Samir Chopra's Blog, page 37

David Brooks Should Take A Knee And Stop Writing Stupid Op-Eds

David Brooks wants to “persuade” high school football players who are kneeling during the national anthem to protest systemic racism that what they are doing is “extremely counterproductive.” He does so by identifying this country’s “civic religion,” which is “a fusion of radical hope and radical self-criticism” and “based on a moral premise–that all men are created equal.”  This religion has been “nurtured…by sharing moments of reverence.” Sadly, this religion is now “under assault” from a “globalist mentality” and  “critics like Ta-Nehisi Coates” and a “multicultural mind-set.” Now, unfortunately, Americans are not so patriotic any more and so now, “sitting out the anthem takes place in the context of looming post-nationalism.” As such, when Americans sing the national anthem, “we’re not commenting on the state of America….We’re expressing gratitude for our ancestors and what they left us.” But if we don’t sing the anthem, all hell breaks loose:

We will lose the sense that we’re all in this together. We’ll lose the sense of shared loyalty to ideas bigger and more transcendent than our own short lives. If these common rituals are insulted, other people won’t be motivated to right your injustices because they’ll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story. People will become strangers to one another…You will strengthen Donald Trump’s ethnic nationalism….

Roughly: if you don’t sing the national anthem and show the appropriate respect to a country whose blessings in your case have been decidedly ambiguous, racists like Donald Trump wins. So you see, if you fight racism, racism wins. Cut one head off, another one appears. Why don’t you just give up, shut up, stand up, and sing? You’re playing football, stayin’ healthy; you might go to the NFL and make lots and lots and lots of money like that other ingrate, Colin Kaepernick. You’ll get to participate in sponsored rituals of patriotism in big stadiums. So go ahead and sing that “radical song about a radical place [and its slavery].”

Because Brooks’ column is an advice column, let me dial 1-800-RENT-A-CLUE for him. The only folks instantiating the “civic religion” Brooks speaks of are the high-school football players who, through their public protests, are risking abuse and denigration from patriots, and worse, patronizing advice from painfully clueless, overpaid, incompetent writers. They, and not the hysterical patriots, are the ones actually displaying a “fusion of radical hope and radical self-criticism.” Their actions indicate that they don’t consider this nation a finished product; they consider it a work in the making. By doing so, through their peaceful, non-disruptive protest, they are making the most hopeful statement of all: that political activism can lead to change. Their actions are not complacent and quietist like Brooks; their silent protest is expressive and eloquent. It adds another note to the American symphony, which is an unfinished work. The American ideal is not a coin, which once minted, carries the same value; it is an ongoing notion, one revealed by history, and by action and thought.

The high-school football players are dynamic innovators in this realm of political practice and theory; Brooks represents stagnancy and stasis. America needs more of the former, less of the latter.

Presidential Elections, Marks, And Con Men

On the night of 15 October 1992, I watched a live telecast of the second presidential debate between George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot. As I watched three men in business suits–walking back and forth on a ‘town-hall’ stage–explain how they would run the nation, manage its economy, and conduct its international affairs, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that were was something of the salesman to all of them. In the case of Ross Perot, that feeling was even more accentuated. Indeed, it was with some incredulity that I watched him go on to earn the vote of almost twenty million Americans in the general election that followed. (Perot earned precisely zero electoral votes for his efforts, a bizarre side-effect of the US’ bizarre electoral system.) Perot was almost universally mocked and reviled by the national press, but he still managed to convince almost half as many Americans who voted for George Bush Sr. to vote for him. This despite being a short man with an almost comical speaking style–his incipient populism and his claims to bring his background in business management to the running of the presidency were enough. His candidacy sparked a very uncomfortable thought: what if some billionaire with adequate money to blow on an election, someone with more charisma and style than Perot, decided to run and buy himself a presidency?

Some twenty-four years later, we have the answer. As a New York Times/CBS poll reports, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now in a virtual tie nationwide. And we have confirmation of that ghastly suspicion: the American electoral system is a mark,  ripe for exploitation by a conman. The ‘right’ economic conditions–it is instructive to return to 1992 and see how many of the current worries about rising inequality and the losses of jobs to overseas manufacturing were present even then–are at hand, media coverage has sunk to new lows of superficiality and vacuousness, and a weak opposition cannot get its campaigning act together.

