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"A lively chronicle. . . . Mr. Hartman's book makes two major contributions. The first is his framing of the culture wars debate from its earliest days. . . . His second major contribution is his conclusion that the culture wars are over."

"As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled. . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas. . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved."

"A provocative review of a formative epoch."

"A valuable addition to the growing body of literature historicizing the post-Sixties era. . . . Classic intellectual history. . . . Thoughtful and thought-provoking."

"An unparalleled guide . . . making sense of the polarized politics that have plagued the USA for the past four decades. . . . Hartman's central point is that the debates were deadly serious, asking fundamental questions abotu who we are as a nation, and about who we want to be. . . . In his efforts to provide an overview and explanation of the culture wars, Hartman is to date without peer."

"Hartman's text is nothing less than required reading on the culture wars, their history, and their impact on American public life."

"The frist book to tell the story of this war in all its diversity. . . . Hartman, to his credit, insists that the issues at stake in cultural politics are 'real and compelling.' . . . His affections clearly rest with the liberals, but he is generally nonpoloemical in his accounts of the two sides."

"Andrew Hartman has worked with a deft hand and a keen mind to give us an absorbing account of the last half-century of culture wars in the United States. By digging far beneath the cross-fire style of political rhetoric that bombards us today, Hartman shows how the seismic changes in American society, most notably in the struggle to create a more equal and inclusive democracy, unleashed a fierce conservative attempt to hold on to a world that was escaping their grip."

"Whatever happened to the culture wars? Americans don't argue the way they used to, at least not over hot-button cultural issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. Andrew Hartman has produced both a history and a eulogy, providing a new and compelling explanation for the rise and fall of the culture wars. But don't celebrate too soon. On the ashes of the culture wars, we've built a bleak and acquisitive country dedicated to individual freedom over social democracy. Anyone who wants to take account of the culture wars--or to wrestle with their complicated legacy--will also have to grapple with this important book."

"A War for the Soul of America illuminates the most contentious issues of the last half of the twentieth century. In lively, elegant prose, Andrew Hartman explains how and why the consensus that appeared to permeate the nation following World War II frayed and fractured so dramatically in the 1960s. With keen insight and analysis, he shows that the Culture Wars were not marginal distractions from the main issues of the day. Rather, they were profound struggles over the very foundation of what it meant to be an American. In tracing the history of those conflicts over the last half of the twentieth century, Hartman provides a new understanding of the tensions and processes that transformed the nation."

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A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture ...

Is there anything left in American public life that isnt an occasion for political rancor and division? NFL games are now nothing more than crude pieces of political theater. On Sunday even Vice President Mike Pence got in on the act, showing up to a Colts-49ers game then leaving after a few players knelt during the national anthem. Next day was Columbus Day, which the cities of Los Angeles and Austin decided this year to replace with Indigenous Peoples Day, because Christopher Columbus is apparently the new Robert E. Lee. And its only Tuesday.

It should be obvious by now that our culture wars will henceforth be constant and unending; the next battle could be triggered by almost anything. Whether its the reactions (or non-reactions) of Hollywood celebrities to the unsurprising news of Harvey Weinsteins sexual misdeeds or the outraged calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment the instant news broke of the Las Vegas massacre, very little can happen in America now without it being an occasion for an appeal to ones own political tribe. No matter how tawdry or horrifying the news, there is vanishingly little room for solidarity because there is no appetite for it. Not even late-night comedy shows with their shrinking audiences can resist the urge to devolve into partisan political rants.

For all his eagerness to wage the culture wars in his improvised, bombastic style, this didnt begin with Donald Trump. It didnt begin with Barack Obama, either, but a recent study by Pew Research Center found that divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values reached record levels during the Obama administration. You dont need a Pew survey to tell you that, of course, but the data helps illuminate an otherwise vague feeling that American society is coming apart at the seams, and has been for years.

