Oklahoma Teacher's Walkout: A Perspective

Today my wife and thousands of other Oklahoma public school teachers descend on the state capitol in an effort to remind the Oklahoma legislators who they work for: the people of Oklahoma.

Executives of the fossil fuel industry do not work for the people of Oklahoma. They work for their stockholders. Their job is to maximize profits for those stockholders, and one way to do that is to convince state legislators to pass laws that help the stockholders get rich. And for many years now, corporate lobbyists have succeeded in doing just that. It's not their fault. They're just going their job to make as much money for the stockholders as they can.

Of course, the state legislators don't work for those stockholders but for all the people of Oklahoma. And they are called to think long-term, to care about Oklahoma's future and not just the stockholders of this or that company. Nothing is more central to the welfare of Oklahoma going into the future than a vibrant public education system, sufficiently funded to help each student achieve their highest potential.

But Oklahoma legislators, it seems to me, have lost sight of this truth, starving public education for years in order to give corporate tax breaks, primarily to fossil fuel companies. Those tax breaks don't serve the people of Oklahoma. The fossil fuel companies aren't going to leave the state for a lower tax rate elsewhere, because the fossil fuels are HERE. They want access to them--to the natural resources that belong collectively to the people of this state.

Paying their fair share to support the collective future of the state, ensuring that an educated workforce is available for them and every other business, should be part of the price of admission. Of course, it's the job of big business executives to get as much for free as they can, including not paying the price of admission, not doing their fair share to support Oklahoma's long-term survival.

It's the job of Oklahoma legislators to tell them no. But state legislators have instead been acting like employees of these big businesses, starving education in the process.

And so our teachers are saying no. Our teachers are saying enough. Education is the future of this state, and the future is being starved by a legislature that has forgotten who they work for. And so the teachers, who have not forgotten, are rising up and demanding that our legislature remember.

Our legislators have so far responded by saying, "How about we feed you a little better than we have been while continuing to let your students starve? Isn't that wonderful? Hooray for us! You should thank us for such a wonderful proposal and if you don't, you're just being greedy!"

Or teachers have answered, "Our children are still being starved."

Today, I hope, the legislators of Oklahoma will open their eyes, remember who they are and who they are supposed to represent--all the people of Oklahoma, including our children--and do the right thing.

Corporate executives have their lobbyists. The children of Oklahoma have our teachers. Pray that out teachers have the eloquence and resolve to make a difference. Pray that our elected Representatives will be moved to implement real change shaped by the real needs of the people they represent, rather than being constrained by some artificial concept of political expediency shaped by corporate interests.

Let all of us stand with our teachers and say, "Feed our children."

AP History Under Fire: Text of a letter to my state legislators

In case you haven't heard, the Oklahoma legislature is considering a bill--HB 1380--that would do away with AP History in Oklahoma. Reproduced below is the text of what I wrote to my legislators. If you live in Oklahoma, I encourage you to write your own letters (you can get help finding out who your legislators are here, although it doesn't give perfect results on the local level). Feel free to share this post or plagiarize the text freely (although you probably want to replace the personal anecdote if you do).


I am writing to urge you to oppose HB 1380, which would replace AP History in Oklahoma with a locally designed alternative. This bill would be bad for the state, and it would be bad for Oklahoma’s students.

AP courses have a long-standing national reputation for academic rigor. A newly-fashioned Oklahoma alternative would not enjoy that status. Successful performance on AP courses and tests enables students not only to prepare for college by undertaking courses of the sort that they will encounter at the college level, but gives these students the opportunity to earn college credit—thereby expanding the options and opportunities they will have for higher education. For example, in my own experience the college credit from my AP courses enabled me to take a semester off in my sophomore year to travel in India with my family and still graduate on time. This experience not only changed my academic trajectory but deepened my understanding of alternative worldviews and cultures in ways that have had a lasting impact on my life.

Part of the reason AP courses can confer college credit and hence provide these opportunities is because the curriculum and learning objectives laid out by the AP program reflect well what experts in the represented disciplines have recognized to be a sound college-level introduction to those disciplines. The motive for HB 1380 springs, on the contrary, from ideology—and in effect is advocating that a course structure which reflects the recommendations of experts in the field of American history be replaced by a course structure that reflects a specific ideological understanding of the American story. In other words, the motive is to render Oklahoma’s high school history classes less academically credible, less scholarly, but more effective at reinforcing a preferred worldview.

Even if many legislators do not see it in these terms, no one can reasonably expect colleges and universities to see it any other way. Hence, no one can reasonably expect colleges and universities to recognize the proposed Oklahoma alternative to AP History the way that they do the AP course. In short, were this legislation to pass, it would impose a handicap on all Oklahoma students pursuing college careers. The imposition of such handicaps is the opposite of what a state legislator should be doing. It shamefully prioritizes ideological agendas over the welfare of Oklahoma’s young people.

There is a dangerous tendency for those at the political and ideological extremes to confuse balance for bias. When one is prejudicially wedded to a particular worldview and narrative, the open and critical inquiry essential for sound academic scholarship can be misperceived as biased simply because it fails to prejudicially endorse the favored worldview and narrative over defensible alternatives. If we allow HB 1380 to pass unchallenged, my deepest worry is that it will strike a blow against sound academic scholarship in the state of Oklahoma.

Please do what you can to fight this bill.

Same-Sex Marriage in Oklahoma (!!!)...and Gov. Mary Fallin's Response

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court refused to take up an appeal of a lower-court ruling that declared Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. This paved the way for same-sex marriage here in Oklahoma. It was a joyful day for many couples, including a number of friends of mine, who suddenly had a right they'd been denied their entire lives: the right to marry the person they love in their home state.

In other words, for the first time in their lives, gay and lesbian Oklahomans found themselves free from the systemic legal discrimination that Oklahoma has enforced for its entire history (even writing it into its constitution in 2004).

And while friends of mine cheered and cried in joy, while many rushed off to get their marriage licenses and lined up in churches and courthouses to finally receive the legal recognition they'd always been denied, the Governor of our state, Mary Fallin, issued a public statement condemning the decision and its implications.

Earlier today, one of my friends said how grateful he is that his belief system doesn't force him "to stand against love and commitment." Apparently, Mary Fallin's belief system does. For this, I pity her. Consider how hard it must be to be forced by your beliefs to utter words of outrage and condemnation in the face of the joy and tears and hugs of people who love one another, who finally are free to express their love and commitment in the public way that the state has always made available--for everyone but them.

How sad it must be, to feel obligated to throw wet towels on love and laughter.

Here is the wet towel she threw:

"The people of Oklahoma have the right to determine how marriage is defined. In 2004, Oklahomans exercised that right, voting by a margin of 3-1 to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

"The will of the people has now been overridden by unelected federal justices, accountable to no one. That is both undemocratic and a violation of states' rights. Rather than allowing states to make their own policies that reflect the values and views of their residents, federal judges have inserted themselves into a state issue to pursue their own agendas.

"Today's decision has been cast by the media as a victory for gay rights. What has been ignored, however, is the right of Oklahomans – and Americans in every state – to write their own laws and govern themselves as they see fit. Those rights have once again been trampled by an arrogant, out-of -control federal government that wants to substitute Oklahoma values with Washington, D.C. values."

Fortunately, as wet towels go, this statement wasn't very wet--and it didn't have much effect on the celebrants.

Let's briefly consider the details of Mary Fallin's claims. As she sees it, Oklahoma should be free to continue to practice marriage discrimination against its gay and lesbian citizens, in defiance of the court ruling that doing so violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

She thinks it is the right of the people of Oklahoma, if the majority so chooses, to systematically exclude a portion of its population from access to the social goods of marriage. For her, this is a matter of "state's rights" and "democracy." Put simply, she thinks it is the right of the majority of the state to exclude select minorities from equal access to legally-conferred social goods, if that so happens to be in line with the majority's values.

But we live in a republic where democratic rule is not absolute. It is not absolute because the founders of this country recognized the importance of protecting individuals and minority groups from a distinct danger: the tyranny of the majority. What the majority of a state has the right to do is and has always been constrained by considerations of individual rights and the obligation of the government to preserve equality and liberty in the face of majorities that sometimes don't care about these things.

