I'm no fan of Biden or Harris, and I don't disagree with your assessment of some of these policy decisions, but too much of this post relates to politics writ large rather than libraries and librarianship. I agree that there are definitely lessons our ideologically-captured library associations should be taking from the extent to which the U.S. electorate appears to have rejected wokeness, but what those lessons might be could have been elaborated upon more, rather than focusing on (for example) the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan or energy policy.
I do think it's interesting to consider how policy changes outside of librarianship affect our professional practice, especially when brought into the context of academia. I've certainly seen faculty and students take current policies as gospel when doing their research across disciplines, including criminal justice, climate, and political science, which can make it difficult for research and instruction librarians to fulfill their duties re: information literacy and research support. Point taken that it would have been useful for the article to more explicitly tie the different pieces to libraries!
I think this article overinterprets the results. Looking at the exit polls, it seems like the big issues were economy/inflation and immigration. It therefore *is* hyperbole to state that "the country has rejected these policies unswervingly". Maybe, but it is too early to say.
I do hope that we can return to the normal business of collection building but certain elements, such as those bringing criminal obscenity charges against individual library workers, are no doubt emboldened by a national GOP trifecta. My assessment is that we are far from ending the "woke" debate in libraries; much work of persuasion and compromise remains.
Yes, thank you, Gabriel, the article oversimplifies and overinterprets the results. I've read a ton of commentaries and listened to many explanations of the outcomes in the past two weeks, and there are myriad combinations of causes of the outcome. It's like a Rubik's Cube of potential explanations, though the major ones you mention are likely most important. I think it's a positive thing for DEI policies, for example, to be curtailed sharply, but I have my own serious reservations about "anti-wokeness" carried to the other extreme by populist authoritarians who think they uniquely have "answers" to the nation's many problems--a great deal of hubris there-- and I'm also both troubled and amused by their claims to be the champions of free speech and freedom of the press when threats are made against journalists and media organizations by some of the leading figures in that movement. The woke progressive/identitarian control in some leading educational and cultural institutions is certainly familiar and there should be countervailing influences; it will not help us for a culture of control and censorship to be imposed sharply from the other direction.
I'm amplifying some other concerns that emerged for me in reading this article:
First, the overinterpreting the results without considering more nuanced analyses from reliable sources such as the Cook Political Report-https://www.cookpolitical.com/
which does show what we already know about the changing nature of the electorate, and the swing of some demographic groups to the Republican/MAGA cause--a trend that had been underway in 2020 and continued in this cycle. The Cook Report shows the closeness of the popular vote totals (which aren't yet final, don't ask me to explain California's voting tabulation procedures), with about 1.5% difference nationally between Trump and Harris. Of course, the Electoral College votes show a large victory for the Republican ticket but the Electoral College may distort more careful analysis of the results.
I'm more concerned by the claims made in the article that somehow a hypothetical Harris administration would be an existential threat to libraries and now we can just return, under a Trump administration, to "common sense" library practices. I think this flies in the face of the larger sociopolitical realities with parts of Project 2025 to be implemented--which potential infringements on academic and intellectual freedom. If we need to take into account the larger sociopolitical realities created by woke identitarianism, and its demands for conformity, and the ideological capture of our major professional associations (and I agree with that point), we also need to take into account potential prescriptive demands from the soon-to-be Trump administration. This will be the Chris Rufo playbook, supercharged, and at work. It doesn't look like a reasonable approach to checks and balances in our system because it may become another form of monocultural control.
I think those who claim that that a Harris administration would have posed an existential threat to libraries might want to consider these points that I think actually *are* existential threats to libraries, to epistemic institutions in general, and to informed citizenship:
--Pew Research findings show that a plurality of American adults read at only a sixth grade level
--Lack of civic knowledge (how our system of government and checks and balances is supposed to work, even if imperfectly--ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni--has been working on this renewal for a number of years
--Lack of statistical literacy or numeracy--ability to read and understand base rates, charts and graphs, etc
--Lack of scientific knowledge: Matt Motta's new book "Anti-Scientific Americans", drawing on Hofstader, is highlighting the challenge here, and suggesting ways forward for scientists to communicate more clearly with a wider public and also to enlist the wider public in inquiry on contested questions
--News and media literacy: these are often discussed and without definitive solutions by any means but the ability of citizens to participate and deal with complex and contested questions depends upon at least some ability to deal with viewpoint diversity among sources
--Relatedly, "the influencer culture" which has emerged as a major force in both sharing a wider range of viewpoints, but with its dark side of creating information pollution in social media
I think any of these forces of our contemporary sociopolitical, educational, and media ecosystem reality are surely more significant than which Presidential candidate is in power, though I am concerned about authoritarianism and censorship regimes coming from the incoming administration (in the name of "anti-censorship"!) as a I am about the authoritarianism and demands for conformity within universities and other leading cultural institutions.
Any political movement whose leaders admire or are totally transactional with autocrats, authoritarians, and dictators abroad--Orban in Hungary, the famous "illiberal democracy" which has curtailed viewpoint diversity in its own country--not to mention Putin, Xi, and others--will continue to be a concern to me.
I've been worried that the US dept. of ed has announced they are not going to collect academic library statistics (but if the US dept of ed goes away entirely I guess this is moot.)
Anyone know why the current dept. of ed has decided this?
