0:00

float Hello

0:33

and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henry. We'll

0:36

hear from Jody Dean, a frequent behind the news guest

0:38

who's been suspended from her

0:45

teaching duties for writing a controversial article,

0:48

and then from the historian Carrie Lee Merritt

0:50

about the serious problems of society in the

0:52

American South. And as a

0:54

postscript, we'll hear a bit of an interview

0:56

first broadcast last June with the economist Samuel

0:59

Bazzi on the effects of the Confederate diaspora

1:01

on recipient areas. The crackdown

1:03

and dissenting voices around Israel's war on

1:05

Gaza, a crime perpetrated with the generous

1:07

assistance of the US, has

1:09

been remarkable, though similar must be said about

1:12

the level of dissent. One

1:14

instance that strikes close to home, my friend

1:16

and frequent behind the news guest, Jody Dean,

1:18

was suspended from teaching by the administration of

1:20

Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges in Geneva, New

1:22

York for an article she wrote for the

1:25

Verso blog that defended Hamas. It's

1:27

not the article I would have written, but whether

1:29

I agree with it or not is irrelevant. A

1:31

professor should not be punished for a controversial article.

1:34

But that's where we are. Here's Jody Dean

1:36

with the story. So Jody, what

1:38

happened? How'd you find out what's

1:40

been happening to you? What's the college doing

1:42

to you? So I'll

1:44

start from the beginning. On April

1:47

9th, the Verso blog published an

1:49

essay of mine, Palestine

1:51

Speaks for Everyone. And

1:54

I guess two days later, I

1:58

started getting notices. that some

2:02

different right-wing

2:04

and Zionist Twitter accounts were

2:06

on it and

2:08

were criticizing it

2:11

and sharing it a lot with

2:13

a lot of outrage. And

2:17

then in one of

2:19

the threads, someone essentially

2:21

doxxed me. And that's not hard. I

2:24

mean, I've written a bunch. Well,

2:26

you're a very public figure. It's not hard to

2:28

find out where you are. But I hadn't put the

2:30

name of where I teach on

2:33

the Verso blog. I just kept

2:35

it in me. I live in

2:37

Geneva, New York. So

2:39

these Twitter accounts then

2:42

started putting, they put my

2:44

picture up and calling out me and

2:46

then the president of Hobart

2:48

and Williams Smith College's Mark Guerin and

2:51

been calling on HWS

2:54

to fire me. I'm

2:56

a horrible anti-Semite.

2:58

I'm vile. I celebrate death.

3:00

And so they started circulating

3:02

these things. And then I

3:04

started noticing, oh, I was

3:06

getting a fair amount of

3:09

really awful hate mail. And

3:11

so I was like, huh, this

3:14

isn't great. This was Thursday night.

3:16

And then on Friday morning, I

3:18

get a call from HWS that lets

3:20

me know that in fact, an

3:23

account with over 300,000 followers

3:27

had been circulating

3:30

these calls against

3:32

me and that

3:35

all of HWS social

3:37

media was getting responses

3:39

and getting basically

3:41

anti-Jodi, hate Jodi

3:43

Dean things all over them. And so

3:45

they were having to do a combination of

3:47

whack-a-mole and cutting off comments and that kind

3:50

of thing. And then

3:52

on Friday afternoon, the president of

3:54

the colleges began the faculty meeting

3:56

by condemning me. So that's a

3:59

first step. first, not just for

4:01

me. I don't think it's ever been done at the

4:03

beginning of a faculty meeting. Had

4:05

you ever been identified by Canary Mission or any

4:08

of those? No, no.

4:10

I mean, not at all, right? I

4:12

mean, a lot of really wonderful scholars

4:14

and brave students, all sorts of people

4:17

have been called out. I've never been

4:19

called out for Canary Mission

4:21

or anything like that. So, you

4:23

know, I was condemned. I wasn't at the faculty meeting,

4:25

which is probably a good thing because it would have

4:28

felt really awkward. The Zoom

4:30

link, for whatever reason, wasn't working. So

4:33

then the next day I got called

4:35

into the office of the

4:37

president and was

4:40

read a letter, which I at

4:42

the time didn't ask, who was it going

4:44

to? I don't know why it didn't ask.

4:46

I was more interested in like, what did

4:48

the condemnation actually say? And it was like,

4:50

oh, well, you know, I'll read this and

4:53

it'll say that. And then after all of

4:55

the critical part, it's like, and

4:57

something to the effect of, and

5:00

Jody Dean is being

5:02

relieved of teaching responsibilities

5:05

pending an investigation in the

5:07

interest of, and I'm paraphrasing

5:10

now, in the interest of the

5:12

safety and well-being of the students. And

5:15

I was pretty shocked. I

5:17

didn't realize that the Verso blog

5:20

was that dangerous. The use

5:22

of safety is so wild because it

5:24

used to be like, oh, there's always

5:26

leftish snowflakes can handle tough

5:29

speech. Howard French, a former

5:31

New York Times reporter has been posting on Twitter

5:33

today, all these columns

5:35

by a New York Times columnist about this very

5:37

topic. Like, the kids today are just too sensitive

5:39

and they want to be safe and they need

5:41

to take it a little rough. And

5:44

now you have these apologists for

5:46

Imperial slaughter embracing that very discourse.

5:48

Yeah, I think it's on the

5:51

one hand gaslighting, on the other hand,

5:53

you know, whatever tools that we release

5:55

out into the universe can get picked

5:57

up by our adversaries. It's just particularly

6:00

calling right now seeing the bravery

6:02

of the students all over the

6:04

country. What is it like? 1617

6:07

colleges and universities have

6:09

students. They're putting themselves at a lot

6:11

of risk. I mean, there are specific

6:14

campaigns to dox these students to prevent

6:16

their future employment. You know, many,

6:18

hundreds of them have been arrested. So

6:21

the snowflake thing, I think we really

6:23

have to you know, just kind

6:25

of say, okay, wait a minute. All

6:28

you guys, like let's look at these brave

6:30

students. I mean, it's really, really

6:32

impressive. And I don't think

6:34

the right wing is going to be able to

6:36

use that anymore because now, basically, who looks like

6:38

a snowflake more than they do? Yeah, your

6:41

status is now pending investigation. Do you

6:43

have any idea of what the scope

6:45

of that investigation is? Who's performing it?

