I remain baffled at the women in philosophy who fall for their old professors. How could that end well? Not ageist, just sayin that I find it baffling.
This is a revealing general trend on blogs in the feminist philosophy network. Don't provide space for discussion of evidence that is off-message. Ignore criticism of the official message or provide non-responses. Then if some site "messes up" and allows discussion that you don't like, complain that the issues have already been settled among reasonable people through extensive discussion.
Yes. Justin realized he went a little too far a couple of days ago by not censoring Anonymous 3's perfectly reasonable comments, since they were off message. He took some flak for that and had to restore his cred by mouthing off sarcastically at Anon3. That was good enough, but he knows not to tempt fate by publishing something else that might be seen to lead his readers into Thoughtcrime.
The CHE article turned out to be too sympathetic to Ludlow for comfort, and definitely more sympathetic than the graduate student expected. There's not much they can do now to bury the story, I've been told by a reliable source that individuals close to the Ludlow case have requested that the article not be posted to Daily Nous. It'll be interesting to see just how far he capitulates to these kinds of requests.
--Look, I... --What now? --Don't think I'm not sympathetic. I am! It's just... --Just what, Justin? --It's not credible! --Ha! Now you're worried about credibility? You don't think you're already compromised up to your neck? --You don't understand! People think... I mean, they know I've got an agenda, but they still credit me with some... some... --Out with it, Justin. --...editorial independence. --Don't make me laugh! --They do! Really! You don't know what you're asking. If I don't say anything about the CHE piece...What reason could I possibly give? It's not some scurrilous blog post! It's a respectable, well-research piece in the CHE! They cite their sources! Scrupulously! I can't just say nothing! I'll be a laughing-stock! --Leave that to us, Justin. Don't worry about reasons. --But what are people going to think? I'm really not sure you've thought this through... --The calculations have been made, Justin. Everything's been factored in. I've told you: this is coming from the very top. --But think about it... in the long term... how am I going to get your message out there effectively if I look like some kind of... lacky? --Is that supposed to be funny? --No! No! It's just a figure of speech! --We made you, Justin. And we can break you. Just remember that.
-- Can I at least put it on the sidebar? -- No. -- What? It’s news, for fuck’s sake! -- Alright, maybe. There wasn’t a ruling on that. It didn’t come up. -- Thanks. -- Your sarcasm was always a bit labored, Justin. -- Whatever. Look, there’s stuff I need to get to… -- What, you don’t think I’m busy? Don’t forget to check in. And watch your threads. There had better not be any repeat of that ‘Anon 3’ bullshit. What a clusterfuck. My people were not pleased. -- Yeah, yeah. Later. -- Toodle-oo.
To the author of these little dialogues: well done. They will provide fodder for the endless "oh, those metabros are just conspiracy theorists" claptrap, but still, very funny stuff.
-- Hello? -- Justin? -- Yeah. What’s up? -- There’s been a slight change of plan. -- [Sighs.] [Pause.] Okay. What’s the new protocol? -- It’s become apparent that at some point, you might have to say something. -- Well duh. Wait. What do you mean, might have to? -- I just meant, there’s always the chance that some new development will take the heat off. -- Yeah, dream on. -- Your negativity is not helping, Justin. -- Alright, I’m sorry. But do you people have any idea of the pressure I’m under? I have a constituency. It includes moderates. I’m not supposed to be some kind of radical outlier! The idea was to be the voice of the profession – don’t you remember? -- Well, there may be some hard choices ahead. -- Hard choices? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? -- Calm down! All I’m saying is… the consensus among us is that you may have to give up some of the middle ground. -- What? The middle ground? What, you mean, like, people who recognize flagrant double standards when they see them? Just have a look back through my archives. Seriously, do it! Have you seen the airplay I gave to all those news items that looked favorable? I’m not some kind of fucking hack, you know! -- Get a grip! For fuck’s sake! Honestly, we’re not asking for much. -- No? -- No! Just… if nothing happens… in a few days… -- Yes? -- We’d really appreciate it if you could say something about PMMB. -- What? Why would you want me to say anything about those fuckers? -- We just need some pushback. Nothing drastic. Kind of the usual, really. You know… ‘metabros’… -- You do know quite a few women post there, right? -- Christ, Justin, what is this, fifth grade? Yeah, we know. The point here is perception. Do you seriously still not get it? -- Yeah… yeah… I get it. [Pause.] What else? -- What? Oh, you know… ‘Beer pong’… -- You know, I think Protevi kind of ruined that whole trope. -- Oh yeah… yeah. Sorry, I forgot. OK, how about… something about ‘rape apologists’? Doesn’t really matter how you get the phrase in there. I swear, you wouldn’t believe how that plays to the base. Wallace will give you some grief, but we’ve weathered that before. And we kind of feel he’s losing credibility by the day. -- Among the base. -- Well, yeah, of course among the base, what did you think I meant? So what do you say? -- Jesus. -- What? Too much? -- No! Not at all! I thought you were about to insist on something really serious! I mean… not that this wouldn’t be really effective… But… it’s actually something I was thinking about doing anyway. -- Excellent! So we’re on the same page! -- I… I guess we are. -- Awesome. Later. -- Wait! What about the CHE piece? -- What about it? -- When can I say something about that? -- What? What are you, high? Not going to happen, J. -- Look, I have to… -- Wait… another call. I’ve got to take this. Ciao, Justin! [Hangs up.]
-- J-Dog! Justin Martyr! Always happy to hear that novelty ring-tone. What’s happening, my man? -- Oh, you know. Nothing much. What ring-tone? -- What? Oh -- little dog barking. Not sure what that’s about. I didn’t even set it up, now I think about it. What can we do you for? -- Just checking in. You know. -- Right! Of course. Of course. Listen, you are doing fantastic work at the Nous. We were just talking about it, actually. Fantastic. The Conscience of the Profession, someone called it. -- Seriously? Someone said that? -- I shit you not, my friend. I shit you not. -- Wow. It means a lot to hear stuff like that. I have to say… sometimes it all feels a bit unappreciated, you know? Thankless. -- Jesus. Tell me about it! Plus: the threads. Don’t think we didn’t notice. Totally under control. That’s what we like to see. -- Thanks! It’s a lot of work… -- Well, it shows. -- …but it’s worth it, especially when you get great feedback, you know? -- I hear you. Is there anything… Can we… Is there anything we can help you out with? -- Oh! Well, it’s kind of you to offer. What sort of thing did you have in mind? -- Anything, really… I mean… Well, for example, we have open channels of communication with a lot of other philosophy blog people. The Apps, Schliesser… a lot. Plus big-time FB people. That’s becoming more and more of a factor. And we have leverage. Some. Some leverage. So, you know, if you ever need a little mood music… you know what I mean? You need the ground prepared for some initiative of your own… Like, say you need some kind of, I don’t know, groundswell of opinion. Or even a… a spontaneous outcry. Like I say, it’s all about perception, you know? -- Right. Yes. Well, I appreciate that. I will definitely keep it in mind. -- Sure thing. You do that. Any time. I mean, within reason. We can’t do the impossible! Like, I know you were super-bummed about that CHE thing… -- Yeah, look… -- But it was nothing personal. Seriously. My hands were tied, Justin. You have to believe me. -- Sure! No… I understand. I do. But if you detect any sign of a… a… you know, change of heart on that front… -- Oh, absolutely! I’m still pushing, Justin. Still pushing. -- Thanks. So… talk soon? -- Yeah. Oh, hey… -- Yeah? -- Almost forgot… There is something you might be able to help us out with…
I like to imagine JW writing these himself, out of a bit of frustration at having to voice specific opinions in order to continue to be supported by those who helped him rise.
I liked it! Very naturalistic conversation. And the bit at the end made me wonder what the 'something' was. My guess is that it's the Calhoun interview, linked at the DN sidebar. Mind you, I think Calhoun did a decent job of it.
I hate it that, thanks to the irresponsible feminidiots and their baseless propaganda campaign, we're now facing a public assumption that philosophy has a major sexual harassment problem and this is how the world primarily sees us.
When philosophy departments get axed because some departments need to in the current budget crises and we look like a bunch of assholes on the basis of no credible reasoning (thank you, WILTBAW, FP, and Amy Ferrer), we're going to be out of work.
But the femphils won't. Most of them are cross-listed in Women's Studies and other departments anyway or else are close enough that they can make the switch with ease. So they've got little to lose if the ship goes down. Who invited them on board in the first place? They sure as hell aren't philosophers. Amy Ferrer doesn't even pretend to be, and the rest of them couldn't objectively and analytically assess an issue or charitably reconstruct a sincere interolcutor's argument if their lives depended on it. And their lives and careers never do depend on it, unlike ours.
Northwestern Professor, Northwestern Graduate Student, whatever -- a pox on both their houses, I say. They sound like terrible and terribly unwise people to me. Seriously, what kind of professor has students over to his house, alone, and spends the night with them drinking? Seriously, what kind of student tells a professor twenty years her elder that she's in love with him, even if only to promote her career? I mean, seriously!
Lockwood accuses Ludlow of "offering to "pass off" a student girlfriend whom he was dating at the time of the incident with the Northwestern undergraduate to another senior Philosophy Professor in the U.K., and allegedly offering to write a letter of recommendation for the student’s application to a university in London".
Anyone know who this "senior Philosophy Professor in the U.K." and "girlfriend" are? There is one obvious philosophy couple (now married) that meets the description pretty well; is this who Lockwood has in mind?
I did laugh out loud that one time it was used on Leiter. I did not laugh out loud this time. I'll bet money no one did. Please don't post any more of these here, facepalmphilosopher.
C'mon people, that speculation is just vulgar. Plus, talking about how women in philosophy get ahead of their peers through relationships with powerful old dudes is NOT on-message and is definitely NOT Whineberg-approved.
The story turns out to be misery for everyone involved. The heart wants what it wants, sure. And it is very easy to understand a life long Lothario, with a track record of sleeping with undergraduates (than which there is nothing more lame), falling in love with a graduate student and not recognizing the tremendous pressure that would put on someone in her situation. It's also easy for me to understand a graduate student not quite having a full grasp on her feelings for a professor whom she admires, fears, desires while not knowing exactly how to extricate herself from the situation. I'm stymied however by Ludlow's full court legal press after the shit hit the fan. Someone gave him terrible advice. All that money now gone. No more apartment. He's living in someone's basement and fleeing the country. That was just really stupid.
It wasn't stupid if there were facts he expected to be exposed in court that would not otherwise be exposed. Also it was not stupid if he believed he was being defamed. The only way to fight defamation is to challenge it, I suspect. Just "letting it go" doesn't work in that kind of situation. "Just letting it go" is good advice for getting over a love affair or for coming to terms with having done something stupid or for coming to terms with something one is embarrassed about. It might even work for dealing with harsh judgments by one's peers (though a better response in that situation might be to look at the judgments and think through them and try to integrate the advice in them). But defamation is beyond being harshly judged by one's peers, and I think has to be fought head on, as he did. What else can an honest citizen with self respect and respect for others do, than to fight perceived defamation? Ignoring it is nihilistic and a pretense that one's society does not matter.
I don't know though. I'm not in any of these people's heads.
Well put 3:08. If Ludlow is telling the truth about NW refusing to look at elevator video in the undergraduate case and refusing to consider a hotel receipt in the grad case then a legal course of action seems like the right way forward.
Yes, and you need to remember that twat of a judge who pretended that 'rape' can mean 'put his arm round you' and concluded that he wasn't defamed by being called a rapist. Always good to know exactly who the female chauvinist pigs are.
From the CHE article: "The graduate student says she did not...consider them to be dating.... She kept the precarious relationship going, she says, because she benefited from the professional connection."
Not even the reporter could believe the grad student would make this claim--and as a basis for denying the relationship in part was consensual ("the graduate student says Mr. Ludlow used his position to take advantage of her"). The grad student was just trucking...for career benefits.
"Dr. Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, revealed to me that he had spoken with Ludlow some time between February 26 and the date of our conversation, and that Ludlow "did admit to dating undergraduate students in previous institutions," but that Stanley was under the impression that Ludlow had managed to change the behavior."
The underlying moral of Jason's correspondence: "I didn't know." Moral of the episode as a whole... You can file a complaint if you wan't... But, they are going to fuck you up. And everybody around you is going to be Jason Stanley. Including all the hey-jason-feminists.
The people agitating for Title IX's expanding scope, and the public prosecution of these matters, are doing harm to nearly everyone involved. Shame on them.
It's incredible that the same people calling now for NO ANONYMOUS GOSSIP AND NO NAMES, PLZ and NO MORE SPECULATION, PLZ are also enthusiasts for blogs literally dedicated to spreading anonymous gossip and speculation -- especially WIITLBAWIP. I would respect Derek Bowman, Jan Dowell, and Elizabeth Harman a lot more if they also denounced efforts to name and shame the Northwestern professor or the use of anonymous blogs to smear philosophers without due process. That would at least be consistent. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.
I think that the WIITBAWIP is an excellent one. I haven't even told my stories on it yet (which probably should be told, as at least one of them is pretty serious, but I haven't gotten around to the work it would take to think about those things that happened to me and then write about them in an appropriate way). I appreciate that women have taken the time to post there, as it helped me gain perspective and come to terms with my own experiences and provided a sense of greater ease. I also appreciate the information value the site has for those who previously seem to have had no clue about the extent of sexual harassment in philosophy and what it has meant to individuals' careers.
That said, I agree with part of what you say, 1:18 (but without the judgment about the commenters you name). When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments. So it is indeed no wonder that there is a felt need to continue commenting on it now. I appreciate that people are trying to puzzle out the whole situation and I am saddened for all those directly involved and wish the best for them.
"When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments. So it is indeed no wonder that there is a felt need to continue commenting on it now. I appreciate that people are trying to puzzle out the whole situation and I am saddened for all those directly involved and wish the best for them."
"It disturbs me that the response to these reports about Ludlow is significantly tempered and sluggish compared with the response people had to McGinn in roughly the same time-frame (after the Chronicle article, but before McGinn's insane blog posts)."
