Disagree, @MohnGedachtnis. When you read snippets, there are undoubtedly similarities. Furthermore, similar to Axelrod, the English department’s open letter was generated in response to online commentary. But these are superficial parallels.
The English department has directed its statement on behalf of “people of color” and is carving out protections for them from speech that is controversial or provocative. Clearly, that will - and should - include outright vitriol and threats of harm. However it also includes any ideas that might lead to such (regardless of how twisted the path). Brown - a white professor - was rebuked for her ideas and her associations. That’s a broad brush - one that doesn’t necessary stroke in the opposite direction. For example, had the situation been reversed (and indeed, per Marlowe, both sides were shooting arrows), would the English Department have released the same Open Letter defending Brown against the “scholar of color”? Furthermore, the rebuke still stands - three years later. That’s a big deal warning to others: if you write or say anything, or associate with anyone - that prompts a person of color to claim they’ve been marginalized (the specific pathway not being relevant), then 40 professors of the English department will call you out. That limits, rather than protects, speech.
In contrast, Axelrod was all about protecting the controversial and provocative from very limited (but unprotected) speech. And it was an “equal opportunity” rebuke. And while we don’t know yet, it’s highly doubtful IOP will be posting its own version of the Open Letter, using Axelrod’s statement for a basis, as a warning for all going forward. He made a statement - that’s likely it. Issue over.
If the incident illustrates the conduct the Open Letter has in mind, I would expect the profs who signed it to now make statements supporting Whiteboard Girl and deploring her harassment. If they are being as even-handed as you believe they are, they might consider an addendum referencing both incidents or use the present one as a teachable moment in their classes. Do you expect that to happen? Is it your belief that if the present incident had been the original one it would have given rise to the Open Letter?
Context matters. Not to rehash the original incident, but it was a dispute between history profs about the proper way to be a medievalist. Internet nastiness ensued. It emanated from supporters and detractors on both sides of that dispute. The Open Letter doesn’t pretend to neutrality, however, and frames the dispute entirely in racial terms as being about “white-nationalist appropriation of medieval symbols” and conduct directed against “an untenured scholar of color”. Throughout the balance of the text the wording continues that theme either directly or through signifiers such as “inclusion”, “diversity” and “hatred expressed in speech and other forms of action”.
And the statement no longer stands guard over the Undergrad website, where one would expect that not fully educated young people might stand in need of it if it is intended to be of general apolitical application. It remains on the Grad School website, reminding us that the original incident concerned scholars in a rather esoteric field, not excitable young people vociferating their newly acquired political passions.
I maintain my incredulity that any such eruption of vituperation against a scholar of color purveying currently fashionable academic ideas has ever occurred in the Department or would be likely to occur. That is what the Open Letter is all about. Would you admit that the thing it actually envisages, detached from its high-flown language, is vanishingly unlikely? I believe so, in part for the reasons you yourself have rather eloquently given. So what is the statement doing there exactly? Unless it is a warning against the wrong ideas.
Another difference is that Axelrod’s statement was a response to a specific incident occurring on his watch at his institute. In her letter to the Maroon Evita Duffy appealed to him directly to address it. He did that and did it in very concrete but also noble terms. Unlike the Open Letter his statement did not merely pay lip service to freedom of expression and put its real energy into constructing objections. On the contrary, it was a perfectly clear, emphatic, and even-handed defence of that principle - both in affirmation of the legitimacy of the speech of Ms. Duffy and of the speech of her critics to the extent that the latter refrained from the various concretely hateful actions she had described. It acknowledged that hers was a provocative idea from which she should have expected a strong response; but it also clearly affirmed that her words were not hate speech. Not all her critics will agree with this; certainly the young woman who wrote a riposte to Duffy’s letter in the Maroon did not.
Very much unlike the Open Letter, Axelrod’s statement was not an exercise in group solidarity; it must have taken some courage to make it, and it rang with conviction. More importantly, it defied the majority: “The IOP cannot and should not refuse to air a controversy simply because many, or even the majority, object to it.” That’s the old-time religion we expect to see at the University of Chicago. It is what I remember Hans Morganthau saying to a crowd threatening to disrupt and shout down a speaker presenting the case in favor of the Viet Nam war (I was a member of that crowd, to my shame). Not at all the impression one gets from the Open Letter.
