AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2009 > February
February 2009
Should lawmakers have a say in college curriculum and staffing?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Censorship and accountability are two completely different things. Georgia is facing at least a $2.2 billion dollar deficit, and universities have to cut costs like everyone else. Of course schools should be prioritizing the relative value of classes in each discipline! How else are they going to decide what to cut: pick it with a pin?
States don’t spend taxpayer dollars on higher education out of the goodness of their hearts: they are paying for more productive workers who will grow the economy and be less likely to need state support. In tough times, it is self-indulgent and foolish to cry ‘academic freedom!’ to protect courses or programs that have the least likelihood of advancing those goals. Because cuts are going to have to be made somewhere. No student at Georgia State University (GSU) should get less financial aid so that the university can continue to offer student health programs like Vagina Monologues and Penis Chronicles (“designed to encourage discussion among females and males about their genitals…”).
GSU is a fine school, but it is irresponsible not to question their use of taxpayer money in offering so many niche “sexualities” courses like “Feminism and Queer Theory” or “African-American Lesbian and Gay Activism.” By contrast, another nearby Georgia school, Kennesaw State, offers just a few such classes, like “Queering the South” (“students will be encouraged to re-construct the South as a place generative of non-normative subjectivities and sexualities”), and other state schools offered none at all.
In a phone interview, Georgia Reps. Calvin Hill and Charlice Byrd explained that since the controversy hit, they’ve been flooded with examples of wasteful public university spending. And their research showed that many state schools around the country are being much better managed in these tight times than others. As Byrd put it, “In this economy, we should be talking primarily about job training, not the superfluous courses and programs.”
This isn’t Andy’s straw man of “government control.” Hill’s bottom line: “We do not want to tell the Georgia Board of Regents what classes to offer or what professors to have. But they have been refusing to take cuts, and yet there are only so many dollars they can spend. We just want them to be accountable for what they offer at taxpayers’ expense.”
Did we move too fast on the stimulus package?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
The “stimulus package,” passed in a panic, is a bad combination: the most expensive and least understood special appropriations law in history. In attempting to help the economy, it makes radical policy changes that lawmakers would never have approved if they had taken a triage approach and passed the most urgent pieces first, then taken more time to understand others. For example, President Clinton’s welfare reform, lauded as one of the most effective policies of our generation, will be effectively eviscerated by the new methods of a bill passed in three weeks.
Anyone with Capitol Hill experience knows that large, urgent legislation typically passes in a “fog of war” scenario, with exhausted staffers drafting hundreds or thousands of pages of legislation, and other legislators exercising an extreme Ievel of trust that someone relatively smart understands each piece of it.
Congressional lawmakers and staffers had just hours to review the 1,000 page stimulus package. Leading democrat Charles Rangel was quoted in “Politico” ruefully laughing that Senate Democrats “don’t know everything that’s in the bill.” In essence, our leaders didn’t lead: they gave into public panic and threw $787 billion in spaghetti against the wall, hoping some of it would stick, instead of spending a few more months to fully develop the less-urgent policies.
We’ve been in this same economic situation before without lawmakers panicking this way. In 1989 to1992, for example, we had the same burst housing bubble, S&Ls and banks failing every day, and hundreds of thousands rapidly losing jobs. The unemployment rate was, like today, passing 7 percent (it was even higher during the 1980s), and the sense of urgency led my Senate Banking Committee bosses to work around the clock to get relief and reform passed. And yet, if memory serves, the quickest bill was passed in six months and the longest took more than a year — and was (at around $250 billion) nowhere near the cost of this initiative.
The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl explained in an interview that, “We are creating a permanent redesign of the government and economy due to a temporary recession, passed by lawmakers who haven’t even read it. Why do we have to pass this whole thing before Presidents Day? The economy is still going to be there next week.”
Rebuttal
De facto GOP Leader Rush Limbaugh took a lot of flack when he admitted that he hopes the Obama presidency fails. Yet after listening to the foot-stamping tantrums of elected Republicans the past few weeks, it’s clear that they’re taking Rush’s obstructionist attitude one step further: they want you, the American people, to fail. They want you to lose your job, not be able to find another one, and wind up cursing Hope and Change from your bed on the sidewalk.
Harsh words, indeed. Yet I promise you, I didn’t move too fast towards this conclusion. I first noted that many GOP strategists join the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl in promoting the fact that “the economy is still going to be there next week.” What an interesting defense of inaction. Sure, the economy will “be there” but in what form? Couldn’t we just keep saying that, week after week, until one day we wake up in Hooverville?
The stimulus plan isn’t perfect, but there’s no perfect solution here. One thing is certain —by the time the precise course of necessary action is known, it will be too late to make a difference. So why not follow the lead of the man we elected to address the crisis just three months ago?
Ah, but then the GOP would have to compromise. Instead, they offer up an alternative bill that relies exclusively on tax cuts, then complain of being “shut out” when their plan isn’t adopted. Other demonstrations of compelling leadership? Representative Eric Cantor’s YouTube video (before it was taken down after a copyright infringement claim) gleefully boasts of the Republican’s zero house participation while Aerosmith screeches “Back in the Saddle” again.
