God and democracy

Posted on January 19, 2016 by David S. Meyer

The Occupation at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge continues at this writing, and Image result for oregon standoffwhatever local authorities and the FBI are doing to end the moment isn’t obvious or clear to those of us watching from afar. If there’s a plan, I don’t know what it is.

The Occupiers, however, have a plan, and it apparently comes from God.

At least some of them are operating on His direction.

Like the urban occupations in the fall of 2011 (Occupy Wall Street), the dramatic action has sucked into its wake all sorts of people with all sorts of claims. The New York Times reports finding individuals on site strongly opposed to Jews and/or Islam and/or gays, participants in nativist campaigns, anti-environmentalists, Patriot Militia, and gun rights fundamentalists. (The Anti-Defamation League has published a report detailing the political biographies of the known participants at Malheur, and it’s not a pretty picture: pretty much, it’s the full spectrum of the paranoid right, with a strong cadre of veterans from the Cliven Bundy stand-off last year.)

They don’t necessarily agree with each other on much more than antagonism toward the Federal government, nor is it clear that they trust each other much–just more than the government. Visible and apparently successful collective action is a magnet for people who want to be visible and apparently successful activists.

God may not be supporting all of them.

Although there is much talk from Ammon Bundy about securing the rights of the people to use their land, and to stand up for the Constitution, there’s not much clarity about just what these Occupiers want, what people they mean to represent, and how they make their own decisions. There has not been strong support locally, from conservative political leaders, or from other believers.

Unlike the hyper-democrats of Occupy Wall Street, the Malheurites haven’t developed a cumbersome, transparent, and largely ineffective way of making decisions. Divine guidance means that you don’t need–and shouldn’t trust–democracy. The lack of visible outside support just means that others don’t get it–or Him.

At Home of the Brave, Scott Carrier has posted a long interview with Brand Thornton, an Occupier who is forthcoming about how he and his colleagues are taking direction from a deity. People who are open to the Spirit recognize when it moves within others, and readily accede to someone who carries God’s word. Thornton reports that the Occupiers have a militarized surveillance and defense system worked out–and, understandably, won’t share many details. He offers somewhat more explanation of the textual support for their campaign on behalf of the people. Their efforts are based in the Constitution (divinely inspired) and scripture from the Doctrines and Covenants of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Please note that the leadership of the Mormon Church has forcefully and consistently condemned the Occupation. I would NOT call the Occupation an instance of Mormon terrorism, btw.

But opposition from the Church, local residents, or more vigorous readers of the Constitution really doesn’t matter if you feel–if you know–God is with you. With God, democracy isn’t a problem.

But religion and God’s will motivates many activists for all sorts of causes, from Dorothy Day refusing to participate in a civil defense drill in New York City to Eleanor McMullen turning up outside a women’s health clinic to counsel women who might consider abortions–vigorously.

How are we to know who God really supports?

Here’s a clue: since yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, we might recall that King himself was divinely inspired. His check on that inspiration was a steadfast commitment to nonviolence. He was willing to suffer–and die–for his beliefs, but not to kill or threaten others.

At the moment, the Occupiers at Malheur, weapons handy, are demonstrating a little less confidence in the Divine.

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Martin Luther King Day, 2016 (repost)

Posted on January 18, 2016 by David S. Meyer

(This is a repost of the MLKing Day holiday note.)

Martin Luther King died young enough and dramatically enough to be turned into an American hero, but it was neither his youth nor his death that made him heroic.

In his rather brief public life, beginning in Montgomery at 26, and ending with his assassination at 39, King consistently displayed rhetorical brilliance (on the podium and the page), strategic acumen, and moral and physical courage.

The effort to honor Martin Luther King with a holiday commemorating his birthday started at the King Center, in Atlanta, in the year after his assassination.  States began to follow suit, and by 1983, more than half celebrated King’s life with a day.  In that year, Ronald Reagan signed a bill making Martin Luther King day a national holiday expressing ambivalence, acknowledging that it was costly, and that King may have been a Communist.

