What is the Claremont Institute doing back at APSA?

Institutional cowardice is not a good way to run a professional association.

Let me tell you a little story about institutional cowardice.

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is my primary professional association. Every year, APSA holds a massive convention of political science professors. We present working papers, give feedback, catch up with old colleagues, hatch new research projects, and discuss the state of the discipline.

Three years ago, I spearheaded an effort to remove John Eastman and the Claremont Institute from the APSA annual meeting. Eastman was one of the architects of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort that culminated in January 6th. APSA had formally condemned these efforts. It seemed ridiculous that the architects and vocal proponents of an attempt to overthrow electoral democracy would be welcome to hold their own mini-conference at the convention.

(Also, they were fundraising off of the meeting. And holding a meeting-within-a-meeting let them draft off of my professional association’s administrative overhead. Political scientists membership dues ought not be spent in support of an organization trying to overthrow electoral democracy. Come on.)

APSA didn’t appreciate the pressure from its members, but we ended up with acceptable results. APSA told Claremont they’d be switched to virtual panels. Claremont got mad and canceled the panels in a huff. After that, Claremont was quietly removed from the list of APSA related groups. I’ll take it, I thought. A win is a win?

In 2022, Claremont wasn’t at APSA. I checked the full agenda and felt a moment of pride. In 2023, Claremont wasn’t at APSA. Mission accomplished.

And then yesterday, while attending APSA, I checked the agenda. And it appears someone decided the heat had died down and it was fine for them to return. Claremont is back.

They have seven panels, with titles like “The Future of Civil Rights Reforms,” “The Supreme Court’s Recent Term and Its Future,” and “The 2024 Elections and the Future of American Politics.”

So, in effect, political science professors’ annual dues are being used to subsidize a Project 2025 planning meeting.

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It is not clear to me how this happened. The Claremont Institute is not listed on the APSA website as either a “Related Group” or “Partner Association.” To my knowledge, APSA’s governing council has made no affirmative decision to invite Claremont back. APSA was under no obligation to give them meeting space and subsidize the logistical costs they would otherwise have had to put into planning their own meeting. It sure seems as though someone decided to quietly invite them back and just cross fingers that the membership would not notice.

I would sure like to know who that someone was, and what they have to say for themself.

I wrote about this on Bluesky yesterday. And I won’t spill too much tea here, just because the minutiae are pretty dry, and I still have a conference to attend. But I do have three notes to share:

(1) The APSA leadership was pretty hostile to hearing from its members. They wanted us to shut up and go away. I and my peers offered to serve on the task force that would rework the related groups policy. We were told “yeah, that sounds great, we’ll be in touch” and then ignored. We also submitted a formal request to revoke John Eastman’s membership. They stalled six months and then dismissed our request on a technicality — The Congressional Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack was still ongoing, and APSA rules won’t consider evidence from an investigation until it has concluded. (I guess the C-SPAN video of him onstage at the January 6th Rally wasn’t enough…)

If APSA had wanted to bar John Eastman from membership, we gave them more than enough evidence to do so. But what they really wanted was for their members to pipe down and leave them alone.

(2) When I saw that Claremont had been quietly stripped of its Related Group status, I was willing to call that a win. I even, incidentally, wrote about the case in a chapter for an edited volume on Media and January 6th. The charitable reading of these events was that APSA decided to handle a volatile situation quietly. I’ve spent almost three decades in leadership roles for national civic associations and advocacy groups. I can appreciate that a soft touch is often the right approach. (No need to make a scene and provide Claremont and Eastman with material to declare "wE'vE bEeN cAnCeLeD!")

If APSA had wanted to end its partnership with Claremont, this was a reasonable way to do so.

(3) But the uncharitable reading is that the American Political Science Association was just waiting out its membership, laying low until the heat died down before inviting the Claremont boys back into the fold.

And empirically, it seems this uncharitable reading is the correct one. APSA didn’t even wait to see if Claremont could go a whole election cycle without calling for the overthrow of electoral democracy.

John Eastman is disgraced and disbarred, but he still sits on Claremont’s Board of Directors. His title is still “Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.”

The APSA section on Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence only had five panels slots at the convention this year. The Claremont Institute had seven.

Claremont hasn’t changed. They haven’t reformed. They are, as an institution, actively hostile to many of the core values that APSA claims to support. These are basic values. Electoral democracy and pluralism are good. Coups are bad. That sort of thing.

This stinks of cowardice. The Claremont Institute has no place at the APSA meeting.

I don’t believe the leadership of APSA disputes any of these basic values. But, in practice, the leadership is behaving as though a higher value is that everyone should pipe down and leave them alone. Claremont has been welcomed back because Claremont wants to be here and it would be uncomfortable to tell them no.

This is no way to run a professional association. APSA members deserve an explanation of why the Claremont Institute was welcomed back. If it was intentional, then the leadership should have the courage to defend their decision. If it was an administrative oversight, then the leadership should explain how they will ensure it doesn’t happen again.

I have served almost thirty years in leadership roles within voluntary civic associations. I do not expect the American Political Science Association to be the best-run organization I have encountered. But it would be nice if they could stop being the worst.