Let me begin with a story.
Thirty years ago, I was for a time the head [unpaid] of an anti-apartheid
organization called Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni/ae Against Apartheid, or
HRAAA. We were trying, unsuccessfully as
it turned out, to get Harvard to divest itself of its investments in companies
doing business with South Africa. Since
every share of stock sold is also bought by some other investor, divestment has
no material impact [unlike disinvestment] but we hoped the symbolism would make
some contribution to the world-wide fight against apartheid. The Harvard administration was having none of
it, of course. They did not want anyone
laying grubby hands on their most precious possession, their Endowment. But the Harvard Development Office was [and I
assume still is] a large bureaucratic operation, and somewhere in its bowels
was a sympathetic flunky, who, one dark night, hit the “print” key and produced
a complete many page list of all Harvard’s prime alumni donor prospects, which
he or she [I never found out] passed on to those of us in HRAAA. The document listed the hundreds of prospects
not in alphabetical order, but in descending order of what Harvard thought it
could get lifetime from them. The list
cut off at $250,000 [$546,000 in 2018 dollars].
Anything less wasn’t worth worrying about. There were some gems in the printout. Maestro Leonard Bernstein was down for
$500,000, but a note warned “will only talk to the president.” But the printout, delicious as it was,
didn’t help us any, and in the end we failed to budge Harvard.
All of which got me thinking. Donald Trump started his college career at
Fordham in 1966, transferring to the Wharton School undergraduate program in
1966 and graduating in 1968. His grades
and personnel file, including the transfer application, are of course private,
and the University of Pennsylvania, home to the Wharton School, will quite
properly keep them strictly secret. But
surely, somewhere in the UPenn bureaucracy, there must be some low-level file
clerk or computer programmer ….
16 comments:
Prof. Wolff,
I must say, I have mixed feelings about what you are proposing. As you and your readers know, I have no love for Il Duce. And yes, I sometimes fantasize about using sinister and underhanded methods to retaliate against him – When they go low, we go lower. But I am not sure about encouraging an employee of a major university to release a student’s private information, including the student’s grades. I would not want it done to me, although, for the most part, I do not have anything to hide. Nor would I want it done to my daughter. Is nothing off limits when dealing with someone even as despicable as Trump? Is the Golden Rule still a viable ethical precept, do not do another what you would not want done to you? Do the ends in this case satisfy the means? And what would Kant say? You may have written this tongue in cheek, as idle musings while waiting at an airport for your next flight, but what you write does carry great weight. I would leave it to Mueller to bring Trump down by legitimate means, and he seems to be making great progress. Even Jeffrey Toobin is predicting that Trump is not likely to serve out his term – I would prefer that he be both impeached and convicted, but I will accept a resignation, although, as I have said, I do not see a resignation likely.
By the way, in a recent editorial on the PBS Newshour, Mark Shields questioned how Trump ever got admitted to the Wharton School and said that it did not reflect well on the school’s supposed high quality business education.
I'm fairly sure Trump's grades at Wharton were through the roof and the best grades ever.
Trump very clearly made U Penn great again.
I doubt Trump has anything to hide, unlike the rest of humanity.
The Presidential election proved he is the greatest man who ever lived, after Demetrius the Beseiger and Jesus
howard b,
I appreciate that what you have written was done in the spirit of amusement, but I am serious regarding the point that I am raising. I suspect, frankly, that Trump’s grades were not very good. The point of releasing them would be to embarrass him. And, since he has embarrassed others, is not embarrassing him fair game? Does the Golden Rule fly out the window when dealing with certain personalities, like a tyrant? Publicly releasing a student’s college grades, w/o that student’s permission, is a violation of the law. Have we reached the point w/ Trump that violating the law is acceptable? At some point, very early in his Chancellorship, it became legitimate to consider assassinating Hitler, even though doing so is not what the assassin would have regard as fair to be done to himself. I do not believe we have reached that point w/ Trump, although, as I wrote in a previous comment, there is an author who has written a book, Necessity, available on Amazon, which is based on just such a plot. So, if we have not reached the point where such an ultimate measure would be deemed acceptable, have we reached a point where less serious forms of rebellion, e.g., releasing his college grades w/o his permission, regardless its illegality, is justified?
