On April 9, Dr. David Lebow, Associate Director of the Law, Letters, & Society (LLSO) Department at the University of Chicago, announced the Charles Wegner Essay Competition Prize with “voter suppression” as its inaugural theme. Entries will be considered for a $500 prize, and the winning paper will be published in the Law, Letters, and Society Review. In the prompt, the LLSO Department maligns Republicans and casts Democrats as heroes, illustrating that the department is egregiously partisan under Lebow’s leadership.
The prompt for the essay contest is quoted in-full below:
The prompt discredits conservative narratives by placing them in scare-quotes, while readily accepting Democrat assertions at face-value. According to the prompt, Republicans are “[a]nimated by a widespread belief that Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory was ‘stolen,’ [leading] state Republican parties [to make] ‘vote integrity’ a signature legislative priority.”
Rather than encourage students to come to their own conclusions regarding “voter suppression,” the prompt unabashedly promotes Democrat talking-points: “Countless bills restricting ballot access are now moving through state legislative pipelines. Many see these efforts as forms of voter suppression designed to protect the political power of the Republican party or even to lock out Democrats permanently.” Republicans obviously aren’t attempting to permanently disenfranchise the Democrat party population, but the prompt ignores this fact, in order to engage in unfounded fear-mongering.
The prompt proceeds to assert that “nothing short of American democracy [is] on the line” and that Democrats are its sole defenders:
“National Democrats have crafted extensive measures to widen and protect the franchise, but as long as the filibuster exists, there seems to be little hope of making these into law. Meanwhile, local activists around the country have made some significant inroads in their campaigns against felon disenfranchisement.”
According to the prompt, National Democrats are the most prominent defenders of American democracy, the filibuster is an undeniable impediment to progress, and felon disenfranchisement and voter ID requirements are barriers to the democratic process.
The prompt’s CNN-inspired list of potential writing topics also encourages students to consider white supremacy, conspiratorial thinking, and Stacey Abrams’s political operation in Georgia (Fair Fight), among other subjects.
Readers wouldn’t know it from the prompt, but Republicans like ourselves sincerely believe election reform bills are enacted in good faith and seek to protect the franchise. The contested Georgia election law actually promotes election integrity by requiring voter IDs for mail-in ballots. It further guarantees poll hours and provides for additional time if necessary while increasing the number of ballot drop boxes compared to the last normal election year: 2019. This isn’t radical, it’s logical. And despite all the hysteria, those who don’t have voter identification in Georgia will be given IDs free of charge.
Democrats like to suggest that it’s racist to prevent non-citizens and unregistered voters from committing election fraud, but there’s nothing racist about protecting voter integrity. What is racist is the erroneous idea that African-American and Hispanic voters who don’t have IDs are somehow incapable of obtaining them. According to polls, voter ID laws have long been supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, including black Americans, by margins of 4-1.
Meanwhile, Democrat Bill H.R. 1 is a direct attack on free and fair elections. The bill will mandate insecure voting processes and subject voting tallies to partisan manipulation. Its provisions include unconstitutionally giving Congress primacy over state elections, mandating unreliable universal mail-in balloting, and eliminating voter ID election security, among many other initiatives.
Does the LLSO Department’s prompt even consider the merits of Republican voter ID laws or the dangers of Democrats’ assault on election integrity? No.
When asked for comment, Lebow stated that the essay prompt “endeavors to describe the salient facts of the current controversy over voting rights in order to invite student engagement.” According to Lebow, the prompt “includes summaries of the positions of both parties.” He emphasized that “it also highlights the fact that both parties engage in partisan gerrymandering—hardly a Democratic talking point.”
Lebow’s response completely misses the point. It’s not controversial to suggest that political gerrymandering is perpetrated by both political parties. Simply acknowledging this uncontroversial truth doesn’t make the prompt bipartisan.
The issue with the prompt is that it engages in overtly left-wing assumptions when “summarizing” political positions. The prompt shamelessly portrays Democrats as defenders of democracy and Republicans as evil conspiracy theorists who are purportedly trying to disenfranchise voters. In sum, the Democrat Party is defined under its own terms, while the Republican party is defined under the Democrats’ terms.
When asked whether he thinks the LLSO contest is in line with the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, Lebow ignored the question. The Provost’s Office champions the 1967 Kalven Report as “one of the most important policy documents at the University of Chicago.” The report itself states that the university “must […] maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures,” and “must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community,” as “It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.” As it stands, the LLSO Department appears to be violating university policy with its partisan essay contest.
