Faculty Protest Changes to Georgia’s Post-Tenure Review Policy

Dear Commons Community,

The University System of Georgia regents yesterday approved changes in the board’s post-tenure review policy that Georgia faculty members and the American Association of University Professors have criticized as a hobbling of tenure.

Before the vote, professors around the state called on the Board of Regents to table the issue. Concerned instructors and students chanted, “Hands off tenure!” at a Tuesday protest outside a two-day meeting of the governing board. The AAUP issued a statement on Tuesday saying if the revisions were approved, tenure and academic freedom would be “severely compromised.” Given “the severity and scope of this potential attack,” the organization’s executive director would authorize an investigation if the changes were ratified, the statement said.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Some observers have characterized the changes as eliminating tenure at the state’s public colleges — the university professors’ group tweeted in advance of the vote that the new language would “end tenure.”

It’s not quite that simple. The alterations center on the process of post-tenure review. The revisions may very well weaken tenured professors’ job security, though to what degree is not immediately clear. (The policy changes leave room for campuses to write their own rules to conform with the board’s language, with guidance from the system chancellor or a designate. A system official declined to make Tristan Denley, the system’s chief academic officer, available for an interview.)

So what’s changing?

Under the former framework, tenured faculty members went through post-tenure review every five years. If there were “deficiencies” identified, that faculty member worked with a supervisor to develop a plan with desired outcomes, a timetable, and a “monitoring strategy.” If after three years the faculty member had not improved in the identified areas, that person could be fired for cause. That dismissal process was governed by the regents’ dismissal policy, which outlines specific procedures that must be followed. Among those procedures are that a tenured professor facing termination has the right to a hearing before a faculty committee made up of three to five impartial faculty members, chosen by the executive committee of the highest faculty legislative body.

Under the new policy, if, during a tenured faculty member’s annual review, that person’s performance is deemed unsatisfactory or not meeting expectations for two years in a row, that faculty member is required to go through a “corrective post-tenure review.”

While it cannot be said to do away with tenure entirely, it certainly moves in that direction.

The policy doesn’t define this term but says if the results of a post-tenure review are unfavorable, then the department chair and dean, in consultation with the faculty member, will create a performance-improvement plan.

Should the professor fail to make sufficient progress or refuse to “engage reasonably in the process,” as determined “by the department chair and dean after considering feedback from the committee of faculty colleagues,” the new policy states, then the college shall take appropriate remedial action, like a pay suspension, a revocation of tenure, or termination. The college president makes the final call.

The system’s 25 tenure-granting institutions must create their own policies for carrying out the system’s new post-tenure review policy, and said policies “shall be developed in consultation with the institution’s faculty and shall include appropriate due-process mechanisms,” the new language says. Campus-level policies must be approved by the system chancellor or a designate. The chancellor or a designate will also provide colleges with “more specific guidelines” for their post-tenure-review policies.

System leaders have defended the policy adjustments, saying they came after a working group thoroughly reviewed what was and was not working in the post-tenure-review process systemwide. That working group was asked to recommend policy and practice updates “to ensure all faculty remain productive throughout their careers.” The goal of the changes they recommended, wrote Lance Wallace, associate vice chancellor for communications, in an email, is “to support career development for all faculty, as well as ensure accountability and continued strong performance from faculty members after they have achieved tenure.”

Faculty critics say proper due process is anything but guaranteed. That’s because before Wednesday, the way in which tenured professors who had undergone post-tenure review and not shown improvement could be fired was set in stone, thanks to a systemwide discipline policy that closely mirrors what the national AAUP recommends. Now, the new policy says, such action can be taken “in accordance with the guidelines provided by the chancellor or the chancellor’s designee(s), as well as the institution’s post-tenure-review policies.” That opens the door, these faculty members say, to firing faculty members through post-tenure review in a way that skirts existing due-process protections.

In September, Gregory F. Scholtz, director of the AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance, pointed out that disciplinary sanctions would no longer fall under the existing dismissal policy. “While it cannot be said to do away with tenure entirely,” he wrote in a letter outlining concerns, “it certainly moves in that direction by making it possible to dismiss a tenured faculty member — without affordance of academic due process — for failing to fulfill the terms of an imposed performance improvement plan, as determined by an administrator, not a body of peers.”

Tenure is an indefinite appointment “terminable only for cause as demonstrated in a hearing before an elected faculty body, with the burden of proof resting with the administration,” Scholtz continued. Tenure without those procedural protections “is tenure in name only.”

