You Can Meet Your Heroes: Inclusion Edition

 Last night, I had the privilege of attending the Vimy Gala to watch a truly outstanding person be recognized for a lifetime of making a difference.  Michelle Douglas has spent her life fighting for the inclusion and dignity of LGBTQ2S+ people after being kicked out of the Canadian Armed Forces for being a lesbian back when such folks were purged.  Her lawsuit ended the purge.  I want to share how this all happened and how Michelle did a great job of using her platform as Vimy Award winner to continue her fight.

The Conference on Defence Associations Institute is an interesting organization as the CDA part of it is essentially a combination of all of the veterans associations of Canada, with each one tied to a specifc speciality.  The Institute does some research, much engagement, and public education (and perhaps a smidge of lobbying?) on defence issues.  The CDAI is a partner of the CDSN, and I have been meeting up with its leaders long before the CDSN got going.  The gala is timed to coincide with the days leading up to Remembrance Day, and Vimy is a big hunk of Canadian history/nationalism/identity that someone else can explain better than I.  At each Vimy Gala they give a lifetime achievement award to someone who made a difference in Canadian defence.  Awardees have mostly been generals and admirals with some senior public servants and politicians.  Michelle very much is exceptional in every way including not being any of those folks.  

Gaëlle Rivard Piché is
in her first year as Executive
Director of CDAI and 
a NPSIA PhD!

I was asked to nominate someone as they were looking to get as broad a pool of candidates as possible.  I nominated Michelle with the help of several people: Artur Wilczynski (who did most of the writing of the nomination letter), Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, Luke Schleusener, Stéfanie von Hlatkly, and Jean-Christophe Boucher.  I was asked last night why I nominated her, and the answer was simply: I know of no one else who made such a big difference on the Canadian Armed Forces and beyond.  Her lawsuit and subsequent activism reshaped one's imagination of who can serve in the CAF: anyone, no matter their background, their sexuality, whatever.  As a civ-mil scholar, I can't help but note that militaries are more effective if they reflect the country they seek to defend and if those soldiers/sailors/aviators are included and treated well.  Michelle played a major role in making that happen in Canada.  

 

 

The biggest benefit for me in this process was getting to know Michelle better.  We had several conversations since she learned of the award, so I learned more about her, her history, and, most impressively, her positive attitude towards Canada and the CAF.  You will see below, where I transcribe some of her speech, that she has not turned to hate or resentment for her poor treatment, the upending of her career and her life.  Instead, she has dedicated her life to making things better, and she's still hard at work doing so.  So, yes, you can meet your heroes.

Hanging out with terrific people 
is a key part of the Gala

Michelle's award comes at a key moment in time. The backlash against culture change (efforts to make the CAF more inclusive, especially for women) is on, and, indeed, a previous gala was used by a Vimy Award winner as the platform for an attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Candidates for office in the US and Canada (and elsewhere) have attacked the military as being too woke and have sought to exclude trans people from not just bathrooms but also from the military, from other careers, and, yes, from existence.  So, Michelle's fight is not over, and this speech gave her the chance to not just tell her story but to remind us of the cruelty of the past and the need to fight to keep those policies in the past.

Enough of me, what did Michelle say?  I will just list some of the highlights with some of my reactions:

