U. Debating Society Whig-Clio Struggles to Grapple with Internal Dissension, Charges of Anti-Conservative Bias

View of the classical facade of Whig Hall. Courtesy of whigclio.princeton.edu

Since the beginning of 2018, the American Whig-Cliosophic Society (Whig-Clio) has struggled to grapple with internal strife as well as charges of anti-conservative bias. The society, founded in 1765 by students like James Madison and Aaron Burr, is the oldest collegiate political union and debating society in the country.

However, during the tenure of the current co-presidents, tension has continued to build over the society’s basic mission and its events program, especially as it relates to conservative speakers and controversial topics, such as abortion.

 

Disapproval All-Round

“Is this a hoax?” replied Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, when she received an “URGENT” email from Whig-Clio’s leadership announcing that the free speech event she was headlining alongside Princeton University Politics Professor Keith Whittington was not going to be held the following day.

The original email from Whig-Clio co-presidents Lena Hu ’20 and Justin Wittekind ’21 was sent at 7:13 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2018, less than 20 hours from the time the free speech event was supposed to be held.

“I am headed to Princeton first thing in the morning so please reply right away,” continued a confused Wax in her first emailed reply to Hu and Wittekind. Nothing of the sort had happened the last time Wax spoke at the University in 2015, when she had participated on a panel during a James Madison Program conference entitled “The Moynihan Report at 50: Reflections, Realities, and Prospects.”

The free speech event, scheduled for Sept. 15, 2018 at 3 p.m., was organized by Whig-Clio’s Director of Programming Thomas Koenig ’20.

Koenig had originally invited Wax and Whittington via email to participate in an event “in light of [the two professors’] recent publications regarding the importance of free speech, especially on college campuses.” The invitation went out in March of 2018, six months before the event was scheduled to be held.

Koenig explained in another email that he hoped “attendees of the talk will leave with a greater appreciation for free speech.”

Koenig proceeded to hash out a format for the event in a series of emails with Wax and Whittington, establish a schedule for the day, recruit fellow Whig-Clio Governing Council member Shanon FitzGerald ’20 to co-moderate the discussion alongside himself, and write nine follow-up questions for the opening remarks Wax and Whittington were slated to give.

In an interview with the Tory, Koenig explained that he had invited Professor Whittington because of the publication of his most recent book, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, later selected by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 as the official Pre-read for the Class of 2022. Copies of Speak Freely were made for all members of the University community. 

Koenig invited Wax, a tenured expert on social welfare law and policy among other things, because of a recent freedom of speech controversy she had been embroiled in after the publication of an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.”

In an interview with the Tory, Wax described herself as a classical liberal and emphasized “reasoned discourse regarding contestable political and social issues over which people in a democratic society can reasonably disagree” as a central value of hers.

Wax would later write an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled “What Can’t Be Debated on Campus,” detailing how her Inquirer piece had led to a condemnatory response in the Daily Pennsylvanian signed by five of her colleagues, followed by a condemnatory open letter also in the Pennsylvanian signed by 33 of her colleagues. The Inquirer piece also led the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School to ask her to cease teaching a mandatory first-year law course.

Koenig explained that he was familiar with the Journal piece. He also planned to ask Wax about it at the free speech event planned for September 15.

Two days before the event was supposed to be held, Koenig received a phone call from Wittekind in which Wittekind explained that he and Hu were thinking of calling off the event.

Koenig expressed disapproval with the plan to do so. Koenig would later be informed of Hu and Wittekind’s final decision the next day, before Hu and Wittekind informed Wax of their decision.

“I just thought it looked bad inviting someone to campus and then having to restructure the event so late – that’s common sense, it doesn’t look good,” explained Koenig to the Tory.

However, Koenig decided he would not pursue the issue further.

He did so because Whig-Clio is a small part of his life. According to Koenig, he has only planned 10 percent of the society’s speakers during his tenure, leaving most of the events to Wittekind, whom Koenig believes has generally done a good job.

Koenig did not bring up the matter at the next meeting of the Whig-Clio Governing Council, which includes the eight students tasked with voting on issues of great importance for the organization, most of whom did not learn of the happenings related to the Wax-Whittington discussion until much later. Nor did he pursue it at other meetings, explaining that he deferred to Hu and Wittekind.

The first member of the administration to hear of Hu and Wittekind’s plans to not hold the event was Alison Nabatoff, the Program Coordinator for Whig, who promptly looped in her boss, Deputy Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne, into the discussion. Dunne is also on Whig-Clio’s Board of Trustees.

The reason Nabatoff and Dunne were looped in is because Whig-Clio is a registered student organization, obligated to follow Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities. Whig-Clio has been a registered student organization ever since 1999, when Dunne first came to the University. Dunne speculated that it has had this status for a much longer period of time.

ODUS makes all of Whig-Clio’s funds available to them, signs contracts on their behalf, and advises the student leadership on logistical concerns.

In addition to Dunne, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students and Director of Student Agencies Jarrett Fisher sits on Whig-Clio’s Board of Trustees. So do three professors, including Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Cecilia Rouse and even Professor Whittington himself.

As to Nabatoff, a member of the administration who focuses solely on Whig-Clio and its subsidiaries, Dunne explained that “the reason that position was created was that the breadth and depth of the program sponsored through Whig-Clio needed some additional administrative support [sic] than we could essentially handle in the office.”