The Pew study measures responses to issues Pew has been asking about since 1994, things like welfare, race, and immigration. On almost every count, the gaps between Republicans and Democrats held more or less steady up until around 2010, when they began to widen. Today, Republicans and Democrats are now further apart ideologically than at any point in more than two decades, with the median Republican more conservative than 97 percent of Democrats and the median Democrat more liberal than 95 percent of Republicans. Heres what that looks like in a chart:

Pick your issue. On immigration, 84 percent of Democrats say immigrants strengthen the country, while only 42 percent of Republicans say the same. Ten years ago, those percentages were nearly identical. On environmental regulation, 77 percent of Democrats say more regulation is worth the cost, compared to just 36 percent of Republicans. A decade ago, that spread was 67 and 58 percent, respectively. On whether Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, 65 percent of Republicans say it does while 69 percent of Democrats say it doesnt. When Pew first asked that question in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the partisan gap was just 11 points.

Heres the other notable thing about Pews findings. Among the ten questions about political values that Pew has asked since 1994, the partisan gap is much larger than divisions based on demographic differences like age, race, and education. For example, the average partisan gap has increased from 15 to 36 points, whereas 20 years ago the average partisan differences on these issues were only somewhat wider than differences by religious attendance or educational attainment and about as wide as the differences between blacks and whites (14 points, on average). Today, the party divide is much wider than any of these demographic differences.

The Pew survey is a rich trove of fascinating survey data, but it mostly confirms what we can all see for ourselves: Americans are sorting themselves into political tribes that have less and less in common. Partisanship has even crept into the online dating scene. Last month the dating website OkCupid announced a partnership with Planned Parenthood that allows users to attach a badge to their profile, the obvious purpose of which is to avoid accidentally going on a date with someone who doesnt share ones views on abortion.

That brings us to something else that might get lost in the Pew numbers: the median Democratic voter has radicalized much faster than the median Republican voter, and most of this radicalization happened while a Democratic president was in office. That counterintuitive trend points to a larger problem with how the Left in particular understands the American project and our prospects for living together in peace and prosperity. Although its true that Republicans have moved further to the right as Democrats have moved further to the left, its the leftward slide that should worry us.

For all their shortcomings, conservatives at least have a limiting principle for politics. Most of them believe, for example, in the principles enshrined in the Constitution and maintain that no matter how bad things are, the Bill of Rights is a necessary bulwark, sometimes the only bulwark, against tyranny and violence. In contrast, heres Timothy Egan of The New York Times arguing unabashedly for the repeal of the Second and Fifth Amendments.

The rapid radicalization of Democrats along these lines follows a ruthless logic about the entire premise of the American constitutional order. If you believe, as progressives increasingly do, that America was founded under false pretenses and built on racial oppression, then why bother conserving it? And why bother trying to compromise with those on the other side, especially if they reject progressives unifying theory that America is forever cursed by its original sin of slavery, which nothing can expiate?

Before you scoff, understand that this view of race and America is increasingly mainstream on the American Left. To read someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose recent articlein The Atlantic is a manifesto of racial identity politics that argues Trumps presidency is based on white supremacy, is to realize that progressive elites no longer believe they can share a republic with conservatives, or really anyone with whom they disagree.

Coates has attained near god-like status among progressives with his oracular writings on race and politics, which take for granted the immutability of race and racial animus. So its deeply disturbing when he writes, as he does in a new collection of essays, that should white supremacy fall, the means by which that happens might be unthinkable to those of us bound by present realities and politics.

What does Coates mean by that? It isnt hard to guess, and lately Coates isnt trying too hard to disguise it. In a recent interview with Ezra Klein of Vox, Coates expanded on this idea. Writes Klein:

When he tries to describe the events that would erase Americas wealth gap, that would see the end of white supremacy, his thoughts flicker to the French Revolution, to the executions and the terror. Its very easy for me to see myself being contemporary with processes that might make for an equal world, more equality, and maybe the complete abolition of race as a construct, and being horrified by the process, maybe even attacking the process. I think these things dont tend to happen peacefully.

This is the circuitous, stumbling language of man who knows precisely what he wants to say but isnt sure if he should come right out and say it. Coates isnt alone in feinting toward violence as a meansperhaps the only means, if Coates is to be taken at his wordof achieving social justice. On college campuses, progressive activists increasingly dont even bother mincing words, they just forcibly silence anyone who disagrees with them, as a Black Lives Matter group did recently during an event featuring the American Civil Liberties Unionat the College of William and Mary. (Ironically, the talk was supposed to be about students and the First Amendment.)

For a sincere progressive, almost everything that happened in the past is a crime against the present, and the only greatness America can attain is by repudiating its past and shamingor silencing, if possibleall those who believe preserving our constitutional order is the best way for all of us to get along.