•  She graduated at the top of her military courses, "my merit was obvious."  Note that those who argue against diversity, equity, and inclusion always falsely suggest there is a tradeoff between merit and efforts to improve diversity and inclusion.  By excluding her and others like her, the CAF was actually not promoting people by merit but discriminating against many qualified people for something that had nothing to do with their ability to shoot a gun, to fly a plane, to steer a ship, or to be an effective leader.
• Her discussion of her time in the Special Investigations Military Police unit which sought to root out espionage, sabotage, and ... homosexuals.  And, yes, this did remind me of Jack Reacher--Michelle is much smaller but also much mightier.
• The purge was not just about the CAF but also the RCMP and the federal public service: "the purge was cruel and traumatizing, was designed to harass us, sometimes criminalize us, institutionalize us, and always diminish us."
• The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: "the LGBT purge was Canada's longest running, largest scale violation of human rights of any workforce in Canadian history."  
• "The losses of the victims and survivors are tragic, the losses to Canada incalculable."
• "These were people who put up their hands to serve."
• "Never was one LGBT spy found. Not one.  The purge must surely be the most costly, least effective police investigation in Canadian history."
• She invoked Frederick Hardy, a gay soldier who died in World War I.  There have always been gays and lesbians and bisexuals and trans people in the armed forces (and in the world)--we just didn't know how many because these people were forced to hide their identities.  It is not that there are more LGBTQ people these days, just that they are freer to be their true selves ... for now.
• Re formal apology by PM Justin Trudeau: "Some say that Canada gives too many apologies, that they are empty gestures, signs of frailty.*  I can say that for those who experienced egregious injustice, having their pain acknowledged and hearing the commitment to change is deeply meaningful and is essential to reconciliation and healing. That formal apology helped many of us move on."
• "For thousands of survivors, justice delayed is still meaningful justice."
• "Ending discrimination by policy does not mean the end of discrimination in practice...."
• "Currently, in Canada and around the world, we see attempts to weaponize and politicize gender not unlike we saw in the past.  The purge should be seen as a cautionary tale."  She cited an international LGBT association: "that the purge should serve as a universal warning ... fear disguised as national security can become a tool to persecute minorities."
• "Supporting diversity isn't about wokeness or weakness, it is about dignity, fairness, respect, and strength."
• "As someone who worked for Canada, served Canada, sometimes criticized Canada, sometimes sued Canada, I have always loved Canada.  Canada is worth fighting for, our values, our democracy are treasured, special. ... So many have sacrificed everything in protection of these values and our democracy."
• "Quitting was not something I learned in the CAF."
• "We are better when we place respect, dignity, justice, and equality at the heart of all we do."
• "As I look around, I know I am not alone.  You think I am dreamer, I am not on the only one."

 Her conclusion with Imagine really hit home.  Michelle is more than a dreamer, she is a doer.  She made a huge difference.  I knew her speech would be terrific (she did talk to me about it ahead of time), and she delivered it so very well. I am guessing the tape will go online at the CDAI website.  It is worth a watch and a listen, as my list here does not do her speech justice.

I didn't do much besides organize a group of people to put her name forward, but still this is and will be one of things I have done that I am proudest of.  Her recognition, like the justice she poke of, is delayed, but very, very much earned.  And the timing is great given the forces at work to unravel what she and others have done.  

 

*  I had to explain to Michelle what subtweeting is.   

 

P-A FTW! Either That or Process Matters

“We don’t have guidance. We have a tweet. We don’t execute policy based on a tweet.” Capt. Jeff Davis, DoD spox on @POTUS’s transgender ban.

— Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) July 27, 2017

Yep, no process, no policy, no implementation.  I wrote yesterday that Trump's transgender in the military "policy" would depend on how the military would feel about implementation.  Well, from the very top, the attitude is: wait and see.  More than that: a smidge of contempt seems to be in the reaction:

Dunford has informed service members that there will be "no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidelines."

"In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect," Dunford wrote in a memo to the military that was obtained by CNN. "As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions."CNN (I would have cited NYT but they don't let me cut and paste!)

If Dunford were General (ret.) Kelly of Homeland Security, he might have taken the tweet and ran with it, as Kelly enforced an immigrant ban with very little backing it up.  Dunford, like the other active senior officers, has opposed kicking transgender people out even as they hem and haw on how to deal with recruiting.  So, this agent has preferences that are distinct from the principal and, as a result, does not imagine what the tweet actually means, but instead asks for the paperwork to be done.

And, yes, DC runs on paperwork .... or Word docs shipped around town as attachments to emails (yes, on the classified servers mostly).  Since Mattis has thus far been silent (did he say anything while I was at Costco?), Dunford went ahead and interpreted how far he could go and went pretty far.  I had some responses on twitter asking for him to do more.  Such folks don't understand civil-military relations--that civilian control of the military means that the civilians have the right to be wrong (which they are here), that the military must obey clear orders.  But they can fudge implementation if the orders are not clear or are not handed down through the chain of command.  Dunford could have started a process to weed out the transgender soldiers, sailors, marines and aviators, but chose not to do so.  This is kind of a work-to-rule thing, where resistance of this form is merely following the rules.  Trump would need to find another general who is more enthused about discrimination to get faster action.  Firing a Chairman for this?  Unlikely.

Finally, it is good to see someone indicate that a tweet may be a policy direction but is not a policy itself.  