All I can say, MS, is that I am very glad Jonathan Swift did not have to contend with you when he wrote A Modest Proposal.
You mean Swift wasn't serious when he proposed cannibalizing Irish children?
But the difference is that you offered as an example something that had actually occurred at Harvard as precedent for what you proposed to be done at the University of Pennsylvania. Swift was not offering any precedent as justification for his proposing the consumption of Irish children.
Just one more point. We on the left obviously agree that Trump is a tyrant. But his supporters obviously agree that he is not. Thus, what constitutes being a tyrant may not be subject to objective consensus. John Wilkes Booth regarded Lincoln as a tyrant, and so exclaimed when he assassinated him. And most of us would regard Booth’s opinion of Lincoln as partisan nonsense. But a prominent writer on the left, Gore Vidal, also regarded Lincoln as being a tyrant. And Vidal was not being satirical.
I don't think that Trump is tyrant (he's a demagogue), but I do believe that releasing his grades is justified if it helps to get rid of him.
What if releasing Trump's grades saves the lives of only 10 people who otherwise would have died from global warming insofar as it accelerates his downfall and makes it possible to elect a Democrat in the next presidential election? I believe it will save a lot more than 10 lives.
s. wallerstein,
You can’t be serious, can you?
Releasing Trump’s grades without his permission is not going to save any body’s life, let alone 10 lives. It is not going to accelerate his departure from office. All it would do is justify the far right in saying, see, those left wing libtard hypocrites are willing to break the law in the interest of harassing our President, so let’s do the same to them, and in spades. Breaking the law claiming it is justified by one’s political ideology, in the long run, can only have disastrous consequences – it eventually comes back to bite the hand that feeds it. I am reminded of the following scene from a Man for All Seasons:
ALICE (Exasperated, pointing after RICH) While you talk, he's gone!
MORE And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
ROPER So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
MORE Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE (Roused and excited) Oh? (Advances on ROPER) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
I think that releasing his grades is entirely justified if it will have positive results, that is, accelerating Trump's downfall. If not, then why bother?
I have no problem whatsoever in breaking the law to advance a good cause, because the law is not something sacred except to your lawyers. It's a reflection of the power relations and class structure of society. Note that I said: "to advance a good cause". The cause has to be good and there has to be some kind of "advancement" of said good cause.
I'm not a Kantian in the least, especially when it comes to politics. Maybe one can be a Kantian or follow the golden rule with one's family or close friends, but otherwise, the gloves are off.
I must qualify what I wrote above, since I can hear my critics saying what about when Martin Luther King broke the law and went to jail, and then wrote his magnificent defense in a Letter From Birmingham Jail? Breaking an unjust law is the very basis of civil disobedience. And, as Martin Luther King maintained, if you break what you believe is an unjust law, based on you conscience, then, in order to convey the righteousness of your course of action you have to be prepared to pay the consequences – something that I pointed out in a previous comment Edward Snowden has not been prepared to do.
And, s. wallerstein, breaking a just or prudent law for what you call a “good” cause is not the same as breaking an unjust law for a good cause. The law that prohibits the publication of a student’s personal information, including the student’s grades, is not an unjust law. We all benefit from such a law, and would all claim the right to have it enforced. And you do not have to be – God forbid - a lawyer to appreciate that. Should the right have the privilege of illegally releasing personal information about Elizabeth Warren’s divorce just to embarrass her, for what they regard as their “good” cause; or personal information about Amy Klobuchar’s alcoholic father, just to embarrass her, for their “good” cause?
I love the way this clearly tongue-in-cheek post has given rise to a debate on the foundations of civil disobedience, etc.
As a practical and political matter, I don't think anyone cares much what T's grades were. I certainly don't. Nor do I think release of his transcript(s) would harm him politically. Reaction in most quarters would be the equivalent of a shrug.