The King holiday was about Martin Luther King, to be sure, but it was meant to represent far more than the man.  King stands in for the civil rights movement and for African-American history more generally.  I often wonder if the eloquence of the 1963 “I have a dream” speech winds up obscuring not only a man with broader goals, but a much more contested–and ambitious–movement.

The man and the movement are ossified into an iconic image, like a statue, which locks King and the movement into the politics of 1963-1965.  We accept King’s dream, that little children will play together, and that people will be judged by “the content of their character” (a favorite phrase on the right).

The image, like a statue, is available for appropriation to advocates of all political stripes, and the establishment of the holiday itself represents an achievement of the civil rights movement, winning the holiday if not broader economic and social equality.

Before the transformation of the man into an icon, King transformed himself from a pastor into an activist, a peripatetic crusader for justice.

But the pastor didn’t disappear; rather this role grew into something larger, as King himself transformed himself from a minister into a an Old Testament prophet, one whose primary concern was always the people on the margins, the widows and orphans, the poor and hungry.  In standing with those on the margins, King courageously used–and risked–the advantages of his privilege, pedigree, and education.  He also knew that he risked his safety and his life.

In his writing, King used his education and his vocation to support his political goals.  In the critically important “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he cited both the Constitution and the Bible in support of Federal intervention in local politics to support desegregation and human rights.  (We know that other activists now use the same sources to justify pushing the Federal government out of local politics.)

King explained that he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, because he had nonviolently defied local authorities in the service of higher laws, the Constitution and the Gospel.  This was not like making a provocative statement on one’s own [profitable] radio or television show.  There were real costs and severe risks.

King was never less than controversial during his life, under FBI surveillance during his political career, and vigorously criticized by opponents (for demanding too much and too strongly) and allies (for not demanding more, more vigorously).

When he was assassinated outside a Memphis motel in 1968, he was standing with sanitation workers on strike, straying from a simpler civil rights agenda.  He had also alienated some civil rights supporters by coming out, strongly, against the war in Vietnam.  And Black Power activists saw their own efforts as overtaking King’s politics and rhetoric.  By the time he was killed, Martin Luther King’s popular support had been waning for some time.

Posterity has rescued an image of Martin Luther King, at the expense of the man’s own broader political vision.

Ironically, in elevating an insurgent to a position in America’s pantheon of historic heroes, we risk editing out the insurgency.

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Keystone XL: what victory looks like

Posted on January 7, 2016 by David S. Meyer

With ice and glaciers melting across the Arctic, at least this one polar bear found a

comfortable place to rest on Pennsylvania Avenue. (Not really, that’s an activist in costume….)

Last November, President Obama (finally) announced a decision on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have connected Tar Sands in Alberta to refineries in the United States.  It was no, and it was a long time in coming.  The pipeline, first proposed roughly a decade ago, had been opposed by activists almost immediately.

Advocates on both sides inflated the importance of the issue, and environmental activists made stopping Keystone the keystone of a political strategy.  Climate change activists focused on Keystone, arguing that the health of the earth was best served by keeping a particularly dirty crude oil in the ground, and moving more quickly to different sources of energy. But most analysts said the practical impact of the pipeline on the production of greenhouse gases would be small. Activists along the route protested about the environmental fallout and disruption of largescale construction.

Refiners and producers supported the pipeline, which would speed the transport of energy to the United States. It would, they said, create thousands–even tens of thousands–of jobs. After construction, other analysts said, 50 might be a better estimate.

But the focus on Keystone was good for climate change activists, and writer and organizer Bill McKibben and 350.org realized this early on. While global climate change, international treaties, and long and complicated environmental processes are hard for most of us to get a handle on, new construction is tangible and seemingly tractable. Keystone became the non-negotiable demand around which all kinds of activists and Image result for Keystone protesters arrestedcampaign could unite. Activists lobbied on Capitol Hill and campuses, and protested along the proposed route and outside the White House. Leaders of environmental groups and celebrity activists got arrested, protesting Keystone, and scientist James Hansen made it a central point in his own campaigning.

Because the pipeline crossed national boundaries, the US State Department had the responsibility of weighing in, and it took years to complete a review. President Obama repeatedly delayed making a decision, trying to keep Keystone from becoming an election issue in 2012, and his opponents kept returning to it, using the delay as an opportunity to make their case, that the president’s environmental concerns were damaging the economy.