I So Want a Crisis in Civil-Military Relations

I write much about how it is important for the military to follow the civilians with the civilians having the right to be wrong.  Today?  Not so much.  I don't expect the military to contradict Trump directly on banning transgender people.  I am not going to bet on Mattis doing anything.

What do I hope for?  Principal-agency theory.  Huh?  There are lots of questions about this policy that was announced in a tweet.  The big one is this: who will be going through the personnel of the US armed forces to kick out the transgender soldiers, sailors, marines, air force folks (have not yet found a non-gendered substitute for airman)? When orders come on down from on high, how will implementation play out?  P-A theory starts with the idea that the agents (the folks lower down on the chain of command) have more information than the principals (el Presidente for Life Trump).  So, they can choose to be enthusiastic and follow the orders and then some, doing too much (consider the ICE folks).  Or they can choose to shirk and do less:  "Oops, found no transgender here!"

While the new "policy" is awful, it is not clear what will happen.  My best guess is that enforcement will be uneven.  The Marines will probably be enthused in general because, well, they have been the most regressive branch of the services.   Special Operations?  Probably will ignore this rule as they tend to ignore many rules, and there has been at least one transgender special operator who came out in the last year.  The more folks know people who are x, the more accepting they are (I think).  Will there be much oversight over this new policy?  Will Congress make sure that the discrimination machine is in high gear?  Probably not as they are too busy trying and failing to pass legislation. Will the Office of the Secretary of Defense spend much time monitoring this?  Still understaffed and overwhelmed.  So, yeah, officers can shirk.  Will they?  I have no idea.

And yes, the impact is beyond the military, as Trump gives yet more license to those who hate and fear to bully those who are vulnerable.  He did it last night with his speech about immigrant "animals" and he did it this morning with his tweets.  Trump continues to surprise me with how thoroughly awful he is--my imagination can't keep up with him.

Yes, this is another day where Trump's awfulness makes me have to try to figure out which conflicting values I want to fight for and which to compromise: tolerance/acceptance/freedom for LGBTQ or good civil-military relations?  Kind of like the feeling one gets when saying Sessions should stay for the rule of law.  I guess I can compromise my focus on civil-military relations since that is headed into the toilet anyway, as Trump's speech to the sailors last week indicated.  Oh and his constant reference to "his generals."

No matter what Trump does, he finds a way to destroy institutions and norms. 

Because It Is the Right Thing

In the aftermath of some posts of the past week and related discussion at the place where political scientists engage in anonymous discussions, folks have questioned my motives.  Of course.   I do not need to defend myself, but I do like to myth-bust when I can, so here are some alleged motivations and then my real motivation.

• "Saideman hates people who are pro-Palestinian."  No.  I am not a fan of the BDS effort, but I am neither pro or anti Palestinian or pro or anti-Israel.  This conflict, like many others, is intractable for a variety of reasons, with people on both sides doing good and bad things. I have already written elsewhere about the choice Israel is facing is to be Jewish or democratic but not both....
• "Saideman is bitter about McGill."  No, not really.  I actually really enjoyed my first seven years there, and then the last three or so were problematic.  But my problems were focused on the Chair and the Full professors, and that old chair is no longer in a leadership position, and the barriers to Full-ness have been overcome by the forces of reason (the Associate professors). Oh, and the tricky thing: RB was one of the few Fulls who took my side in the Promotion fiascoes, so this argument does not fly.  Also, as distance grows between my time at McGill and the present, I have grown to focus more on all of the good stuff and not so much on the negative stuff with this one key exception.
• Saideman is white-knighting.  This is the classic misogynist accusation whenever a man stands up for women--that he is doing it to impress women and/or to get laid.  
• Saideman is seeking attention since no one reads/cites his stuff.  While I am an admitted narcissist and attention seeker, this is not my intent.  If I wanted to get heaps of hits on my blog, I would simply attack the same two political scientists over and over again (I try to restrict those posts to once or twice a year).  While the anonymous folks might not believe it, I am pretty happy where I am--there are always bigger fish a not-so-wise Jedi once said.  So, I could be cited more or less.  

The obvious reason is, of course, I am outraged.  Why?  Because I believe in equality of people regardless of gender, sexuality, race, etc.  Where did this belief come from? 

