As most people here probably know, Mr. Obama has proposed changing overtime regulations so that more people will be covered. Megan McArdle’s critique of this proposal is, as usual, well-spoken and in my opinion mostly spot-on. But she unfortunately neglects and seems to assume away one of the arguments in favor of Mr. Obama’s proposal.

McArdle points out that changing the overtime requirements to include erstwhile exempt employees would encourage employers to more closely monitor those employees’ hours. For people like her–and like me, who in my current job is exempt–that would work as an intrusion, assuming it would apply to us at all. (Other than snippets from the news and internet, I’m not sure on the specifics of Mr. Obama’s proposal. But I think she and I would still be exempt, even though I, for one, earn less than the $50K+ threshold of the proposed regulations.)

But here is where she errs:

I have a vague idea of what it would be like to manage a Chipotle, in that I can probably specify the major duties involved, like ordering stuff and training workers. But I have no idea what that manager’s biggest day-to-day challenge is, what it takes to do the job well, what he enjoys about his work and what he doesn’t, where she’s hoping to get and what she’s willing to do to get there.

You know who knows that? The manager and the manager’s boss: the people who are currently agreeing to the terms of employment. The administration is proposing to overrule their judgment and force overtime restrictions onto them. But if I asked that Chipotle manager whether he wants the possibility of overtime pay and the certainty of clock-punching that comes with it, he might give an answer quite a bit like my own — all about why his job, like mine, shouldn’t fall under those rigid external rules.

The error isn’t necessarily in what McArdle suggests about the manager and his/her boss knowing their business and interests better than a regulator would. And as applied to Chipotle or to any number of jobs, or to any number of managers, she might be right. The error, though, is that a lot of service jobs–maybe not Chipotle, but probably Burger King, Wendy’s, McDonalds, Hardee’s, etc.–hire “shift managers” who after a certain training period are put on salary and sometimes must work in excess of 40 hours per week. Their pay may be greater to put them above the current overtime-qualifying wage threshold, and they may very well be managers in key respects, but they are also in many ways just as much workers as they are managers. These aren’t the assistant managers or co-managers or general managers.

There’s much I don’t know. For instance, I just said “a lot of service jobs…hire ‘shift managers.'” Maybe “a lot” isn’t that many, and maybe even those earn so little that the overtime requirements do apply to them. The anecdata I rely on are faulty because in addition to being anecdata, they’re about 20 years old. But Obama’s proposal addresses what to “a lot” of people is a real grievance. Whether that grievance admits of a remedy, and whether his proposal is that remedy or might in some ways make things worse, is another question. I, with McArdle, suspect the remedy might be worse and am at best ambivalent about the proposal.

I probably haven’t done justice to McArdle’s column. It’s about more than this one point I claim she neglects. So of course, read the whole thing.

I agree almost entirely with Megan McArdle’s critique of Lee Siegel, in his article on why he chooses to default on his student loans (NY Times Link). And I don’t particularly wish to defend Mr. Seigel, who, as McArdle says, presents what is perhaps the least sympathetic account of why he has defaulted. Mr. Siegel comes across to McArdle–and to me–as an entitled, even snobbish, person who doesn’t wish to live up to his freely-incurred obligations mostly because it’s inconvenient for him to do so. I’d also add, though McArdle doesn’t say this, that if, as Mr. Siegel urges, all who hold student loans boycotted paying them, then one possible consequence would be a huge curtailment of the loan program, such that others would not have the same opportunities that loans have afforded him.

But there’s a little bit of something in the article that does give me some sympathy, if not for Mr. Siegel’s situation, then at least for what some people face when dealing with student loans. It’s an image his opening anecdote evokes for me:

ONE late summer afternoon when I was 17, I went with my mother to the local bank, a long-defunct institution whose name I cannot remember, to apply for my first student loan. My mother co-signed. When we finished, the banker, a balding man in his late 50s, congratulated us, as if I had just won some kind of award rather than signed away my young life. [link omitted by GC]

By the end of my sophomore year at a small private liberal arts college, my mother and I had taken out a second loan, my father had declared bankruptcy and my parents had divorced. My mother could no longer afford the tuition that the student loans weren’t covering. I transferred to a state college in New Jersey, closer to home.