No other student organization has a member of the administration providing logistical support in this fashion.

In an interview with the Tory, Whittington described Whig-Clio as a quasi-autonomous organization, though he did emphasize that the decisions made by the student leaders are autonomous.

Thus, on that Friday, before the event cancellation email was sent to Wax, Nabatoff and Dunne as well as Hu and Wittekind, all gathered in Whittington’s office in Fisher Hall.

The Tory could not confirm whether the individuals mentioned above had other conversations with one another before the meeting in Whittington’s office. However, it could confirm that at one point, all five individuals were in the same room.

Both Dunne and Nabatoff clarified that they uphold the University’s commitment to academic freedom as well as freedom of speech and that they make a point of communicating this to students.

At the meeting, Dunne explained that he was there to logistically support whatever decision Hu and Wittekind made.

Dunne added that he communicated his disapproval about not holding the event.

“I think it’s hard for students [on] campus to think about making a decision with very short notice because not everyone is right here,” Dunne explained, adding that for him, the best course of action would have been for Hu and Wittekind  “to honor [their] commitments and have the event even if it leads to a low audience turnout or blowback.”

“I do expect and hope for students to uphold their obligations,” Dunne asserted.

However, he made clear that he would only step in if their decision was a violation of Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities. In this case, he decided to respect the autonomy of a student organization to conduct its own affairs.

Whittington broadly painted what the pair’s reasoning was in an interview with the Tory.

At the meeting, “it was not clear to me then what their concerns were and why it was affecting the timing and nature of the event,” said Whittington. “I think they were fairly resolved that they didn’t want this to be [the event at] the start of the semester and they were trying to figure out what to do about it.”

“Certainly Prof. Wax’s participation in it was the thing that set them off…it wasn’t about the format per se,” Whittington added.

Whittington also asserted that he communicated to Hu and Wittekind that he had concerns with their plan.

Whittington said during the meeting that, “We ought to have the event as scheduled and certainly we shouldn’t be moving events out of concerns that speakers were controversial.”

Though Hu and Wittekind explained that Koenig and Dunne had indeed made their concerns known to them, they deny that Whittington did the same.

“I want the record to reflect that neither [Hu] nor I walked out of that meeting thinking that [Whittington] was against our decision,” explained Wittekind. “What he says he sa[id] in the meeting, he just didn’t say to us – quite plainly, his position has changed 180 degrees.”

Hu agreed with Wittekind.

“[Whittington] seems to move back and forth on his views. When we talked to him at the initial discussions, he was totally on board with [the proposal to move the event], and supportive of the idea.”

Whittington denies Hu and Wittekind’s characterization, asserting that he was never fully supportive of the idea and that his position has not changed 180 degrees. “I was merely willing to go along with it,” Whittington explained.

Wittekind also explained that Whittington told them the following: “When I saw that [Koenig] had invited her, I knew I should have red-flagged her.”

Whittington explained that this only meant he wished he had pointed out the controversiality of Wax to Koenig, something Hu and Wittekind have suggested Koenig did not know. He said that this did not mean he wanted Koenig not to invite Wax.

Wax expressed deep disapproval when she learned of the meeting between the five above individuals.

“Why were they meeting at the 11th hour about this event? When you invite speakers five months ahead of time, they put in on their calendar, they forego other things they might be doing on the same date, they arrange to travel from wherever they are, they carve out time in their schedule, they forego time with family and friends, and they set up their lives to meet their commitments,” asserted Wax. “And there’s a meeting at the last minute to decide whether to call it off? That’s nutso.”

Thus, after the original cancellation email and Wax’s response to the pair, Koenig replied all in the email chain, explaining that “over [his] protests, the presidents of [his] society [-Hu and Wittekind-] have decided to cancel the event for now.”

“Despite my best efforts to proceed with the event, I have no power to change this decision,” Koenig continued, adding that he apologizes for “all the inconvenience that this will cause for you, and I find it deeply ironic and disturbing that the controlling officers of our political society are doing this on the eve of an event dedicated to free speech.”

Shortly thereafter, Koenig replied all again, explaining that his previous email had been a draft sent mistakenly.

Nevertheless, in his second email, Koenig reiterated that “with regards to what happened, [his] commanding officers told [him] that they were cancelling the event since they were uncomfortable.”

In their original email to Wax, Hu and Wittekind had explained that their intention was not to disinvite Wax and that they wanted to hold the event at a different time. They also planned to reimburse Wax.

“Lena and I have concluded that the society [was] not equipped at the moment to host the best event possible given how early in the year it is,” wrote Wittekind in an email to Wax. “We do not believe that, so early in the school year, we are prepared for the logistical complications that may arise.”

Wittekind continued by saying that he and Hu felt it was important to amend the format to provide stronger programmatic content and that the event “could either be dramatically under-attended…or dramatically over-attended.”

Wax replied that she found the message disturbing and contradictory. “The event has been planned for five months and should not be called off now,” she added, in another email. Dean Dunne, who was also copied to the email chain, responded that he understood “where A[my] Wax finds the message contradictory,” referring to Hu and Wittekind’s citing of both low and high attendance as a concern. Dunne confirmed this in a subsequent interview with the Tory.