Back in the saddle, maybe, but finding no trail out of this mess. “You can’t approach something this big with nothing but rhetoric,” Joe Scarborough chided his peers the other day. Unfortunately, reasonable views like this within the party are being drowned out in a chorus of “Yes We Can Obstruct!”
Still, maybe we should have spent more time trying to bring a seemingly intractable GOP team to the table. After all, we’re searching for a plan designed to save a dying economy.
I mean, it’s not like this is a war in the Middle East or anything. Now that’s something you rush into….
Does the public have the right to know who financially supports voter initiatives?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Is there any way to know what you’re really dealing with on Election Day? Sure there is, as an up-and-coming football player famously said to his agent in “Jerry Maguire”: “Show me the money!”
Following the money trail is important in truly understanding a campaign, so I was gratified earlier this month when U.S. District Judge Morrison England upheld a 35-year old finance disclosure law that identifies all who contribute over $100 to a campaign.
This decision greatly displeased supporters of Proposition 8, the voter-approved measure that banned gay marriage in California. The attorneys for Prop 8 feared reprisals for supporters of this controversial measure, including retaliation towards donors to one of the major groups behind the anti gay-marriage initiative, ProtectMarriage.com.
ProtectMarriage.com folks fear harassment? That’s rich. They’re the same group that sent a certified letter to large donors of Equality California, noting their donations for the fight against Prop 8 and tersely suggesting that they “make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error.” Refusing to donate, the letter continued, “would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage… . The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate…will be published.”
Threats of this sort have been regular fare for the anti-gay crowd: companies as disparate as Disney, Pepsi and Wal-Mart have faced very public boycotts for showing any tolerance toward gay groups. How then can conservative groups complain when their followers get similar treatment?
Of course physical threats are another matter entirely; fortunately, despite the hyperbole, there have been very few of those perpetrated against Prop 8 supporters. The plaintiffs in this recent case cite nine incidents of outright harassment, only one of those involving someone whose identity was revealed through campaign disclosure information.
No, most “retaliation” towards supporters of Prop 8 has simply come in the form of irate citizens who have taken their business elsewhere. The last time I checked, voting with your pocketbook played an intrinsic role in a free and just society.
So let’s celebrate transparency in government — at least until some Privacy in Campaign Funding measure crawls onto the next ballot. And when it does? I, for one, want to know who paid for it.
Rebuttal
Andy has gone to the dark side of a dangerous liberal trend: freedom-of-speech protections for everyone except conservative religious believers. The point behind campaign disclosure was to check large donors’ influence on lawmakers’ votes. But democracy is at stake when small donors can no longer contribute without having private information posted on the Internet for the purpose of a coordinated hate campaign.
Andy clearly hasn’t grasped the threat level against Prop 8 supporters. Violent protests against Mormon and Catholic churches have been common. The L.A. local news covering 2,500 protesters caught on camera two Hispanic women being beaten simply for trying to remove hateful graffiti desecrating a church. Small $100 donors have received death threats, their homes have been vandalized, and their employers - who had nothing to do with their donation - threatened and harassed. It got so bad that liberal L.A. Times columnist Steve Levin — a gay marriage supporter — finally wrote a December column pleading for civility. As he reported a few days later, “I’ve never been called a bigot so many times.”
One statement from San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty — reported by Knight-Ridder — sums up why unprotected religious donors will be afraid from now on: “The time has come to take it out there to the people who voted for this awful thing…. The Mormon church has had to rely on our tolerance in the past, to be able to express their beliefs…This is a huge mistake for them. It looks like they’ve forgotten some lessons.”
Jim Bopp, lead attorney on the unsuccessful attempt to protect small donors’ identity, explained via phone that the Supreme Court has upheld such efforts — such as for the NAACP — when there was a “reasonable probability” that donors would be subject to “threats, harassment or reprisals.” If black civil rights donors were being threatened this way, Andy would be the first to want to protect them.
It’s terribly ironic that gay rights advances rest on the very freedoms being threatened by California’s angry agents of intolerance. As Bopp put it, “People can’t be fearful for taking part in our democracy. But they are being punished for taking part. If we allow this, then we are like a Third World country.”
Should race or gender have a major role in Senate appointments?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
These days, we should be able to tackle awkward questions about diversity. In particular: were the governors who appointed two replacement senators feeling too much pressure to meet identical diversity profiles? Doesn’t it seem awfully coincidental that Sen. Barack Obama’s replacement is a black man and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s replacement is a white woman? Granted, I’m glad that the Senate did not lose diversity. And diversity should be one of the many factors considered for appointments. The sensitive question, though, is whether the governors did a comprehensive review of all available candidates or whether race or gender was an implicit prerequisite.