Here’s the image that snippet evokes for me. It’s the image of an 17- or 18-year old and his parents, who seem to not have had much or any experience with college or with how to play the loan game. Perhaps they all assumed that college was a guarantee of success in life, or perhaps they had met people with college degrees who had money and authority and whom they perhaps had to answer to at their jobs

They, I imagine, had talked to a recruiter for the small liberal arts college at which he found himself. Or perhaps they read the glossy pamphlets that such institutions send out, perhaps with bucolic scenes of campus life, photographs of attractive young students and older but good-looking professors with charismatic faces, and quotations from famous alumni about the value of a small liberal arts college education. Perhaps the recruiter or pamphlet offered some impressive statistics that showed a large number of students obtaining a BA (instead of dropping out) and going on to high-paying jobs or to professional or graduate degrees.

There’s something not quite right with that image ( and I admit I’m reading much into this that Mr. Siegel doesn’t offer). There seems to be something exploitative about it, and I might at a later date write how I believe it is exploitative. But it’s not clear to me what the solution is.

To make matters more difficult, we don’t need to assume bad faith on the part of anybody when the loan was taken out and when Mr. Siegel first matriculated. He and his mother probably really intended to pay back the tuition. The loan officer and the bank he worked for probably really believed that going to college was a good thing and that the loan would help Mr. Siegel. The program of government guarantees for loans was designed to help people like Mr. Siegel to expand their opportunities. The impressive statistics the small liberal arts college offered probably were accurate. And for all I know, maybe that particular college was responsible–expensive, but mindful of costs and really making an effort to give its students real value for their tuition dollars.

In 1903, workers at the World Smelter struck for an 8-hour day. The World Smelter was owned by the Trumanverse Smelting and Refining Company (TSARCO) and was located in Worldville, a neighborhood in Danvar, the capital of Cibolia. TSARCO used strikebreakers, from Worldville, from other parts of Danvar, or from other states. By September, the smelters were running again, but the union did not officially call off the strike until spring 1905.

At least two incidents of labor violence occurred during the strike. The first came in November 1903. As replacement workers walked to the smelter, wives of some of the strikers attacked them. They threw red pepper into their eyes and temporarily blinded them. The second incident came sometime in 1904. Someone set off dynamite outside the home of a skilled smelter worker who lived in Worldville. The dynamite shattered the worker’s windows, but otherwise left the inhabitants unscathed.

I wrote my masters thesis about that strike and another one at the same smelter that occurred in 1899. I interpreted the violence differently then than I do now. Neither interpretation is without its problems.

Then: I mostly gainsaid the violence. It was a violent time for union supporters elsewhere in Cibolia. In 1903, the governor had launched a campaign against the Occidental Federation of Miners (OFM), with which the smelter union was affiliated. The OFM had effectively controlled labor relations in the state’s gold and silver mines for about 10 years. The governor used state militia not only to protect replacement workers, but also to intimidate and arrest union supporters on trumped up vagrancy and other charges. He also turned a blind eye to vigilante groups, called “Citizens’ Alliances,” that harassed and deported miners out of the state. The smelter union’s strike was a sideshow to this larger campaign, and Danvar was a different place. But if that union also resorted to violence, I reasoned, the bigger picture made the resort seem less unjustified.

Second, the violence was not so bad because the harms were “mild.” The victims of the pepper spray attack were blinded, but “only temporarily.” The skilled worker’s house was bombed, but the evidence that unionists were responsible was unclear. Also, it was generally conceded in the news accounts, even in those papers not particularly sympathetic to the union, that the dynamite was so placed that the resulting explosion would not harm anyone. Therefore, the bombing was “only” a threat, and not actual harm aside from a few shattered windows. It’s also possible that the explosion was prompted by something other than the labor dispute because the evidence was too scanty.

Now: I’m much more concerned about how violence operated against those strikebreakers and more particularly, how much unionization at that time depended on the threat of violence. I’m more inclined to find reasons to criticize the violence and much more wary of invoking the “community norms” that helped sustain such violence as some sort of justification.  I personally would be quite scared if someone blew dynamite outside my apartment even if the explosion “only” destroyed my windows.  The damage from the red pepper may not have been permanent, but must have been painful. (Last night, I made for the first time what is called “green chili,” a dish I’ve never had outside of Cibolia and that I get homesick for. I got jalapeno seeds on my fingers and they burned for a couple hours. Good thing I didn’t touch my eyes.)

