The Advocate

How Will Your Professors Vote?

Tony Monchinski
I got the idea for this article after I interviewed CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven for another publication. I asked her if she would be voting in the 2004 Presidential election, and if so, for whom. John Kerry, she answered without hesitation.

The gist of Piven’s rationale went like this: she is not a Kerry supporter per se, but she feels that, in the short run, a Kerry victory will remove Bush from office, supplanting him with a man who is more of a “uniter than a divider,” if only on the international scene. Furthermore, if Kerry is elected, Piven noted, he will be more responsive to progressive demands than George W. Bush. Just as Bush has to appease his religious right constituents with talk of a constitutional amendment spelling out marriage as a male/female institution, Piven feels Kerry can be made to listen to the demands voiced from the other end of the political spectrum.

This seems to be a sentiment voiced by several professors in the CUNY system. In researching this article I emailed 25 professors from various departments and institutions, asking them the following questions:

-Will you be voting in the 2004 presidential election?
-Who will you be voting for and why?
-Is a vote for Ralph Nader or Green candidate Cobb a vote for Bush?

I wasn’t exactly bowled over by the number of responses I received. As a matter of fact, I would have scrapped the article but for the fact that some professors did take time out of their busy schedules to answer my queries, and tossing those replies in a trash can would be doing them a disservice.

A few professors were kind enough to email me back and explain that they would rather not contribute to the piece. I can understand that, and I respect their wishes. But about 15 of them didn’t even bother to email me back. Sure, I know: people are busy, things come up, The Advocate isn’t the New York Times. Okay.

But I was especially disappointed that no one from the Economics Department at the Graduate Center answered me back, as I was hoping to find at least one or two conservative voters who could articulate their interests. You’re thinking: conservative voters? At CUNY? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Well, maybe I was naïve.

As this article was being submitted, some germane news was breaking. George W. was pulling ahead in the polls, with registered voters claiming Kerry was spending too much time attacking Bush (!). The Florida Supreme Court OK’d the addition of Ralph Nader to the ballot in Florida, causing certain Democrats to blanche. The war in Iraq looks more and more unwinnable, with over a thousand US troops dead so far, yet no exit strategy is forthcoming from the Commander in Chief.

Here, for your edification, are the answers provided by several of CUNY’s esteemed faculty to the aforementioned questions. Whatever their views, I want to thank these professors for agreeing to share them in a public forum. Doing so does entail a certain measure of risk, be it the opprobrium of colleagues or just the fact that they are laying their personal opinions out in the open.

Professor Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Department of Political Science, GC and Hunter College

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
Yes, I will definitely vote and will vote for Kerry—not because he represents my views on just about anything (well, he's actually fairly good on women's issues and reproductive rights and very good on the environment from what I can tell), but because there is simply no alternative. I do indeed believe a vote for Nader or Cobb is a vote for Bush, though less so in New York State than in so-called swing states, and I thought the Green Party took a principled position by urging supporters to vote for Cobb only in those states where it won't matter much. Still, this election is going to be so very close one almost believes every vote counts, and four more years of the neocons will be truly a disaster for the world. I do a lot of work internationally, travel in a lot in other countries and regions, and believe me, most of the world despises Bush & Co. and is looking to American voters to do boot them out—and will hold us accountable if we don't. The impact in other countries—of Bush's arrogant, unilateral version of imperialism and Christian crusade fundamentalism (Kerry will be a more multilateral and liberal-minded imperialist but a proponent of empire nonetheless); of the global gag rule; of the war in Iraq; of uncritical support for Israel (Kerry is just as bad if not worse on the Middle East, unfortunately); of nationalist trade policies; of the very perverse policy on HIV/AIDS (especially abstinence over condoms, funding of "faith-based" groups, punitive attitude toward sex workers, promotion of Big PHARMA drugs and suppression of generics)—all this and so much more makes Bush anathema around the world. His domestic policies, from deficit-boosting tax cuts for the rich to privatization of health care and social security to environmental devastation, hardly need comment. And for sure, another Bush term will spell doom for the federal and supreme courts as far as civil rights, affirmative action and the rights of ordinary people over corporate power are concerned. I think we're at a moment of severe crisis where we have to get these people out in order just to carry on our lives and build a serious movement for social change, without having to defend every tiny piece of turf that progressive movements won over the past 50 years (or more).