6:48

So let me talk about this one

6:50

kind of vaguely. Okay. Because one of

6:53

the things that's been really helpful

6:55

is this has happened is I've been able to connect

6:58

and talk with other scholars and

7:00

academics who have gone through this

7:02

kind of thing. And one of

7:05

the things that people who are

7:07

enduring this are sharing is

7:09

the way that these processes

7:11

are being made up.

7:13

They're usually completely ad

7:15

hoc. Most of the time, there's

7:18

not good kind of language

7:20

or process or sort of bylaws

7:22

or rules that tell how to

7:24

do this. And so

7:26

it seems to me like

7:28

what happens is that universities

7:30

cast a wide net and go

7:32

on fishing expeditions to see what they

7:35

can catch. So the

7:38

investigations that I'm

7:41

familiar with are doing precisely

7:43

that thing, looking to see if

7:46

anyone could possibly be harmed. So

7:48

actually, that was in the letter

7:51

that the president of HWS sent.

7:53

Oh, let me go back. I should have

7:56

said this part. On Saturday, the president

7:58

of Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges released

8:00

this letter about condemning

8:03

me and saying, you

8:05

know, HWS has nothing to do with that, which is, of

8:07

course it didn't, it was my article, and saying I was

8:10

relieved and released it to all the students, the

8:12

faculty, the staff, the parents, and

8:14

all the alumni. Right, so

8:16

this then went, and then of

8:18

course it was immediately circulating. So

8:21

this letter about my employment was

8:24

widely publicized online, and it was

8:26

into that entire community. And in

8:28

that it said that they would

8:31

be investigating to make sure that

8:34

no one could have been possibly at

8:36

risk or something like that. So looking

8:38

for to make sure that anyone may

8:40

have been harmed that

8:42

they were to find them. On the

8:44

face of it, this seems like an

8:46

academic freedom issue. You're a tenured professor,

8:49

a distinguished scholar and writer with a

8:51

pretty high public profile. You

8:53

would think you would have the freedom

8:55

to say pretty much anything you'd want. Obviously

8:58

that has some limits. How does

9:00

this fit into traditional notions of academic freedom? Well,

9:03

the American Association of University Professors

9:05

has already weighed in on this

9:07

in a letter to HWS saying

9:11

that this is an incredible violation

9:13

of academic freedom. I'm very pleased

9:15

that they wrote so quickly on

9:18

my behalf that this

9:20

is what academic freedom

9:22

is supposed to protect,

9:24

which is the ability

9:26

to raise critical questions,

9:28

to think freely, to

9:30

explore ideas, and particular

9:32

ideas that may not be

9:35

popular, particularly critical ideas, ideas

9:37

that are critical of a

9:39

dominant view. I mean, the

9:41

interesting thing about academic freedom is it's

9:43

not just like anything goes,

9:45

say whatever you want, any time.

9:48

What it means is opening up the

9:50

space for thinking and

9:53

critique and thoughtfulness and

9:55

inquiry and exchange and exploration, a

9:57

kind of like an interpretive way.

10:00

dialogue to understand. And

10:03

that's what's really being shut down by

10:05

going after a tenured professor

10:07

for a blog post. Now,

10:09

I don't want to take away anything from

10:12

what you're going through, but now academia is

10:14

populated by very casualized adjuncts. And

10:16

if this is happening to you, a

10:18

tenured professor with a global reputation, they

10:21

have no freedom at all, right? Oh,

10:24

absolutely. I was talking with

10:26

a colleague

10:28

just today who was describing

10:31

some cases out in California

10:33

where really vicious

10:36

Zionist groups were going after

10:38

contingent laborers who were women

10:40

of color and looking

10:42

through their syllabi and seeing if they

10:45

could find anything, anything to

10:47

go after them and to try to

10:49

get their jobs. And it's very

10:51

hard to protect contingent faculty because they

10:53

don't have long-term contracts.

10:55

When the president of

10:57

Columbia called out untenured

10:59

faculty member in her

11:01

presentation, it's also just

11:04

completely vile the way this

11:06

is happening. And yeah, yeah, it's, they

11:08

don't have the same protections at all. And

11:10

this is actually one of these intersections of

11:13

the kind of neoliberalization of the

11:15

university and the elimination of

11:17

tenured jobs and the moving to more

11:19

and more contingent labor. Without that, I

11:21

think we would actually be in a different ballgame.

11:23

But that sort of 40 years

11:26

of attacks on higher ed,

11:28

the moving over to fewer

11:31

and fewer tenured positions in more and more

11:33

adjunct positions, means that people

11:35

don't have the protections of thought.

11:37

They're not able to write and teach, which

11:39

then is really bad for students who don't

11:42

get to explore a different idea. I'm

11:44

speaking with Jody Dean, who's been suspended

11:46

from her teaching duties at Hobart and

11:48

William Smith colleges. It's worth pointing out

11:50

that the president of Columbia, when she

11:52

was president of LSE, London School of

11:54

Economics, expanded the contingent workforce there at

11:56

a time when other British universities are

11:58

actually expanding their program. permanent workforce. So she

12:01

really went out of her way to

12:04

impose this new neoliberal model even

12:06

against what was happening in the

12:08

wider culture there. It's

12:11

completely vile and unfortunately

12:14

not really surprising. One of the things

12:16

we should be worried about is that

12:18

what more and more trustees want, right?