It's an instigation masquerading as an innocent request for an explanation (about a putative asymmetry with the putatively comparable McGinn case). Nothing needed to be explained, or certainly not right then, It was the first most people had heard of the NU situation.
6:41, hmm. I took that comment to be as much a condemnation of the rush to judgment on McGinn as it was a condemnation of the "sluggishness" of the response to Ludlow. See the final paragraph of that comment:
"If this is true, it is worrisome. We should not be less inclined to believe that someone is guilty because we have great respect for his/her philosophical work. And by the same token, we should not be *more* inclined to believe that someone is guilty because his or her nasty character traits."
OK, 6:51, but perhaps you will reconsider if you read the person's subsequent comments and some of the other people's comments building on the meme comment 3 is introducing. I guess not a meme but a piece of sophistry. I disagree that the theme was that we should look to fair treatment for McGinn, if you consider the later comments for interpretation of the early one. Rather, the theme was oriented towards creating occasions --openings in the "conversation"-- for people to register disgust with the NU case or for them to type the "r" word. Even the phrase you quoted is problematic: "we should not be less inclined to believe that someone is guilty because we have respect for his/her philosophical work..." With that comment the readers are now primed with the word "guilt" and with the suggestion that they need to form some judgment about the person's guilt or innocence, and need to form some such judgment about it sooner rather than later, or never.
7:22, can you be more specific about the comments you have in mind?
At 18, CL says: "Yet today I'm seeing a lot more skepticism about the Ludlow case: about the student's motives, about her 'mental stability,' etc. It is sickening and hypocritical, since these come from the same people who danced on McGinn's grave."
That seems to me to be critical of a rush to judgment in the McGinn case, due, on CL's hypothesis, to a dislike for McGinn. "Why didn't they extend to McGinn the (correct) skepticism they now offer Ludlow?" -- that seems to be his / her line of thought.
This CL person is saying she/he is "sickened" by the fact that people were not rushing to dance on PL's grave, and implying that if people do not judge him negatively, they are being hypocritical. But the first charge is admirable and the second is false.
There are probably two other commenters that seem very consciously to be beating the drum for CL's dance, and then there are a couple swept up already on that first day in the tribablism.
Just to explain the context for anyone who might not know it: Colin McGinn had already made many enemies prior to the exposure of the incident with his graduate student, which led many people to rejoice that someone they already hated was getting lambasted in the press. No doubt, a number of people who jumped up and down about the McGinn thing were really using it as a convenient excuse for McGinn hatred, and for that reason found themselves screaming for the blood of all sexual harassers.
When the news broke about Ludlow, the New Scolds wanted to make sure they got the same reaction. They realized it was going to be a harder sell, though, since Ludlow had been well liked by pretty well everyone. So Ludlow was a kind of testing ground. If people didn't tear Ludlow to pieces as easily as they had McGinn, it would show that they weren't so rabidly opposed to even the mere accusation of sexual harassment that they would turn on their best friends. And that would be bad for the cause. So the passage from the blog seems intended to put those who hesitate before pissing all over a formerly beloved friend, or who called for evidence first, in a tricky position by making them seem "disgusting" for being insufficiently zealous.
8:24 and 12:29: I read it exactly the opposite way. No one recommends to people that they should dance on X's grave; that's a condemnation. If you are trying to exhort people to morally condemn someone you appeal to objective moral grounds, not to the subjective feelings of joy at seeing an enemy fall. In other words, hardly anyone *recommends* Schadenfreude as a moral motivation, though they acknowledge it as human, all too human. Again, then, my reading is that that CL says is hypocritical is people extending to Ludlow the skepticism that they should have extended to McGinn, but did not, merely based on their dislike of McGinn.
8:24: "There are probably two other commenters that seem very consciously to be beating the drum for CL's dance, and then there are a couple swept up already on that first day in the tribablism."
Which two others, please? There are 82 comments on that thread before it was closed with the 83rd. By my reading, there are three main topics. 1) the comparison of the reactions to the McGinn to those of the Ludlow case; 2) expressions of disgust, but in the hypothetical "if he did that, then it's a serious breach of [morals / professionalism]" (that is sometimes adduced as a reason for the different reactions -- along with the fact of McGinn's blogging); 3) the long discussions about Heck's claims at 40 that sexual assault, as opposed to McGinn's more mundane harassment, is rare in philosophy so that the Ludlow case does not provide evidence of a climate issue (while the McGinn case does).
I don't see much "branding" and "burning" of Ludlow, but would be happy to see you provide some specific quotes to the contrary.
But you didn't provide any other quotes after I gave a plausible counter-interpretation to yours. There are 82 comments there; which ones are you referring to?
I'm afraid you are missing the gist of what I said. The branding does not consist only in the contents of particular comments, but in the fact that a ridiculous issue got raised in the first place and the focus kept on that. It was ridiculous to complain how philosophers were responding given they had only just heard the news (as several of them did attempt to point out in comments, to no avail). Each time that people were pushed back to the non-issue, this constituted a re-branding, since each time it invited people to attribute an act of violence to a guy and to distance themselves from what they imagined to be an awful thing. Several philosophers did try to veer away from this issue to something else, and they got brought back to it. Comments got deleted for b.s. reasons, but the blog moderator was unduly influenced by one of the commenters.
Now I'm not going to pick out particular comments for you to "prove" my point. I partially explained the mechanism to you, and you can go figure it out yourself or not.
"Several philosophers did try to veer away from this issue to something else, and they got brought back to it.... Now I'm not going to pick out particular comments for you to "prove" my point. I partially explained the mechanism to you, and you can go figure it out yourself or not."
Don't try to shift the burden of proof, 12:17. You made a positive empirical claim and have not yet provided any evidence for it. What I think is irrelevant to your ability (or inability, as the case may be) to provide evidence for your claim of "branding" (and "burning," let's not forget that) of Ludlow in the first NA thread. The link is there; and there are 82 comments at NA. Surely you can provide some evidence for your claims. Where, exactly, by number and with quotes, is the "branding" and "burning"?
You're an idiot 12.34. If you're too thick to see the truth of what he is saying, and insist on being a useful idiot for the NC spin, he doesn't have to waste his time proving it to you. Just know, the rest of us see you're stupidity.
12:24, You're just spinning, and not responding to what I actually said about the nature of the evidence.
I deny that I have a burden of proof to point out branding comments to you. I was asking you a diagnostic question. If you think that the issue raised at comment 3 on NA was reasonable given that people had just heard the news, then there is no point in me pointing to specific comments in the thread. It is not, or not only, the content of specific comments that constitutes the branding. Rather, it is the way the focus was manipulated. This includes deleting comments that were not on message. To make this case would require more than producing objectionable comments. It would be to explain the relations of the comments to each other.
I was on that thread in real time when it happened. I'm not sure why I should spend my time now analyzing the thread for you. If you are interested, you can find the time yourself to do it, assuming you know something about rhetoric and psychology and a basic respect for all people. But I suspect you're more interested in grandstanding on an anonymous blog.
So you got nothing, either, 12:55. Good to know. If the "truth" is so evident, it should be easy for 11:43 to provide it, right?
Look, it's simple. A makes an empirical claim of X ("branding") and Y ("burning"). B asks for evidence of X and Y. A provides passage P as evidence for X but not Y. B produces a counter-interpretation of P w/r/t X and asks for further evidence for X and any evidence of Y. A cannot do so but attempts to change the subject. B refuses that shift and asks again for evidence of X and Y.
It still seems to me, that, that A has violated the obligation to provide evidence for claims.
When B, that is to say, you, provides a bullshit counter-interpretation and carries on with nonsense blather, no one has to bother because unlike you we're not so stupid as to think such nonsense raises an explanatory burden. You've been told once: you come back with time wasting bullshit: we don't care, byeee.
"When B, that is to say, you, provides a bullshit counter-interpretation and carries on with nonsense blather,"
LOLOL. Proof of "bullshit" conveniently omitted. Look dude, calling it bullshit don't make it so. I'll stick with my points throughout this sub-thread.
My favorite thing about this arid thread is the way 2:32 keeps using "we", trying to create the impression of some anonymous majority finally crying out against teh oppressive fems. There's just one of you, dude.
Actually, given some differences in style of language, I think there are at least three who have no truck with the ridiculous attempt made to defend the spin that was put on the original NA thread.
More than two. I know this, since I've talked about the PMMB in person with philosophers at conferences, and I know multiple people IRL who post here anonymously. Despite what the detractors say, the PMMB isn't merely an online hangout spot for a handful of irate white male graduate students. All sorts of professionals tune in and occasionally post.
2:15: "we interpret, you spin" is that it? Since there are at least three of you it should be easy for you to point to an instance of Ludlow being "burned" at the NA thread, right? But so far it's been crickets on that point.
And no argument as to why my interpretation (or "spin," whatever, as long as the opposite side is "spin" too, right, because fair's fair, right?) of CL is "bullshit," just bare assertion that it is. But naming don't make it so, amirite?
I'm another person who thinks the NCs are having a very unwelcome influence.
You keep asking for quotes and references. I'm not as familiar with that DN thread, and the case against the NCs hardly depends on it, but I'll have a look for you.
But please clarify first what you're contending, so I know what I'm looking for.
Are you saying that no members of the New Consensus/Feminist Philosophers crowd played any role in Ludlow's downfall, the canceling of his classes in Spring 2014, and the pressure on the university to deprive him of his job? If that's not your contention, please clarify what it is. Thanks.
By the way, if you think those of us who are sick and tired of the NC/femphil bullshit are just a small handful, you're in for a rude awakening. There are origami several hundred of us at least, and we're growing rapidly. Through their pigheadedness, the NCs and femphils are creating a massive backlash against themselves. I wish it weren't as extreme as the pendulum swing is likely to be. They had a good position to work with but fucked it up spectacularly.
8:09, I'm responding to the claim in the second paragraph of this comment about "branding" and "burning":
"When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments."
Another new voice here. I'm a woman, and I used to consider myself a feminist. But I think the "feminist" philosophers (which includes FP and Schliesser and NA and JW and others) have acted terribly in a number of situations. It makes me too ashamed to call myself a feminist, so I don't.
Hi, 8:19. So: are you merely trying to show that that one particular comment happens to be incorrect (if it is)? And nothing more? You're not arguing that the NC/FP crowd didn't push people to condemn Ludlow hastily, but only that the second commenter is mistaken in the details of how this happened?
I'm asking for two things: 1) evidence of "branding" and "burning" in the NA thread; and 2) an argument, rather than a mere assertion, that this interpretation of CL on that thread is bullshit:
"8:24 and 12:29: I read it exactly the opposite way. No one recommends to people that they should dance on X's grave; that's a condemnation. If you are trying to exhort people to morally condemn someone you appeal to objective moral grounds, not to the subjective feelings of joy at seeing an enemy fall. In other words, hardly anyone *recommends* Schadenfreude as a moral motivation, though they acknowledge it as human, all too human. Again, then, my reading is that that CL says is hypocritical is people extending to Ludlow the skepticism that they should have extended to McGinn, but did not, merely based on their dislike of McGinn."
A "hey jason" is when you loudly yell someone's name across the quad at someone who may or may not be your friend, so I'm guessing that a "hey jason feminist" is someone who loudly proclaims their feminism which may or may not be sincere.
Lemoine comment 38 at Ranksalot FTW. The usual suspects are totally running scared from the pretty much undeniable points he makes there in connection with the Kipnis fiasco. Still deafening silence at DN -- what a joke.
The hypocrisy and barely-deniable deceit is appalling. One wonders how revealing this is of the concept of justice behind the push to favor the accuser in cases of this sort. It certainly makes the Feminist Philosophers crowd come off looking bad.
Lemoine says the question of consensual sex is relevant to the Kipnis angle.
Leiter is saying it's relevant to discussion of the rape charge. Not that it solves it one way or the other, but that it's legally allowed to be discussed -- that is, there is no *blanket* exclusion of the sexual history of an accuser for court testimony.
History prof says the consensual sex question is relevant to the trustworthiness of the complainant w/r/t Title IX filings. It's unclear whether he or she thinks it's relevant to the rape charge; the exact wording is "the accuser’s credibility, judgment, and the accuracy of her self-reporting."
Is that how folks here are reading the latter part of the thread?
I read the History Prof's remark as saying that the consensual sex question is relevant because of some unusual features of this situation, viz. waiting two years and then being apparently strong-armed into the first complaint against L, then filing "four other increasingly specious Title IX complaints". So, not necessarily anything specific to do with evidence appropriate to evaluating rape charges.
All the humming and hawing over did she or didn't she on Leiter is ridiculous. It's perfectly obvious she was screwing him and now is trying the 'how dare you ask me that...I'm a lady, don't you know' line, at which point the feminists and the white knights join in with a load of crap, hoping that no one will ask what was she doing in his bed if she didn't want to screw him.
It's funny... I remember being quite shocked by the readiness of NC philosophers of my acquaintance, and especially women, to deploy the r-word in the PL / undergrad case. When I protested I was mocked for being (or pretending to be) naive: 'Why else would he have gotten into bed with her?' Like almost everyone else I have no idea what really happened, and I'm not endorsing 6.50's switched-around version of the same thought, but I have no doubt that the same NC people would angrily reject it, so I'm just thinking about the issue of consistency. Some of the discussion has struck me as confirming the now-familiar idea of a pronounced Victorian streak in white academic feminism.
(contd)...Or maybe it's just opportunism, ie the biases that work in these contexts to lower the culpability-bar for men as compared to women happen to ape well-known 'Victorian' tropes concerning sexual difference. Although -- even here, is the connection entirely coincidental? Not sure how to think about this.
The dilemma FP and DN currently face is this. On the one hand, the article extensively quotes the graduate student, and it is well-researched and fair. So it would seem to be FP-friendly. But, on the other hand, it also extensively quotes Ludlow, and it is well-researched and fair.
The graduate student's own words are in conflict with things Pogin has claimed or implied, and the overall impression one gets casts the Title IX complaints in a very unflattering light. Figuring out how to frame all of these facts in a way that supports the FP view is quite tricky, and it may take Pogin et. al. a week or two to figure out how to pull that off. So for now, DN and FP will refrain from allowing any comments on the issue.