Professor John ‘Tito’ Gerassi, Department of Political Science, Queens College:

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
I'm not sure yet.

If not, why not?
I can’t stand Kerry and of course Bush is a fascist.
If so, which candidate do you intend to vote for and why?
If I vote, I may vote for Cobb so as to keep the Greens alive. I may even vote for Bush if I am convinced in November that his reelection will so alienate Europe that the community will react more meaningfully to the fact that he is trying to spread the Empire throughout the world. A Bush election may encourage India (raw materials), Japan (technology) and China (disciplined labor, i.e. semi-slaves) to form an economic unit (like Europe should be) to fight the US in the market, which in turn might convince Europe to do the same. If that occurs, the US economy will completely collapse and we might see real meaningful reforms here via a socializing (sschh) president.

Do you believe that a vote for Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate David Cobb is a vote for George Bush?
Not in New York which will go for Kerry by a large enough margin that odd-balls like me could vote for even the vegetarian candidate (is there one?).

Professor Jackie DiSalvo, Department of English, Baruch College:

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
I am disturbed that Kerry is running as a pro-occupation moderate Republican who is backed by and owned by the same corporate finance capital as Bush. Like Clinton on NAFTA he may be more able to get away with reactionary policies. I consider that he will at least delay the ominous threat to civil liberties, make saner judicial appointments, not privatize social security, and appoint a fairer Labor Board—all very significant but undermined by other regressive policies: a "jobs" program that is just corporate subsidies, further global corporatization, a more effectively internationalist imperialist foreign policy, and other New Democrat policies. Worse he will co-opt the leadership of a growing progressive movement and they will demobilize the membership again. The old escape clause for Dem Presidents—will persist after the election: we must support him against Republican enemies. Why vote for Kerry if he's already a shoe-in in NY?

Professor Ruth O’Brien, Executive Officer, Political Science Department, Graduate Center:

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
Yes, I'll vote and vote for Kerry (though I'm in the ABB camp and will hold my nose for this Wall Street Democrat). And yes, 3rd party candidates still hurt the candidate they are closest to. (This is why —as is widely reported—the Bushies are helping Nader in states where he's on the ballot.) This is not to say that 3rd party candidates don't have role to play in a duopoly. They help push agendas that the two dominant parties won't push. If these agenda items resonate w/ the voters, they might well be appropriated by one of these parties.

Professor Judith Stein, Department of History, Graduate Center:

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
I am voting and voting for John Kerry. Given the choices, I suppose you want to know why I am not voting for a candidate of a third party. Even if Ralph Nader and the Green Party candidate were more to my liking, I still would not vote for them. A presidential election has nothing to do with preference for individuals. It is not the occasion for protest. At this moment in time, the election of John Kerry would be the most effective verdict on the foreign and domestic policies of George Bush. Then, by depriving the GOP of complete control of the government, it would place a brake on the most right-wing administration in United States history. The next act, after Kerry's election, would depend upon what progressive forces are able to muster.

Nader would not be my choice even if I viewed the election as beauty contest. Unlike the constituencies of the Democratic Party, Nader's base of relatively affluent individuals and students is not the group who would suffer from four more years of George W. Bush. Nader's candidacy did not emerge from any popular demand, but from his own desire for celebrity. His history is less splendid than many claim. His electoral record demonstrates a political philosophy of worse is better. He was not very upset when Ronald Reagan was elected and predicted a rise of public interest organizations which would produce new reforms. He was wrong. Nader is demagogic. When anyone disagrees with him, and that includes colleagues, he accuses them of being corporate lackeys. This moral righteousness and outsized role he assigns for himself renders him unfit for political leadership.

Professor Andrew Polsky, Department of Political Science, Hunter College:

Do you intend to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
I will vote for Kerry with some misgivings, which is how I always vote and what I would expect. Bush's presidency has been a disaster on most levels. In terms of foreign policy, Iraq was a reckless, short-sighted adventure. You cannot protect America from threats unless you can recognize them. Iraq was not a danger to the US; it had been reduced to a third-rate power after 1991.

To this we can add Bush's disastrous tax cuts, which will saddle my children's generation with an enormous debt. A second Bush term will see attacks on the remaining structure of social provision in the United States that are unacceptable.
A vote for Nader or the Green party is a form of political masturbation: briefly satisfying and without constructive effect on the world beyond the voting booth curtain.

Tony Monchinski is a student in the PhD program in Political Science.