Lebow has made no bones about where he stands on the political spectrum. He is the author of a 2019 paper titled “Trumpism and the Dialectic of Neoliberal Reason,” in which he uses “the thesis that fascism was the outcome of a dialectic of instrumental reason” to argue that “Trumpism is the result of a dialectic of neoliberal reason.”
Shortly before he assumed his position at the university, Lebow posted a Twitter thread condemning those who promote “sensible reforms” and desire an end to rioting. According to him, such individuals are hypocrites numbed by the “‘tranquilizing drug of gradualism.’”
Lebow continued by calling Trump the authoritarian personification of “the whole parade of terribles in society today.” He ended by stating that Democrats who are not willing to pay the price of a “juster world” are “standing a lot closer to Donald Trump than [they] are George Floyd.” When creating a good-evil dichotomy, Lebow places Trump—or anyone else who challenges his radical narrative—at the evil end.
Lebow told the Thinker that “essays that challenge the framing of prompts are often the most original and energetic responses,” and that he “would be very happy if a student tendered a submission that thoughtfully reframed the controversy and convincingly challenged any assumptions that he or she found implicit in the description.”
This is not stated in the prompt, which, as currently written, clearly seeks predetermined, left-wing answers. Moreover, Lebow’s own research and Twitter activity show that he is personally hostile to even middle-of-the-road opinions, let alone ones that challenge his own.
Lebow became associate director of LLSO, and an assistant senior instructional professor at the university, on July 1, 2020. He currently teaches the “Legal Reasoning” and “Introduction to Law, Letters, and Society” gateway courses that are required to complete the major.
According to a July 1 departmental email obtained by the Thinker, Lebow is LLSO students’ “first point of contact as [they] work [their] way through the major. He [answers] questions [that students] have about the curriculum and program requirements, he [handles] course petitions, and he [offers] his advice on law school applications and career paths in law. [Alongside Faculty Chair Jonathan Levy, Lebow is] also […] responsible for programming events and charting LLSO’s future in the College.”
Students who graduate from the LLSO Department often enroll in top law schools and then work high-level, high-paying jobs at big firms. Unfortunately, UChicago fails to prepare its LLSO students to think creatively and critically when it allows such a hyper-partisan associate director to literally offer money to students who engage in groupthink.
By elevating such a rabid partisan to a position of authority and allowing him to exchange authentic academic inquiry for his own radical, left-wing agenda, the LLSO Department undermines its own prestige. More than that, it lets down students. They deserve better.
*The views expressed in this article solely represent the views of the authors, not the views of the Chicago Thinker.
If the tables were turned and the essay prompt had been on the conservative side, they would be calling for his resignation. Hypocrisy at its finest.
This is a very good write up on an important topic: it underscores an ideology that, in effect, violates what Harvard Law’s Charles Fried refers to as the “ground zero” rule of free speech, which is a free mind, unburdened by authority seeking particular expression and conformity, expressed or implied. The LLSO is also a strange creature as it seeks to mimic some elements of a UK undergrad law program, but provides no legal credential. Moreover, Mr. Lebow is also a graduate of Yale Law, which has especially diluted Chicago Law’s more moderate, if conservative, rational foundations: they are now “sister” law schools in value activism and moral coercion, and largely captured by special interests. The SCOTUS court packing academic “Commission” is an example. ’96, Booth
David Lebow is an academic who needs to get a real job. This is migraine producing “Democrat/Progressive” claptrap being squeezed like toothpaste from his brain. His essay prompt is so ridiculous, I can only hope that someone uses it for a Bulwer Lytton entry. You.Need.To.Stay.Off.Twitter.David.
Have you maybe considered that you’re just wrong? I don’t doubt your personal convictions, but frankly voter ID laws are and always have been little more than a cover for voter suppression efforts, and no amount of personal conviction will make that not true. There’s just not much serious debate on this front. I’m not going to hash it all out here because of your website’s stupid-ass character limit, but in essence, because the US has no national ID, access to identification is limited, and the people most likely to not have a driver’s license or ID are disproportionately young people, ethnic and racial minorities, and poor people, all groups that Republicans benefit from disenfranchising. Now, if we were to improve access to the IDs that would be required to vote under these new laws, then things would be different, but as it stands, any “merits” are just political handwaving to get voter suppression laws through the door.
