Over at the website Minding the Campus, Prof. KC Johnson takes a look at the academic astroturf project called “Cry Wolf” that Big Journalism has been breaking all week. The reviews are not good for Prof. Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Urban & Environmental Policy Program director at Occidental College:
A newly announced project called “Crying Wolf,” organized out of the Center on Policy Initiatives, seems blithely unconcerned with any requirements associated with academic freedom… project coordinators Peter Dreier (a distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College), Nelson Lichtenstein (a historian of 20th century U.S. history at UC Santa Barbara who directs the university’s Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy), and Donald Cohen, CPI executive director, are recruiting professors and graduate students (in “history, sociology, economics, political science, planning, public health, and public policy”) to perform “paid academic research” that can “serve in the battle with conservative ideas.”
The initiative is open about its biases: it intends to “construct a counter narrative” against what it describes as conservative opinions about taxation and regulation policy.
At one level, the “Crying Wolf” project is (unintentionally) hilarious. Its directors believe that their project will transform the debate on tax and regulation matters. The Wolfers’ efforts will generate “the first reaction of millions of people(!!), as well as opinion leaders,” thereby undermining “the credibility and arguments of the organizations and individuals who use such dire social and economic prognostications to thwart progressive reform.” In other words: what two of the best-run political campaigns in U.S. history (Clinton in 1992, Obama in 2008), plus countless essays in the media, the political press, and high-quality blogs could not accomplish will be achieved by some graduate students’ scholarship-for-hire essays. Such expectations raise doubts regarding the level of knowledge that these so-called experts bring to U.S. politics and public policy.
At three other levels, however, this initiative is deeply troubling.
Johnson goes on to list the reasons he thinks the project will fail, including this:
The Wolfers, however, envision faux scholarship, in which the trappings of real scholarship (they demand factual accuracy, and have established an advisory board that mimics a peer-review process) are intended to support propaganda. In the words of the project’s introductory e-mail, the CPI will pay money to “give substance and scholarly integrity” to the directors’ preferred policy outcomes on such matters as taxes and public budgets; labor market standards; financial regulations; and “inclusionary housing.” In short, the Wolfers intend to reverse customary academic procedure (researching the evidence, and then attempting to ferret out the truth). They have already established their truth: that “history shows that in almost every instance the opponents of needed social and economic change are ‘crying wolf.'” They look to pay academics to assemble evidence that will “prove” the foreordained truth.
He also cites the distressingly elite names of contributors to the project, featuring genuine bigdomes from Harvard and elsewhere — respected academics, not run-of-the-mill hacks. Notes Johnson:
Their involvement in a project of this type illuminates the depth of the corruption in the contemporary humanities.
His conclusion:
In the end, almost no chance exists that the Wolfers will exercise any impact on any public policy debate. But little doubt exists that their project imperils academic integrity.
Stay tuned for more on “Cry Wolf” here at Big Journalism tomorrow.
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