8:29: you're *complaining* that people are taking time to compose a response that fits their point of view? Isn't that so mundane as to be yawn-inducing?
6.27: Troll. We're talking about people who can't move fast enough when they think a story can be slotted into their narrative with ease. One can actually tell quite a lot from the time-lag factor. J Dowell's extraordinary 'Very Important Public Announcement' on FB appeared the day after I had made a comment here remarking on the unusual silence at all the main non-Leiter philblogs about the Kipnis case. Once the rudiments of a position had been stitched together (roughly, "Won't someone, please, think about the children?'), posts started to appear on the blogs.
8:29 says it will take time to fit this story into the prevailing narrative for the New Consensus, because it's a tricky case for them.
At 6:27, I agree, but point out that taking one's time to fit a story into a prevailing narrative is a common occurrence, *when it's a tricky case for that narrative* -- that latter clause not being made explicit, because I assumed it would be understood, in context of the previous comment.
7:39 then calls me a troll for pointing that out, because people can write quickly when a story easily fits a narrative.
The two graduate students who filed Title IX complaints -- presumably Pogin and Leydon-Hardy, since they are otherwise publicly connected to the case -- knew that Ludlow and the accuser had a relationship, and they tried to bury that, assuming that there is no other way it would come to light. In doing so, they made it clear that winning in the public debate, or coming to what they perceive as the right outcome in the end, takes precedence over the truth. They selectively presented facts with an intent to deceive. I now no longer trust anything else they said about this issue, nor will I trust them on any other Title IX issue.
That seems mostly right, as Lemoine has been saying on the BL thread. Pogin, we assume, knew all about the case before any of this came out, yet wrote this to Kipnis:
The graduate student has neither confirmed [that the claim about dating] is the case, nor had a chance to dispute the claim in court given that her motion to dismiss had to presume all the facts as he alleged them could be substantiated, whether or not she believed that to be true. Moreover, given that the university's finding that he sexually harassed her was based precisely on the relationship which he alleges was consensual, one must wonder how a relationship could be found to both sexually harassing and consensual at one and the same time.
At the time a lot of people took Pogin to mean there was no dating relationship betwen PL and GStudent. After reading the CHE article, of course, her locutions look carefully chosen to invite that misreading. Further, it seems, given what we know of the actual finding against PL, that the relationship was both consensual and a policy violation.
Sure, there's a lot of bad advice floating around there. But it's well-intentioned, mostly harmless, and not given over to the toxic culture that has taken over a few other philosophy blogs. So I'm inclined to just leave it alone and hope that the young philosophers whose future I care about don't put too much credence in the posts over there.
Yeah, whatever else you might say about the blog, things never turn nasty there. Even when the odd comment takes an excessively snarky tone, I can't recall a case of the OP taking the bait. It's an impressively positive place, given what normally happens on philosophy blogs.
Is it just me, or is the general priggish and scolding nature of our field and the general reaction to Ludlow extremely disturbing? Or perhaps what is more disturbing is the lack of self-awareness and thought about how romantic and sexual attraction works. For example, from a commenter on Leiter's blog:
"Now him. Ludlow, for his part, seems to me to be sort of willfully and conveniently blind to the potentially intoxicating effect of his position and power and prestige. I'm sure he greatly enjoyed the benefits of that intoxicating effect, even if he could not fully acknowledge to himself that it was merely a form of intoxication that probably drew her to him in the first place."
"[M]erely a form of intoxication"? Wow. Do people like this commenter not realize that it just these sorts of "intoxicating" combinations of properties that people are actually _seeking_ all over the place. Would the person who wrote those words not be ecstatic if some person with such "intoxicating" properties showed romantic or sexual interest in him or her? And why is Ludlow singled out? Can women not have such "intoxicating" properties for men, for example, in the form of physical beauty?
What the fuck is wrong with academics? They really are the absolutely stupidest, most fucked up, idiotic "smart" people that exist, no?
I agree with your diagnosis of the field in general, 7:58. But I think your example lands shy of the mark. The commenter you quote (Ken Taylor, Stanford) actually struck me as wise and balanced. People *are* often attracted to power and prestige. And let's face it, it is often *women* who are attracted to power and prestige wielded by men. Insensitivity to that attraction (as Ludlow -- and many pundits -- seem to exhibit) belies a kind of foolishness with respect to basic and obvious facts about human nature. The attraction of people to power offers a helpful explanation of what probably happened. But it does not strip the graduate student of agency (that would be a mistake, but a mistake that Taylor did not make). The leap from "the graduate student found Ludlow's power intoxicating" to "the graduate student did not consent to a relationship" would not be truth-preserving; it would be, in fact, an obvious fallacy. On that, I suspect you, me, and Taylor agree.
I don't know if this is what Taylor was getting at, but I think the only thing potentially problematic with Ludlow enjoying the benefits of the "intoxicating effect of his position and power and prestige" is that, since that power and prestige was in the student's field, the potential for quid pro quo is really strong. If this case was about a relationship with a young bartender from the corner bar who happened to be "intoxicated" by academic prestige, the only issue anyone (or at least anyone rational) would be talking about is the alleged rape.
But if you have power and prestige in field X, and you enter into a relationship with someone who is wanting to advance in field X, there's lots of room for misunderstanding.
My take on it: brains can trigger sexual attraction as easily as any other body part, and there was probably some intellectual and romantic attraction on both sides. Both of their reports seem to indicate this. But the student placed a relatively higher value on the mentoring side of things and Ludlow placed a relatively higher value on the sexual side of things. Not surprising. A student's success depends more on finding a good mentor than a professor's success depends on finding a good advisee. Ultimately, they couldn't reconcile that and called it off. The way they both describe it in the CHE piece, I'm not too surprised the student doesn't call it "dating":
Compare it to a slightly different scenario. Suppose, instead of the narrative in the CHE piece, they both fell in love and or lust. As in the CHE piece, they recognize that the relationship could be harmful to the student's career. But, because they are in love/lust and want to keep it that way, she finds a different mentor to write papers with, he offers his research travel funds to some other deserving student, they let their friends and department know what's going on and there's no question if they are dating because everyone's seen them together at department and private parties. The fact that they didn't do this synchs with the student's account that she saw it as primarily a mentoring opportunity.
So, the problem, back in the real scenario, is the potential for having professional favors conferred based on a personal relationship. It kind of looks like that was happening. I wonder, after they broke off whatever you call that relationship, if the mentoring continued. Did they write the paper together? Did the research trip happen?
My impression is that the research trip happened, but before they were involved. And the fact that they didn't tell other people about the relationship is easily explained by two things: the fact that she didn't want to be known as someone who got involved with professors (see her texts to him, cited in the article). He didn't seem to mind the prospect that they would stay together and that the story would have come out: he mentions that they considered marriage together. It seems he kept quiet about it either because she wanted him to or also, perhaps, because he didn't want to be seen as someone who had *non-serious* relationships with graduate students.
How do we know it's Ken Taylor? The link sends you to Philosophy Talk, which features two hosts, Ken Taylor and John Perry, and a couple of producers, some researchers, etc.
"I would have hoped that by now most folks recognize that an accuser's sexual history is never relevant to the assessment of a rape accusation."
This is a great example of the absurdly anti-philosophical stance of many in our field. The above claim is epistemologically problematic, to put it mildly. Try doing some philosophy, folks. If you want to do uncritical, feminist activism, please leave academia.
It amazes me when I see this kind of thing. It's like these people live an ideological bubble and expect to get whatever they want. And they seem increasingly willing to manipulate fact and due process to further their interests. All under the cover of justice. Talk about privilege.
No. There is a more idiotic one (hidden in a very long passionate post in which the poster is (in my view) admirably trying to take account of the complexity of human life and remind us that it is not easy to know what goes on between people). I started to post the short statement here to show you-all, but thought better of it.
People, when you write, try to avoid excess verbiage (too many adjectives or rhetorical flourishes). You may accidentally say something that is obvious false or that you don't really believe. That's what I am going to try to remember to tell my students and also to remind myself about.
And so we move into the second full day in which the (balanced, well-researched) CHE article has been given no attention at DN (beyond the sidebar).
This lengthening silence should be monitored and publicized. Against the background of what has been said about this case up to now on that blog, it's a real scandal.
In light of this scandal, it would be a good time to plug Laura Kipnis' book "How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior." A review--
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
We all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classic—revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness—though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception—the necessary ingredients—are our collective plight. How to Become a Scandal is “an extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignore” (David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto).
I was a bit puzzled about where all this mass hysteria about the so-called 'scandal' that DN has paid 'no attention to' an article that is clearly linked to from the sidebar, but there's an obvious answer. BL's clearly pulling this shit to try and maintain market share, along with the concerned email 'from a reader' that he prefaces his post with, which oh-so-neatly gives him a chance to smear JW's credibility while still being able to maintain that *he's* not saying those things about JW. Follow the money.
Your use of "hysteria" is offensive and sexist (look it up). Check your privilege, and next time please issue a trigger warning before using such language in this safe(r) space.
Justin, you gave that CHE article all the attention you gave to the dinosaur philosopher, so I don't know why people think you're paying it no attention. To the contrary, the real scandal is that Leiter is just ignoring the important dinosaur philosopher story.
I don't have the CHE article in front of me. Am I correctly rembering that Ludlow says that on the night of the alleged rape, there was no sex at all, but instead he checked into a hotel while leaving the student in his apartment?
Yes, that is his claim. There's no time line proposed however. The alleged rape could have occurred at 11:30 pm and PL arrived at the hotel at 12:30 am, for instance.
Yes. And also that he had a hotel receipt that proved it, which he gave to the investigators. Presumably they were convinced, since the finding that Northwestern arrived at said nothing at all about this alleged episode and only mentioned the propriety of the relationship as a whole.
Sorry, I posted this below, but meant to include it in this thread...
It's notable how prima facie implausible this is. Ludlow is having plenty of sex with the student, according to his account, and so the student had plenty of episodes she could point to as involving rape, if she so chose. But instead she chooses an occasion on which nothing happens at all. Doesn't make much sense.
Why does Ludlow choose that night, of all the ones in which they slept together (whether they had consensual sex on those other nights is disputed, but both agree they slept together a lot), to go to a hotel?
One hypothesis would be she was too drunk to have sex with, or even to share the bed with, what with all her tossing and turning, so he went to a hotel to get some peace and quiet.
Another hypothesis would be he had sex with her (whether this was the only time or one of many needn't concern us here I don't think) but then realized she had been too drunk to consent, so he panicked and went to a hotel to establish an alibi.
There are no doubt other hypotheses that would fit the facts, but these two seem reasonable.
It's notable how prima facie implausible this is. Ludlow is having plenty of sex with the student, according to his account, and so the student had plenty of episodes she could point to as involving rape, if she so chose. But instead she chooses an occasion on which nothing happens at all. Doesn't make much sense.
Why does Ludlow choose that night, of all the ones in which they slept together (whether they had consensual sex on those other nights is disputed, but both agree they slept together a lot), to go to a hotel?
One hypothesis would be she was too drunk to have sex with, or even to share the bed with, what with all her tossing and turning, so he went to a hotel to get some peace and quiet.
Another hypothesis would be he had sex with her (whether this was the only time or one of many needn't concern us here I don't think) but then realized she had been too drunk to consent, so he panicked and went to a hotel to establish an alibi.
There are no doubt other hypotheses that would fit the facts, but these two seem reasonable.
More smoke and desperation. The debate has been about the willful lack of clarity about the relationship from the grad student's camp and the bogus Title IX complaints. The actions against Ludlow and Kipnis--and the university's findings against Ludlow--have nothing to do with the alleged rape.
@8:47- Why do you consider the discussion above your post "smoke and desperation".(None of which is from me, fwiw) Yes, there's an on-going discussion elsewhere on the blog about the nature of the relationship and the Title IX complaints and Kipnis, etc. And yes, those don't have to do with the rape allegation.
But that doesn't mean there can't also be a discussion about the rape allegation. It was the subject of the grad student's original complaint. It's a subject in Ludlow's defamation suits. It's mentioned in the CHE article. It's a serious allegation. There's room for both discussions.
(Now, if I was going to derail the discussion, it would be with two utterly trivial and irrelevant questions that have been bugging me since reading the CHE article: 1) Why, in 2011, is Ludlow printing off documents for a traveling student instead of just sharing them? Who wants all that paper in their luggage? and 2) Ludlow is (per the CHE article) "known for .....redirecting philosophy to an emphasis on studying the logic of ordinary human language" ? Really?)
Yeah that summary of what he is known for also gave me pause. Strangely, none of his engagement with the public over philosophical issues arising from the consideration of technology, journalism and online communities has been given a mention in any of these blog discussions all this time.
Anyone remember Paranoid British Guy? I am not he. I still think he had one good point though. Ludlow was no friend of the powers that be -- he was a well-known supporter of Snowdon and Wikileaks -- and one must wonder whether this has something to do with the unsympathetic and intense scrutiny he's faced. To me, Ludlow's work on these topics is his most important, and it's curious, as 3:05 notes, that it doesn't get any comment in most treatments of the Northwestern Affair.
I think his most important work is the extra layer of fakeness he added to the second really real world of 10 million twelve year old dragon slayers. Nothing is quite as entertaining as one 50 year old pretending to be a twelve year old prostitute, and another pretending to be, what a 50 year old pervert?, but whose second-really a pretend-pretend journalist who first-really is a 50 year old pervert, faking out the other 50 year old who is pretending to be a twelve year old prostitute. That is important work. Tenure baby!
Seeing as how according to Snowden Second Life was rife with intelligence agents -- so much so that they kept running over each other and had to come up with a system to avoid interfering with each other -- you may be right that the PTB were upset somehow with his activities on Second Life.
