative approaches to thinking,
learning and teaching about domestic violence.
We welcome original contributions on individual or team-taught courses or programs
related to domestic violence. Contributors are asked to reflect on how they incorporate
disciplinary frames, theoretical tensions, or other sources of intellectual and policy debate
within the field of domestic violence studies, into their courses, along with the challenges
and opportunities embedded within their approach to teaching and learning.
Potential contributors to the special issue are asked to submit their manuscripts of no
more than 30 double-spaced pages, inclusive of abstract, tables, figures, notes and
references, written in APA style. Shorter essays are welcome. The manuscript must
include an abstract of no more than 100 words.
Please send the manuscript in WORD format as an attachment to Donna Coker
(dcoker@law.miami.edu) and to Madelaine Adelman (mad@asu.edu) no later than Mon. Oct. 1, 2012.
For the full description see: Call for Papers re Teaching Domestic Violence.

Higher Education Access and the Reproduction of Privilege

By Lisa R. Pruitt

Two recent items in the New York Times have caught my attention in relation to how access to higher education reproduces privilege and undermines class mobility.  One is “Cuts Threaten Access to College Placement Tests,” for which a summary follows:

As part of the federal budget agreement last December, Congress cut federal financing for programs that offer advanced high school courses to slightly under $27 million, from $43 million the previous year, with only about $20 million to be used to subsidize low-income students’ exam fees.  So, in recent weeks, state education officials have been notifying high schools that low-income students, who have for decades been eligible for fee waivers,  will have to pay $15 for each of the first three exams they take, and $53 per exam for any beyond that.

Needless to say, this federal cut is sure to decrease the AP credits that low-income students are able to rack up, thereby increasing their college costs and perhaps also deterring them from seeking higher education.

The other recent item is Thomas Edsall’s post titled “The Reproduction of Privilege” on the New York Times Campaign Stops blog.   This excerpt sums up the phenomenon Edsall wishes to highlight–that higher education is no longer the path to class mobility that it once was.  Rather, higher education–particularly at top institutions–is more often the preserve of the well off, dominated by the children of those who have already arrived socioeconomically:

Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification, with a huge majority of the 24 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelor’s degree coming from families with earnings above the median income.

Seventy-four percent of those now attending colleges that are classified as “most competitive,” a group that includes schools like Harvard, Emory, Stanford and Notre Dame, come from families with earnings in the top income quartile, while only three percent come from families in the bottom quartile.

Edsall’s piece is chock full of additional data that all flies in the face of “the American dream” of class mobility, revealing it to be more myth than reality.

The Devastating Disconnect Between Rich and Poor

Posted by Lisa R. Pruitt

The Occupy Wall Street movement has recently drawn national attention to economic inequality, and several new studies and a book just published also invite us to consider the acuteness of this inequality, as well as its causes and/or consequences.   These publications all highlight education, to one degree or another, as a key indicator of class and class mobility.

The New York Times, NPR and the Los Angeles Times all ran features this week on Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart:  The State of White America, 1960-2010.  Murray, labeled “a libertarian social scientist” by NPR (and worse things by other liberal pundits), is a controversial figure due in large part to his co-authorship of The Bell Curve.  In that 1994 book, Murray described  a “cognitive elite” who, he argued, get ahead in large part because of their superior IQs.  The controversy was understandable given his assertion that whites tend to have higher IQs than African Americans and some other minorities.

I want to focus here, however, on some of the less controversial information featured in Coming Apart. By this, I mean to steer clear of the book’s commentary on values and related suggestions for remedying the problem.  (I do, however, recommend Paul Krugman’s op-ed and Nicholas Confessore’s review which offer incisive observations regarding those aspects of the book).  Also, to be clear, I have yet to read the book and so rely here on characterizations from media reports.