Ross Perot did not stay on message; he did not tone down his ridiculousness; he paid for it. Donald Trump seems to have learned the right lessons from his campaign: go full-bore populist, mark yourself as an outsider, brag about your business acumen, strut your patriotism. And avoid Perot’s mistakes: get disciplined; provide your supporters a fig-leaf for their commitment to you. As the New York Times reports:

Mr. Trump hired new campaign leadership in mid-August and has been more disciplined in his public statements. His poll numbers have been steadily rising.

It had always seemed that if Donald Trump ever toned down his act a bit, he’d become a genuine threat at the polls; it would allow ostensibly nose-holding Republicans to vote for him. He seems to have imbibed this lesson: say what you want to say, cloak it artfully; drop the megaphone, pick up the dog-whistle. And of course, be blessed with an opposition candidate like Hillary Clinton who is not a very good politician, has been weakened by a stream of political attacks over the years, and cannot trust her supposed electoral base enough to give them–even if only in promises–what they really want.

We live in interesting times.

 

 

Machiavelli On The Unjust Republic’s Susceptibility To Treason

In Book I, Chapter VII of The Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli writes:

[N]othing makes a republic so stable and strong as organizing it in such a way that the agitation of the hatreds which excite it has a means of expressing itself provided for by the laws….whenever one finds foreign forces being called in by one faction of men living in a city, it may be taken for granted that the bad ordinances of that city are the cause, for it does not have an institution that provides an outlet for the malignant humors which are born among men to express themselves without their resorting to illegal means.

The laws of the republic are, for Machiavelli, part of its leader’s political toolbox for maintaining its stability and ensuring its longevity and prosperity. A crucial and indeed, essential, function of the laws is the channeling of discontent toward safe and speedy resolution. Where such channeling does not take place, the citizens “have recourse to illegal means, which cause the eventual ruin of the entire republic.”

These passages remain instructive. As I read them, I scribbled the following note in the margins of my copy of The Portable Machiavelli (Penguin Classics, Bondanella and Musa trans., 1979):

Treason is more likely in an unjust state.

Indeed. Where there is no forum for the expression of discontent with the republic, we might come to see, through a Freudian or Nietzschean lens, that this repressed desire or drive for amelioration of injustice will find expression through some other means. If the republic is lucky, this drive will be directed inwards and result only in the destruction of the discontented. If not, that drive will find outward expression, directed against the republic, by any means necessary. Violence and treason will come to seem reasonable alternatives to the oppressed; aid will be sought wherever it may be found, and then pressed rapidly pressed into service. Allegiance to the republic will fall away; redressal of oppression and injustice will come to occupy center stage in their politics of those who protest. The republic will come to stand for something other than its republican ideals; its laws, supposedly its most noble possession, will appear debased and unworthy of commanding obligation.

We should keep this in mind when we rush to criticize those who would dare choose unorthodox means of protest. Merely urging them to legal forms of protest is not enough; it must also be asked whether the legal arrangements of the republic in question would allow their experienced injustice to actually be addressed, or will merely cause their protest to fizzle out. The wise ruler witnesses discontent in his state and wonders the republic law’s may be amended his laws so that future protests find a forum for expression and redressal; the unwise merely ratchets up the repression or becomes defensive, blaming the discontented for having the temerity to speak up and act.

Note: These passages led to a vigorous discussion today in my Political Philosophy seminar, an always gratifying response to an assigned reading.

A Bedtime Story About ‘Immigration And Separation’

Last week, as is our custom at home, I read to my daughter before I put her to bed. (We pick a mix of ‘long stories’ and ‘short stories’ and settle on a number beforehand, one which has to be conformed to by a ‘promise.’) On this particular night, the ‘long story’ was Edwidge Danticat‘s Mama’s Nightingale; I did not know what the book’s contents were and only picked it up because, well, the author was Edwidge Danticat. That’s not entirely accurate: the subtitle did say A Story of Immigration and Separation but I presumed it was about an immigrant child feeling homesick for the home she has left behind. Perhaps, subconsciously, I had hoped to be able to tell my daughter about my migration to the US, my occasional nostalgia for an older ‘home.’

The opening passages of Danticat’s story soon dispelled these hopes:

When Mama goes away, what I miss most is the sound of her voice….For the last three months, Mama has been at Sunshine Correctional, a prison for women without papers….Every night after he makes dinner for us and helps me with my homework, Papa sits at the kitchen table and writes letters to the judges who send people without papers to jail. He also writes to our mayor and congresswoman and all the newspapers and television reporters he’s heard of. No one ever writes him back.

