Gandhi Usa
Content
Melinda R. Thomas, Associate Professor
Attorney-at-Law
Law Studies Program,
Saint Mary’s College of California
1928 Saint Mary’s Road
Moraga, California 94575
FIRST ANNUAL GANDHIAN NONVIOLENCE CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 8-9, 2004
“The Academy and Nonviolence: Can Academics Help Find the “Tipping
Point” for Peace?”
INTRODUCTION
This paper addresses the theme of personal and national nonviolence.
It is based partly on new research and analysis and partly on my work for a
law review article entitled “Who Cares About Academic Freedom – An
Exploration of the Extrinsic Speech Rights of Faculty and Their Place
Within the Developing Law of Academic Freedom.” The basic theme of
this presentation is that academics can and should help to promote and
achieve non violence because they are now one of the key sources of reliable
public information and education in our society. In addition, it is an integral
part of their “job description” to produce expertise in the form of published
scholarship.
It is clear that peace and non violence as a means of national and
international conflict resolution have a long way to go to catch on. This
paper explores how academics might help the peace movement to “catch on”
by starting to treat the ideas of peace and non violence more as a product we
are trying to sell. This viewpoint might well raise the eyebrows and hackles
of some peace activists because it appears to commodify ideas that are based
on profound philosophical, spiritual and political beliefs. However, this
paper will attempt to show that applying some marketing and successful
social movement techniques to the peace movement is not inconsistent with
its deeper meaning for human kind. In fact, selling ideas in the public forum
is consistent with Gandhi’s own use of the primary media of his day, the
newspaper, for this purpose. This paper will also explore some obstacles
1
that the partnership between academics and peace activists might encounter
in trying to achieve a lasting American commitment to non violence and in
trying to “sell” peace and non violence to the American people.
PART I
Where Do American Citizens Get the Information They
Need to Live Responsibly in a Democratic Society?
Let us look more closely at why the media are no longer good sources
of information to educate citizens and convey information vital to
democracy, whether that message is peace and nonviolence or information
about abortion, Al Qaeda or prescription drug costs. There is now a widelydiscussed and widely-documented failure of the conventional media to
educate citizens and convey information vital to democracy over the past
twenty years. Corporatization and consolidation of ownership in the media
has been documented by media specialists and journalists such as Leonard
Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser of the Washington Post. In their recent
book, THE NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS, 1 the authors explore changes in
the news media that have led to a decline in the availability of good
investigative reporting. They assert that much of what has been offered as
news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or
incomplete. 2 They note that what has happened to the news is the product
of broader economic, technological, demographic and social changes in the
country – mainly, that the media now largely belongs to giant, publiclyowned corporations that have little relationship to the communities they
supposedly serve.
Primary among other problems with the media, is the relentless
pressure to be profitable. Profit margins imposed by today’s media owners
often far exceed the 5% profit margins that even traditional, large
corporations consider extremely healthy. One example Downey and Kaiser
note is the Tribune Company of Chicago which owns many national
newspapers and television stations and which demands a profit margin of
over 30% 3 -- a profit margin normally unheard of in even such
conventional, successful and powerful financial enterprises as General
Motors. According to Downey and Kaiser, some local television stations try
to keep 50% of their revenues as profits. Availability of advertising
revenues and audiences are split among broadcasting, cable and the Internet
1
Leonard Downie, Jr., & Robert G. Kaiser, Alfred Knopf (2002)
Id. at 9
3
Id. at 10
2
2
which has a destabilizing effect on profit predictions and increases the
fierceness of competition for market shares.
In addition to very high profit margins, there are other systemic
weaknesses in the media as a whole cited by Downey and Kaiser:
newspapers have shrunk their reporting staffs and switched to emphasizing
“light” topics such as shopping and sports to attract readers and advertisers
rather than emphasizing more traditional, “heavy” topics such as
government accountability, business, world and national news. Thus, a
primary result of the relentless pressure to keep up incredibly high profit
margins is that whatever sells news to the public is what gets printed or
aired. If “human interest” stories, or stories about pets, gruesome
kidnappings and sports are what people want to watch on television, hear on
the radio and read in the news that is what they get. Leaving aside the
question of why American tastes are what they are, Downey and Kaiser
assert that this very strong trend in coverage of “news light” to support high
profit margins, has huge consequences, in that it has: (1) markedly decreased
the amount of investigative reporting now performed; (2) severely reduced
resources that media companies are willing to invest in supporting
traditional investigative reporting on the national and international level; (3)
undermined the notion that journalism is a public service, and (4) reduced
news coverage in large part to superficialities.
If what Downey and Kaiser assert is true, the average voting citizen is
not receiving through the media, much information on, or serious analysis
of, issues of national policy, education, finances, military spending, and so
forth – in other words, on issues necessary for informed exercise of the right
to vote. In addition, it is common knowledge that some media concentration
leaves news outlets in the hands of powerful companies with a specific
political agenda. The conservative Fox News is probably the most widely
acknowledged and influential of such monoliths.
In TARGET IRAQ: WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA DIDN’T TELL
YOU, the authors make an even more ominous assertion: that the media
filter out key information and that modern media career building is
inconsistent with investigative dissent. Respected peace activists and writers
such as Arundhati Roy have documented and deplored the role of the
corporate media in turning imperialism into a series of allegedly just wars.
4
4
Norman Solomon , & Reese Erlich, Context Books (2003)
3
Failure of the modern media to bring objectively investigative, effective,
honest reporting to serious national issues is documented in many other
sources such as COMMUNICATING TERROR, 5 50 WAYS TO LOVE
YOUR COUNTRY, 6 “The New American Century,” 7 THE ORDINARY
PERSON’S GUIDE TO EMPIRE,8 WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?, 9 and
RESURRECTING EMPIRE.10
Strangely enough, at the same time that the media is being criticized
for failing us, Mahatma Gandhi and his principles are still highly thought of,
and at least as to the main theme of non violence, well known. Recently,
when marches were held to protest the beginning of the Iraq war, all over the
country people turned out in larger numbers than ever before to participate
in the peace marches. Yet, the Iraq War began on schedule and implacably
continues. And, throughout the war polls have shown that the majority of
Americans support the war. Thus, in spite of some commitment to the
principles of nonviolence displayed in the anti-Iraq war movement, it is clear
that principles of nonviolence are not widely or deeply enough practiced In
America, to change the current political agenda. Why? What would happen
if the clear majority of people in this country did not support the war, and, in
fact, actively opposed it? What would happen if the majority of Americans
became committed to pacifism and non violence as the desired form of local,
national and international dispute resolution? And, most importantly as a
first question, how could we get this to occur? How do we make
nonviolence as popular a form of political expression and patriotism as flag
waving and militarism?