While Obama stalled, the world changed. Oil got cheaper, as did solar panels, the environmental movement got stronger. He waited to decide whether to take an umbrella to work until the rain had slowed to a trickle.

I don’t know if anyone thought Obama could delay a decision all the way up to 2015, after the price of oil had fallen, and after demand for the Tar Sands oils had cratered, but he did. The economics of the new pipeline were so unfavorable by November 2015, that approval would probably not have spurred drilling and construction anyway. The company behind the pipeline, Transcanada, appealed for a delay, when its circumstances and its markets might be more favorable–and someone else might be president.

When President Obama finally announced his decision, he emphasized that Keystone itself was not that important–to the economy or the environment–except as a symbol. Rejecting Keystone, he said, was a way for the United States to demonstrate international leadership on the issue.

Activists claimed victory, even acknowledging that some circumstances beyond their control, like the effect of increased fracking on bringing down energy costs, helped their case on the pipeline. They also emphasized how much more there was to do. (See McKibben’s comment on the victory in The New Yorker.)

At this point, it’s clear that keying on the pipeline was smart politics for the movement. It made the issue of climate change concrete. It was stoppable, a clear focus, and with obvious targets for influence and protest, and the prospects of political accountability. There may have been many projects that would have had a great environmental impact, but it’s hard to find a sharper focal point for organizing.

Today, TransCanada filed a claim against the United States for $15 billion in damages that it suffered by losing the pipeline. Maybe this will resurrect the Alberta Tar Sands as a business prospect or Keystone as an electoral issue–but maybe not.

Victories are always partial and usually contested. Keystone XL provides a clear and unambiguous example of what a win looks like.

 

 

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Another kind of Occupation: What do you mean “we”?

Posted on January 6, 2016 by David S. Meyer

Occupation of public spaces to advance a political agenda is nothing new to us, nor to anyone who watched Occupy flash across American politics in 2011. The ongoing Occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is a little different. Most notably, these occupiers are brandishing weapons (beyond moral commitment) and threatening a more vigorous and violent resistance to removal.

This occupation grew out of a rally protesting the jailing of Dwight and Steven Hammond, who set fire to public lands next to their ranch. They say they meant to protect their land from invasive species; federal prosecutors say they meant to cover up the illegal slaughter of deer. Last Saturday, the Hammonds’ last weekend before returning to prison, protesters showed up, took over a park welcome center and promised to stay. The Hammonds have announced they want no part of the protest, and have turned themselves in, but these Occupiers are still committed.

Calling themselves “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom,” and often pointing to pocket Constitutions, the protesters have been clear that they have larger aims than standing up for the Hammonds.  It is, according to Ammon Bundy–probably the most visible protester, about protecting the Constitution and protecting the people from the government.  Vox reports:

We’re out here because the people have been abused long enough, really…Their lands and their resources have been taken from them — to the point where it’s putting them literally in poverty. And this facility here [the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters] has been a tool into doing that. It is the people’s facility, owned by the people. And it has been provided for us to be able to come together and unite, and making a hard stand against this overreach, this taking of the people’s land and resources.

Ammon Bundy and at least one brother, have staged such an occupation before, in support of their father, Cliven Bundy, and his long campaign to avoid paying fees to the federal government for grazing his cattle on public lands. But dad is sitting this one out. And while the Bundy brothers are not alone, they haven’t generated much local support for their effort. So who are the people?

Activists routinely claim to be acting for a larger group. Occupy Wall Street meant to speak for the 99 percent, and the Tea Party for regular Americans. Politicians virtually always define their policies as supporting a vaguely defined middle-class–or working Americans. Even the founding fathers announced their commitments in the preamble to the Constitution.

Of course, the drafters of the Constitution weren’t just like the people they claimed to represent: much wealthier, much better educated, and of course, no women, Native people, or slaves participated in the deliberations.

When we talk about “the people,” we always imagine people who will agree with us–or at least, should agree with us. We learn to be careful about those who would claim to look out for the people.

