How critical theory dismisses the best ways to achieve social justice

Andrew Sullivan reviews an upcoming book which I’ve already pre-ordered: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. Sullivan writes:

liberalism can include critical theory as one view of the world worth interrogating. But critical theory cannot include liberalism, because it views liberalism itself as a mode of white supremacy that acts against the imperative of social and racial justice. That’s why liberalism is supple enough to sustain countless theories and ideas and arguments, and is always widening the field of debate; and why institutions under the sway of Social Justice necessarily must constrain avenues of thought and ideas. That’s why liberalism is dedicated to allowing Ibram X. Kendi to speak and write, but Ibram X. Kendi would create an unelected tribunal to police anyone and any institution from perpetuating what he regards as white supremacy—which is any racial balance not exactly representative of the population as a whole.…

Here's an excerpt from a 2019 New Yorker piece in which Kelefa Sanneh takes down Kendi's book How to Be an Antiracist, along with Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

Andrew Sullivan goes on:

these theorists … claim that their worldview is the only way to advance social progress, especially the rights of minorities, and that liberalism fails to do so. This, it seems to me, is profoundly untrue. A moral giant like John Lewis advanced this country not by intimidation, or re-ordering the language, or seeing the advancement of black people as some kind of reversal for white people. He engaged the liberal system with non-violence and persuasion, he emphasized the unifying force of love and forgiveness, he saw black people as having agency utterly independent of white people, and changed America with that fundamentally liberal perspective.

The gay rights movement, the most successful of the 21st century, succeeded in the past through showing what straights and gays have in common, rather than seeing the two as in a zero-sum conflict....

The women’s rights movement has transformed the role of women in society in the past without demonizing all men, or seeing misogyny as somehow embedded in “white supremacy”.

As we have just seen, civil rights protections for transgender people—just decided by a conservative Supreme Court—have been achieved not by seeing people as groups in constant warfare, but by seeing the dignity of the unique individual in pursuing their own happiness without the obstacle of prejudice.

In fact, I suspect it is the success of liberalism in bringing this kind of non-zero-sum pluralism into being that rattles the critical theorists the most. Because it suggests that reform is always better than revolution, that empirical truth is on the side of the genuinely oppressed and we should never fear understanding things better, that progress is both possible in a liberal democracy, and more securely rooted than in other systems, because it springs from a lively, informed debate, and isn’t foisted on society by ideologues.

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive. But liberals have nothing to be defensive about. What’s so encouraging about this book [Cynical Theories] is that it has confidence in its own arguments, and is as dedicated to actual social justice, achieved through liberal means, as it is scornful of the postmodern ideologues who have coopted and corrupted otherwise noble causes.

This is very good news—even better to see it as the Number 1 Amazon best-seller in philosophy long before its publication date later in August. The intellectual fight back against wokeness has now begun in earnest. Let’s do this.

The authors of Cynical Theories are 2 of the 3 people behind the academic hoax I posted about in 2018.

Here’s one of the authors, Helen Pluckrose, reading a summary of the book:

Cynical Theories explains how theory has developed into the driving force of the culture war of the late 2010s, and proposes a philosophically liberal way to counteract its manifestations in scholarship, activism, and everyday life. The book charts the development of the evolving branches of cynical postmodern theory over the last 50 years, and shows that it has influenced current societies in ways the reader will recognize.… This book is a story about how despair found confidence, which then grew into the sort of firm conviction associated with religious adherence.…

The book's other author, James Lindsay, has a new piece called "No, the Woke Won't Debate You. Here's Why." Excerpt:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked why it is that the Woke won’t seem to have a debate....

It is not, as many think, a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation—that prevents those who have internalized a significant amount of the Critical Social Justice Theory mindset that prevents these sorts of things from happening. There’s a mountain of Theoretical reasons that they would avoid all such activities, and even if those are mere rationalizations of a more straightforward fear of being exposed as fraudulent or losing, they are shockingly well-developed and consistent rationalizations that deserve proper consideration and full explanation....