If the media is even failing to give us basic, adequate information
necessary to citizens in a democracy, then we can’t really count on it to treat
the complex and controversial political, economic and social issues of non
violence effectively in the public forum. Then, who or what can we count
on? Where can we look for information about key national and
international issues such as United States dependence on foreign oil as a
motive for war, the potential impact of various tax schemes on the national
economy, safe alternative energy sources, real statistics on health care and
the health care industry, education, effectiveness of the legal system and
5
6
7
8
9
10
Joseph S. Tuman, Sage Publications (2003)
MoveOn.org, Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc. (2004)
Arundhati Roy, The Nation Magazine, February 9, 2004
Arundhati Roy, South End Press (2004)
Eric Alterman, Basic Books (2003)
Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2004)
4
prison reform, deregulation, connections of government officials to lobbyists
and related issues of government corruption – and on and on. In other
words, if we are not just interested in the latest developments in the Scott
Peterson trial, where can we look for information necessary to act and vote
effectively in a democracy? This is where the work of academics might
come in.
An increasingly prominent source of information is the work of
academics in post secondary academic institutions. Leaving out, for the
moment, discussion of the content of academic work, the requirements of the
tenure systems followed in some 90% of the accredited, post-secondary,
academic institutions means the sheer volume and distribution of academic
scholarly research and publication is considerable. Since it is essentially a
requirement of the academic’s job to produce scholarship, the “market”
supply of it is steady and reliable – in fact, almost inexhaustable. Downey
and Kaiser even point out that in some cases, academic journals have
become one of the watchdogs of modern society in monitoring the media.11
In doing so, such academic work provides some check on the inaccuracies
and deficiencies of the media in conveying information to the public. Even
notable legal scholars have acknowledged the general informational function
of academic speech, as has the United States Supreme Court. In his work on
academic freedom, Professor Willliam Van Alstyne has stated; “A faculty,
especially a research faculty, is employed professionally to test and propose
revisions in the prevailing wisdom, not to inculcate the prevailing wisdom in
others, store it as monks might do, or rewrite it in elegant detail. Its function
is primarily one of critical review: to check the conventional truth….” 12
What can academics actually do to encourage the messages and
practices related to national and international non violence? In trying to
“sell” the concepts of peace and non violence in the broadest possible way,
academics could take some lessons from Malcolm Gladwell’s now wellknown book, THE TIPPING POINT 13and use the three major rules that
Gladwell asserts will drive change: The Law of the Few, the Stickiness
Factor, and the Power of Context. Let us take a closer look at Gladwell’s
11
THE NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS, at 255
William W. Van Alstyne, “Academic Freedom and the First Amendment in the Supreme Court of the
United States: An Unhurried Historical Review,” 53 Law & Contemp. Probs. 79 (1980) at 87.
13
Malcolm Gladwell, THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Little,
Brown & Co. (2002)
12
5
theory of the “tipping point” and the relation of each of those three rules to
social change.
PART II What can peace activists and academics learn from THE
TIPPING POINT?
In his book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the way in which ideas,
trends or social behaviors suddenly seem to spread like wildfires throughout
society or to become “epidemics” of practice and thought. In exploring the
mechanism of how this happens, Gladwell coined his phrase “the tipping
point” as a description of that moment when seemingly small ideas take on
the ability to change the world. He asserts that contrary to the conventional
wisdom of mass-marketing, a few special individuals or a chance, special
event, can set off an epidemic of practice and thought with the potential to
change the culture forever.
In Gladwell’s terms, it might be argued that nonviolence and pacifism
as a national and international commitment have never reached their
“tipping point” in America. In his day, what Gandhi did was to produce the
tipping point for his brand of personal and political pacifism in building, for
example, the Indian home rule movement. Of course, part of the way in
which Gandhi produced such attention and commitment to his principles
involved his own willingness to sacrifice for his beliefs. In his last fast,
which Gandhi undertook on January 13, 1948, Gandhi fasted for the purpose
of promoting unity among the Muslims and Hindus of Pakistan and India.
Gandhi said of this fast: “I put my head on God’s lap….God sent me the
fast….Let our sole prayer be that God may vouchsafe me strength of spirit
during the fast that the temptation to live may not lead me into a hasty or
premature termination of the fast.” 14 When Gandhi’s fast had produced the
political results he sought, he broke his fast but, had these results not been
satisfactory, he was willing to die. At the time, that Gandhi undertook this
sacrificial suffering he was seventy-eight years old and fully determined to
die if that was necessary to help promote the cause of peace among the
religions of India and Pakistan. While it is unlikely that the majority of
Americans, in or out of the peace movement, can equal the strength of spirit
and profound commitment of a Gandhi, many of us might participate in a
lesser way, in furthering the message of peace and non violence by
following some of Gladwell’s principles of social change.
14
THE GANDHI READER at 452, Chapter 19, “Last Days” Grove Press (1956)
6
First, let us take a brief but more detailed look at Malcolm Gladwell’s
theory of social behavior and social change. Gladwell likens ideas that catch
on – whether they involve fashion trends such as the return of “Hush
Puppies,” or sociological movements such as crime reduction – to viral
epidemics. “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like
viruses do….” he asserts.15 Further, he asserts that they share a “basic
underlying pattern” in that they involve contagious behaviors, settings in
which little changes have huge consequences and refutation of the idea that
change needs to be slow. Gladwell argues that there was one dramatic
moment in the spread of each idea when, like the spread of epidemics,
everything seemed to change all at once. This moment is what he refers to
as the “tipping point’ and in his now famous book, he explores the tipping
point for such widely different modern wildfire phenomena as the Sharp fax
machine in the 1980’s, the cell phone, the rates of childbearing for teenage
girls, and the rise of HIV/Aids. Gladwell asserts that the mechanics of
sudden and profound change involve three specific mechanisms or rules: the
Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.
