Academia

Lots of people have raised the suggestion of applying game theory to the the Greek debt crisis. I haven’t attempted this, reflecting my general scepticism about game theory in the absence of a well-defined strategy space. But now the Greek government and public have made, what is, in effect, a final move. In view of the No vote, Syriza can’t accept a deal that doesn’t include an explicit debt write-off or one that obviously crosses its stated red lines. Within those parameters, its clearly eager for a face-saving compromise.

For the other side (effectively the Troika and the German government), since Syriza’s move has already been made, the problem has now been reduced to one of decision under uncertainty, which is something I am comfortable with. More precisely, it’s a choice between a “safe” option, with an outcome that is fairly predictable, and a “risky” option where the outcome is uncertain.
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After Chris and John’s posts, a lot of which I agree with, I thought it made sense to look at the third member in the three-cornered disaster in Euroland …

When you look at this series, two things strike the eye. One, good God what a long and deep recession. And two, it was coming to an end. Even the worst policy mistakes don’t last forever and a combination of time, human resilience and the Pigou Effect will usually prevail. Greece had two quarters of consecutive growth at the beginning of 2014. Unemployment also began to fall. They were issuing bonds on the open market and had some hopes of completing the second bailout program with a degree of success.

Then, Syriza happened.
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Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson,<em> <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Justice-Selling-Clarence-Thomas/dp/0395633184/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1435596133&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Strange%20Justice”>Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas</a></em>:
<blockquote><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$text0:0″>What she remembered most vividly, however, was the way [Clarence] Thomas woke up each morning. He had a theme song which he would play at high volume in his room at the start of every day, “kind of like a mantra.”</span></span>

<span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$text0:0″>”What’s that?” she remembered asking [Gil] Hardy [Clar</span></span><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$text0:0:$text0:0″>ence Thomas’s roommate] when she was first rocked out of bed by it at an early hour. </span></span></span>

<span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0″><span data-reactid=”.1kn.1:4:1:$comment874301359302253_874303012635421:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$text0:0:$text0:0″>”Oh, that’s just Clarence,” Hardy replied with a laugh. “It’s his theme song.” The song, “The Greatest Love of All,” was a pop anthem celebrating self-love rereleased by Whitney Houston.</span></span></span></blockquote>
Clarence Thomas, <em><a href=”http://www.amazon.com/My-Grandfathers-Son-Clarence-Thomas/dp/006056556X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1435605590&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=my+grandfather%27s+son”>My Grandfather’s Son</a></em>:
<blockquote>I’d heard the song many times, but it had never meant more to me than it did now…I took heart from George Benson [who originally performed the song]: …<em>No matter what they take from me/ They can’t take away my dignity</em>.</blockquote>
Clarence Thomas, <a href=”http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf”>Obergefell v. Hodges</a>, dissenting:
<blockquote>The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.</blockquote>

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So much excellent stuff has been written on the murders in Charleston, I hesitated to weigh in. But one part of the story that I thought could use some amplification is the politics of safety and security in this country, from the backlash of the GOP through 9/11 and today, and how that intersects with the politics of racism. So I took it up in my column for Salon. I’m not sure I said exactly what needed to be said or what I wanted to say: for some reason, the precision and specificity I was aiming for here proved to be more elusive than usual. So if you find that the article misses its mark, I’ll understand.

Here are some excerpts:

In response to Wednesday’s murder of nine African Americans at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, President Obama said, “Innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

I’ll admit: When I first read that statement, I thought Obama was talking about the police. Unfair of me perhaps, but it’s not as if we haven’t now been through multiple rounds of high-profile killings of African Americans at the hands of the police.

Indeed, until Wednesday’s murders, it seemed as if the national conversation about public safety had dramatically and fruitfully shifted. From a demand for police protection of white citizens against black crime—which dominated political discussion from the 1970s to the 1990s—to a scrutiny of the very instruments of that presumed protection. And how those instruments are harming African American citizens.

It’s tempting to seize on this moment as an opportunity to broaden that discussion beyond the racism of prisons and policing to that of society itself. In a way, that’s what Obama was trying to do by focusing on the threat posed not by the state or its instruments but by private guns in the hands of private killers like Dylann Roof.

But that may not be the wisest move, at least not yet.

So long as the discussion is framed as one of protection, of safety and security, we won’t get beyond the society that produced Dylann Roof. Not only has the discourse of protection contributed to the racist practices and institutions of our overly policed and incarcerated society, but it also prevents us from seeing, much less tackling, the broader, systemic inequalities that might ultimately reduce those practices and institutions.