Can we be at all certain that what the English Department considers factually to constitute harms, intimidation, racism, and so on, is quite so clear as all that? Some of us think these are slippery words, and it’s not as though they aren’t being used in many places to shut down speech not at all threatening or intimidating or hateful in any normal meaning of those words. Consider the second round of the controversy at Middlebury College concerning the re-invitation of Charles Murray to speak on topics unrelated to “The Bell Curve.” Once again there are threats being made against the event and petitions of objecting faculty members are being circulated. One of the reasons given is the “significant psychological distress” which his appearance would engender in the members of the Middlebury community. Remember, Murray is not saying things of any sort to anyone in that community except those who choose to come to his lecture and, even there, he will not be talking about any of the things these petitioners hold to be so hurtful. It is suppression of ideas pure and simple that they are after, and it is based on the alleged hurt, threat, lack of safety, etc which they feel in encountering those ideas. An account of this can be found on Jerry Coyne’s blog.
^ Perhaps Murray will be discussing his new book “Human Diversity.” This will make the debate about The Bell Curve look like a nursery school squabble. While I don’t know this for sure, I expect the largest detractors will be those who never took a biology course. Should be fun.
It’s a funny, through-the-looking-glass world you are living in, where a white person attacking socialism is bravely expressing controversial ideas that obviously need protection and a black person challenging white supremacy is an example of those in power enforcing conformity and suppressing free speech. It’s really a triumph of Fox News gaslighting (or whatever blogs you all are reading) that people take such ideas seriously. I’ll grant that the academic world is not quite the same as the real world, but it is not so divorced from the real world as all that.
I agree, by the way: If the English Department letter means what it says, the members of the English Department ought to express their disapproval of the way in which people attacked Whiteboard Girl, just as Axelrod did. And for all I know (or you know) they did, or some of them did, albeit not on their webpage or in the Maroon. Or maybe they didn’t, and they were being lazy or hypocritical (things that occasionally happen in the world). That still doesn’t mean that you get to imagine that the English Department letter was about enforcing a standard of political correctness, when that was not what it said.
I may be a flawed reader of texts, @MohnGedachtnis , but I will absolve myself of racism.
It matters not at all to me that the Vassar prof was a person of color (of Asian ancestry, not black), though she herself made a point of this and the Open Letter also made a point of it. It was not her race but the position she was taking about medieval studies that irked me and evidently irked Fulton Brown and thus ignited the online war in which, as I understand it, intruders from outside the academy got into the fray on behalf of Brown. She may have deserved a rebuke for letting that happen, and, if so, she certainly got it, in the form of her own bevy of hateful emails, attempts to get her fired, and the putting up of statements deploring her on both the History and English Department websites. In the only world that matters to these two profs, the academic one, the Vassar Prof was not an underdog in the position of bravely uttering a minority opinion in the teeth of opposition. She did not suffer, she prevailed. Her scholarly world rallied around her, produced statements of support such as that of the English Department, and the whole affair brought her fame, admiration, and a tenure-track position. And, remember, the controversy was not about being for or against white supremacists, which seems to be how you see it, but whether a white medievalist must necessarily cleanse himself by adopting one or other antagonistic scholarly perspectives toward the subject matter of his study. I myself do not consider a denial of that proposition to be evidence of anyone’s politics.
If I have any of this factual background wrong, I would stand to be corrected. I summarize it only because it informs my reading of the Open Letter, which I therefore cannot read as you do - as merely a defence of a beleaguered person of color.
Evita Duffy (who is Hispanic, if that makes a difference) was on the other hand uttering a very unpopular sentiment in the only world that matters to her - that of her peers at the University of Chicago. The Vassar prof was not sticking her neck out and needed no moral support from a department in a different discipline in a different university. For Evita at 19 or so years of age the blowback was up close and personal, and no one was rallying around her. And the controversy directly concerned the principles of free speech in a community in which those principles are supposed to be honored. In that context the words of the Axelrod statement have a beleaguered nobility and deserve to be read literally.
You see only equivalence between his statement and the English Department Statement and you can think of no reason why anyone might read the statements differently absent a racial or political motivation. I say that’s reading with a tin ear and no sense of the differing audiences and occasions. But beyond that I won’t call you any dirty names.
Have never laid eyes on Fox News. Give me that at least.
@MohnGedachtnis isn’t posting his usual quality. The assumption that everyone watches Foxnews, for instance, is like something I’d read from a t.r.o.l.l. on Politico (expressed, perhaps, with a bit less profanity). Also, he’s making an assumption about the races of at least two individuals (and one of those assumptions I’m pretty sure is incorrect). But no matter, because the subject was the English Department, not the race of any one person or scholar in particular. If the English department were filled with protectors of White Identity, their statement would be no less wrong. A carve-out to protect one group or other is just at cross-purposes with academic freedom.