For an example of what he means by the Law of the Few and its
relation to radical change, Gladwell exlores such phenonema as the
epidemic of syphilis in the city of Baltimore. During the years 1995 to 1996,
Baltimore saw a 500% increase in the number of children born with the
disease of syphilis. It turns out that the sudden epidemic was due to crack
cocaine use which “is known to cause a dramatic increase in the kind of
risky sexual behavior that leads to the spread of such things like HIV and
syphilis.” According to the Centers for Disease Control, crack and the
behaviors that accompany its use was the “little push that the syphilis
problem needed to turn into a raging epidemic.” 16 Without going deeply
into the mathematics of how diseases and idea spread exponentially, suffice
it to say that Gladwell asserts social epidemics works just like viral
epidemics. And, just like viral epidemics, social epidemics are driven by the
behaviors of a handful of exceptional people. However, in the case of social
epidemics, it is not sexual appetites that set apart these people, but how
sociable they are, how energetic and knowledgeable and how influential
among their peers. 17 This ability of a small number of people to bring about
huge changes is the Law of the Few.
15
16
17
THE TIPPING POINT, at 7.
Id. at 15
Id. at 21
7
Second, Gladwell also asserts that ability to make people remember a
particular message is even more important than how many people the
message reaches. This he labels the Stickiness Factor which “says that there
are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are
relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information
that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.”
Third, Gladwell asserts that the environment in which people hear a
message makes a difference in whether they act on the message. The more
the environment or context for the message is a solitary one, the more
personal action responsibility people seem to feel. Gladwell gives examples
from the research conducted by Bibb Latane of Columbia University and
John Darley of New York University 18 to determine why some bystanders
come to the rescue of violence victims and others do not. What these studies
revealed is that the highest predictor of bystander rescue attempts was how
many witnesses there were to an event. When the number of bystanders is
more than four, people are not likely to come to the rescue; when there were
fewer than four bystanders, people were much more likely to act to rescue a
victim. Gladwell points out this means that when people are in a group the
responsibility for acting is diffused. Thus, apparently the more isolated a
bystander is from other witnesses, the more personal responsibility he or she
feels for the victim. This third rule of “tipping,” Gladwell refers to as The
Power of Context.
What academics might do for the peace movement today and for all
forms of nonviolence in public affairs, is turn some of their academic
attention to finding the “tipping point” for peace by becoming Gladwell’s
handful of exceptional people putting out the peace message, studying how
to make their messages “stick” and by exploring ways to tap into the
American citizen’s sense of personal responsibility so action is more likely
to result.
18
Id. at 28
8
PART III How Might Academics Make Practical Use of Gladwell’s
Mechanics of Change to Help Find The Tipping Point for Peace?
A. Becoming “the few” Who Help to Publicize and Legitimize
Concepts of Nonviolence
If the huge number of peace-minded academics engaged in
scholarship and writing in the United States today were each to commit one
or two publications a year to exploring the themes of non violence and
pacifism, this would produce for public consumption, a large and varied
body of thought-provoking information concerning nonviolence in all its
aspects. Academics could focus on writing in their area of expertise from a
perspective of exploring related aspects of nonviolence.
Take one example of where a willing academic might bring his or her
psychological or economic expertise into the service of pacifism and non
violence. In his book, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS,19
Thomas Frank looks at his home state of Kansas to explore the American
phenomenon of right-wing pseudo populism that has swept over the state.
He explores the possible causes of why so many Kansans appear to have
decided to vote against their own economic and political interests, as a
microcosm of why people all over America have done the same thing in the
last few years. Frank posits that this “derangement has put the Republicans
in charge of all three branches of government; it has elected presidents,
senators, governors; it shifts the Democrats to the right and then impeaches
Bill Clinton just for fun.” 20 In what he calls “the politics of self delusion” 21
Frank points out a fundamental shift in the thinking that has allowed the neoconservative movement to take control of Kansas: separate ideas of “class”
from any link to economics. Sell a view of class and class warfare that
denies any and all economic bases for social grievances. To do this Frank
asserts, among other things, that the neo-conservative movement in Kansas
capitalized on a series of firmly-held views about victimhood and
repackaged the Christian Right as victims preyed upon by uppity, lattesucking liberal Democrats and Godless parasites oppressing the “The
People.” Frank contends that the NeoCons have thus created an unlikely
19
Thomas Frank, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS, How Conservatives Won The Heart of
America, Metropolitan Books (2004)
20
Id. at 2.
21
Id at 79.
9
cultural solidarity between the working class and the corporations and
corporate stakeholders of Kansas
Academics with an interest in human psychology and in the economic
dynamics of sociological phenomenon might be able to study and address
the phenomenon Frank posits. Perhaps academics could put the economics
back into the class equation by discovering an effective psychological
approach for doing so. Thus, academics might begin to change the thinking
of a large segment of the population that has supported the Iraq war,
continued to believe in the disproven link between Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda and supported increased militarism as an expression of its brand of
political conservatism. Gandhi himself believed the newspaper and other
forms of public writing were an indispensable tool for political and social
change. He successfully helped to launch at least three different newspapers
to support the struggle for justice and many of his short essays, editorials
and articles had tremendous political impact. In fact, Gandhi’s first
important written work was a pamphlet of some twenty chapters written in
Gujarati called Hind Swaraj or “Indian Home Rule” which he wrote in 1909.
Of this pamphlet, Gandhi himself has said “…it is a book which can be put
into the hands of a child.” 22 In other words, Gandhi used his writings for
the purpose of mass education, in a simple, straightforward way.