I’ll admit to hesitating when I read the bit about an imprisoned mother; I was reading to a not-quite-four-year-old after all. But I pressed on. My daughter’s curiosity about why this girl had been separated from her mother was not easily satisfied; I did the best I could to explain the surrounding context.

Danticat’s story is ultimately one with a happy ending–a family reunification–in which the young girl who is the subject of the story plays an empowered and leading role. I read–with some relish–those parts of the book in which the young daughter of the imprisoned mother is able to intervene in her mother’s case; there was ample opportunity here for my daughter to find behavior and attitudes worth emulating.

My story reading over, I noticed the book carried a postscript by Danticat, which I read aloud as well. In it, Danticat notes that she is the child of parents who migrated to the US before she could, that she was unable to join them because they were ‘without papers,’ a notion which fascinated her then and resulted in her writing this current story. And then at the end, there was a straightforward recitation of some grim numbers, an accounting of the tens of thousands of who have been ‘returned’ or ‘removed’ from the US–thus splitting many, many families asunder–by the Obama administration.

I have heard of, and read, those statistics many times; they have featured in many political debates I have participated in. But my relationship to them, despite being an immigrant myself, has always been a rather peripheral one. Not on that night, not with my daughter sitting on my lap. As I tried to finish reading Danticat’s postscript, my daughter looked at me in some surprise: my voice had caught in my throat, and I was unable to continue reading aloud. I tucked her in just a little more affectionately that night.

James Cozzens On The Supposed Theater Of The Law

In The Just and the Unjust (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1942, p. 9) James Gould Cozzens writes:

It might be argued that providing spectacles was not now, or ever, the office of a court of law. Good in theory, in practice these arguments overlooked the fact that spectators made anything they watched a spectacle, and those who performed public duties before an audience became willingly or unwillingly actors, and what they did, whether they wanted it or not, became drama. Involuntarily an actor, Abner could not be unconscious of his audience’s expectations, nor unaware that his audience was finding the performance, of which he was part, a poor show compared to what true drama, the art of the theater or the motion picture, had taught them to expect.

Art would not take all day Monday to get a jury. Art never dreamed of asking its patrons to sit hour after hour over an impossible-to-hear lawyers’ colloquy, with no action but the self-conscious walking down of person after person from the panel of petit jurors as the names were called.

Law is commonly described as drama, spectacle, and performance art. As Cozzens notes, one part of this identification is relatively facile: legal affairs are conducted and enacted in public spaces by its agents; they, in turn, keenly aware of the spectators’ gaze involuntarily play to these galleries; and so we have a public, dramatic performance of matters of–sometimes–life and death. In these passages, Cozzens makes note of this common suggestion and dismisses it. His rejection of this identification relies on a commonly noted feature of the law: it can be exceedingly and pointlessly tedious and inefficient.

Law’s spaces–its courts–are indeed dramatic venues as are its trappings: the robes of the judges, the declamations of the bailiffs; the solemn swearings in. But the procedures of law, the specifications of legal business can and is to be conducted, while setting up constraints for the behavior of legal actors both include and exclude too much. They make possible too much interference by legal actors with ‘directors’ cues’; they allow for all manner of interruption of the ‘main act.’ Sometimes all is pantomime as prosecutor and defense spar with the judge in a sidebar conference; sometimes procedural constraint blocks the introduction of dramatic new evidence; there is all too much sand that may be thrown in the wheels of a legal drama. Imagine, by way of an analogy, that a theater performance or a poetry reading is interrupted frequently to adjust the lighting or the sound: technicians rush on stage, the actors cease speaking and wait patiently, the poet halts mid-stanza. Too many of these and the spectators may well head for the exits.

But perhaps legal drama is distinct in that its interruptions and inefficiencies are only imagined as such; they are part of the drama and must be viewed as such. They are not bugs; they are a feature. If so, the nature of the legal drama has been perhaps misunderstood by Cozzens above.  Not all drama or theater or all motion pictures entertain and edify in precisely the same way; some, in order to make us experience a distinctive qualitative aspect of life must incorporate those features. Perhaps law’s dramatic purpose in these tedious inefficiencies is to bring us face to face with their undying presence in our lives, to make us aware of just how much of our lives is lived in precisely that same fashion as the law conducts itself.