1. Lengthy quotation (two or three paragraphs, at least, without line breaks) 2. Tenuous bridge paragraph connecting topic of opening quotation to whatever Eric was thinking about last night 3. Side-swipe at colleagues, with links that imply the sideswipe is justified (recall) but that have nothing to do with the topic at hand 4. Irrelevant brown-nosing links to other, more hip colleagues (recall) 5. Lengthy and irrelevant autobiographical note, including references to Eric's recent career developments. Implications without substantiation that those in the know (that is, early modernists who work in Eric's extremely narrow field) already know what he's saying (what that thesis is, of course, remains unclear) 6. An empty comment box
To whomever wanted to start naming sexual pariahs by name in the field of philosophy, please add Brian Leiter to that list. Although I don't count him as a philosopher given his own institution doesn't seem him a member of the philosophy department, the conversation he on his website is disgusting, to say the least. And the way he responds to critics of the conversation just proves he is the biggest sanctimonious ass in higher education.
No 12:06, 11:41 is using the fact that BL is hosting a conversation the politics of which she disagrees with to justify accusing him of being a 'sexual pariah'. This is how 'sexual harassment' is being redefined by the Title IX fanatics. If I disagree with your sexual politics, you are sexually harassing me.
11:41, if you think the discussion is "disgusting" is that because it is about sex? Or is that because it is on a professional blog? Or is that because you think the content of conversation, what people are expressing, is disgusting? I didn't notice anyone describing noxious or smelly substances so I don't get why number three would be true. If you think it's disgusting because the convo is carried out on a professional blog, why don't you just write Leiter a little note suggesting another location for the conversation to be copied to and further carried out. As for the first possibility of why you might be disgusted, if you're disgusted because the conversation is about sex I am not sure what to say.
1:08, if you think the two things are remotely parallel, you're out to lunch.
We're not going around destroying the careers of Title IX fanatics. We're not putting them out of a job. We're not dragging them through the courts. We're calling them out for introducing extreme injustice and the absence of due process into our lives. They lie in legal documents, they subvert justice, and they treat mere accusations of guilt as sufficient to condemn others. They deserve nothing but contempt.
It's as if you're responding to people saying "Serial killers deserve to be imprisoned" by telling us we're just as bad because we agree with the ethical views of serial killers.
Or maybe you feel disgusted because you think it is about rape and power and dominance. In that case, I would agree with you, IF that's what I thought the conversation was about. But that view about the subject matter begs all sorts of questions.
Of course it's a tu quoque. You guys are always going on about how the New Consensus demonizes its opponents; I thought you would acknowledge that some comments here indulge hyperbolic demonization as well.
"Weaponizing Title IX is really destructive and I have to wonder not just at the judgment, but even the character of those who misuse it like that" would be perfectly within the bounds of rational though impassioned discourse.
"Disgusting pieces of human garbage" seems, well, like a meltdown, to use one of the favorite phrases of the PMMB.
If I were trying to create a fascist state, one of the main things I would see to early on would be to make the philosophers and other intellectuals claw at themselves and scar and dismember themselves. It seems like it would be rule number 3 or 4 in the directions for creating a fascist state.
You know, until the wild feminized attacks on McGinn and Ludlow, I can't think of any time when this happened in philosophy after the McCarthy hearings.
No 2:29, we are going on about how the new consensus conspires to ruin the professional standing of their opponents. That's the difference your tu quoque ignores. So take your tone policing back to the tribe and tell them it won't work here.
"always going on about X" is a colloquial saying in American English for a common theme for a group of people; it's not a literal invocation of ubiquity, so pointing to a case where X is not a narrow focus of discussion doesn't detract from the claim that X characterizes a group.
So are you denying that "the NC demonizes its opponents" is a common (though not ubiquitous) theme in PMMB threads? Because I sure seem to read it a lot here (and at Leiter for that matter).
Your tu quoque misfired spectacularly, and the focus on tone policing makes you look tonedeaf to the conversational context, which is the baseless insinuation of sexual impropriety in the OP.
Every time Leiter hosts a thread in which non-NC views get expressed, someone on Facebook calls for a boycott of his blog. And then the usual crew chimes in to share that they stopped reading it years ago. This is all a show, though, and a sort of sickening one at that. So yeah, Leiter is a pariah of sorts, and in part because of his willingness to tolerate dissent on sexual matters; but this poor treatment of Leiter does not speak well of our profession!
Yes, the New Consensus demonizes its opponents, and we say so. In saying that, we're saying that, **rather than** engage with their interlocutors as philosophers ought to, the New Consensus members **avoid** clear arguments provided by those interlocutors and instead use political and social pressure to prevent the interlocutors from speaking or being taken seriously.
Saying that Title IX warriors are scum or garbage does not involve refusing to listen to the Title IX warriors' arguments. In fact, we have repeatedly and clearly refuted, in fact torn to shreds, what feeble arguments the Title IX warriors bother to provide (they don't have to provide them, since they're in power). And yet they ignore our responses and refuse to settle the matter with a conversation. And so, **after having debunked** their arguments, we call them things.
3:53, you seem to me to be engaging in premature self-congratulation about your defeat of your opponents. Of course *you* think you've won, and only resort to vituperation after the frustrating experience of having your victory go unacknowledged by your opponent.
I've no doubt, however, that they would say the same thing about their behavior. That seems to be the way people are: motes in your opponent's eyes vs beams in yours, etc.
Can the FP crowd really be oblivious to the difference between accusing, by name, a person of sexual impropriety and calling the ANONYMOUS people who do that garbage? Or is it just a smokescreen for an ad hominem?
It's not subjective motes vs beams. It's objective fact.
Can you think of a single time we sued someone for expressing an opposing opinion? Censored opinions we didn't like on our blogs? Attempted to have someone 'dispelled' from his grad program for expressing views we oppose, and using IP addresses to hunt down dissidents to ruin them?
These tactics are regular occurrences for the New Scolds. That's what we've been saying. It's not that they have an opposing view in the debate. It's that they constantly attempt to prevent the debate from happening, and try to destroy others in the process.
The FP crowd really is that inept at reasoning and being self-critically objective. When you think about it, nothing in their background ever taught them otherwise.
Alright assholes, dial it back a notch. You're probably talking to undergraduate hey-Jasons. They get their sense of justice from their facebook feeds straight to their brainstems. It's like beating up 5-year-olds.
I'm 5:07 and 3:53. Read it again, carefully this time. What I said was that the New Scolds avoid engaging with our arguments and instead use social and political pressure to shut us down. That pressure includes trying to 'dispel' people, censorship, lawsuits, etc.
Okay, fair enough, you do say that in the first paragraph of 3:53. You also say in the second paragraph "In fact, we have repeatedly and clearly refuted, in fact torn to shreds, what feeble arguments the Title IX warriors bother to provide (they don't have to provide them, since they're in power). And yet they ignore our responses and refuse to settle the matter with a conversation."
That was the target of the "premature self-congratulation" gibe.
However, I don't think it is factually true that the NC folks refuse to argue. It seems to me that many threads at DN, LR, FP, and even here contain arguments by your opponents.
As for the pressure tactics: Brogaard's "dispel" thing seems to have been a one-off (thankfully); whether DN, LR, or FP "censors" when they don't allow comments is disputed by the proprietors there (vociferously, by Leiter); and the lawsuits in the past years have been brought by Ludlow and the NU undergrad (not the grad), by Barnett and Kaufman against CU (and threatened by Leiter against Jenkins and Ichikawa).
Unless you are counting Title IX complaints as "lawsuits." That would be a little loose terminology, but whatever, this is a blog, so let's go there. Then we have the original Miami complaint (and the subsequent complaint to the OCR that Miami's action was inadequate), the CU complaints, and the NU undergrad and grad complaints against Ludlow and then against Kipnis and others.
In any case, if you have a narrow sense of "lawsuit" none of the NC people have brought suit to my knowledge (but maybe I'm forgetting one, or maybe you want to include the NU undergrad here, which I'll concede, though it does seem to stretch the sense of "NC"), and if you have a wide sense of "lawsuit" (that is, including Title IX internal complaints) even then I don't see legal or quasi-legal action as solely used by NC people.
Thanks for conceding that point, 6:31. Hm... you're definitely not the Femtroll, since she never concedes anything. My respect for you has definitely risen there, seriously!
Yes, I'm counting Title IX complaints as lawsuits. Here's another way the NCs have tried to stifle debate: the Colorado Site Visit report forbade people from taking a negative attitude toward feminist philosophy.
That doesn't really engage with 6:31's comments, 6:53. Are you conceding, at least, that lawsuits (even broadly speaking) are not solely used by NC people?
Also, it would be good if you could provide the evidence from the Site Visit Report that supports the claim that tit 'forbade' people from taking a certain attitude toward feminist philosophy. I ask because that is not what I recall. I thought it was closer to a recommendation that there were some situations where it is better to refrain from expressing total disdain for the field, or something. Although I might be remembering wrong. But I do think it matters, because I don't think the view that there are some times and places (and ways) in which discussions ought to take place and some times and places and ways in which they shouldn't is the same as the view that it is right to deliberately attempt to stifle those with opposing views.
I'm a feminist and according to me it is perfectly OK for anyone at any time to express disdain for the view(s) or any other view.
Of course, I wouldn't want to have colleagues who did express disdain for feminism, especially if they did it constantly and in a disrespectful way to actual people they worked with. I would want them to express their discerning judgments in other ways than to spout off to arbitrary anyone at arbitrary any time. I would hope that my department would hire collected people who don't spout off about things, about which their opinions are ill-informed. Still, let's have as few rules as possible about who can have or express which attitudes.
This makes me wonder whether at the CU site visit they tried to correct for rudeness to women colleagues by requesting that people be polite to a certain view -- feminism -- rather than requesting that people be polite to certain people -- women or philosophers who work on feminism. Did they confuse feminism and women again?
Hi, feminist at 8:30. (I'm a feminist too, but certainly opposed to the NC crowd).
I think you've hit the nail on the head. The Site Visit team is incapable of distinguishing their putative job, which is making philosophy departments comfortable to women, with a very different job of promoting feminist philosophy and a feminist outlook.
8:16, here's the passage. It's from pages 6 and 7 of the Site Visit report for Colorado.
"Realize that there is plurality in the discipline. If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy (or being engaged in any other sort of intellectual or other type of pursuit), they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for plurality in the discipline. Even if they are unable to reach a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students, in formal or informal settings on or off campus."
I'm a feminist. And I'm a philosopher. But I also hold that 'feminist philosophy' is a load of horseshit. I believe I have good grounds for thinking so. Now, I won't deny that there are intelligent people who have looked at the facts and conclude otherwise, but nonetheless this is my position. And I see nothing wrong with that position, and nothing wrong for that matter with anyone else holding, say, that metaphysics is nonsense or that logic is worthless and inapplicable, etc. And to say that I can't even say these things to a sympathetic or unsympathetic colleague off campus is lunacy.
It's also patronizingly question-begging to suggest that those of us who have read some 'feminist philosophy' and concluded that it tends to be utter bullshit need to "reach a level of appreciation" but are "unable" to do so, as if the fault must be ours for failing to see the wonderful merits of what we take to be a bogus and embarrassing subdiscipline.
You see how this works. Once this is put in place, the following conversation becomes taboo:
A: This department has a widespread sexual harassment problem. B: What? Oh dear. Where's the evidence? A: You don't need evidence for that. A woman said it. Listen to the women. B: But some women are saying there's no problem. I'm one of them. Shouldn't I listen to them also? A: Ah look, you're digressing and derailing to stop action from being taken. B: No, I'm not. You have no reason to impute that motive to you. A: Yes I do. I know what I'm talking about. B: You know no such thing. Where's your justification? A: Epistemology doesn't work like that. Read some feminist epistemology. B: If 'feminist epistemology' entails that you can justify your beliefs the way you just did, then it's a bunch of horseshit. A: I'm telling!
Look, I have never posted on this blog, and I am sure people will find some way to attack me for this, but I wanted to give you guys a piece of information. Do what you want with it. The site visit report at Colorado was written by the site visit committee to be viewed internally, by the department. And, since I was interviewed for it (and since I am very familiar with the situation there), I feel like I have to tell you that some of the stuff in it that has been interpreted by the public as part of the feminist conspiracy was not intended that way (though perhaps some of it was). The passage you've quoted is one example. There's a problematic trend in the department with certain faculty and students who work on feminist/political stuff, where they constantly disparage those who work on any other area of philosophy, practice exclusionary tactics, and so on (in particular running the hard line that if you're not doing feminist philosophy, you're automatically "part of the problem", you're living your life wrong, you're not a morally good person, etc.). At the same time (and, I think, partly because of this), there are people "on the other side" who go out of their way to say similarly nasty things about feminist philosophy. I agree that the passage you quoted is far too strong, and I don't agree with it as stated. But it's worth noting that it was meant to be a message to the department about people on both sides of this divide cleaning up their act and not being dismissive a**holes about their colleagues' work and lives. (And not being so dogmatic about it that this trickles down to their students, causing the same result among the grad students.) Okay, in short, yes, the passage sucks. But it's also (trust me) hard for most of you to imagine just how much seething hatred and acrimony there was in that department when it was written--and the hatred and acrimony was being perpetuated by both sides of the divide, and the site visit committee knew that. So, while being clear that I disagree with the passage, I think that given the context, it isn't the worst message ever, just too strong.
Thanks for sharing, 4:38. What you say sounds reasonable, and it is consistent with what I know about Boulder. I still wish, though, that the report had been written more thoughtfully.
Yeah I totally agree--even knowing that there was some background context to some of it that made it a bit more palatable, I still thought it was pretty damn annoying.
Interesting stuff, 4:38. Thanks. If that's true, it makes me feel a little better about that passage in the report.
I must object when you say it was meant for internal readers only. That is what the sure visit committee members falsely claimed, and in fact they only were able to get the confidential information they did by telling people that. But then they released the whole report to the administration, which they had specifically promised in writing they would not do. Since the administration was known to trample on men's and women's academic freedom in the name of creating a 'safe' environment, and since it was also known that the admin was out to destroy the Philosophy department, the subsequent press conference and release of the report to the media was easy to predict, as were the draconian conditions imposed at the recommendation of the report (e.g. the ban on all email exchanges on any topic between department members).
Michael Tooley still has an explanation and links to original source material to show all this at his website.