Professors have objected to other aspects of the new policy, like that it adds “student success” as a benchmark on which faculty members will be evaluated. Faculty members have pressed for clarity on how, exactly, “student success” will be gauged, and why it’s necessary to add another category to the traditional teaching, research, and service. In evaluations, professors already report many things they do to help students beyond instruction in the classroom, said Heather Pincock, an associate professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a member of United Campus Workers of Georgia, the union that mounted Tuesday’s protest.

In an email, Wallace said that adding student success “recognizes ways in which faculty deepen student learning and engagement through activities both inside and outside the classroom.” As has always been the case, each institution must establish “clear and transparent assessment of all criteria in ways fitting to their mission and values. The development of the new student success criteria will be no different,” he said.

The new procedure “involves review by a body of peers both at the beginning and at the end of the process, and provides for appeal.”

Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the AAUP, wonders why regents want to make these changes. His assumption: The board thinks tenure is too easy to get and too easy to keep. Among the policy changes is that regents — though they’ve delegated authority for tenure decisions to college presidents — can now take that authority back if a college’s “faculty-review process” is not being carried out “in a sufficiently rigorous manner” until the college’s processes have been fixed. (Regents did not discuss the new policy language at the Wednesday public meeting.)

As faculty concerns mounted, Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, relayed them to Teresa MacCartney, the acting system chancellor. MacCartney, in response, defended the policy changes. They grew out of a post-tenure-review working group that the previous chancellor formed last year, she wrote in an October letter to Boedy. That group, which included faculty members, collected information from all tenure-granting colleges and surveyed faculty members and administrators.

Data the group assembled shows that the vast majority — 96 percent — of post-tenure reviews conducted in the past five years at 22 institutions were positive, meaning no development plan was needed. Of those who had to submit a plan, 39 percent were successful at remediation, though that percentage does not include the many plans counted as in progress. The working group concluded, among other things, that in its current form, “very few low-performing faculty members are identified and remediated during the PTR process.”

The new procedure, MacCartney wrote, “involves review by a body of peers both at the beginning and at the end of the process, and provides for appeal.”

Boedy was unmoved. The post-tenure-review process and tenure due process are not “remotely the same,” he wrote in reply.

“While you point out the obvious, that indeed the PTR process will be not under the umbrella of the dismissal-for-cause policy, you don’t state why that is necessary,” he wrote. And that move by the Board of Regents to remove post-tenure review from the tenure due process “is where tenure dies.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

William Shatner became a real-life Captain Kirk yesterday when the Star Trek alum became the oldest person to travel to space.

Shatner, an Emmy Award-winning actor, 90, set off for the adventure of a lifetime thanks to Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin.

Taking off from Launch Site One in West Texas around 10:50 a.m. ET, Shatner was one of four crew members aboard the New Shepard rocket.

“That was unlike anything they described,” Shatner said as the capsule descended to Earth thanks to a giant parachute minutes later.

“That’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.” he added.  Video above of the flight includes more comments from Shatner that begin at the 25 minute – 40 second mark.

Joining the star were Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations, as well as crew members Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries.

“It’s life-changing in its way, not because of the aerial adventure, but because of the people I’m meeting,” Shatner said in a video that aired during Blue Origin’s livestream.

Speaking of the joy that space travel can bring, Shatner added, “We’re just at the beginning, but how miraculous that beginning is — how extraordinary it is to be part of that beginning.”

Bezos joined the crew on the launch pad before Shatner, Powers, Boshuizen and de Vries entered the space vehicle and made final preparations for takeoff.  The Amazon billionaire took the honors of closing the hatch.

Bezos revealed on Instagram that Shatner is taking along a special possession for him.

“I made these tricorders and communicator to play Star Trek with my friends when I was 9 years old, and my incredible mom saved them for 48 years,” Bezos wrote.

“She dug them up this past week, and @WilliamShatner has agreed to take them up into space for me tomorrow,” he added. “Please don’t judge me for the artwork. Thank you, Bill!”

According to Blue Origin’s official website, the New Shepard suborbital vehicle can seat six astronauts, and since the ship is “fully autonomous,” there is no pilot.

The reusable craft’s 11-minute flights are “designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space,” the company’s website says.

Addressing recent headlines about the safety of the vehicle, Blue Origin employees pointed out during the launch livestream that the New Shepard vehicle completed multiple tests without a crew in a years-long process that began in 2015.

Someday, everyday people will be able to take this ride and maybe come to appreciate a bit more the wonders of our planet and beyond.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Monday, the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to three Americans:  David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens.

