The Counterpublic Papers vol. 4 no. 10

Every now and again there’s a bit of a benefit to running behind. In this case if I’d have sent this out to you when I normally do, with “normally” placed in quotes, I’d have missed one of the biggest stories of the day.

Michael Bloomberg gave 1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins for the sole purpose of providing financial aid to lower income applicants. His thoughts.

Universities have always been more than universities. They’ve been real estate developers. They’ve been policy makers. They’ve been state agents—they’ve staved off revolutions in instances, fomented them in others (see: Chile). But I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in the modern period where universities have relied more on private funds. Johns Hopkins, unlike many of its peers, has been horrible at the endowment game, not even cracking the top 25. But this is the third large donation (the second made by Bloomberg) that may chart a different path. I’ve written here about the Agora Institute—created in order to deal with the growing threat of “political polarization” (well, it’s really the growing threat of white nationalism, but I don’t shape these things). Bloomberg has also given a large amount of money to incentivize inter-disciplinary scholarship in the form of Bloomberg Professorships. By giving such a large amount to financial aid, some hope that this will create a further incentive for others to follow suit. Just the interest alone on a 1.8 billion gift is something on the order of $54 million/year at 3% growth. Hopkins tuition plus room and board is roughly $60K…which would mean that approximately 900 kids/year could go to school for free on this if Hopkins never touched the principal and solely used the interest. This could be a game changer. It’s not just large enough to change the way Hopkins operates, it may be so large that others follow suit.

Six years ago, I argued that college education should be free. I am, and likely for the rest of my life will be, a supporter of public institutions. But in a space where cash rules everything around me if donor politics is what we have, I’d rather those politics turn towards making places like Hopkins more open to the working class populations that surround it.

(Interesting aside. In response, a number of folk are asking why Bloomberg didn’t give his money to CUNY. Similarly others are asking what it would take for a historically black college/university to get this type of donation. Both sets are asking the wrong question—going down that road only leads to a search for the right type of donor, or a better type of donor politics, without questioning why donations—and donors—are necessary in the first place. The neoliberal anti-racist position would simply have us questioning the racial disparity in donors, which while important if we take the political-economy for granted, isn’t the central issue.)

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Hopkins has been working on a plan to create a private police force for the past several months, with administrators increasingly concerned about a wave of low level violence that occurs right outside “the Hopkins bubble” (most universities like Hopkins draw an implicit and in some instances explicit circle around the university, articulating this to students and parents as a way to make them feel safe). Another way to think about Bloomberg’s donation is as trying to construct a 21st century noblesse oblige. I don’t believe it’s a particularly good idea for Hopkins to have its own private police force, deputized or not, just as I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend too much space lauding Bloomberg’s donation without questioning the framework. I wonder though. Might it be possible for folk invested in restructuring the Baltimore police department to use this to get Hopkins to use its weight to bring Baltimore’s police under control? Hopkins administrators probably don’t want a public unit, because they’re not able to hold a public unit as accountable as they could a private unit. But is it possible that a Hopkins public unit might create more space for Baltimore’s supposedly public unit to be more public?

(highly unlikely. worth thinking about.)

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My piece in Dissent magazine is up, expanding a bit on my ideas about how to politically use ballot initiatives.

There are a few challenges both with ballot initiatives writ large and a ballot initiative like the one passed in Florida. Writ large there are enough instances of ballot initiatives used for evil to express concern. We don’t have to go too far—a few states used the ballot initiative this go around to restrict rather than expand reproductive rights. And a few states used the ballot initiative to reduce the government’s ability to collect taxes rather than expand them.

Amendment 4 in particular has three problems worth noting. First, there are two groups of former felons who will not have their voting rights restored—people who’ve committed murder, and people guilty of committing sex crimes. Second, this does nothing to touch the idea of taking voting rights away from people in jail in the first place. Finally, there’s something pretty problematic about the idea of putting a right like the right to vote up for democratic debate.

These critiques are all substantively right. There’s no reason, on the surface, while someone guilty of murder or of rape should not have the right to vote. If you believe the right to vote is inalienable. And as people in jail are responsible for a range of things—debts still accrue, child support still due—it isn’t clear why voting isn’t still part of those things one is responsible for.

But we’ve got two sets of institutions in which we’ve got to fight this battle—we can use the courts, which are definitely not majoritarian institutions, or we can use legislators/ballot initiatives, which are. And while majoritarian institutions in the US represent deep problems, it seems to me that this is the best route to go, in order to transform the meaning of the US in such a way that endures and that then extends. I don’t think we get to our endpoint here, and in this case we’re talking about a state in which one’s status as a prisoner doesn’t have any bearing on one’s ability to participate in government—without building a voting constituency for it that believes that this is an inherent right. We don’t do that without getting some majoritarian institution to express support for it. And in as much as any policy like this is going to leave people out at first, then potentially draw them in later, we had to go with what we went with. Social security began with forms of employment that tended to exclude blacks and the working poor (domestics, agricultural workers, etc.). Once it became the law of the land it was then gradually expanded.

This is what we’re looking at here.

As I’m writing this I’m peering over my shoulder at Corey Robin on FB, and we’re getting at the same thing…as I noted in my last newsletter we’re fighting for a forward looking vision of democracy embedded in the post Civil War constitutional amendments rather than a backward looking vision embedded in the pre Civil War ones. (To be fair, people like Douglass used this backward looking vision to in effect argue that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document, but I think we have a better argument and a better position than Douglass had.)

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More to write…but I’ve more to write. Be good to one another. We’re not all we have. But we have to start here.

Until next week. My name is Lester Spence, and this is the Counterpublic Papers. Lightly edited, slightly stirred.