I’ll try to remain somewhat calm and dispassionate here, but I kind of doubt that will be possible:
The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left.
But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is a friend of the Washington Monthly. We’ve both interviewed her for the magazine and gratefully published her as well. I have no preexisting animus towards her– quite the opposite, actually. But let’s take a look at how she protected her scholar when Eric Schmidt called to voice his displeasure:
The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.
Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Ms. Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Mr. Schmidt serves as executive chairman.
Ms. Slaughter told Mr. Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Ms. Slaughter to Mr. Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.
While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was “in no way based on the content of your work,” Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of “imperiling the institution as a whole.”
I certainly understand that Ms. Slaughter was in a bit of a spot considering how important Eric Schmidt is and has been to the organization she leads, but her reaction was to fire not only Barry Lynn but the entire Open Markets department, including my brother Phillip. Phillip is also, of course, the senior editor of the Washington Monthly.
Perhaps I’m not the best person to discuss this since it involves my family, but I have no problem questioning the justice and administrative wisdom of canning “nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows” for the supposed sins of just one of them.
And what was that sin, exactly? Barry Lynn put up a post on the think tank’s website supportive of the European Union’s decision to fine Google “for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service.”
Now there are two handfuls of people looking for work.
Ironically, the Open Markets initiative has probably been the most influential and important department at the New America Foundation over the last couple of years.
It is difficult to overstate Mr. Lynn’s influence in raising concerns about the market dominance of Google, as well as of other tech companies such as Amazon and Facebook. His Open Markets initiative organized a 2016 conference at which a range of influential figures — including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — warned of damaging effects from market consolidation in tech.
Barry Lynn was instrumental in convincing Sen. Warren to look beyond her initial area of expertise in consumer protection and lock in on the role of lax antitrust enforcement in hollowing out America’s working class. Getting Warren to appear at New America and give the following speech was a coup for the think tank and a demonstration of the power of their ideas.
But Anne-Marie Slaughter wasn’t happy even then.
In the run-up to that conference, Ms. Slaughter and New America’s lead fund-raiser in emails to Mr. Lynn indicated that Google was concerned that its positions were not going to be represented, and that it was not given advanced notice of the event.
“We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to “just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.”
Again, I understand that Anne-Marie Slaughter has to consider a variety of factors and she was correct that the work being done by the crew at Open Markets was going to make Google unhappy. But she should at the very least own her decisions rather than allowing the following statement to be issued:
New America’s executive vice president, Tyra Mariani, said it was “a mutual decision for Barry to spin out his Open Markets program,” and that the move was not in any way influenced by Google or Mr. Schmidt.
“New America financial supporters have no influence or control over the research design, methodology, analysis or findings of New America research projects, nor do they have influence or control over the content of educational programs and communications efforts,” Ms. Mariani said.
I know I said I wanted to remain calm and dispassionate, but that statement by Tyra Mariani is demonstrably and egregiously false.
And unless Ms. Slaughter just panicked and overreacted to Eric Schmidt’s call, the statement made by Google is complete bullshit, too.
Google rejected any suggestion that it played a role in New America’s split with Open Markets. Riva Sciuto, a Google spokeswoman, pointed out that the company supports a wide range of think tanks and other nonprofits focused on information access and internet regulation. “We don’t agree with every group 100 percent of the time, and while we sometimes respectfully disagree, we respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions and policy perspectives.”
Either way, Google certainly “played a role” in the destruction of the Open Markets initiative. If they are so fearsome that they can get an entire department sent to the soap factory without even explicitly demanding it, it seems to me that they might be an even bigger problem.
Here’s the deal, though. The Open Markets initiative has already left its mark.
Last month, Democratic congressional leaders rolled out a policy platform that included a pledge to dismantle monopolies, including in cable and internet service, which some read as a direct challenge to Google in particular. That sentiment — which appears to have some support from populist elements of President Trump’s base — diverges sharply from the approach that had been taken by most Democrats until recently.
In our last issue, I had a feature piece on How to Win Rural Voters Without Losing Liberal Values that focused on the importance of revitalizing antitrust enforcement and anti-monopoly policies. Since that time, I have been contacted by several Democratic candidates and thought leaders who want to know more about how do messaging and strategy around these issues. They might get that kind of advice from me, but they probably won’t be getting too much of it from any source that relies on money from Google or Amazon or Facebook. Platform monopolies are popular and wealthy beyond imagination, and they’re fighting back against what they correctly see as a growing movement within the Democratic Party to disrupt their vertical integration and limit their power.
They can’t shut Elizabeth Warren up but, as you can see, they can limit where she can speak. She can say what she wants on the Senate floor, but she won’t be getting more invites to New America to talk about monopolies.
This is a lesson to anyone who doubts that these platform monopolies have too much market power and too much political power. They shouldn’t be able to put people like Anne-Marie Slaughter in this kind of vice, and that’s true regardless of whether or not what Slaughter did was wise or justifiable.
I think that there must have been better options than putting innocent people on the unemployment line, but the broader issue is that New America is functionally a subsidiary of Google. And they are far from the only left-leaning organization in that position.