I'm less enthused about 4:38's explanation. The issue is not whether the report was compiled in a context in which advising particular people that they shouldn't be so dismissive of the work of others is the right thing to do. We can grant that as a truth, and still the way this passage is written betrays a lack of concern for basic norms of careful word selection that a professional philosopher writing in a situation like this should not be allowed to lightly elide. And this was written by a committee of professional philosophers, unselfconsciously telling us it is "totally unacceptable" to denigrate feminist views (among others!) in front of anyone teaching or attending the university, graduate or undergraduate, on or off campus. The fuck is your problem?
Furthermore, the fact that the committee did not expect CU administrators not to release the report is irrelevant (although, as the facts stand, it looks like the Committee was not forthright about who the document would be shared with). The language the report uses is culpably misguided regardless of whether it reaches the light of day.
Incidentally, the recent move by some feminists to defend their shoddy treatment of detail by claiming that their statements were meant to be semi-secret is a monumentally horrible tactical move. In addition to betraying a casual disregard for honesty, it makes it seem like you are patsies to a political agenda.
At any rate, with the kind of phrasing one sees in a document like the Site Visit Report, or Lockwood's affidavit, we should all be concerned about the intellectual and (because of their institutional power) ethical bona fides of the people running this circus.
The editor of the new APA blog is Lewis Powell, who has no less than 10,500 tweets to his name. Anyone want to scour these for racist, misogynistic, ableist, ageist, slut-shaming, size-shaming, transethniphobic, or transphobic content?
"Realize that there is plurality in the discipline. If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy (or being engaged in any other sort of intellectual or other type of pursuit), they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for plurality in the discipline. Even if they are unable to reach a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students, in formal or informal settings on or off campus."
Jesus H. Christ. Did a committee of members of our profession, sanctioned by the APA, write this in summary judgment? What an embarassment. Whatever they were trying to say, they fucked it up good.
They did indeed, 10:31. You can read the document at http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/The_Site_Visit_Report_and_Administration_Summary.pdf .
All the members of the site visit committee work, not coincidentally, on feminist philosophy.
We really need to bring about a sea change at the APA if our discipline is going to last another decade. We're losing ground in the university due to budget cuts and a lack of positive public attention to philosophy. The APA administration, headed up by a woman who is not even a member of the profession but instead is a self-described 'feminist activist', ignores all this and is devoting all its attention to these little pet projects, farmed out to the NCers at everyone else's expense.
Comment 62 at the recent LR thread on the CHE article cites this 2000 law review article claiming non-support for the 2% false rape accusation rate: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2216&context=llr
This 2010 social science journal article by Lisak et al however, based on its own study which arrives at a 5.9% figure, plus a review of 8 other studies, puts the number between 2 and 10%: http://www.icdv.idaho.gov/conference/handouts/False-Allegations.pdf
Do folks know of critiques of the Lisak et al 2010 study?
The thing to keep in mind with Lisak and many other researchers on false rape claims is that, as Lisak says explicitly many times in the study, they are looking at how many cases law enforcement originally took seriously enough to investigate but that were later *discovered* to be false. Since rape accusations normally can't be directly proved or directly disproved, it's not surprising that cases in which the accusation is shown to be false are quite rare.
Vastly more common are cases in which there is no clear evidence either way, so for all we know the accusation was false. Lisak doesn't count these in his total, so the rate of false reports could be anywhere from 2-8% at the very low end to 50% or even higher.
Anyone who uses Lisak 2010 to say that fewer than 10% of accusations are false is confusing demonstrated falsity with actual falsity.
Also, Lisak's work, like pretty well all work in the field, deals only with accusations made to law enforcement, where there's a stronger disincentive against making a false accusation. In cases like the Ludlow one, where no report was made to the police, the likelihood of a report being false should be considerably higher, since a false accuser has less to lose.
The correct comparison of Lisak's figure is with conviction rate, giving roughly his figure, 5% proved false, some other feminists figure, 5% proved true, therefore we should conclude the false accusation rate is roughly 50%.
8:40: thanks, those are interesting points and I'll keep them in mind.
11:08: Unless I'm missing something, you're saying that of the 90% of charges not resulting in conviction, half of them are "false." That would be 45% of the total charges, plus the 5% proven false. But why would *half* of the non-proven be "false"? Why assume that the symmetry between proven false and prove true holds for the non-convictions?
I really don't like the non-literal use of "rape" (as when, for example, victorious video gamers are described as "raping" their opponents), but Brad Stone doesn't seem to have a problem with it in his comments on Daily Nous:
"Roof is himself raping White women by relegating their sexual reproductive abilities to his own (racist) ends."
"White supremacy itself that is raping White women."
Are you serious? What kind of offensive garbage is this? Pretty sure it is men (of various races) making the decision to rape that is raping women, white and otherwise.
"Roof is himself raping White women by relegating their sexual reproductive abilities to his own (racist) ends... The logic does not need any actual Black man/White woman rape to take place, for it is White supremacy itself that is raping White women... White supremacy rapes and takes over."
Oh dear. The most charitable conclusion I can reach is that Brad Stone does not know what rape is.
Stone's commentary was really astounding. It was incredible to read someone consider an abominable racist mass murder of black men and women and essentially say, "the real take away here is how this relates to the oppression of white women!"
Much like the "diverse" all white conference advertised on FP, this is just another case where some NC members reveal that their commitment to diversity only extends to helping the careers of white women.
The people in this thread are dumb. During the shooting, Roof reportedly said, "I have to do it. You RAPE OUR WOMEN and you're taking over our country, and you have to go." This of course fits into an historic pattern, in which the supposed rape of white women is used again and again as a pretext for white violence against blacks. So, it seems fair for a philosopher to address this element of the shooting, to address what Roof himself claimed justified his shooting.
That said, I appreciate that the readers of this blog have very delicate sensibilities, and don't like it when people talk about rape or analogize behavior to rape or say that certain actions (e.g., the treatment of white women under white supremacy) have the key bad-making features of rape. So, I really do think that Stone should have issued a trigger warning, to protect you as his readers.
Charitably, I think the objection is not that the Stone addresses this historical pattern of justifying racist violence by appealing to protecting white women but that in doing so, Stone repeatedly uses "rape" in a non-literal sense. Since Roof (as far as I know) did not physically penetrate "White womanhood," construed generically, I'm not sure what Stone means here. I think he means something like "Roof supports a social system in which white women have no agency over their sexual choices."
We might say that the objectors to Stone in this thread were not reading Stone maximally charitably. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to those who criticize Continental-y or critical theory-style writing when it uses highly loaded language, often better applied to cases of literal physical violence, in a non-literal sense. It sounds more dramatic and may feel more rhetorical powerfully and persuasive to say that "Roof himself rapes white women" (generically construed) than to say "Roof supports a social system in which white men have all the control over white women's sexual and reproductive choices." But I happen to think that the former sort of reformulation ("Roof rapes women") should be avoided. It has a strong whiff of emotional manipulation and it makes it harder to counter the claim. For example, one might disagree that Roof supports a system in which white men have all the control over white women; they might argue that White Supremacy and its associated ideologies is more charitable to white women than that.
Finally, some people just think that "Rape" should always be used in its literal sense. Possibility they are concerned that widespread confusion over the meaning of "rape" creates conditions that make it difficult to address cases of (literal) rape in society. Their objection isn't that the word "rape" offends their "delicate sensibilities" but that using the word in a non-literal fashion contributes to a widespread and difficult problem, having to do with explaining and communicating about actual instances of literal rape.
Nice to see Prof Carolyn Dicey Jennings returning at NewAPPS to the topic of "placement data", as part of a "collaborative project" kindly funded by APA.
Curiously, the new "placement data" doesn't indicate gender. As CDJ puts it, "any categories that have not been made public (e.g. name, gender, race/ethnicity) will be provided to researchers with IRB approval from their home institutions".
One wonders if CDJ can explain why gender is not included. A detailed analysis of CDJ's hiring data for "the publication patterns ... for the cohort of those hired during 2012 and 2013 into tenure-track and post-doc positions from no prior position" is given here
http://genderandprestige.blogspot.com
Three highlights of this analysis are
1. " ... by and large, men publish more than women do: The average publication rate for women hired was about 0.8. The median number of publications for a woman hired was 0. The average publication rate for men hired was about 1.5. The median number of publications for a man hired was 1. .... a majority (54%) of women hired had no publications, as compared with 40% of men".
2. "For the Top 15 journals, 27% of men hired had at least one such publication, while only 11% of women hired had at least one. For these journals, the average publication rate for men hired was 0.42 publications, while for women hired it was only 0.14 publications".
3. "The statistical findings, at least as far as philosophy job hiring in 2012 and 2013 were concerned, indicate the existence of both prestige and gender bias in philosophy job hiring: Against lower prestige male applicants. For high prestige female applicants. As noted above, the correlation amongst those hired between being unpublished and gender is statistically significant".
Does the American Philosophical Association want to bury statistically significant evidence of anti-male bias in job hiring?
I remain baffled at the women in philosophy who fall for their old professors. How could that end well? Not ageist, just sayin that I find it baffling.
ReplyDeleteThe heart wants what it wants.
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Is Daily Nous really not going to link to the CHE article on Ludlow? If so, that is a very revealing editorial choice.
ReplyDeleteThis is a revealing general trend on blogs in the feminist philosophy network. Don't provide space for discussion of evidence that is off-message. Ignore criticism of the official message or provide non-responses. Then if some site "messes up" and allows discussion that you don't like, complain that the issues have already been settled among reasonable people through extensive discussion.
DeleteYes. Justin realized he went a little too far a couple of days ago by not censoring Anonymous 3's perfectly reasonable comments, since they were off message. He took some flak for that and had to restore his cred by mouthing off sarcastically at Anon3. That was good enough, but he knows not to tempt fate by publishing something else that might be seen to lead his readers into Thoughtcrime.
DeleteThe CHE article turned out to be too sympathetic to Ludlow for comfort, and definitely more sympathetic than the graduate student expected. There's not much they can do now to bury the story, I've been told by a reliable source that individuals close to the Ludlow case have requested that the article not be posted to Daily Nous. It'll be interesting to see just how far he capitulates to these kinds of requests.
Deletewell it is on the sidebar --
Delete--Look, I...
Delete--What now?
--Don't think I'm not sympathetic. I am! It's just...
--Just what, Justin?
--It's not credible!
--Ha! Now you're worried about credibility? You don't think you're already compromised up to your neck?
--You don't understand! People think... I mean, they know I've got an agenda, but they still credit me with some... some...
--Out with it, Justin.
--...editorial independence.
--Don't make me laugh!
--They do! Really! You don't know what you're asking. If I don't say anything about the CHE piece...What reason could I possibly give? It's not some scurrilous blog post! It's a respectable, well-research piece in the CHE! They cite their sources! Scrupulously! I can't just say nothing! I'll be a laughing-stock!
--Leave that to us, Justin. Don't worry about reasons.
--But what are people going to think? I'm really not sure you've thought this through...
--The calculations have been made, Justin. Everything's been factored in. I've told you: this is coming from the very top.
--But think about it... in the long term... how am I going to get your message out there effectively if I look like some kind of... lacky?
--Is that supposed to be funny?
--No! No! It's just a figure of speech!
--We made you, Justin. And we can break you. Just remember that.
-- Can I at least put it on the sidebar?
Delete-- No.
-- What? It’s news, for fuck’s sake!
-- Alright, maybe. There wasn’t a ruling on that. It didn’t come up.
-- Thanks.
-- Your sarcasm was always a bit labored, Justin.
-- Whatever. Look, there’s stuff I need to get to…
-- What, you don’t think I’m busy? Don’t forget to check in. And watch your threads. There had better not be any repeat of that ‘Anon 3’ bullshit. What a clusterfuck. My people were not pleased.
-- Yeah, yeah. Later.
-- Toodle-oo.
To the author of these little dialogues: well done. They will provide fodder for the endless "oh, those metabros are just conspiracy theorists" claptrap, but still, very funny stuff.
Delete-- Hello?
Delete-- Justin?
-- Yeah. What’s up?
-- There’s been a slight change of plan.
-- [Sighs.] [Pause.] Okay. What’s the new protocol?
-- It’s become apparent that at some point, you might have to say something.
-- Well duh. Wait. What do you mean, might have to?
-- I just meant, there’s always the chance that some new development will take the heat off.
-- Yeah, dream on.
-- Your negativity is not helping, Justin.
-- Alright, I’m sorry. But do you people have any idea of the pressure I’m under? I have a constituency. It includes moderates. I’m not supposed to be some kind of radical outlier! The idea was to be the voice of the profession – don’t you remember?
-- Well, there may be some hard choices ahead.
-- Hard choices? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
-- Calm down! All I’m saying is… the consensus among us is that you may have to give up some of the middle ground.
-- What? The middle ground? What, you mean, like, people who recognize flagrant double standards when they see them? Just have a look back through my archives. Seriously, do it! Have you seen the airplay I gave to all those news items that looked favorable? I’m not some kind of fucking hack, you know!
-- Get a grip! For fuck’s sake! Honestly, we’re not asking for much.
-- No?
-- No! Just… if nothing happens… in a few days…
-- Yes?
-- We’d really appreciate it if you could say something about PMMB.
-- What? Why would you want me to say anything about those fuckers?
-- We just need some pushback. Nothing drastic. Kind of the usual, really. You know… ‘metabros’…
-- You do know quite a few women post there, right?
-- Christ, Justin, what is this, fifth grade? Yeah, we know. The point here is perception. Do you seriously still not get it?
-- Yeah… yeah… I get it. [Pause.] What else?
-- What? Oh, you know… ‘Beer pong’…
-- You know, I think Protevi kind of ruined that whole trope.
-- Oh yeah… yeah. Sorry, I forgot. OK, how about… something about ‘rape apologists’? Doesn’t really matter how you get the phrase in there. I swear, you wouldn’t believe how that plays to the base. Wallace will give you some grief, but we’ve weathered that before. And we kind of feel he’s losing credibility by the day.
-- Among the base.
-- Well, yeah, of course among the base, what did you think I meant? So what do you say?
-- Jesus.
-- What? Too much?
-- No! Not at all! I thought you were about to insist on something really serious! I mean… not that this wouldn’t be really effective… But… it’s actually something I was thinking about doing anyway.