The email chain continued two days later, with Wax writing forcefully to Hu and Wittekind on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018.

“It was incredibly rude and heedless to cancel with less than 24 hours notice (and much less than that for my planned departure to Princeton), and there is absolutely no excuse for it – none whatsoever,” wrote Wax. “In other words, your reasons are inadequate, and your behavior is irresponsible and disrespectful.”

Hu and Wittekind apologized in a final September email to Wax and called their decision to not hold the event a “postponement.” However, this would not be the last the University community would hear of Hu and Wittekind’s decision. Not only would it cause controversy within Whig-Clio’s student leadership, but it would also engage some of the University’s most powerful figures, who, when they became aware of the situation, expressed disapproval with the decision Hu and Wittekind had made.

According to Whittington, Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 called him and expressed disapproval with the decision. So did Skip Rankin ’72, Chair of the Whig-Clio Board of Trustees.

Eisgruber did not confirm the phone call with Whittington or its contents. However, he did comment on the Wax-Whittington situation.

“I believe that when campus organizations issue an invitation to a speaker, they have an ethical obligation to honor that invitation,” Eisgruber explained.

Rankin confirmed that he had expressed dissatisfaction to Whittington as well as the rest of the Board of Trustees when he first heard about the situation.

“It’s not consistent with Whig-Clio’s traditions or mission that one would cancel an event on the eve of an event, or frankly disinvite someone to participate…Whig-Clio has never shied away from something that might be controversial,” Rankin explained, adding that the decision of the co-presidents was not a proper decision.

Professor Robert George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and head of the James Madison Program, having learned of the situation from Wax, feared that the motivations of Whig-Clio’s leadership constituted bias against Wax’s views.

“Because it was last minute, of course it raised the question of whether it was cancelled for some legitimate reason or whether it was cancelled because some people didn’t want to hear [Wax’s] point of view expressed,” said George. “Of course I don’t regard [the latter] as a legitimate reason.”

George proceeded to email Koenig and noted his dissatisfaction with the decision. Koenig directed George to Hu and Wittekind. George explained that his communications with Whig-Clio leadership did not ameliorate his fears that the event being moved constituted bias against Wax’s conservative viewpoints.

The first time other members of Governing Council aside from Hu, Wittekind, and Koenig were made aware of the Wax-Whittington situation was when Nabatoff vaguely communicated on Sept. 20, 2018 that “some decisions were made…unilaterally [recently] and it caused challenges.”

In this recording of a phone call obtained by the Tory, Nabatoff goes on to say that the trustees were very concerned with this unilateral decision and that they wanted processes and procedures to be instituted that would prevent this in the future.

The Tory learned from Hu and Wittekind that the processes and procedures Nabatoff refers to in the recording are those concerning speakers.

Rankin also confirmed this, explaining that he had required the students to better codify processes and procedures regarding speakers.

“Steps are being taken to avoid the [unfortunate] situation that occurred in September [in the future],” Rankin explained.

The Tory has interviewed several senior members of Governing Council – namely, Hassan Ahmad ’21, Christian Schmidt ’20, and Brent Kibbey ’21 – all of whom expressed disapproval with the decision once they had been clued in on all the major details. They also wished that they had been clued in much sooner so that something like this could have been prevented.

 

Justified Reasoning?

The reasoning Hu and Wittekind provided for their decision not to hold the event was multifaceted. However, it has been challenged by a number of people every step of the way.

Hu and Wittekind explained that their concerns about the format of the event, which they cite in the original email, was one of the primary reasons they decided to move the event. They wanted the event to be restructured.

The last-minute nature of their decision to not go forward with the event is, according to Hu and Wittekind, a function of not being fully informed on Wax’s views until very late in the game.

“A couple of days before the event, we were looking her up and then we found that she had made some statements during her time at Penn Law School about black students not graduating at the top of their class ever,” Hu explained.

“About white culture being supreme,” Wittekind added. “Our concern was not the political valence of [these statements] but the racial valence.”

According to Wittekind, the charge associated with this type of speech needs to be counterbalanced in a public forum “and especially in a space where we’re in the first semester…and we want people to realize that this speech uncontested is probably not what we want to seem like it’s being represented.”

Hu and Wittekind expressed concern that Whittington was not the best person to counter such statements and that someone from the African American Studies Department would be better suited to do so.

Wittekind also explained that he thought it “unquestionable, given [Wax’s] statements, that a reasonable person would say she is racist.” However, he took pains to separate this personal view of his with the institutional concerns that were motivating his decisions.

Neither Wax nor Whittington thought that these concerns were reason enough to move the event at the last minute.

“They should thought of that long ago,” explained Wax. “As my dear departed father used to say, they should’ve thought of that before they had the baby.”

“I think you gotta do your homework before you extend the invitation,” asserted Whittington. “You live by your invitation…in hindsight you might think ‘well, maybe that was a mistake’ – [however, you ought to] learn from your mistakes and move on, you don’t at that stage of the game retract the invitation.”

On the topic of her purportedly racist statements, Wax questioned the degree to which Hu and Wittekind were familiar with the scholarship she has produced.

“Racist is such a totally ill-defined, protean term,” Wax explained.