Critical Social Justice activists ... tell us constantly about the high emotional labor costs of doing the “work” they do (and never being taken seriously for it). To invite them to a public conversation or debate is to ask them to get exploited in this way for other people’s benefit by getting up on stage in a dominance-approved paradigm with a bad-faith moral monster who just wants his opportunity to reinforce the very dominance that exhausts them....

That whole piece is worth reading, and I have a feeling that his and Pluckrose's upcoming book, Cynical Theories, is going to be worth reading too.

Professor Robert Summers of Cornell Law School (1933 - 2019)

Robert S. Summers, a contract law professor who taught at Cornell Law School for 42 years, was a preeminent scholar of the Uniform Commercial Code, and advised other countries including Egypt and Rwanda in writing their laws, died at age 85 on December 1.

I took his Contracts class throughout my first year of law school (2004-05). He had a distinctive style of teaching in which he rarely made any direct statements, speaking almost entirely in the form of questions.

I wrote down many of his witty and insightful comments during class, and when he retired in 2010, I did a blog post with some of my favorite moments of Contracts with Summers.

As you can see from that post, at one point he seemed to challenge some of the fundamental premises of legal education based on appellate case law, before saying he was “sowing the seeds of self-destruction.”

It was my first class of law school, and I won’t forget it.

"[A] stunning example of feminism devouring itself"

Natasha Vargas-Cooper writes, in the feminist blog Jezebel, about the case of Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis: "As feminist student activists fight to expand their circle of vulnerability in collegiate life, Title IX has gone from a law designed to protect college students from sexual misconduct and discrimination to a means by which professors are put on trial for their tweets. . . ."

Why don't economists promote marriage?

Megan McArdle has the answer:

College improves your earning prospects. So does marriage. Education makes you more likely to live longer. So does marriage. Yet while many economist [sic] vocally support initiatives to move more people into college, very few of them vocally favor initiatives to get more people married. Why is that ... ? ...

[A]ll economists are, definitionally, very good at college. Not all economists are good at marriage. Saying that more people should go to college will make 0% of your colleagues feel bad. Saying that more people should get married and stay married will make a significant fraction of your colleagues feel bad. And in general, most people have an aversion to topics which are likely to trigger a personal grudge in a coworker.

"[T]o the extent that racial preference fans at Berkeley condemn opposition to their ideas as offensive — i.e. blasphemous — . . .

. . . and leave temperate-minded people afraid to speak their minds, they have become, themselves, The Power—a kind of power that good people are responsible for Speaking Truth To." — John McWhorter

Are conservatives in academia victims of discrimination and deserving of affirmative action?

This New York Times article has gotten a lot of attention for raising that question (by focusing on Jonathan Haidt, who's concerned about the underrepresentation of conservatives even though he himself is a liberal).

But the really odd thing is, as Megan McArdle points out: every time this topic comes up, liberals and conservatives both seem to do a 180 on their usual talking points about discrimination and diversity. Specifically:

Conservatives are usually reluctant to agree that women and minorities are still often victims of structural or personal bias--despite numerical underrepresentation and some fairly compelling studies showing that hiring is not race or gender blind. Yet when it comes to conservatives in academia, they suddenly sound like sociologists, discussing hostile work environment, the role of affinity networks in excluding out groups, unconscious bias, and the compelling evidence from statistical underrepresentation.

Meanwhile, liberals, who are usually quick to assume that underrepresentation represents some form of discrimination--structural or personal--suddenly become, as Haidt notes, fierce critics of the notion that numerical representation means anything. Moreover, they start generating explanations for the disparity that sound suspiciously like some old reactionary explaining that blacks don't really want to go into management because they're much happier without all the responsibility. Conservatives are too stupid to become academics; they aren't open new ideas; they're too aggressive and hierarchical; they don't care about ideas, just money. In other words, it's not our fault that they're not worthy.