12:21

Are trustees actively dismantling

12:23

education and just turning them into

12:25

their own depositories for some kinds

12:27

of money so they can have

12:29

like, oh, I'll have a building

12:32

in my name. I'll create a

12:34

workforce or a populace that reflects

12:36

the ideas that I want. I

12:38

mean, it seems like where that's where it's

12:40

going. Now, I was just reflecting

12:43

on Yale of my era, early

12:45

1970s. Kingman Brewster, very aristocratic,

12:47

double Mayflower, president of Yale at

12:49

the time, diffused a whole lot

12:51

of campus tensions. There was a

12:54

trial, some Black Panthers going on in New

12:56

Haven. Brewster tells the press, I

12:59

don't think a Black revolutionary can get a fair trial

13:01

anywhere in the United States. He

13:04

says some sympathetic things. This diffuses

13:06

a whole lot of the anger

13:08

on campus and prevented riots basically from

13:11

happening. The contrast with the college and

13:13

university president today is really striking. It

13:15

seems, as you mentioned, the

13:18

money bags guys are really, seem

13:20

much more directly involved. The

13:23

top officials themselves are just

13:25

bureaucrats. Shafik came out of

13:27

the IMF and the Bank of England. These

13:30

are not career educators. They don't seem to have

13:32

much in the way of an

13:35

understanding of intellectual life or

13:38

how to handle

13:40

the complex politics of a university without

13:42

calling the cops. I've

13:44

been wondering, is this going

13:46

to be part of the New World Order? Not

13:49

to use the old, I don't mean from the

13:51

old George Bush New World Order times,

13:53

but just whatever this time

13:57

of extreme repression is. expect

14:00

will get worse as

14:03

inequality continues to deepen

14:05

and we've got rampant

14:07

climate change. But anyway, back to, I'm

14:10

wondering if the new model is

14:12

gonna be coercion. It's like there's not

14:14

a model of discussion

14:16

and inquiry anymore, but the model

14:18

will be, if you don't

14:20

do what we want, we're going to police you.

14:22

If you're a faculty member and you don't say

14:25

what we like, we will fire you. If

14:27

you were a student and you

14:29

break our bizarre and

14:32

elaborate regulations regarding when

14:34

and where you can speak, then

14:36

you will be arrested. I

14:38

actually wonder if what we're seeing is a kind of

14:41

grim new time where the universities

14:44

aren't what they should be or

14:46

what they were, but on the other hand, not

14:48

to be so grim, the students fighting back are

14:50

actually, I think, giving us the

14:52

other side of it and another kind of

14:55

hope that they're not going to let that

14:57

happen, that they're gonna insist on spaces of

14:59

freedom. Yeah, they're actually inspiring. I mean, whenever

15:01

Columbia has been following it most

15:03

closely because it's just around the corner from

15:06

me practically, but I've been watching these students

15:08

with great admiration. Like whenever Columbia tightens the

15:10

screws, they just redouble their efforts. It's

15:12

exhilarating. It's totally

15:14

exhilarating. It's persistent. IOSC

15:17

really was just blown

15:19

away by the bravery of

15:22

the faculty surrounding

15:24

the students at NYU and

15:27

being the first line of defense and

15:29

getting arrested. I mean, that's pretty great.

15:32

And I hope that we see this at

15:34

all the other colleges and universities that will

15:36

see more and more faculty stand up because

15:39

really the more people come out, the

15:41

weaker that the administrations and

15:44

the trustees are. I

15:46

don't think they can arrest us all.

15:48

No, well, I was just on the,

15:50

the NYPD had trouble. The bus drivers

15:53

wouldn't drive the buses to take the

15:55

arrested to jail. And so the cops are

15:58

trying to drive the bus by themselves. We're

16:00

having a very hard time doing it, which was a

16:02

very cheery little detail. That's cheery. It's

16:05

also meant to get all,

16:08

you know, a commie revolution on

16:10

this. But those kinds

16:12

of connections, right, where other

16:14

groups start to express

16:16

solidarity and start to refuse to

16:19

comply, that's a really great kind

16:21

of building of

16:23

social solidarity and building a fight

16:25

back that's also totally

16:27

inspiring. I'm amazed by what's

16:29

been going on with this since

16:32

October 7th. It feels very

16:34

McCarthy-y. I don't think it's an exaggeration to

16:36

say it feels like McCarthyism all over again.

16:39

But McCarthyism was about communism, which was

16:41

really about something. I mean, we can

16:43

make fun of some of the crazy

16:45

delusions that McCarthy and the people like

16:47

him trafficked in, but

16:49

it really was about something. I

16:51

don't fully understand why this particular

16:54

issue has provoked such an

16:56

intense crackdown by the American political

16:59

and educational elite. Do you have any thoughts on that?

17:02

Solidarity with Palestine is impermissible,

17:06

right? Solidarity with Palestine

17:08

is what the US

17:11

Academy and the US

17:13

state has said, no. We

17:17

know from Biden, it's like he calls

17:19

himself a Zionist and says that if

17:21

Israel wasn't there, we'd have to invent

17:23

it. And billions and

17:25

billions of dollars that continue to

17:27

go in to fund this genocide,

17:29

it's like the hold on the

17:32

American political system and all of the

17:34

elite is this utter

17:37

exclusion of

17:40

Palestinian self-determination and

17:42

Palestinian freedom from the imperial

17:44

world order. I really

17:48

fully believe it is

17:50

the commitment to

17:53

Palestinian freedom that is at the heart of it. And

17:56

why? It's also because the Palestinian cause

17:58

is at the end. the core of

18:01

anti-imperialism as well. And it's

18:03

completely inspiring and great. I was

18:05

at the University of Rochester encampment

18:07

yesterday. And to see the students there,

18:09

I think it's very much like

18:11

on the other campuses that it was

18:14

an extraordinarily diverse group of students there.

18:16

It was not, did not look like,

18:18

you know, your typical white group.

18:21

It was all sorts of different

18:23

multinational students, multigendered, other

18:25

people from the community. And it just made

18:27

you see like this core

18:29

of solidarity with Palestine as

18:31

uniting multiple movements. It

18:34

does seem like some elite

18:36

campuses are taking the lead in these

18:38

protests. Do you have any thoughts where

18:41

that might be? Yeah, I've wondered

18:43

a couple of things. I wondered if

18:45

in part that because they may have

18:47

more international students, an international

18:50

student, I mean, that's an empirical question.

18:52

You know, one can do research on

18:54

that. But that would be a guess.

18:56

A lot of international students who come

18:58

from political cultures where protest

19:01

is common and normative

19:03

and encouraged, I think that might be

19:05

one reason. I've also wondered if

19:08

whether a relative amount of privilege

19:11

that students at elite colleges have may

19:13

make them freer to demonstrate.

19:16

They may be less worried

19:18

about their economic futures than, say,

19:20

students who go to commuter

19:22

colleges or who are working

19:24

a full-time job as they're going

19:27

to school or who are

19:29

continuing education students. And so

19:31

it could be that the

19:33

students at the elite universities have a

19:35

degree of privilege that frees

19:38

them to protest. Yeah,

19:40

this whole concept of privilege is very complicated

19:43

in politics. Sometimes

19:45

if you use it properly, it's a weapon

19:48

rather than something to be embarrassed about. Absolutely.