Afghanistan, Greg Mortenson, And The Temptations Of Charitable Work

In his New Yorker profile of Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, George Packer writes:

Afghanistan—mountains, deserts, ungoverned spaces—has always seemed to offer a blank slate for utopian dreamers: British imperialists, hippie travellers, Communists, Islamists, international do-gooders.

Jon Krakauer’s trenchant takedown of the Greg Mortenson Three-Cups-Of-Tea myth in Three Cups of Deceit offers a depressing confirmation of this claim. Except that Mortenson, the supposed do-gooder, builder of schools for Afghani children which would magically combat ‘terrorism,’ and founder of the Central Asia Institute (“from which he was forced to resign as executive director following an investigation by the Montana attorney general”) does not even come across as particularly utopian, but instead as a plain old grandstander and crook.

There is a familiar pattern here: international traveler goes to distant land, regarding it as testing or proving ground for himself or herself, as a zone for self-discovery and/or self-realization, and resolves to not stop there; this land must now receive the benefits of his journey of self-realization. In this vision, the land and its peoples turn into mere pawns to be moved around, lied about, turned into characters in the traveler’s own charade, all while money and fame accumulate thanks to the largess of those who buy the legend hook, line, and sinker. For his part, Mortenson abuses the hospitality of the Afghanis who sheltered him, escorted him through unfamiliar territory, and acted as interpreters and liaison officers in establishing local relationships. He also embellishes his own adventures, describing himself as a man who bravely confronted dangerous armed men, the dreaded “jihadis” who apparently strike fear into the hearts of all Americans, even as it is made clear most of his purported adventures involved no such contact, and were instead confined to the safest parts of Baltistan.

Unfortunately, there will be more folks like Mortenson in the future, just like there will continue to be places like Afghanistan. Charity work like his claimed to be brings with it two particularly attractive inducements¹: you acquire the halo of a saint, and you can dip into the coffers of the tax-exempt non-profit organization you set up. (Krakauer’s detailing of the various devices by which Mortenson fleeced the Central Asia Institute makes for particularly infuriating reading.) Fame and wealth? Show business might bring you that same package, but you won’t get that nice halo in the bargain.

In the end, as might be expected, Mortenson merely loses a bit of his reputation–for you can rest assured that some will continue to believe his story–and will continue to live in some comfort in the US. But back in Afghanistan, the empty, non-functioning schools that his ‘charity’ built will continue to provide damaging testimony to the local folks that their troubles can only be enhanced when ‘outsiders’ come visiting, spinning fairy tales of deliverance, all the while casting themselves as saviors. Distrust and suspicion and hostility are only reasonable responses to this state of affairs.

Note #1: The Clinton Foundation’s activities are particularly instructive in this regard.

On Hoping For The Miracle Of Precocity

A few days ago, I met some neighbors, out for a walk with their son (who was riding in a stroller.) As we chatted, they turned to their son and asked him a question or two. Answers were not forthcoming. They pressed on, but there was no response. These questions were innocent ones: “What number is that?” or “Where do we live?”  A few seconds later, the young lad’s parents laughed a little nervously and said ‘Well, I guess you’re being a bit shy today, aren’t you?” We all laughed and bade each other goodbye.

Plenty seemed to lurk beneath the surface of that seemingly innocent encounter. As the young lad was prompted by his parents, I tensed, hoping for his parents’ sake that he would respond, eliciting approving chuckles from me and beaming smiles from his parents; I would then be able to able to congratulate him–and his parents–on his precociousness (and their role in nurturing it), his grasp of concepts vital for his continuing maturing as a human; they could bask in his reflected glory. But it was not to be, and the resultant disappointment was almost palpable in all of us.

It is entirely possible I was projecting my own worries and insecurities on my friends. I will confess to worrying–almost incessantly, like many other parents about me–about whether my child is keeping up with the appropriate developmental landmarks in the cognitive and physical domains (and sometimes the moral too.) In this context, the slightest suggestion of precociousness is seized upon as manna from heaven and shown off proudly. The failure of the child to ‘perform on demand’ like a well-trained seal is then cause for considerable disappointment. The benign type remains internalized in the parent; the malign type is directed at the child.

