Jeff Flake letter

Disappointingly, Harvard Law has selected Sen. Jeff Flake as our Class Day speaker. Here's my response in The Harvard Law Record — an argument that Harvard Law has fallen victim to the right-wing tactic of "working the ref". An excerpt:

There is an idea in sports called “working the ref.” You accuse the ref of being biased toward your opponent, and the ref starts being biased toward you to make up for it. It’s a clever tactic for bending an easily-rattled referee to your will.

In institutional politics, the right-wing establishment has honed working the ref into an art form. It’s a two-part dance. First, they take institutions that see themselves as “neutral referees” and accuse them of having a “left-wing bias.” Then, they repeat themselves over and over and over again — no matter what the truth of the matter is — until the institution is so rattled by being called biased that it, in an attempt to affirm its neutrality, starts doing whatever the right-wing wants.

Dozens of institutions that see themselves as referees have been worked. PBS has long been accused of being left-wing, so it finally gave in this year and launched its own conservative talk show. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic editorial boards got accused of being left-wing so much that they just went ona hiring spree for conservative columnists. The Obama administration so internalized the accusation of being left-wing that it started implementing conservative agenda items, like cutting entitlements and deporting thousandsof American families, to prove its neutral bona fides.