Academics are in a position to do the same thing. Academics
committed to affecting the political process for nonviolence with their
writings could fill some of the vacuum now created by mainstream media
failures and could significantly increase availability of information on all
aspects related to the peace movement. The expertise of post secondary
academics writing and teaching in America today cover everything from
economics, spirituality, psychology, history, law, sociology and politics to
physics, anthropology, and information technology, and more. There is
virtually no sphere of intellectual expertise in which academics do not
participate. By explicitly studying aspects of the peace and nonviolence
movement and relating their areas of expertise to the movement, on a yearly
basis academics could produce a huge increase in the amount of information
and analysis about nonviolence. As in the example of Thomas Frank’s
work, they might influence or open the thinking of large numbers of people.
22
THE GANDHI READER at 105.
10
In order to reach large numbers of people with their information and
analyses, academics should look seriously at Gandhi’s comment about his
1909 pamphlet – that even a child could understand it. Without in any way
demeaning the intelligence of American citizens, or ignoring the genuine
scholarly and professional needs of academics to communicate with others
in their fields of expertise, academics could also act on the broader
implication of Gandhi’s remark. Gandhi understood that for the people to
understand and support the social and political changes he believed in, he
would need to communicate directly with them. Academics who are
actively seeking to bring about peace and nonviolence as a legitimate social
reform movement have the same need. We need to investigate, analyze and
write more directly for “the people,” that is for ordinary public consumption,
not just other academics. Therefore, other than scholarly journals or
textbooks, academics interested in promoting the principles of nonviolence
should explore getting their work into print sources such as popular
magazines, internet sites, newsletters, club bulletins and so on.
B.
Increasing the “Stickiness” of the message for peace and
non violence
As Gladwell develops it, stickiness is the catchiness and the
memorable quality of an idea. His basic theme is that to have maximum
impact for social change, the number of people an idea initially reaches is
not as important as whether the idea is one that really grabs them. If an idea
really grabs a few people, they remember it and even pass it on. Meanwhile
it is expressed to, and grabs, more people who pass it on and so forth.
Stickiness is therefore the quality of an idea that somehow makes it stay with
the hearer. Catchy advertising slogans are examples of messages that have
“stickiness” -- probably because the advertising and marketing people are
explicitly trying to hit on a phrasing of their message that the hearers will
not forget when they go to select their product. Gladwell gives the example
of “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” as an example of an
advertising slogan that remains memorable even today, years later after it
was developed.
Academics committed to the social and political changes inherent in
the peace movement could extract several encouraging principles from
Gladwell’s idea about stickiness. First, if Gladwell is correct and the
stickiness factor is part of what makes any idea catch on, then when
academics write for public consumption, they should start thinking more in
11
terms of what would make the principles of non violence have that “sticky”
quality. Second, this involves an explicit acceptance of one of the concepts
involved in marketing and advertising : the legitimacy of selling our ideas,
not just presenting them. Third, because concepts of nonviolence and
commitment to them usually involve profound and complex beliefs and
practices, there may be an obstacle here in the feeling among academics and
peace activists that it is demeaning to be influenced by the marketing of
products like cigarettes. However, if Gladwell is right, the idea of stickiness
is not merely a superficial tool of glib marketing firms – it is a discovery of a
deeper psychological truth: people are more likely to act on what they
remember and think about more than on what they forget. There is nothing
demeaning in accepting the idea that when we teach or present nonviolence
as a way of life, our hearers will be more affected by it if we discover ways
of making it “stick” in their minds by being more emotionally and
intellectually memorable. If advertising successfully uses the stickiness
technique in the service of profit, we should not hesitate to use it expressly
in the service of far higher ideals with far higher stakes.
The stickiness factor also has something else profoundly encouraging
to teach us: we don’t need to reach everyone in order to have an impact. If
Gladwell’s theory is accurate, then we academics can contribute to political
change by continuing to reach relatively small groups of people who will
remember our ideas, act on them and pass them on. In this sense, the
stickiness factor describes how to become part of the process that eventually
can result in critical mass being reached -- suddenly the ideas catch on like
an epidemic. And, in this sense the stickiness factor is consistent with what
we know to be true in the democratic process: you don’t need to persuade
everyone to win, most of the time you just need to persuade 51% of the
people, or a simple majority.
C.
Using the Concept of “The Power of Context” to Increase A
Sense of Personal Responsibility for Promoting Nonviolence
If Gladwell has correctly identified one dynamic of change in
asserting that people are more likely to act when they cannot shift the burden
of personal responsibility to someone else, this dynamic has at least two
major implications for academics trying to support the peace movement.
First, academics must accept that without the full functioning of the media as
investigative and analytical public service tools, the media cannot provide its
traditional check on government by subjecting government to public scrutiny
12
in every aspect, including militarism, secrecy, national budget priorities,
abridgement of civil rights, breaches of democratic process and so on.
Others must now provide the service of subjecting all aspects of the
government to vigorous, open, intelligent scrutiny. As noted above,
academics are one of the segments of our society fully prepared to perform
that service. Since academics receive professional support for investigating
and writing about an almost endless number of socially and politically
relevant topics, we must accept the personal responsibility for furthering the
peace movement by performing some of the duties traditionally performed
by the media.
The second major implication of Gladwell’s theory that people are
more likely to act out of a sense of personal responsibility is that when we
write, we should be explicitly trying to appeal to the reader’s sense of
responsibility. How we might do that is the subject of a different paper, but
accepting the idea that we want to instill in our readers a sense of personal
responsibility for actions towards peace and nonviolence, is a start. As
MoveOn.org’s 50 WAYS TO LOVE YOUR COUNTRY asserts, political
action is personal: “Know thy power. Call, write, fax, email or meet with
your representatives and senators. Make your views known.”23 In other
words, MoveOn.org is encouraging citizens to take personal responsibility
for their views and for what they want to happen in a democracy. If
Gladwell is correct and feeling a sense of personal responsibility makes
people more willing to act, then academics writing for the purpose of
supporting the peace movement would do well to seriously study how to
strike the chord of personal responsibility in the citizens they reach.