The question, then, is this: Does the majority in Oklahoma have the right to systematically exclude persons with a homosexual orientation from access to a valuable social good that the state provides to persons with a heterosexual orientation--namely, marital recognition for their intimate partnerships (and the attendant legal rights and protections).

Put another way, do the people of Oklahoma have the right to legally discriminate against gays and lesbians when it comes to marriage? (For those who are under the impression that there is no legal discrimination going on, see here).

This amounts to a question of justification. Legal discrimination can, in some cases, be justified. For example, the state can justifiably exclude the blind from access to driver's licenses. But legal discrimination is the kind of thing that requires justification. Absent a compelling state interest, legal discrimination violates both the political philosophy on which this country was built and the founding documents that express that philosophy.

The federal courts ruled, in effect, that the State of Oklahoma failed to meet this burden when it comes to its same-sex marriage ban. Hence, the ban was declared an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of persons to receive equal treatment under the law.

In the face of this, does Mary Fallin explain what she thinks is wrong with the federal court rulings? Does she build the case that legal discrimination is justified in this case?

She mentions the values of the people of Oklahoma, as if this were a sufficient basis for justifying the ban. But "majority values" in a state are precisely the sorts of things that cannot, by themselves, justify discriminatory treatment under the law. "Majority values" supported Jim Crow laws in most southern states. The majority can be wrong, its values unjust. If laws are discriminatory, then majority values have to give way. The alternative is to open the door to the untrammeled tyranny of the majority.

If the federal courts made a mistake, then we need to look at where the mistake lies, by looking at the substance of the court arguments. Does Fallin do this?

No. Instead, she throws a red herring. She asserts that the federal judges in question here--who were duly appointed according to the procedures written into federal law--are "unelected" and "accountable to no one." This sounds like she disapproves of the federal judicial system in this country, and thinks it should be radically restructured.

But even if she's right--even if there are good reasons to be unhappy with the design of our federal judicial system--why is that relevant in this case? Does she think the purported flaws in the federal judicial system have compromised the soundness of the ruling against Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban? If so, she needs to show that this is so. Simply calling the federal judges "arrogant" and "out-of-control" shows us nothing--except that Mary Fallin can fling put-downs.

If you want to show that a flaw in the federal judicial system has compromised one of its rulings, you show this by, first of all, showing that the ruling is unsound. She makes no effort whatsoever to do that. Hence, her vague unhappiness with the way that federal judges get their positions is nothing but irrelevant distraction.

Think of it this way: Our judicial system is at the front lines of our nation's founding commitment to ensure that legal discrimination is not taking place, or when it is, that there is a sufficiently compelling reason for it. Given this fact, Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban is clearly suspect. A court ruling against it sounds quite reasonable. If Fallin thinks that, despite this, the ruling is wrong, she needs to dig into the substance of the arguments and identify the flaws. Vague complaints and put-downs simply won't do.

What we have here is a fallacy taught in most freshman-level critical thinking classes: the ad hominem fallacy, which is roughly the mistake of attacking a person instead of their views and arguments. Instead of speaking to the substance of the federal rulings, Mary Fallin calls the judges names while vaguely deriding the system that put them in office.

We deserve better than freshman-level logical fallacies from out governor. Really, we do. Until we get it, those who are enjoying their new-found freedom to marry should treat Mary Fallin's statement for what it is: not so much a wet towel as a dirty dishrag.

"Hey, let's ban ALL marriage so we can keep the gays from having it!"

Faced with a federal ruling against Oklahoma's Constitutional same-sex marriage ban, some Oklahoma lawmakers have taken an attention-grabbing step: Propose eliminating legal marriage altogether in the state.

This is an interesting move, especially when one recalls that one of the key pieces of legislation blocking same-sex marriage rights for two decades was called the DEFENSE of Marriage Act.

The conservatives opposing extending legal marriage rights to same-sex couples have marshaled many arguments against it. Most of them, in my judgment, have been pretty awful. But the one that has always struck me as the most sensible, if ultimately unconvincing, is this one (reconstructed as charitably as possible):

Satanic Monuments and Church-State Separation: The Perspective of One Oklahoma Christian

Oklahoma made news this week when the Satanic Temple unveiled the design for its proposed monument to Satan, which it has sought a permit to build on the grounds of the Oklahoma capitol building. Here's what it would look like:



Kind of like a goat-headed Santa Claus, at least going by the looks on the children's faces. I'm not sure actual children would be quite so adoring.

In a tongue-in-cheek statement, the spokesperson and leader of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner), noted that the monument would be functional as well a symbolic, serving as a place "where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation" (although, as Robin Abcarian of the LA Times has noted, the monument might be more suitably used as a time-out chair by parents--a proposal that might cause me to rethink my view that time-out is generally preferable to corporal punishment).

The proposed monument is a response to the erection, in 2012, of a privately-commissioned Ten Commandments monument that is now on display on the Oklahoma capitol grounds. Doug Mesner has elsewhere acknowledged that the Satanic Temple was originally created to serve as "a 'poison pill' in the church/state debate. The idea was that Satanists, asserting their rights and privileges where religious agendas have been successful in imposing themselves upon public affairs, could serve as a poignant reminder that such privileges are for everybody, and can be used to serve an agenda beyond the current narrow understanding of what 'the' religious agenda is." Their current move is in the spirit of this founding mission.

The ACLU is currently suing to have the Ten Commandments monument removed--and the state of Oklahoma has put a "moratorium" on further religious monuments pending the outcome of the suit (there have, since the erection of the Ten Commandments monument, been requests from several other groups to erect monuments, including representatives of a major world religion, Hinduism). Put another way, the state has actually been able to use the ACLU lawsuit as a kind of cover--allowing them to reject other organizations' petititions for monument space.

But, eventually, the lawsuit will run its course. If the ACLU wins, the Ten Commandments will be taken down and the Satanists won't be able to erect their goat-headed Santa. But what happens if the ACLU loses?

There is, after all, an argument that could be made that keeping the Ten Commandments monument does not violate the establishment of religion clause in the Constitution. If the monument is treated as an historically significant symbol of the rule of law, apart from its religious content, there might be an argument for saying that the state of Oklahoma is not violating church/state separation by allowing a private group to erect the monument. This, in fact, seems to be the line that supporters of the current monument are taking.

But the state could make this case for preserving the monument only if it were equally open to erecting other such law-symbolizing monuments, and only if it adopted religion-neutral procedures for deciding which such symbolic monuments to erect. That is, they'd need to make decisions about monuments with no favoritism based on the religion of the monument sponsors and no favoritism based on the sectarian religious messages symbolically endorsed by the monument itself--and with a commitment to even-handedness in the implied message that the resultant mix of symbolic monuments conveys.

If the State of Oklahoma wants to pursue that course, they might win. And they might even avoid having to put up the proposed Satanic monument, since it is not overtly a symbol of the rule of law. But the Satanic Temple folks have proven themselves clever enough that they could quite readily revise their proposed monument to reflect the Satanic Temple's attitude towards laws.

And, in fact, the Satanic Temple does seem to have a law-and-order perspective that they want to bring into public conversation. Speaking of the Satanic Temple's relationship to Anton LaVey, author of the "Satanic Bible," Mesner had this to say:

LaVey’s rhetoric tended toward Social Darwinistic Police State politics. Since 1995, violence in the United States—and, in fact, the world over—has been in decline, and we’re now in a position to evaluate what’s working for us, and where we went wrong previously. Certainly, a strong and effective police presence is a contributing factor, but we also find that autocratic governments breed social violence. We also find that Social Darwinism, interpreted in brutal, strictly self-interested terms, is counter-productive, and based on a simplistic misinterpretation of evolutionary theory. We do better when we work in groups, where altruism and compassion are rewarded. We are social animals. That said, however, I believe in a system that runs meritocratically. Also, revenge is a natural impulse, without which justice would never be served. We should do our best to mitigate the pain of those who are suffering, whoever they are—but also be diligent to punish the misdeeds of those who behave unjustly to those around them.