But the claim was about the public good. Surfing the language of the Declaration of Independence, the idea was that “governments are instituted among men” to secure rights, that, in effect, the government holds lands for all of us, builds roads, looks out for the quality of air and water, licenses the airwaves, and inspects meat. All of it costs money, which the government prints and takes in taxes. And all of it can be a huge inconvenience.

Far from rural Oregon, my life would be easier if I didn’t have to file tax returns, pay to park at the beach, and observe traffic laws. The ranchers would have an easier time if they didn’t have to pay grazing fees or observe restrictions of any kind on their activity. It’s an incredibly understandable–if juvenile–politics: to take whatever advantage we can of government, hoping that others won’t do the same–and to protest any incursions on our autonomy at the same time. (Recent reports have made much of the fact that Ammon Bundy has benefited from rather large subsidized federal loans.)

One measure of success is the extent to which outsiders rally to the cause and imitate the claims and tactics. Thus far, that hasn’t happened–at least not much. The Republican presidential hopefuls, all champions of state rights against the federal government, have distanced themselves from these Occupiers, even if acknowledging sympathy with some of their aims. They were all more careful here than they were with the initial Bundy protest.

But how long can they stay? Comparing how authorities treat these white men with guns with how police treat young unarmed black men are all over the internet, but it’s a little misplaced. (See Jamelle Bouie at Slate.)

These Occupiers have thus far refused to respond to calls to stand down, even from Ted Cruz. The FBI, far better armed and trained, than this militia, could surely evict them, but at what cost? Remember, the mostly urban occupations of 2011 stayed in far more visible locations for around 10 weeks.

How would the people respond?

 

 

 

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Does the student campaign spread?

Posted on November 19, 2015 by David S. Meyer

Activists copy things that seem to work, but the recipe for success in one place doesn’t always translate elsewhere.

Of course, students around the United States found inspiration and encouragement from the Missouri students’ successful blitz of their university president.  There were student protests, a hunger strike, a clear statement of a central demand, and the support of the football team–and its coach and athletic director.

Some of this translated to Occidental College in Los Angeles, where student activists were also concerned about the racial climate on campus and the under-representation of Blacks and Latinos in the student body and on the faculty. Student activists unified behind a first step by demanding the ouster of their own president, Jonathan Veitch.

Activist students, clear demand, but that’s not always enough. President Veitch isn’t as vulnerable a target. He has a long record of academic scholarship and administration. This means that he’s quick to call a meeting. The  Occidental Tigers haven’t lined up against him, and Division III football teams can’t throw around as much weight anyway. Most important, Occidental is a private school, and Veitch answers to a Board of Trustees who don’t have to answer to any elected officials.

President Veitch announced that he’s not resigning, and that he’s eager to talk with the students to start working things out. The Trustees announced that they would stand behind their president.

Now the students are holed up in an occupation of an administration building, maintaining their call for resignation and publicizing other demands as well (the list and responses here): more Black faculty and students; more funding for Black student organizations; a Black Studies major; demilitarizing campus police and taking bullet proof vests from them; and new training and new staff to support diversity.

Each demand starts its own conversation, with committed supporters and skeptical opponents (except for the vests: the campus police are more than skeptical). It’s tougher to get the rest of the world to focus, and easier for opponents to pick away at the details.

It’s not over, but university presidents are harder for students to dismiss than the Missouri events would have us believe.  This administration is responding, creating new administrative positions, moving some money around, and stepping up efforts to diversify the faculty. But scoring responsiveness to student demands is tricky, especially when Occidental promises efforts and commitments to consider.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking that the campus reforms of the past twenty years, where administrators have been encouraged to treat their students as customers rather than charges, creates a circumstance in which administrators have to take every demand seriously.

 

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The Mizzou moment: Student activism beyond Missouri

Posted on November 13, 2015 by David S. Meyer
NARCH EUO

Protest at Ithaca College

When activists see a tactic that seems to be producing results, they’ll imitate it. Innovation spreads ideas that seem to work. The ousting of University of Missouri Timothy Wolfe signaled student activists across the country about new possibilities. We’ve seen a run of discussions of race, protests, hunger strikes, and targeting administrators in the last few days, and I don’t think anyone knows just what happens next.

