Stanger Talks History of Whistleblowing

After a year of news stories about Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, Russell J. Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics Allison Stanger set the record straight on Jan. 10.

Talking about the cases of Edward Snowden, the NSA, and Wikileaks, Stanger was critical of those she defined as whistleblowers while also seeming to embrace the long-standing American tradition.

“Reverence for whistleblowing is at the heart of the American exception, and it’s one of America’s signature features,” she said. “Though not commonly perceived as such, whistleblowing is a quintessentially American activity with a long history.”

Stanger spoke to a noticeably older audience, which gathered in the sardined conference room of the Robert A. Jones ’59 House to hear the professor present her talk titled “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Leaks: The Story of Whistleblowing in America.”

One of the few students in attendance was Kate McCreary ’15. A student of political science and education, McCreary came to the talk out of pure curiosity.

“One thing I liked was that [Stanger] was really focused on legality; the law for the protection of whistleblowers includes those who revealed not only actions that are illegal but also improper,” McCreary said. “I was talking to my friends about this afterwards. It seems almost worse if there were something the government was doing that was legal but that the majority of Americans would disagree with if they knew about it.”

Stanger, who holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and has taught Political Science and Economics at Middlebury 23 years, is about to add a second book (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Leaks) to her repertoire of contributions to the world of political science.

A main point in her discussion was the influence of technology on national security, especially in reference to the National Security Agency (NSA).

“The Fourth Amendment protects your personal home computer from illegal search and seizure,” Stanger said. “But once you post anything up in the ‘cloud,’ you lose that protection. The Fourth Amendment’s protection largely ends where virtual reality begins, since Americans are volunteering to share in this way and are not being forced to do so.”

Stanger highlighted these nuances when talking about the case of Edward Snowden, who she says is not yet declared a whistleblower and who, “if the Supreme Court were to rule that some of the NSA activities were unconstitutional… would probably morph from a traitor to a patriot.”

Another issue brought up was the conflict between democracy and security.

“Democracy demands that the people know what the government is doing…but this is what I call the paradox of whistleblowing in America. On the one hand, Americans view whistleblowing as valuable. On the other, they implicitly range security as the supreme value trumping all others. ”

Democracy, at the core of our American identity, plays an integral role in whistleblowing, and in the industrialized world, Stanger points to how the two are in some ways co-dependent.

On this point, McCreary said, “Something that I found really interesting, and refreshing too, was that [Stanger] was super critical of a lot of the ways that our country does national security, but also, at the end, seemed to really adhere to the idea of American exceptionalism in that regard. I thought that was a combination that doesn’t normally happen.”

“American democracy was not designed to serve capitalism and free markets alone – it was designed to serve the people,” Stanger said.

Stanger said the problems plaguing a world power create inaction on the part of most citizens.

“Today, plagued by financial scandals, we seem both fearful of corruption and resigned to it. We seem uncertain about whom it hurts and what difference it ultimately makes” Stanger said.

In the end, Stanger suggested, whistleblowers may have more conviction than the average American.

“The republic seems to be perpetually corrupted, but instead of being outraged, we are not sure it matters. Well, whistleblowers think it matters,” Stanger said.

The result, Stanger said, was that whistleblowers embody an American value of wanting to do more.

“Whistleblowers take things everyone views as natural or inescapable and say that they aren’t. And, in so doing, challenge all of us to dream of a better day,” Stanger said. “What can be more American than that?”

As for the older audience, McCreary explained, “There are normally more students. One reason for their absence is that people went skiing. Also the subject of this talk is more accessible and interesting to a broader audience so that probably is why more townspeople wanted to be there to hear it.”