“He’s just running scared because this label has been attached to me and it’s almost like a religious form of contamination that he’s associated [the word] with,” said Wax. “There’s this kind of very primitive reaction.”

On the question of whether there needed to be someone there to counter Wax, Whittington responded that it was a peripheral concern. An event in which Wax’s past statements would be the primary topic of discussion was neither the event Whittington had signed up for nor the event Koenig had planned.

Wax had another angle on this question.

“This is a common pattern that I have noticed for the 20 years I have been in academia….when someone is from the left that person is a freestanding speaker. They don’t feel the need to bring in any balance or any counter-opinions,” Wax asserted.

“When I published an article on discrimination and unconscious bias years ago, they said: ‘well we have to get someone to answer this article.’ I said: ‘Why? Other law review articles are published without getting a point – counterpoint in print.’ That’s completely unprecedented and aberrational,” Wax said.

“Absolutely it’s something that’s done only to conservatives by and large. It’s obvious,” Wax continued.

Senior Governing Council member and current chair of the Clio Party Hassan Ahmad ’21 concurred with Wax, explaining that Hu and Wittekind’s reasoning is ludicrous when one considers the fact that the far-left speakers Wittekind brings regularly are never countered.

“No, I don’t remember anyone there to counter DeRay McKesson’s beliefs, or Chapo Trap House, or the communist Angela Davis,” Ahmad explained. “I don’t think that’s a sufficient justification because that’s not the ongoing practice.”

“The implication is that you’re only inviting conservatives when you can have a ‘no – but actually’ left wing speaker there,” Ahmad added.

Ahmad noted that one group of speakers Wittekind invited – Chapo Trap House, a group of podcasters well-known for their far-left commentary – are so against the idea of free speech that when they got to campus, they tore down posters for an American Enterprise Institute event. Chapo Trap House did not have anyone there to counter them.

Nevertheless, Hu and Wittekind were reportedly pleased with the Chapo Trap House event.

When asked why he and Hu had not explained to Wax that they were concerned about her past statements, Wittekind explained that it would have been uncivil to do so.

In response, Wax put to them the following question: “Is it not the height of incivility to disinvite someone with 11 hours notice without offering an honest explanation. Does that not define incivility?”

Hu and Wittekind were also motivated by concerns that there would be low attendance or high attendance at the event, something which both Wax and Dunne explained was contradictory in the email chain.

“That sort of covers the territory, doesn’t it,” noted Wax. “We’ve got the whole logical space taken care of here. Good for them.”

However, Hu asserted that this reasoning is not contradictory.

“Either this goes under people’s radar and no one is even aware that this event is going on and it’s reflected in the Facebook event attendance [with] 3 to 7 people show[ing] up, explained Hu. “The alternative is that like one person googles her and sees all these very inflammatory statements made specifically toward black students…it blows up and then a ton of people come out and we’re not necessarily prepared for that either.”

However, when it comes to the transparency of this statement, Whittington denies that Hu and Wittekind discussed turnout at the meeting in his office. It was a justification that they only cited in the email.

On Hu’s first claim – namely that the event might be poorly attended – the Tory has discovered that no email was sent to the official Whig-Clio list-serv promoting the event, something regarded to be a common practice according to Kibbey. An email sent out to the Whig-Clio list-serv on or before Sept. 14, 2018, would have reached all Whig-Clio members who are currently sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

When asked how to read this information, Dunne responded that it is within the realm of possibility that this could have constituted suppression of the event.

“One way [to read this] is to say that there wasn’t a sufficient backing of the program…the other probably more likely example [is that]…people don’t do a very good job of advertising events,” Dunne explained.

Though Wittekind claimed in an interview that events are not always promoted on the Whig-Clio list-serv, the Tory has discovered that every event advertised on the Facebook page, which includes all the events hosted this semester, has also been promoted on the Whig-Clio list-serv. The exception is the Wax-Whittington event.

The Political Activities Fair was also not advertised on the list-serv. However, according to Governing Council member Brent Kibbey ’21, the Political Activities Fair is geared towards freshmen, who were not on the list-serv at the time.

The decision not to hold the event was included in an email to the Whig-Clio list-serv. However, according to Kibbey, it was “in this tiny little clip at the bottom of a Whig-Clio information email.” No other emails were sent, no explanation was given, Kibbey explained.

“I think they were deliberately downplaying it in order to not bring it up to our attention,” Kibbey added, referring to the Wax-Whittington event more broadly.

According to Hu and Wittekind, posters were made and distributed on campus and at the Political Activities Fair. The Tory has not managed to get its hands on one of these posters.

As to Hu’s assertion that there was little interest in the Facebook event created, the Tory cannot confirm or deny the Facebook event’s existence. The Facebook event has since been deleted, and the Tory cannot find physical evidence of it.

Dean Dunne also spoke on the history that Whig-Clio has with low turnout events. According to Dunne, who joined the University’s administration in 1999, there isn’t an instance he can remember of an event being cancelled due to low turnout.

Wax noted that she didn’t consider low turnout to be a salient concern.

“Even if there are 7 or 8 people, you can have a great event…I know because I’ve had events with 150 people and with 10 people and they have different dynamics..it’s a whole different experience but the small events can be terrific because people actually get to speak and express their thoughts,” said Wax. “There’s a real interaction and discussion. If it somehow influences those 10 people, then that’s terrific and they’ll often talk to their friends about it.”