19:52

That's one of the things I

19:54

actually think that tenured

19:56

faculty have a duty to

19:58

be out there. And

20:01

many, many are out there

20:03

speaking in solidarity with Palestine

20:05

and in support of all

20:07

of our students. And

20:10

it can't just be that this

20:12

is on the backs of contingent

20:14

faculty, like who are the ones

20:17

taking the brunt of the

20:19

pushback. So what kind of reactions

20:21

have you been getting? Are you getting messages of

20:23

support from near and afar? How's it been? I

20:26

won't be surprised to know that

20:28

not everyone has been supportive. I've

20:30

gotten quite a bit of nasty,

20:32

nasty, nasty hate mail. But

20:34

the support has really drowned

20:37

that out and helped me a great

20:39

deal. My good friend

20:41

and comrade, Abena Osmanova, put

20:43

together a sign-on letter and

20:46

petition that got over 4,000

20:48

signatures. And that really

20:50

was very, very helpful.

20:53

And on campus, the Students

20:56

for Academic Freedom group put together a letter

20:58

that they sent to the administration and faculty

21:01

put together a long letter with

21:04

many faculty supporting our branch AUP,

21:07

put together a letter. So

21:09

all of that has been really great. And

21:11

oh my God, I've gotten beautiful

21:14

letters from alumni, from parents,

21:16

from students, and also from

21:18

a friend who's an activist

21:20

in Israel. She has relatives

21:23

who were in the south of

21:25

Israel and displaced for quite a

21:28

while. And she knows people who

21:30

are hostages. And she wrote in

21:33

full solidarity with my Verso

21:35

blog post and wrote a letter to

21:37

the president on

21:40

my behalf, which I thought was an

21:42

incredible act of generosity. People who

21:44

are listening who want to help you out

21:46

either emotionally or in

21:48

any other way. Is there

21:50

something they could do? Yeah, they could

21:52

write letters to the president of

21:54

Hobart and Weymsmith colleges and say

21:57

that academic freedom matters.

22:00

And it really matters in a

22:02

genocide, that we have to demonstrate

22:04

solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and

22:07

recognize. And this is actually what my

22:09

friend Dana says, the activist from Tel

22:11

Aviv. She's like, nobody is

22:13

safe if Palestine's not safe.

22:16

That Jewish people in the United States are

22:19

not safe because of Israel's genocidal

22:23

assault on Palestine. And

22:25

they're not safe anywhere given that assault. And

22:27

so it's important that

22:29

we recognize this and that

22:31

we recognize the absolute, absolutely

22:35

essential nature of solidarity

22:37

with the Palestine struggle. So I think writing

22:39

HWS could be useful

22:41

or there's a change.org petition

22:43

for my reinstatement that's circulating

22:46

online. That was Jodi Dean, a

22:48

professor of political science at Hobart and William

22:50

Smith Colleges, who's been suspended from her teaching

22:52

duties because the administration of the college didn't

22:54

like an article she wrote. If

22:57

you'd like to file a note of support

22:59

for Jodi, the email address of the president

23:01

of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Mark Guiran

23:03

is guiran at hws.edu. A

23:12

CC to Katherine Williams, vice president

23:14

for marketing and communications. C

23:16

Williams at HWS EdU might also be

23:19

in order. Though we talked some

23:21

about the initial wave of protests emerging at

23:23

elite institutions, the Gaza solidarity encampments

23:25

are spreading. As I was putting the finishing

23:27

touches in this show this morning, I saw

23:29

that students at City College of New York

23:31

were setting one up. You're listening

23:33

to Behind the News on Jacobin Radio. My

23:35

name is Doug Henwood, back after a musical

23:37

break. I

24:44

was sent to the second movement of the

24:46

string quartet number one by the Italian composer

24:48

Giacinto Celsi, performed by the Arditti Quartet. Next,

24:51

the Severe Structural Problems of the American

24:53

South. My next guest, Carrie

24:55

Lee Merritt, has an article on the

24:57

EON website, the Southern Gap, on the

24:59

Lingering Effects of the Antebellum Order on

25:01

Southern Society. She's a historian

25:04

and writer based in Atlanta. Carrie

25:06

Lee Merritt. Can you say the piece,

25:08

whether measured in terms of development, health, or

25:10

happiness, the region is bad at everything good

25:12

and good at everything bad? That's quite

25:15

a broad indictment. Could you expand on that

25:17

a little bit? So I say the region

25:19

is bad at everything good and good at

25:21

everything bad. Of course, that is painting with

25:23

a broad stroke, but that's the actual

25:25

data. That's what the data tells

25:27

us. If we look at anything

25:29

from economic data to health

25:32

and well-being to any kind of

25:34

development data, the South is always

25:36

the lowest on

25:39

the spectrum, always the worst. And

25:41

the Deep South, the states where slavery

25:43

was the highest, those states are

25:46

the worst out of the region. Yeah, there seems

25:48

to be an awful lot of continuity in the

25:50

social structures that prevailed before 1865 and after, isn't

25:52

there? Absolutely.

25:55

I mean, obviously the legacies of slavery, but

25:57

all of the other forms of unfree labor.

26:00

that accompanied slavery and persisted

26:02

long after slavery from debt

26:04

peonage to child indenture laws

26:07

to the fact that they actually

26:09

indentured white people for hundreds of years as

26:11

well, especially in the South, in the Deep South.

