Uchicago — English Department

JBStillFlying
Fri, 25 May 2018 14:35:49 +0000

Rachel Fulton Browne is not an ass’t prof; she is a tenured associate professor of History who helped re-design and update the Western Civ. sequence (now called European Civ. One section of Western continues as long as Katie Weintraub continues to teach it). Brown is a bit weird but you really have to read the entire “spat” to understand what was going on there. It really seemed to be more ways to shut down speech than anything else. And if anyone thinks this little tiff at all resembles some of the monster (and monstrous) methodological battles that “The Chicago School” used to fight - well, you need to read more about UChicago. NO ONE is more petty than an insulted academic.

@marlowe1 - the History dept. did a similar, albeit more toned down, statement that was prepared within the context of the university’s free speech policy (which it referenced indirectly) - and that now seems to have been moved to a less prominent part of their website or removed altogether. Also, it was a statement only on behalf of “senior” members and certainly not all of them at that (Boyer’s signature, for instance, was notably absent). Perhaps the History dept. was being careful to avoid the appearance of having pressured untenured members to sign on, even if they didn’t agree with the statement. It is to be hoped that the English dept. conducted itself similarly. Senior faculty are pretty much free to say anything, as Prof. Brown has demonstrated.

There are some in the English dept. who also teach history courses/seminars (Eric Slauter, for instance), and so there’s hopefully no “bad blood” other than the standard methodological tug-of-war or department jockeying.