In all cases, neither the grievances nor the activism is new. But there is more energy and far more attention in the wake of Mizzou.

At Ithaca College, POC at IC (People of Color at Ithaca College) has called for President Tom Rochon’s*  resignation. The students are angry about the racial climate on campus, including the small number of Black and Latino faculty, but they cite many other grievances, often tied to his management style (he doesn’t consult, they say), the school’s ties to business interests, and budget priorities. A large group of faculty has endorsed the call for a no confidence vote, amplifying those concerns and adding their own (read the “open letter.“) The Trustees have endorsed Rochon, who has named a new administrator charged with diversity issues, and announced curricular and training reforms. The students (and faculty) aren’t close to backing down.

former Dean Mary Spellman at Claremont-McKenna College

At Claremont-McKenna College, Dean of Students Mary Spellman resigned her position yesterday, responding to student protests and hunger strikes calling for her ouster. The straw that stirred this drink was an unfortunately phrased email Dean Spellman sent to a student, offering to talk, and pledging her commitment to help students who don’t fit the “CMC mold.”

But the students had long-brewing grievances about the racial climate on campus, noting insensitive and offensive comments from classmates, as well as vandalism of the offices of minority student organizations. Students complained about the lack of alternative perspectives in some of their courses and about hurtful comments from professors. Before Mizzou, the activists had already provoked the resignation of their Junior Class president. The students asked for a space to organize and broader attention to their concerns. President Hiram Chodosh announced new administrative positions to address issues of diversity. Expect the new Dean of Students to vet emails more carefully; maybe proofing the correspondence will be a new administrative job.

Amherst College protest

Meanwhile, at Amherst College the Mizzou fallout intensified a campaign not only against an administrator, but also targeting the school’s mascot, Lord Jeff. He’s a stupid mascot, and a ready target. (Lord Jeffrey Amherst was known for promoting the distribution of blankets from small pox patients to Indians.) Students have demanded that President Biddy Martin denounce Lord Jeff by 5:00 tonight, and purge his image from the campus and all associated paraphernalia. Or else?

There are 10 other demands, starting with a call for apologies from the president and the Chair of the Board of Trustees to

students, alumni and former students, faculty, administration and staff who have been victims of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism. Also include that marginalized communities and their allies should feel safe at Amherst College.

Meanwhile, here at the University of California, Irvine, two groups of students seized the moment to protest high tuition–and tuition altogether. Attending the University of California was once just about free, and now students commonly go deep into debt to finance an undergraduate degree. (I’d add, many many students work many many hours while in school, seeking to minimize that debt; they work enough to make getting through school and learning something much more difficult.) The Black Student Union used the Mizzou moment to stage a protest reiterating its demands for more academic and psychological support on campus, and calling for a zero-tolerance policy for racism.

The point: the apparent success of the student movement at the University of Missouri inspired campus-based activists who shared similar concerns to seize the moment, adding local issues, targets, and approaches. (Thankfully, hunger strikes are far from universal.) And college students have plenty of reasons to feel aggrieved, although replacing a campus leader and creating new administrative positions can’t come close to addressing most of those complaints.

Indeed, the proliferation of administrative positions is one of the factors driving high tuition. (But faltering state support is far more significant.)

There will be plenty of discussion about the justice and wisdom of each of these demands, about the obstacles students from underrepresented minorities face on college campuses, and the difficulties universities have in navigating academic, social, and financial pressures.

Right now, we can thank the student protesters for raising those questions.

*Full disclosure: Tom Rochon and I edited a book together a long time ago. Although we haven’t stayed in touch, I think of him as a great scholar (irony alert: of social movements), a decent man, and a friend.

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How student activists win: Update on APUSH in Colorado

Posted on November 12, 2015 by David S. Meyer

Remember when high school students walked out of the public schools in Jefferson County Colorado earlier this year? They were protesting a number of administrative and curricular changes underway that threatened their educations. (We discussed it here.) A newly elected school board had hired a new superintendent who was determined to make a difference.

