Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

The Monitor case illustrates how the reputation of the impartial scholar can be leveraged for possibly less-than-reputable purposes. But it also shows something more. When accused of being involved in an unseemly practice, academics can also quite plausibly insist that they had a genuine interest in scholarship or improving international relations or the betterment of society. Indeed, as I and many other academics do when abroad, many of them delivered public lectures during their trips. I, myself, might find the offer of a trip to Libya enticing (I’m an anthropologist, after all). Still, it would seem wise to think seriously about how one’s credibility might be used when being hosted by a leader like Gaddafi and paid by a consulting firm tasked with doing it’s-not-clear-what for such a regime.

Backtracking?

And yet the case is laced with ambiguity. When these academics were forced to explain their involvement in the PR program (and not all did), it wasn’t entirely clear what the Monitor Group had told its “thought leaders,” or even that all of them were compensated. Nicholas Negroponte, for instance, says he wasn’t paid a consulting fee or travel expenses, and “proudly” viewed his visit as an academic, diplomatic, and humanitarian opportunity. 20Joseph Nye said he was paid, but also viewed the trip as enriching his academic research. His New Republic article wasn’t explicit about that fee; in responding to criticism, Nye said that editors had revised the second sentence of his disclosure. The original read: 21

I was in Libya at the invitation of a former Harvard colleague who works for the Monitor Group, a consulting company which has undertaken to help Libya open itself to the global economy. Part of that process is meeting with a variety of Western experts whom Monitor hires as consultants.

Even if the second sentence had been published as written, it’s not at all clear that readers would grasp that Monitor had paid Nye. Also note the way he presents Monitor’s agenda, as helping “Libya open itself,” which, of course, sounds better than “rehabilitating the reputation of a notoriously violent dictator.”

And surely this may have been how Monitor sold the academics on its project: when the firm put out a statement, it insisted that it had lofty goals, such as trying to help Libya in “. . . accelerating modernization and increased openness. . . .” 22

Benjamin Barber also came out swinging in his own defense and (presumably unintentionally) offers some credence to critics of freelancing intellectuals. In one interview with Foreign Policy , he ponders the “old question that goes back to Machiavelli” of whether thinkers should engage with power: “My answer is that each person has to make their own decision.” 23In another defense to The Nation , he insisted that he was genuinely interested in fostering democracy in Libya and was never swayed by money, or told to write anything at Monitor’s urging, adding: “. . . it is not who pays you that is important, but whether they are paying you to do what you do, or you are doing what they want you to do because they are paying you.” 24Barber also suggests that if you have a longtime reputation for integrity, you should be trusted to regulate yourself.

Barber indeed has a point. The shadow-elite age of representational juggling and focus on performance is also an age of ambiguous ethics. People who try to take action, even—perhaps especially—positive action across venues, find themselves making judgments (and, often, uneasy compromises) amid an ethical minefield. I know more than one of the scholars named above and do not believe they are bad people. Still, on the face of it, this sort of activity raises questions. And while self-regulation is essential, is that the only answer? Should not one’s peer group and outside community (the public, that is) be concerned? After all, we are the consumers of such seemingly independent assessments by big-name scholars.

If the various “thought leaders” believed they were engaged in something wholesome, it’s worth noting that at least one wasn’t fooled. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute was invited, and declined. Her reasoning: 25

I did not have any desire to aid and abet Gaddafi’s P.R. effort. It was clear that was what was intended—the person from the Monitor Group spent quite a lot of time on the phone telling me all about how Libya had changed for the better and how they wanted the world to see them. That’s P.R. in my book.

Robert Putnam, who met with Gaddafi, says that he declined a second trip, saying “by then I had concluded that the whole exercise was a public-relations stunt.” 26

The fact remains that top intellectuals found it necessary to engage in rhetorical jujitsu to explain their (perhaps inadvertent) role in a propaganda program. They expressed very little regret, not to mention shame. And yet is it not their professional obligation as analysts of politics and society to suss out the settings in which they choose to operate and anticipate the consequences of their actions? Meanwhile we, the consumers of media, were misled by their actions. Was our trust not violated?

And yet the activities of these academics can hardly compare to some of the compromised practices that have been taken to an art form by the High Priests of economics and finance.

HIGH PRIESTS, SHADOW LOBBYING

While the opportunities for, say, historians and political scientists to make money outside the academy are comparatively rare, the same cannot be said for those whose expertise is in economics or finance. For some time, these scholars have plied their trade outside academe as consultants with, say, the International Monetary Fund, or as experts testifying before governmental and policy bodies, such as parliamentary or U.S. congressional committees. At the high end, they have taken up stints in key public or governmental bodies like central banks (such as the Federal Reserve Board) and treasury departments, or with entities like the National Bureau of Economic Research (a prestigious outfit with which many American Nobel laureates in economics have been affiliated) or in leadership positions in academic associations and on editorial boards of journals.

But today, in our age of proliferating roles, representational juggling, and the prestige of big bucks, these High Priests also lend their services to companies and consulting firms.

At the same time, with greater effect than in the past due to the sea changes in the media (described in Chapter 5), these luminaries can help shape public opinion as never before through their op-ed pieces, TV and radio appearances, and public testimony. They interpret for us, the laity, what is happening in that impenetrably technical world of economics/finance, banking on our inability to understand without their help. And yet, while performing in their capacity as professors and prized experts, they can champion a particular policy or industry in the media or in testimony, without divulging that the policy benefits the industry for which they consult.

That is by no means all. While serving in key governmental and public roles, the High Priests act as gatekeepers for what information gets released to the public, who within their ranks gets promoted, what ideas get aired, and whose wisdom is the received of the day. We, the public, again are left to wonder whether they are proffering opinions gleaned from impartial research that are in the public’s interest, or rather those that might serve their own.

Sadly for us, as these players—notably, many at the high end of their discipline—traverse university, disciplinary, governmental and public, corporate, and media roles, many become shadow-elite or shadow-lobbyist exemplars, serving the interests of their fellows and firms before ours.