David Card has made a career of studying unintended experiments to examine economic questions — like whether raising the minimum wage causes people to lose jobs.

Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens have developed research tools that help economists use real-life situations to test big theories, like how additional education affects earnings.

All three winners are based in the United States. Mr. Card, who was born in Canada, works at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Angrist, born in the United States, is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mr. Imbens, born in the Netherlands, is at Stanford University.

“Sometimes, nature, or policy changes, provide situations that resemble randomized experiments,” said Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the prize committee. “This year’s laureates have shown that such natural experiments help answer important questions for society.”

The recognition was bittersweet, many economists noted, because much of the research featured in the prize announcement was co-written by Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University economist and former White House adviser who died in 2019. The Nobels are not typically awarded posthumously. Despite that note of sadness, the economics profession celebrated the news, crediting the winners for their work in changing the way that labor markets in particular are studied.

“They ushered in a new phase in labor economics that has now reached all fields of the profession,” Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State, wrote on Twitter shortly after the prize was announced.

Mr. Card’s work has challenged conventional wisdom in labor economics — including the idea that higher minimum wages led to lower employment. He was a co-author of influential studies on that topic with Mr. Krueger, including one that used the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania to test the effect of a minimum wage change. Comparing outcomes between the states, the research found that employment at fast food restaurants was not negatively affected by an increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage.

Mr. Card has also researched the effect of an influx of immigrants on employment levels among local workers with low education levels — again finding the impact to be minimal — and the effect of school resource levels on student education, which was larger than expected.

Congratulations to these Nobel winners.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Texas-based American Airlines said yesterday it would move forward with mandates that employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the state’s governor attempting to ban such requirements across Texas this week.  Southwest Airlines also came to the same decision. As reported by Politico, the Huffington Post, and other media sources.

“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order on Monday barring vaccine mandates for any business, government office or other entity across the state, despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus and its highly transmissible delta variant.

That effort is in opposition to President Joe Biden’s federal requirement that businesses with 100 employees or more must mandate vaccination or weekly COVID-19 testing. The White House asked the Department of Labor to draft a rule doing so last month, a decision that could ultimately impact 100 million Americans. There is also a separate provision that mandates all federal workers and government contractors be vaccinated as well.

Federal contractors have until Dec. 8 to show they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Southwest and American have asked employees to submit proof of vaccination by Nov. 24.

“Federal action supersedes any state mandate or law, and we would be expected to comply with the President’s Order to remain compliant as a federal contractor,” Southwest told Politico in a statement Tuesday, adding that it would continue to update employees about any “potential changes.”

American Airlines also told The Hill it was reviewing Abbott’s order, but it, too, believed “the federal vaccine mandate supersedes any conflicting state laws, and this does not change anything.”

Almost all major U.S. airlines have announced vaccine mandates for staff after the White House announcements. Delta Air Lines does not have a vaccine requirement but charges a $200 monthly surcharge for unvaccinated workers.

Southwest’s CEO, Gary Kelly, said this week he was opposed to a vaccine requirement but added the company must comply with the Biden decision.

Vaccination remains a safe and effective way to prevent severe illness and death associated with COVID-19, but mandates compelling Americans to do so have remained a flashpoint among conservatives. Abbott, who is fully vaccinated himself, has regularly moved to bar mask and vaccination requirements across the state, calling Biden’s orders “bullying” against private businesses.

Only about 52% of the Texas population is fully vaccinated and the state is still seeing an average of more than 7,000 new cases per day.”

Governor Abbot has no pride in showing what an a** he is.

Get vaccinated!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Countdown 1945:  The Extraordinary Story of the Atom Bomb and the 116 Days that Changed the World by  news anchor, Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss. It is a quick read mainly because the subject matter is so provocative.  Anyone interested in history, particularly World War II, will finish its 270 plus pages in a few days.  The last hundred pages are riveting and include detailed descriptions of President Harry Truman at the Potsdam Conference during which he is negotiating with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.  His main objective during this conference was to get Stalin to commit to declare war on Japan.  During the conference, he is also keeping open his communications lines with his military advisers who are getting ready to test the first atomic bomb.  The test is successful and plans for dropping the bomb on mainland Japan are discussed, debated and eventually approved.  For every adviser who supports dropping the bomb, another is against it.  Senior military personnel such as General Dwight Eisenhower preferred a land invasion of Japan rather than using such a destructive weapon that would result in an incredible loss of civilian lives.  General Douglas Arthur felt that a land invasion of Japan would be “the greatest bloodletting in history” resulting in a loss of at least 250,000 to 500,000 American military lives. Later on, there is much debate about the consequences of having unleashed nuclear weapons upon humanity.  Robert Oppenheimer, the main architect of the bomb regretted his decision to use it stating “I have blood on my hands.” 

