How do you solve a problem like Claremont?

Some further notes for my professional association.

This will be a more-niche-than-usual post. Think of it as an “and another thing!” addendum to this weekend’s post about the Claremont Institute at APSA.

To be frank, I’m publishing these comments because I attempted to share these privately within APSA years ago, and the leadership behaved as though they couldn’t hear me/it was all left unsaid. It appears they are still treating their handling of the Claremont Institute as though it is a difficult governance problem.

It is not.

---

Back in 2021, when APSA members first mobilized to ask our professional association to rescind its partnership with the Claremont Institute, the one counterargument that I repeatedly heard was “we can’t just single out the Claremont Institute like this because some members don’t like their politics. We need clear, neutral rules, and they must be fairly applied.”

There are three variants of this argument.

Photo by Itay Peer on Unsplash

(1) The slippery slope version. If we agree to bar Claremont from attending, then what’s to stop members from insisting the Federalist Society cannot attend? Or the McConnell Center for Political Leadership? And what’s to stop conservative members from making the same demands against scholars who study class and inequality? It’ll be a cascade of unintended consequences!

(2) The pragmatic version. The APSA annual meeting has over 1,500 panels. It is an absolutely mammoth conference. And the way we manage all that activity is by establishing a panel allocation formula, awarding panels to each section and related group based on past participation levels, and then leaving the sections and related groups to work it out on their own. If we dissolve our relationship with the Claremont Institute because they put one of the architects of January 6th on a couple of panels, then aren’t we creating a situation where our members will expect APSA to monitor the content of these panels in future years? We simply do not have the capacity to do so.

(3) The institutional risk version. The Claremont Institute has a donors with deep pockets, a lot of lawyers, and friendly relationships with a lot of conservative judges. Even if APSA is within its rights to revoke Claremont’s “Related Group” status, doing so could create legal exposure. Nuisance lawsuits are still lawsuits. They’re still a nuisance. We need to be very careful in how we navigate this relationship.

Of these variants, I take the third the most seriously. I don’t expect my professional association to publicly denounce Claremont. APSA ought not pick fights that it is not well equipped to win.

The pragmatic point is also worth taking seriously, but it isn’t hard to dismiss. Yes, of course, you shouldn’t unintentionally multiply the administrative workload of putting together a big conference. Big conferences are hard enough as it is. But that just weighs against particular solutions to the problem. It isn’t an argument for ignoring it altogether.

The slippery slope argument, on the other hand, I always found to be trivially easy to overcome. It’s only a slippery slope if you fail to create a defensible, universally applicable decision rule. And that requires only a modicum of ingenuity.

Here’s how you do it. Just follow my reasoning:

-On January 11th, 2021, the APSA council passed a resolution formally “condemning President Trump, Republican legislators, and all those who have continuously endorsed and disseminated falsehoods and misinformation, and who have worked to overturn the results of a free and fair Presidential Election.”

-The Claremont Institute endorsed and disseminated falsehoods and misinformation, and worked to overturn the results of a free and fair Presidential Election.

-John Eastman is still on their board of directors. They continue to claim that Eastman was right, question the results of the 2020 election, and fantasize about an oncoming future for the country where conservative dominance is no longer burdened by pesky electoral democracy.

-So, here goes… APSA can and should implement a clear, neutral rule that states “if and when any APSA section, related group, or partner organization is included in a resolution of condemnation by the APSA Council, the Council hereby recommends suspending their participation in the annual meeting. Such suspensions can be lifted by an affirmitive vote by the Council whenever it sees fit to do so.”

The Claremont Institute isn’t being singled out for being (ultra-)conservative. It is being singled out for actively promoting the Big Lie in 2020, and continuing to endorse and disseminate electoral falsehoods and misinformation that undermine electoral democracy in the United States. And we APSA members aren’t exercising a heckler’s veto here. We are insisting that, when our governing body passes a resolution of condemnation, they ought to act like they mean it.

Notice, if you will, that this happens to be exceptionally good governance practice. Your governing body’s resolutions ought to mean something. The APSA Council didn’t have to condemn the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. It could have said “eh, that’s fine. We are social scientists and if there is going to be an attempted coup, then it is our job to study it without passing judgement.” But if it is going to issue a motion of formal condemnation, then the organizations implicated by the motion don’t get to just show up to the next annual meeting, enjoying the in-kind financial subsidy by letting APSA bear the expense of planning the event and booking the venue, along with the reputational subsidy of remaining associated with a legitimate professional association.

This is a decision rule that is narrow enough to apply only to Claremont at present. It is also narrow enough that it would create no pragmatic headaches in planning future meetings. But it is also broad enough to apply to all future, similar cases. If a leftist political science outlet advocates for the violent overthrow of the government or something, and the threat is significant enough that the organization’s governing body passed a resolution of condemnation, then yes of course they should lose their panel allotment at the annual meeting.

And, likewise, it is not a permanent ban on Claremont. If, in the future, the Claremont Institute wants to make the affirmative case that they are no longer interested in undermining electoral democracy — that it was all just a phase, and they’ve returned to their roots as Straussian political theorists — then they are free to do so. The APSA Council can consider the matter and decide whether to affirmatively invite Claremont back.

It just shouldn’t be done through institutional cowardice. If you’re going to invite Claremont back to the conference, you don’t bury it in the program and hope no one notices. That’s exceptionally bad governance practice. You passed a resolution. Act like you meant it. It’s an embarrassment.