23
MoveOn..org, Part IV, “Political Action Is Personal” at p. 69
13
Attorney-at-Law
Law Studies Program,
Saint Mary’s College of California
1928 Saint Mary’s Road
Moraga, California 94575
FIRST ANNUAL GANDHIAN NONVIOLENCE CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 8-9, 2004
“The Academy and Nonviolence: Can Academics Help Find the “Tipping
Point” for Peace?”
INTRODUCTION
This paper addresses the theme of personal and national nonviolence.
It is based partly on new research and analysis and partly on my work for a
law review article entitled “Who Cares About Academic Freedom – An
Exploration of the Extrinsic Speech Rights of Faculty and Their Place
Within the Developing Law of Academic Freedom.” The basic theme of
this presentation is that academics can and should help to promote and
achieve non violence because they are now one of the key sources of reliable
public information and education in our society. In addition, it is an integral
part of their “job description” to produce expertise in the form of published
scholarship.
It is clear that peace and non violence as a means of national and
international conflict resolution have a long way to go to catch on. This
paper explores how academics might help the peace movement to “catch on”
by starting to treat the ideas of peace and non violence more as a product we
are trying to sell. This viewpoint might well raise the eyebrows and hackles
of some peace activists because it appears to commodify ideas that are based
on profound philosophical, spiritual and political beliefs. However, this
paper will attempt to show that applying some marketing and successful
social movement techniques to the peace movement is not inconsistent with
its deeper meaning for human kind. In fact, selling ideas in the public forum
is consistent with Gandhi’s own use of the primary media of his day, the
newspaper, for this purpose. This paper will also explore some obstacles
1
that the partnership between academics and peace activists might encounter
in trying to achieve a lasting American commitment to non violence and in
trying to “sell” peace and non violence to the American people.
PART I
Where Do American Citizens Get the Information They
Need to Live Responsibly in a Democratic Society?
Let us look more closely at why the media are no longer good sources
of information to educate citizens and convey information vital to
democracy, whether that message is peace and nonviolence or information
about abortion, Al Qaeda or prescription drug costs. There is now a widelydiscussed and widely-documented failure of the conventional media to
educate citizens and convey information vital to democracy over the past
twenty years. Corporatization and consolidation of ownership in the media
has been documented by media specialists and journalists such as Leonard
Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser of the Washington Post. In their recent
book, THE NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS, 1 the authors explore changes in
the news media that have led to a decline in the availability of good
investigative reporting. They assert that much of what has been offered as
news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or
incomplete. 2 They note that what has happened to the news is the product
of broader economic, technological, demographic and social changes in the
country – mainly, that the media now largely belongs to giant, publiclyowned corporations that have little relationship to the communities they
supposedly serve.
Primary among other problems with the media, is the relentless
pressure to be profitable. Profit margins imposed by today’s media owners
often far exceed the 5% profit margins that even traditional, large
corporations consider extremely healthy. One example Downey and Kaiser
note is the Tribune Company of Chicago which owns many national
newspapers and television stations and which demands a profit margin of
over 30% 3 -- a profit margin normally unheard of in even such
conventional, successful and powerful financial enterprises as General
Motors. According to Downey and Kaiser, some local television stations try
to keep 50% of their revenues as profits. Availability of advertising
revenues and audiences are split among broadcasting, cable and the Internet
1
Leonard Downie, Jr., & Robert G. Kaiser, Alfred Knopf (2002)
Id. at 9
3
Id. at 10
2
2
which has a destabilizing effect on profit predictions and increases the
fierceness of competition for market shares.
In addition to very high profit margins, there are other systemic
weaknesses in the media as a whole cited by Downey and Kaiser:
newspapers have shrunk their reporting staffs and switched to emphasizing
“light” topics such as shopping and sports to attract readers and advertisers
rather than emphasizing more traditional, “heavy” topics such as
government accountability, business, world and national news. Thus, a
primary result of the relentless pressure to keep up incredibly high profit
margins is that whatever sells news to the public is what gets printed or
aired. If “human interest” stories, or stories about pets, gruesome
kidnappings and sports are what people want to watch on television, hear on
the radio and read in the news that is what they get. Leaving aside the
question of why American tastes are what they are, Downey and Kaiser
assert that this very strong trend in coverage of “news light” to support high
profit margins, has huge consequences, in that it has: (1) markedly decreased
the amount of investigative reporting now performed; (2) severely reduced
resources that media companies are willing to invest in supporting
traditional investigative reporting on the national and international level; (3)
undermined the notion that journalism is a public service, and (4) reduced
news coverage in large part to superficialities.
If what Downey and Kaiser assert is true, the average voting citizen is
not receiving through the media, much information on, or serious analysis
of, issues of national policy, education, finances, military spending, and so
forth – in other words, on issues necessary for informed exercise of the right
to vote. In addition, it is common knowledge that some media concentration
leaves news outlets in the hands of powerful companies with a specific
political agenda. The conservative Fox News is probably the most widely
acknowledged and influential of such monoliths.
In TARGET IRAQ: WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA DIDN’T TELL
YOU, the authors make an even more ominous assertion: that the media
filter out key information and that modern media career building is
inconsistent with investigative dissent. Respected peace activists and writers
such as Arundhati Roy have documented and deplored the role of the
corporate media in turning imperialism into a series of allegedly just wars.
4
4
Norman Solomon , & Reese Erlich, Context Books (2003)
3
Failure of the modern media to bring objectively investigative, effective,
honest reporting to serious national issues is documented in many other
sources such as COMMUNICATING TERROR, 5 50 WAYS TO LOVE
YOUR COUNTRY, 6 “The New American Century,” 7 THE ORDINARY
PERSON’S GUIDE TO EMPIRE,8 WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?, 9 and
RESURRECTING EMPIRE.10
Strangely enough, at the same time that the media is being criticized
for failing us, Mahatma Gandhi and his principles are still highly thought of,
and at least as to the main theme of non violence, well known. Recently,
when marches were held to protest the beginning of the Iraq war, all over the
country people turned out in larger numbers than ever before to participate
in the peace marches. Yet, the Iraq War began on schedule and implacably
continues. And, throughout the war polls have shown that the majority of
Americans support the war. Thus, in spite of some commitment to the
principles of nonviolence displayed in the anti-Iraq war movement, it is clear
that principles of nonviolence are not widely or deeply enough practiced In
America, to change the current political agenda. Why? What would happen
if the clear majority of people in this country did not support the war, and, in
fact, actively opposed it? What would happen if the majority of Americans
became committed to pacifism and non violence as the desired form of local,
national and international dispute resolution? And, most importantly as a
first question, how could we get this to occur? How do we make
nonviolence as popular a form of political expression and patriotism as flag
waving and militarism?