-- Excellent! So we’re on the same page!
-- I… I guess we are.
-- Awesome. Later.
-- Wait! What about the CHE piece?
-- What about it?
-- When can I say something about that?
-- What? What are you, high? Not going to happen, J.
-- Look, I have to…
-- Wait… another call. I’ve got to take this. Ciao, Justin! [Hangs up.]
Haha! Someday, someone has to make this movie.
DeleteThese Justinian Dialogues are seriously hilarious. Someone will take them too seriously, probably, but that doesn't make them any less genius.
DeleteThey are very good, I have to admit, even though I'm on Team NC.
Delete(FWIW, my guess is that Justin wanted to spend a summer weekend with his family and not have a bunch of comments to moderate, but what do I know?)
-- J-Dog! Justin Martyr! Always happy to hear that novelty ring-tone. What’s happening, my man?
Delete-- Oh, you know. Nothing much. What ring-tone?
-- What? Oh -- little dog barking. Not sure what that’s about. I didn’t even set it up, now I think about it. What can we do you for?
-- Just checking in. You know.
-- Right! Of course. Of course. Listen, you are doing fantastic work at the Nous. We were just talking about it, actually. Fantastic. The Conscience of the Profession, someone called it.
-- Seriously? Someone said that?
-- I shit you not, my friend. I shit you not.
-- Wow. It means a lot to hear stuff like that. I have to say… sometimes it all feels a bit unappreciated, you know? Thankless.
-- Jesus. Tell me about it! Plus: the threads. Don’t think we didn’t notice. Totally under control. That’s what we like to see.
-- Thanks! It’s a lot of work…
-- Well, it shows.
-- …but it’s worth it, especially when you get great feedback, you know?
-- I hear you. Is there anything… Can we… Is there anything we can help you out with?
-- Oh! Well, it’s kind of you to offer. What sort of thing did you have in mind?
-- Anything, really… I mean… Well, for example, we have open channels of communication with a lot of other philosophy blog people. The Apps, Schliesser… a lot. Plus big-time FB people. That’s becoming more and more of a factor. And we have leverage. Some. Some leverage. So, you know, if you ever need a little mood music… you know what I mean? You need the ground prepared for some initiative of your own… Like, say you need some kind of, I don’t know, groundswell of opinion. Or even a… a spontaneous outcry. Like I say, it’s all about perception, you know?
-- Right. Yes. Well, I appreciate that. I will definitely keep it in mind.
-- Sure thing. You do that. Any time. I mean, within reason. We can’t do the impossible! Like, I know you were super-bummed about that CHE thing…
-- Yeah, look…
-- But it was nothing personal. Seriously. My hands were tied, Justin. You have to believe me.
-- Sure! No… I understand. I do. But if you detect any sign of a… a… you know, change of heart on that front…
-- Oh, absolutely! I’m still pushing, Justin. Still pushing.
-- Thanks. So… talk soon?
-- Yeah. Oh, hey…
-- Yeah?
-- Almost forgot… There is something you might be able to help us out with…
This one wasn't as good.
DeleteI like to imagine JW writing these himself, out of a bit of frustration at having to voice specific opinions in order to continue to be supported by those who helped him rise.
I liked it! Very naturalistic conversation. And the bit at the end made me wonder what the 'something' was. My guess is that it's the Calhoun interview, linked at the DN sidebar. Mind you, I think Calhoun did a decent job of it.
DeleteI hate it that, thanks to the irresponsible feminidiots and their baseless propaganda campaign, we're now facing a public assumption that philosophy has a major sexual harassment problem and this is how the world primarily sees us.
When philosophy departments get axed because some departments need to in the current budget crises and we look like a bunch of assholes on the basis of no credible reasoning (thank you, WILTBAW, FP, and Amy Ferrer), we're going to be out of work.
But the femphils won't. Most of them are cross-listed in Women's Studies and other departments anyway or else are close enough that they can make the switch with ease. So they've got little to lose if the ship goes down. Who invited them on board in the first place? They sure as hell aren't philosophers. Amy Ferrer doesn't even pretend to be, and the rest of them couldn't objectively and analytically assess an issue or charitably reconstruct a sincere interolcutor's argument if their lives depended on it. And their lives and careers never do depend on it, unlike ours.
Northwestern Professor, Northwestern Graduate Student, whatever -- a pox on both their houses, I say. They sound like terrible and terribly unwise people to me. Seriously, what kind of professor has students over to his house, alone, and spends the night with them drinking? Seriously, what kind of student tells a professor twenty years her elder that she's in love with him, even if only to promote her career? I mean, seriously!
ReplyDeleteLockwood accuses Ludlow of "offering to "pass off" a student girlfriend whom he was dating at the time of the incident with the Northwestern undergraduate to another senior Philosophy Professor in the U.K., and allegedly offering to write a letter of recommendation for the student’s application to a university in London".
ReplyDeleteAnyone know who this "senior Philosophy Professor in the U.K." and "girlfriend" are? There is one obvious philosophy couple (now married) that meets the description pretty well; is this who Lockwood has in mind?
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This was funny the one time someone used it on Leiter, and only that time. It's had its day in the sun. Find something else to do.
DeleteI did laugh out loud that one time it was used on Leiter. I did not laugh out loud this time. I'll bet money no one did. Please don't post any more of these here, facepalmphilosopher.
Deletewell i would love to know if that story checks out...
Deleteand some of the others..
C'mon people, that speculation is just vulgar. Plus, talking about how women in philosophy get ahead of their peers through relationships with powerful old dudes is NOT on-message and is definitely NOT Whineberg-approved.
Deleteit would be funnier if it was the ASCII version of the pig poop balls meme. somebody who knows how to do that stuff should start spamming with that
Deleteah yes philosophers should be pristine and vulgar-free
ReplyDeletewe should all think the same and act the same
exactly why i got in the biz
The story turns out to be misery for everyone involved. The heart wants what it wants, sure. And it is very easy to understand a life long Lothario, with a track record of sleeping with undergraduates (than which there is nothing more lame), falling in love with a graduate student and not recognizing the tremendous pressure that would put on someone in her situation. It's also easy for me to understand a graduate student not quite having a full grasp on her feelings for a professor whom she admires, fears, desires while not knowing exactly how to extricate herself from the situation. I'm stymied however by Ludlow's full court legal press after the shit hit the fan. Someone gave him terrible advice. All that money now gone. No more apartment. He's living in someone's basement and fleeing the country. That was just really stupid.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't stupid if there were facts he expected to be exposed in court that would not otherwise be exposed. Also it was not stupid if he believed he was being defamed. The only way to fight defamation is to challenge it, I suspect. Just "letting it go" doesn't work in that kind of situation. "Just letting it go" is good advice for getting over a love affair or for coming to terms with having done something stupid or for coming to terms with something one is embarrassed about. It might even work for dealing with harsh judgments by one's peers (though a better response in that situation might be to look at the judgments and think through them and try to integrate the advice in them). But defamation is beyond being harshly judged by one's peers, and I think has to be fought head on, as he did. What else can an honest citizen with self respect and respect for others do, than to fight perceived defamation? Ignoring it is nihilistic and a pretense that one's society does not matter.
DeleteI don't know though. I'm not in any of these people's heads.
Well put 3:08. If Ludlow is telling the truth about NW refusing to look at elevator video in the undergraduate case and refusing to consider a hotel receipt in the grad case then a legal course of action seems like the right way forward.
DeleteYes, and you need to remember that twat of a judge who pretended that 'rape' can mean 'put his arm round you' and concluded that he wasn't defamed by being called a rapist. Always good to know exactly who the female chauvinist pigs are.
DeleteFrom the CHE article: "The graduate student says she did not...consider them to be dating.... She kept the precarious relationship going, she says, because she benefited from the professional connection."
ReplyDeleteNot even the reporter could believe the grad student would make this claim--and as a basis for denying the relationship in part was consensual ("the graduate student says Mr. Ludlow used his position to take advantage of her"). The grad student was just trucking...for career benefits.
"Dr. Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, revealed to me that he had spoken with Ludlow some time between February 26 and the date of our conversation, and that Ludlow "did admit to dating undergraduate students in previous institutions," but that Stanley was under the impression that Ludlow had managed to change the behavior."
ReplyDeleteThe underlying moral of Jason's correspondence: "I didn't know." Moral of the episode as a whole... You can file a complaint if you wan't... But, they are going to fuck you up. And everybody around you is going to be Jason Stanley. Including all the hey-jason-feminists.
The people agitating for Title IX's expanding scope, and the public prosecution of these matters, are doing harm to nearly everyone involved. Shame on them.
ReplyDeleteIt's incredible that the same people calling now for NO ANONYMOUS GOSSIP AND NO NAMES, PLZ and NO MORE SPECULATION, PLZ are also enthusiasts for blogs literally dedicated to spreading anonymous gossip and speculation -- especially WIITLBAWIP. I would respect Derek Bowman, Jan Dowell, and Elizabeth Harman a lot more if they also denounced efforts to name and shame the Northwestern professor or the use of anonymous blogs to smear philosophers without due process. That would at least be consistent. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.
ReplyDeleteI think that the WIITBAWIP is an excellent one. I haven't even told my stories on it yet (which probably should be told, as at least one of them is pretty serious, but I haven't gotten around to the work it would take to think about those things that happened to me and then write about them in an appropriate way). I appreciate that women have taken the time to post there, as it helped me gain perspective and come to terms with my own experiences and provided a sense of greater ease. I also appreciate the information value the site has for those who previously seem to have had no clue about the extent of sexual harassment in philosophy and what it has meant to individuals' careers.
DeleteThat said, I agree with part of what you say, 1:18 (but without the judgment about the commenters you name). When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments. So it is indeed no wonder that there is a felt need to continue commenting on it now. I appreciate that people are trying to puzzle out the whole situation and I am saddened for all those directly involved and wish the best for them.
"When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments. So it is indeed no wonder that there is a felt need to continue commenting on it now. I appreciate that people are trying to puzzle out the whole situation and I am saddened for all those directly involved and wish the best for them."
DeleteDitto.
This is the first NA thread about Northwestern:
Deletehttp://www.newappsblog.com/2014/02/student-sues-northwestern-for-alleged-failure-to-act-on-sexual-misconduct-finding-against-a-philosop.html
Where does this "branding" and "burning" occur?
On these next two NA posts, comments were never open:
Deletehttp://www.newappsblog.com/2014/02/student-sues-ludlow.html
http://www.newappsblog.com/2014/03/ludlow-responds-to-student-suit.html
No comments allowed here either:
Deletehttp://www.newappsblog.com/2014/03/open-letter-from-northwestern-graduate-students-in-philosophy.html
Thanks for posting, 6:24
DeleteThe branding begins with this instigation:
"It disturbs me that the response to these reports about Ludlow is significantly tempered and sluggish compared with the response people had to McGinn in roughly the same time-frame (after the Chronicle article, but before McGinn's insane blog posts)."
It's an instigation masquerading as an innocent request for an explanation (about a putative asymmetry with the putatively comparable McGinn case). Nothing needed to be explained, or certainly not right then, It was the first most people had heard of the NU situation.
Ah temperance, that most disturbing of virtues.
Delete6:41, hmm. I took that comment to be as much a condemnation of the rush to judgment on McGinn as it was a condemnation of the "sluggishness" of the response to Ludlow. See the final paragraph of that comment:
Delete"If this is true, it is worrisome. We should not be less inclined to believe that someone is guilty because we have great respect for his/her philosophical work. And by the same token, we should not be *more* inclined to believe that someone is guilty because his or her nasty character traits."
OK, 6:51, but perhaps you will reconsider if you read the person's subsequent comments and some of the other people's comments building on the meme comment 3 is introducing. I guess not a meme but a piece of sophistry. I disagree that the theme was that we should look to fair treatment for McGinn, if you consider the later comments for interpretation of the early one. Rather, the theme was oriented towards creating occasions --openings in the "conversation"-- for people to register disgust with the NU case or for them to type the "r" word. Even the phrase you quoted is problematic: "we should not be less inclined to believe that someone is guilty because we have respect for his/her philosophical work..." With that comment the readers are now primed with the word "guilt" and with the suggestion that they need to form some judgment about the person's guilt or innocence, and need to form some such judgment about it sooner rather than later, or never.
Delete7:22, can you be more specific about the comments you have in mind?
DeleteAt 18, CL says: "Yet today I'm seeing a lot more skepticism about the Ludlow case: about the student's motives, about her 'mental stability,' etc. It is sickening and hypocritical, since these come from the same people who danced on McGinn's grave."
That seems to me to be critical of a rush to judgment in the McGinn case, due, on CL's hypothesis, to a dislike for McGinn. "Why didn't they extend to McGinn the (correct) skepticism they now offer Ludlow?" -- that seems to be his / her line of thought.
This CL person is saying she/he is "sickened" by the fact that people were not rushing to dance on PL's grave, and implying that if people do not judge him negatively, they are being hypocritical. But the first charge is admirable and the second is false.
DeleteThere are probably two other commenters that seem very consciously to be beating the drum for CL's dance, and then there are a couple swept up already on that first day in the tribablism.
Just to explain the context for anyone who might not know it: Colin McGinn had already made many enemies prior to the exposure of the incident with his graduate student, which led many people to rejoice that someone they already hated was getting lambasted in the press. No doubt, a number of people who jumped up and down about the McGinn thing were really using it as a convenient excuse for McGinn hatred, and for that reason found themselves screaming for the blood of all sexual harassers.
DeleteWhen the news broke about Ludlow, the New Scolds wanted to make sure they got the same reaction. They realized it was going to be a harder sell, though, since Ludlow had been well liked by pretty well everyone. So Ludlow was a kind of testing ground. If people didn't tear Ludlow to pieces as easily as they had McGinn, it would show that they weren't so rabidly opposed to even the mere accusation of sexual harassment that they would turn on their best friends. And that would be bad for the cause. So the passage from the blog seems intended to put those who hesitate before pissing all over a formerly beloved friend, or who called for evidence first, in a tricky position by making them seem "disgusting" for being insufficiently zealous.