With no other African American in the Senate, Illinois Gov. Blagojevich must have already felt immense pressure to find a black replacement for Obama - and after Blago’s disgrace for allegedly trying to “sell the seat,” such a pick probably also seemed politically bulletproof. Roland Burris was an elected state comptroller and attorney general years ago, but has no legislative experience. I used to work in the Senate, and it is almost impossible to explain how complex and fast-moving every hour is. Senators must have immense leadership, smarts, management skills and - above all - the legislative experience and gravitas to represent their constituents’ viewpoints well. The demanding process of running for Senate tends to weed out anyone without all those traits. Burris may turn out to have them all. But without legislative experience, how can anyone know that? With all candidates to choose from, shouldn’t an ideal appointee be a seasoned legislator?
In New York, Gov. David Patterson reportedly preferred a woman for the seat. And surely Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t have been remotely considered a reasonable contender if she wasn’t a woman. Patterson’s eventual appointee, Kirsten Gillibrand, has a strong educational background but just two years’ legislative experience — and lacks anything approaching the resume of more senior legislators, or New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, who also served in President Clinton’s cabinet. Gillibrand even worked for Cuomo for a year.
Today’s unforgiving policy problems are often a matter of life and death and allow no margin for learning curve. Time may show the new appointees to be excellent senators. But unfortunately they seem like candidates picked more for race and gender than experience, which puts their constituents at a disadvantage.
Rebuttal
Note: Andrea Sarvady’s response was posted a bit late Friday because of technical problems.
My colleague is right — “awkward questions” abound when it comes to race and gender picks, for both appointments and elections. Yet I can’t help but notice that it’s only Democrats who have raised her ire on this topic. If we’re going to tackle thorny issues of diversity in politics, we should first acknowledge that concerns about tokenism are highly subjective. In general, the more the candidate in question has views that vary from your own, the more you may question their selection for high office. Republicans wondered how much of Hillary Clinton’s popularity had to do with her gender; Democrats wondered the same about Sarah Palin. Republicans wonder how much President Obama’s rise had to do with affirmative action; Democrats are now thinking the same thing about Michael Steele’s sudden ascent in the GOP.
The truth is that we can only speculate why Governors Blagojevich and Paterson selected Roland Burris and Kirsten Gillibrand for these plum seats (which they’ll probably only hold for two years; the re-election rate for appointed senators is under 40 percent). With the Blagojevich pick in particular, it’s seems sort of silly to wonder about tokenism when so many of the discredited governor’s decisions are suspect.
Roland Burris’s lack of legislative experience could be a problem, but I can’t help but wonder if we’ll hear the same concerns about New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch’s recent selection. Picked as part of a bipartisan trade that would allow Judd Gregg to leave his Senate seat without losing it to a Democrat, in comes J. Bonnie Newman, a woman and a Republican—bingo! Still, let’s give both Sens. Burris and Newman a fair shake; I’m not sure that “unforgiving policy problems” aren’t better served by at least some fresh eyes to the process.
Burris may well earn his place in the Senate. Newman has actually promised not to run for re-election in 2010, but her short time as a legislator may be productive—she’s an independent thinker whose common sense just might transcend pressure from both parties. And who knows? Maybe someday there’ll be enough folks of various ethnicities and both genders in politics that we won’t find ourselves so caught up in these partisan musings. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on these “golden-ticket” appointees—and an even keener look inward, at our own political biases.
Commentary
By Andrea Cornell Sarvady
Feel like a college education will soon be beyond your family’s budget? Good news! It’s not a safe place to spend four years, anyway.
At least that’s what I’ve gathered, watching lawmakers urge the public to storm the campus gates and protest courses and professors that look like a waste of taxpayers’ money. Their mantra? Censor now, ask questions later.
Such lack of research recently put egg on the faces of two legislators in Georgia, who railed against governmental spending for courses in oral sex and male prostitution. Rail against anything you like, folks, but do your homework first. They soon discovered that these are actually not courses at all, but areas of scholarly expertise that have provided crucial understanding of both teenage sexual habits and the AIDS crisis.
One of the crusading representatives, Calvin Hill, claimed his campaign had been “taken sideways by people who like the titillating words.” Yet Hill’s embarrassing lack of investigation into the very work he was concerned about fully demonstrates just who was “taken sideways” by provocative subject matter.
There’s an art to putting together a rich educational environment, involving an extensive hiring and development process. What qualifies politicians for the job? Nothing, especially when their sole focus is to appease a constituency flooded with selective, sensationalistic tales of Professors Gone Wild.
“Colleges and universities operate for the good of society as a whole,” I was reminded by John Curtis, Director of Public Policy for the American Association of University Professors. “That’s why taxpayers, legislators, students and families invest in them—not only when they already agree with each lesson that is being taught.”
Makes sense, right? Nonetheless, certain groups keep touting insidiously named “academic freedom” and “academic diversity” bills, designed to push intelligent design theory into the science curriculum, force professors to tailor their lectures to appeal to pre-held views, even give students permission to reject an assignment with which they don’t agree.
Does that sound like freedom and diversity to you? It sounds like coercion to me, and now the same manipulative crew who used the “balance” argument to silence professors is trotting out a “budget” argument to try and achieve the same thing.
Governmental control of our intellectuals? That’s never been my view of America. Do you want it to be yours?