It would be GREAT if the English dept. actually did speak out for Whiteboard Girl in order to make clear that they, too, are equal opportunity defenders against vitriol and threats and genuinely for free speech (delivered in a civilized manner). Alas, no evidence to date. Perhaps they’ve contextualized the harrassment by making the same assumptions about race as Mohn did. But - as he points out - we don’t know. In the absence of such, a Plan B would be looking as what the Statement says and understanding its continued purpose on the graduate website. So pretty much what we have been doing. Marlowe brought up a great question which Mohn hasn’t answered yet (or if he did I missed it). Do graduate students of English routinely spew hate, racism and violence during the course of their studies? Or is the statement more of a “guideline” meant for those applying for graduate studies/research?
You have forced me to go back and re-read stuff about the Rachel Fulton Brown controversy, which served to remind me (a) how incredibly stupid it was, on both sides, and (b) how poorly academic debates play when exposed to popular culture. From the standpoint of anyone reasonable, it is really hard to understand what Brown and her antagonist Kim were fighting about. In the wake of Charlottesville, Kim called on scholars of the Middle Ages to make certain they were condemning White Supremacist fantasies about the Middle Ages, and Brown responded that the best way to do that was to teach students about the Middle Ages, which had nothing to do with White Supremacist fantasies about the Middle Ages. But Brown plugged in right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannoupoulos and his millions of internet followers, who proceeded to attack Kim in ways that would pass any test for harassment and threat, and that had nothing to do with academic debate. Kim thought Brown had done that on purpose; Brown was far too coy about it.
It was clear that Kim’s position was very much a minority one in the world of medieval studies, if not in the world of English departments. (She was and is a member of an English department.) Most of Brown’s colleagues leapt to Brown’s defense. It was not at all clear to me what specifically Kim wanted medievalists to do that they weren’t already doing, other than not playing footsie with the alt-right. As far as I can tell, Brown is a fine scholar of what one might call high Christianity in the Middle Ages, and I enjoy some of the same texts she does. (I am selectively a Middle Ages fan, except for, you know, the periodic confiscation, exile, and slaughter of Jews and Muslims, and the fact that women had no rights.) On the other hand, Brown managed to do less than Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders has to disavow behavior by their supporters that is completely unacceptable, and that was an awfully low bar not to clear.
So, here’s what I think the English Department letter was/is doing: (1) Making clear that they generally support Kim’s side in the controversy, at least to the extent that they think Brown should have clearly condemned her supporters’ crude, threatening attacks on Kim. (2) Trying to assure candidates for faculty and PhD program positions that notwithstanding the University’s tolerance of Brown’s conduct, that’s not how the English Department rolls. (3) Presenting a statement that they probably debated for hours and are proud of about the relationship of free speech and civil speech in academia.
Those things belong more on the Graduate Program page than the Undergraduate Program page because the people reading that page will be more attuned to the issues than undergraduates, likely familiar with the Brown-Kim controversy, still, and might really be concerned whether anyone at the University of Chicago cared about inclusion of minority scholars at all levels.
Absolutely nothing in the English Department letter tells me or, I think, anyone else that the English Department thinks there is only one way to talk about the Middle Ages. In fact, I think the letter is very careful to avoid that implication. To read it otherwise is to pile unsupported assumption upon unsupported assumption – the method of conspiracy theorists everywhere, not just Fox News, but a method that is very familiar in current attacks on the academy from the right.
It would take a forensic analysis of the emails and social media accounts of the two profs to determine which of them received the most hate-mail in this affair. Some of it definitely came from the Milo crowd, but are you quite convinced that the magnitude and virulence of the stuff from that source was greater than anything Fulton Brown got from the woke scholars who came to the defense of Kim? Twitter mobs are not solely the preserve of the alt right. No doubt much stupidity and much vile invective was dished on both sides, but only Brown was condemned by the English Department. You seem ready to admit that they took Kim’s side in the underlying substantive controversy. The Milo incursions were part of the reason for this, certainly, but not all of it.
Brown herself characterized the controversy in the way I did above - as Kim’s demand that white scholars demonstrate their bona fides not merely by disavowing white supremacy in so many words but by adopting a critical scholarly orientation toward the subject itself (with minority scholars exempted from that litmus test). Kim was proposing that test to weed out the white supremacists in medieval studies - for no better reason than that a few non-academic knuckle-draggers had adopted medieval paraphernalia. It was she, not Brown, who was importing that world into this learned discipline.