8:24 and 12:29: I read it exactly the opposite way. No one recommends to people that they should dance on X's grave; that's a condemnation. If you are trying to exhort people to morally condemn someone you appeal to objective moral grounds, not to the subjective feelings of joy at seeing an enemy fall. In other words, hardly anyone *recommends* Schadenfreude as a moral motivation, though they acknowledge it as human, all too human. Again, then, my reading is that that CL says is hypocritical is people extending to Ludlow the skepticism that they should have extended to McGinn, but did not, merely based on their dislike of McGinn.
Delete8:24: "There are probably two other commenters that seem very consciously to be beating the drum for CL's dance, and then there are a couple swept up already on that first day in the tribablism."
Which two others, please? There are 82 comments on that thread before it was closed with the 83rd. By my reading, there are three main topics. 1) the comparison of the reactions to the McGinn to those of the Ludlow case; 2) expressions of disgust, but in the hypothetical "if he did that, then it's a serious breach of [morals / professionalism]" (that is sometimes adduced as a reason for the different reactions -- along with the fact of McGinn's blogging); 3) the long discussions about Heck's claims at 40 that sexual assault, as opposed to McGinn's more mundane harassment, is rare in philosophy so that the Ludlow case does not provide evidence of a climate issue (while the McGinn case does).
I don't see much "branding" and "burning" of Ludlow, but would be happy to see you provide some specific quotes to the contrary.
I already explained how the branding worked.
DeleteBut you didn't provide any other quotes after I gave a plausible counter-interpretation to yours. There are 82 comments there; which ones are you referring to?
Delete4:43,
DeleteI'm afraid you are missing the gist of what I said. The branding does not consist only in the contents of particular comments, but in the fact that a ridiculous issue got raised in the first place and the focus kept on that. It was ridiculous to complain how philosophers were responding given they had only just heard the news (as several of them did attempt to point out in comments, to no avail). Each time that people were pushed back to the non-issue, this constituted a re-branding, since each time it invited people to attribute an act of violence to a guy and to distance themselves from what they imagined to be an awful thing. Several philosophers did try to veer away from this issue to something else, and they got brought back to it. Comments got deleted for b.s. reasons, but the blog moderator was unduly influenced by one of the commenters.
Now I'm not going to pick out particular comments for you to "prove" my point. I partially explained the mechanism to you, and you can go figure it out yourself or not.
"Several philosophers did try to veer away from this issue to something else, and they got brought back to it.... Now I'm not going to pick out particular comments for you to "prove" my point. I partially explained the mechanism to you, and you can go figure it out yourself or not."
DeleteLOL. Fancy way of saying "I got nothing."
So you DON'T think that the issue was a stupid irrelevant one? That no one in their right mind who was not being manipulated would take up?
DeleteDon't try to shift the burden of proof, 12:17. You made a positive empirical claim and have not yet provided any evidence for it. What I think is irrelevant to your ability (or inability, as the case may be) to provide evidence for your claim of "branding" (and "burning," let's not forget that) of Ludlow in the first NA thread. The link is there; and there are 82 comments at NA. Surely you can provide some evidence for your claims. Where, exactly, by number and with quotes, is the "branding" and "burning"?
Delete12:07: You cherry pick 11:43's content. "you got nothing" sounds like what a criminal would say.
Delete12:28: where in 11:43 did he provide evidence for his claims that I overlooked (that's what "cherry-picked" would mean here)?
Delete"I got nothing" is an American colloquialism associated with comedians, not criminals: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=i+got+nothin
You're an idiot 12.34. If you're too thick to see the truth of what he is saying, and insist on being a useful idiot for the NC spin, he doesn't have to waste his time proving it to you. Just know, the rest of us see you're stupidity.
Delete12:24, You're just spinning, and not responding to what I actually said about the nature of the evidence.
DeleteI deny that I have a burden of proof to point out branding comments to you. I was asking you a diagnostic question. If you think that the issue raised at comment 3 on NA was reasonable given that people had just heard the news, then there is no point in me pointing to specific comments in the thread. It is not, or not only, the content of specific comments that constitutes the branding. Rather, it is the way the focus was manipulated. This includes deleting comments that were not on message. To make this case would require more than producing objectionable comments. It would be to explain the relations of the comments to each other.
I was on that thread in real time when it happened. I'm not sure why I should spend my time now analyzing the thread for you. If you are interested, you can find the time yourself to do it, assuming you know something about rhetoric and psychology and a basic respect for all people. But I suspect you're more interested in grandstanding on an anonymous blog.
So you got nothing, either, 12:55. Good to know. If the "truth" is so evident, it should be easy for 11:43 to provide it, right?
DeleteLook, it's simple. A makes an empirical claim of X ("branding") and Y ("burning"). B asks for evidence of X and Y. A provides passage P as evidence for X but not Y. B produces a counter-interpretation of P w/r/t X and asks for further evidence for X and any evidence of Y. A cannot do so but attempts to change the subject. B refuses that shift and asks again for evidence of X and Y.
It still seems to me, that, that A has violated the obligation to provide evidence for claims.
When B, that is to say, you, provides a bullshit counter-interpretation and carries on with nonsense blather, no one has to bother because unlike you we're not so stupid as to think such nonsense raises an explanatory burden. You've been told once: you come back with time wasting bullshit: we don't care, byeee.
DeleteAlright kids, take the melodrama to the comments section of youtube.
Delete"When B, that is to say, you, provides a bullshit counter-interpretation and carries on with nonsense blather,"
DeleteLOLOL. Proof of "bullshit" conveniently omitted. Look dude, calling it bullshit don't make it so. I'll stick with my points throughout this sub-thread.
My favorite thing about this arid thread is the way 2:32 keeps using "we", trying to create the impression of some anonymous majority finally crying out against teh oppressive fems.
DeleteThere's just one of you, dude.
Nope. There are at least two.
DeleteActually, given some differences in style of language, I think there are at least three who have no truck with the ridiculous attempt made to defend the spin that was put on the original NA thread.
DeleteMore than two. I know this, since I've talked about the PMMB in person with philosophers at conferences, and I know multiple people IRL who post here anonymously. Despite what the detractors say, the PMMB isn't merely an online hangout spot for a handful of irate white male graduate students. All sorts of professionals tune in and occasionally post.
Delete2:15: "we interpret, you spin" is that it? Since there are at least three of you it should be easy for you to point to an instance of Ludlow being "burned" at the NA thread, right? But so far it's been crickets on that point.
DeleteAnd no argument as to why my interpretation (or "spin," whatever, as long as the opposite side is "spin" too, right, because fair's fair, right?) of CL is "bullshit," just bare assertion that it is. But naming don't make it so, amirite?
Hi, 6:49. I'm a new voice here.
DeleteI'm another person who thinks the NCs are having a very unwelcome influence.
You keep asking for quotes and references. I'm not as familiar with that DN thread, and the case against the NCs hardly depends on it, but I'll have a look for you.
But please clarify first what you're contending, so I know what I'm looking for.
Are you saying that no members of the New Consensus/Feminist Philosophers crowd played any role in Ludlow's downfall, the canceling of his classes in Spring 2014, and the pressure on the university to deprive him of his job? If that's not your contention, please clarify what it is. Thanks.
By the way, if you think those of us who are sick and tired of the NC/femphil bullshit are just a small handful, you're in for a rude awakening. There are origami several hundred of us at least, and we're growing rapidly. Through their pigheadedness, the NCs and femphils are creating a massive backlash against themselves. I wish it weren't as extreme as the pendulum swing is likely to be. They had a good position to work with but fucked it up spectacularly.
8:09, I'm responding to the claim in the second paragraph of this comment about "branding" and "burning":
Delete"When the news about the Northwestern case first came out on the NA blog it took exactly SIX comments before the professor involved was branded, and then burnt again and again and again in subsequent comments. Anyone who attempted to suggest a wait and see attitude or suggest that there was a wider context relevant to evaluating the situation was shut out of comments."
http://philosophymetametablog.blogspot.com/2015/06/june-shrugs.html?showComment=1434836198304#c308214080126830460
Another new voice here. I'm a woman, and I used to consider myself a feminist. But I think the "feminist" philosophers (which includes FP and Schliesser and NA and JW and others) have acted terribly in a number of situations. It makes me too ashamed to call myself a feminist, so I don't.
DeleteHi, 8:19. So: are you merely trying to show that that one particular comment happens to be incorrect (if it is)? And nothing more? You're not arguing that the NC/FP crowd didn't push people to condemn Ludlow hastily, but only that the second commenter is mistaken in the details of how this happened?
DeleteI'm asking for two things: 1) evidence of "branding" and "burning" in the NA thread; and 2) an argument, rather than a mere assertion, that this interpretation of CL on that thread is bullshit:
Delete"8:24 and 12:29: I read it exactly the opposite way. No one recommends to people that they should dance on X's grave; that's a condemnation. If you are trying to exhort people to morally condemn someone you appeal to objective moral grounds, not to the subjective feelings of joy at seeing an enemy fall. In other words, hardly anyone *recommends* Schadenfreude as a moral motivation, though they acknowledge it as human, all too human. Again, then, my reading is that that CL says is hypocritical is people extending to Ludlow the skepticism that they should have extended to McGinn, but did not, merely based on their dislike of McGinn."
What's a "hey Jason feminist"?
ReplyDeleteA "hey jason" is when you loudly yell someone's name across the quad at someone who may or may not be your friend, so I'm guessing that a "hey jason feminist" is someone who loudly proclaims their feminism which may or may not be sincere.
DeleteLemoine comment 38 at Ranksalot FTW. The usual suspects are totally running scared from the pretty much undeniable points he makes there in connection with the Kipnis fiasco. Still deafening silence at DN -- what a joke.
ReplyDeleteThe hypocrisy and barely-deniable deceit is appalling. One wonders how revealing this is of the concept of justice behind the push to favor the accuser in cases of this sort. It certainly makes the Feminist Philosophers crowd come off looking bad.
DeleteLemoine says the question of consensual sex is relevant to the Kipnis angle.
DeleteLeiter is saying it's relevant to discussion of the rape charge. Not that it solves it one way or the other, but that it's legally allowed to be discussed -- that is, there is no *blanket* exclusion of the sexual history of an accuser for court testimony.
History prof says the consensual sex question is relevant to the trustworthiness of the complainant w/r/t Title IX filings. It's unclear whether he or she thinks it's relevant to the rape charge; the exact wording is "the accuser’s credibility, judgment, and the accuracy of her self-reporting."
Is that how folks here are reading the latter part of the thread?
I read the History Prof's remark as saying that the consensual sex question is relevant because of some unusual features of this situation, viz. waiting two years and then being apparently strong-armed into the first complaint against L, then filing "four other increasingly specious Title IX complaints". So, not necessarily anything specific to do with evidence appropriate to evaluating rape charges.
DeleteAll the humming and hawing over did she or didn't she on Leiter is ridiculous. It's perfectly obvious she was screwing him and now is trying the 'how dare you ask me that...I'm a lady, don't you know' line, at which point the feminists and the white knights join in with a load of crap, hoping that no one will ask what was she doing in his bed if she didn't want to screw him.
DeleteWhat she was doing in his bed... and not even just once, but over and over again for weeks or months, it seems from her story.
DeleteIt's funny... I remember being quite shocked by the readiness of NC philosophers of my acquaintance, and especially women, to deploy the r-word in the PL / undergrad case. When I protested I was mocked for being (or pretending to be) naive: 'Why else would he have gotten into bed with her?' Like almost everyone else I have no idea what really happened, and I'm not endorsing 6.50's switched-around version of the same thought, but I have no doubt that the same NC people would angrily reject it, so I'm just thinking about the issue of consistency. Some of the discussion has struck me as confirming the now-familiar idea of a pronounced Victorian streak in white academic feminism.
Delete(contd)...Or maybe it's just opportunism, ie the biases that work in these contexts to lower the culpability-bar for men as compared to women happen to ape well-known 'Victorian' tropes concerning sexual difference. Although -- even here, is the connection entirely coincidental? Not sure how to think about this.
DeleteThe dilemma FP and DN currently face is this. On the one hand, the article extensively quotes the graduate student, and it is well-researched and fair. So it would seem to be FP-friendly. But, on the other hand, it also extensively quotes Ludlow, and it is well-researched and fair.
DeleteThe graduate student's own words are in conflict with things Pogin has claimed or implied, and the overall impression one gets casts the Title IX complaints in a very unflattering light. Figuring out how to frame all of these facts in a way that supports the FP view is quite tricky, and it may take Pogin et. al. a week or two to figure out how to pull that off. So for now, DN and FP will refrain from allowing any comments on the issue.
Great analysis, everyone. Thanks!
Delete8:29: you're *complaining* that people are taking time to compose a response that fits their point of view? Isn't that so mundane as to be yawn-inducing?
Delete6.27: Troll. We're talking about people who can't move fast enough when they think a story can be slotted into their narrative with ease. One can actually tell quite a lot from the time-lag factor. J Dowell's extraordinary 'Very Important Public Announcement' on FB appeared the day after I had made a comment here remarking on the unusual silence at all the main non-Leiter philblogs about the Kipnis case. Once the rudiments of a position had been stitched together (roughly, "Won't someone, please, think about the children?'), posts started to appear on the blogs.
Delete8:29 says it will take time to fit this story into the prevailing narrative for the New Consensus, because it's a tricky case for them.
DeleteAt 6:27, I agree, but point out that taking one's time to fit a story into a prevailing narrative is a common occurrence, *when it's a tricky case for that narrative* -- that latter clause not being made explicit, because I assumed it would be understood, in context of the previous comment.
7:39 then calls me a troll for pointing that out, because people can write quickly when a story easily fits a narrative.
6:27 is definitely trolling or at least not arguing in good faith.
DeleteAlso, the FPers haven't been silently toiling at their response. They've been biding their time with a bigger news story about the Sunday cat.
Oh good, it's 'you disagree with me so I will accuse you of being a troll or arguing in bad faith in order to shut down the discussion' time.