Also, the idea that the Democrats are the ones attacking the integrity of the voting system is pretty rich coming from you, considering that (1) Democrats introduced several election security bills during Trump’s presidency that immediately got shut down by the GOP, and (2) your side is the one that refused to concede, even after Trump’s own CISA director confirmed that the election was secure, which severely undermined public confidence in the electoral system for no real reason other than that Trump was too much of a petulant manchild to publicly state that he lost.
Not to mention the whole “no giving food or water or chairs to voters” thing is pretty indefensible.
“UChicago fails to prepare its LLSO students to think creatively and critically when it allows such a hyper-partisan associate director to literally offer money to students who engage in groupthink.”
I’m sorry that you take issue with encountering teachers who believe different things than you, and teach there interpretation. Would you prefer to have a LLSO course specifically for conservatives, so your ideas aren’t challenged? We could call it the LLSO conservative safe space track
UWUCHICAGO states that ” because the US has no national ID, access to identification is limited” which seems to assume that everyone could easily obtain a national ID were we to have one. That assumption is certainly dubious and probably silly. Why is there no deference given to Georgia offering to provide a free ID? I’ve seen no criticism of the (proposed) Georgia ID being difficult to obtain. Also, I’m not sure what alternative IDs are acceptable but virtually every teen has at least a high school ID and many have driver’s licenses and everyone should have a Social Security Card. I suspect that a SSN is required for enrollment in grade school After all, a person can’t vote until they are 18 which gives folks plenty of time to get an ID card of some sort.
The thing is that “easy” does not necessarily equate to “universal.” You’re right when you say that the vast majority of Americans have a driver’s license or other ID, but around 11% of Americans don’t, and various surveys have shown that the people most likely not to have an ID are the young, the poor, and members of ethnic minorities. It’s also true that everyone has a social security card and a student ID, but neither of those count as valid voter ID according to Georgia law. And finally, while you can apply for a free ID at the county registrar’s office, it still costs time and resources to do so. You might think that it’s not that much of a hassle, and that one should be willing to spend a couple hours to get an ID, but remember, voter ID laws (and voter suppression in general) are not intended to make it onerously difficult for every single person to vote, but rather to make it just hard enough to discourage enough people from voting to affect the outcome.
Oh please.
Everyone needs a state ID to buy a 6 pack of beer. It’s not asking very much to require people get a state ID to show that they are legally entitled to vote in a specific place.
Unless someone is disabled, there is no reason everyone can’t physically go walk in to the legal poling station where they legally live.
The Demorats, BLM, various special interests groups want to use mail in voting without state IDs to allow people to vote in places, many places they don’t live such as college students voting in the zip codes where they grew up with their families.
Census data indicates our Chicago has lost 50% of our Black African American population since 1990, but there has been no noticeable decline in voting registration and Congressional districts are gerrymandered to protect these Congressional seats as permanent Black Democrat seats.
You’re right: asking people to get an ID is not asking very much of them. On an individual level, it’s not too hard to take a couple hours to head to a county clerk’s office and get yourself an ID, whether that’s a voting ID or a driver’s license. But you’re misunderstanding my point. Again, voter suppression does not aim to make it overly tedious and difficult for every single person to vote. Really, voter ID laws are (relatively) just a small speed bump. But that small speed bump will inevitably make some people say “I’m better off spending time working, or taking care of my kids, or recovering from work, or studying, than voting.” Often, the effect is big enough to sway elections, which is bad, not because it favors Republicans, but because it means the election is less representative of the people as a whole. Ideally, if we want the government to best represent the interests of the people, we want the voting process to be absolutely as smooth and seamless as possible.
I look at this as yet another example of society trying to dumb down our democracy – we supposedly can’t require voters to get a simple state ID, and it’s asking too much to require voters to know how to read. There’s a big movement to ban basic math in certain Demorat urban districts because certain racial and ethnic groups don’t do very well in…. basic math.
What did we Chicago tax payers spend on Chicago public schools last year? Wasn’t it over $ 8 billion? CTU didn’t even do in person teaching, so I’m not that surprised that increasing numbers of poor Chicago residents will not know how to read or do basic math and this is of course the market that Demorats want to enable to vote (many times) by mail in ballots all over the country.
