Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

Policy Professor, Ford School, University of Michigan.
Irish immigrant. Administrative burdens guy.
Free newsletter, Can We Still Govern?: https://donmoynihan.substack.com

@donmoyn.bsky.social

I always thought it would be great to do a series of public events called something like "BANNED ON CAMPUS" in the relevant states - rare that government does you the favor of making you seem edgy and dangerous.

@donmoyn.bsky.social

Separate from the events was the coverage of the events as social phenomena. For example, the year is 2026, and Bret Stephens is still talking about Dorian Abbot being disinvited from a talk in 2021. The Times covered this as national news, giving less attention to more substantive attacks on speech

@donmoyn.bsky.social

I think there were multiple threads, the biggest:
Pre-Trump: People like Milo & Ben Shapiro going to college campuses and getting interrupted
Rufo-inspired demand for actions: inspect curriculum and ban speech (mostly state level)
Trump: set DOJ on campuses, threaten funding
bsky.app/profile/thor...

@donmoyn.bsky.social

If you only read the opinion journalism in elite media over the last decade, you would have been convinced that wokeness, not fascism, was the greatest threats to American society. Now some of those authors are retconning by trying to relabel fascism as "the woke right." bsky.app/profile/donm...

@donmoyn.bsky.social

There are people on the right who are principled on free speech, but most could see where this was going under Trumpism. A perfect distillation: Jon Haidt led a "we told you so" chant at Heterodox Academy meeting, and the most enthusiastic joiners were right wingers killing speech at New College.

Belvedere: I do want to give credit where it’s due. So, another anecdote from the conference that you reported on involved the Heterodox Academy founder, Jonathan Haidt. In his opening day remarks, he tried to lead attendees in a chorus of, “We told you so.” And let me give my own gloss on what that is supposed to mean, just to give background. It’s basically him saying, “We, the heterodox academics, told you, the progressive academics, to reform your ways. And the fact that you didn’t do so is why you got Trump.” But you noted that many seemed uneasy with Haidt’s call-and-response gimmick. So that’s a plus. Young: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I like Jon Haidt. But I think he got a little carried away there. It was a not-so-great moment. Belvedere: He got into rah rah mode. Young: I think most people agreed that it wasn’t a great moment. I mean, with one exception: Mark Bauerlein, who was part of the DeSantis takeover of New College of Florida. But yeah, pretty much everyone else was like, “Yeah, that was kind of in bad taste.”
@donmoyn.bsky.social

Over the last decade, there were two hypotheses: H1: the political right genuinely cared about threats to speech from the left. H2: they were using campus speech wars to impose their values and silence dissent. Today, the answer is clear, but I can't find any of the H1 people admitting their error.

@josefoshea.bsky.socialReposted by @donmoyn.bsky.social

What a weird world we live in - Ukraine hits a data centre deep in Russia - Irish twitter users see racist posts about IPAS centres in Offaly fall off a cliff

@maxkennerly.bsky.socialReposted by @donmoyn.bsky.social

I'm convinced Newsom isn't running for President at all. Sure, he might have a committee and use it as a slush fund, but he's running to be appointed to corporate boards and fake think tanks and stuff. Just too many examples of him going out of his way to show he's not aligned with the Dem base.

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