How To Stand Up To A Bully Consistent With My Game Theory and MLK: Lessons for Columbia and Harvard from the Underground Railroad

          I just discussed yesterday that I’m working on a new paper that vindicates “turning the other cheek” in a symmetric 2-player, 3-player, or 4-player Prisoner's Dilemma game. Does this mean, a fortiori, that institutions like Columbia should cave to Donald Trump, now that it looks like Columbia is being stripped of its accreditation after giving in to Donald Trump?

            First, let’s be clear that this conclusion makes a tactic assumption – Trump is going after most of academia, including academic institutions that have spoken truth to power and refused to “kiss the ring.” Harvard hasn’t caved to DT, and I clap for joy it hasn’t, though it isn’t my institution and I’ve never had a Harvard affiliation (except for winning the Harvard round robin in high school debate). But we (and by we, I mean society) don’t have a counterfactual universe where Columbia sued the bananas out of Trump, so there’s no scientific basis to know if Harvard’s suing versus Columbia’s caving caused the difference. 

            Still, lest I be misinterpreted, I will be absolutely crystal clear about what my scholarship does not speak to. Although my new answer to the Prisoner’s Dilemma preliminarily finds that “turning the other cheek” in symmetric games is the best approach, it is silent on multiplayer games, or on asymmetric games, and there are other outstanding game theorists in political science such as James Fearon of Stanford, and his work speaks to asymmetric games and suggests a completely different approach (i.e. not caving). I’ll let James Fearon speak to his own work if he feels compelled to weigh in. 

There was an article recently in the New York Times (my all-time favorite paper, and a former client), but this particular reporter screwed up, and badly, because she compared Columbia’s caving to Donald Trump to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma absolutely, and I cannot emphasize this enough, does not stand for this because of the massive power differential between the two players. In the comments on LinkedIn, a reader asked a question that caused me to bring up RAND, an Air Force think tank in Santa Monica that I endorse with my whole heart and soul because RAND has historically had some of the smartest game theorists in the whole world. And I mentioned the work of Merrill Flood, who invented a precursor game to the Prisoner’s Dilemma known as the “Pennies Game” which is the same as the PD except one of the players is a whole “hell” of a lot more powerful than the other. 

According to Flood, these two players playing asymmetrically could each opt between an efficient (from a Nashian approach) or a fair (maximizing social utility, from a von Neumann/Dyson/Plotkin/me) perspective. While it’s entirely unrealistic, players in an experiment at RAND when presented with this scenario voluntarily had one player (the one with the more power) make more money if the weaker player also got to keep money, instead of having one player with a little money and the other player with no money. I have no ability to defeat this reasoning currently because I’m not working on it, and Flood seems pretty smart, and also because I’ve vowed to never, ever, and I mean never, work on asymmetric games because they aren’t my problem. Nash is my problem, and by problem, I mean my life’s work, though I will point people to scholarship about animals that suggests even animals have a sense of fairness and justice and act out when they are not being treated fairly, as do many humans, so I think scholars of animal law should “eat it” if they think fairness isn’t a good value. I’m a quasi-vegan so I have the right to say this, plus I own two cats, though actually it’s more fairly said my cats own me because I didn’t move to Africa largely out of love for them. And in general, it’s wise to treat people fairly because if society does not, people do act out, and act in self-harming or other-harming ways, which causes the “cycle of violence,” so treating people unfairly is “silly” from the perspective of a game designer, even though I have not engaged in self-harm myself.    

But if I had to put my own “finger” on it, do I endorse Flood in the "Pennies Game," solely as a matter of pure instinct without attempting to even solve it mathematically? My mentor who I mentioned, Kaushik Basu (and please correct me, if I’m at all mischaracterizing you), teaches that most game theorists just know the answer “in their heart” before they solve a problem, and feel it instinctively, which is why my new PD answer is correct because both Judge Easterbrook and Judge Posner themselves got the payoff matrix for the PD wrong in a published decision, likely because they weren’t wrong at all, they were righter than they knew. (And while we’re on opposite sides of an issue, they are really, really smart.) 

So, as a matter of instinct, do I think that Merrill Flood is right in the "Pennies Game"? The answer is a resounding “hell no.” But even while I know in my heart and soul that Merrill Flood’s answer is wrong, I have no equations to back myself up, unlike the equations I do have for my new PD proof (and yes, there are triple integrals in spherical coordinates). And that means for now, I think it’s like the nasty trolley problem I originally raised, and while I one day might have a better answer to Merrill Flood (and I invite game theorists to please send me citations and educate me if I’m missing something), I also think like can be unfair, and sometimes puts humans in unfair situations and that humans cannot fiat ourselves out of these even if we might wish we could. 