I was most interested in the students’ concern with the Advanced Placement Course in United States History (APUSH). They were riled up about a proposed focus on promoting patriotism, rather than telling a fuller, sometimes critical, story of American history.

But the story drifted out of the national news when the student walk-out ended. The action didn’t. Students and their allies (including many parents and the teachers union) spent the ensuing months organizing.  Voters recalled three conservative members of the school board; in conjunction with two members choosing not to seek reelection, Jefferson County will see a completely new school board. Grassroots mobilization at the polls meant engaging citizens in an election that’s normally not very visible, and it also meant fighting Americans for Prosperity, which invested time and money in keeping the conservative board in power.

The point, again, is that effective movement work starts before the cameras turn on, and continues long after attention passes. We’d also note that there isn’t such a sharp distinction between protest and electoral politics.

I suspect the students will learn that.

And I won’t count on Colorado’s high school students to line up reliably with the College Board in the future.

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Mizzou, part II: Lead-up and legacies

Posted on November 11, 2015 by David S. Meyer

Most of us tuned into the story about the ouster of University of Missouri president Timothy Wolfe last weekend, when the football team weighed in to support a hunger University of Missouri turmoilstriker, and saw a sudden and conclusive end when Wolfe stepped down and Jonathan Butler started eating.

It’s a nice short story with well-defined sides and a convincing resolution. That story emphasizes the power of collective action–for good or ill, depending upon your sympathies.

Real life, of course, is more complicated, and even extending the tale a little ways backward and forward gives us a better sense of how social movements really work.

To start, hunger striker Jonathan Butler says that he began to tune into the politics of race on campus during the protests in Ferguson, about a hundred miles from the university. He shuttled back and forth between his academic studies and what was then the front lines in a political battle, describing the effect as transformative (See Matt Pearce’s profile in the LA Times). With others similarly inspired, he organized a campaign to draw attention to the racial climate at the University of Missouri, which included letters, requests for meetings, protests, and the tent city on the quad. The fast was slow in coming, and many of his classmates were already paying attention. Like a career in the arts, overnight success took a long time and a lot of effort.

And after the splashy victory, it’s hard to think that the departure of two administrators could fix the broader concerns about the racial climate that spurred the protests in the first place. Concerned Student 1950, the small group of activists that launched the campaign, has demanded further action on curriculum and faculty hiring, demanding a meeting with Missouri governor Jay Nixon, and representation on the committee that picks a successor.

Next steps are always more difficult, and maintaining the breadth of the active coalition, including support from athletes and academics, is far from automatic.

Effective activists start long before anyone’s paying attention, and they have to continue long afterward.

 

By the way, a student protest toppling a university president by threatening intercollegiate sports does not generate universal support. Clay Travis’s take-down at Fox Sports’s College Football Blog is worth a look to see the rhetorical battle unfolding.  Travis questions whether any of the racist incidents actually took place, and whether the administration could have–or should have–done anything about them if they had. He also charges Butler with concealing his very affluent background and questions his long tenure at Mizzou–if things were really this bad. Aristotle would call the questions about veracity challenges on logos, and those of Butler’s character, questions of ethos. The final concern, that college football might actually be threatened, could boil the blood of College Football readers: pathos.

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How movements work: Activists sack a president at Mizzou

Posted on November 9, 2015 by David S. Meyer

University of Missouri president Timothy Wolfe, a one-time championship high school quarterback, took a knee to avoid being sacked.  Once the football team lined up against him, it was clear Wolfe’s time was running out, and he resigned today to avoid additional damage–to himself, certainly, but also, he said, to the university.  Wolfe said that he hoped his resignation would speed healing and progress on combating racism on campus.

But there was obvious regret: “This is not the way change should come about,” he said, resignedly.

Thirty-two black football players came relatively late to this game, when they announced that they would not participate in any football activities until Wolfe was gone, but they https://cbsstlouis.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pinkel.jpg?w=640&h=360&crop=1 weren’t the last. Their teammates endorsed the strike, as did their coach and the university’s athletic director. Hundreds of black alumni signed a statement of support. Even the faculty followed, endorsing a student strike that would have started this morning.