Hu also mentions a concern for high turnout in the above quote. The same concern is also mentioned the email exchange.

When Wax first read this, she emailed back: “Is the import here that you expect some kind of protest[?] I wouldn’t worry about that. Just notify the police and make sure there is a police presence there.”

Dunne emailed back that “the university has absolutely no reason to believe that this event would be protested should it be held as planned tomorrow.”

Wittekind then replied in the same email chain saying that “there have been no indications whatsoever about a protest planned for tomorrow’s lecture, and the precautions you advise don’t seem to be a necessary logistical element for our event.”

However, Whittington explained that Hu and Wittekind did in fact mention a concern about protesters in the meeting they attended alongside Whittington, Nabatoff, and Dunne.

“I think they were concerned there might even be protesters in which case you’d need some crowd control to manage it,” explained Whittington. “I think presumably it would be possible to make such arrangements if it came to that.”

Whittington further reiterated: “I think there was a concern that if there [were] protesters it would require particular crowd control that simply having a lot of attendees wouldn’t…it wasn’t a function of there’s so many people the building would be swamped and therefore we can’t do it.”

However, high profile speakers at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs and even Whig-Clio itself have handled large crowds without any significant police presence. That was the case for the recent Angela Davis event, which, according to the Facebook event created, 113 students indicated that they attended, with another 369 students indicating that they were interested.

When asked to reconcile many of the contradictions between what was said in the meeting and what was said in the email exchange, Whittington explained that the pair’s emailed explanation probably did not contain the full extent of their concern for the event.

Though they were adamant that this was a “postponement” and not a “cancellation,” Hu and Wittekind did not send another email to Wax until Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018.

Hu and Wittekind defended this action by pointing to the line in their final email to Wax: “we reiterate that we do want to host this event at another time this semester, and we hope you will respond with dates that work for you.

Wax commented forcefully when asked why she didn’t respond.

“I don’t remember if they asked me for dates. It was all very vague and open-ended. I think frankly it was pro-forma. They were very, very vague and evasive about what they wanted to do differently, what their objections were, what their problems were,” explained Wax. “They weren’t candid with me, they weren’t honest with me, they didn’t tell me the real reasons…that’s not civility, that’s a lack of forthrightness. They were resoundingly uncivil in many ways.”

Wittekind also explained that the tone of the last email Wax sent to him and Hu did not, in his view, merit a response.

“The way that she responded was not conducive to me re-inviting her or Lena or anyone [else re-inviting her],” Wittekind explained.

The Tory later learned that Hu and Wittekind’s arguments for not having followed-up with Wax occurred after the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Skip Rankin ’72, traveled down to Princeton and forcefully explained to the pair that they were not to wait and see whether or not Wax would respond. They were to follow-up immediately. The meeting between Rankin and the pair occurred in September.

For his part, Whittington understood Wax’s anger and the fact that she took Hu and Wittekind’s actions personally.

When asked to comment on whether he believed Hu and Wittekind had made attempts to reschedule the event in a way commensurate with their emphasis of the word “postponement,” Whittington explained that “it’s clear not a lot of effort has been made to reschedule.”

On Thursday, Dec. 13, three days after the Tory interviewed Hu and Wittekind and almost three months after the original email exchange, Hu and Wittekind extended another speaking invitation to Wax for the spring semester.

Wax explained that she had no way of knowing for sure but added that “one could put the interpretation…that they’re sending the email just to kind of make themselves look better and to back up their assertion that’s it’s not really a ‘cancellation’ but a ‘postponement’ and all of that. One could interpret it that way but how are we supposed to know?”

Wax continued by asking: “At the end of the day what difference does it make?”

“[Hu and Wittekind] are more obsessed with whether I can be regarded as a racist than with actually hearing what I have to say and getting a new or a different perspective on things,” explained Wax. “If that’s the game they want to play then let them play it – that’s the game that’s being played everywhere across all the universities and as far as I’m concerned it’s not an education.”

When it came to Whittington specifically, Wax was deeply disappointed that Whittington never reached out to her following the event.

“I can only tell you that I am very disappointed in him. He spends an entire book exploring the high-minded topic of free speech and intellectual integrity but from my experience, which is a resounding silence on his part, he did not display any integrity with respect to me and I find that to be a problem that is endemic to academia which is people who pretend to virtue but don’t display basic fundamental virtues of honor, of integrity, of following through on your promises and commitments to others,” Wax explained. “We’re talking about basic stuff here. It continually amazes me how these simple elements of socialization have been completely lost.”

Informed of Wax’s disapproval, Whittington stated that it never occurred to him that reaching out would improve the situation.

“If she would have felt better if I had sent her an email, then I wish I would have sent her an email…it didn’t occur to me that me reaching out to her would make a difference one way or another,” Whittington explained.

The Tory also learned that Wax contacted the Daily Princetonian in September and offered to be a source with regards to the Wax-Whittington event. Hu and Wittekind explained that they had been interviewed by this student newspaper.

However, the ‘Prince’ did not pursue the story.

“I think there’s a cover-up mentality,” explained Wax. “Nobody wants to rat out on other students even when the students behave very badly. Otherwise I can’t explain it.”