If Brown’s colleagues leapt to her defence I saw no sign of it. Quite the contrary, there was that statement rebuking her on the website of the History Department. She had tenure, and no one tried to say she had done anything egregious enough to forfeit its protection, if that’s what you mean by the History Department’s “tolerating her conduct”. I agree that the Open Letter was meant to put distance between the English Department and Brown, especially in the eyes of the potential grad students the statement was no doubt meant to impress. Condemning nasty emails from the Milo crowd must have been a crowd-pleaser, but the English Department was signalling its disapproval of Brown for more reasons than that.
The principal medievalist in the Department appears to be Mark Miller, a signatory of the Open Letter, who says that his interests are “conceptually in the intersections of psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory with ethics, theory of action, and philosophical psychology… My teaching within medieval studies includes courses on medieval gender and sexuality, the theory, practice, and phenomenology of bodiliness and ensoulment, perfectionism and utopianism in fourteenth century England, and Chaucer.” No mention there of the Christian synthesis, theology, iconography or worldview. Perhaps I am unduly put off by the academic-speak; however, I read this with a shiver and ask myself if those lenses would be the ones through which medieval people viewed themselves.
The Open Letter in its portentousness seems to me to be issuing another kind of warning: Do not go down the path of Rachel Fulton Brown. Traditionalists are not welcome. You don’t read it that way. So be it. It won’t be the first time that two people read the same words and found different meanings in them.
I tend to read it the same way that Marlowe does. Granted, it might just be that the English Department letter seems to toss a bone to free expression because they spend most of the statement decrying the victimization of the usual groups. It’s easy to conclude that they prefer one goal over the other. However, they didn’t pick a fight with Brown (to my knowledge) and only got involved when the ad-hominem attacks began. So maybe Mohn has the right idea in #27 that they are mainly concerned about civility in dialogue and don’t wish to express an opinion on how to think about the Middle Ages.
But here’s my bugaboo with that letter: despite starting out with a reference to a specific event, it doesn’t clarify beyond that. Instead, the reader is left with a vague notion that someone did something bad and there were some verbal attacks on a scholar of color. Perhaps that someone wrote something and attacked this scholar. Awful. And the English Department has made it clear that THEIR scholars should do no such thing; to use Mohn’s phrasing: “we don’t roll that way.” What exactly “that way” is would be left for those who want to take the deep dive into what happened. That’s going to be very few outside the humanities profession. The remainder read it and say “ok that makes sense. Be free, but be civil.”
The deep dive reveals that Kim is a race-based/gender-based midievalist - if unusual, it still can’t be too far out there for a humanities scholar in modern times. In fact, I was under the impression that race- and gender-based frameworks of analysis were getting more trendy. Kim is no fan of the traditionalist, “white male” point of view defended by Brown and would argue that it perpetuates all sorts of injustices against various marginalized peoples. Most scholars at the PhD level in this particular area of research would be aware that traditionalist frameworks are falling out of favor (for instance, the English department just voted to de-neutralize the term “Anglo Saxon” from their pedagogical language and department materials and discussions). They would also recognize that Kim’s use of the word “violence” within the context of this newer, more trendy framework refers to concepts, ideas and viewpoints as much as concrete acts or threats; like, for instance, when she stated that Brown’s “views are violence to me and my family.” “Violence”, then, refers to a variety of vague evils including thinking and writing a certain way. Same with “racism” and “hate.”
The English Department understands this as well as Kim. When they adopt such language for their statement, most regular people must find it reasonable; after all, who would protest a call for less “violence, racism and hate?” But those in the “know” - ie, the trained humanist scholars aware of which framework(s) might have fallen from grace - get the signal. It’s a bit of an underhanded way to limit academic inquiry, and it seems to have fooled Mohn. It’s certainly not an open-arena discussion of how to think or talk about the Middle Ages - or the humanities in general.
In contrast, if you desire something a bit more straightforward and even-keeled, read the “Statement from the Senior Members of the History Department” (see link below), which was also generated in connection with the subject conflict. IMO, it’s a lot more consistent both with Axelrod’s piece and with the university’s own history. It first and foremost upholds the principles of free speech and academic inquiry, and then reminds everyone of the responsibilities that accompany those principles. It probably did result after hours of debate, but that wouldn’t have been unusual, given Brown’s position in the department; the diversity of viewpoints over what the policy means in this case; or what specific portion - freedom vs. responsibility - should be underscored more forcefully (in the end, each was equally represented).