I'm no fan of Biden or Harris, and I don't disagree with your assessment of some of these policy decisions, but too much of this post relates to politics writ large rather than libraries and librarianship. I agree that there are definitely lessons our ideologically-captured library associations should be taking from the extent to which the U.S. electorate appears to have rejected wokeness, but what those lessons might be could have been elaborated upon more, rather than focusing on (for example) the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan or energy policy.
I do think it's interesting to consider how policy changes outside of librarianship affect our professional practice, especially when brought into the context of academia. I've certainly seen faculty and students take current policies as gospel when doing their research across disciplines, including criminal justice, climate, and political science, which can make it difficult for research and instruction librarians to fulfill their duties re: information literacy and research support. Point taken that it would have been useful for the article to more explicitly tie the different pieces to libraries!
Oh for sure, absolutely.
I think this article overinterprets the results. Looking at the exit polls, it seems like the big issues were economy/inflation and immigration. It therefore *is* hyperbole to state that "the country has rejected these policies unswervingly". Maybe, but it is too early to say.
I do hope that we can return to the normal business of collection building but certain elements, such as those bringing criminal obscenity charges against individual library workers, are no doubt emboldened by a national GOP trifecta. My assessment is that we are far from ending the "woke" debate in libraries; much work of persuasion and compromise remains.
Yes, thank you, Gabriel, the article oversimplifies and overinterprets the results. I've read a ton of commentaries and listened to many explanations of the outcomes in the past two weeks, and there are myriad combinations of causes of the outcome. It's like a Rubik's Cube of potential explanations, though the major ones you mention are likely most important. I think it's a positive thing for DEI policies, for example, to be curtailed sharply, but I have my own serious reservations about "anti-wokeness" carried to the other extreme by populist authoritarians who think they uniquely have "answers" to the nation's many problems--a great deal of hubris there-- and I'm also both troubled and amused by their claims to be the champions of free speech and freedom of the press when threats are made against journalists and media organizations by some of the leading figures in that movement. The woke progressive/identitarian control in some leading educational and cultural institutions is certainly familiar and there should be countervailing influences; it will not help us for a culture of control and censorship to be imposed sharply from the other direction.
I'm amplifying some other concerns that emerged for me in reading this article:
First, the overinterpreting the results without considering more nuanced analyses from reliable sources such as the Cook Political Report-https://www.cookpolitical.com/
which does show what we already know about the changing nature of the electorate, and the swing of some demographic groups to the Republican/MAGA cause--a trend that had been underway in 2020 and continued in this cycle. The Cook Report shows the closeness of the popular vote totals (which aren't yet final, don't ask me to explain California's voting tabulation procedures), with about 1.5% difference nationally between Trump and Harris. Of course, the Electoral College votes show a large victory for the Republican ticket but the Electoral College may distort more careful analysis of the results.
I'm more concerned by the claims made in the article that somehow a hypothetical Harris administration would be an existential threat to libraries and now we can just return, under a Trump administration, to "common sense" library practices. I think this flies in the face of the larger sociopolitical realities with parts of Project 2025 to be implemented--which potential infringements on academic and intellectual freedom. If we need to take into account the larger sociopolitical realities created by woke identitarianism, and its demands for conformity, and the ideological capture of our major professional associations (and I agree with that point), we also need to take into account potential prescriptive demands from the soon-to-be Trump administration. This will be the Chris Rufo playbook, supercharged, and at work. It doesn't look like a reasonable approach to checks and balances in our system because it may become another form of monocultural control.
I think those who claim that that a Harris administration would have posed an existential threat to libraries might want to consider these points that I think actually *are* existential threats to libraries, to epistemic institutions in general, and to informed citizenship:
--Pew Research findings show that a plurality of American adults read at only a sixth grade level
--Lack of civic knowledge (how our system of government and checks and balances is supposed to work, even if imperfectly--ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni--has been working on this renewal for a number of years
--Lack of statistical literacy or numeracy--ability to read and understand base rates, charts and graphs, etc
--Lack of scientific knowledge: Matt Motta's new book "Anti-Scientific Americans", drawing on Hofstader, is highlighting the challenge here, and suggesting ways forward for scientists to communicate more clearly with a wider public and also to enlist the wider public in inquiry on contested questions
--News and media literacy: these are often discussed and without definitive solutions by any means but the ability of citizens to participate and deal with complex and contested questions depends upon at least some ability to deal with viewpoint diversity among sources
--Relatedly, "the influencer culture" which has emerged as a major force in both sharing a wider range of viewpoints, but with its dark side of creating information pollution in social media
I think any of these forces of our contemporary sociopolitical, educational, and media ecosystem reality are surely more significant than which Presidential candidate is in power, though I am concerned about authoritarianism and censorship regimes coming from the incoming administration (in the name of "anti-censorship"!) as a I am about the authoritarianism and demands for conformity within universities and other leading cultural institutions.
Any political movement whose leaders admire or are totally transactional with autocrats, authoritarians, and dictators abroad--Orban in Hungary, the famous "illiberal democracy" which has curtailed viewpoint diversity in its own country--not to mention Putin, Xi, and others--will continue to be a concern to me.
I've been worried that the US dept. of ed has announced they are not going to collect academic library statistics (but if the US dept of ed goes away entirely I guess this is moot.)
Anyone know why the current dept. of ed has decided this?
Background: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/04/2024-04509/agency-information-collection-activities-comment-request-integrated-postsecondary-education-data