Daily Princetonian Editor-in-Chief Marcia Brown ’19 declined to comment.

 

Abortion: Too Controversial?

“As a woman on this campus and also the friend of many other women on campus I legitimately HATE THE IDEA OF A BUNCH OF CONSERVATIVE MEN DEBATING THE RIGHTS TO FEMALE BODIES,” wrote Hu in a Oct. 9th Facebook message to Christian Schmidt ’20, Whig-Clio’s President of the Senate, who has jurisdiction over events such as senate debates between Whig and Clio members and congressional caucuses, where Whig and Clio members attempt to reach a compromise on a given issue.

Schmidt is Publisher of The Princeton Tory and also President-elect of Whig-Clio.

Hu’s comments were made in regards to an abortion caucus Schmidt had organized and promoted on the campus list-servs a few hours before. The rhetoric included in the message above, alongside Hu and Wittekind’s subsequent decision to cancel the caucus, led several senior members of Governing Council – namely, Schmidt, Kibbey, and Ahmad – to assert that the pair’s decision-making process was tinged with anti-conservative bias.

According to Schmidt and Brent Kibbey ’21, who works alongside Schmidt as Senate Program Coordinator, the way that the abortion caucus was organized and promoted was entirely appropriate.

In the Facebook event created for the abortion caucus, Schmidt included the following line to clarify what the object of the discussion would be: Stopping Abortion and Ensuring a Woman’s Right to Choose Don’t Have to be Mutually Exclusive.

Schmidt expanded further in the promotional material sent out to various list-servs.

“Think the country’s too polarized? Can’t believe how crazy the other side is? Come dissuade yourself of both of these notions and make a deal nobody thinks can be made: Bipartisan Abortion Rights Policy,” Schmidt wrote.

Kibbey explained that in preparing the promotional material above, Schmidt had talked to students on opposing sides of the abortion issue in order to ensure that the event was construed moderately.

However, Hu and Wittekind did not see it that way.

In other Facebook messages to Schmidt, Hu speculated that Schmidt had not talked to any women in wording and creating the promotional material for the event. Schmidt explained that he had talked to current members of the governing board of the Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice (PSRJ), an abortion rights-focused student group.

Hu proceeded to forcefully ask Schmidt for a meeting later that day which was also to include Wittekind and Kibbey.

Before the meeting, audio of which was obtained by the Tory, Schmidt was removed as an administrator on the Facebook page, and the abortion caucus Facebook event was deleted.

When 8 p.m. finally rolled around and all four gathered in Frist Campus Center, Hu and Wittekind chastised Schmidt for not discussing the caucus extensively with them beforehand.

Wittekind explained that the two would be cancelling the event. He also explained that part of the reasoning behind the decision to do so was because of careless timing on Schmidt’s part, with the last Kavanaugh hearing having been held only two weeks earlier.

Wittekind expanded further on this point, saying that “the way [the promotional material] was phrased – we frankly felt like it was basically saying to any pro-choice activist: ‘compromise now – we have the power’…which [is] a very aggressive message.”

Hu also questioned whether an abortion debate was worth having at all in the Frist meeting.

“Ignore the fact that I’m a woman, there’s like an objective truth in this and it’s that…I don’t want to have a debate where we’re debating whether or not women should have the right to choose…I think that’s a terrible thing to do on this campus,” Hu asserted.

Kibbey explained that Hu and Wittekind’s aggressive rhetoric against the caucus and decision to cancel it were unprecedented.

“They were just really against it and I’m not sure if it was because of the nature of the event or the way it was brought forward but there was nothing different from the way we brought this forward [sic] than we would have any other Senate event,” Kibbey explained.

“It seemed like a pretty ridiculous thing for the co-presidents to come in and push their authority to have it cancelled,” added Kibbey. “All the other caucuses – no big commotion was raised about them.”

Clio chair Ahmad defended the abortion caucus as a debate worth having.

“Whether or not abortion is a right or whether or not abortion is murder falls under the realm of legitimate debate seeing as there is a legitimate debate in our legislatures and public life about this,” explained Ahmad. “I don’t think [Hu and Wittekind’s] reaction was warranted.”

Ahmad added that “in my experience there hasn’t been a better format to getting compromise in terms of political activities on campus than the congressional caucus.”

When asked to interpret the statements she made in person as well as on Messenger, Kibbey explained that Hu had made judgements about the event based on who she thought would show up.

“She did feel that due to the more conservative interest in the matter, it wasn’t going to be a good discussion,” Kibbey explained.

Though Kibbey agrees with Hu on the substance, he didn’t agree with her rhetoric not to have the debate at all.

“From everything I’ve gathered [Hu is] pro-women rights and pro having unrestricted abortions…which I’m not against but it didn’t seem [like] she wanted to have it debated at all…she was pretty hotheaded,” Kibbey explained.

“I agree with her [on the substance] but I think we should have a debate about it,” Kibbey reiterated.

The day after the meeting, Schmidt and Kibbey met with Nabatoff and asked her to talk to Hu and Wittekind. Nabatoff agreed.

After sitting down with Nabatoff, Hu and Wittekind agreed to allow Schmidt to move forward with the event. The abortion caucus was eventually held on Oct. 18, 2018.