According to Mesner, the Satanic Temple does not embrace Satan as a literal being, but as a symbol wedded to an atheistic worldview. Satan names "a rebel angel defiant of autocratic structure and concerned with the material world," and this serves as an apt metaphor for a certain attitude towards political freedom and atheism, one that could be symbolically represented in a way that would likely meet the requirements for a monument on the Capitol grounds.

In other words, even if the particular monument proposal currently offered up by the Satanic Temple could be rejected in a manner consistent with church-state separation (while still preserving the Ten Commandments monument), it doesn't follow that the State of Oklahoma is safe from Satanic monuments.

Put more simply: If the state really wants to fight for the Ten Commandments monument in a manner consistent with church/state separation, it opens a big door. And while space limitations may give the state some leeway to choose among proposed monuments, the mechanisms whereby such choices must be made would be fraught with complications, potentially unsavory outcomes, and dangers of future lawsuits. Not to mention an aesthetic mess as rival groups clamor to install their goat-Santas and Flying Spaghetti Monsters on the Capitol grounds.

I'm a fan of the Ten Commandments. But I'm also a fan of church/state separation. The constitutional prohibition against state sponsorship of a particular religion is a promise to every religious and non-religious community in the country. It is a promise against having our religious freedom curtailed by the demands of a different religion that has come to enjoy theocratic control. It is a promise of a level playing field, in which all of us are afforded the freedom to live out our own comprehensive conception of the good life in a manner consistent with everyone have the same opportunity.

Allowing the Ten Commandments onto the grounds of the state capitol--unless it is done in a manner that would also allow the Satanic Temple to erect their own symbol of law--threatens that promise. But any threat to that promise is a threat to those of us who want to live a religious life informed by our understanding of the Ten Commandments. It threatens us because state sponsorship of religion may not always sponsor a religion supportive of the practice of our own.

Pursuing a policy that is both consistent with the promise of church/state separation and allows for the continued presence of the Ten Commandments monument is a kind of quagmire, one in which the Ten Commandments are lost, figuratively and literally, amidst the clutter on the Capitol lawn.

Far better, in the end, for those of us who care about the Ten Commandments to honor them on private ground.

What do identical twins have to do with Oklahoma's Personhood Bill?

A lot, actually. The process of twinning may pose one of the clearest grounds for challenging the proposed legislative assertion that personhood begins at conception.

In fact, the philosopher who is arguably the most important philosophical defender of the pro-life position, Don Marquis, has argued that his case against abortion does not apply prior to implantation--precisely because of the twinning issue. And the reasoning here (which has been laid out by a number of philosophers, including Peter Singer) has clear implications for Oklahoma's so-called Personhood Bill.

Since I've talked about the Personhood Bill on this blog, I thought I'd spend a few moments connecting the dots between this bill and some of the philosophical arguments that relate to it. Let's start with Don Marquis's anti-abortion argument.

Marquis recognizes that there are enormous problems in making one's moral case about abortion rest on the question of personhood. We simply don't have a clear enough understanding of personhood to do that. So, instead, Marquis begins by asking what is wrong with killing adults. What makes homocide so presumptively seriously immoral? His answer is this: it deprives someone of the future they would otherwise enjoy. And not just any future. It deprives them of a certain kind of future--what we'll call a human future.

But if the chief wrong-making property of killing an adult human being is that it deprives the individual killed of a human future, that immediately motivates Marquis's key question: What kind of future does a fetus have?

A human one, of course. All of us started out as fetuses. And every human fetus is on a developmental trajectorty to become "one of us," and as such has a future like ours. And this means that killing a fetus has the same wrong-making property that killing an adult has.

Now there are various ways to object to Marquis's argument, but the one I want to focus on--the one that's interested me the most--has to do with identity over time. If you kill me, you deprive me of my future--the future I'd otherwise have. There is, in other words, a victim here. Someone who is being deprived of something they'd otherwise enjoy. And in order for there to be a victim, the one who enjoys the future in question has to be the very same individual as the one who is killed. Marquis's argument here depends on positing identity over time. The question is this: At what point does the organism who possesses a future like ours come into existence?

I'm inclined to say that this question is related to personhood (I've made an argument to this effect in conference presentations and have been working on a journal article on the topic). A necessary condition for A and B being the exact same individual is that A and B are essentially the same kind of thing. Since a person is an essentially different kind of thing than a corpse, the body that remains after I die won't be me. The question is when, on the other end of the course of my life, I came into being. I think the answer is this: whenever the biological organism developing in my mother's womb became a person.

And since the notion of personhood is difficult to explicate in uncontroversial terms, it follows that the question of when I came to be is a vexed one.

Marquis disagrees (and has expressed this disagreement in an e-mailed critique of my conference paper). He thinks that what is essential to me is not my personhood, but my status as a living human organism. So, on his view, when the living human organism came to exist, I came to exist (even if my personhood only came later). Given this view of things, Marquis thinks he can sidestep the vexing question of personhood and still argue that abortion is presumptively wrong.

But despite our differences on this issue, he and I would agree, I think, that if the organism has not yet come to exist, then neither has the person. And if the person comes to exist at conception, so does the organism.

Here is where Oklahoma's Personhood Bill becomes relevant. The Oklahoma state legislature is, in effect, poised to declare that the organism identical with me comes into existence at conception (and that this organism is a person to boot). According to this law, I came into existence the moment my father's sperm fertilized my mother's egg. I am identical with that zygote--we are the same individual at two different stages of development. Likewise, my student, "Tammy," is the same individual as the zygote from which she developed. And her sister, "Bri," is the same individual as the zygote from which she developed.

If this is true, then each of these zygotes would have been deprived of its future--a human one--had it been killed.  But even Don Marquis argues that this can't be.

And why not? Here's where twinning poses a problem. The problem is born out of what logicians call "the transitivity of identity." It's a basic logical rule that goes like this: If A=B and B=C, then A=C. In terms of individual organisms, if A is the very same individual as B, and B is the very same individual as C, then A is the very same individual as C.

So let's apply this rule to my student, Tammy, and her sister, Bri. As mentioned above, according to the Personhood Bill Tammy has to be conceived (pun intended) as the very same individual as the zygote from which she developed; and Bri has to be conceived as the very same individual as the zygote from which she developed. But Tammy and Bri are identical twins, identical in the sense of emerging from the same fertilized egg or zygote. According to the Oklahoma Personhood Bill, Tammy would have to be conceived as identical with that zygote, and Bri would have to be conceived of as identical with that zygote. By the rule of transitivity of identity, Tammy and Bri are the same person.

But they're not. Tammy greets me enthusiastically whenever we pass each other on campus. Bri has no idea who I am. I've seen them walking down the hall side-by-side, and I can assure you that they're not merely different people, but physically distinct biological organisms.

Marquis follows up this line of argument with another one: Much of the early "conceptus" (the product of conception) develops into what, later in pregnancy, is the placenta and other extra-embryonic structures(amniotic sac, umbilical cord) rather than any part of the fetus. These considerations, along with certain others, drive Marquis to the conclusion that the human organism comes on the scene only after implantation, when the embryo begins to differentiate itself from the extra-embryonic structures. This is still, of course, very early in pregnancy--usually before the person even knows they're pregnant; certainly before most abortions are performed. But not at conception.

If you embrace the Personhood Bill, you embrace the idea that I was a person when my father's sperm met my mother's egg--and hence that the organism that is me came into existence at that point. But holding that the organism exists at conception leads to absurd results in twinning cases; and there are important developmental milestones (the differentiation of embryo from the extra-embryonic structures being a crucial one) that could readily be understood as the point at which the organism emerges without leading to such absurd results.

In short, there are good philosophical reasons not to hold that the fertilized egg is a person--even if, like Marquis, we maintain that the fetus is a potential person (at least) by the time most abortions are being contemplated; and even if we hold, like Marquis, that being a human organism that is potentially a person means that killing it deprives it of a future like ours and so is presumptively very seriously wrong.