Seen in that light, the radicalization of Democrats is something qualitatively different, and much more dangerous, than the radicalization of Republicans. It means, among other things, that the culture war is now going to encompass everything, and that it will never end.

Continued here:
Left's Sirens Already Hinting Our Culture Wars Will End In ...

America's most famous Jesuit has a great gift for spiritual writing. But his polemics have helped to widen the Church's divisions

Fr James Martin SJ is an American priest and author who has cornered the market in affable and polished liberal Catholicism. He is the most famous Jesuit in the United States; probably the most popular, too. And also the most disliked. Hated, even.

The name will mean nothing to most British Catholics. Nor will the phenomenon of the simultaneously admired and despised media priest. The Catholic Church in this country is only mildly affected by the culture wars. We can all think of a few pugnacious traditionalist clergy and their smarmy liberal counterparts but there is no one who can give a talk on Jesus that (a) fills every seat in a major cathedral and (b) draws a crowd of protestors outside who accuse him of leading souls to hell.

Why is Fr Martin such an affront to conservative Catholics? Hes a liberal Jesuit, but that is hardly a novelty. And hes not a very liberal Jesuit, compared to, say, the peace activist Fr Daniel Berrigan, who once broke into General Electric premises to damage nuclear missile nose cones and pour blood on documents.

That was in 1980, two years before James Martin also entered General Electric as a trainee accountant fresh out of Pennsylvanias elite Wharton Business School.

Fr Martin, 57, was not quite one of the heartless Wall Street Masters of the Universe depicted in Tom Wolfes Bonfire of the Vanities but, as a highly paid young graduate in mid-Eighties Manhattan, he hung out in bars on the Upper East Side where there was cocaine in the bathroom for the adventurous. And he took pride in stepping over the homeless.

Martin tells us this in his book In Good Company, his account of getting fed up with the petty cruelties of corporate America and joining the Jesuits at the age of 26. Its not a very interesting book, considering the subject matter. Jim was a rather conventional young man. Its hard to imagine him joining the coke-snorting adventurous in the bathroom; his only love affair seems to have been with Brooks Brothers, purveyor of button-down shirts to conservative preppies.

When he joined the Jesuits he was asked whether he was a virgin and said no. This was the right answer seminary directors in the 1980s preferred applicants to have had a bit of experience but he adds that it was also a lie.

He grew up in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and although his parents didnt go to Mass every Sunday their son did. Apart from a brief loss of faith at university, he never stopped practising, avoiding self-consciously trendy churches in favour of parishes with proper choral music. He decided to become a priest because he was worried by his drift into selfishness and felt he had a vocation.

Martin soon discovered that life in the Society of Jesus contained its fair share of petty corporate cruelties including the indignity of having to wear a black shirt made out of the dreaded polyester. But they were easily outweighed by the satisfying rigour of Ignatian spirituality, about which he writes with a warm and inviting fluency. Thirty years on, he has never regretted becoming a Jesuit not even when clipping the toenails of old men in a Jamaican hospice. Posted to Nairobi, he used his Wharton training to help refugees set up small businesses.

Whats not to like? Or, rather, what is there to dislike so intensely about a priest who is always scrupulously polite and has always been careful not to dissent from the Magisterium of the Church? British Catholics find the passions he arouses rather puzzling. But American Catholics dont. Or, to put it another way, the phenomenon of James Martin SJ tells us a lot about the differences between the Church in Britain and the United States.

In middle age, Fr Martin has moved to the Left. He hasnt drifted into progressive politics, as some priests do: rather, he has danced his way from one bandwagon to the next, acquiring a formidable following along the way. He has nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter, but his fan base predates social media.

He is at ease to put it mildly in Hollywood. He prepared the late Philip Seymour Hoffman for his role as a suspected sex abuser with a twinkle in his eye in the film Doubt. More recently he took the Spider-Man heartthrob Andrew Garfield, who played a Jesuit in Martin Scorseses Silence, through the Spiritual Exercises. As a result, Garfield from an agnostic Jewish background says he found himself falling in love with Jesus Christ. According to America magazine, the dogmatically left-liberal publication that tirelessly promotes Martin, the priest was hesitant about the experiment.

