Claremont Institute, Home of ‘Stop the Steal’ Lawyer, Returns to Political Science Conference

Back in September of 2021, Dave Karpf was reading about how former Chapman University law professor John Eastman advised Donald Trump on how to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That’s when Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said he learned something from Twitter that unsettled him.

His fellow political scientists had spotted that Eastman, who had spoken at the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol, was slated to be a panelist at the upcoming American Political Science Association conference. The insurrection happened close to home for Karpf, who said he lives “close enough to the Capitol that when they were assaulting it— My kids were in preschool, I couldn’t take my daughter outside for worry that we were going to face tear gas.”

On social media, political scientists were both joking about how inappropriate Eastman’s conference appearance would be and saying how “terribly” unacceptable it was. “People were complaining about how nobody was going to do anything,” Karpf said—so he did something himself, penning an open letter urging APSA to kick Eastman off its membership roster.

“John Eastman has violated our discipline’s professional ethics by participating in the dangerous attempt to overturn the institution of electoral democracy in the United States,” Karpf wrote. He urged the association to strip the Claremont Institute—the pro-Trump think tank where Eastman was and is a senior fellow and the founding director of its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence—of its status as one of APSA’s Related Groups.

“Claremont Institute has been an active proponent [of] falsehoods and misinformation about the 2020 election and its aftermath,” Karpf wrote.

His letter noted that Claremont was advertising that donors could buy spots on its panels at the conference for $5,000 each. Claremont president Ryan Williams told Inside Higher Ed that language had been on its website, but he said the institute hadn’t received such a donation for at least 18 years and that it took the advertisement down after APSA said it violated policy.

Karpf also noted that APSA's Jan. 11, 2021, statement on the insurrection had condemned organizations like Claremont. "The American Political Science Association strongly condemns President Trump, Republican legislators and all those who have continuously endorsed and disseminated falsehoods and misinformation, and who have worked to overturn the results of a free and fair Presidential Election," it said, adding that "no tolerance should be given to the insurrectionists."

After the open letter, Karpf and his supporters appeared to win. Eastman was set to speak on two Claremont-hosted panels at APSA’s 2021 conference, but those panels never happened.

APSA leaders told Claremont that many members were upset with it hosting panels and, especially, with Eastman being a panelist, Williams said. Citing “security concerns,” APSA moved all of Claremont’s panels to online only.

Williams said APSA leaders never specified what their security concerns were. “I suspect they were worried about having protesters” and the attendant security costs, Williams speculated. Dan Gibson, an APSA spokesman who answered some of Inside Higher Ed’s questions via email, suggested the concerns were related to COVID-19. “Due to spacing limitations at the event, we could not have had all panels in-person,” Gibson wrote.

In any case, Claremont went ahead and canceled its panels entirely, protesting what Williams called APSA’s “semi-cancellation.” By that time, more than 270 political scientists had signed Karpf’s open letter objecting to Eastman and Claremont.

So, for 2021, 2022 and 2023, Claremont hosted no panels at APSA, where Williams said it had been a major presence since the early 1980s. The institute disappeared as a Related Group from APSA’s website.

“Claremont was not banned from the annual meeting,” Gibson said.

But Karpf kept watch for the organization’s possible return. “Every year, I click on the related groups, see that Claremont isn’t there, and feel a dash of pride,” Karpf told Inside Higher Ed. “The open letter in 2021 was an episode of APSA members coming together, making a collective demand and achieving a result. It’s nice to see a little annual reminder of that.”

Then on Friday, during last week’s APSA conference in Philadelphia, Karpf checked this year’s agenda. He didn’t get his nice little annual reminder. Under the online category Divisions, and under the further subcategory Partner Associations, Claremont was back. And it had seven panels.

The Return

On Thursday, for example, you could catch Claremont’s “The New and Old Dangers of the Intel and the Administrative States—or, How the Intel and Administrative States Became One.” On Friday, you could attend “The Future of Civil Rights Reform,” and on Saturday, “The Supreme Court’s Recent Term and Its Future” or “The 2024 Elections and the Future of American Politics.”

Williams said being an APSA Partner Association is free and allows Claremont to skip the normal review process for panel topics and panelists. Gibson—who didn’t provide interviews with any APSA leaders Monday, saying staff were still traveling—didn’t explain the specific benefits Partner Associations have, or why APSA chose to make Claremont one. The conference listed 19 Partner Associations hosting panels at APSA, including the Society for Catholic Social Scientists, the Women’s Caucus for Political Science and the Association for Israel Studies.

Williams said the “symbiotic” relationship between APSA and Claremont has historically been that the institute’s presence attracts scholars—“friends” and “fellow travelers,” Williams said—to APSA who normally wouldn’t attend, and the association collects those attendees’ registration fees. He said Claremont’s return to the conference provided a networking opportunity and a chance for its young scholars to advance their careers.

“Our goal is to have some interesting and stimulating content for our friends who are at the conference and anyone who would like to attend,” Williams said. He said, “Our mission at APSA has remained constant even in recent years when our opinions about Donald Trump have caused some controversy, especially with some of the APSA membership.”

Karpf said Claremont still isn’t listed as a Partner Association on APSA’s website—yet there it was on the conference agenda. “I think it’s pretty fair to say that this was actively hidden from the membership,” Karpf said. He accused APSA of “governance by cowardice.”

Claremont, Karpf said, is “trying to overturn electoral democracy.” He took his concerns to Substack, where he wrote Saturday that “APSA didn’t even wait to see if Claremont could go a whole election cycle without calling for the overthrow of electoral democracy.”

Williams said Eastman himself didn’t attend the conference. “John has been very busy of late, so rather than add one more thing to his strained schedule, we didn’t have him on the program,” Williams said.

Gibson said, “Eastman is not a current APSA member,” but didn’t say whether that was because APSA ousted him as Karpf desired.

But APSA members have taken issue online with someone who was a Claremont panelist last week: John Yoo, the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoo, as deputy assistant U.S. attorney general, legally justified the use of torture during the George W. Bush administration.

Karpf noted that Eastman is still a member of Claremont’s board and said that “Claremont has made it clear that they are a significant part of Eastman’s project” to overturn electoral democracy.

Asked whether Claremont opposes electoral democracy, Williams said that was “a ridiculous charge.”

“We certainly raised issues with the many documented ways in which the 2020 election was conducted outside of normal constitutional procedures—if not unconstitutionally,” Williams said. Asked whether he believes Trump won in 2020, Williams said, “I haven’t seen any evidence that proves that he did, no, but we have serious reservations about especially the extraordinary circumstance of COVID being used as an excuse to loosen, considerably, rules around voting and vote counting, which we find troubling.”

Williams said, without Claremont, APSA runs the risk of becoming “an echo chamber without a diverse set of voices from across the American landscape of political and even scholarly opinion.” He said its members “should be grateful” for Claremont providing some diversity of thought.