1. Mostly because it is simply right.  
2. Partly because my mother instilled that belief in me and then my wife and daughter remind me.  
3. Partly because I went to Oberlin which made me confront my sexism and my homophobia.  
4. Partly because I am a scholar of ethnic conflict and, as a result, know the destruction that comes with discrimination.  
5. Partly because I have supervised many students and worry about how the world will treat them. 
6. Partly because I have seen plenty of sexism over the course of my career.
7. And, like dodging in dodgeball, it is worth mentioning twice: equality is simply right.  We are deserving of equal treatment.  That discrimination exists is, well, basic to social psychology (thanks Donald Horowitz), but we don't have to tolerate it nor should we.   

When Conservative Pundits Go Awry

I saw this today:

It’s Canadian liberals, not Canadian Muslims themselves, who identify the faith's most extreme adherents as its most authentic exemplars

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 17, 2015

and responded thusly.

Um, no. Not even close. But go ahead and pander to the fearful, the ignorant, and the hateful. https://t.co/eSphedc2Go

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) October 17, 2015

No Liberal or liberal is saying that the niqab wearers are most authentic.  They are mostly saying:

• that it would be mighty arrogant to say that we outsiders know better than those who wear them why they are wearing them and whether their beliefs are authentic. 
• that liberal democracy means respecting the exercise of rights up until such exercise does real harm to others to society at large.  Hence the difference between niqabs and vaccines.
• that tyranny of the majority is something that one must fear far more than the religious beliefs of a tiny minority
• that any pretense that this is a feminist stance--that these poor Muslim women are being oppressed--is utterly undermined by the record and positions of the Conservative Party and of Stephen Harper on women's issues, from abortion to the murdered/missing indigenous women to representation in their party, and on and on.  
• that this entire campaign has been tainted by appeals to fear and to hate.  
• The clearest example of a barbaric cultural practice is the promise to create a tip line to report on the barbaric cultural practices of others.
• that this use of religious differences for political gain risks real harm as it incites violence against Muslims. 

While politics is multidimensional and people should consider all of the issues at stake, the pandering to the worst instincts by the Conservative Party should be reason enough to vote for any of the alternatives.  Nothing in this campaign has done more to show that one of the leaders and one of the parties is "not ready", not fit to serve than the combination of stances that seems to single out one group.

So, on Monday, do vote and vote for someone other than the Conservatives.  They have had enough time, and they have done more damage in the two months than perhaps in the previous nine years.

Sexism in Political Science: Fact or Fact?

There is a discussion on PSR about sexism in political science, with most folks concurring that it is still an issue with some deniers pointing out that support groups for women are exclusive, too.  Um, yeah.  How to address such discussions?  I go to my standard operating procedure: what have I seen over the years?  The answer: a heap of sexism which has not gone away.

First, there is the repeated myth that jobs are gamed for women and minorities, which explains why white men don't get jobs.  Of course, this defines all women and minorities who do get jobs as less qualified.  The problem with this myth is that it is not true.  I cannot speak for the other subfields, but my work with the TRIP data indicates that IR scholars are mostly white (80*%) and mostly male (70%), and that these numbers have only changed modestly since they started doing TRIP surveys ten years ago.  You would think that if most of the jobs were going to women and minorities, the numbers would have swung.  I also would not have much in the way of male friends in the business that are my age or younger if women were always or mostly beating the men.
      In my career, I have lost many job competitions and I cannot think of one where an inferior woman beat me out.  I have mostly lost to males, including some I consider superior to me, some that are my equals and a few that I would consider to have inferior records at the time.   Indeed, most of the job searches I remember, I was competing against other men, including my first and second tenure-track/tenured jobs.
     The repetition of this myth helps to foster sexism by allowing the men who share it to consider the women (and minorities) as inferiors who did not earn their jobs.  Indeed, I originally came out on PSR as myself to de-myth a job search my department was running--that we were only looking for females for a particular job search. 

Second, while sitting in various departments, I have seen plenty of sexism.  At my first tenure track job:

• one faculty member was sleeping with multiple female grad students, creating a very hostile work environment for all;  I was told  that one of the perks of the job was "they let you screw the students here." 
• one faculty member said at a job search meeting that a female candidate did not need the job because her husband had a job;
• every sexual harassment workshop for the department was trivialized by some of the older males.  

