After radical left-leaning New York City University Professor Frances Fox Piven shook up the campus of evangelical Messiah College on October 11, the Pennsylvania school offered a response panel the day afterward. As both professors and students weighed in, it became clear that this once conservative college is experiencing a shift in identity. It seems that Messiah no longer has a moderately conservative consensus; liberalism is starting to make inroads onto the campus outside Harrisburg.
The first panelist, representing the liberal perspective, was comparative politics professor John Harles, who declared, “I agreed with pretty much everything she said.” According Harles, extremes of wealth pose a danger to the nation; corporations and unions have “more clout” and “access to more influence” than is befitting these organizations. “We should be aware of the link between economic and political power,” he intoned. Harles also observed, “Other countries…are horrified by how money influences the United States.” He believed party discipline and respect for the role of government mitigates the harm the private sector inflicts on the common good. “The U.S. is a decentralized country comparatively,” he said, “Party politics are relatively weak.” Like Piven, Harles was disenchanted with federalism’s goal of disbursing power. Without a properly unified government, the private sector easily wrested political influence for the worse. Harles warned, “Freedom without responsibility is a horrible sin.”
History Professor James LaGrand gave a more conservative take on the lecture. He described Piven’s lecture as “an odd kind of history,” especially since her vaunted “radical democratic movement…is not something any historian recognizes.” Channeling the insights of Christian historiographer Herbert Butterfield, he accused Piven’s retelling of American history as “overly simplistic.” LaGrand thought that a straight progression from Thomas Paine to the Occupy Wall Street movement did not meet the standards of historical truth. For example, Piven indicated that immigrant labor unions and the Progressive Party fit seamlessly into the pedigree of radical democracy. In reality, the two groups bitterly opposed each other. Whereas Piven saw democracy as an inevitable “leveling force,” LaGrand noticed that “there are other civic turns.” Many of the reform movements Piven praised actually formed unaccountable bureaucracies we see today, embodied in Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” and Kennedy’s gathering of elites. “The so-called ‘end of poverty’ doesn’t always turn out that way,” observed the history professor, “Many welfare efforts have come at the cost…of the American family.”
LaGrand also critiqued Piven’s political comments. He noticed “a quite frequent condescension” when she described conservatives as “confused,” “anxious,” and “worried.” LaGrand, raised in a liberal household, declared, “This is kind of old stuff in some ways.” He offered his final impression: “I didn’t find her dangerous. Ultimately, I found her arguments unsatisfactory.”
The two student panelists were less conclusive in their observations than the professors. Morgan Lee shared, “I found it super fascinating.” She was thankful that the campus retained a civil discourse despite the polarizing lecture. She also appreciated Piven’s concern with news media and corporate “propaganda.” If news sources are unreliable, Lee wondered, “How can we know what’s true?” The other student, Xu Ren, disagreed with most of Piven’s denouncements of private industry. Nevertheless, he shared her concerns regarding an overly-powerful Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court has decided there is no limit to corporate spending in elections,” Ren argued, “We should be limiting this aspect of ‘democracy’…We must retain some concept of justice.”
The audience also commented on the previous presentation. One student praised the free market for performing well; there did not seem to be any need for Piven’s notorious “power-pivot” strategy to overload the welfare system. A most insightful audience member asked, “Can freedom and equality exist happily together?” The session ended with the question left unanswered. Piven and Harless touted parity of outcome over freedom. Messiah students will question if this choice is prudent.
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