If you are not familiar with the details of the development and deployment of the first atom bomb, Wallace’s book is a good place to start.

A review that appeared in the New York Times Review of Books is below.

Tony

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New York Times Review of Books

A Day-by-Day Re-Creation of Truman’s Decision to Use Nuclear Weapons

By Jay Winik

July 9, 2020

COUNTDOWN 1945
The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World
By Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss

On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt, beloved by the American people, was sick and depleted. Convalescing in Georgia after an exhausting summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin about ending the war and creating the peace to follow, he slumped in his chair, dead from a cerebral hemorrhage. He had tamed the Great Depression, lifted the hearts of Americans with his fireside chats, forged a remarkable Allied coalition and was victorious at D-Day. Now he was gone. Eighteen days later so was Hitler. All that remained for America was forcing Japan to surrender.

That job fell to the untested vice president, Harry S. Truman. “Salty,” “blunt” and “decisive,” Truman barely knew Roosevelt, and in the previous three months had met with him only twice (outside of cabinet meetings). Yet after being hurriedly sworn in as president, Truman was informed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson about an enormous top-secret program to develop a bomb of “unbelievable destructive power.” With “Countdown 1945,” Chris Wallace, son of the legendary newscaster Mike Wallace, and today one of the nation’s premier news anchors, tells the powerful story (assisted by the journalist Mitch Weiss) of the frenzied rush to develop the bomb before America’s adversaries did, and of the agonizing decision of whether to use it against Japan. It is a debate that haunts us to this day.

On one hand, the book reads like a riveting novel as Wallace reveals the machinations and internal debates among the scientific community to devise a workable atomic bomb as quickly as possible. We see Albert Einstein; we see Robert Oppenheimer; we see Enrico Fermi, each of whom played a role in developing the bomb, but then later came to regret the awesome power they helped unleash upon the world.

But “Countdown 1945” is also a profound story of decision making at the highest levels — and of pathos. The alternative to using the bombs would have been for a war-weary America to invade Japan. Yet as Wallace notes, the closer American troops got to Japan, the more “fanatical” the Japanese defenders became. American military planners feared that the war could go on not for months but for years, especially if a guerrilla war was carried out. And most estimates believed it would cost 500,000 or even a million American lives. Gen. Douglas MacArthur put it bluntly: An assault on Japan, he said, would be “the greatest bloodletting in history.”

“Countdown 1945” is filled with fascinating details. Truman referred to Stalin as a “little son of a bitch.” Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, cost more than an aircraft carrier, and was likened to the stuff of sci-fi and even “Frankenstein.” The men of the flight crew carried cyanide pills with them, in case they somehow got caught by the Japanese. Incredibly, the bomb fell nearly six miles in 43 seconds; the explosion could be heard 50 miles away and the mushroom cloud was visible 400 miles away. As for the Japanese victims? “The fluid of their melted eyes” ran down their cheeks, and for one American crew member, “a lively city … disappeared before his eyes.”

In the end, the reader is forced to ask: Should Truman have dropped the bombs? Wallace points out that more than 100,000 people were part of the bomb-making effort, the program was approved by Roosevelt and over $2 billion was spent. “It is unrealistic,” Wallace says, “to think Harry Truman would make any other choice.” Truman himself exulted after the success of Little Boy, “This is the greatest thing in history.”

Was it? Wallace’s superb, masterly book lets the reader decide.

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I enjoyed the sunset last evening on Madaket Beach on Nantucket.  

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tom Nichols, writer for The Atlantic and author of  Our Own Worst Enemy,  was interviewed on CNN this morning regarding the threats to American democracy.  He explained an earlier tweet:

“The threat to American democracy increased exponentially over the past five years or so when mediocre people of meager talents realized they would never have to work a straight job again as long as they could terrify a nation of right-wing nitwits about the end of “Real America.”

He called out various individuals and pundits including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

The five-minute interview is worth a view.

Tony

Matt Amodio, a doctoral student at Yale, had the second-longest streak in Jeopardy’s history.