Matters are considerably worse if one lives, as I do, in a place like Brooklyn, Ground Zero for The Overachieving Child and The Overly Anxious Parent. Here, prodigies abound, reared by parents of seemingly unlimited intelligence, achievement, and ambition. They’ve read all the right parenting books; they know where all the city’s best offerings for children are; they seem to know how best to place their child on the Fast Track. You can recite as many mantras about accepting your child for ‘who he or she is’ but those nostrums fight hard to make an appearance when confronted with the worry that your child has to ‘compete’ with sundry geniuses and their superbly switched-on parents. You remain well aware that ‘good schools’ are hard to get into; that the world that awaits your child is not increasing in tolerance or kindness for outliers. Try as you might to take on board the various bits of parental comfort food that are sent your way by those who’ve been lucky enough to see their children flower and blossom into something approximating their parents’ hoped-for vision, the daily reality of dealing with the irregular ‘progress’ of your child continues to provide a steady IV line of incurable anxiety.

And much like the believers of old, we continue to hope for miracles, for displays of the spark of precocity that will reassure us all is well, that we are saved.

 

Cioran on Academic Writing’s ‘Forms of Vulgarity’

In ‘The Addict of Memoirs’ (from Drawn and Quartered, Arcade Publishing, New York, 1983/2012), E. M. Cioran writes:

Is there a better sign of “civilization” than laconism? To stress, to explain, to prove–so many forms of vulgarity.

Bergson is said to have said–somewhere–that time spent in refutation is time wasted¹. There is, evidently, a sympathy between these pronouncements that I make note of. Cioran suggests laconic forms of expression avoid three undignified sins that burden our writing. For in stressing, in explaining, in striving to prove–requirements placed upon us by the need to persuade, to change minds, to engage dialectically–we may go far afield of our original intentions were in writing. We write to communicate but only secondarily to persuade; what matter if we don’t?

Cioran’s assessment of the dialectical aspects of writing are harsh but rare is the academic writer who would not heave a sigh of relief were he or she to be spared their burdens. Consider, for instance, the trappings of academic writings: the elaborate piling on of references in opening sections to indicate–to referees, almost never to readers–that adequate scholarship is on display, the careful invocation of select objections and their refutation to shore up the central thesis presented. the footnoting to account for shades of meaning or to point to subsidiary debates, the careful setting of the stage for the presentation of the thesis, and so on. Such is  the overhead these place on any piece of academic writing that a common complaint made by readers–even if not always verbally articulated–is that a little too much fluff obscured the author’s central points. (I’m not discounting the importance of the references the author-researcher provides to future scholars in the field; merely that these accouterments are, at one level,  entirely peripheral to the points made by the writer and are only present because of the location of the writing within a particular social structure of inquiry. And as my nod to referees above indicates, within the context of a system of peer-review these considerations can quickly fade into insignificance.)

These ‘forms of vulgarity’ may too, force writers into forms of expression they are not competent at. Not everyone can explain or refute or prove as well as they can state a bold or original thesis; to indulge in these can weaken the work presented, which is both the writer’s and the reader’s loss. The provision of a claim or thesis in splendid isolation may be as productive–if not more–of thought as the provision of an elaborate package of arguments, objections, counter-objections, refutations, and so on; if we are to suggest further avenues of inquiry or to cut to the heart of the matter, a concise, powerful, and laconic statement may work best. Perhaps the reader can construct objections and see if the thesis presented stands up to them. Perhaps the writer and the reader–together–may then bring the writer’s work to fruition. Which is how it normally goes, in any case.

Note #1: I would appreciate a reference so I can reassure myself I’ve not made up this line.

The Implausible Immigrants Of ‘The Night Of’

In HBO’s The Night Of a young Pakistani-American, Nasir Khan, has a bad night out: he ‘borrows’ his father’s cab for a joyride, picks up a mysterious and beautiful stranger, parties with her, and wakes up in her apartment to find her dead, and himself accused of murder. Things look bad, very bad. And so we’re off, probing into the subterranean nooks and crannies of the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, on the ‘outside,’ his stunned and bemused parents, convinced of his innocence–remain stunned and bemused, fumbling about, accepting help as and when it is given to them by strangers. This depiction of their plight and their reaction to it reveal this show’s understanding of immigrant life to be a very superficial one.