His critics find that hard to believe: they see Jim Martin as a self-promoter and celebrity-hunter. This may or may not be fair but its worth asking why celebrities respond to this Jesuits message. Is it because he tells them what they want to hear?

Not necessarily. You cannot understand Fr Martin without reading The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, a far better book than his anodyne spiritual autobiography. Its an elegantly written, user-friendly guide to something very tough: the spirituality of St Ignatius Loyola, which requires almost obsessive self-examination. Martins own commitment to this process is surprisingly fierce: for example, he loves the austerity of daily Mass. He name-checks all the usual liberal suspects Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Sister Helen Prejean but also writes admiringly of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Michael Novak and Evelyn Waugh In other writings he has berated Hollywood for its anti-Catholicism, and especially its sneering attitude towards celibacy.

And yet unfortunately there is another side to Fr Martin, one which has become intrusive since the election of Pope Francis. He thinks more clearly than the first Jesuit pontiff but, to an even greater degree than Francis, he embraces the fashionable consensus on just about everything in a manner which inevitably alienates conservative Catholics. And, like the Pope, he doesnt necessarily help the people whose suffering he is trying to address.

Has Amoris Laetitia made life easier for divorced and remarried Catholics, who now find themselves at the centre of one of the most unproductive rows in Church history? Its increasingly clear that the answer is no. Likewise, James Martins Building a Bridge is not the priceless gift to gay Catholics that its fans clearly think it is.

This short book is pompously subtitled How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. The message is that Catholics in same-sex partnerships can be reconciled to the Church through the exercise of these virtues. But can they? Surely there is an insurmountable barrier to reconciliation namely, the Churchs teaching that all homosexual acts are sinful.

This is something Fr Martin refuses to debate. Many gay Catholics are appalled by a teaching that, in their view, is tantamount to the Church saying that its OK to be left-handed so long as you dont write with your left hand. Building a Bridge does not defend the Church against this charge; nor does it propose any change to teaching. As the conservative Catholic columnist Matthew Schmitz observes, it skips over fundamental questions of sexual morality and concentrates instead on good manners.

The paradoxical effect has been to provoke displays of aggression by some conservative Catholics. There has always been a fine line between defending the Churchs prohibition on homosexual acts and being nasty about gays. That line has all but disappeared since the books publication thus appearing to strengthen Fr Martins case. He knows that, if you goad your opponents, they will play into your hands with ad hominem attacks. Pope Francis knows it, too. So does the Holy Fathers close ally, Fr Antonio Spadaro.

Is it a coincidence that all three men are Jesuits? Fr Martin loves to deplore personal attacks on liberal priests yet he does so in a passive-aggressive manner that only makes matters worse. His enemies call him slippery Jim. That sounds mean, but perhaps they have a point. For example, Fr Martin is on record as saying that he will never oppose Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Yet he has also been recorded telling a gay man, in a question-and-answer session, that I do hope that in 10 years time youll be able to kiss your partner or, you know, soon, to be your husband [at the sign of peace during Mass]. Why not?

You could interpret this as intellectual dishonesty or as evidence that Fr Martin is torn between his true convictions and fidelity to the Society of Jesus. Either way, it suggests that his ministry to gay people has over-reached itself. His talents should be employed elsewhere which is not a euphemism for silencing him (an impossible task in any case).

The truth is that James Martin is, like many of us, a victim of the culture wars. The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything can be read with profit by any Catholic or non-believers who are trying to live a good life but dont know how to start. It is a book that has led people to Christ the authors clear intention and will continue to do so. But the Fr Martin who writes in America, and who has taken to siding automatically with the progressive side in any argument, is deliberately cutting himself off from Catholics who honestly disagree with his political opinions. Worse, he is provoking some of them to react fiercely against him and the people on whose behalf he claims to speak.

That is the nature of Americas culture wars. It is not the nature of Ignatian spirituality. If the engaging Fr Martin really cannot see that, then perhaps he should be learning, rather than teaching, fearless methods of self-examination.

Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald and associate editor of The Spectator

This article first appeared in the May 11 2018 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

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Caught in the culture wars | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Government health care. Racial equality. Income disparity.

Theyre familiar battles in 2017. But not so familiar seven decades ago.

Yet many seeds of todays culture wars were sown in an unlikely place and time: a Finnish farming community in rural Minnesota at the height of World War II.

