I am intermittently a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and attend its large annual meeting when it is convenient or otherwise useful, such as when held in San Francisco or Washington DC, as it often is. Some years back the APSA moved its long-scheduled annual meeting from San Francisco to Seattle because there was a pending strike of hotel workers in San Francisco, and for the oh-so-sensitive political science community, union solidarity ranks up there with hating Deplorables.
This year it was once again the west coast’s turn to host the annual meeting, but since no one wants to go to San Francisco for major conventions any more, the APSA chose Los Angeles as the host venue. There’s just one problem: the hotel workers union local for LA is threatening to strike against Marriott hotels since its contract has expired (in fact the union is conducting a slow-motion slowdown action already), and the APSA has booked nearly 500 panels and meetings in Marriott properties in LA. The union asked the APSA to cancel its proceedings books for Marriott hotels. Lots of the rank and file political scientists will not cross picket lines.
What’s the APSA to do? With a month to go, it is difficult to move the whole thing to another city on such short notice, but during COVID the APSA moved the entire annual meeting online, so you’d think that would be an option. Apparently not. APSA has decided to hold the annual meeting as planned. Here’s their explanation:
The union has asked us to cancel our annual meeting, and we have heard from hundreds of APSA members who support this demand. . . There would be a significant financial impact to APSA. We have vendor contracts to fulfill for our non-hotel partners. We would need to pay cancellation fees to the hotels that are not being struck, as well as to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The minimum costs of cancellation are at least $2.8 million, with further costs and litigation likely to accumulate.
Well that seems a high price to pay for union solidarity, and they might just have let it rest there, or suggested that panels (where the four or five panelists often outnumber the audience—I’m not kidding about this) could meet spontaneously at a Starbucks or something.
But no: The APSA has to contrive a woke rationale for stiffing their union allies:
After careful consideration, we feel that in light of the interests of our membership–especially underrepresented scholars, scholars from the Global South, and non-tenured scholars–we must maintain the Meeting in Los Angeles.
This is not going down well with fully paid-up members of the woke faculty judging from the reaction on Twitter the X-Files:
P.S. I’ll be attending the meeting to chair just one panel (APSA rules allow you to participate in one panel or event without joining or registering), and giving a lecture at a black-tie dinner. I’ll try to report from the scene.
P.S. (2): My two favorite X-Files responses are from James Patterson of Ave Maria University, with a dry-as-dust but spot-on parody of political science methodology today (IYKYK):
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