Immigrants don’t sit around, waiting for help to fall into their laps. The fact that they left their homelands to seek a better life is a prima facie indication they don’t do so. Here is what a pair of real-life Mr. and Mrs. Khans, living in the US for long enough for their son to have been born and brought up here, would have done had their son been picked up by the police and thrown behind bars: they would have started working the phones, calling every single one of their friends and family members who could help. They would have put the word out; they would have hustled, desperately and frantically, in a  manner quite familiar to them. The would have worked every ‘angle’ available to them. Perhaps a friend knows a friend who knows a criminal lawyer (“Let me call Hanif, his friend Syed used to work with a lawyer once”); perhaps someone knows a local Congressman who could help (“Do you think we should call Rizwan to see if he can put in a good word for us?”).  The Khans are shown living in Queens; their precise neighborhood is never named, but one can guess the show’s makers had Jackson Heights–where a large Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi community resides–in mind. If the Khans had been living there for any length of time, they would have built up, as all immigrants do, a rich network of connections who would have enabled and facilitated many aspects of their life in New York City. Nasir’s father, Mr. Khan, is shown as being successful enough to have a part-share in a cab; he did not get to that point without: a) displaying considerable drive and b) cultivating partnerships and relationships.

Leaving an old life in one’s home and starting a new one elsewhere take energy and initiative, the kind conspicuously absent in The Night Of’s depiction of an immigrant family’s responses to a personal catastrophe. The networks of ‘connections’ and ‘contacts’ immigrants rely on to replace the comfortable social structures of the past are what make their lives in this new land possible; an immigrant who did not instinctively rely on such forms of aid, and who did not display sufficient initiative to draw on them, would not last too long in this unforgiving land. Mr. and Mrs. Khan do a good job of looking like shocked parents; they don’t do such a good job of looking like immigrant parents who have brought up their child away from ‘home. ‘

Why Faculty Lock-Outs Are Irresponsible And Inappropriate

In response to my post on Sunday making note of the lock-out of faculty at Long Island University (LIU), a Facebook friend wrote on my page:

So, I don’t understand. What makes university professors any different than people who work any other job? If you don’t like the pay, or don’t like the working conditions, simply go somewhere else. An employeer prohibiting someone from coming into their workplace who doesn’t agree to the terms of their employment is immenently fair. I’m sure the employeer (whatever, whoever, and for whatever industry) has made a calculated position to turn away their employees because they weren’t worth the compensation they demanded. The employees may not feel that way, and maybe they can come to an agreement, but maybe not and both sides go their own merry way.

Because students are people, not products; because education is not a commodity. That’s the short answer, and it should be enough. But let’s look a little closer.

The first part of the response above is eminently fair in one regard: faculty are workers who provide labor to employers; indeed, faculty organize themselves into unions precisely to make the point that they should be compensated fairly and that they deserve adequate working conditions in their workplace. Moreover, the possibility they may seek alternative employment or withholding labor (via a strike) is one their employer is aware of; these are tactics and strategies available to workers in labor negotiations.

So why criticize the employer for leveraging their power in their relationship with their workers?

Because, bizarrely enough, as just noted, there is the small matter of students and their education, the impact on which needs to be assessed when evaluating the appropriateness of any action taken by management or faculty. See, for instance, this post expressing concerns about how CUNY faculty should approach the decision to take a strike in case their negotiations with CUNY administration failed; at that stage, CUNY faculty had been without a contract for several years. That is, tactics and strategies which might compromise the education of our students were only to be resorted to as a last, radical measure when all other options had failed. (They included civil disobedience actions by faculty.) Management which took actions to compromise the mission of the corporation they managed would be looked upon very unfavorably by their shareholders; this is the situation we face at LIU. As noted in my post, LI management’s concerns seem to be exclusively financial–improving their ‘credit rating.’ Where are LIU’s students and their education in all of this?

In Long Island University’s case, there is no indication that management has these kinds of concerns front and center, no indication that management seems to understand the almost-fiduciary duty they have to their wards, their students: they have abruptly pulled the plug on contract negotiations, unilaterally declaring an impasse of sorts; they have hired inadequate, underqualified replacement workers, thus compromising the education the university provides. Just because an action is legally permissible does not make it responsible or appropriate. LIU management’s actions were not criticized in my post for being illegal; they were criticized for being grossly inappropriate to the situation at hand. LIU students have lost access to their teachers; this is very dissimilar to manufactured products losing access to their makers. (I hope this difference is clear.) LIU students have lost access to their education; this is the cost that must be reckoned with when assessing the worth of LIU management’s actions. From this teacher’s perspective, management’s actions are irresponsible and reckless, and provide clear evidence they misunderstand the nature of the work they are engaged in.