Still, I’d have to concede the points I made above. It was a violent time in Cibolia (and in generally). And the harms, while nothing to sneeze at, did fall short of more severe violence.

One answer to these different ways of telling the story is is to analyze what happened and refer to how it supports or contradicts existing studies in labor history and history of the era. That’s what historians do. And many, not all,  historians like to say, “it’s not the historian’s job to judge, but to analyze the context and the patterns, and understand why things happened as they did.”

That admonition is sometimes used against Marxist-leaning leaning historians like me in 2000 that tried to find a common class-interest among people I knew only through contemporary news accounts and a few other sources. That same admonition could be used against the neoliberal-leaning me in 2015 who tries to find an individualized interest labor market participation. I’m actually compelled, based on the evidence before me (which is the same as 165years ago), that there was something like a class-interest in Worldville. And despite my now strong preference for the liberal presumption, I can’t fully deny this class-based, communitarian sense existed and was part of a reality that would not recognize the policies I support now or the reasons I support them.

Will’s comment here got me thinking about times in my customer service jobs when I refused to bend the rules but probably should have bent them. Here are two examples, both of which pertain to my time as a bank teller.

Example #1: A young girl, probably 8 or 9 years old, came in with a jar of loose change and wanted to use our coin counter. The rule was only account holders could use the counter. I refused to count the change because when I asked her if she had an account, she said no.

Example #2: A young man came in with a cashiers check for $1,000 made out to his mother. His mother had endorsed the check, and because his mother was a regular customer, I even recognized the signature as hers (or strongly resembling hers). I was reluctant to cash the check because I had never met this man before. (The rule in this case was quasi-unofficial. Theoretically, if the check is endorsed by the payee, it’s negotiable. But in practice, we wanted to be very sure before simply giving away so much money.) He said his mother was outside in his car, but according to him was very sick. I told him to bring his mother in so I could verify that it was her. He did, but as the bank was very crowded, they had to wait in line, and by the time they got back to my teller window, she was so weak she almost collapsed onto the floor and would have if her son hadn’t caught her.

I should have bent the rules in both cases. For example #1, I should have just run the coins through the machine. I don’t think the little girl cried, but she was probably upset or embarrassed that I didn’t help her. And I remember what it’s like being a kid and trying to negotiate an adult world with its seemingly arbitrary rules.

For example #2, I think I was right to insist to talk to the mother, although that is debatable because the signature was probably valid. But I could have said, “Bring her into the bank. You won’t have to wait in line. Just let her sit down and I can skip out of the teller line and verify with her.

I think in both cases the “rule”  was defensible, or at least non-arbitrary. But enforcing them the way I did and with such consistency seemed and seems cruel.

 

Consider this quote from an essay by Leon Fink, a labor historian:*

[Andrew] Carnegie, of course, was the protagonist of the Homestead Strike of 1892, a fateful standoff between one of the biggest corporations and the most powerful union of the Gilded Age. When the Amalgamated Association of Iroon and Steel Workers (AAISW) together with an aroused local citizenry proved unable to withstand a combination of lockout, importation of Pinkertons to protect strikebreakers, and ultimate application of state militia, unionism took a toll beyond the immediate causalities of nine dead and eleven wounded. In the steel industry, declining wages and yellow-dog contracts requiring a binding non-union pledge subsequently became the norm. Overvaluing its remaining resources, the Amalgamated made a final, fateful decision to confront the newly formed U.S. Steel monolith [the successor to Carnegie’s concerns, which he sold to J. P. Morgan] in 1901, a decision ending in crushing defeat. Once the last steel lodge in the country dissolved, Big Steel inoculated itself from trade unionism for the next thirty-four years. [citations omitted]

The “importation of Pinkertons,” which were private security guards, and “the application of state militia” reflect something one sees often in narratives about Gilded Age (c. 1877-c.1920) labor disputes. The idea is that unions could have had more success if it weren’t for violent interference from the state. “Success,” at least when counterposed to the above-mentioned use of Pinkertons and the militia, meant that the strikers would be permitted to harm or threaten strikebreakers, to use violence to prevent strikebreakers from taking jobs that “belonged” to union members.

Before I go too far in decrying “union violence” in the Gilded Age there are two counterpoints. First, in the example of Homestead and many other examples, introducing strikebreakers was a provocative move, an invitation to the very violence that often followed. To be clear, blame for any violence rests with those who actually commit the violence. But if someone introduces a situation they know will lead to violence that person also bears some of the blame for the results.

