An appealing feature of honoring people based on the positions they’ve held is that it’s ideologically neutral. Institutions, like law schools, can simply say that they’d love to host anyone that has held a sufficiently important position. And by doing so, they don’t have to make judgements about the merits of the policies that person advanced, or the decisions they made, when they held their important position. Liberal stakeholders may be upset when someone that was against marriage equality is given a prestigious invitation; but, don’t worry, the conservative stakeholders will be upset next time when someone that has advanced pro-choice positions gets the same opportunity.
Although this is roughly the standard policy that many elite institutions have adopted, I share what I understand to be the worry behind Jacob Levy’s argument: honoring anyone that holds sufficiently important positions sends a dangerous signal that nothing is beyond the pale. And it would be helpful for important people to know that if they act in a dishonorable way, they won’t get to fly around the country to be complimented, wined, dined, or even paid.
But I also share what I understand to be the worry behind Will’s argument: endorsing Levy’s view will predictably result in censoring people that have views opposed those that control our elite institutions. And, like Will suggests, currently that means that it would likely be the case that important liberal figures will still be honored while important conservative figures will be excluded.
Fortunately, there is a solution that universities generally—or law schools more specifically—can adopt that addresses both of these worries at the same time. It only requires taking two steps.
Step 1: Hire an ideologically diverse faculty and appoint ideologically diverse administrators.
Step 2: Establish a norm that people should veto efforts to honor members of their own team when they do something beyond the pale. In other words, let the conservatives figure out which conservatives are dishonorable, and then let liberals do the same thing for their team.
The advantage of this solution is simple: there are plenty of people that we all think advance positions that, in Levy’s words, are “dishonorable.” The problem is that we are poor judges when trying to make these judgements across the ideological spectrum.
For example, I think that many conservative judges write terrible opinions in the name of originalism that hurt our societies’ most vulnerable; but, as the dozen readers of this blog know, there are conservative scholars that think judges who depart from originalist positions have violated their oath of office and thus should be removed. Given that, maybe I shouldn’t be evaluating which conservative judges are worth honoring, but a conservative scholar shouldn’t be evaluating which liberal judges are worth honoring either.
The only tricky part of this solution is that it requires us academics to support hiring good people we disagree with and then to put trust in their decisions. I know plenty of academics that think those good people on the other team simply don’t exist. But any liberal (conservative) person that thinks there aren’t any conservatives (liberals) worth hiring and trusting is exactly the kind of person that shouldn’t be in charge of figuring out which of their ideological adversaries is dishonorable.