26:14

And so the legacies of these kind of unfree

26:16

labor coupled with the deep and

26:18

abiding racism really set

26:21

the entire region back in so

26:23

many ways and has continued to

26:25

hold us back even today. You

26:27

quick Du Bois saying even

26:30

among the two million slaveholders, an oligarchy of 8,000

26:33

really ruled the South. They really ruled

26:35

everything, right? All aspects of social life

26:37

in the South. They ruled everything

26:39

and they honestly, their heirs still do. There's

26:41

a very small cadre of families that,

26:44

especially in rural areas in the South,

26:47

own not only kind of the

26:49

local government and everyone who runs

26:51

the local government, but also the banks. So

26:53

they're the people that are in charge of

26:56

loans. They own the housing complexes and the

26:58

places to live. So they decide whether or

27:00

not you get to rent from them and

27:02

at what prices. These are people that not

27:04

only basically own a monopoly of companies,

27:07

they also own a monopsony in terms

27:09

of labor power that in these rural

27:11

areas, especially if you don't have

27:13

an education, there's just no one

27:15

to work for besides

27:17

these few powerful families that own

27:19

everything. And so, unless

27:22

there's some sort of governmental intervention,

27:25

this structure will not change and it

27:27

hasn't changed. I mean, we've seen the

27:29

persistence every time there has been actual

27:31

progress in the South, it has

27:33

come at the federal government's insistence

27:36

on making it progress in certain

27:38

ways. And these guys, the

27:40

original slaveholders and their descendants,

27:42

the slaveholders and their families really

27:44

curated their bloodlines, right? They made

27:47

sure to preserve the family as family

27:49

and its social position. Yeah, it

27:51

was crazy. People think of today,

27:54

the modern stereotype is of poor

27:56

whites and Appalachian whites being thin

27:58

bread, kind of. of Hicks. And

28:01

that's actually the opposite.

28:03

The people that were the most inbred

28:05

and kept, they were actually very obsessed

28:07

with blood lineage and, you know, considered

28:09

themselves an aristocracy and so wanted to

28:11

keep all of the wealth and power

28:14

within these few families. I

28:16

mean, you see their bloodlines and

28:18

then, you know, it's a tree

28:20

without any branches, essentially, because they

28:22

knew that this was the key

28:24

to keeping the South and their

28:26

slave empires, essentially. Like, we really

28:28

have to start seeing slavery as

28:31

these little fiefdoms. You know, it wasn't

28:33

run by the federal government. These rural

28:36

areas were lorded over by the biggest

28:38

slaveholders and they controlled everything. And

28:40

like I argue in this article, their

28:43

descendants today still control, because they have

28:45

access to all of the land and

28:47

power and money in those areas, still

28:49

control almost everything. Now, there's a

28:51

school of history that arose in recent years,

28:53

recent decades, rather. It's echoed in the 1619

28:57

Project idea that slavery was essential

28:59

for economic growth in American history.

29:02

And it said pretty much that

29:05

slavery and capitalism went together, like

29:07

love and marriage. But the truth

29:10

is somewhat more complicated, isn't it? Slavery

29:12

is a bit of an anomaly in

29:14

the capitalist system. How do we reconcile

29:16

these things? Right. So, I mean,

29:18

there are so many different streams of thought

29:21

about this and there's a different stream of

29:23

thought that comes from people writing in the

29:25

1940s and 50s, and especially

29:28

from black scholars who are writing from

29:30

the West Indies and these former

29:33

colonial societies that were ruled

29:35

over by slavery. And then, of

29:37

course, we have what's called the

29:39

New History of Capitalism, which were

29:41

scholars primarily out of Ivy League

29:44

schools writing in the late 2000s,

29:46

2010s. And- Could

29:49

you name some names? Like, who were you talking about? Sure.

29:51

Sven Beckert and Ed Baptist

29:55

and Seth Rockman, primarily

29:57

all white men who were mostly-

30:00

criticized from black scholars who

30:02

said that they weren't giving

30:05

these older scholars from the 1940s and

30:08

50s and even 60s, their intellectuals

30:10

do. But what

30:12

kind of happened was that

30:15

in this making slavery

30:17

and capitalism marketable to the masses,

30:19

a lot of nuance got left

30:21

out. And a lot of that nuance

30:23

was really centered on how underdeveloped

30:25

the South is and that in

30:28

making America rich, it wasn't truly

30:30

slavery, it was unfree labor and

30:32

unfree labor persisted in many, many

30:34

different forms over a long period

30:36

of time. And it

30:39

wasn't just African Americans, obviously, because

30:42

you have instances of this in the West with

30:44

Native Americans all the time. And so we

30:46

look at how that complicated

30:48

system really is

30:50

something that occurs and fits and starts. And

30:53

if you predicate your definition

30:55

of capitalism on labor power, on

30:57

labor's actually having the ability to

30:59

choose who they work for, then

31:02

you can't classify slavery as

31:04

strict capitalism. And so there's a

31:06

long history of this, it gets

31:09

very complicated. But really up until

31:11

the 2000s with this

31:13

new history of capitalism, scholars and

31:15

economists and historians all really said

31:17

that the South wasn't fully capitalist

31:20

in a way that we consider it today until after

31:22

World War II. Yeah,

31:24

but the products that it produced with

31:26

slave labor were very crucial

31:29

to the development of northern

31:31

capitalism, but also British capitalism. Turning

31:33

cotton into textiles and clothing was

31:36

really very crucial to early industrialization.

31:38

What exactly is this relation? Was

31:40

it just the slave

31:42

system embedded in a larger capitalist structure,

31:44

but it wasn't fully capitalist itself? Right,

31:47

absolutely. It said, the old argument

31:49

is that it said capitalism, essentially,

31:52

that the South was more

31:55

of a feudalistic society, but it

31:57

fed industrial capitalism. And you

31:59

see that this by planters

32:02

keeping industrial capitalism out of the South

32:04

explicitly. They could have made a higher

32:06

rate of return by industrializing during slavery,

32:08

and they chose not to in order

32:10

to keep the South rural, in order

32:12

to keep those racial and class hierarchies

32:14

that they already had in place. Yeah,

32:17

there's no question that it made America

32:19

incredibly rich, but I would think

32:21

what the main point that gets

32:24

lost in this conversation is it made

32:26

a very, very small percentage of Americans

32:28

very, very rich. What

32:31

it did essentially was increase wealth

32:33

inequality exponentially, and

32:36

really make the South an

32:38

incredibly poor and underdeveloped region for

32:41

centuries, not only because of

32:43

slavery, but because of, as I talked about

32:45

in the article, what happens after slavery, which

32:47

is that the region is capital

32:50

starved and they have to start

32:52

courting these northern companies and northern

32:54

capitalists. These

32:56

companies basically come in and it's almost like

32:58

a colonial economy. They're training the profits back

33:01

to the north or to wherever the companies

33:03

are head forward. Yeah, it

33:05

really is like an internal colony in

33:07

the sense that primary products, value extraction through

33:09

primary products, but not much

33:11

reinvestment locally and absentee

33:14

landlords and profiteers are

33:16

the ones who get really rich off

33:18

it. A small class in

33:21

the colony get rich, but there's no way

33:23

that the region itself can be called rich

33:25

by conventional measures. Right. Again,

33:29

we're seeing this crisis play out today.

