CBN Cites My Research; Southern Poverty Law Center Outed for Racketeering

CBN cites my research in connection with a case involving a politicized classroom at Towson University.  I'm wondering how the president's recent executive order will affect blatant violations of Section 501(c)(3) such as this one.  Sam Abrams recounts parallel violations by the administration of Sarah Lawrence College in a New York Times  article last October.  The college's blatant use of its assets for political advocacy should disqualify its tax exemption.  We have yet to see a meaningful action along these lines.  It may turn out that any college with a diversity office has run afoul of the tax code.

Also along related lines, in November 2016 the president of Brooklyn College, Michelle J. Anderson, quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center vis-a-vis on-campus activities of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  In my inimitable way, I wrote the president that the SPLC was as bigoted as any hate group.  President Anderson is not alone in quoting the fake claims of the SPLC.  They have been quoted in virtually every major media source. For example, I did a search on "Southern Poverty Law Center" in the New York Times digital archives through 2013 and found 2,222 hits.  I suspect 100% of the references were positive or implied that the SPLC was a reliable source. As usual, the media has gotten things dead wrong.

On March 19 Rich Lowry revealed in the New York Post that the SPLC has turned out to have been a racketeering organization that engaged in racial and gender discrimination internally and relied on fake commitment to political correctness to profit Morris Dees and his colleagues by using the threat of law suits and bad publicity as an extortion device. In effect, the Times and virtually all other Democratic Party-linked media were quoting the equivalent of Bernie Madoff or John Gotti on the subject of social justice--not once or twice, but thousands of times.  Lowry writes of the SPLC:


It used the complicity or credulousness of the media in repeating its designations to punish its ideological enemies and engage in prodigious fundraising. It raised $50 million a year and built an endowment of more than $300 million.

Imagine a left-wing outfit with the same shoddy standards as Sen. Joe McCarthy but with a better business sense.

Clear-eyed, fair-minded people on the left have long recognized the SPLC as a fundraising tool masquerading as a civil rights group, but its absurd overreach has in recent years earned skeptical coverage from the likes of The ­Atlantic and PBS.

I'm increasingly wondering about the sources of the incompetence of the media. One question is whether the anti-trust laws ought to be reinvented to apply to both print and electronic media. Another is whether the indoctrination on offer in American colleges are key to understanding the journalistic failures of CNN, the New York Daily News, and Inside Higher Education.

Letter to Sarah Lawrence College President Cristle Collins Judd in Support of Prof. Samuel Abrams

Dear President Judd:

I attended Sarah Lawrence College for two years, from 1973 to 1975, and I am increasingly ashamed of my association with it.  I read with dismay Professor Abrams’s op-ed in Minding the Campus.  Abrams writes that students are afraid to say not only that they support a Republican or Libertarian candidate but also that they support a left-wing candidate like Hillary Clinton who is not as extreme a leftist as campus bullies would like.  

When Professor Abrams wrote in the Times that the college needs better balance, he and his family received threats and suffered property damage from campus bigots who have been encouraged by a faculty that has apparently lost its way and an administration that apparently likes to run afoul of Section 501(c)(3).  My guess is that if a basic history examination is to be given to the Orwellian-named “Diaspora Coalition,” it would reveal that the majority do not know the basics of history.  Professor Abrams says that this coalition of bigots has intimidated and bullied those who support him.

I want to see such an examination given to the members of the Diaspora Coalition. The scores should be publicly posted.  My null hypothesis is that they are badly educated half literates. 

My question is this: Given that the college increasingly appears to be in the indoctrinating-and-dumbing-down business, exactly why should I offer financial support?

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Austrian Economics Research Conference, Citation by Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

I spent Thursday through Sunday at the Austrian Economics Research Conference, which is sponsored by the Mises Institute. The Mises Institute is next door to Auburn University.  The conference is small but lively, and the speakers were excellent. I was delighted to meet Bob Luddy, the founder of CaptiveAire Corporation; Hans Herman Hoppe, who received an achievement award;  Sam Johnson, who is a retired Exxon executive who adjuncts at Auburn University; and the founder of the Mises Institute, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

I gave a presentation on the historical evolution of political groupthink and intolerance in higher education. It went well, and I am looking forward to further exploring the data that I presented. 

While I was at the conference, someone from Boston emailed me to ask for links to the work I've done on faculty political affiliation because the Wall Street Journal (paid access) editorial page had cited my research on Friday.  I was thrilled to get the cite, but I disagree with the editorial.

According to the Journal,  President Trump's executive order has the right impulse, but the executive order is unclear.  It merely mandates that a list of federal agencies review incursions on free speech on campus.

The Journal argues that absent the executive order markets will correct for incursions on free speech, but the institutional history suggests otherwise.  Colleges have received enormous institutional support from government and from tax-exempt foundations, and much of this support has had ideological strings attached. Such support extends to tax-exempt endowments that shelter the leading colleges from market concerns.  As well, monopolistic media that collude with and ideologically support Antifa extremists on campus support the reputations of colleges that abuse free speech. The major media outlets take their cues from and collaborate with campus Antifa terrorists.

As it is written, the executive order merely encourages agencies that oversee funding to colleges to consider whether the colleges are violating federal laws, including the First Amendment.  One of the laws is Section 501(c)(3), which prohibits tax exemption for political or ideological advocacy.  Although when in power the Democrats may abuse these provisions, they have already abused their privileges to an unlimited extent, so that the current intolerance on college campuses can hardly be increased.  Hence, there are limited downside risks from the Democrats, who have shot their wad.  When Republican administrations are in power, they now have some impetus to enforce the law and at times to revoke tax exemptions of endowments.  Although the threat to colleges may be intermittent because it is limited to Republican administrations, colleges need to think long-term because it is difficult to change programs and policies.  Hence, an intermittent threat is almost as good as a permanent one.

An additional step that the Trump administration might take is to make explicit that all federal aid is contingent on compliance with the First Amendment and that when colleges violate First Amendment Rights affected individuals have a cause of action that includes punitive damages.