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Don Moynihan Profile picture
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10 Apr, 7 tweets, 2 min read
My position:

Conservatives who are welcome in the mainstream look at their electoral calculus, and decide it's better to pander to populism.

See, for example, J.D. Vance deciding to throw his lot in with Tucker Carlson's white nationalism when he decides to run for election.
No conservative in America has been as showered by mainstream accolades as Vance. But he made a decision that his path to being a Senator is to run I the Trump/Carlson lane of the GOP *because that is the dominant lane.*
The most ambitious Republicans populists - Hawley, Cruz, Cotton - are the products of elite institutions like Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and Yale.
Not blaming those institutions, but the idea that our current moment is the result of *excluding* conservatives is bizarre.
What is happening is what is always happening with populist movements: they blame a shadowy "elite" - academia, media the deep state and so on - not b/c they are powerful but b/c they contradict the dominant narratives the populist wants to impose.
So an anchor of a national news channel promotes the Great Replacement theory of white nationalism and Vance jumps into defend him.
The "mainstream" or "elites" can't fix this by being more hospitable to them: *they are the mainstream and elites.*
I welcome actual conservative voices in academia and elsewhere, and have done my bit to incorporate them on campus in some ways. But we need to be realistic about what is going on, what is causing it, and how to respond. That means speaking truth to power and against hate.
This thread that gets at the heart of the dilemma that Mounk poses: there is a lot of room for what were traditionally conservative beliefs in mainstream intellectual spaces, but that is different from the animating beliefs of today's GOP.

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More from @donmoyn

Don Moynihan Profile picture
10 Apr
This is the problem with giving control of higher education to political cronies who do not respect science or education: UW Regent who got COVID last year, and has not gotten vaccinated, says the university should not pressure students to get vaccine. wpr.org/uw-regent-camp…
The scientific method for managing a pandemic is to limit the spread of the pandemic. But UW Regent Bob Atwell thinks it should just be up to everyone to make their decision. The thing is: it's a fucking pandemic. Your decision affects my risk.
Colleges tend to be incubators of risk for their community and faculty and staff. Students travel and do not observe always lockdowns. This should be something a university regent should be able to understand. channel3000.com/the-data-tells…
Read 5 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
9 Apr
This held up well
To be clear, Vance is choosing to jump into defend Carlson when Carlson is getting some heat for being a bit more explicit than usual in his support of white nationalism, endorsing the Great Replacement theory. This is the cause Vance wants to associate with as a GOP candidate.
Vance won't specifically endorse Replacement Theory. Instead, he uses Carlson's technique of saying that some shadowy elite* is silencing him - and you!

*elite does not include Ivy League educated lawyers and venture capitalists supported by billionaires.
Read 8 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
9 Apr
The line of reasoning here is that its ok to study race, gender etc. but its been done poorly. To accept this you have to have just an incredibly blinkered knowledge of what social science actually produces. (Blinkered enough to be cheering on an authoritarian attacking campus).
If your taste is for rigorous causal research on discrimination, thats fine. There is plenty of it that shows the type of pattern of discrimination that the anti-CRT crowd are claiming is made up. But they never engage with this research. pnas.org/content/114/41…
If you are applauding how Victor Orban manages universities, you are cheering on one part of a broader strategy by an authoritarian to silence dissenting thought. He is doing the same thing for media & civic life. Don't pretend you support free inquiry.
Read 4 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
7 Apr
In the name of free speech, and viewpoint diversity, the government wants to survey the beliefs of individual faculty and students and "fix" the problem if they don't provide the right answers.
This bill appears to be an update of legislation proposed in 2019, which I discussed then. Same arguments apply (thread)
The problem with framing "viewpoint diversity" as a public value is that invites policymakers pursue it. Here, policymakers are explicit in saying that if (as we already know) students and faculty are mostly liberal, that is a problem that must be fixed.
Read 7 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
7 Apr
People associate "passport" with "government" and so the use of "vaccine passports" invokes the idea of govt control. That is not really what is happening.
Private organizations - and consumers - are generating a demand for a mechanism to reduce frictions while ensuring safety.
It is legal for private organizations to place conditions on access to their products, and the federal government has been very clear it is not the one mandating any sort of mandatory passport. nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/…
But collectively we would be better off if each company did not have its own vaccine app. So, there is a demand for federal regulation to address reliability, integrity and privacy questions. nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/…
Read 8 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
6 Apr
This piece from @jbouie makes clear what should be obvious, but which we are still arguing about: that facially neutral rules have disparate effects in voting. 1/ nytimes.com/2021/04/06/opi…
This disparate effects of facially neutral rules is clear if you look at the history of US elections. When @pamela_herd & I wrote about administrative burdens in voting it was essential to take a historical view.
As more overt forms of discrimination became illegal, states relied more on grants of discretion to local officials that they could assume would generate disparate impact. This still happens. Disparate employment of administrative discretion arguably determined the 2000 election!
Read 5 tweets

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