Second, if you look at the history of labor activism, one finds violence directed against strikers or union supporters either without provocation or with flimsy justifications. The examples are many:  Henry Ford’s hiring thugs to beat up union organizers, the Republic Steel Massacre, the Ludlow Massacre, the deportations and bull-pen imprisonments during the “Colorado Labor Wars” of 1902-1905. I wouldn’t be surprised if such violence counts for a majority of the instances of “labor violence” during the Gilded Age.

So why pick on anti-strikebreaker violence, especially at a time when unions in most sectors seem to be so poorly represented and when most union supporters (I imagine) today disavow violence and do so sincerely?

One reason is a preachy one. I want to point out that such violence is illiberal. If “liberal society” means anything, it means that a person has the right to pursue a lawful calling for which someone else is willing to lawfully hire them. Maybe other norms ought to override at least sometimes this liberal presumption–such as “community interest,” a  notion that jobs are “owned” by the jobholder, a commitment to class solidarity, or a shared opposition to an allegedly monopolistic octopus. And perhaps those norms deserve consideration.

Another reason is, the issue of violence is a more extreme version of the issue of when and whether and how employment relations can be said to be voluntary or coercive. And as one of my interests is labor policy and labor history, I’d like to put the issue of violence out there.

For union supporters, I’d like to ask when, if ever, is it acceptable to use violence and to deter strikebreakers? other forms of coercion to impose or establish a union contract? and what counts as violence and “other forms of coercion”? For opponents of unions, I’d like to ask if anything overrides what I call the “liberal presumption” that each person has a right to pursue a lawful calling? and when and by how much is that presumption overridden?

These are questions that bother me as I try to consider my stance on, for example, the repeal of Taft-Hartley, curtailing public employee unions, anti-union shop (aka “right to work) laws, card check votes, or such workplace related policies like Montana’s “for cause” employment law or raising the minimum wage.

 

 

*From Leon Fink, “Great Strikes Revisited,” in The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and Lessons of a New World Order (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), page 38.

 

Libertarians are sometimes accused of a certain “glibness,” or a Fish You I’ve Got Mine mentality.  And that accusation is in evidence in some of the responses to Jason Brennan’s recent Bleeding Heart Libertarians thread.  In that thread, Brennan addresses an ad hominem he found on twitter.  That ad hominem calls him to task for an argument he has made in the past about the role today’s adjuncts have played in their own poor job fortunes.  Whatever one thinks of Brennan’s post–and I agree with it–it highlights a kind of argument that the unconverted sometimes interpret as glibness.

I’ll call that argument the “one momentous choice” argument.  Here it is, from the original argument that Brennan had made:

Adjuncts are people who played what they should have known, and in most cases did know, was a risky game, and lost…They are more like formerly rich people who understand statistics, but who decided to bet the house in Vegas anyways.

The “one momentous choice” argument refers to a mistake someone made and should have known better than to make.  That mistake should govern the rest of that person’s life circumstances.  No help, no sympathy, is merited or ought to be forthcoming.   The person made their bed, etc., etc.

No, that’s not really Brennan’s argument.  It’s only part of his argument.  The other part is that in the case of adjuncts, there is an opportunity for exit.  Another part is that the higher ed system is corrupt and needs some fixing, and as Brennan said in response to my comment, he pushes for reform “internally.”  Yet another part (not stated in that particular post) is the very reasonable question of why someone else’s mistakes should be a third person’s obligation to remedy?

My point is, though, that the argument seems glib. To the “glib” caller, the argument probably seems like a radical and unrealistic insistence on responsibility to which few of us are ever really held accountable in real life.  The “glib” caller probably believes that we’ve all made mistakes and few of us would want to live in a completely just world where we’re accountable for each and every one of the mistakes we’ve made.  Not to deny the importance of responsibility, that person believes themselves to be just trying to point out even the hardest working and most deserving among us have gotten breaks.  And as the ad hominem Brennan is responding to claims, Brennan is an “overprivileged libertarian faculty member who believes in his heart of hearts that he somehow beat the house.”  He’s already got his, so the ad hominem implies.