33:31

All of these states, I was born in

33:33

Mississippi. That state is the last state

33:35

on every single list, like

33:37

I said, for anything bad. The

33:40

maternal mortality rates in that state

33:43

are on par with places like

33:45

rural Mexico and rural

33:48

Caribbean places. That's the state of

33:50

our health care in some of these

33:52

southern states. And with the new laws

33:54

that are being passed against women and

33:57

with all of the deep south

33:59

southern. governors keeping Medicaid expansion from

34:02

entering the states. I mean,

34:04

it's just, we're seeing death

34:06

rates just skyrocket

34:08

and it's going to keep getting worse unless

34:11

there's some kind of major federal intervention. I'm

34:14

speaking with historian Kerry Lee Merritt.

34:16

The slaveocracy, the ruling class of

34:18

the South before emancipation, really

34:21

pushed low levels of public investment,

34:23

low taxation, low education,

34:25

and not just for the slaves, but

34:28

for poor whites as well. These policy

34:30

preferences have persisted 160 years later. Right.

34:34

They basically invested as little as possible

34:36

in their local communities. And when they

34:38

did, it was very much into

34:40

the police state. So, you know,

34:42

the South is building jails and prisons, what the

34:44

North is building schools and asylums and

34:46

places for the deaf and the

34:49

blind. And you really

34:51

see this kind of division of what counts

34:54

as a public good, you know, as early

34:56

as the colonial period, but certainly into late

34:58

antebellum period, there's not even public

35:00

schools in the deep South for white people

35:02

in the late antebellum period. There's literally no

35:05

system of public schooling. So

35:07

what are ideas of what's going on in

35:09

America and in the Jacksonian period that all

35:11

white men are voting, like they don't apply

35:13

to the deep South. It was a completely

35:16

different place governed by completely different rules. And

35:18

even if we look at the actual laws that

35:21

are in place, that's not what's happening on the

35:23

ground. Like I said, these are little fiefs, the

35:25

slaveholders, the big slaveholders control everything.

35:28

But, you know, we see now the hostility

35:30

to the public schools and

35:32

voucher systems and all these schemes for

35:34

defunding the public schools and creating some

35:37

kind of private system that is spreading

35:39

across the country. I mean, that's pretty

35:41

standard right wing politics, pretty standard libertarian

35:43

politics. How did this kind

35:46

of influence spread North and West?

35:48

I and other labor historians in the South

35:51

have argued for years that there's

35:53

what we call the southernization of

35:55

America really happening in terms of

35:57

labor laws and work opportunities. in

36:00

that the rest of the country has basically been

36:02

pulled down to our standards, instead of us being

36:05

raised up to the standards that

36:07

we've previously held as a country.

36:10

These policies are meant to divide a labor

36:12

force, to keep a labor force under educated

36:14

and uneducated, to keep people from

36:16

realizing real history, real civics, and

36:18

learning how to work politically to

36:20

band together across racial lines in

36:23

class solidarity and to make any

36:25

real changes in America. And

36:27

it's proven to be an

36:29

incredibly effective way

36:31

to control the masses. You cut off education,

36:33

you cut off opportunity, you cut off the

36:35

ability for them to earn even

36:38

a living wage, and you cut off

36:41

so much of people's hopes and dreams

36:43

and even their willingness to be involved

36:45

in a democratic political system. Now,

36:47

you look at the South today, it

36:49

seems developed, thriving, strong population growth, you

36:51

know, it looks prosperous, city like Atlanta

36:54

looks very much in line with the

36:56

modern 21st century city. You're

36:59

seeing a large amounts of migration

37:01

to the South. How real is

37:03

this picture? Well, it's very skewed.

37:05

You know, I mean, there are

37:07

certainly cities that are doing well,

37:09

like Atlanta, like Charlotte, in

37:12

the deep South, but overwhelmingly, you know, I always

37:14

ask people from outside the region, have they ever

37:16

been to the rural South, like really driven

37:18

to the rural South? Have they gone through

37:20

the Mississippi Delta? Because I mean, if you're

37:22

in those areas, and I've been through much

37:25

of our country, much of our country, you drive through

37:27

these areas in the deep South, and you feel like

37:29

you're still in the days of slavery. That's how little

37:32

even just the general landscape has

37:34

changed. It's it's

37:36

incredible the kind of staying

37:38

power of this slaveocracy and

37:40

the fact that hundreds of

37:42

years later, we're still living

37:44

in this state of under

37:47

development in one of the in the richest

37:49

country in the world. And

37:51

the fact that this is happening is

37:53

nothing short of, you know,

37:56

moral failure. But the region seems

37:58

long to have had a very. disproportionate

38:01

influence of national politics. Is that right?

38:03

Oh, absolutely. Of course, the South controlled everything

38:06

before the Civil War. And

38:09

once, even after losing power

38:12

for a few years during early reconstruction,

38:14

what I argue is one

38:16

of the biggest mistakes in our country's history was

38:18

the fact that nothing was done to the

38:21

leaders of the Confederacy and these major slaveholders.

38:23

And so that was really the problem that

38:26

their land wasn't taken away. There wasn't any

38:28

punishment for leading an open insurrection against the

38:30

government. And so really, again, these people are

38:32

back in power with their same, now they

38:35

don't have slave forces,

38:37

but they still own

38:39

all the land. And so because they own all the

38:41

land in the South, they're able to still control

38:43

the work forces because

38:45

literally people have nowhere else to go, nowhere else

38:47

to live. And it

38:49

just turns into this self-perpetuating

38:53

cyclical either

38:55

poverty or great wealth. There's

38:57

incredible wealth inequality. And

39:00

these few cities that are

39:02

shining examples of prosperity in the

39:05

South, these are the exceptions.

39:07

And even if you go into these

39:09

cities, what they're showing you on the

39:11

outside is not exactly what it looks like

39:13

on the inside. Yeah, I recall a phrase from Du

39:16

Bois' Black Reconstruction. We quote

39:18

somebody saying, there should have been dozens of hangings.