I like the History Department statement, too. The big difference between it and the English Department statement is the English Department’s emphasis on inclusiveness. Honestly, since I think inclusiveness has been a real issue in academia, I don’t mind that. I, personally, knew the very first Jews to be granted tenure in Arts and Sciences at Yale and in the Yale English Department – inclusion of people like me was that recent. The first African-descended people with those honors were still young when I was an undergraduate. The problem of exclusion is not one of the distant past.
Marlowe1: I’m sorry, but I can’t take Brown’s word for things. Maybe she received messages as violent as the ones Kim did, but she gives a sense of enjoying the attention too much to believe that she was frightened. I’m not certain Kim was actually frightened, either, but I would have been, in her shoes.
There’s no question that Kim, and Chicago’s Miller, are looking at the Middle Ages through a contemporary lens. (I also suspect that no one is voting for Chicago as the top English Department in the country on the strength of its medieval literature scholars.) But it is doubtful Brown is doing anything substantially different. From the couple of hours I spent reading her stuff, it was apparent that her interest is largely directed by her Christian faith, and understanding the development of Christian doctrine that eventually produced the Reformation and then . . . her. In its own way, her scholarship is as personal and driven by a contemporary agenda as Kim’s, although also more traditional. In effect she is arguing for the beauty of an ideology promulgated by institutions that have exercised real power – for good and for evil – over centuries, and that have never fully lived up to their ideology. Brown is more interesting than Kim, too, but that does not make her right and Kim wrong.
I agree that Kim’s notion of what constitutes “violence” is overbroad. I think the English Department letter brackets that issue – which probably threatens to divide the department. Everyone can agree that violence is bad, and not everyone agrees on what limnal things may constitute violence (or whatever bad thing you are talking about), so the letter stays at the level of generalities where everyone agrees.
I just remembered something that may be of interest in this context:
One of my daughter’s close friends, from kindergarten on, came to the University of Chicago largely because of its Classics department. She had been a Greek and Latin jock since way back (and of course at Chicago took Akkadian and Middle Egyptian as well). And she had a particular interest in medieval Latin poetry, extending back into high school.
She wound up having to switch her major very late in the game from Classical Studies to Comparative Literature. The Classical Studies department would not let her do her senior thesis on medieval poetry – not classical enough – and required her to take a bunch of history courses she felt she had already taken and had no interest in taking again. In order to do medieval Latin poetry in Comparative Literature, she had to compare it to something different, so she wound up having to write about medieval Latin poetry and T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. A little bit of a waste.
The point being: not so easy being a medievalist. When I said that Brown’s colleagues leapt to her defense, I meant the medieval studies folks world wide. A dwindling crew. Medieval studies has been a field where, when someone with tenure retires or dies, no one is hired as a replacement.
There’s a lot I can agree with in your #30, Mohn. Much of our disagreement comes down to emphasis and personal inclination. I don’t like the Open Letter standing guard over things that are vanishingly unlikely (violent actions or even vituperative words in the English Department). However, I am half ready to accept your hopeful interpretation that its real purpose is to create a spirit of communal solidarity welcoming minority applicants. I could do without the moral uplift and the ideological tinge, but perhaps that goes with the territory. And, yes, there is some tension between the statement and a robust interpretation of the University’s free speech policies.
Perhaps we can leave it at that: I have a temperamental aversion to such gestures and you don’t. You consider the Open Letter important, I consider it superfluous and annoying. Nevertheless, I do not suspect bad faith in the signatories nor in you as their eloquent defender, and I hope I myself have no retrograde thoughts to repent of.
Personal history comes in to the way we think about all things, though we strive to make principles of general application out of our poor attempts to organize our lives and to understand the world. I am ready to shake hands on it. Luckily a quill pen is not at hand or else a sonnet might ensue.
The kind of inclusivity you mention is essential to a thriving university, but not the kind that the English department was referring to. Furthermore, it’s not even clear that the English department surpasses other departments and divisions at Chicago when it comes to ethnic and racial diversity of the faculty. That’s kind of a red herring.