Though the global conflict still raged, it was becoming clear by 1944 that the United States and its allies would win. But what kind of world would we live in when the cataclysm ended?

The question was on many minds, including that of Theodore Brameld, an energetic, idealistic many would say left-wing education professor at the University of Minnesota.

Forty miles west of Duluth, in the town of Floodwood (pop. 570), Brameld conducted an experiment that one academic called the first example of educational futurism.

Brameld challenged the entire junior and senior classes at Floodwood High School 51 students in all to create a blueprint for the future, to envision the postwar world theyd lead.

For four months in the spring of 1944, for two hours a day, they studied an intensive curriculum that pushed them to draw conclusions about government, society and how America could make its way in the new world.

These rural Minnesota kids, many of them from immigrant homes, came out in favor of radical ideas like national health care and supported a national public works program, public ownership of natural resources, eliminating the poll tax and lowering the voting age.

Brameld published the conclusions of the Floodwood project in a book, Design for America a thin, rather dry academic summary. After its publication years before the red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy burst on the scene Bramelds book would become the center of a controversy stirred by the National Council for American Education, a right-wing lobbying organization.

Calling the project an attempt to indoctrin[ate] high school students with collectivist and anti-American ideology, the council launched a national campaign against the book, its author and the students.

One of those students was my mother.

The Finns were on board

Brameld chose fertile ground for his experiment. Floodwood was largely settled by Finns, who were widely known for their liberal views.

Many were poor farmers who had formed cooperative organizations to market their produce. Mayor Sanfrid Ruohoniemi my grandfather was calling for government ownership of the towns utilities. And the weekly Floodwood Forum editorialized strongly in favor of international cooperation in the postwar world.

Brameld was using Floodwood to show that issues and social ideology could be dealt with through a level of discourse that would allow students to explore and decide for themselves, said Craig Kridel, an emeritus professor of education at the University of South Carolina who has studied Bramelds work.

Brameld was a rising star in the academic world, and the Floodwood project would give him an important calling card. He didnt rig the results of his experiment, Kridel said, but he definitely picked a favorable laboratory.

He knew that there was a very strong Finnish socialist tradition in Floodwood, Kridel said. He felt it was a community that would resonate with the ideas.

Brameld also pioneered a philosophy of education he called reconstructionism the idea that schools could lead the way in reconstructing society with reasoned self-examination.

Brameld believed that was the point of schools to be a meeting ground to explore ideas in an open way, Kridel said.

My mother, Ann Ruohoniemi, grew up in a Finnish immigrant household and didnt speak English until she went to school. She was a junior at the time of Bramelds experiment; her name appears in the books acknowledgments, along with the other 50 students who took part names like Matalamaki, Perkkio and Karkiainen.

Yet I never heard her mention Design for America or her part in it. She died young, at 46, when I was about the same age she was during Bramelds experiment. I only happened to learn about the Floodwood project when I found articles about it in some old clipping files the Star Tribune was disposing of after digitizing its news archive.

Collectivist, anti-American

The letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star got straight to the point:

I wonder how many of us know that our state university, supported by taxes, is engaged in teaching socialism and communism to our youth?

That note from a Minneapolis reader kicked off a commotion that kept university officials scrambling to defend themselves for years afterward, generating what U of M President J.L. Morrill called nasty and damaging publicity.

The National Council for American Education had discovered Design for America. In 1948 four years after the Floodwood project and three years after publication of Bramelds book the council sent a two-page flier denouncing the project to its national mailing list.

Soon, the university was getting letters from powerful figures across the country corporate executives, legislators and politicians, including former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, who was then president of the University of Pennsylvania.

They asked how the university had gotten itself involved with teaching American youth that Communism and Socialism offer a way of life superior to our American system, as the flier put it.

As the controversy roiled, Morrill strongly supported the universitys right to academic inquiry.

The fact is that if we had the kind of university in which only our views, yours and mine, were held or expressed, it would be no good really as a university at all, Morrill wrote to Richard Griggs, a member of the universitys Board of Regents.

But Morrill also was careful to distance himself from Brameld, who by then had left the U for New York University.

Brameld himself wrote a fiery response in the Minneapolis Star, denouncing the smear-sheet published by a group of notorious native fascists of the kind who were driven into their holes during the war.