39:21

There really weren't dozens of hangings and maybe there should

39:23

have been. Oh, absolutely. That's

39:25

what has brought us to this level, is that

39:28

these people were never punished. And I

39:30

think it's an incredibly important political lesson

39:32

for us today is what happens when

39:34

you don't punish the leaders of a

39:36

major insurrection. And I mean, we

39:38

see what's happened. So

39:41

how do we reconstruct the South? How do we

39:43

bring it into a more

39:45

advanced state? I think we definitely need

39:47

a third reconstruction if we talk

39:49

about reconstructions as federal government increasing

39:52

the rights and livelihoods

39:55

of the masses of people. Then

39:57

the first reconstruction obviously was right after the South.

40:00

Civil War and the second reconstruction would

40:02

have been the Civil Rights Movement in

40:04

the 50s and 60s where the federal

40:06

government really stepped in and made states

40:09

abide by federal law. So

40:11

we need a third reconstruction that does a lot of

40:13

things. My biggest goal

40:15

would be that people would have health care

40:18

as a basic minimum in these southern states

40:20

and that there would be some sort of

40:23

either federal jobs guarantee or some kind

40:26

of state jobs guarantee where people

40:28

have the opportunity to work for

40:31

an employer who treats them well,

40:33

who pays them a decent wage,

40:35

who gives them benefits, somebody

40:37

outside of the monotonistic people that

40:39

rule their local counties or local

40:42

governments. But it seems like a

40:44

second Trump administration, which is seeming

40:46

more and more like a realistic possibility, would

40:49

just empower these

40:52

worst elements of the slaveocracy or

40:54

the neo-slave democracy. Absolutely.

40:57

And it obviously then plays

40:59

to on people's loneliness, on

41:01

people's isolation, on people's feelings

41:05

of being left out of America,

41:07

which are at obviously their

41:09

peak since COVID. But

41:12

the divisions we're facing today are incredibly

41:14

scary. And as a historian, I mean,

41:16

I've said this since 2016, but

41:19

we really are at a crossroads in

41:21

our nation's history. And we need

41:23

to be looking back at things like the

41:25

Civil War, but especially I think Reconstruction. People

41:27

ask all the time, are we going to

41:29

erupt in another Civil War? I don't think

41:31

so. I think it's going to look more

41:34

like Reconstruction, where there are very targeted pockets

41:36

of violence and very targeted political acts of

41:38

violence in certain areas that

41:40

will last over possibly decades to

41:42

come. But that's the terrain,

41:44

I think, that we're getting into and have

41:46

been in the last few years, really. Yeah.

41:50

And I think that January 6th, the efforts

41:52

to overturn an election is somehow historically unprecedented.

41:55

That was really popular in the South, wasn't it, in

41:57

the late 19th century? Right.

42:00

Right, yeah, that was the irony, right? Was

42:02

that January 6th was actually the first time

42:04

there was a Confederate flag in the White House,

42:06

or sorry, in the Capitol. And

42:08

that was the first time there was a Confederate

42:10

flag in the Capitol was that Kevin Seyfried, who

42:12

was on all the magazine covers. And

42:15

so yeah, in so many

42:18

ways, I think the

42:21

Trump administration and those guys

42:25

have done a fantastic job of

42:27

using this ahistorical wrong history in

42:29

order to motivate people to join

42:31

their cause. And

42:33

this is something again, that we've seen throughout

42:36

all of history. The

42:38

areas in the South today, the most

42:40

pro-Confederate are actually the areas where they

42:43

were the least Confederates and the most

42:45

Unionists and the most anti-Confederates.

42:47

And so, this- How does that happen? Because

42:50

history has been so distorted, number

42:53

one, in the way it's taught and the

42:55

way what people believe, but also because

42:57

of money, quite frankly. My

42:59

friend Adam Dombey has a great

43:01

book about how Confederate pensions actually

43:04

drove a lot of

43:06

Southern families to claim that they were

43:08

Confederates when in fact they never were.

43:11

It's very easy for Yankees to get snooty and

43:13

condescending about the South. We

43:15

just think of a bunch of Hicks and

43:17

Yocles and superstitious snake handlers

43:20

and all kinds of caricatures about

43:22

the region. How can we separate

43:24

the truth from that kind of

43:26

bigoted version of events? Well,

43:28

I mean, certainly there's truth to all of

43:30

those stereotypes, I think, but you

43:32

have to understand the South as a

43:34

place of deep, deep poverty and deep

43:37

suffering that lasts for generations,

43:39

for centuries, and a type

43:42

of suffering and a type of shame and

43:44

humiliation that no other

43:46

section of the country has really experienced. And

43:48

I think has never been properly dealt with

43:51

within the South or within America. And

43:55

there's a lot psychologically that I think

43:57

white people in the South need to

43:59

work on. themselves, but there's

44:01

a lot that Americans need to work on and

44:03

understanding that how under

44:06

education, how miseducation, how

44:08

outright lies and hatred and being

44:11

raised in a culture of hatred and

44:13

being raised in a culture of violence, how

44:15

that impacts people from birth, how hard

44:17

it is to leave that, right? How

44:19

hard it is to leave that culture

44:22

and be ostracized and be a free

44:24

thinker in that culture. And,

44:26

you know, there are lots

44:28

of good people down here doing the hard

44:30

work that needs to be done. And they're

44:32

maybe not profiled or not heard of within

44:35

different parts of the South, but

44:37

it's being done. And there are good people

44:39

here that want to make our

44:41

region prosperous and make

44:43

our people happy. And we're

44:46

working hard to do that. That was

44:48

a historian and writer, Carrie Lee

44:50

Merritt. You can find her article

44:52

on the EON website, aeon.co. We

44:55

talk some about the southernization of the U.S.

44:57

For long-term view of the U.S., after that, here's a

45:00

bit of an interview I did with the economist Samuel

45:02

Bazzi last June. He's one of five

45:04

co-authors of a paper on the long-term effects

45:06

of the post-Civil War dispersion of southerners to

45:08

other parts of the country. The

45:10

effects were profound and lingering, measurable

45:12

increases in racial violence and stratification.

