The Counterpublic Papers vol. 4 no. 15

It’s been a minute. A lot going on.

About a year and a half ago Hopkins students, staff, and faculty received an email from President Ron Daniels. Hopkins was going to push for its own police force. Hopkins wasn’t alone. The University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania (Daniels’ previous employer), as well as a range of other private universities had their own police force. In Baltimore Morgan State, Coppin State, and the University of Baltimore (all public) have their own police forces.

A group of faculty drafted a letter. Not even four years removed from the uprising we thought that such a police force would further exacerbate tensions between Hopkins and the broader Baltimore community, we felt that it wouldn’t deal with the most important crimes that Hopkins students face (sexual assault), we felt that there would be few mechanisms people could use to hold the unit accountable. And we felt that once the police unit was created there would be no way to peel it back. We had a meeting with President Daniels and the provost personally, and noted our concerns. Daniels was concerned in a sharp crime increase that he couldn’t reduce no matter what he threw at it. (Faculty responded with research suggesting that police rarely reduce crime in the fashion he desired.) Students organized against the idea immediately, expressing similar concerns. Because state legislation was required, Hopkins had to lobby the state to draft and pass the legislation.

They failed. It was an election year, and given how intense antagonism was, no one wanted to pay at the polls.

So over the summer Hopkins administrators took a different path.

Whereas last year Hopkins administrators felt the need for the bill was self-evident, this year they tried to build community support. Held a number of forums (all during work hours), went to community associations, met with student groups, faculty, and administrators. The student groups still expressed concern, while some faculty members participated in the forums none of them supported the idea.

In addition though Hopkins administrators did three things.

They gave campaign donations to a number of political representatives—including Baltimore’s mayor Cathy Pugh. Billionaire (and Hopkins alum) Michael Bloomberg came to Annapolis to lobby for the bill. And they sweetened the pot by, among other things, paying for a police athletic league.

Although we don’t know what’s going to happen yet, last week the bill passed its first hurdle. The five member delegation of Baltimore state senators passed the bill 3-2, with state senator Cory McCray being the deciding vote.

It’s possible that it lose in the house—that the Baltimore city delegation defeats it there. But it looks like it’s going to get through. (I think it JUST passed the city delegation as I type. 9-4 with two not in attendance.)

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In the wake of the 2016 election one of Hopkins’ trustees—a greek shipping magnate—thought that it’d be a good idea to create an institute designed to study and problem solve political polarization. The institute (the Agora institute) would bring together scholars from a range of disciplines but centered in political science and psychology. The institute would have inward facing projects designed to push the literature forward, and outward facing projects designed to push ideas out to the public.  I can’t speak for psychology, but over the past several years the department has seen its numbers increase primarily through external projects like Agora rather than internal needs. In relatively flush years a department like ours would identify a need (say for a Latin American specialist), we would go to the administration, the administration would say yes and then we’d try to make a hire.

Now? More likely administrators would come to us with an initiative (funded by outside capital) and then we’d see if we find a way to make that initiative fit our interests.

In this specific case, we’re looking at adding a significant number of faculty, more than we’ve ever seen before…off of this initiative.

Which on the one hand sounds good. Political polarization is a pressing issue. It hits the sweet spot of being politically and intellectually important.

But…take a look at the board.  (Take a look at the name of the board.)

We know that one of the driving factors of political polarization is economic. Fewer individuals receive the benefits of our current global economic arrangement and increasing numbers of people are on the direct receiving end of all the drawbacks. What’s the odds that a board. of. overseers are going to want to wrestle with this directly?

We’ve already received emails about the rollout event associate with institute. Paul Ryan and Paul Wolfowitz are just a couple of the headliners.

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A few weeks ago Amazon pulled out of Queens. I’ve written about the HQ initiative in the past, about how it was nothing more than a cash grab. I didn’t think it was likely or even possible to fight it off in the short term. But the political climate had changed. Bernie Sanders had already forced Amazon to increase its minimum wage. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez railed against the deal. And the state senator perhaps most opposed to Amazon was nominated to the state board that would ultimately decide it. Amazon probably could’ve weathered the storm, but because they were unused to the type of pushback they’d received, they simply pulled out.

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I bring up Amazon, because in a way Hopkins is the State of Maryland’s Amazon. Although we are a non-profit entity, we are the state’s largest employer, probably one of the state’s largest private landholders, and provide more intellectual expertise than any other private entity. Although we don’t pay taxes, we provide a range of services in lieu of taxes that while not quite adding up, provide a city like Baltimore with a range of resources that it wouldn’t necessarily receive otherwise.

What we see with the police force on the one hand and the Agora Institute on the other, is the power that a single actor can wield to move the needle in reverse. A group of us, small to be sure, have been working to create a new common sense that fights against the logic that policing is the solution. that the most important function of a city is to police its poorer (and blacker) residents. It wasn’t three years ago that Daniels himself argued that we needed to create a new set of partnerships with the city in the wake of the uprising.

There’s more to this.

But there’s a larger reason why it’s been a few weeks since I’ve wrote one of these. It’s like the walls are closing in.

Now this isn’t right. At all.

It feels like it though, because all around us a new world is coming into being. And as the parent of five kids, I know a little something about childbirth. It’s disruptive, chaotic, violent, and painful.

Even under drugs.

We can win this. It’s going to take a lot of dedicated work. I also bring up Amazon because Amazon was defeated.

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Oh. Wrote a bit about the LA teacher strikes. Forgot to give a shoutout to Sarah Jaffe who’s been doing the bulk of the writing and talking on this.

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The first day of Spring Break came at a good time. Rest for the struggle ahead.