The debate continues

In 1976, Kridel, then a young teaching associate, sent a survey to the Floodwood students who had taken part in Design for America. Nineteen of the 51 responded. (My mother wasnt among them.) Their responses were mixed.

The project gave me a more complete understanding of being involved, one student wrote.

I think the project stunk and was a complete waste of time and education, said another.

Taught us how to judge for ourselves by studying facts as we saw them, rather than being told! wrote a third.

Addressing perhaps the crucial question in the Floodwood controversy, Kridel asked the former students if they felt they had been indoctrinated by the project. Three said yes and two didnt respond; 14 said no.

Some 70 years after the students of Floodwood created their blueprint for the future, debates over what America should look like still rage. And topics like government health care, racial equality and income disparity are just as polarizing.

The Floodwood project itself lives on only in dusty files at the U of M archives and in a copy of Design for America at the Minneapolis public library.

It hasnt been checked out since 1962.

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Today's culture wars foretold in tiny Floodwood, Minn., 70 ...

Increasingly, corporations are finding themselves called upon to becomewillingly or unwillinglyparticipants in a range of social and political controversies. While retail businesses long have been accustomed to consumer-driven activism such as boycotts and publicity campaigns, the current movement is significantly different. Today, institutional investors and other stakeholders are asking companies to take public stances on a wide array of topics, some of which may be wholly unrelated to the targeted companys corporate purpose. Investment funds themselves are feeling this pressure, as they are being asked by their own investors to become activists on social issues, and the rapid pace of recent external eventscombined with the impact of social mediacan demand hasty statements or actions.

In response, corporations need to proceed thoughtfully, deliberately, and with caution. While corporate policymaking and public statements on social and political issues are essentially management decisions, the board should be kept informed and has the right to weigh in, if it so chooses. At the same time, the need to respond quickly often necessitates that management take the lead. Ideally, the board should be comfortable with managements message, plan of action, and evaluation of the attendant risks.

In his 2018 letter to CEOs, BlackRock founder Larry Fink wrote that [t]o prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. This most-recent Fink letter has been cited by some as a call for companies to become social activists. Yet one can take the view that companies have societal responsibilities and, at the same time, support the view that companies do not fulfill those responsibilities by weighing in on social or political issues outside their corporate purpose. Making a positive contribution to society takes many different forms. Society benefits enormously from a company that pursues its corporate purpose with integrity and generosity, requiring leadership from its management and decency from all employees. The American economy, and a great many other elements of American life, depend on the success of companies that dedicate themselves to doing business honestly and well. Chief executives should take care that they do not create needless controversy by being drawn into social issues of the day and thereby undermining the success of their corporate endeavors. Without sustained profitability, after all, companies are unable to have a meaningful impact of any kind over the longer term.

Over the past decade and a half, environmental, social, and governance issues have come to the forefront of business discourse. Shareholder proposals under SEC Rule 14a-8 in 2017 were concentrated on social and environmental issues. On the environmental front, support has surged in recent years for proposals requesting that companies disclose how they are assessing climate risk, and three such proposals received majority support in 2017 for the first time. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have advocated for increased leadership and oversight regarding ESG risk and the integration of sustainability-related risk into corporate strategy. For many companies, environmental risk should be overseen by the board of directors as part of risk oversight generally, although for some, environmental risks may be overseen by a dedicated board committee that then reports to the board. Boards may benefit from director education on environmental and social risks as well as regular briefings on company-specific issues and how they are managed by the company. Boards should also be aware of any particular areas of significant shareholder focus and should be comfortable with the companys external reporting on ESG issues.

Gender diversity on boards and in executive leadership is a key social issue for investors. The related issues of gender pay equity and sexual harassment have also increased in prominence, and the business community has begun to view gender diversity and pay equity as essential to a healthy and successful enterprise. Happily, this is an area where the business case and the social benefit are aligned. Data show that diverse boards lead to better performance, risk management, and returns. Going forward, boards with a lack of diversity will find themselves under increasing pressure to take meaningful steps toward inclusion. Investors do and will continue to urge companies to remedy gender pay inequities and maintain a workplace free from sexual harassment so as to attract and retain top female talent.

