folks are rightly angry about the “both sides” language in the @APSAtweets statement, but for me an equally big problem is the repeated failure of the organization, in these moments, to be reflective about the specific role of the discipline in producing political knowledge

This statement, like the one this summer, is barely discernible from a statement that any corporation or nonprofit might put out. There is nothing about our specific social role as producers of knowledge about politics, let alone the discipline’s relation to white supremacy

What should be the public role of political scientists? How can the kinds of knowledge we produce help explain—or, how are they implicated in what is going on? Our subfields have roots in white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism. What are our duties in light of that?

I know I am in the left-most corner of a largely centrist discipline; so I would never expect APSA to make the statement I would personally make. That’s not my issue.

My issue is the complete avoidance of thinking specifically about the role and structure of the discipline, the nature of political knowledge, and the particular responsibilities of political scientists as producers of that knowledge

(I should add: of course “political knowledge” is generated in all kinds of ways by all kinds of people. You don’t need a PhD in politics for that. But our work is vested w epistemic authority, and I think we have responsibilities that are directly linked to that)

I promise to stop talking about this and just log off in a minute, but if you’re not going to do these things then why do a statement at all? You’re making it meaningless and perfunctory by making it meaningless and perfunctory

If you think of the task is “X organization comments on Y event,” where X and Y are totally independent, then you’re just putting out an “Axe Body Spray condemns the coup” tweet with less potential for comedy

In this sense the dynamic I am trying to name is, indeed, a bigger issue than the ‘both sides’ language, because it explains it (chronic avoidance of appearance of partisanship prioritized over deep thinking about the role of political science) and

it identifies the stakes of APSA’s both-sides stance (failure to see how this both picks up on and lends further authority to the equivocation of politicians who are always ready to shrug at “extremists on both sides” in the face of right-wing violence). Ok, end/