You can, in conclusion, take a strong stand against abortion without embracing this Personhood Bill. And the philosophical reasons not to regard the fertilized egg as a person are, to my mind, quite strong. In my last serious post on this subject, I argued that legislative fiat is not the best way to try to settle an essentially philosophical dispute. The kinds of arguments offered here constitute a better approach...and even the arguments of a well-known philosophical opponent of abortion speak against the currently proposed legislative pronouncement.

Personhood Bill--New Developments

As reported on the Daily Show, there have been some new developments relating to Oklahoma's so-called "Personhood Bill," which I've talked about before on this blog. Check out the report here:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Bad Oklahoma Bills: Personhood by Legislative Fiat

Okay—very quickly now: Personhood. What is it?


I ask because here in the great state of Oklahoma, the Senate has passed—and the House is preparing to vote on—legislation (SB 1433, the so-called "Personhood Act") that essentially declares a fertilized human egg to be a person. If this bill passed, what would the legislature be declaring?

All of us agree, I assume, that you and I and other adult human beings are persons. And I also suppose we agree about other things. For example, were there such alien beings as Klingons or Wookies, they’d be persons too, even if not biologically human ones. Traditional Christians believe that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son are all persons—although only the last of them can have a claim on being human.

Personhood is not a biological category, not determined by species membership. To be alive isn’t sufficient to be a person (mosquitoes are alive, but I’d defy you to call one of them a person). To concede that human life begins at conception is thus not to concede that personhood does. To be a cell with a full complement of human DNA in its nucleus isn’t sufficient to make one a person (if so, I would have just scratched a bunch of persons off my face).

Were I to try to offer a rough idea of what we are referring to when we use the word “person,” it would be this: “Person” names the kind of being that you and I and our neighbors most essentially are. Personhood is an essential property the possession of which lends to us the kind of moral standing we have in relation to one another, a moral standing that imposes demands on others to respond to us with a certain basic level of respect.

As such, the nature of personhood is one of those philosophical issues that straddles the intersection of ethics and metaphysics. The question is so vexing that philosophers who have written about the ethics of abortion have routinely sought to sidestep the question by granting the opposing side’s assumptions about the personhood of the fetus. While a kind of continuity exists between a fertilized egg and the child that eventually develops, this continuity isn’t enough to settle the question of whether a fertilized egg is a person—because it’s quite possible for some kind of continuity to underlie an essential change. When I die, there will be a kind of continuity between the body I have now and the corpse that will be there then. But at death an essential change will have taken place. The corpse that remains isn’t a person—and as such, in an important sense, it isn’t me. Likewise, until we know what defines personhood, we can’t say whether that fertilized egg from long ago with which I enjoy a kind of physical continuity was in fact me, or whether an essential change happened somewhere further along in the gestation process.

In important ways, our understanding of what makes you and me persons will depend on how we answer some very hard questions about reality. The philosopher Mary Ann Warren famously tried to characterize personhood in terms of the possession of some significant subset of a cluster of properties—including such things as consciousness, reasoning ability, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness. Warren isn’t sure which of these is required for personhood, but she is confident that if none of these things are present, then we don’t have a person.

I suppose that if you’re a reductive materialist, then something like Warren’s definition of personhood--in terms of a set of functioning capacities or powers--will be what you’ll have to go with. And so, if you think the fundamental nature of reality is what the reductive materialists take it to be, you’d also be likely to conclude that a fertilized egg is not a person. If, by contrast, you think that mind isn’t reducible to matter, and that having a mind is essential to being a person—if, for example, you believe that to be a person requires the possession of something we call a “soul” that isn’t merely an emergent property of one’s physiology—you’d be less enamored with Warren’s approach to characterizing persons. You might then think that having a soul of a certain kind is sufficient to being a person, even if limitations in one’s body might prevent the soul from exercising those powers that are natural to it. The absence of discernible capacities of the sort Warren lists might, in that case, not rule out a claim to personhood.

Of course, belief in a soul leaves unanswered the question of when the soul comes on the scene. If you're a mind-body dualist, the presence of a physically human organism is not guarantee of the presence of a mind.

And there are a range of interesting alternatives to reductive materialism and dualism. The point is simply this: The issue of who counts as a person and why is bound up with questions having to do with the very nature of reality itself. So, to decide who qualifies as a person, we simply need to figure out the fundamental nature of reality. No wonder so many philosophers in the abortion debate try to sidestep the personhood issue!

Put simply, the question of who qualifies as a person is one of the most difficult philosophical questions you can find. And I don’t think that’s the sort of question that can or should be settled by a vote of the state legislature.

It is true, of course, that we have to make policy decisions in the face of all sorts of uncertainty. But the framers and supporters of SB 1433 are insisting that by itself it establishes no explicit policy requirements. It simply declares that the status of personhood begins at conception.

In effect, then, this is an attempt to legally settle a question about what is the case, as opposed to implementing a policy that reflects our uncertainty about what is the case. It seeks by legal fiat to tell us to operate as if there is no uncertainty. Good legislation acknowledges where uncertainty exists and looks for the best ways to reflect that uncertainty in the contours of our laws and collective practices. By that measure, SB 1433 is, simply put, bad legislation.

Bad Oklahoma Bills, Part 2: An Excuse to Talk About Tenure

In my series on “bad bills” submitted to the Oklahoma legislature this legislative season, it would be remiss to leave out one that touches close to home: Republican Corey Holland’s bill, HB 2598, which would abolish the institution of tenure at state colleges and universities (at least for new hires).

From the little I've been able to find on the issue that speaks to Holland's motivations, it appears that Holland is worried about college and university faculty who have light teaching loads but do no research (and are poor teachers in any event), take home big salaries, and can’t be fired because they have tenure. That is, he invokes the tradition bogey of tenure opponents: the lazy professor sitting in his cushy job, doing little to nothing and getting paid a hefty sum for it. To this he adds a concern about students. He claims universities exist for the sake of students ("not faculty"), and that the institution of tenure does the students a disservice by lining the pockets of tenured professors who don’t contribute to their education.

There are oodles of problems here. First of all, the bill is premised on some false assumptions about what actually happens in colleges and universities when it comes to the assesment of tenured faculty. Second, Holland's case for the bill is premised on a mischaracterization of the mission or purpose of institutions of higher education, especially universities. Third, Holland has no clear sense of how academic freedom and the tenure system that protects it relate to the purpose of a university. Fourth, Holland has no clear understanding of how tenure actually works to prevent the "lazy professor" cliche of which he is so worried. I will consider each of these issues in turn.

Existing Post-Tenure Faculty Review Processes

First, Holland does not seem to be aware of the rigorous post-tenure review processes that are in place in Oklahoma colleges universities, or the fact that while tenure guarantees due process before someone is terminated, it is not a guarantee of continued employment. Tenured faculty can be fired, but only if their performance can be shown to be substantially deficient (not for unspecified reasons or vague considerations that could obscure politically motivated employment decisions such as an authority feeling threatened by the critical arguements). Furthermore, evidence relevant to determinations of deficiency are constantly being collected.

Speaking for OSU specifically (although other colleges and universities have similar policies), every course that every professor teaches is reviewed by the students at the end of the term using evaluation forms that solicit both quantitative and qualitative feedback. In many if not most departments, untenured faculty are additionally evaluated by classroom visitations from tenured faculty. All faculty are subjected to yearly review by their department head in terms of research, teaching, and service work, and faculty performance in each area is “graded” on a scale from inadequate to highly meritorious. These Assessment and Development reviews serve as the basis for determinations of raises—and there are no cost of living raises. You get a raise only based on merit, which means that to keep up with inflation you have to perform above and beyond the minimum requirements of the job.

Furthermore, OSU has a cumulative post-tenure review process (as does OU, the other major state university in Oklahoma). Every five years the faculty member’s total body of work is assessed as a whole for the purpose of identifying any substantial deficiencies, and if deficiencies are found a corrective plan is implemented. Failure to follow the plan can trigger the process whereby a tenured faculty member loses his or her job.

