Punishment Envy And The Perils Of Institutional Engagement

Every parent of multiple kids knows about punishment envy. You punished me for doing that, why aren’t you punishing him for it? Why does she get to do things I wasn’t allowed to do? It’s not fair. You love her more. You treat him better because he’s a boy.

Parenting is absurdly difficult. “It sure would be helpful,” I sometimes proclaim, “to have a clinical child psychologist to deal with this situation.” I say this to my wife the clinical child psychologist, who does not tend to react with an attitude of solace. Life is complex. Every kid is different, every situation is different. Why did I treat this kid differently for sneaking out than that kid? From that kid’s perspective it’s rank discrimination. From my perspective I caught that kid, covered in scratches from the hedge outside their window, making a deafening racket climbing through the wooden blinds, to find me sitting in their desk chair doomscrolling Facebook, saying “‘sup?” You lift the blinds and go under them, for Christ’s sake. And don’t get me started on the cameras. What is your strategy, exactly, in tiptoeing like a cartoon burglar past a security camera? Do you think it’s sound-activated? What did you expect to happen when you engaged in a prolonged examination of the camera to adjust its field of view while on camera? I feel disrespected by the lack of OpSec is what I’m saying, I guess.

I may have strayed from my point, which is about punishment envy. Institutions, like parents, punish. Sometimes they punish speech. Punishment can be take the form of actual official censorship, like suspending or firing someone for their speech, or the form of harsh criticism, like issuing a statement condemning someone’s speech. Perceived disparities in these punishments lead to tumult. Punishing leads to demands for more punishment.

We’ve been seeing a storm of institutional punishments since the Hamas attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023. They’ve multiplied in the wake of Israel’s military response against Gaza. We’ve seen some universities suspend and investigate professors for heated outbursts about the war, some ban Students for Justice in Palestine, and some issue issue statements implying — or sometimes outright claiming — that certain student or professor speech about the war is bigoted. Law firms have withdrawn offers to law students over their speech about the war and fired associates for criticizing the ...