On October 18, 2021, The Bulwark published a piece by Laura K. Field regarding recent events at the Claremont Institute. Read it here.
You may know the Claremont Institute as the intellectual home of John Eastman, the lawyer behind the infamous six-point memo, who helped President Donald Trump concoct his plan for rejecting the Electoral College results on January 6. Or you may know the Claremont Institute as the publisher of the gross “Flight 93” essay comparing the 2016 election to a terrorist hijacking and warning Americans to “charge the cockpit” (i.e., vote for Trump) “or you die” (i.e., see the country wrecked under a Democratic president).
In recent weeks, the institute has been entangled in a dispute with the American Political Science Association. APSA is the country’s premier professional association for political scientists, and the dispute with Claremont concerned Eastman’s participation in APSA’s annual conference.
Spoiler alert: The conference is over, Eastman did not participate, and Claremont is claiming it has been censored—and even affirmatively defending Eastman and naming him in its latest fundraising efforts. In a sense, this is just a minor kerfuffle, but the stakes are higher than they might at first appear. It is worth taking some time to unpack the factual record and sort out the disputed claims.
Read the rest of the commentary here.
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