Hu explained that she regretted how she handled the initial interactions with Schmidt and Kibbey.

“I shouldn’t have been so angry about it but it was so frustrating to me that [Schmidt] hadn’t really proposed it before,” Hu explained.

“I was operating with the information at the time that no women’s groups on campus were involved in the planning or organization of this at all,” explained Hu. “My assumption at the time was that it was only Christian Schmidt and Brent Kibbey who [were] going to run this abortion caucus.”

Hu explained that her vision of what was going to transpire was Schmidt and Kibbey and their friends “debating whether or not women should be able to abort children they do not want.”

“To me that is just abhorrent,” explained Hu. “If you want to have a discussion like that, you must reach out to the stakeholders on campus and if you’ve created the event in such a way that those stakeholders have no interest in co-sponsoring it then I think it’s problematic because you’re cutting out people.”

However, the Tory discovered that Schmidt had originally reached out to PSRJ to co-sponsor the event. These efforts were rebuffed due to PSRJ following Planned Parenthood’s policy of not engaging with the opposition.

“We work super closely with PP and trust that the non-engagement approach is the best course of action for the types of advocates we are,” explained Co-President of PSRJ Tamar Willis ’19 in an email to Schmidt.

The recording of the Frist meeting makes clear that Schmidt communicated this information to Hu and Wittekind.

The recording also makes clear that in lieu of PSRJ’s participation, Schmidt had made plans to speak to a representative of the Women*s Center.

In the same meeting that Hu and Wittekind cancelled the original abortion caucus, the pair also expressed their desire for Schmidt not to reach out to the Women*s Center. Schmidt decided not to listen to them and proceeded with the meeting. Though the Women*s Center declined to co-sponsor, Schmidt reached out to the Princeton Women’s Alliance through the Deputy Whig Chair Morgan Smith ’21. The latter organization agreed to co-sponsor alongside Princeton Pro-Life.

Hu admits that it was at this point that she decided to jump on board as well.

Ahmad explained that if this had not occurred, the push to salvage the abortion caucus may not have worked.

“I think [Schmidt] showed that there was interest from the left which helped mitigate a lot of [Hu and Wittekind’s] concerns,” Ahmad explained.

However, Ahmad speculated that there may never have been such a problem if the situation were reversed and too many liberal students were interested in the event. The rules were only such for conservatives.

 

Ethos Woes

“I want us to get into a situation where people who do subscribe to campus orthodoxies feel about being challenged from critics of those orthodoxies the way I feel about being challenged by for example Professor Singer where I think not that he should be silenced but rather that he is doing me a favor by forcing me to think more deeply about whether I’m right or wrong and if I’m right to articulate more clearly and more intelligently the case for the view I hold,” explained Prof. Robert George.

According to him, the University’s ethos is one that promotes academic freedom and freedom of speech. The University’s ethos is one that demands that students be unsettled as part of a liberal arts education. It demands that their fundamental beliefs be challenged – whether they’re ethical beliefs or religious beliefs or the identity-forming beliefs which give someone a sense of who they are.

George is adamant in saying that the top members of the administration agree with this ethos wholeheartedly, making Princeton University different from many other institutions of higher education.

In the many interviews the Tory conducted for this story, most were reluctant to draw a connection between a perceived black eye on the part of the co-presidents and the society at large all the way to the University proper.

“I’m only distrustful of the people I dealt with at [Whig-Clio] and it’s lowered my estimation of them considerably,” explained Wax, declining to draw that broader connection. George did the same.

All followed this pattern but Keith Whittington.

“It has proved that giving students that kind of autonomy has real risks for universities because students will sometimes use that freedom in problematic ways and it will necessarily reflect on the University in public,” explained Whittington. “But that’s part of the risk you run by trying to have student organizations that have a fair amount of freedom to make their own decisions on a university campus.”

“If you tightly control a lot of stuff maybe you avoid some of those mistakes and as a consequence maybe you avoid some negative PR that might affect the University’s own public image,” continued Whittington. “But on the other hand then you’re giving students fewer opportunities to make decisions, learn from those decisions, and hopefully grow and develop as a consequence of that.”

The students who remain deeply involved in Whig-Clio are not able to speak of mistakes and their lessons in the abstract, as Whittington does. They are, after all, tasked with steering the path forward.

Ahmad, who represents the conservatives in Whig-Clio, is discouraged by the events which transpired under Hu and Wittekind’s leadership.

“I think this year there’s definitely a feeling amongst Clios that conservatism or anything that isn’t left has been ignored by the administration,” explained Ahmad.

According to him, the speakers that Hu and Wittekind have brought have not failed to be progressive par excellence. Ahmad explained that the speakers Tom Koenig brought, such as author David Kaplan, could not be characterized in the same way.

“I can understand there being a little bit more liberal speakers just because if you look at the demand that campus or Whig-Clio has it does lean left,” said Ahmad. “I can understand but I expect the proportions to be maybe be 60-40 or 70-30, in that area….ideally 50-50.”

Ahmad noted that it was sad to see the Wax-Whittington event not held since it included the only true right-oriented speaker Hu and Wittekind would have brought.

The Tory did learn that, at one point, Senator Jeff Flake came to speak at Whig-Clio. However, further reporting confirmed Ahmad’s assertion.