Besides, liberals suddenly argue, we shouldn't look for every sub-population to mirror the composition of the population at large; just as Greeks gravitated towards diners in 1980s New York, and the small market business was dominated by Koreans, liberals are attracted to academia, and conservatives to, well, some other profession.

Part of what's going on here is that everyone wants to point out the hypocrisy of people who are on the other side from them. But hypocrisy often cuts both ways: if your opponents are taking positions that directly contradict each other, and both of them are the exact opposite of what you believe, then doesn't that imply that you're also taking contradictory positions?

McArdle quotes Paul Krugman's defense of liberals on this issue:

Every once in a while you get stories like this one, about the underrepresentation of conservatives in academics, that treat ideological divides as being somehow equivalent to racial differences. This is a really, really bad analogy.

And it's not just the fact that you can choose your ideology, but not your race. Ideologies have a real effect on overall life outlook, which has a direct impact on job choices.

McArdle has an apt response:

I have no idea what distinction one is supposed to make between beliefs and something you "can't change". Could Paul Krugman become a devout Baptist and a supply sider tomorrow, if the financial incentives were right? I devoutly hope not. I presume that Paul Krugman . . . could no more change his beliefs than he could change his native language. It is easier (in most cases) to pretend different ideas than a different race--but we rightly think that it was horrific to force blacks to "pass" as a condition of being treated like a full human being.

But what about Krugman's other point that's supposed to show how ideology-based discrimination is nothing like race-based discrimination? "Ideologies have a real effect on overall life outlook, which has a direct impact on job choices." Oh. But wait a minute . . . how exactly does that show that there's no analogy between ideology and race/gender? Is Krugman trying to say that that gender and race have no correlation to job choices? I don't see why he'd assume that. As for gender, well, men and women are different in many ways; you'd have to be pretty naive to be shocked at the possibility that certain jobs are more appealing to men while others are more appealing to women. Race may be trickier, but should we really assume that race isn't correlated with job choices?

Krugman (a Nobel Prize-winning economist) seems to be doing some awfully sloppy thinking here, and McArdle is right about the shameless hypocrisy on both sides.

I also wonder if Krugman considered that the fact that ideology does have to do with different outlooks on life (as he says) makes ideological discrimination a particularly bad thing. If academics tend to dogmatically shut out certain outlooks and privilege others, so much the worse for academia.

IN THE COMMENTS: LemmusLemmus says, agreeing with that last paragraph:

One often hears the argument for affirmative action for African Americans in academia that it enriches discussion because African Americans contribute a different perspective on issues (which can be relevant at least in the social sciences and some humanities). And that's not true of conservatives? Ha!

ADDED: A commenter on Krugman's post sums up what I imagine is the real thinking behind the liberal reaction to this topic:

Besides, Paul, people who disagree with you are stupid, right?

Can't have stupid people teaching. They're too stupid!

Professor Robert Summers of Cornell Law School

Professor Robert Summers taught his last class on December 1, marking the end of 42 years of teaching at Cornell Law School. Before that, he taught at the University of Oregon Law School.

Here are some of his many accomplishments, from the article at the link:

Summers is perhaps best known as co-author of the Uniform Commercial Code (West Publishing Co.), written with James J. White in 1972 and now in its sixth edition. The four-volume treatise on the rules that coordinate the sale of goods and other commercial transactions throughout the 50 states is the most widely cited on the Code, which has been adopted by all 50 state legislatures. . . .

In 1993 the Russian government called on Summers to help draft that country's new civil code. He later served as adviser to the Drafting Commission for the Egyptian Civil Code (1998-99) and as principal drafter for the Code of Contract Law for Rwanda (2006-10). . . .

In the 1960s he began advocating for more minority students in law schools, holding summer sessions around the country . . . to recruit and prepare minority undergraduates.

"That was one of the largest, most satisfying public service activities I have ever been privileged to engage in in my life," Summers said. "It was extremely inspiring."

Wikipedia says:

He is well known among Cornell Law School students for his inquisitive, spirited use of the Socratic method in instruction.