If the media is even failing to give us basic, adequate information
necessary to citizens in a democracy, then we can’t really count on it to treat
the complex and controversial political, economic and social issues of non
violence effectively in the public forum. Then, who or what can we count
on? Where can we look for information about key national and
international issues such as United States dependence on foreign oil as a
motive for war, the potential impact of various tax schemes on the national
economy, safe alternative energy sources, real statistics on health care and
the health care industry, education, effectiveness of the legal system and
5
6
7
8
9
10
Joseph S. Tuman, Sage Publications (2003)
MoveOn.org, Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc. (2004)
Arundhati Roy, The Nation Magazine, February 9, 2004
Arundhati Roy, South End Press (2004)
Eric Alterman, Basic Books (2003)
Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2004)
4
prison reform, deregulation, connections of government officials to lobbyists
and related issues of government corruption – and on and on. In other
words, if we are not just interested in the latest developments in the Scott
Peterson trial, where can we look for information necessary to act and vote
effectively in a democracy? This is where the work of academics might
come in.
An increasingly prominent source of information is the work of
academics in post secondary academic institutions. Leaving out, for the
moment, discussion of the content of academic work, the requirements of the
tenure systems followed in some 90% of the accredited, post-secondary,
academic institutions means the sheer volume and distribution of academic
scholarly research and publication is considerable. Since it is essentially a
requirement of the academic’s job to produce scholarship, the “market”
supply of it is steady and reliable – in fact, almost inexhaustable. Downey
and Kaiser even point out that in some cases, academic journals have
become one of the watchdogs of modern society in monitoring the media.11
In doing so, such academic work provides some check on the inaccuracies
and deficiencies of the media in conveying information to the public. Even
notable legal scholars have acknowledged the general informational function
of academic speech, as has the United States Supreme Court. In his work on
academic freedom, Professor Willliam Van Alstyne has stated; “A faculty,
especially a research faculty, is employed professionally to test and propose
revisions in the prevailing wisdom, not to inculcate the prevailing wisdom in
others, store it as monks might do, or rewrite it in elegant detail. Its function
is primarily one of critical review: to check the conventional truth….” 12
What can academics actually do to encourage the messages and
practices related to national and international non violence? In trying to
“sell” the concepts of peace and non violence in the broadest possible way,
academics could take some lessons from Malcolm Gladwell’s now wellknown book, THE TIPPING POINT 13and use the three major rules that
Gladwell asserts will drive change: The Law of the Few, the Stickiness
Factor, and the Power of Context. Let us take a closer look at Gladwell’s
11
THE NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS, at 255
William W. Van Alstyne, “Academic Freedom and the First Amendment in the Supreme Court of the
United States: An Unhurried Historical Review,” 53 Law & Contemp. Probs. 79 (1980) at 87.
13
Malcolm Gladwell, THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Little,
Brown & Co. (2002)
12
5
theory of the “tipping point” and the relation of each of those three rules to
social change.
PART II What can peace activists and academics learn from THE
TIPPING POINT?
In his book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the way in which ideas,
trends or social behaviors suddenly seem to spread like wildfires throughout
society or to become “epidemics” of practice and thought. In exploring the
mechanism of how this happens, Gladwell coined his phrase “the tipping
point” as a description of that moment when seemingly small ideas take on
the ability to change the world. He asserts that contrary to the conventional
wisdom of mass-marketing, a few special individuals or a chance, special
event, can set off an epidemic of practice and thought with the potential to
change the culture forever.
In Gladwell’s terms, it might be argued that nonviolence and pacifism
as a national and international commitment have never reached their
“tipping point” in America. In his day, what Gandhi did was to produce the
tipping point for his brand of personal and political pacifism in building, for
example, the Indian home rule movement. Of course, part of the way in
which Gandhi produced such attention and commitment to his principles
involved his own willingness to sacrifice for his beliefs. In his last fast,
which Gandhi undertook on January 13, 1948, Gandhi fasted for the purpose
of promoting unity among the Muslims and Hindus of Pakistan and India.
Gandhi said of this fast: “I put my head on God’s lap….God sent me the
fast….Let our sole prayer be that God may vouchsafe me strength of spirit
during the fast that the temptation to live may not lead me into a hasty or
premature termination of the fast.” 14 When Gandhi’s fast had produced the
political results he sought, he broke his fast but, had these results not been
satisfactory, he was willing to die. At the time, that Gandhi undertook this
sacrificial suffering he was seventy-eight years old and fully determined to
die if that was necessary to help promote the cause of peace among the
religions of India and Pakistan. While it is unlikely that the majority of
Americans, in or out of the peace movement, can equal the strength of spirit
and profound commitment of a Gandhi, many of us might participate in a
lesser way, in furthering the message of peace and non violence by
following some of Gladwell’s principles of social change.
14
THE GANDHI READER at 452, Chapter 19, “Last Days” Grove Press (1956)
6
First, let us take a brief but more detailed look at Malcolm Gladwell’s
theory of social behavior and social change. Gladwell likens ideas that catch
on – whether they involve fashion trends such as the return of “Hush
Puppies,” or sociological movements such as crime reduction – to viral
epidemics. “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like
viruses do….” he asserts.15 Further, he asserts that they share a “basic
underlying pattern” in that they involve contagious behaviors, settings in
which little changes have huge consequences and refutation of the idea that
change needs to be slow. Gladwell argues that there was one dramatic
moment in the spread of each idea when, like the spread of epidemics,
everything seemed to change all at once. This moment is what he refers to
as the “tipping point’ and in his now famous book, he explores the tipping
point for such widely different modern wildfire phenomena as the Sharp fax
machine in the 1980’s, the cell phone, the rates of childbearing for teenage
girls, and the rise of HIV/Aids. Gladwell asserts that the mechanics of
sudden and profound change involve three specific mechanisms or rules: the
Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.
