Is the former secretary of state (and current Hoover Institution fellow) George P. Shultz just "any fascist" while the former secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is an "egregious" one?
That is the question David Bernstein somewhat comically poses after reading some remarks by the Stanford psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo. "Hoover is in a sense independent of Stanford, but it's always linked to Stanford," Zimbardo told the San Jose Mercury News, responding to Rumsfeld's appointment as a visiting fellow at Hoover, a conservative public-policy think tank on the Stanford campus. "They can have any fascist they want there, and they do. ... We've never protested before, but this seems to be egregious." Zimbardo is spearheading a protest petition that has attracted over 2,000 signatures, mostly from professors and students.
(Zimbardo is well known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment. In a recent essay for The Chronicle Review, he explained the relevance of his work in light of the abuse that transpired in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.)
The Rumsfeld controversy comes on the heels of Dinesh D'Souza's sudden departure from the Hoover Institution. As you may recall, D'Souza's latest book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, was not very well received by critics.
