Slaughter of the Innocents?

By Nellie Bly
Washington Bureau

Who is Anne-Marie Slaughter, you are unlikely to ask?  She's had her ticket punched a number of times: Professor at Harvard Law School, Dean of the Wilson School at Princeton, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning, among others.  All great jobs but none of them are likely to get you that P Street townhouse, are they?

So a few years back, she concocted a well-paying gig as the head of a posh new Washington gasbag hangar called New America Foundation.  It raised, to use the technical nonprofit-development term, s**tloads of money from chic corporate funders like Google and, as a token of its appreciation for its chair's efforts, paid Ms. Slaughter last year a mere $535,000.

What could go wrong with this blissful picture?  Funny you should ask:

The head of an influential think tank funded by Google is grappling with a mounting backlash — including from her own scholars and donors — over the firing of a leading critic of the tech giant.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the president of the New America Foundation, pledged to re-examine her group’s policies for dealing with donors while defending the organization’s intellectual integrity.

She also told the think tank’s employees that New America was “under attack from many quarters,” and warned that they should expect heightened scrutiny.  But a group of the left-leaning think tank’s current and former fellows was collecting signatures on a letter to be delivered next week to Ms. Slaughter and New America’s directors, asserting that Ms. Slaughter’s handling of the situation has jeopardized the think tank’s reputation.

Other scholars affiliated with the think tank were quietly comparing notes on past instances in which they contend she placed donors’ interests over ideology. (New York Times, September 1, 2017).

Apparently a scholar in her employ produced a research paper describing the adverse effects of monopolies like, wait for it, Google.  And Google is willing to support open and searching academic inquiry as long as it likes the results.  When it doesn't – remember the old saw about money talks and bullsh*t makes increasingly defensive and lame rationalizations? 

Another Washington gasbag has a bad day

The Times story continued:

At issue is New America’s firing on Wednesday of a scholar named Barry Lynn, and its exiling of his entire 10-person initiative, called Open Markets, which had been pushing for more rigorous antitrust enforcement against Google and other tech giants.

Google officials — including its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt — had complained about Open Markets multiple times. Their grievances could not be easily ignored. The company, Mr. Schmidt and his family’s foundation had donated more than $21 million to New America since the think tank’s founding in 1999, according to voluntary disclosures and tax filings. . . .

Mr. Schmidt reached out to Ms. Slaughter to express displeasure with [Lynn's] statement, though Ms. Slaughter said “Google did not at any point threaten our funding.”

Of course he didn't.  Whatever else Ms. Slaughter is, she's not a total idiot.  But what kind of person acts from expediency when moral courage is called for? 

Indeed, who would disagree with the proposition that “deep and lasting damage [is] done when the gap between words and deeds becomes too great to ignore, when those who wield power are exposed as not saying what they mean or meaning what they say?”

And you can't argue with that, if for no other reason than it was written by a noted former Harvard Law and Wilson School Professor named Anne-Marie Slaughter.  On April 26, 2013, in The Washington Post.  You could look it up.

Anyone have any more advice for Ms. Slaughter?  How about this gem? “We must take responsibility for what we have done if we expect others to believe that we will do better from now on. We do not need to grovel.  But we should make clear that our hubris, as in the old Greek myths, has diminished us . . .”  Or so said Prof. Slaughter in Commonweal on February 15, 2008.

Anyone else we haven't heard from?  You there in the back with the bowl haircut:

Just as you will come to understand that there are arguments made in good faith on opposing sides, you must also learn to reject some arguments, or at least to choose among them. Arguments may be bad because they are illogical, because they do not fit the facts or the law, because they are silly or inconsequential. They may also be bad because they promote bad policies, or because they reflect values that we condemn: racism, degradation of human dignity, greed -- you fill in the blanks.

Thank you, Prof. Slaughter!  We have!

We could go on, but her final insight to the Times pretty much summed up her plight:

“There are unavoidable tensions the minute you take corporation funding or foreign government funding,” she said. “But the fact is that it’s very difficult to run a think tank these days with just foundation funding.”

I mean, my God, without corporate funding you'd be lucky to afford a duplex in the third alphabet.  With the other law professors and assistant secretaries.