It’s not about intelligence, it’s about priorities. Again, for many people, they see voting as not worth their time. Especially for those who need to work hard to get by (whether that’s as a student, as a parent, as someone working multiple jobs, etc.), they’d rather use those few hours it’d take to get an ID and to vote doing something else. You can say that voting is important, that it’s our civic duty, that it’s worth those few hours, etc., and I would agree there, but there will inevitably be some people who have other priorities. But the goal of making the voting process seamless and pain-free is to make it so those people have no excuses, because they deserve to be represented even if they’ve lost faith in the public process.
Y’all just canceled a professor for having different views than you. So much for “preserving the Chicago Principles.” Let’s just say it: The Chicago Thinker is a right wing grift that doesn’t care about its core values. They aren’t in this for discourse; they’re doing this for their careers to become big staples of right wing media. Wake up people.
Matthew and Evita
Do you know if the Chicago Maroon newspaper, on-line blog no longer allows reader comments? I’m seeing “0 comments, comments closed” on some rather controversial articles like the naming of the new University of Chicago President who comes from uggh U Cal Berkeley!.
This is another really bad sign that some Lib Leftist media place is really clamping down on any free speech – it’s just the official party line, with no one allowed to comment.
Lots of places that were once intelligent Liberal places such as The Atlantic Magazine have ended all reader comments. This is a clear sign that the PC thought police will not tolerate any dissent or really any discussion. What was that U Chicago book “The Closing of the American Mind”?
What a tragedy!
Ah, yes.
Truly, it is the end of free speech when reader comments on news articles are restricted.
Truly, “dissent is not tolerated” when reader comments are restricted.
Better tell that to all of the underground writers in the USSR who couldn’t publish anything for fear of being executed or “disappeared” that they still had “free speech” since nobody had banned reader comments yet.
What’s your point?
That there was less free speech in the Soviet Union during the Bolshevik reign of terror, or under Stalin and his NKVD henchmen?
I concede that this is true.
But that’s a lot like saying that violent crime, car jackings, 4,000 plus shootings and792 murders in 2020 aren’t anything to be concerned about because the violent crime rates are higher in places like Baltimore MD or Magadeshu Somalia.
I’m concerned about increasing censorship under our “woke” , “cancel culture”.
I don’t believe the removal of reader comments on certain news sites amounts to censorship. After all, these news sites are private organizations and can set rules that users of their website must follow (i.e. preventing comments). There is absolutely no proscription on discussing the content of these news articles, though.
N.B. There were only 333 murders in Baltimore last year, less than half as many as Chicago had, but this is a minor thing.
USR-Plus
Aren’t you a little bit concerned about free speech censorship in U Chicago, Chicago and USA?
We’re not talking restrictions of extreme, violent speech – it’s park lovers objecting to the Obama Fnd stealing a big junk of Jackson Park building a 23 story high rise bldg in the park.
All kinds of Americans are losing their Facebook, Twitter accounts, 4 just speaking perfectly legal speech.
A young man name Nick Fuentes (Hispanic America) just got put on a “No Fly list” – he can’t fly domestically anywhere in the USA because he advocating yeah “America First” and was trying to attend a Big Tech censorship conference in Florida.
I don’t know of anyone who is arguing that this Nick Fuentes has done or said anything illegal, they just don’t like his views so they took away is right to get on airplane.
Not really, no.
Losing a Facebook account does not warrant abrogation of First Amendment rights. Again, since these are private companies, they may regulate speech on their platforms at their own will.
After a cursory Google search of Nick Fuentes, I found that he in fact has said some relatively violent things, and participated in the 06 Jan storming of the Capitol. He is also not just in favour of “America First,” but he is also a staunch white nationalist.
The claim that he has been placed on a no-fly list has not been verified, as well.
Because of the character limit, I will put his quotes in a separate comment.
Continued from my previous comment.
Two of his quotes are below. They may be found on Wikipedia and its associated references, and certainly do not paint a picture of a reasonable conservative interested in dialogue. Reference is listed below.
Fuentes said:
“What can you and I do to a state legislator — besides kill them? We should not do that. I’m not advising that, but I mean, what else can you do, right?”
“It is us and our ancestors that created everything good that you see in this country. All these people that have taken over our country—we do not need them… It is the American people, and our leader, Donald Trump, against everybody else in this country and this world… Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do.”
