I know that many of the readers of this blog also read PZ’s Pharyngula so this post may be a bit redundant for them but I followed a link he gave in a recent post that was so good that I wanted to give it more publicity. The link was to an essay by Peter Coviello who used to be the chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, an expensive elite liberal arts college in Maine. It was also the department in which Zohran Mamdani majored while in college.

Coviello says that whenever an alumnus of a college becomes famous, and especially if they are controversial, reporters come calling to get some background on that person and this was no exception. Reporters approached him to ask about Mamdani. He warns that little good comes of talking to the reporters because they usually have an ax to grind and they will take what you say and make it fit their agenda, which will often be opposed to what you stand for. But it is hard to resist such an approach. For one thing, academics love to have the opportunity to spread greater awareness of their work and the popular media provides a major platform. There is also the issue of vanity. Being quoted in the media can be seen as a feather in one’s cap, a sign that one has had some impact, and can improve one’s standing among colleagues, provided it is not a takedown of you.

I have been approached by reporters and could not help but feel flattered that my work had been noticed by the wider world and so have spoken to them. But the results are invariably disappointing. When you eventually read the item, your views, that you took care to present with accuracy and nuance, are presented superficially, the article written as if it was done before they even interviewed and they just needed some quotes to stick in it. You are lucky if they don’t make you sound utterly banal.

Coviello said many reporters emailed him during Mamdini’s rapid rise in popularity and all their messages had a similar subtext: “Can you explain how reading certain things can turn a person into a socialist—and, possibly, a terrorist-sympathizing antisemite?” He had no trouble turning them down. But then he got an email from a Times reporter that was different, in that it said he was less interested in Mamdani himself than he was in the Africana Studies. Much to his chagrin, he fell prey to that seductive appeal and decided to accept the offer and sent him a fairly detailed email explaining what the field involved. He later regretted it and his essay provides a cautionary tale for other academics.

Coviello said he responded because he wanted to help Mamdiani in some way.

It’s fair to say that, former student of mine or not, I’ve loved Mamdani’s campaign, and loved in particular the glad-hearted and admirably steady way he’s brought what not that long ago would have been absolutely ordinary social-democratic priorities (in respect to affordability, housing, health, food, education) back into the realm of mainstream political discourse.

For some time I’ve been saying that the storied choice between socialism and barbarism was made exquisitely clear a good many years ago in the United States, and both major parties chose barbarism. They are obviously and consequentially different barbarisms—one had reproductive freedom, vaccines, and trans health care in it, at least for a while—and I can tell you why I have sincerely preferred one to the other. But we oughtn’t to kid ourselves. From the perspective of a world of increasingly unimaginable maldistribution of resources, cascading ecological collapse, a genocide cheered on by a putatively liberal order, both are barbarisms. Mamdani seemed to me a small glimmering break in the wall of all that. A part of me wanted to do him a solid.

He accurately describes the way that the Times slants its coverage.

Like so many other bits of Times coverage, the whole of the piece is structured as an orchestrated encounter. Some people say this; however, others say this. It’s so offhand you can think you’re gazing through a pane of glass. Only when you stand a little closer, or when circumstances make you a little less blinkered, do you notice the fact which then becomes blinding and finally crazymaking, which is just that there is zero, less than zero, stress put on the relation between those two “sides,” or their histories, or their sponsors, or their relative evidentiary authority, or any of it. Instead, what you get is a piece making the various more or less bovine noises of studious grey-lady impartiality, with the labor of anything resembling “appraisal” surgically excised.

He also realizes, like me and a lot of his colleagues, that it is better not to talk to the Times because of their slanted reporting, especially on Israel and Palestine. That paper has always been reflexively pro-Israel and anti-Palestine, giving cover over the years to the atrocities that Israel has committed, while pretending to be balanced. It is also definitely not, as often portrayed, ‘liberal’. It may have liberal views on some social issues but in general it is solidly neoliberal, pro-war, and pro-establishment.

I have also always hated the smug attitude of the Times and the people enamored by it, that it is impartial and objective and represents the highest standards of journalism, that it is the best not just in the US but in the world. It’s slogan “All the news that is fit to print” is both pretentious and wrong. It should really be “Just the news that fits with our agenda”.

I recall two representatives of the paper coming to my office at the university to ask for my support to get the university to purchase and then provide copies of their paper free to all the dormitories. When I asked them why they thought this was a good idea, they came out with the usual stuff about how it is the best newspaper. They were surprised when I said that I did not think it was a good paper at all and so would not support the move. I also recall a faculty colleague complaining about the lack of political awareness of his students and gave as an example that they did not read Tom Friedman’s columns. He too was taken aback when I said that it showed that the students had good sense. Disparaging the Times is seen as a form of heresy.