The English Department’s emphasis on “inclusivity” refers to scholarship: “We wish to reaffirm that our role as scholars and educators centrally includes the fostering of a culture of inclusiveness and mutual respect that prizes our diversity rather than seeing it as a threat.” That’s referring to more substantive matters than passing the doughnuts to the scholars of color at the at the faculty meeting
Indeed, Kim might have been genuinely frightened. Same with Whiteboard Girl. The History faculty members' statement: "Attack ideas, not individuals," underscores the proper way to carry on this sort of dialogue in the public square, and both sides needed that reminder. The History faculty also correctly (IMO) correctly clarifies Brown's lack of responsibility here: "When other parties use one's arguments as grounds for online threats, intimidation, harassment, or verbal violence in general, it is one's firm responsibility to denounce those actions and to mark a clear and public distance from them, even (or especially) if those aggressive or extremist forms of speech misconstrue one's stated points of view." In contrast, the English department mixes Brown, the scholar, into the same Brew of Nasty as the Breitbart t.rolls, with the clear implication that whatever Brown wrote, it must have been Really Bad. This is the opening sentence: "The recent online dispute concerning white-nationalist appropriation of medieval symbols, in particular the harassment, threats against, and demeaning of an untenured scholar of color during that dispute, serves as a stark reminder that our academic pursuits do not exist in isolation from the hate, racism, and violence that continue to play a powerful role in US politics and in the social and legal arrangements that endanger the safety and well-being of people of color throughout the country." What is the normal reader left to conclude? That Brown must be a hateful racist of course. And what are scholars left to conclude? That her ideas are unacceptable in the English Department.
(NB: Scholarly ideas are rejected all the time. But not usually with strong language prominently displayed on the department website)
Whether a scholar is "right" or "wrong" is a matter for their colleagues to debate (we can debate too, of course). Attempting to shut down the debate altogether limits freedom of speech and academic inquiry. Could not agree more that both scholars have taken something personal to them and made it their metier. That's not unusual for many in the humanities and social sciences. IMO, scholarship should be judged for its rigor and conclusions, not by our guesses as to motivations.
Well, yes. . . .but what are they agreeing on? The statement means different things to different people. However, in the final analysis Brown and her scholarship are effectively labeled as "racist." Academics are precise and careful thinkers. There is no room for "generalities" in an academic department statement.
A word about “current attacks on the academy from the right” (see #27):
Throughout history, academic scholarship has been subject to institutional attacks (political, religious, etc.). And recently, BOTH sides of the political spectrum have been trying to influence speech; for instance, here https://news.wfsu.org/post/fsu-changes-rules-corporate-donors-after-koch-scandal and here http://www.startribune.com/he-she-or-ze-pronouns-could-pose-trouble-under-u-campus-policy/488197021/ These dust-ups will likely continue to happen, not only because our civilization is in a deepening political and cultural battle, but also because institutions are created and run by human beings. It’s very human to want to steer speech in a direction that’s pleasing to us, or that agrees with our World View, or that shuts down “the opposition” and makes our life easier. If one side can do that easily in some years, the other side will follow when it has its own turn at power and influence.
Throughout its particular history, Chicago has had its share of attacks from both sides, and it makes a big deal out of that fact. Freedom of speech and inquiry are very important to the professed identity of the place, and the university seems to relish the “fight” - perhaps even provoke it a little. Maybe the English Department feels it needs to counter-balance or even push back a little on that identity, or strongly emphasize that it has a particular abhorance to various “no no’s” (unlike some of those other departments). The university hasn’t made them take down the statement - doing so would be a violation of free speech.
However, these things tend to resolve themselves. If the English department at Chicago and elsewhere truly restrict speech, it will be obvious in the quality of both scholarship and job prospects of its graduates. In the end, your ideas are only as relevant as they are applicable (by means other than brute force).
You keep saying that over and over again, without ever being precise about the series of logical steps that would make it true. Everything in the sentence you quote from the English Department letter is factually accurate:
– There had been a recent online dispute about white-nationalist appropriation of medieval symbols.
– There had been harassment, threats and demeaning of Kim.
– She was an untenured scholar of color.
– Academic disputes do not exist in isolation from some ugly aspects of American society. The whole kerfuffle began with Kim’s reaction to some of the ideology of white nationalist groups demonstrating in Charlottesville, and it was clear that those groups or their sympathizers got involved in attacking Kim online.
There is nothing about Brown in there. A “normal reader” would have no idea Brown existed without doing a bunch of research. A normal plugged-in reader would know what dispute they were talking about, and know that the clear implied criticism of Brown was that she had brought the academic dispute to the attention of a bunch of skinhead boys and arguably invited their participation, and that she had been not so quick and not so enthusiastic about condemning their excesses. That’s not her ideas, that’s her behavior. Or rather, maybe her behavior reflects her ideas, but not any ideas she presented in her academic work.