These sound like restrictions of “extreme, violent speech” as you said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes
Do Chicago Thinker writers and readers ever get together in person, in public/private?
I would enjoy socializing and conversing with you bright, brave young people.
I do (sadly) note that the Chicago Maroon and the Hyde Park Herald newspapers are not publishing any comments to their articles – it’s very weird, very Stalinesque/Orwell’s “1984”. It’s like the word came down and switch was flipped:
“OK, there will be no more difference of opinions presented here. Here’s the story, here’s our narrative and everyone is supposed to just bow their heads in agreement”.
Very strange and very unsettling – I’m seeing this throughout the American media and various groups of people that well, just have real opinions about anything, they are being persecuted, shadow banned and are migrating to places like “Gab”.
So does anyone want to meet in person/public – meet and greet over beers, wine?
USR-PLUS
Seems like you are talking a bit out of both sides of your mouth.
You deny that Nick Fuentes has been put on a no fly list and imply that he and other Trump supporters aren’t being censored persecuted, deplatformed just for their perfectly legal political opinions; then you say out of the other side of your mouth – that his political views are so bad and evil that it’s OK to censor him, put him on no fly lists and besides private companies like twitter, google and apple should be allowed to decide who they want to provide services to and who they don’t.
1.
For the third time (and hopefully the last), banning someone’s account on Twitter or Facebook does not warrant abrogation of First Amendment rights. Private corporations are permitted to refuse to serve customers (users of Facebook/Twitter/etc.) if those customers break that company’s Terms of Service. A restaurant may refuse a customer because they enforce a “No Shoes No Shirt No Service” policy and the customer is shirtless. I do not believe (and you can correct me if I am incorrect) a company may refuse service to a customer based on intrinsic qualities of the person pursuant to the Civil Rights Act (e.g. refusing service based on sex, race, etc.)
Saying that this amounts to “censorship [and] persecution” is plainly ridiculous. Given that Facebook or Twitter are not the US federal governments, it is simply idiotic to say that people who are banned from these social media sites are facing “government censorship.”
USR-Plus continued Part II
You are presenting the mindset of the worst forms of corporate/Woke PC which is approaching Maoist Communist Chinese standards:
You present the George Orwell “1984” mind #*$&@ of holding two completely contradictory arguments, then force them to agree with each other through brutal political force:
You argue that there is no censorship, government or high tech persecution/censorship of Nick Fuentes, or others or just anyone that attended the Jan 6 protest at the US Capital. Then you turn around and say that Nick Fuentes’ opinions and those like him are so bad and evil that it’s OK for the government to put him on no fly lists and it’s always ok for (monopoly) private companies to discriminate, not serve people with opinions they don’t like or groups they don’t like because they are private companies and if Conservatives, nationalists or just straight White European Americans don’t like it they should start their own companies.
2.
The US is not approaching Maoism or Communist China. This statement is asinine.
Please remember that those who attended the Capitol riot and entered the Capitol broke the law, plain and simple.
The government is permitted to restrict the movement of those who have been convicted or are awaiting trial. I do not understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.
The decision from the SCOTUS case Brandenburg v. Ohio states that speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” is prohibited and may be punished. Given that the second statement of Fuentes I have provided above (“It…do”) was said directly during the 06 Jan 2020 riot, this statement certainly skirts very close to the Brandenburg test.
I also said that Fuentes’ claim that he was placed on a no-fly list has not been independently verified, so I thus cannot say if he is telling the truth. He may be, he may not be.
USR Plus continued Part III
The reality is that high tech, social media companies have monopoly powers much greater than the Railroad monopolies or Standard Oil that prompted the anti Trust laws in our country. Regular Americans can’t start their own social media companies any more than they can start a competitive Hollywood movie studio or a television cable news network. There are huge barriers to entry, the American mass media is a very tightly controlled ethnic and politically the same media mafia.
3.
I do agree with you that the US should investigate the Big Tech companies for monopolistic behavior and, if need be, break them up.
I do not think, though, that the platforms of these companies are the only place one may express their opinion. If someone is banned from, say, Facebook, they are still permitted to speak their opinion, but just not on Facebook (e.g. they could use any one of the encrypted messaging apps, like Telegram), go out and protest, petition their elected representative, etc.
So, we may thus definitively say that having a Facebook account is not guaranteed under the Constitution and an individual still maintains their freedom of speech even if they lose it.