Sustainability-related environmental concerns and enterprise-enhancing diversity initiatives are examples of the easier cases. It makes good business sense to take steps that are both societally beneficial and strategically sound. The difficulty comes when companies are called to address issues that relate to a small element of their business, or issues that are tangential or even unrelated to the corporate purpose, especially those that are high-profile and controversial. In recent months, companies have found themselves under pressure to take public stances on topics as varied as sugar consumption, the manufacture and sale of guns, immigration policy, and device use by children.

Social media has also irrevocably altered the dynamic for public companies. While very few investors will use social media platforms to communicate with the companies that they have invested in, they generally take notice of social media trends. Moreover, it is very difficult to tell with social media platforms whether the people who are targeting the companys action or inaction on any particular issue have any relationship with the company (i.e., customer, supplier, employee) or whether they are simply individuals motivated by social and political factors. In todays world, companies must actively monitor social media platforms while taking care not to react too quicklyor too slowly to any particular trend or perspective. This is further complicated by the fact that two individuals with different beliefs can receive vastly different social media news feeds, leading them to opposite conclusions. One person may view the company as being criticized for its stance while another individual will be more likely to see positive stories and comments due to the way the different social media platforms function. In addition, social media has significantly truncated the time periods under which companies must respond before any particular social media story goes viral. This is part of the reason why management has the primary responsibility to respond to these issues while keeping the board apprised of any concerns and reactions: Management can respond within minutes or hours while it might take a board hours or days to be in a position to respond.

Delta Airlines attempt to stay neutral in the gun control debate shows the futility of any bid to please all sides, and even the impossibility of avoiding controversy altogether in certain situations. According to the Washington Post, Deltaunder public pressureended a discount available to members of the National Rifle Association to travel to their annual convention, a type of discount routinely offered to many other groups. Delta announced that this step was an attempt to refrain from entering this debate and focus on its business. Nonetheless, Delta immediately encountered fierce political pushback from the State of Georgia, where the airline is based, as well as from the NRA and its supporters, which resulted in Delta losing a $38 million tax break. Similarly, when Kevin Plank, chief executive of Under Armour, stepped down from President Trumps American Manufacturing Council in the wake of racially-driven tensions in Charlottesville, Va., he cast it as a neutral move, stating that Under Armor engages in innovation and sports, not politics. His resignation was taken as a political statement nonetheless, as were prior favorable comments he had made about President Trumps pro-business policies, and shortly thereafter, Under Armour took out a full-page ad in its hometown newspaper to clarify the companys stances on a range of hot-button issues including immigration, equal rights, and diversity.

The Delta and Under Armour examples show how quickly a seemingly minor political statement can explode into public controversy. If a chief executive makes a comment about a political issue, or if a company changes or establishes a policy that seems to have political implications, almost overnight there can be enormous public pressure for the CEO or the company to express a viewpoint on a wide range of issues. Under Armours business has nothing to do with the travel ban, yet that issue was headline news at the time and thus had to be included in the companys clarification. Businesses hardly wish to alienate a sizable portion of their customer base, yet in a country intensely divided along political lines, outrage becomes inevitable the moment a company enters the culture wars on one side or the other. The slippery slope from one controversial issue to all the controversial issues is very steep. Furthermore, attempts to remain neutral in a particular debate will often be viewed as picking a side. While it is managements job to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of red and blue America, the board may find it necessary to intervene if it becomes convinced that management decisions in this regard are likely to be harmful to the company and its shareholders.

Milton Friedman wrote that social responsibility is one way for a corporation to generate goodwill as a byproduct of expenditures that are entirely justified in its own self-interest. Yet in the current climate, that goodwill lasts only until the next issue comes along. Public statements on social issues are quickly forgotten, and the stream of controversial topics is never-ending. Friedman cautioned decades ago that the doctrine of social responsibility taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity.

It is as fraught in the current climate to cite Milton Friedman as it is Larry Fink. Yet there is no need to choose between the two. Larry Fink is correct that companies serve a social purpose and should make a positive contribution to society. And Milton Friedmans limitation is worth heeding. A company that seeks to serve every social purpose would be hard-pressed to deliver financial success at the same time. Profitability, achieved through ethical business practices, is the engine that drives corporate impact and, with responsible leadership, produces meaningful benefits to society that last longer than the next news cycle.

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Corporations and the Culture Wars - corpgov.law.harvard.edu