      At my next job, there was a serial sexual harasser.  I had heard about him before I got there, and then another incident happened.  Because it was all covered in confidentiality, only a few faculty (and all of the grad students at the time) learned of it.  There was a concerted effort to make sure this guy would not serve as adviser to any grad students and especially females.  That effort has apparently dissipated as I recently learned that he is serving as an adviser to female grad students again.  Somewhat less problematic was that we had a speaker series that seemed to invite only males with the occasional token female sprinkled in.  The one year I ran it, I found several female scholars who presented excellent talks and one token male who did great as well.

Third, almost always when I see a list of a person's favorite books recommended on some blog, it has somewhere between zero and one females.  Which is why I wrote this post a while back which took little time to write since most of my favorite books are by women.  Similarly, we see plenty of panels and workshops that have few, if any, women, such as the most recent Aspen Forum.

Fourth, we actually have some IR scholars lamenting the end of the Old Boy's Network.  Note Boy's and not Girls or Kids or whatever.  These folks sit in powerful positions.

Fifth, I also see my female friends be far more burdened by service (there was a recent graph flying around the internet demonstrating that women and minorities do far more service than white men).  Since there are relatively fewer women and minorities who are tenured or Full, they tend to get hit with lots of requests as people want a balance or representation on committees, among letter-writers, whatever.  Good intentions that lead to bad outcomes since service goes unrewarded.

Sixth, I have seen far more attacks at PSR on women for their looks, for their relationships, for daring to beat a man out in a job competition and more.  I don't think that PSR is representative of the discipline, but it does shape attitudes and perceptions.  I don't think the profession is as hostile to women as it used to be, but PSR often makes the case that not much has changed (the evidence would be more obvious if the moderators didn't delete many of the offending posts and threads).

Seventh, women get paid less, promoted less despite/because of doing more service, and get less research money.  Thanks to Page Fortna for reminding me of this (in the comments). 

I am sure there is plenty of sexism that I didn't observe as it did not affect me directly, and I tend to be oblivious.  The reality is that path dependence is a bastard--making it harder to compensate for the sins of the past.  Of course, there are still plenty of sinners still around as I have discovered in my academic travels.  There has been progress, as there are more women who are successful and have gotten tenure, but there are still plenty of impediments and enough men with lousy attitudes/beliefs.  Which is why we need some vigilance when people put forth the old BS.

Double Standards Commercial!

Really, a hair product commercial does a better job of expressing gender biases than damn near anything else:


This reminds me of a classic page in Donald Horowitz's book on Ethnic Conflict that lists all kinds of words used to describe "advanced" and "backwards" groups, demonstrating how stereotypes and the logic of invidious comparison are close to universal.  This ad sort of does the same thing.

When a Xenophobe Complains

Parti Quebecois defenders have been asserting that the Anglophone media does not know what it is talking about, that their stance is not xenophobic.  "Xenophobia is the irrational or unreasoned fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange (wikipedia)."  Perhaps the PQ and its supporters are not xenophobic, as their fear could be rational or they are fearing stuff that they think is familiar.  So, perhaps we should just call them fear-mongerers or the religious equivalent of race-baiters?  Would that be better?

When a party seeks to discriminate against minorities, it better have a good reason.  Actually, it rarely has a good reason, and here there is the Quebec specialty: the non-crisis crisis.  There is no crisis that this law is supposed to address. It is about mobilizing a base, distracting a public, and developing more divides with the Rest of Canada.  It is not about justice, and it is not about "values."  Well, it might be about values if intolerance is a value.  

So, the PQ can push back and claim they are being oppressed for their political stances, which is mighty rich, of course, given that they are seeking to repress those who follow religious injunctions closely.  As a non-religious person, I have no crucifix/turban/kipa/whatever in this fight.  As a scholar of nationalism and of xenophobia, I have a pretty good idea of what is going on: marginalizing minorities for political gain.  People have been calling it xenophobia, but we can just call it .... wrong.

Voter Fraud Fraud Illustrated

Check out this piece at Mother Jones.  It does a wonderful job of depressing me early in the morning--demonstrated that voter fraud legislation is awful, awful, awful.  I wrote about this only two weeks ago, but the stats at MJ pushed me to write again.  I cannot think of a more destructive, anti-American movement than this.  What about the presumption of innocence?  What about overcoming a past where Blacks were systematically denied the ability to vote? 

I am glad to see Doonsebury calling, pardon the phrase, a spade a spade:

The bird, of course, is Jim Crow.