University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe's Very Telling Resignation Speech

The Fix is aware that some Americans are inclined to reject, outright, the idea that some words — those that we choose to express our ideas, what we say at critical moments and that which we do not mention — have deeper, often multi-layered meaning. But to believe this, you must reject the field of social psychology — and likely political psychology, too. You must believe that all advertising (or for that matter, campaigning) is pointless and has no impact at all. It is to insist that human beings always mean only what they say.

That's obviously not the case.

So we asked Ian Haney Lopez and Lee D. Baker to help us dissect what Wolfe did and did not say as he resigned. Why?

Lopez is the author of the much-talked about 2014 book, "Dog Whistle Politics." It explores the sometimes-hidden or even unconscious meaning of public speech. He is also constitutional law and race specialist at the University of California-Berkeley Law School.