            Does this influence Columbia or Harvard suing versus caving? Yes, because as I said, those scenarios aren’t PD scenarios and are complex multiplayer games, and probably even in my world punishment (such as moving Trump to the Bahamas if he doesn’t comply) can be used, though of course we (and by this I mean society), should attempt to use empathy first, like having Trump’s family stage an intervention, and by this I don't mean a Britney Spears intervention where women are sometimes falsely locked up, discredited, or turned into wards by their families or employers for being #MeToo victims or victims of domestic violence or rape and presenting institutional threats to power as sometimes happens. (Melania, in this fully voluntary intervention, I suggest you give DT an ultimatum and ask him for a divorce if he doesn’t move back to Mar-a-Lago and cause all Republicans in the line of succession to resign until society gets to a Democrat.) So, yes, Columbia and Harvard can absolutely stand up to Trump because punishment can be appropriate in asymmetric games when all other measures fail.  

            But should a tiny kid in the school yard attempt to kick a bully’s butt? Probably not, because if they do, they might get injured (or even killed, especially if that tiny kid like me grew up in Oakland where I know people who died in Oakland public schools). Thus, it’s probably better to run away. I was bullied throughout my childhood, and actually had to transfer schools after seven little boys held a competition to be my “boyfriend” and the losers tied me to a picnic bench, so let’s just say that even as a kid I knew a lot about the #MeToo movement. My parents thankfully pulled me out school after the school took away the jump ropes as punishment. I then transferred to a much better school, where I had an amazing badass Black woman teacher named Mrs. Richardson as my fourth grade teacher, who was a role model and taught me what “conscientiousness” means. So, in the end, I guess the bullies lost, even if this was a multiplayer game. 

            Returning to Columbia and Harvard, I advise everyone to stand up for what you believe if you chose to remain in the United States and are in the legal profession, and I also urge people leaving the United States to also stand up, and continue speaking truth to power, but don’t shame those who say people have a duty to fight for this country as Black women in the military have throughout history, and as one of my ultimate icons, Harriet Tubman did. (Harriet Tubman allegedly had supernatural powers that helped her see the future as a result of a head accident, and she helped Lincoln defeat the South in the Civil War, and risked her life daily, and also was responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation.) I share "her" sentiments that our country is worth fighting for, though in my case, it won’t be with a weapon, unless my weapon is my pen, and my ancestors in the Midwest worked on the underground railroad, and I would not live up to them if I didn’t stand up for my own beliefs, including yes, if necessary, staking everything I own and even my life on my beliefs because I’m a dreamer just like Dr. King, even though my ancestors were white, and I’m white too. 

As suggested, turning the other cheek has its “limits” and likely does not apply in institutional contexts, unless those institutions are peers. And let’s not forget what’s at stake: Democracy itself is on the line, even if I have to be burned at the stake like Joan of Arc, who also had supernatural powers, and helped lead Napolean to victory, though hopefully it won’t come to that. I did successfully predict renditions many months ago, and I predict There Will Be Blood, though I’d give every cent I own to for Jack Balkin’s book Cycles of Constitutional Time to be correct.

I also fully predict certain blue states and areas will be mostly safe, and that Nazi Germany isn’t the model: The model is South America, like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, which I specialize in, and in those nation states, democracy did not completely die, and many people lived quietly under the dictatorships, while resistance movements persisted, and in the case of Chile ended Pinochet’s reign of terror by voluntarily convincing him to run for office after he’d been installed by the CIA/School of Americas, in a peaceful plebiscite called the “vote no” campaign in which Chilean President Ricardo Lagos convinced the entire country to vote for him. My favorite U.S. President is still Barack Obama, and he said: “One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world.” This prediction is actually serious, unlike some of the rest of my blog, which is existential humor that we need in these dark times. See my time and date stamp for yourself to fact check me, and double check my accuracy. 

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure MLK would have supported the underground railroad, as would have Jesus, whose actions led to the downfall Rome itself for its corruption and was the greatest anti-corruption activist to ever have lived and was a yeller who fundamentally stood for love and who also caused scenes, or the Dalai Lama, who spoke truth to power against China threatening Tibet, and even the first American Pope is on record as thinking poorly of DT. Thus, “both/and” – my game theory scholarship, spirituality, and even sense of humor are fully consistent lest anyone think otherwise.

            P.S. My favorite science fiction TV show, as opposed to movie, is undoubtedly The Watchman, which is about Oklahoma and two Black superheroes in Tulsa unraveling the mystery of the Tulsa race massacre using time travel. I think it’s the best TV show to have ever been created, and I commend it to all involved. My white underground railroad ancestors lived in the Midwest when Oklahoma wasn’t even a state for Lincoln to carry, and I think it’s the best.

            P.P.S. Since starting this blog, I have given up movies and TV, one of my bad habits, and this is how I have so much time to write on top of my job. It's a lot more productive than vegan ice cream and "The Princess Bride," which I only watched because I anticipate water boarding may be revived in the Trump Administration, and I wanted to educate myself about the only realistic version of waterboarding I was willing to watch.

-Cortelyou C. Kenney (6/6/2025, 7:22 am PT)