That's putting it mildly. That sentence would describe many Cornell law professors, but Summers took the Socratic method to the extreme. He rarely made any direct statement about anything, almost always preferring to ask questions instead.

He mockingly voiced the way he thought students would react:

Isn’t it a pity that you need to analyze cases? You can’t just go around with your mouth open waiting for a spoon that will feed it to you in one big, luscious bite! Students should sue. The teachers should just give you the law.

A student piped up:

We're working on a class action.

The article quotes Summers giving a more straightforward rationale for his teaching method:

"It teaches the students analytical focus, verbal adroitness and articulateness, and it keeps them on their toes," he said. "You've got to hold their feet to the fire."

He had an inimitable style of speaking: self-consciously erudite and even antiquated, often quite stern, but also wryly comical.

Over the summer before our first year, the law school had all of us incoming students read Franz Kafka's novel The Trial so we could discuss it at orientation. Per Wikipedia, "it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime never revealed either to him or the reader." In the middle of contracts class, Summers would suddenly attack Kafka:

In very few walks of life can you see the power of human reason when it's at its best — as it is in well-reasoned judicial opinions. In other words, this is not a course that Kafka would recognize. Kafka couldn't possibly see that there was any rationality to the law.

He added sarcastically:

So it's a wonderful thing for the law school to select such an inspiring book for law students to read.

Summers would urge us to write down everything that was said in class. I know that many people look down on this technique (calling it the work of a "stenographer"), but I found the advice useful. On one occasion he started to scold us for not taking notes, but then he seemed to have a flash of sympathy for us:

I see a lot of you just relaxing and not taking notes. These hypos are important. Of course, relaxation is important too!

He ruthlessly mocked judges who wrote opinions he considered irrational. After reading one such opinion, he said:

We would want to be very wary of any majority decisions written by Lindberg, J., if they purport to be contracts case. It might not be a problem if it’s a tort case, because torts is really simple. It’s just: one person bumps into another person!

(Yes, he referred to the judge as "Lindberg, J." This is the standard legal notation, meaning "Judge Lindberg." Summers is the only person I've heard pronounce the "J." as written.)

Summers was a scholar of jurisprudence and felt strongly about the subject, so he would go off on delightful philosophical tangents while we were in the middle of analyzing a contracts case. Here's one I tried to type out close to verbatim in my notes:

Is certainty important from the point of view of justice, legal predictability, treating like cases alike? Do the materials that law students are now studying have a tendency to dull your sensitivity to the value of certainty? Indeed, does Friedman [the author of a passage in our casebook] give law professors a pretty hard time here?

A student responded, reading from the casebook:

“In a complex social and economic system, a legal system on the model of appellate cases selected for law school instruction would be insupportable.”

That line was particularly ironic because not only were we in law school, but Summers edited the casebook and presumably chose to include that passage.

He elaborated on the point:

You have a steady diet of borderline cases. Is this bending up your mind? Is this having the effect of dulling your sensitivity to the 7 major values of certainty in law? If you’re getting accustomed to life on the borderlines — that's what you're in, life on the borderlines — could that have a prejudicial effect on the general standards that you have with regard to what the law is like? And you just take for granted that the law will be open-ended, spongey, discretion-ridden? Some of you do think there’s value to predictability, determinativeness. There are probably not just 3 ways in which it’s valuable, but probably about 15.

(Summers often referred to imaginary numbered lists.)

He went on:

Does certainty facilitate citizen self-direction vs. being ordered around ad hoc by judges and other officials? Does determinativeness limit judicial power, and thus reduce the scope of judicial arbitrariness? Does determinativeness contribute to dispute avoidance? That would be a bad thing, because it would reduce the number of jobs you can get, and that would reduce the number of law professors. What I’m doing is sowing the seeds of self-destruction. So maybe I better shut up.

On another day in class, we read a passage by a former Cornell law professor named Ian MacNeil. Summers said:

MacNeil was a whale of a law professor! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Not in 35 years! Best law professor we've ever had! Now he's retired. What a mistake that was. What a mistake that was.