In short, Holland seems to have no comprehension of the scope and systematic character of the evaluations that college and university faculty undergo, formally and repeatedly, after earning tenure. It's true that once you have tenure you cannot simply be fired at will. You have more job security than is typical in business. The granting of tenure is a contract in which termination requires compelling evidence of incompetence, dereliction of duty, criminal behavior, or the right sort of financial necessity. But in exchange, faculty are subject to a level of ongoing, formal, systematic scrutiny that is rarely seen in other occupations. 

The Purpose of the University

Another false assumption Holland makes is that public higher education’s mission is mainly to teach a range of subjects to students--and that, as such, a professor is first and foremost a kind of teacher. As he puts it, “Colleges and universities exist for the benefit of the students not the professors.”

Now teaching is a very importand dimension of a university and a professor's job, but to define the mission of a university in terms of teaching mischaracterizes its more comprehensive function. Universities are centers of scholarly research, humanistic and artistic creativity, and critical (but constructive) reflection on social norms, practices, and institutions. They are places where such scholarly and creative endeavors are pursued by the most talented and innovative faculty that the university can attract, and the fruits of their work and learning are disseminated to the broader public—in part by enrolling and educating students, but also by reaching out in various ways to the broader community and bringing their expertise to bear on issue of public concern.

In the original conception of the university, it was an institution where students who wanted to become scholars could go in order to essentially apprentice themselves to established scholars. Apprenticeship is not quite the same as classroom teaching. For an apprenticeship to exist, the teacher/mentor has to actually be an active practitioner of what the apprentice seeks to master.

An apprentice blacksmith doesn't apprentice himself to someone whose profession is teaching; he apprentices himself to a professional blacksmith who also teaches. Likewise in the various fields of academia, the profession of the apprentice's mentor is to be a practitioner of the scholarly discipline that the apprentice seeks to master. The apprentice learns the discipline by working with a practitioner, by being given the chance under the practitioner’s supervision and critical guidance to try his or her own hand at doing the kind of work that the practitioner engages in.

This vision remains clearly in place at the graduate level, where graduate students learn to be philosophers or historians or research biologists or mechanical engineers by working with accomplished philosophers, historians, research biologists, and mechanical engineers--professionals who are busy doing philosophy, history, biology, and mechanical engineering. This same vision also remains in place in a more attenuated way in relation to undergraduate students who major in a given field.

But the scope of faculty responsibility has expanded beyond this role of active-scholar-mentoring-apprentice-scholar (and rightly so, I think, but I won't go into that here). Now, faculty are called upon not merely to do scholarship and take on apprentices, but to teach the basics of their discipline to those who have no intention of becoming apprentices but who would benefit from a broad, general understanding of a diversity of disciplines. In this capacity, they are acting mainly as teachers of philosophy, history, etc., as opposed to operating mainly as philosophers, historians, etc. But they remain more than teachers of the discipline. They are also practitioners of it. In fact, the university is built around the idea that best teacher in a given field, at least at the level of higher education, is a practitioner.

The point is that Holland is formulating his legislation without any clear sense of what colleges and universities are about. To regard the faculty as teachers by profession is to miss something important. The members of the philosophy faculty, for example, are philosophers by profession--but philosophers who teach. They teach about their profession to those who are interested, and they take on apprentice philosophers at various stages of development. Likewise for historians and biologists and mechanical engineers.

To summarize, a university is a center for scholarship, research, and original creative and critical work in humanistic and artistic fields. Faculty are practicing scholars, researchers, artists, etc., who teach others about what they do in addition to producing original work in their field. Universities are centers not only for teaching about but also for expanding human knowledge and wisdom and for producing creative and critical works of diverse kinds. They are centers for intellectual pursuits that often challenge existing ways of doing things, existing cultural presuppositions and standards.

The importance of academic freedom—and the role of tenure in preserving such freedom—is best understood in the light of this understanding of what universities and colleges are about. Insofar as Holland displays no understanding of this sort, it is no surprise that he displays no appreciation for academic freedom or the tenure system that furthers it. But that is the issue I want to explore here.

Tenure and Academic Freedom

Academic freedom refers to the substantial freedom of the scholar to develop a comprehensive scholarly program in the light of his or her own interests, passions, and commitments, without the range and substance of that scholarship being restricted by the fear of termination. The heart of any comprehensive scholarly program is the scholar’s research; hence, in its essence academic freedom entails that there are no restrictions on the direction or focus of a scholar’s research.

But a comprehensive scholarly program includes not only research, but also teaching and community outreach activities that are integrated with and complementary to that research. A true scholar’s research shapes his or her teaching; and insofar as much scholarship has implications for public life, the best scholars are often vitally engaged in civic discourse, public policy decisions, community service activities, etc. In fact, the relevance and importance of scholarship depends on its capacity to reach beyond the “ivory tower” and into the world, via the classroom and public outreach. Thus, the scholar’s academic freedom, to be authentic, must extend into these areas as well. The best scholars convey their research findings in their teaching and pursue the practical implications of that research in public life. Academic freedom entails that they be free to do these things without risk of termination.

The crucial importance of preserving and promoting academic freedom cannot be underemphasized. Academia is, in its purpose and mission, the place in which scholarly and artistic excellence, in all its rich diversity, is valued and promoted for its own sake. Originality and creativity are crucial components of such excellence, and guarantees of academic freedom are essential for fostering this creativity and originality.

One reason why this is so is because academic creativity and originality is often bound up with an openness to criticizing the status quo. Academia is often if not usually the primary institution within society that operates as society's "gadfly"--the prod that discourages complacency and encourages critical reflection on existing social practices. But as demonstrated by Socrates, the original "gadfly," this role can produce enemies among the beneficiaries of the status quo--namely those in positions of power. If faculty can be fired for the substance of what they say and the uncomfortable social implications of their research, then soon enough only those without the courage to serve the "gadfly" role will remain in the academy. Not only will this undercut an important social function of academia, but it will diminish academic creativity in general. Creativity depends on the willingness to push against existing boundaries, and tenure is a tool for keeping such creativity alive.

In sum, one dimension of academic freedom—and the version that typically receives the most attention—is the freedom to pursue work that may be unpopular with established authorities or the broader public without fear of being terminated. Without such freedom, fewer scholars would dare pursue the kind of boundary-challenging research that is often a prelude to the most important intellectual developments. Scholars won’t risk critically examining the assumptions that underlie existing social practices if doing so leads to conclusions likely to be unpopular with the wider public or their leaders.

But with respect to promoting academic innovation, there is another dimension of academic freedom that deserves attention as well: the freedom to risk the pursuit of ground-breaking research that might not bear fruit, or whose fruits might not be immediately appreciated. Very often, the ground-breaking research that has the highest payoffs when successful also has the greatest chance of proving unsuccessful. Furthermore, even when such research generates important results, it may take time for the value of these results to be understood and embraced within a discipline (especially if accepting the results would force a paradigm-shift within the discipline).

Such research, in short, faces a higher risk of not finding the level of peer recognition that more modest research enjoys, at least within a short time frame (say, six or seven years). This is why many scholars wait to pursue this kind of potentially momentous work until after they've received tenure. Scholars who, in order to keep their jobs, must show a consistent level of research productivity as measured by publication in peer-reviewed outlets, and who cannot afford to wait a dozen years for their insights to be appreciated (because they are likely to have lost their job in the meantime), are far less likely to pursue the riskier but more important and potentially ground-breaking lines of research.

There is a reason why, prior to tenure, scholars are measured in terms of their capacity to produce work that is well-received within their discipline. That, after all, is an important preliminary measure of a scholar’s promise. Universities are therefore prepared to limit the academic freedom of scholars for a short time (six or seven years) for the purposes of ensuring that these scholars are capable of meeting the standards of success that currently prevail in their discipline.