I don’t mind if prospective graduate students and faculty get the idea that hateful racists aren’t welcome in the Chicago English Department, although I doubt that much distinguishes the Chicago English Department from any other English department. I do mind if they get the sense that studying medieval Christian theology in and of itself constitutes being a hateful racist, but I don’t see why anyone would read the letter that way unless they were looking for monsters under the bed.
“Appropriation” is an opinion, not a fact (morons misuse well known and unregistered symbols for their various ends all the time, and no one profession or group has a claim to them). Also, your bullets need some tightening up and filling in for clarity. Kim made some provocative race-based demands, Brown declined to fulfill them citing the issue as irrelevant to scholarship, then Brown wrote something provocative in return and tagged her friend Milo; Milo wrote his own provocative piece and then all hell broke loose with the t.rolls. Getting into the weeds is a tedious undertaking because neither side is blameless and both sides point fingers at the other. Agreeing to disagree on what exactly went down makes a lot of sense in this “She Said/She Said” saga. Supporters of Brown will find Kim to be hysterical and unintelligible, supporters of Kim will find Brown to be a race-baiter. There will be no resolution there. However, it’s possible to frame the main “transgression” in simple and straightforward fashion. The English department did no such thing, preferring to lump all on one side under the same umbrella despite the facts.
It’s not necessary for a “normal reader” to know Brown’s name in order to conclude that a senior faculty member must have done something “horrible” to a junior scholar of another, and more disadvantaged, race. It’s worth noting that Asians don’t tend to be “under-represented” in at least some fields of academia; however, maybe it’s true for the humanities or for Midieval Studies in particular. Of course, given that the backstory to the kerfuffle is that Midieval Studies might have a “racism” problem and that Kim herself is a critical race theorist, “race” and “confrontation” are both front and center to the issue. The “plugged-in” see that, and of course the scholars and prospective scholars can read the language of the statement and understand the goals of the English department quite well. However, the uninitiated “normal reader” only sees someone with all the power being mean to someone with none. That’s not an accurate characterization of what happened, but that’s how it’s presented in the statement.
Consider:
"The recent online dispute concerning white-nationalist appropriation of medieval symbols, in particular the harassment, threats against, and demeaning of an untenured scholar of color during that dispute . . . "
Translation: A senior, probably white, scholar affiliated with white-nationalists is somehow attacking a more junior scholar of color. Right away, you just get the feeling this person must be really nasty.
" . . . serves as a stark reminder that our academic pursuits do not exist in isolation from the hate, racism, and violence that continue to play a powerful role in US politics and in the social and legal arrangements that endanger the safety and well-being of people of color throughout the country."
-Translation: This is a white tenured scholar doing harmful research or making harmful statements. Mohn’s suggestion of “behavior” and not “ideas” that are in the dog house is a leap based on what we’ve read so far. There’s no “how” provided concerning those “attacks” and everything is mentioned within the context of “academic pursuits.”
“We wish to reaffirm that our role as scholars and educators centrally includes the fostering of a culture of inclusiveness and mutual respect that prizes our diversity rather than seeing it as a threat.”
-Translation: The English department believes that scholarship should be directed toward fostering racial and ethnic diversity.
“Such a culture depends on a willingness to listen carefully to other viewpoints, and to engage critically with them, in ways that respect norms of reasoned argument and the use of evidence. Particularly in the context of emotionally and politically charged issues, it is crucial to respect the right to freely express and argue for one’s views, especially when they are controversial or run counter to popular opinion.”
Translation: these are the rules of engagement for fostering racial and ethnic diversity. Discusson and freedom of expression are at least in principle supported (wording a tad vague there).
“But when disagreement takes such forms as bullying, racially charged attacks, and the glorification of violence against those with whom one differs, then speech is no longer primarily a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions, and an invocation of the right to free speech is a distraction from the real issue. There is a crucial difference between speech that makes claims and articulates ideas, and speech that demeans, intimidates, or harms others. Such hostility has no place in academic life.”
Translation: tenured white scholar is directly responsible for those racially-charged and threatening attacks against the junior scholar of color. Just how . . . isn’t really important. This bully also uses “free speech” as a cover. Those super plugged-in will recognize that this must be another senior faculty member at UC and will wonder whether the statement will stay up as long as he/she remains there.
“It is our responsibility as scholars not only to condemn and repudiate hatred expressed in speech and other forms of action, but to model forms of discussion that manage criticality in a spirit of open inquiry, committed to acknowledging and thinking through the difficult histories and difficult present in which we are all embedded.”
