By Pam Powers, Office of University Communications, UW-Stout
Corporations sometimes act much like toddlers, according to Jeffrey Lockwood, the author of a book critical of political censorship.
Two-year-old children don’t know right from wrong, and corporations in their mission to maximize profits and shareholders’ dividends also often lack a moral compass when it comes to discerning their impact on society, Lockwood said. He was one of the keynote speakers Wednesday (Apr. 4) at the Civil Liberties Symposium hosted by the Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
At the keynote session, Lucas Vebber, representing Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and Tom Pearson, a UW-Stout anthropology professor, were respondents.
Lockwood, a University of Wyoming professor of natural sciences and humanities, said that if a child is the major wage-earner for the family, the power shifts.
“Now Mom and Dad, what time is my bedtime?” Lockwood quipped. “Our real danger is separating corporations and the state. That is being blurred.”
As politicians need more and more funding to get elected, they will take money from corporations and be beholden to the industry. This will lead them to censor criticism of those corporations, infringing on the free expression of others, Lockwood said.
Government then becomes no longer for the people but for corporations, he added.
“Behind the Carbon Curtain”
Lockwood wrote the book “Behind the Carbon Curtain: The Energy Industry, Political Censorship and Free Speech.” Some research has criticized the coal energy industry in Wyoming; in turn political pressure was placed on the University of Wyoming to stifle that. Lockwood and other scholars have argued it this should be seen as a clear case of academic freedom.
“The rules of the marketplace become the rules of civil society,” Lockwood warned. “When people stop speaking we are in deep trouble. People take it to be normal when everything is treated as a commodity, including speech. Living behind a carbon curtain of silence is too high of a price to pay.”
One example he used was a 2011 art installation, “Carbon Sink,” at his university depicting partially charred logs going into a sinkhole. The installation was intended as a commentary on climate change due to fossil fuel use, Lockwood said.
Elected officials declared it an insult to the energy industry and demanded the school remove it. Eventually it was taken down after threats were made to university funding.
One of Lockwood’s concerns is that young people don’t grasp the importance of free speech, particularly when they are afraid.
“The work of social justice will never be done,” Lockwood said. “The task of education is daunting.”
Respondents’ Comments
Vebber said one of the duties of all people is to protect civil liberties because they are what America’s society is built upon.
“You can’t stand for free speech and not allow corporations to speak,” he said.
Another concern he has is hyperbole, he said.
“One person can take one ridiculous thought, put it on Twitter, it gets shared and it becomes a movement,” Vebber said.
He pointed to an example of those opposed to the repeal of a Wisconsin law that effectively placed a moratorium on metallic mining in the state. Repeal opponents posted comments on social media claiming that all the state’s rivers would be filled with acid, Vebber said.
“They took it to an illogical extreme,” he said.
Pearson said that his research on the frac sand mining industry in Wisconsin indicates that many people are concerned that the democratic process is being circumvented.
“Many people were frustrated by the influence these companies had,” Pearson said, citing the example of a company paying those living near a proposed sand mine for the landowners’ “cooperation” with the project.
He also found that people were concerned about diminished Department of Natural Resources autonomy and former DNR employees reporting they were discouraged from commenting on controversial issues.
The Civil Liberties Symposium featured three keynote addresses and eight sessions over two days, with speakers from Wisconsin and around the United States.
The Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation was set up last fall through a Charles Koch Foundation grant. Its intent is to facilitate civil and rational debate and research in the state and beyond on important civil liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.