But giving scholars the freedom after tenure to pursue research that risks not being well-received is equally important for the sake of promoting intellectual excellence. If continued employment after tenure is made contingent on producing a steady stream of scholarly work that is generally well-received within the discipline, few will risk the kind of paradigm-shattering scholarship of which greatness is made. In a university where drops in scholarly productivity (as measured by conventional standards) pose a risk of termination, there will admittedly be fewer incompetent scholars on the faculty. But there will also be fewer great ones. Perhaps worse, some of the greatest scholars, who brilliance defies conventional measures of competence, and who might one day help to redefine those very measures, will be prematurely fired before their greatness is appreciated.

The best way to promote genuine scholarly excellence is therefore to hold scholars to conventional standards for a probationary period, temporarily limiting academic freedom for the sake of being able to evaluate the capacity of scholars to work to conventional standards. But once this probationary period ends, these restrictions of academic freedom must be lifted. If not, the university imposes constraints on scholarly creativity and originality that seem to be a recipe for institutional mediocrity. There is a reason why the tenure system, in which a probationary period is followed by the conference of a strong presumption of continued employment (barring evidence of substantial deficiency in meeting basic job requirements), has become the dominant model around the world. It has become dominant because it has proved through the generations to be the very best way to promote academic excellence.

Creating the Self-Motivated Academic
Speaking of academic excellence, there is another way tenure works to promote this besides giving proven scholars the freedom to experiment and explore new territory that might not bear fruit. Specifically, the entire academic system, of which the tenure process is an integral part, helps to cultivate the kind of inner virtues, the dedication and self-starting motivation, that is essential for genuine academic achievement.

Here’s how it works: First, you make those who want to work in the profession go through years and years of schooling in which they are tested over and over (and over and over) again by experts in the field, have to create a major original contribution to the field called a dissertation, have no guarantee of a job at the end of it, and if they do find a job won’t be paid nearly as much as less-educated people in the private sector. This step in the process helps to make sure that only those who have strong internal motivation to work in the field—those who do it out of love—end up in the running for academic careers.

Next, those who do find entry level positions in academia have seven years to prove themselves worthy of the chief “carrot” the academy offers (in lieu of high salaries): tenure. To earn tenure, they have to show a consistent record of achievement as a teacher and scholar. They don’t just have to pass muster with their immediate colleagues. No. Their scholarly work is sent to a slate of chosen experts in the field (from other institutions) to be evaluated, and those third-party evaluations play a crucial role in the tenure decision. To earn tenure, you must prove yourself to be really, really good at what you do—and if you don’t succeed in doing this, you are not only out of your current job, but you’re unlikely to get another job in academia. You will have devoted years—even decades—of your life to a career path that you must now leave behind.

This process ensures that those who do get tenure are not only qualified and knowledgeable in their chosen field. It also ensures that before they ever get tenure they will have developed solid work habits, inner motivations, and deep personal investment in their chosen field. In other words, they will be people who for reasons having little to do with external reward are deeply committed to pursuing excellence.

Before getting tenure, I wrote dozens of professional articles, but I didn’t write my first book until after I got tenure. It was an enormous investment of time and energy. So why did I do it?

I wrote my second book after I was promoted to full professor. That’s the highest rank you can achieve in academia, and there really isn’t much in the way of promotion or raises you can enjoy after that. But I still wrote another book. Why?

Because I cared about the topics of those books. Because, based on my body of learning and intellectual training, I had something of significance to say about those topics. And because by the time I had tenure, I’d become one of those people who, when they care about a topic and have something significant to say about it, can’t rest until they’ve communicated that as clearly and rigorously as they can.

Science faculty develop habits of curiosity, skills in the laboratory, and deep intellectual investment in the controversies and puzzles that dominate the world of science. Creative writing faculty develop habits that drive them to obsessively craft their poetry or prose, to produce the best poems or stories they are able to produce.

You get the idea. This long vetting process described above—of which tenure and promotion is the capstone—shapes the character and passions of those who go through it. If they pass through it successfully, they don’t just become scholars and teachers and researchers in name. These things become a defining element of who they are. They become the kind of people who do this sort of work passionately, even compulsively.

There are, of course, exceptions—scholars who burn out, or who suffer something in their personal lives that impacts their professional performance. But in all the years I’ve been involved in academic life, I’ve met a bare handful who fit this description. And I have never, not once, personally met a tenured professor who fits the stereotypical “lazy professor” portrait that operates as the motivator for the kind of legislation Holland is proposing. The reason is clear: people who do a certain kind of work passionately, even compulsively, are the very opposite of lazy. And the tenure and promotion process is specifically designed to help build potential scholars into people who do that kind of work passionately, even compulsively (and to weed out those without the disposition to become such scholars). Those too strongly motivated by laziness just don’t make it through the tenure process.

And Representative Holland’s solution to the non-existent lazy professor problem? Eliminate the process that is responsible for the non-existence of the problem.

I suppose he imagines that fear of unemployment will then prevent the laziness he imagines to exist but which doesn’t really exist. Arguably, fear of unemployment can prevent laziness. So can inner drive and passion for what one is doing. And as motivators go, when it comes to the kind of work that scholars do, the evidence is overwhelming that intrinsic motivators--passion for what you're doing, the autonomy to choose and direct your own work, and the desire to build on your talents to achieve excellence--are far better at producing results. In fact, with the kind of work that scholars do, the evidence reveals that an emphasis of extrinsic motivators--"carrots and sticks"--actually interferes with higher accomplishment. You want higher accomplishment, you take carrots and sticks out of the picture (in the way that tenure does at least to an important extent) but give someone the freedom to autonomously choose meaningful, creative work that challenges them (as tenure gives scholars the academic freedom to do).

Skeptical? Just think about how much time people are willing to spend, with no compensation, engaging in the complex problem-solving and dexterity challenges we call "computer games." Or if that doesn't convince you, check out this compelling and engaging summary of current research in a TED talk by Dan Pink.

Tenure is a well-spring of intrinsic motivation for scholarly achievement. Holland wants to do away with it.

Bad Oklahoma Bills: Pursuing Inequality--even if it costs the state money and diminishes local liberty, because increasing inequality is apparently THAT important

It’s hard to keep up with all the bad bills introduced by members of the Oklahoma legislature. But, as a public service, I thought that in the next few posts I’d hit on a few of the biggest clunkers. In the first post of this series, I begin with a pair of bills introduced by the Republican state representative Mike Reynolds.


The first of Reynold’s disturbing bills, and the one that I think has received the most public attention, is HB 2195. Thankfully, it was just today effectively killed by a House committee, and for good reason. But it’s a shame that Oklahoma’s legislature needs to expend time and energy on bills such as this one.

This bill has been described as an effort to reinstate, in the Oklahoma National Guard, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays serving in the military--the policy that was recently repealed at the federal level. In fact, however, HB 2195 would apparently have gone further, permitting officials to questions soldiers about their sexuality and dismiss them based on what was learned. That is, it’s DADT without the “DA,” thereby allowing for witch hunts based on sexual orientation.

One's sexuality has no bearing as such on one’s ability to perform the duties of a soldier in the National Guard. What Reynolds was proposing, therefore, was to write unjustified discrimination into state law. He seems to thinks this is a good idea: legal discrimination that justifies firing people based on personal characteristics that don’t interfere with job performance.

The reason DADT was ultimately, finally repealed at the national level is because the obvious injustice of such discrimination finally won out over deep-seated anti-gay prejudice. But some have sought to justify the discrimination by arguing that private sexuality somehow is a relevant consideration for doing the kind of work that soldiers do. Usually, their argument invokes “morale.”

Now it is true that if a military organization is riddled with prejudice against a certain class of people, there can be problems if that class of people is allowed to serve. But surely the solution is not to pander to the prejudice—to legislate in favor of the “morale” of those who harbor prejudice against people fully capable of performing the job. If you have prejudices that interfere with your ability to work with people of a certain class, then you have a characteristic that interferes with your ability to do your job. Your prejudice interferes with your job performance, and you should be fired—not the person against whom your prejudice is directed.

It’s also worth noting that passage of this bill would have put the state National Guard at odds with federal level policy, jeopardizing millions in federal funding. Reynolds wanted so badly for Oklahomans to be able to unjustly discriminate against sexual minorities that he was willing to risk losing the state valuable resources for the sake of this cause.

