by Kristofer J Petersen-Overton

I just got back to New York from lovely Seattle where I spent the last few days sitting through panels at the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) annual conference. If spending a holiday weekend locked in a convention center with several thousand (mostly) old white men doesn’t strike you as particularly exciting, then maybe the following incident will.

Before I go into it, I should mention that I sometimes feel incredibly alienated from political science as a formal discipline — and not only because I have absolutely no interest in the quantitative methodological bent of so much work that fills the journals, nor even because I do political theory (the odd stepchild of the field). Rather, attending APSA reminds me just how conservative, disconnected and downright elitist academia can be.

John Yoo is not a political scientist by training but the former legal advisor to the Bush Administration and author of the notorious torture memos was also at APSA this year. He was scheduled to speak on (presumably in favor of) the expansion of executive power under the Lincoln administration for a panel organized by the conservative Claremont Institute.

As Yoo began his talk, a lone protestor stood up and denounced him as a war criminal, appealing to the members of the audience to walk out in opposition to his appearance at the conference (you can view a video of the incident here). Listen closely as the enlightened political scientists in the room howl with laughter and repeatedly tell her to “shut up”, “get out”, or (bizarrely) to “bug out”. One particularly witty guy, referencing Yoo’s instrumental role in sanctioning torture, yells: “you’re torturing us!” More howls of laughter. And no one walked out.

Part of the reason I went into academia was because my intellectual role-models would have walked out. Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Frances Fox Piven, Howard Zinn — they would have walked out. As an undergraduate, I was in awe of these principled individuals and I remain so today. I wanted so much to demonstrate even a fraction of their intellectual courage. During the crisis at Brooklyn College earlier this year I tried to manage as best I could given the immense power disparity between me and the insidious forces that nearly prevailed. So I was beyond disgusted to see other political scientists ridicule a brave woman for daring to interrupt the polite niceties of their academic panel with her moral outrage. The field has far too many craven hacks bearing PhDs. Political science as a discipline could do with some moral outrage for a change.