Dear Commons Community,

The news in television land last night was the loss by long-time champion, Matt Amodio on the game show, Jeopardy. Amodio came in third during last night’s match; Jonathan Fisher, an actor, narrowly won the game, with Jessica Stephens, a statistical research specialist, following close behind. Amodio missed the Final Jeopardy clue, pushing him way behind his competitors, with $5,600 at the end of the game, compared to Fisher’s $29,200. (The clue: Nazi Germany annexed this nation and divided it into regions of the Alps and the Danube; the Allies later divided it into four sectors. The correct response: “What is Austria?”).  I watched the show last night and it was clear that Amodio was off his game.

Regardless, Mr. Amodio was a fine champion:  humble, talented and extremely knowledgeable in a host of categories. Below is a review of the evening, courtesy of The New York Times.

Tony

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The New York Times

Matt Amodio’s ‘Jeopardy!’ Streak Ends After 38 Wins

By Julia Jacobs

Oct. 11, 2021

Ken Jennings can relax.

On Monday, the reigning “Jeopardy!” contestant Matt Amodio lost his 39th game, leaving Jennings’s No. 1 hall-of-fame spot safe. Amodio, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Yale, had the second-longest streak in the game show’s history, earning him $1.5 million in prize money.

Since his debut on the show on July 21, viewers grew attached to following Amodio’s streak, turning him into the latest “Jeopardy!” darling. Amodio was less aggressive in his wagering compared with James Holzhauer, the professional sports bettor who dominated the show in 2019, but he lasted longer. Amodio, who ranks third in total regular-season winnings, had many more games to go to rival Jennings’s 74 wins.

The episode marked another behind-the-scenes transition for the show. It was the first episode following the departure of Mike Richards, the television executive whose short stint as the new “Jeopardy!” host imploded over offensive comments he had made on a podcast. Richards stepped down as host after taping five episodes, then left his role as executive producer less than two weeks later.

Monday’s pretaped episode was executive produced by Michael Davies, a game-show veteran who developed the original American version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and agreed to step in temporarily after Richards’s exit.

Amodio’s streak was likely a relief for the executives behind the show after weeks of attention around the struggle to replace Alex Trebek, who died last year after hosting the show for more than 36 years. Some of the games during Amodio’s streak were hosted by Mayim Bialik, an interim host who is vying for the full-time job but faces criticism of some of her positions, including her questioning of vaccines and an affiliation with a disputed brain-health supplement.

Amodio came in third during Monday’s match; Jonathan Fisher, an actor, narrowly won the game, with Jessica Stephens, a statistical research specialist, following close behind. Amodio missed the Final Jeopardy clue, pushing him way behind his competitors, with $5,600 at the end of the game, compared to Fisher’s $29,200. (The clue: Nazi Germany annexed this nation and divided it into regions of the Alps and the Danube; the Allies later divided it into four sectors. The correct response: “What is Austria?”)

As Amodio built up a string of wins, he amassed a large following on social media, where he answered fans’ questions, shared behind-the-scenes details and bantered with his fellow “Jeopardy!” champions. His clue-answering strategy of beginning every response with the word “what” rather than other question words such as “who,” which he has said he does to focus on finding the correct response, sparked a lively online debate around the game show’s rules.

“I always wanted to be a ‘Jeopardy!’ champion, and I accomplished that,” Amodio said in a news release. “I know going into every bar trivia game that I play that I’m going to come in with a little intimidation factor.”

Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

In an essay in today’s New York Times, Republicans Christine Todd Whitman and Miles Taylor call on their membership to abandon the extreme pro-Trump wing of their party and to team up on key races with their longtime political opponents: the Democrats. Ms. Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and Mr. Taylor  served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019.  To achieve their goals,  they are organizing a Renew America Movement — and will release a slate of nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates to support in 2022.

The key take-away from their essay is:

“…the best hope for the rational remnants of the Republican Party is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year — including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.

It’s a strategy that has worked. Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for him in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.

Even still, we don’t take this position lightly. Many of us have spent years battling the left over government’s role in society, and we will continue to have disagreements on fundamental issues like infrastructure spending, taxes and national security. Similarly, some Democrats will be wary of any pact with the political right.

But we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate Republican leaders — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.

To that end, concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the House of Representatives. Some of us have worked in the past with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, but as long as he embraces Mr. Trump’s lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election.

And while many of us support and respect the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is far from clear that he can keep Mr. Trump’s allies at bay, which is why the Senate may be safer remaining as a divided body rather than under Republican control.

For these reasons, we will endorse and support bipartisan-oriented moderate Democrats in difficult races, like Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, where they will undoubtedly be challenged by Trump-backed candidates. And we will defend a small nucleus of courageous Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer and others who are unafraid to speak the truth.”