Reynold’s other bad bill, HB 2245, is a bit less well-publicized and, as far as I know, has not yet been killed. Like HB 2195, this bill is also aimed at enabling discriminatory practices in government employment. That’s right: Reynolds is such a fan of engaging in discrimination that he wants to use his position as a state legislator to protect those who practice discrimination, rather than protecting their victims.

HB 2245 is written in response to recent efforts by local municipalities to include the protection of sexual minorities (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons) in their anti-discrimination ordinances. HB 2245 seeks to prevent such protections. The state government currently fails to mention LGBT public employees within its own anti-discrimination policies, so Reynolds’ bill works by prohibiting city and county governments from protecting from discrimination any group not explicitly protected at the state level. If passed, the bill would invalidate a number of existing local ordinances, including the one in Oklahoma City.

So, once again, Reynolds wants to protect the discriminator rather than the victim of unjust discrimination. That, after all, is what’s accomplished by HB 2245: existing policies protecting victims of LGBT discrimination are repealed and the world (or at least the state of Oklahoma) is made safe for those who want to discriminate.

And the discrimination in question here is clearly unjust, insofar as it makes private sexuality a criterion for employment—even though there is no good reason to think one’s private sexuality has any bearing on one’s capacity to fulfill the responsibilities of a city job. After all, no city job I know of requires the city employee to have sex with someone as part of their job duties. If makers of heterosexual pornography want to discriminate based on sexual orientation, I can see that being relevant. But last I checked, your ability to do the bureaucratic work of city government isn't a function of who you're attracted to sexually.

Furthermore, the majority of Oklahomans have long stood behind the conservative principle of limiting the authority of higher levels of government in order to maximize local autonomy. But passing this bill would be a precedent-setting expansion of the state’s power to intrude on local affairs. The key question is on what basis should higher levels of government have the authority to intrude on local autonomy?

HB 2245 answers this question in a way that, put bluntly, seems to be the very opposite of what makes sense. Local communities often have unique needs. This fact is best recognized when municipalities retain the right to construct policies that, while consistent with broad state requirements, can be tailored to meet local needs by going beyond what is mandated at the state level. HB essentially denies municipalities this right in the area of protecting threats to equality. I could see stepping in on local automony for the sake of promoting equality--but for the sake of inequality? Really?

I can only blink in mute astonishment.

Is Gingrich a Hypocrite? Should We Care? Some Reflections on Hypocrisy

It's a bit of an understatement to say that I’m not a fan of Newt Gingrich. But I’ll confess to feeling a pang of sympathy for him when I read about his recent exchange with Univision correspondent Jorge Ramos.

In that exchange, Ramos pushed Gingrich on the matter of Gingrich’s supposed hypocrisy, something Gingrich has been relentlessly accused of—by various media pundits and bloggers, students, academics, surfers, Chinese acrobats, perhaps a few dogs. The primary basis for the charge is that Gingrich led the charge against President Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinski sex scandal…while he was himself energetically pursuing his own extramarital affair. These hypocrisy accusations have gotten new life recently from the revelation—in an interview with Gingrich’s second wife—that around the time of the Lewinski scandal Newt approached his wife about an “open marriage,” presumably so that he wouldn’t have to give up either woman.

Gingrich deflected efforts at the South Carolina debate to confront him about his infidelities and supposed hypocrisy—by attacking those who would focus on such irrelevant concerns. Ramos, however, had more luck in engaging Gingrich on the issue last week at a forum in Florida. But before the charge of hypocrisy could even be leveled, Gingrich quickly stressed that his criticisms of Clinton weren’t about the affair as such, but about Clinton perjuring himself under oath.

Ramos doggedly pressed on with his line of questioning as if Gingrich hadn’t made this distinction. Three times, in fact, Ramos pushed the hypocrisy charge as Gingrich continued stressing that what he targeted Clinton for was not his infidelities but his felony perjury—a crime Gingrich stressed he had not committed.

Ramos essentially ignored the distinction Gingrich was making. The third time Ramos ignored Gingrich—saying that “people think that’s hypocritical to criticize President Clinton for doing the same thing that you were doing at the same time”—Gingrich snapped back with, “Okay, there is some place there where there’s a mental synapse missing.”

By that point, I wanted to say to Ramos the same damned thing.

Here’s the point: It is not hypocritical for someone with chronic infidelity problems to push for the impeachment of a sitting President if the reason is that the President committed felony perjury. To plow ahead as Ramos did, in the face of Gingrich’s explicit assertion that Clinton’s infidelity was not the issue—well, at best it seems bullheaded and evasive.

And Ramos is hardly alone. Gingrich has, essentially, offered two rebuttals to the argument that Ramos and others have been making: First of all there's the pre-emptive rebuttal, which he offered at the South Carolina debate: It doesn’t matter, it’s a distraction from the real issues that should define a campaign. Secondly, there's the substantive rebuttal offered to Ramos: He wasn’t guilty of hypocrisy in any event.

You don’t do anyone a service by simply ignoring these rebuttals and plowing ahead with the hypocrisy charge as if Gingrich had never opened his mouth.

So: Is Gingrich a hypocrite? And does it matter?

As to the second question, it’s important to be clear about something. Sometimes what hypocrites have to say is exactly right. If a pot calls the kettle black…well, if the kettle is black, then the pot got it right. That you’re being hypocritical doesn’t mean you’re wrong. So if there's a problem with hypocrisy, it isn't that it falsifies what the hypocrite is saying.

In fact, the ubiquity of human shortcomings means that anyone who preaches against moral failings--especially ones that involve falling prey to temptation--is bound to be a pot calling the kettle black. Does that mean no one should exhort us to resist various temptations on pain of hypocrisy?

Hardly. Real hypocrisy is more than just failing to live as you preach. Falling short of your own moral ideals isn't hypocrisy. It's humanity. Real hypocrisy involves a kind of self-righteousness in relation to what one is preaching against--a self-righteousness that invites others to abhor "those" people, people against whom the hypocrite hopes to present him- or herself in a favorable light. In other words, hypocrisy involves explicitly expressing and encouraging harsh judgments, punitive responses, and moral outrage against others who have behaved in a certain way—while seeking to avoid similar judgment in one’s own case (even though one has done the same sort of thing). In another variant, it involves making harsh judgments of people with whom one doesn't identify (such as candidates one doesn't like, or members of a different religion) while shielding from such judgment those with whom one identifies (even if they're guilty of the same thing.

Now suppose what you are preaching against is something you yourself have done in the past—but you explicitly disavow and condemn your past actions now. If, in fact, you really are reformed and you really don’t do that sort of thing anymore, we wouldn’t call you a hypocrite. Maybe we should call you a “remorseful moralizer” (there may be something troubling about moralizing in general, but not every case of moralizing is necessarily hypocrisy).

But suppose you adopt the attitude of a remorseful moralizer as a strategy for deflecting condemnation from the current you--in effect, trying to restrict that condemnation to the "past" you. Suppose you’re still just as bad as you ever were. Suppose you’re still a shameless womanizer with pathological infidelity problems—a “fornicator,” for short. You want to condemn fornication without tarring yourself (because you see an advantage to be gained from doing that), but there’s no hiding from your past fornication. Everyone knows about it. In that case, you might pose as a remorseful moralizer even though you’re not one. Instead, you’re a hypocrite.

And this example helps reveal why hypocrisy matters. Hypocrisy essentially involves misrepresentation. And it’s misrepresentation for a purpose—the purpose being to enjoy the benefits (whatever they might be) that come from condemning others while avoiding the costs of being condemned oneself. It is, in short, a kind of self-serving deception. A habitual hypocrite is, put bluntly, a selfish liar.

Of course, no one is fully defined by hypocrisy—no one is simply a hypocrite. But for some people, the propensity for hypocrisy is so much a part of their character that there is reason for us to be concerned about how extensively self-serving deceptiveness might shape their behavior (in, say, political office). On that level, the question of whether a person is guilty of hypocrisy—and how habitually—is indeed relevant in a Presidential candidate.