For an example of what he means by the Law of the Few and its
relation to radical change, Gladwell exlores such phenonema as the
epidemic of syphilis in the city of Baltimore. During the years 1995 to 1996,
Baltimore saw a 500% increase in the number of children born with the
disease of syphilis. It turns out that the sudden epidemic was due to crack
cocaine use which “is known to cause a dramatic increase in the kind of
risky sexual behavior that leads to the spread of such things like HIV and
syphilis.” According to the Centers for Disease Control, crack and the
behaviors that accompany its use was the “little push that the syphilis
problem needed to turn into a raging epidemic.” 16 Without going deeply
into the mathematics of how diseases and idea spread exponentially, suffice
it to say that Gladwell asserts social epidemics works just like viral
epidemics. And, just like viral epidemics, social epidemics are driven by the
behaviors of a handful of exceptional people. However, in the case of social
epidemics, it is not sexual appetites that set apart these people, but how
sociable they are, how energetic and knowledgeable and how influential
among their peers. 17 This ability of a small number of people to bring about
huge changes is the Law of the Few.
15
16
17
THE TIPPING POINT, at 7.
Id. at 15
Id. at 21
7
Second, Gladwell also asserts that ability to make people remember a
particular message is even more important than how many people the
message reaches. This he labels the Stickiness Factor which “says that there
are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are
relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information
that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.”
Third, Gladwell asserts that the environment in which people hear a
message makes a difference in whether they act on the message. The more
the environment or context for the message is a solitary one, the more
personal action responsibility people seem to feel. Gladwell gives examples
from the research conducted by Bibb Latane of Columbia University and
John Darley of New York University 18 to determine why some bystanders
come to the rescue of violence victims and others do not. What these studies
revealed is that the highest predictor of bystander rescue attempts was how
many witnesses there were to an event. When the number of bystanders is
more than four, people are not likely to come to the rescue; when there were
fewer than four bystanders, people were much more likely to act to rescue a
victim. Gladwell points out this means that when people are in a group the
responsibility for acting is diffused. Thus, apparently the more isolated a
bystander is from other witnesses, the more personal responsibility he or she
feels for the victim. This third rule of “tipping,” Gladwell refers to as The
Power of Context.
What academics might do for the peace movement today and for all
forms of nonviolence in public affairs, is turn some of their academic
attention to finding the “tipping point” for peace by becoming Gladwell’s
handful of exceptional people putting out the peace message, studying how
to make their messages “stick” and by exploring ways to tap into the
American citizen’s sense of personal responsibility so action is more likely
to result.
18
Id. at 28
8
PART III How Might Academics Make Practical Use of Gladwell’s
Mechanics of Change to Help Find The Tipping Point for Peace?
A. Becoming “the few” Who Help to Publicize and Legitimize
Concepts of Nonviolence
If the huge number of peace-minded academics engaged in
scholarship and writing in the United States today were each to commit one
or two publications a year to exploring the themes of non violence and
pacifism, this would produce for public consumption, a large and varied
body of thought-provoking information concerning nonviolence in all its
aspects. Academics could focus on writing in their area of expertise from a
perspective of exploring related aspects of nonviolence.
Take one example of where a willing academic might bring his or her
psychological or economic expertise into the service of pacifism and non
violence. In his book, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS,19
Thomas Frank looks at his home state of Kansas to explore the American
phenomenon of right-wing pseudo populism that has swept over the state.
He explores the possible causes of why so many Kansans appear to have
decided to vote against their own economic and political interests, as a
microcosm of why people all over America have done the same thing in the
last few years. Frank posits that this “derangement has put the Republicans
in charge of all three branches of government; it has elected presidents,
senators, governors; it shifts the Democrats to the right and then impeaches
Bill Clinton just for fun.” 20 In what he calls “the politics of self delusion” 21
Frank points out a fundamental shift in the thinking that has allowed the neoconservative movement to take control of Kansas: separate ideas of “class”
from any link to economics. Sell a view of class and class warfare that
denies any and all economic bases for social grievances. To do this Frank
asserts, among other things, that the neo-conservative movement in Kansas
capitalized on a series of firmly-held views about victimhood and
repackaged the Christian Right as victims preyed upon by uppity, lattesucking liberal Democrats and Godless parasites oppressing the “The
People.” Frank contends that the NeoCons have thus created an unlikely
19
Thomas Frank, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS, How Conservatives Won The Heart of
America, Metropolitan Books (2004)
20
Id. at 2.
21
Id at 79.
9
cultural solidarity between the working class and the corporations and
corporate stakeholders of Kansas
Academics with an interest in human psychology and in the economic
dynamics of sociological phenomenon might be able to study and address
the phenomenon Frank posits. Perhaps academics could put the economics
back into the class equation by discovering an effective psychological
approach for doing so. Thus, academics might begin to change the thinking
of a large segment of the population that has supported the Iraq war,
continued to believe in the disproven link between Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda and supported increased militarism as an expression of its brand of
political conservatism. Gandhi himself believed the newspaper and other
forms of public writing were an indispensable tool for political and social
change. He successfully helped to launch at least three different newspapers
to support the struggle for justice and many of his short essays, editorials
and articles had tremendous political impact. In fact, Gandhi’s first
important written work was a pamphlet of some twenty chapters written in
Gujarati called Hind Swaraj or “Indian Home Rule” which he wrote in 1909.
Of this pamphlet, Gandhi himself has said “…it is a book which can be put
into the hands of a child.” 22 In other words, Gandhi used his writings for
the purpose of mass education, in a simple, straightforward way.