Translation: tenured white scholar obviously a hater so someone had to speak out. But let’s not just condemn because we can also propose a model for discussion in the academy: that which fosters racial and ethnic diversity. Obviously this model precludes the scholarship and statements of that tenured white scholar (who is a hater).
Those “translations” are in the worst sort of bad faith, inserting all sorts of things that simply aren’t there, starting with repeated references to a “tenured white scholar” that the letter never even mentions. If the English Department had wanted to condemn Brown personally, it would have been easy to do that – and not a violation of academic freedom of speech, either. That isn’t what they did.
Nor did they announce that “scholarship should be directed toward fostering racial and ethnic diversity.” That’s you. What they said was scholars and teachers (“educators” being an important addition here) should, among other things, “foster a culture of inclusiveness” in which “diversity” (which could be racial and ethnic, and could also be by gender identity, politics, or simply different ideas) is not seen as a threat.
And how did they propose to foster that culture of diversity? By condemning hate speech – you have a free speech problem with that? isn’t that exactly what civil libertarians are supposed to do, talk back? – and by modeling respectful modes of argument that do not sacrifice disagreement (“criticality”). It is simply ridiculous to translate that as “this model precludes the scholarship and statements of that tenured white scholar.” You aren’t reading what they wrote, you are cramming it into your prejudice.
People who care about language and ideas take care with what they say, especially when a group of people who may (do) have all sorts of disagreements among themselves try to take collective action. I’m sure there are people in the English Department who wanted to say exactly what you claim the letter says, but they didn’t prevail. The letter stops so far short of that line it isn’t even in the neighborhood.
By the way, I agree that Kim comes off as less that rational most of the time, and I don’t have any sense that Brown is a race-baiter. I am not a supporter of either of them. Neither should be particularly proud of the “modeling” she did in this incident. Instead of talking to one another and addressing one another’s arguments, both engaged primarily in performative declamation for the benefit of their supporters. That really irks me, although of course it’s the most common kind of discourse these days. They both called in their goons, too; Brown had a lot more goons, and went first, but that doesn’t excuse everything Kim or her supporters did.
^ @MohnGedachtnis - one drawback in this series of exchanges is a continual and one-way string of accusations and assumptions. Such posts are not up to your usual quality of commentary. The accusation of “bad faith” is especially disconcerting. It’s possible to have differences without hurling accusations, don’t you think? After all, isn’t that what “mutual respect” is all about?
A few responses:
Delineating between protected and unprotected speech is a distinct - though not completely unrelated - issue from the desire to “foster a culture of inclusiveness and mutual respect that prizes our diversity rather than seeing it as a threat.” Don’t take my word for it: both the history department senior faculty and Axelrod managed to release statements that declined to mix up or even blur the edges around these objectives. It should be noted that the History department has a Statement on Diversity, so it’s not like they are exactly AGAINST the concept. And much of what they say resembles a portion of the English department statement, albeit in a clearly-worded manner that puts the focus on intellectual endeavors, pedagogical methods, and other aspects that are appropriate to the Academy: https://history.uchicago.edu/news/department-history-adopts-diversity-statement
Googling “culture of inclusiveness” renders many interesting articles that have nothing to do with free speech and, in many cases, would have it take a back seat. Anyone reading the English department statement and then following up with a simple Google search is going to conclude that the English department’s objectives for scholarly work and debate aren’t necessarily compatible with free speech and inquiry. That just a fact, based on the English department’s own choice of words.
If the English department truly just wanted to remind everyone of the rules pertaining to scholarly debate and engagement, why couldn’t they have just said that? It’s a simple point to make: “We support the right of both parties to have this debate and we decry ad hominem attacks from either side or even inadvertently encouraged by either side” clearly dovetails with their statement about hostility having no place in an academic setting - and it also took me about 10 seconds to type. And why even mention the racial or tenure status of one side? Is Kim perceived as a victim due to race? Or is it somehow not “fair game” to point out the flaws in an “untenured scholar’s” work?
If the English department statement is truly nothing more than an attempt to clarify the rules of discussion, then they should have left the jargon out of it and stuck to the facts, in order to avoid turning it into a nonsensical mashup of thoughts either not quite clear in the heads of the authors, or offered as a “meh” sort of compromise on the various points trying to be conveyed. Perhaps that’s what happens when you turn such a topic into a “collective action.” Which in itself is a bit odd, IMO.
Or . . . they meant what I wrote. As you pointed out, they took care with what they said. I 100% agree with you there. So let the debate continue! By the way, your last paragraph makes a lot of sense.