According to Millie Goldrup ’20, Co-President of the Latter-Day Saints Student Association, Flake came to speak as part of a conference organized entirely by Mormon students on campus.

Whig-Clio, alongside ODUS and the Office of Religious Life, provided some funding, but it was “definitely not the majority,” Goldrup said. Aside from that contribution, the extent of Hu and Wittekind’s involvement was to organize chairs and to allow the conference attendees to use Whig Hall for the entire weekend.

“[Flake] was in town for this religious conference that he was already going to be at so that kind of fell into their lap,” explained Ahmad. “But other than that they didn’t make much of an effort to get conservative speakers.”

This is despite the fact that Whig-Clio has a history of bringing high-profile conservative speakers in the past. The year before Hu and Wittekind’s tenure, senior fellow at the National Review Institute David French came to campus. The year before that, an event featuring former Senator Rick Santorum was hosted by the society.

Hu and Wittekind did note that they have their own biases which invariably affect their decisions to a certain degree.

“The idea that people don’t have political biases within institutions is fatally flawed I think it’s a talking point that means nothing,” Wittekind asserted.

“Very frankly people privilege in their invites – in the energy that they give even if that’s a slight privilege – a small bias – 1-2% – which I think in this case it reasonably can be said it is – any human being has a bias – they invite who they like,” Wittekind continued.

Wittekind also explained that, in his experience, conservative speakers are much more expensive when it comes to honoraria, or speaking fees. The Tory was not able to confirm or deny this assertion, other than confirming that Wax did not charge one.

However, Ahmad was entirely unsympathetic to this viewpoint.

“I feel like when you make an effort there are conservative speakers who are willing to come whether it be some congressman or some senator,” explained Ahmad. “You don’t need to get the Ben Shapiros and Jordan Petersons all the time but just like other right of center or maybe not leftists orthodox speakers would have been nice.”

The society has also seen senior Governing Council members clash about what Whig-Clio’s basic mission ought to be.

According to current President-elect Christian Schmidt, Hu and Wittekind do not have a basic mission other than getting people in the door.

Hu and Wittekind did not shy away from this alleged paradigm.

“The overarching narrative of what we’ve done here at Whig-Clio is good programming,” Wittekind explained.

“We’re hitting a pretty good spot where people are generally happy with the way our programming is going. It’s also reflected in our attendance,” Hu added.

For Schmidt, this meant that “[Hu and Wittekind’s] main priority was making sure that Whig-Clio sort of fit in to the average campus perspective and tried to get as many people in the door as possible…it led to them making some decisions based on that. If an event wasn’t set to be popular, they would cancel it rather than let it go.”

According to Schmidt, conservative events would have been perceived as less popular by the pair.

However, Schmidt went even further in reading their actions this year.

“I think [Hu and Wittekind’s] primary purpose in not having large conservative events was more that they just felt that bringing those speakers to campus would be immoral because they think the speakers are intolerant,” explained Schmidt.

His own vision is decidedly different from that espoused by Hu and Wittekind.

“It is better to have good events and less attendance than it is to have high attendance and bad events,” Schmidt added.

In line with this thinking, Schmidt has no problem with controversial events.

In fact, Schmidt explained that “it’s important for controversial ideas to be discussed because controversial ideas have very real and relevant implications for policy and society in general and if you’re ignoring the controversial ideas then you’re ignoring a certain group of ideas that people do actually think and sort of dismissing them.”

Looking at the year in its totality, Ahmad reiterated a sense of deflation.

“I think it’s one of those years that’s gonna be looked at as not the best year for Whig-Clio conservatives, or even discourse in general,” Ahmad explained.

Ahmad took solace in the University’s ethos, which George had emphasized so strongly. For him, Whig-Clio has always been an important contributor to this ethos. Ahmad hopes that the veil of uncertainty that has descended upon the society can be punctured. He hopes that the ship can be righted.

***

The tension brewing within Whig-Clio is best exemplified in its architecture.

Though both Whig Hall and its counterpart, Clio Hall, were remodeled in the neo-classical style to look like Greek temples in the 1890s, much of Whig, excluding its facade, has changed significantly. A 1969 fire led a New York architectural firm to shoehorn a four-story Modernist building into Whig-Clio’s surviving walls.

The inherent tension between the Modernist and the neo-classical, which together form Whig’s structure, resembles the tension which competing views of Whig-Clio’s basic mission necessarily brings. Concern of anti-conservative bias only adds fuel to the fire.

Whether today’s or tomorrow’s leadership will be able to dissipate this tension remains to be seen.

A note from Joaquim Brooks ’20, Editor-in-Chief of the Tory: Christian Schmidt, the publisher of the Tory in 2018, recused himself from his publishing duties for this investigation. Schmidt elected to do so because he is an executive of Whig-Clio who commented for the story. Not only is Schmidt Whig-Clio’s President of the Senate, but he is also the society’s President-elect. Consequently, I assumed any and all oversight he would have exercised.

This story has been updated to include comment from Skip Rankin ’72, Chair of the Whig-Clio Board of Trustees. A correction has also been made with regards to the organization that co-sponsored the abortion caucus. It was the Princeton Women’s Alliance, not the Women*s Center.

Comments

comments