Academics are in a position to do the same thing. Academics
committed to affecting the political process for nonviolence with their
writings could fill some of the vacuum now created by mainstream media
failures and could significantly increase availability of information on all
aspects related to the peace movement. The expertise of post secondary
academics writing and teaching in America today cover everything from
economics, spirituality, psychology, history, law, sociology and politics to
physics, anthropology, and information technology, and more. There is
virtually no sphere of intellectual expertise in which academics do not
participate. By explicitly studying aspects of the peace and nonviolence
movement and relating their areas of expertise to the movement, on a yearly
basis academics could produce a huge increase in the amount of information
and analysis about nonviolence. As in the example of Thomas Frank’s
work, they might influence or open the thinking of large numbers of people.
22
THE GANDHI READER at 105.
10
In order to reach large numbers of people with their information and
analyses, academics should look seriously at Gandhi’s comment about his
1909 pamphlet – that even a child could understand it. Without in any way
demeaning the intelligence of American citizens, or ignoring the genuine
scholarly and professional needs of academics to communicate with others
in their fields of expertise, academics could also act on the broader
implication of Gandhi’s remark. Gandhi understood that for the people to
understand and support the social and political changes he believed in, he
would need to communicate directly with them. Academics who are
actively seeking to bring about peace and nonviolence as a legitimate social
reform movement have the same need. We need to investigate, analyze and
write more directly for “the people,” that is for ordinary public consumption,
not just other academics. Therefore, other than scholarly journals or
textbooks, academics interested in promoting the principles of nonviolence
should explore getting their work into print sources such as popular
magazines, internet sites, newsletters, club bulletins and so on.
B.
Increasing the “Stickiness” of the message for peace and
non violence
As Gladwell develops it, stickiness is the catchiness and the
memorable quality of an idea. His basic theme is that to have maximum
impact for social change, the number of people an idea initially reaches is
not as important as whether the idea is one that really grabs them. If an idea
really grabs a few people, they remember it and even pass it on. Meanwhile
it is expressed to, and grabs, more people who pass it on and so forth.
Stickiness is therefore the quality of an idea that somehow makes it stay with
the hearer. Catchy advertising slogans are examples of messages that have
“stickiness” -- probably because the advertising and marketing people are
explicitly trying to hit on a phrasing of their message that the hearers will
not forget when they go to select their product. Gladwell gives the example
of “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” as an example of an
advertising slogan that remains memorable even today, years later after it
was developed.
Academics committed to the social and political changes inherent in
the peace movement could extract several encouraging principles from
Gladwell’s idea about stickiness. First, if Gladwell is correct and the
stickiness factor is part of what makes any idea catch on, then when
academics write for public consumption, they should start thinking more in
11
terms of what would make the principles of non violence have that “sticky”
quality. Second, this involves an explicit acceptance of one of the concepts
involved in marketing and advertising : the legitimacy of selling our ideas,
not just presenting them. Third, because concepts of nonviolence and
commitment to them usually involve profound and complex beliefs and
practices, there may be an obstacle here in the feeling among academics and
peace activists that it is demeaning to be influenced by the marketing of
products like cigarettes. However, if Gladwell is right, the idea of stickiness
is not merely a superficial tool of glib marketing firms – it is a discovery of a
deeper psychological truth: people are more likely to act on what they
remember and think about more than on what they forget. There is nothing
demeaning in accepting the idea that when we teach or present nonviolence
as a way of life, our hearers will be more affected by it if we discover ways
of making it “stick” in their minds by being more emotionally and
intellectually memorable. If advertising successfully uses the stickiness
technique in the service of profit, we should not hesitate to use it expressly
in the service of far higher ideals with far higher stakes.
The stickiness factor also has something else profoundly encouraging
to teach us: we don’t need to reach everyone in order to have an impact. If
Gladwell’s theory is accurate, then we academics can contribute to political
change by continuing to reach relatively small groups of people who will
remember our ideas, act on them and pass them on. In this sense, the
stickiness factor describes how to become part of the process that eventually
can result in critical mass being reached -- suddenly the ideas catch on like
an epidemic. And, in this sense the stickiness factor is consistent with what
we know to be true in the democratic process: you don’t need to persuade
everyone to win, most of the time you just need to persuade 51% of the
people, or a simple majority.
C.
Using the Concept of “The Power of Context” to Increase A
Sense of Personal Responsibility for Promoting Nonviolence
If Gladwell has correctly identified one dynamic of change in
asserting that people are more likely to act when they cannot shift the burden
of personal responsibility to someone else, this dynamic has at least two
major implications for academics trying to support the peace movement.
First, academics must accept that without the full functioning of the media as
investigative and analytical public service tools, the media cannot provide its
traditional check on government by subjecting government to public scrutiny
12
in every aspect, including militarism, secrecy, national budget priorities,
abridgement of civil rights, breaches of democratic process and so on.
Others must now provide the service of subjecting all aspects of the
government to vigorous, open, intelligent scrutiny. As noted above,
academics are one of the segments of our society fully prepared to perform
that service. Since academics receive professional support for investigating
and writing about an almost endless number of socially and politically
relevant topics, we must accept the personal responsibility for furthering the
peace movement by performing some of the duties traditionally performed
by the media.
The second major implication of Gladwell’s theory that people are
more likely to act out of a sense of personal responsibility is that when we
write, we should be explicitly trying to appeal to the reader’s sense of
responsibility. How we might do that is the subject of a different paper, but
accepting the idea that we want to instill in our readers a sense of personal
responsibility for actions towards peace and nonviolence, is a start. As
MoveOn.org’s 50 WAYS TO LOVE YOUR COUNTRY asserts, political
action is personal: “Know thy power. Call, write, fax, email or meet with
your representatives and senators. Make your views known.”23 In other
words, MoveOn.org is encouraging citizens to take personal responsibility
for their views and for what they want to happen in a democracy. If
Gladwell is correct and feeling a sense of personal responsibility makes
people more willing to act, then academics writing for the purpose of
supporting the peace movement would do well to seriously study how to
strike the chord of personal responsibility in the citizens they reach.
23
MoveOn..org, Part IV, “Political Action Is Personal” at p. 69
13