I’m not a big fan of ad hominem’s in general and don’t like that one in particular.  And again, I agree with what Brennan says in that OP and what he’s said in other OP’s about the “plight” of adjuncts.  But I do think this particular example highlights why some libertarian ideas have a hard time gaining much currency.  And although there’s perhaps no other way for Brennan to make the argument he does without coming off as “glib,” it’s hard not to acknowledge that there’s something understandable  (not particularly defensible, but understandable) about the “glibness” argument.

I share James’s defense of the liberal arts in his post a couple weeks ago.  But I have mixed feelings about  the promises professors sometimes make on behalf of them.  One promise is that prospective employers “look at” your writing ability and ability to think critically.   Another promise is that a liberal arts degree will be “useful” in the business world.

My feelings are “mixed about” and not “completely opposed to” such promises.  My sense is that writing proficiency and critical thinking ability–along with work ethic, collegiality, and overall competence, however defined–helps one keep a job.  But getting the job in the first place depends more on internships, networking, or credential signalling (a proxy for liberal art’ish skills, but not the same thing) than on demonstrated writing or critical thinking ability. Perhaps a good liberal arts programs introduces its students to these things, but they’re separate from the actual study of liberal arts disciplines.  (Or mostly so….we could argue that everything is all related and part of a lifetime curriculum and that that represents the true spirit of the liberal arts.)

As James points out, the paths from degree to career for liberal arts majors tend to be “so contingent, so unique and unrepeatable, that they provide little clear guidance.” That isn’t an argument against the liberal arts.  In a sense, it can be an argument for the liberal arts inasmuch as it demonstrates the flexibility that comes with such a degree.  But it is an argument against giving prospective students the assurance that intellectual engagement at college or simply attaining a degree is the key to success.

How much do people actually make such promises?  Maybe not as much as I think or recall. Memory is always tricky, but my professors’ “promises” were at least sometimes qualified with a “or at least that’s what I’m told.”  They weren’t necessarily promises to begin with, just statements of why studying liberal arts might be instrumentally useful.

I also remember only half-believing those “promises.”  As an undergrad, I didn’t do all I could have or should have to develop my job skills (e.g., seeking internships), but I think I knew enough to know that a BA in history by itself didn’t really get one much of an entree into the work world.

And if I only half-believed those promises, I’m probably not the only one.  In my undergraduate years, my sense is that among my fellow students, there was a certain belief that the liberal arts were easy and what people took when someone couldn’t hack it in a “real” major like the hard sciences, or math, or engineering.  And let’s face it:  it’s probably usually easier for a non-specialist to get a B in an upper level history class than it is, say, for a non-specialist to get a B in an advanced science, math, or engineering class.  The prevalence of that belief suggests that it was hard to take uncritically the “promises” I mention above.

Therefore, however nefarious the promises might be in theory, they’re probably not as bad as those who might say their teachers lied to them.  At worst, they probably just reinforce what the student wants to believe.  Still, we shouldn’t make those promises without underscoring what James said in his post about paths to career.

Let me state upfront. Civility should never be a standard for freedom of speech. The state should not punish people for engaging in “uncivil” speech and those who engage in “uncivil” speech deserve the protection of the law. If there are any exceptions I can’t think of them right now.

Let me also state upfront. It was wrong for the U of I system to “non-hire” Steven Salaita for the incivility of his tweets, etc. It was wrong on procedural grounds. An excellent case is to be made that when the department invited him “pending approval of the Board of Trustees,” that approval was intended to be pro forma. It was also wrong because the U of I system is a public institution, and a public institution ought to have a darn good reason when it discriminates against a prospective employee’s speech without a showing that that prospect’s speech would negatively affect his or her job performance. And the Board of Trustees, as far as I know, made no finding that Mr. Salaita’s incivility would affect his teaching. If I am wrong, please provide me evidence and if the evidence is compelling, I’ll revise my objection as to the Board’s finding but probably not to the procedural grounds.

But with that out of the way, when it comes to academic speech civility can be a legitimate restriction.

Most university professors play three roles. They teach. They participate in shared governance, such as committee work. And they perform scholarship through publishing, giving public lectures, participating at conferences, authoring blogs, making themselves available for interviews on documentaries, and doing other things.

In that last role, when they speak they are speaking ex academia. When they speak ex academia, they speak from within the bounds set by their institution, by members of their department, and by members of their discipline, such as those who edit and referee the journals, create conferences, and comment on public statements made in the general area of their discipline.

