From Robert Nichols via Facebook: “At the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association this year, my former colleague Joan Tronto was scheduled to receive the Benjamin Lippincott Award in recognition of the tremendous impact and importance of her work “Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care”. The APSA has decided, however, to proceed with the meeting in direct contravention of strike action currently being taken by UNITE HERE Local 11, the union representing hotel workers at the host facilities. Her response is undoubtedly one of the best Lippincott lectures ever delivered.” (Shared with permission from the author.)

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Dear [APSA leadership],

I received notice a few weeks ago that I have been presented with the Lippincott Award, arguably the highest achievement possible in the field of political theory. I am humbled, thrilled, and deeply honored to have received this award.

I am writing, though, to inform you that I will not be attending the Annual Meeting this year, nor taking the opportunity afforded me to present a Lippincott Lecture at the meeting. Neither will I take part in any awards ceremony online or present the lecture remotely. You asked me to reconsider my decision. And I do want to acknowledge that you all have worked very hard to remedy a bad situation. But I have reconsidered, and I remain more committed to my decision. I will rearticulate my reasons for you here. I have taken this decision for three reasons: first, the necessity to stand with labor, second, the manner in which APSA has responded to the ongoing labor disputes, and third, because attending this meeting would directly contravene the theoretical insights that I have worked a lifetime to develop.

UNITE HERE Local 11 asked APSA to cancel, relocate, or move online the conference scheduled at the end of August in Los Angeles. You decided that it was too difficult to cancel or move the conference online, and so you are trying to find ways to accommodate people who do not want to cross a picket line to attend the Annual Meeting.

To say, as you do in the note sent to members today, that APSA “is standing with labor, consistent with our long-standing policy of siting our annual meetings in union venues” should not mean that we will stand with labor as long as it is not too inconvenient to us. Let me begin, then, by pointing out that the inconvenience to young scholars, international scholars, and other members of the Association pales in significance to the issues being fought over in this strike. A quick perusal of the news stories covering the strike make clear what hotel workers in Los Angeles currently suffer: sleeping in their cars between shifts, traveling 200 miles a day to and from work, being priced out of a housing market where families cannot afford to live. Moving the conference on line would have a financial impact on the Association, it is true. But the Association has more capacity for financial resilience than a family of four relying on stingy wages in an industry whose profits do, and will, soar in the next years in Los Angeles.

Second, given the inadequate communication, reports that the full Council did not vote on statements (I do not know if this is true or not), and the haphazard way in which this issue has been addressed, I have lost all faith in APSA to honor in any full sense the requests of UNITE HERE. The deadlines for housing changes approached but we members at large were not informed of these issues in the last month. I have heard conflicting reports about whether and how effectively APSA has communicated with the union, though I have no doubt about clear lines of communication with management. I have no trust that APSA will run this meeting in a way that fails to continue at least some “business as usual” with hotels and companies that refuse to accede to the demands of workers. For example, members with no scruples about doing so are free to stay at the Marriott and will, I am sure, do so.

This issue is more complicated, and though I am sorry to dive into the weeds to make this point, let me do so. As a professional association, APSA conducts business in the world that can either conform to, or subvert, such values as solidarity. In my humble opinion, the responsible position for the association to take, as an organization, is to accept responsibility for the harm its presence might do to the ongoing demands of organized labor. To conduct “business as usual” and let people whose consciences do not support this view opt out of attendance, or move on line, takes a kind of approach that is much too familiar in the current world, of pushing responsibility down on to, in this case, individual members, while claiming the Association has done its best, met everyone’s interests, etc. It displays the lack of leadership, willingness to take responsibility, willingness to act on principle, that now seems to infect public and private life.

Third, ironically, the content of Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (the book for which I receive the Lippincott Award) concerns precisely these issues. There, I made the argument that people in relative positions of power vis-à-vis care workers can exercise a kind of privileged irresponsibility by ignoring, degrading, and marking care and caring work as “other” than the “important” life work that the powerful do. Despite its concessions, as APSA persists in holding this jerry-rigged meeting, it once again enacts this kind of unjust power over much more vulnerable members of society. I would betray my life’s work in going along with this plan.

For all of these reasons, then, I have considered, and reconsidered, my decision and will not legitimate this meeting by participating in it. One of the dangers that you mention is that the cancellation of the meeting will damage the Association. As a former Vice President of the Association, I regretfully say that, for me, such damage has already been done.

Sincerely,

Joan Tronto