45:15

Bazzi is an associate professor at the University

45:17

of California, San Diego's School of Global Policy

45:19

and Strategy. How big was this

45:21

diaspora? The Confederate diaspora, as

45:24

we're calling it, our best estimate

45:26

suggests that upwards of around one

45:28

million southern whites left the American

45:30

South, the former Confederate states and

45:32

allied territory in Oklahoma, between about

45:34

1870 and 1900. So we're talking

45:36

about a

45:40

million people. And within that,

45:42

we're able to estimate that

45:44

roughly 60,000 former slaveholders and

45:48

about another 120,000 or so of

45:50

their household kin within that broader

45:52

set of white migrants

45:56

out of the South in that 30-year period right

45:58

after the end of the year. the Civil War.

46:01

And then where did they tend to go? Both regions and

46:03

the types of communities they settled in? They

46:05

largely went west. Of course, they

46:08

went to border states, which were

46:10

naturally the most proximate destinations for

46:13

those leaving the former Confederacy. But

46:15

they really seemed to have gravitated

46:17

out west and largely

46:19

avoided the heart of

46:22

former Union territory up

46:24

in New England and kind of the upper Midwest, but

46:27

really seemed to have settled by and large. And

46:29

a lot of what at the time was

46:32

the American frontier, places that were

46:34

being newly incorporated as the country

46:36

was pushing westward. And the kind

46:38

of communities? It varied.

46:41

Some of them were settling

46:43

in larger established towns,

46:45

mining towns throughout the

46:47

west. But a lot of them

46:49

were really settling in nascent communities,

46:52

places that had some viable agricultural

46:54

land or other potential

46:56

resources for fresh economic activities and

46:58

really playing a big role in

47:00

many places that for the first

47:03

time were receiving large influxes of

47:05

white settlers from all over America,

47:07

but in this case from the

47:09

American South, which had just been

47:11

devastated, of course, during the many

47:13

battles of the American Civil War.

47:16

And a lot of them chose occupations that put

47:18

them in positions of influence. That's right. And

47:21

so if you compare the kind

47:23

of average Southerner to anyone else

47:25

living in these communities where they

47:27

settled, they tended to be overrepresented

47:30

in what we're calling positions of

47:32

authority. Think about lawyers and

47:34

judges. Think about local

47:36

officials working in public administration.

47:39

Think about your local religious leaders. And

47:42

so you can really see this kind of

47:44

outsized presence of these members

47:46

of the Confederate diaspora. And within

47:48

that, we can even dig deeper

47:51

and see that former enslavers were

47:53

even more likely to be taking

47:55

on these positions of authority in

47:57

these new communities where they settled.

48:00

See, you found in a lot of

48:02

these recipient areas really significant increases in

48:05

lynchings, incarceration rates,

48:07

you know, just real material evidence

48:09

of a much more

48:11

racist culture than surrounding areas that

48:13

didn't necessarily have that level of

48:15

Confederate penetration. Yeah, that's absolutely

48:18

right. As economists, we're in many ways

48:20

bringing data to a lot of what

48:22

historians have told and kind of carefully

48:24

documented themselves. But really what we're

48:27

able to do is trace out a direct

48:29

causal link between this

48:31

influx of migrants from the

48:34

former Confederate states and see

48:36

this subsequent increase in

48:39

racial violence and Confederate

48:41

memorialization and really the

48:43

propagation of a set

48:45

of institutions and cultural

48:48

norms that were very

48:50

unfavorable, to put it mildly, to

48:52

black populations. And that, of course,

48:54

at this early stage of institutional

48:56

development can have profound

48:59

implications for the subsequent

49:01

evolution of culture and

49:03

norms and institutional practices in

49:05

these places. And

49:08

while the effects on social indicators

49:10

persist into the presence as well, right?

49:12

Yeah, that's absolutely right. So, you know,

49:14

one thing we're able to see is

49:16

as early as the 20 in the

49:18

early 1900s, we're

49:20

able to trace out a

49:23

distinct influence of former slaveholders

49:25

in particular, working in

49:27

these positions of authority and creating

49:30

adverse outcomes in the form of

49:32

higher up incarceration rates for black

49:34

men in the early 20th century.

49:37

And then if we kind of trace that forward

49:39

all the way to modern data

49:41

on racial gaps and incarceration, we

49:44

still seek that kind of persistent

49:46

legacy going back to the early

49:48

Confederate diaspora and especially

49:50

to the former enslavers

49:53

within that diaspora. And

49:56

so it materializes in the carceral

49:58

state. racial gaps in

50:01

incarceration as well as in greater inequity

50:03

in the labor market in terms of

50:05

racial wage inequality and in terms

50:08

of persistent racial segregation, which is,

50:10

of course, has its roots in

50:12

a number of forces and kind

50:15

of practices that differ in urban

50:17

and rural America, but are

50:19

certainly part and parcel of that early

50:21

legacy of these white settlers from the

50:23

South. And finally, what does your work

50:25

say about the claim that Confederate nostalgia

50:27

is about heritage and not hate? Yeah,

50:30

that's a tough question, I

50:33

think. But certainly, as far as our

50:35

empirical findings are concerned, they seem to

50:37

go hand in hand. And

50:40

so it's very, I would say, very

50:42

difficult to look at our findings and

50:44

suggest that there's somehow a distinction

50:46

between a benign effort

50:49

to memorialize one's fallen

50:52

ancestors and the very

50:55

real and persistent effects of

50:57

these racially divisive figures and

50:59

institutions from the former Confederacy,

51:02

the role they're having in

51:04

public spaces and in the

51:06

minds of local residents and

51:09

citizens of these communities. You do see

51:11

this tight connection. In recent, the past

51:13

year or two, there's been a number

51:15

of efforts to kind of understand what

51:17

happens when some of these monuments are

51:20

removed. Do we see changes in

51:22

racial attitudes? Do we see changes in

51:24

other forms of racial

51:26

inequity? And so I think that

51:29

work is still very much in

51:31

progress, but I'm excited about what we're

51:33

going to learn from hopefully

51:35

more of these removals of

51:38

these divisive monuments and iconography

51:40

across the U.S. Samuel Bazzi,

51:42

Associate Professor at the University of California,

51:44

San Diego School of Global Policy and

51:46

Strategy, and co-author of a National Bureau

51:48

of Economic Research working paper on the

51:50

effects of the Confederate diaspora on the

51:52

rest of the country. That's

51:55

it for me, Doug Henwood. Let's go out with

51:57

this, some more of Giacinto's Chelsea's string quartet in

51:59

the number one is from the fourth movement

52:02

performed by the Arditi Quartet. Till

52:04

next week. Bye.