Those “bounds” or standards are many and they evolve over time. A historian today who states that antebellum slaves in the United States were basically happy and loved and were well-served by their masters is transgressing a pretty solid boundary. If that historian makes such an argument and hasn’t the evidence to back it up or doesn’t at least make the necessary qualifications about the nature of slavery or the difficulties of the type of evidence that is available, he or she will be shunned out of what is considered acceptable for the profession.

If that person is an emeritus/a, they* might be smiled at as a crank or curmudgeon. If that person is a tenured professor, they might find themselves invited to or accepted by fewer journals or conferences. If that person is a tenure-track scholar and their argument about slavery is pretty much the sum total of all they’re about when they speak ex academia, they may very well be denied tenure unless they’re a superstar (or at least hardworking and willing) teacher or the “committee martyr” type that seems to exist in medium- to large-sized academic departments. If that person is a junior scholar, he or she will have a pretty hard time getting hired. The departments will take that speech into account, especially if speaking ex academia is a big part of the job.

That particular “standard” is not a civility standard. It’s also not a firm standard. But it is a standard nonetheless. The literature on the essential violence that was chattel slavery in the U.S. is so broadly accepted that at the very least anyone who claims there were some benefits for the slaves (such as Fogel and Engerman, whose book I have not read but about which there is a Wikipedia article here) must acknowledge it and either (unlikely) refute it or (more likely) find certain benefits that coexisted with the violence.

That example risks violating an American version of Godwin’s Law. And to be clear, I think an outright denial of the essential violence of slavery is akin to the outright denial of the scale of mass-murder executed by any mid-twentieth century despot. And to be further clear, I also realize that such a case is a marginal one. But my goal is only (or mostly) to demonstrate that a standard exists and legitimately so. And I don’t think many will disagree in the abstract. And if they do, I’d concede that disagreeing in the abstract about even such propositions often falls in within the bounds set by any given discipline.

But enough meta. What does this have to do with civility? This: It’s possible that enough members of a discipline can decide on certain standards of argumentation deemed acceptable for speaking ex academia that invoke something like treating interlocutors with respect and evincing a respectful attitude toward, say, humans as humans. It’s possible that departments or even entire institutions can make such a standard applicable to judging one’s statements when made ex academia.

Would an academic journal be acting legitimately within its discipline if it declined to publish anything that relied mostly on ad hominem attacks against other scholars? I believe it could. Would an academic department be acting legitimately within its discipline if it declined to hire a controversial person because that person, in the judgment of those who ran the department, engages in uncivil speech? I believe it could. Would a university, in judging the scholarship of a professor applying for tenure, be acting legitimately by considering that professor’s argumentation against the norms of the discipline in which he/she works? I believe it could.

(For the record, I have read at least a smattering of journal articles that seem to be based on ad hominem argumentation. And one way to conceive of the whole “postmodern” approach to academic discussions is as an argument that ad hominems are valid.  Maybe ad hominems are not per se “uncivil,” but attacking the background and good faith of one’s discussant at least edges toward the border of civility.)

I should state that as a practical matter, judgments of civility and incivility should err on the side of speech. It’s better to leave such determinations to the departments that have to work with whomever they hire. (Again, that’s as a practical matter. I don’t concede that academic departments are necessarily any fairer than a board of trustees would be. But a less centralized approach will probably bring about better outcomes.)

I wish to limit my discussion to instances when a scholar speaks ex academia. When the scholar is speaking as a colleague or teacher, a different, probably higher, standard of civility should apply. When speaking ex civitate (as a citizen), a lower standard should apply.

I live in the real world and realize that when someone who is introduced as a “Professor of X” at a political rally, whether that person is speaking ex academia or ex civitate is probably an open question, and his or her employing institution is well-advised to err on the side of more speech. If that institution is a state-run institution, then well-advised approaches something like “categorically should be required to.”  I don’t want to insist that “when it’s public, it changes everything,” but if it is the state doing the censuring, it’s almost a freedom of speech issue.

Disciplines have standards about what is discussable and about how what is discussable is to be discussed. Academic speech—properly limited to those situations when the scholar is speaking ex academia and not, say, as a citizen, as a teacher, or as a colleague—can be legitimately restricted based on those standards. And civility can be one of them.

 

*Yes, I realize I am shifting back and forth between the “he or she” and “they” formulations.  I have no excuse.  It just seems, to me, to flow better sometimes one way, sometimes another.