Few, if any, Trumpies would think less of him if he received low grades. To the contrary, they'd like him better. "More like us!"
MS,
Professor Wolff has explicitly asked us not to hijack the threads, so this will be my last comment here, unless he signals that he wants us to continue the discussion.
In addition, we are getting into a very complex philosophical debate about the merits of consequentialism (my position) and your Kantian (?) posture.
However, I will make a few brief comments.
I have a great deal of respect for Martin Luther King and civil disobedience, but that is not my position.
I claim that in a good cause one has the right to break a just or unjust law if the good obtained by breaking the law is greater than the good of not breaking the law in question.
Obviously, a lot of thinking has to go into judging which good is greater. In the case of releasing Trump's grades there does not seem to be much point doing it, so why do it?
Yes, Trump's supporters consider their cause to be "good", but I'd have to say that I consider them to be wrong that their cause is "good". That claim is going to get us into us complex metaethical and ethical questions and this does not seem to be the space to do that. For the record, that is my position.
LFC,
I found that The Ascent of Man lectures by Prof. Bronowski, which I referred to a prior comment, are available on the internet at the link below. I have listed the titles of all 13 of the lectures. I highly recommend them to all of this blog’s readers. You will not be disappointed.
http://www.infocobuild.com/books-and-films/science/TheAscentOfMan/episode-01.html
Episode 01 - Lower Than the Angels
Episode 02 - The Harvest of the Seasons
Episode 03 - The Grain in the Stone
Episode 04 - The Hidden Structure
Episode 05 - Music of the Spheres
Episode 06 - The Starry Messenger
Episode 07 - The Majestic Clockwork
Episode 08 - The Drive for Power
Episode 09 - The Ladder of Creation
Episode 10 - World within World
Episode 11 - Knowledge or Certainty
Episode 12 - Generation upon Generation
Episode 13 - The Long Childhood
I found Prof. Bronowski’s discussion of his friendship w, John von Neumann (he refers to the brilliant mathematician and game theorist as “Johnny”) and talks about their work together during WWII(it is in Episode 13). I was partially correct regarding my recollection of von Neumann’s late rising habits – he did not get out of bed until 10:A.M. Prof. Bronowski relates how he once called von Neumann at his hotel in London to tell him he had solved a mathematical problem relating to artillery explosions. Von Neumann, annoyed, said, “You woke me up to tell me THAT?” Prof. Bronowski discusses von Neumann’s last work, "The Computer and the Brain,” which he was unable to complete because he was dying from cancer. He is somewhat critical of his friend, noting that von Neumann was overly attracted to seats of power and in ingratiating himself to them.
In lecture 12, he notes that humans are the only species that copulates face to face, which he contends has had an effect on natural selection and human evolution. His lectures are full of interesting insights like this, most less scatological.
Thanks, MS. I'm old enough to remember The Ascent of Man (though not its actual content) when it was a TV series and then a book.
One of the ways in which the Bronowski/Mazlish book and prob the Ascent of Man are a bit dated has to do w the almost exclusive, at least in the book, focus on men. I haven't gotten that far in the book yet but looking through it for an overview first, I noticed almost no women discussed at all prominently, w the exception of Queen Elizabeth I, who seems to get treated sort of as an "honorary man," if I can put it that way.
Not really intended as a criticism, just noting that times change (for the better in this particular case, I think).
LFC,
Dated perhaps only in the sense that women of our generation and hereafter will be playing more prominent roles in politics and science. But when Bronowski/Mazlish wrote, most individuals who had had a significant impact on history were men – w. the rare exceptions of Isabella, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Maria Theresa and Victoria. In science/mathematics there had been Hypatia, Sophie Germain, Ada Lovelace and Madame Curie. That is not a sign of sexism on the authors’ part – just a reflection on the subordinate role that women have been condemned to by men. Hypatia’ horrible death is an example of male intolerance towards intelligent women.
The Ascent of Man series (produced in 1973) may be dated with respect to the obsolete nature of some of the science Prof. Bronowski talks about, but the series is wonderful nonetheless.
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