So: Is Gingrich a hypocrite? On this point, it’s important to remember that when Gingrich takes a strong stand on the campaign trail for “family values,” you can’t paint Gingrich as a hypocrite simply by dredging up past misdeeds—especially if he’s gone on record expressing remorse. Gingrich is putting himself out there as a remorseful moralizer. The question is whether this is an honest representation, or whether he is posing. It's only in the latter case that he's being hypocritical.

Along similar lines, the fact that Gingrich at one time sought an “open marriage” does not as such render hypocritical his current claims that same-sex marriage should be rejected because it violates the traditional “one-man/one-woman” model of marriage. After all, Gingrich might have undergone a profound change of heart. He might now look upon his past desire for an open marriage with horror. He might be deeply committed to the one-man/one-woman model now, even if he wasn’t then. In that case, he wouldn’t be a hypocrite—even though, of course, he’d still be deeply wrong in opposing marriage equality (and that’s a reason not to vote for him whether he’s a hypocrite or not).

Another thing to keep in mind: Even if Gingrich used to be a hypocrite, it doesn’t mean he is still a hypocrite. But a past legacy of hypocrisy is certainly admissible as evidence when trying to decide whether someone is a hypocrite now. Entrenched habits of character being hard to break, in the absence of clear evidence of character transformation it is often wise to be skeptical of someone who says, “But I’ve changed!” You don't go back to a wife-beater just on their say-so that they're no longer abusive. Likewise, you might not want to re-elect a chronic self-serving liar without clear evidence of a transformation.

So, in deciding whether Gingrich is hypocrite now, it will be helpful to take seriously his track record. But that goal is not served when people like Ramos throw out the hypocrisy label without considering the kinds of objections Gingrich offers. Taking a track recond seriously means honestly assessing it, which isn't served by ignoring objections. More significantly, Ramos's approach may lead many to pre-emptively dismiss the hypocrisy charge as nothing but groundless name-calling.

For a hypocrisy charge to be warranted, you have to demonstrate a conflict between what someone was preaching at a given time and what the person was doing at that time. And so, if Gingrich insists that in pushing for Clinton’s impeachment, it was all about perjury rather than infidelity, an astute journalist wouldn’t just keep plowing ahead with the same unmodified argument.

Suppose, however, that while Gingrich pursued impeachment based on the perjury charges (because those are the charges that would stick legally), he knew that the infidelity itself was what would have the most traction with the public—and so engaged in and encouraged moral grandstanding about Clinton's failures of moral character displayed by his sexual dalliances. If Gingrich had done that during the whole Monica Lewinski affair, he would have been deeply hypocritical then and a liar now.

So, did Gingrich engage in moral grandstanding about Clinton’s infidelity during the Monica Lewinski affair? Is that something he’s deceptively leaving out now, in order to avoid the hypocrisy charge? If so, that speaks to an ongoing pattern of deception and not just a past tendency towards hypocrisy. To be honest, my memory of those events is sufficiently hazy that while it seems to me that Gingrich did engage in such grandstanding, I can't swear to it. But a journalist has the resources to very readily determine the answer.

Speaking of lying, one could quite convincingly argue that no small measure of hypocrisy is displayed in taking a strong, self-righteous stand against lying under oath if, for example, you’ve just lied multiple times to the Congressional ethics committee in an attempt to get ethics violation charges against you dismissed. If you’ve been recently fined a whopping $300,000 for ethics violations that include deliberate deception aimed at deflecting an investigation of misconduct, there may be something hypocritical about leading the charge against someone else for doing the same sort of thing.

Maybe Gingrich can make a distinction here. I suppose, strictly speaking, lying your way out of an affair in a legal deposition isn’t exactly the same thing as lying your way out of an ethics violation in letters to the Congressional ethics committee. Legally, the two are different. Can hypocrisy concerns be derailed by appeal to such legal differences?

And for how long has the rhetoric of conservative “family values” shaped his political career? Was his rhetoric very much like it is now…back when he was cheating on his wives, divorcing them to marry different ones, asking for open marriages? If so, there is a pattern of hypocrisy here—and that pattern may lead us to justifiably ask whether anything has changed, whether his current thumping for family values is any less hypocritical today.

Again, my memory tells me that Gingrich has been thumping for family values in much the way he does now for a long while--but, again, a clear record of this (of the sort journalists could readily provide) would be much more helpful in substantiating hypocrisy charges that a bullheaded line of questioning that is so oblivious to Gingrich's rebuttal that even someone with no political sympathy for Newt wants to cheer when Newt spits a quip about missing synapses.

One final remark: Whether or not Gingrich is a hypocrite, anyone who has insisted of other politicians that their private sexual lives are highly relevant to assessing their suitability for political life would be courting hypocrisy if they treated Gingrich's blatant record of sexual infidelity and disregard for marital vows as politically irrelevant.

Keeping Oklahoma Safe from Islamic Law

For those of you who haven’t heard the news, legislators here in the great state of Oklahoma (apparently not wishing to be outdone by political weirdness in other states) have now approved a ballot measure that would amend the state constitution so as to prohibit judges from making rulings based on Islamic “Sharia” Law.

Although Muslims comprise less than 1% of the population of Oklahoma, and although Oklahoma is in the Bible Belt where the real risk is that Levitical Law will be enforced from the bench, and although there has never been even the remotest rumbling of a hint of a risk of Sharia law guiding judicial decisions in this state—despite all of this, it is apparently of vital significance for securing Oklahoma’s future that the state take a strong “pre-emptive” stand against Sharia law...apparently in order to discourage “liberal activists” from trying to legitimate it (since we all know how common it is for those ACLU liberals to try to circumvent church-state separation).

At first, of course, I found the whole thing absurd. Since there isn't even the remotest possibility that Oklahoma judges will be tempted to follow Sharia law from the bench, let alone think they can get away with it, it seemed to me that devoting a constitutional amendment to the issue was really just a way of expressing an ideological opposition to Islam. But as I think more about it, it occurs to me that the legislators responsible for this proposed constitutional amendment may be onto something after all.

Of course, there would be no risk of Sharia law guiding judicial decisions were one in a state where the principle of separation of church and state is strongly upheld. But maybe these legislators realize that Oklahoma is not such a state. Maybe they realize it because they are the very ones who have been laboring so long and hard to eviscerate this principle in the great state of Oklahoma, so as to better enable state legislators and judges to impose biblical morality on Oklahoma citizens.

And they are suddenly fearful that their achievements in this area come with a cost. With church-state separation out the window, what is to stop other religions from imposing their sectarian concept of justice on the people of Oklahoma? After all, only Christians should be free to force everyone to live by their sectarian principles. But since U.S. founding principles enshrine equality for all—including on the basis of religion—what happens when a state passes a constitutional amendment enshrining legal discrimination against gays and lesbians, even though such discrimination cannot reasonably be justified by any non-sectarian principle? What we have here is a state that has written legal discrimination into its constitution based on prevailing Christian doctrine--in other words, it has written into its constitution a practice that presupposes the legitimacy of imposing sectarian religious convictions on everyone regardless of their faith (or lack thereof). Because of this anti-gay constitutional amendment, the rejection of church-state separation has been implicitly written into the very constituition of the state of Oklahoma. And if that's the case, but there's still this impulse towards religious equality, what's going to stop those danged liberals from insisting that if Christians are free to use judicial power to impose their sectarian morality on everyone, then Muslims should be free to do the same?

While religious parity might be achieved by trying to restore a strong separation of church and state, doing so would impose inconvenient impediments on the efforts of Oklahoma Christians to pursue their God-given right to use the law to persecute gays and lesbians. While it is true that Sharia law would also call for the persecution of gays and lesbians, Oklahomans are firm in their commitment that when a sexual minority is to be subjected to discriminatory laws in the great state of Oklahoma, the discrimination should be justified by Bible quotes, not Koranic ones.

And even if the risk of the latter may seem low with such a tiny Muslim population in Oklahoma, one can never be too careful...especially now that the very President of the Unites States is a Muslim.

Oh, wait. Nevermind.