We wish Ms. Whitman and Mr. Taylor all the best in their efforts. Our democracy is at stake!

Below is their  entire essay.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————————–

The New York Times

We Are Republicans. There’s Only One Way to Save Our Party From Pro-Trump Extremists.

Oct. 11, 2021

By Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman

After Donald Trump’s defeat, there was a measure of hope among Republicans who opposed him that control of the party would be up for grabs, and that conservative pragmatists could take it back. But it’s become obvious that political extremists maintain a vise-like grip on the national and state parties and the process for fielding and championing House and Senate candidates in next year’s elections.

Rational Republicans are losing the party civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democrats.

This year we joined more than 150 conservatives — including former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders — in calling for the Republican Party to divorce itself from Trumpism or else lose our support, perhaps with us forming a new political party. Rather than return to founding ideals, Republican leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office.

Starting a new center-right party may prove to be the last resort if Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries. We and our allies have debated the option of starting a new party for months and will continue to explore its viability in the long run. Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of failed attempts at breaking the two-party system, and in most states today the laws do not lend themselves easily to the creation and success of third parties.

So for now, the best hope for the rational remnants of the Republican Party is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year — including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.

It’s a strategy that has worked. Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for him in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.

Even still, we don’t take this position lightly. Many of us have spent years battling the left over government’s role in society, and we will continue to have disagreements on fundamental issues like infrastructure spending, taxes and national security. Similarly, some Democrats will be wary of any pact with the political right.

But we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate Republican leaders — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.

To that end, concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the House of Representatives. Some of us have worked in the past with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, but as long as he embraces Mr. Trump’s lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election.

And while many of us support and respect the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is far from clear that he can keep Mr. Trump’s allies at bay, which is why the Senate may be safer remaining as a divided body rather than under Republican control.

For these reasons, we will endorse and support bipartisan-oriented moderate Democrats in difficult races, like Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, where they will undoubtedly be challenged by Trump-backed candidates. And we will defend a small nucleus of courageous Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer and others who are unafraid to speak the truth.

In addition to these leaders, this week we are coming together around a political idea — the Renew America Movement — and will release a slate of nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates we will support in 2022.

These “renewers” must be protected and elected if we want to restore a common-sense coalition in Washington. But merely holding the line will be insufficient. To defeat the extremist insurgency in our political system and pressure the Republican Party to reform, voters and candidates must be willing to form nontraditional alliances.

For disaffected Republicans, this means an openness to backing centrist Democrats. It will be difficult for lifelong Republicans to do this — akin to rooting for the other team out of fear that your own is ruining the sport entirely — but democracy is not a game, which is why when push comes to shove, patriotic conservatives should put country over party.

One of those races is in Pennsylvania, where a bevy of pro-Trump candidates are vying to replace the departing Republican senator, Pat Toomey. The only prominent moderate in the primary, Craig Snyder, recently bowed out, and if no one takes his place, it will increase the urgency for Republican voters to stand behind a Democrat, such as Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist who is running for the seat.

For Democrats, this similarly means being open to conceding that there are certain races where progressives simply cannot win and acknowledging that it makes more sense to throw their lot in with a center-right candidate who can take out a more radical conservative.

Utah is a prime example, where the best hope of defeating Senator Mike Lee, a Republican who defended Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede the election, is not a Democrat but an independent and former Republican, Evan McMullin, a member of our group, who announced last week that he was entering the race.

We need more candidates like him prepared to challenge politicians who have sought to subvert our Constitution from the comfort of their “safe” seats in Congress, and we are encouraged to note that additional independent-minded leaders are considering entering the fray in places like Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, targeting seats that Trumpist Republicans think are secure.

More broadly, this experiment in “coalition campaigning” — uniting concerned conservatives and patriotic progressives — could remake American politics and serve as an antidote to hyper-partisanship and federal gridlock.

To work, it will require trust building between both camps, especially while they are fighting side by side in the toughest races around the country by learning to collaborate on voter outreach, sharing sensitive polling data, and synchronizing campaign messaging.

A compact between the center-right and the left may seem like an unnatural fit, but in the battle for the soul of America’s political system, we cannot retreat to our ideological corners.

A great deal depends on our willingness to consider new paths of political reform. From the halls of Congress to our own communities, the fate of our Republic might well rest on forming alliances with those we least expected to.

Steve Scalise on Fox News Sunday repeatedly refuses to acknowledge that the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/EME1lBK1vA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2021

Dear Commons Community,