The charge against President Wolfe that stuck was insensitivity and failed leadership in addressing the racial climate on campus. The student body president had https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQt9yqHVEAAx6BT.jpgbeen subjected to racist insults, and someone drew a swastika in feces on a dorm bathroom–and this wasn’t the first time. Wolfe’s responses to events were slow and awkward at best.

Last week, Jonathan Butler, a graduate student in educational leadership and policy, announced that he was going on a hunger strike until Wolfe was gone. The effort generated more attention, and a growing pressure on students, faculty, and administrators to take a stance. The football players lined up prepared. The post-it decoration of a statue of Thomas Jefferson (at right) was another response.

The focus of the protests, however, was always on Timothy Wolfe. Indeed, an activist group’s demands called on him not only to resign, but first to hand-write a letter of apology acknowledging his “white male privilege,” and hold a press conference to read the letter. (Thankfully, Jonathan Butler has announced that the resignation is enough for him to start eating again.)

But to understand the last week, we need to pay attention to the larger context.  President

Jonathan Butler

Wolfe’s political skills and academic support were substantially weaker than we’d expect for the leader of a major research university. After getting his undergraduate degree at Mizzou, he forged a career in the computer industry. He was unemployed when he took the job, promising to deliver higher education at lower costs, after he’d learned about the university.

Wolfe had generated opposition through a number of unpopular reforms, including cutting health insurance for graduate students and kicking a Planned Parenthood office off campus. When he faltered in managing the fallout from racist incidents, he lacked a loyal basis of support for anything else elsewhere on campus. The football coach didn’t threaten the players’ scholarships; the faculty didn’t call for patience and dialogue with the administration. Like the Egyptian army responding to the protests at Tahrir Square, once the football team had lined up, there was little support left on the other side.

The apparently sudden emergence of opposition to President Wolfe’s tenure had been brewing for a long time, with student activists engaged in a number of less successful campaigns that set up this victory.

Trust that his successor will be far more committed to addressing the racial climate on campus–at least rhetorically.

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The Tea Party falters

Posted on October 27, 2015 by David S. Meyer

I took this Gallup poll result from the New York Times  “Taking Note” column, just because I wanted to take note.  Support for the Tea Party in surveys peaked at the end of 2010 at less than 30 percent, and then has declined fairly steadily, now down to about 17 percent.  What’s this mean anyway?

The Tea Party was a vigorous and volatile social movement starting with that name just after Barack Obama took office.  It was visible during the 2010 election, and claimed responsibility for the very large Republican gains in the House of Representatives.

But assessing membership in a movement is always tricky, no less so for a movement that mostly abandoned demonstrations after winning a firm institutionalization in both Congress and in the world of Washington-oriented advocacy organizations. Most supporters were never going to demonstrations or even meetings, much less donning the tricorner hats that make for such good photos.

Still, it’s easy to find numerous organizations with Tea Party in their names, pushing for conservative causes, and an even larger group of groups that have been pushing conservative positions on a range of issues.

In the House, a Tea Party caucus in the Republican Party, initially led by Michele Bachmann, came and went, and has largely been replaced by the Freedom Caucus, which claimed the career of Speaker John Boehner and promises to bedevil his successor.

For many reasons, this institutional version of the Tea Party commands less popularity than the one focused on stopping health care reform in 2009 or President Obama more generally in 2010.

But what does “Tea Party” mean anymore anyway?  The acronym, “Taxed Enough Already” remains, and the Freedom Caucus is firmly opposed to taxes. It’s also stillImage result for tea party protest stalwart in opposing the Affordable Care Act, but that ship has sailed.  Its members are vigorous in opposing immigration reform, ostensibly because Obama is president, but I can’t imagine a program that will pass muster with this group. The groups behind the Tea Party (FreedomWorks; Americans for Prosperity) in the early days were absolutely not in this rejectionist camp on immigration.

More than anything, Tea Party has become shorthand for an attitude of strong commitment and vigorous opposition. And that seems to sound better as ideal and as strategy when government is actually getting things done.

Establishment Republican figures continue to struggle with finding a way to manage their own radical flank.

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