Did This Antitrust Advocate Get Fired From A Nonprofit Because He Criticized Google?
Today, a writer and researcher named Barry Lynn was fired from his position as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. Normally, almost no one pays attention to the personnel decisions of public policy nonprofits. But people are paying attention to Lynn because he has told The New York Times that he was fired due to his writings criticizing Google — which happens to be a major funder of New America. Here's what you need to know about this unfolding controversy.
Lynn Has Been Called 'The Intellectual Godfather' Of The Democrats' Antitrust Platform
The author of two books about how monopolies and unfettered globalization threaten democracy, Lynn has been writing and talking about antitrust issues for 15 years. HuffPost profiled him about a year ago, writing:
A former business journalist, Lynn has spent more than a decade carving out his own fiefdom at a calm, centrist Washington think tank called the New America Foundation. In the process, he has changed the way D.C. elites think about corporate power.
[HuffPost]
After the Democrats included anti-monopoly policies in its platform earlier this summer, The Daily Beast wrote this about Lynn:
Barry Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C., could reasonably be described as the intellectual godfather of much of the new material that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) proposed…
For years, Lynn has been warning about the pernicious effect monopolies have on all facets of American life: from the food one eats, to the financial system one uses, to the forms of communications on which one depends. And for years, his work has been restricted to the usual confines of advocacy and academia, fleshed out in white papers and articles—or, as one top Senate aide put it, "relegated to nerd world."
In Late June, Lynn Wrote A Statement Praising The Fine Google Had To Pay The EU For Breaking Antitrust Rules
Earlier this summer, the EU fined Google €2.42 billion for promoting its own products in search results. Writing on behalf of the Open Market initiative, Lynn's 10-person antitrust team at the New America Foundation, Lynn congratulated the EU for fining Google and called on the American government to take similar action.
Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today. By requiring that Google give equal treatment to rival services instead of privileging its own, Vestager is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend. We call upon U.S. enforcers, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and states attorneys general, to build upon this important precedent, both in respect to Google and to other dominant platform monopolists including Amazon. U.S. enforcers should apply the traditional American approach to network monopoly, which is to cleanly separate ownership of the network from ownership of the products and services sold on that network, as they did in the original Microsoft case of the late 1990s.
After He Published The Statement, New America Told Lynn It Was Cutting Ties With His Team
According to Lynn, via an article published in The New York Times today, Eric Schmidt — the CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company — "communicated his displeasure with the statement" to Anne-Marie Slaughter, the CEO of New America. (You might recognize Slaughter's name from "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," the blockbuster Atlantic cover story about work-life balance that she wrote in 2012.) Schmidt was the chairman of New America until 2016, and he, Google and his family foundation have donated $21 million to New America.
Lynn says that Slaughter called him to her office a couple of days after he published his statement and told him that the Open Markets initiative would have to leave New America.
Ms. Slaughter told Mr. Lynn that "the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways," according to an email from Ms. Slaughter to Mr. Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.
While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was "in no way based on the content of your work," Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of "imperiling the institution as a whole."
Lynn Thinks That New America Exiled Open Markets Out Of Fear Of Losing Funding From Google
Lynn told the Times that he thinks he and his team were pushed out because Slaughter was afraid of losing Schmidt's and Google's funding.
Mr. Lynn, in an interview, charged that Ms. Slaughter caved to pressure from Mr. Schmidt and Google, and, in so doing, set the desires of a donor over the think tank's intellectual integrity.
"Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings," Mr. Lynn said. "People are so afraid of Google now."
This belief doesn't seem totally unfounded. In 2016, he organized a conference about tech monopolies like Google, and Slaughter accused him of "imperiling funding."
In the run-up to that conference, Ms. Slaughter and New America's lead fund-raiser in emails to Mr. Lynn indicated that Google was concerned that its positions were not going to be represented, and that it was not given advanced notice of the event.
"We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points," Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to "just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others."
After The New York Times Article Was Published, Slaughter Called It False
This morning, Slaughter tweeted that the New York Times story about Open Markets' ouster from New America was false.
She later released a statement asserting that Google never asked her to push out Open Markets.
Today's New York Times story alleges that Google lobbied New America to expel the Open Markets program because of this press release. I want to be clear: this claim is absolutely false.
(The New York Times didn't actually say that Google lobbied New America to push out Open Markets — it just suggested that Slaughter may have feared losing funding if she didn't constrain Lynn's work.)
Slaughter went on to explain that Lynn was pushed out because of "his repeated refusal to adhere to New America's standards of openness and institutional collegiality" and announced that he had been officially terminated.
For the past two months, we have been working with Barry Lynn to spin out Open Markets as an independent program, as we have done with other programs, to preserve his leadership, keep the program together, and maintain a strong relationship with New America. As I reiterated to him in June, his repeated refusal to adhere to New America's standards of openness and institutional collegiality meant that we could no longer work together as part of the same institution. I continued, however, to seek a cooperative solution with Barry; unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful.
Today, we made the difficult decision to terminate Barry Lynn. However, we are proud of the work Open Markets has done under his leadership and with the contributions of many others. We remain committed to continuing work on an open and competitive economy.
She later clarified on Twitter that the Times article wasn't factually incorrect but that it took quotes "out of context."
However, The Intercept obtained the same emails quoted by the Times and says that the Times did not take them out of context.
The Intercept reviewed the full termination email sent from Slaughter to Lynn that was cited and quoted in the Times report and found that they were reported and characterized with complete accuracy. The full text does, however, show that Slaughter threatened to make Lynn's firing more difficult for him and his team should it generate any negative publicity for New America.
Google, For Its Part, Denies Having Anything To Do With Lynn's Firing
A Google spokesperson told the Times that it respects think tanks' independence.
Google rejected any suggestion that it played a role in New America's split with Open Markets. Riva Sciuto, a Google spokeswoman, pointed out that the company supports a wide range of think tanks and other nonprofits focused on information access and internet regulation. "We don't agree with every group 100 percent of the time, and while we sometimes respectfully disagree, we respect each group's independence, personnel decisions and policy perspectives."
Lynn's Colleagues At Open Markets Say That Their Expulsion Proves Their Point About The Dangers Of Monopolies
Lina Khan, a fellow with Open Markets, wrote a tweetstorm describing her research on market consolidation and New America's changing attitude toward her team's work.
Open Markets fellow Matt Stoller made a similar point in an interview with The Intercept.
But for Matt Stoller, up until very recently the most vocal member of the Open Markets team, there's a significant upshot to getting the boot. "I think the thing that's great about this, whenever you're in politics and policy, it's hard to prove you're effective," he told The Intercept. "This is just Google just saying you guys are too effective." Even Lynn shares the feeling: "We've been martyr-ized," he added. "We'll be growing."