…

To assume that the state can provide for the safety and security of the most subjugated classes in America without addressing the fact of their subjugation is to assume away the last half-century of political experience. If anything, the discourse of safety and security has made those classes less secure, less safe: not merely from freelance killers like Dylann Roof or George Zimmerman, who claim to be acting on behalf of their own safety and that of white society, but also from the police. As [David] Cole writes, the proliferation of criminal laws and quality-of-life regulations that are supposed to make poor and black communities safer often serve as a pretext for the most intrusive and coercive modes of policing in those communities.

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In the second half of the twentieth century, a writer of uncommon gifts travels to Israel. There, the writer, who is Jewish and fiercely intellectual, attends the trial of a Nazi war criminal. When the trial’s over, the writer writes a book about it.

No, it’s not Hannah Arendt. It’s Philip Roth.

Arendt and Roth led oddly parallel lives. [click to continue…]

I read Daniel’s LIBOR for the universities? with great interest, not least because I think the central thesis…

Bankers have had their day under scrutiny. But so have Members of Parliament (expenses scandal). So have journalists (phone hacking). So has the Church (paedophilia cover-ups). So has the BBC (ditto). This isn’t a specific issue about financial sector corruption. It’s a general trend, one of gradual social re-assessment of whether the fiddles and skeletons of the past are going to be tolerated in the future.

…is spot on, even translating it across the Atlantic.

However, I think his LIBOR comparison is a bit too literal, his scandals in potentia all hinging on system-gaming. In the U.S., kiting of research assessment and post-grad employment is small beer. Senior faculty claiming authorship is already regarded as a personal rather than systemic crime. U.S. New and World Report is simply making the previously tacit prestige ranking visible to the public. (I forget if it was Billy the Kid or Sun Yat-sen who said that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low, but they both had a point.)

Nevertheless, I think there is a scandal brewing, though, like all academic change, it is moving slowly. That scandal is tied to growing realization that professors do far less teaching than the average citizen imagines.
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Daniel wrote recently about prima facie scandalous behaviours in academics, drawing a parallel with banking cultures pre-Crash. Pointing out that while activities like taking credit for grad students’ work or blatantly gaming independent review mechanisms may in some cases seem rational and even acceptable behaviour within certain academic circles, once these things are exposed to the light of day as, say LIBOR rate-fixing was, they appear rightly scandalous. Heads roll. It’s only a matter of time, therefore, before UK academics join the police, journalists and politicians and find the ‘but everybody does it’ excuse does not wash when you’re on the front page of a newspaper.
One commenter in that long, long thread asked how something can become a scandal when everyone already knows about it. Something everybody already knows about is the very definition of a scandal.

Let me draw your attention to some things that everybody knows or knew about. [click to continue…]

In my Salon column today, I look at new research examining how corporations influence politics.

Money talks. But how?

From “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” to Citizens United, the story goes like this: The wealthy corrupt and control democracy by purchasing politicians, scripting speech and writing laws. Corporations and rich people make donations to candidates, pay for campaign ads and create PACs. They, or their lobbyists, take members of Congress out to dinner, organize junkets for senators and tell the government what to do. They insinuate money where it doesn’t belong. They don’t build democracy; they buy it.

But that, says Alex Hertel-Fernandez, a PhD student in Harvard’s government department, may not be the only or even the best way to think about the power of money. That power extends far beyond the dollars deposited in a politician’s pocket. It reaches for the votes and voices of workers who the wealthy employ. Money talks loudest where money gets made: in the workplace.

Among Hertel-Fernandez’s findings:

1. Nearly 50% of the top executives and managers surveyed admit that they mobilize their workers politically.

2. Firms believe that mobilizing their workers is more effective than donating money to a candidate, buying campaign ads, or investing in large corporate lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce.

3. The most important factor in determining whether a firm engages in partisan mobilization of its workers—and thinks that that mobilization is effective—is the degree of control it has over its workers. Firms that always engage in surveillance of their employees’ online activities are 50 percent more likely to mobilize their workers than firms that never do.

4. Of the workers who say they have been mobilized by their employers, 20% say that they received threats if they didn’t.

My conclusion:

When we think of corruption, we think of something getting debased, becoming impure, by the introduction of a foreign material. Money worms its way into the body politic, which rots from within. The antidote to corruption, then, is to keep unlike things apart. Take the big money out of politics or limit its role. That’s what our campaign finance reformers tell us.

But the problem isn’t corruption. It’s…

Read more here.

It’s hard to find time to blog when one of your hobbies is reading Rod Dreher. Dude doesn’t stop!

Where to start, where to start? Dreher, like a lot of conservatives, is aghast at the Kipnis case. [click to continue…]