DeleteThe two graduate students who filed Title IX complaints -- presumably Pogin and Leydon-Hardy, since they are otherwise publicly connected to the case -- knew that Ludlow and the accuser had a relationship, and they tried to bury that, assuming that there is no other way it would come to light. In doing so, they made it clear that winning in the public debate, or coming to what they perceive as the right outcome in the end, takes precedence over the truth. They selectively presented facts with an intent to deceive. I now no longer trust anything else they said about this issue, nor will I trust them on any other Title IX issue.
ReplyDeleteThat seems mostly right, as Lemoine has been saying on the BL thread. Pogin, we assume, knew all about the case before any of this came out, yet wrote this to Kipnis:
DeleteThe graduate student has neither confirmed [that the claim about dating] is the case, nor had a chance to dispute the claim in court given that her motion to dismiss had to presume all the facts as he alleged them could be substantiated, whether or not she believed that to be true. Moreover, given that the university's finding that he sexually harassed her was based precisely on the relationship which he alleges was consensual, one must wonder how a relationship could be found to both sexually harassing and consensual at one and the same time.
At the time a lot of people took Pogin to mean there was no dating relationship betwen PL and GStudent. After reading the CHE article, of course, her locutions look carefully chosen to invite that misreading. Further, it seems, given what we know of the actual finding against PL, that the relationship was both consensual and a policy violation.
ive noticed people dont bash the cocoon blog -- is that because it stays out of controversy?
ReplyDeleteSure, there's a lot of bad advice floating around there. But it's well-intentioned, mostly harmless, and not given over to the toxic culture that has taken over a few other philosophy blogs. So I'm inclined to just leave it alone and hope that the young philosophers whose future I care about don't put too much credence in the posts over there.
DeleteYeah, whatever else you might say about the blog, things never turn nasty there. Even when the odd comment takes an excessively snarky tone, I can't recall a case of the OP taking the bait. It's an impressively positive place, given what normally happens on philosophy blogs.
DeleteIs it just me, or is the general priggish and scolding nature of our field and the general reaction to Ludlow extremely disturbing? Or perhaps what is more disturbing is the lack of self-awareness and thought about how romantic and sexual attraction works. For example, from a commenter on Leiter's blog:
ReplyDelete"Now him. Ludlow, for his part, seems to me to be sort of willfully and conveniently blind to the potentially intoxicating effect of his position and power and prestige. I'm sure he greatly enjoyed the benefits of that intoxicating effect, even if he could not fully acknowledge to himself that it was merely a form of intoxication that probably drew her to him in the first place."
"[M]erely a form of intoxication"? Wow. Do people like this commenter not realize that it just these sorts of "intoxicating" combinations of properties that people are actually _seeking_ all over the place. Would the person who wrote those words not be ecstatic if some person with such "intoxicating" properties showed romantic or sexual interest in him or her? And why is Ludlow singled out? Can women not have such "intoxicating" properties for men, for example, in the form of physical beauty?
What the fuck is wrong with academics? They really are the absolutely stupidest, most fucked up, idiotic "smart" people that exist, no?
I agree with your diagnosis of the field in general, 7:58. But I think your example lands shy of the mark. The commenter you quote (Ken Taylor, Stanford) actually struck me as wise and balanced. People *are* often attracted to power and prestige. And let's face it, it is often *women* who are attracted to power and prestige wielded by men. Insensitivity to that attraction (as Ludlow -- and many pundits -- seem to exhibit) belies a kind of foolishness with respect to basic and obvious facts about human nature. The attraction of people to power offers a helpful explanation of what probably happened. But it does not strip the graduate student of agency (that would be a mistake, but a mistake that Taylor did not make). The leap from "the graduate student found Ludlow's power intoxicating" to "the graduate student did not consent to a relationship" would not be truth-preserving; it would be, in fact, an obvious fallacy. On that, I suspect you, me, and Taylor agree.
DeleteHi, Ken!
DeleteI can't tell whether it's an American thing or an academic thing. Are academics in other countries as clueless about romance and sex?
DeleteUS/Canada/UK academic thing, I'd say. In my experience, that weirdness about romance and sex is not the norm in Australasia or continental Europe.
DeleteI don't know if this is what Taylor was getting at, but I think the only thing potentially problematic with Ludlow enjoying the benefits of the "intoxicating effect of his position and power and prestige" is that, since that power and prestige was in the student's field, the potential for quid pro quo is really strong. If this case was about a relationship with a young bartender from the corner bar who happened to be "intoxicated" by academic prestige, the only issue anyone (or at least anyone rational) would be talking about is the alleged rape.
DeleteBut if you have power and prestige in field X, and you enter into a relationship with someone who is wanting to advance in field X, there's lots of room for misunderstanding.
My take on it: brains can trigger sexual attraction as easily as any other body part, and there was probably some intellectual and romantic attraction on both sides. Both of their reports seem to indicate this. But the student placed a relatively higher value on the mentoring side of things and Ludlow placed a relatively higher value on the sexual side of things. Not surprising. A student's success depends more on finding a good mentor than a professor's success depends on finding a good advisee. Ultimately, they couldn't reconcile that and called it off. The way they both describe it in the CHE piece, I'm not too surprised the student doesn't call it "dating":
Compare it to a slightly different scenario. Suppose, instead of the narrative in the CHE piece, they both fell in love and or lust. As in the CHE piece, they recognize that the relationship could be harmful to the student's career. But, because they are in love/lust and want to keep it that way, she finds a different mentor to write papers with, he offers his research travel funds to some other deserving student, they let their friends and department know what's going on and there's no question if they are dating because everyone's seen them together at department and private parties. The fact that they didn't do this synchs with the student's account that she saw it as primarily a mentoring opportunity.
So, the problem, back in the real scenario, is the potential for having professional favors conferred based on a personal relationship. It kind of looks like that was happening. I wonder, after they broke off whatever you call that relationship, if the mentoring continued. Did they write the paper together? Did the research trip happen?
My impression is that the research trip happened, but before they were involved. And the fact that they didn't tell other people about the relationship is easily explained by two things: the fact that she didn't want to be known as someone who got involved with professors (see her texts to him, cited in the article). He didn't seem to mind the prospect that they would stay together and that the story would have come out: he mentions that they considered marriage together. It seems he kept quiet about it either because she wanted him to or also, perhaps, because he didn't want to be seen as someone who had *non-serious* relationships with graduate students.
DeleteTaylor nails it again over at Sir Ranksalat.
DeleteHow do we know it's Ken Taylor? The link sends you to Philosophy Talk, which features two hosts, Ken Taylor and John Perry, and a couple of producers, some researchers, etc.
DeleteAnother commenter on Leiter's blog says:
ReplyDelete"I would have hoped that by now most folks recognize that an accuser's sexual history is never relevant to the assessment of a rape accusation."
This is a great example of the absurdly anti-philosophical stance of many in our field. The above claim is epistemologically problematic, to put it mildly. Try doing some philosophy, folks. If you want to do uncritical, feminist activism, please leave academia.
It amazes me when I see this kind of thing. It's like these people live an ideological bubble and expect to get whatever they want. And they seem increasingly willing to manipulate fact and due process to further their interests. All under the cover of justice. Talk about privilege.
DeleteThat was honestly the most idiotic quote in the thread at Leiter.
DeleteNo. There is a more idiotic one (hidden in a very long passionate post in which the poster is (in my view) admirably trying to take account of the complexity of human life and remind us that it is not easy to know what goes on between people). I started to post the short statement here to show you-all, but thought better of it.
DeletePeople, when you write, try to avoid excess verbiage (too many adjectives or rhetorical flourishes). You may accidentally say something that is obvious false or that you don't really believe. That's what I am going to try to remember to tell my students and also to remind myself about.
And so we move into the second full day in which the (balanced, well-researched) CHE article has been given no attention at DN (beyond the sidebar).
ReplyDeleteThis lengthening silence should be monitored and publicized. Against the background of what has been said about this case up to now on that blog, it's a real scandal.
In light of this scandal, it would be a good time to plug Laura Kipnis' book "How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior." A review--
DeleteA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
We all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classic—revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness—though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception—the necessary ingredients—are our collective plight. How to Become a Scandal is “an extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignore” (David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto).
"failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception", how apt.
DeleteIf the NC really wanted to avoid comments on the new CHE piece, they should have posted the article on New Apps. That's a zero comment guarantee.
ReplyDeleteYes! Excellent tactic. Hull or Kazarian could bury any issue, no matter how hot, just by writing some loopy pomo analysis.
DeleteI was a bit puzzled about where all this mass hysteria about the so-called 'scandal' that DN has paid 'no attention to' an article that is clearly linked to from the sidebar, but there's an obvious answer. BL's clearly pulling this shit to try and maintain market share, along with the concerned email 'from a reader' that he prefaces his post with, which oh-so-neatly gives him a chance to smear JW's credibility while still being able to maintain that *he's* not saying those things about JW. Follow the money.
ReplyDeleteYour use of "hysteria" is offensive and sexist (look it up). Check your privilege, and next time please issue a trigger warning before using such language in this safe(r) space.
DeleteHi Justin!
DeleteHi Brian!
DeleteJustin, you gave that CHE article all the attention you gave to the dinosaur philosopher, so I don't know why people think you're paying it no attention. To the contrary, the real scandal is that Leiter is just ignoring the important dinosaur philosopher story.
DeleteI don't have the CHE article in front of me. Am I correctly rembering that Ludlow says that on the night of the alleged rape, there was no sex at all, but instead he checked into a hotel while leaving the student in his apartment?
ReplyDeleteYes, that is his claim. There's no time line proposed however. The alleged rape could have occurred at 11:30 pm and PL arrived at the hotel at 12:30 am, for instance.
DeleteYes. And also that he had a hotel receipt that proved it, which he gave to the investigators. Presumably they were convinced, since the finding that Northwestern arrived at said nothing at all about this alleged episode and only mentioned the propriety of the relationship as a whole.
DeleteSorry, I posted this below, but meant to include it in this thread...
DeleteIt's notable how prima facie implausible this is. Ludlow is having plenty of sex with the student, according to his account, and so the student had plenty of episodes she could point to as involving rape, if she so chose. But instead she chooses an occasion on which nothing happens at all. Doesn't make much sense.
Okay, I'll move my reply up here too then.
DeleteWhy does Ludlow choose that night, of all the ones in which they slept together (whether they had consensual sex on those other nights is disputed, but both agree they slept together a lot), to go to a hotel?
One hypothesis would be she was too drunk to have sex with, or even to share the bed with, what with all her tossing and turning, so he went to a hotel to get some peace and quiet.
Another hypothesis would be he had sex with her (whether this was the only time or one of many needn't concern us here I don't think) but then realized she had been too drunk to consent, so he panicked and went to a hotel to establish an alibi.
There are no doubt other hypotheses that would fit the facts, but these two seem reasonable.
Seems unfair to Ludlow that his career is being derailed by all the drunk students who slept in his bed but whom he DID NOT have sex with.
DeleteThe undergrad doesn't even claim he had sex with her.
DeleteIt's notable how prima facie implausible this is. Ludlow is having plenty of sex with the student, according to his account, and so the student had plenty of episodes she could point to as involving rape, if she so chose. But instead she chooses an occasion on which nothing happens at all. Doesn't make much sense.
ReplyDeleteWhy does Ludlow choose that night, of all the ones in which they slept together (whether they had consensual sex on those other nights is disputed, but both agree they slept together a lot), to go to a hotel?
DeleteOne hypothesis would be she was too drunk to have sex with, or even to share the bed with, what with all her tossing and turning, so he went to a hotel to get some peace and quiet.
Another hypothesis would be he had sex with her (whether this was the only time or one of many needn't concern us here I don't think) but then realized she had been too drunk to consent, so he panicked and went to a hotel to establish an alibi.
There are no doubt other hypotheses that would fit the facts, but these two seem reasonable.
More smoke and desperation. The debate has been about the willful lack of clarity about the relationship from the grad student's camp and the bogus Title IX complaints. The actions against Ludlow and Kipnis--and the university's findings against Ludlow--have nothing to do with the alleged rape.
DeleteWhere does his defamation suit against the student stand at this point?
Delete@8:47- Why do you consider the discussion above your post "smoke and desperation".(None of which is from me, fwiw) Yes, there's an on-going discussion elsewhere on the blog about the nature of the relationship and the Title IX complaints and Kipnis, etc. And yes, those don't have to do with the rape allegation.
DeleteBut that doesn't mean there can't also be a discussion about the rape allegation. It was the subject of the grad student's original complaint. It's a subject in Ludlow's defamation suits. It's mentioned in the CHE article. It's a serious allegation. There's room for both discussions.
(Now, if I was going to derail the discussion, it would be with two utterly trivial and irrelevant questions that have been bugging me since reading the CHE article:
1) Why, in 2011, is Ludlow printing off documents for a traveling student instead of just sharing them? Who wants all that paper in their luggage?
and
2) Ludlow is (per the CHE article) "known for .....redirecting philosophy to an emphasis on studying the logic of ordinary human language" ? Really?)
Yeah that summary of what he is known for also gave me pause. Strangely, none of his engagement with the public over philosophical issues arising from the consideration of technology, journalism and online communities has been given a mention in any of these blog discussions all this time.
DeleteAnyone remember Paranoid British Guy? I am not he. I still think he had one good point though. Ludlow was no friend of the powers that be -- he was a well-known supporter of Snowdon and Wikileaks -- and one must wonder whether this has something to do with the unsympathetic and intense scrutiny he's faced. To me, Ludlow's work on these topics is his most important, and it's curious, as 3:05 notes, that it doesn't get any comment in most treatments of the Northwestern Affair.
DeleteSample:
Deletehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality-of-systemic-evil/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/fifty-states-of-fear/?_r=0
http://www.thenation.com/article/174851/strange-case-barrett-brown
I think his most important work is the extra layer of fakeness he added to the second really real world of 10 million twelve year old dragon slayers. Nothing is quite as entertaining as one 50 year old pretending to be a twelve year old prostitute, and another pretending to be, what a 50 year old pervert?, but whose second-really a pretend-pretend journalist who first-really is a 50 year old pervert, faking out the other 50 year old who is pretending to be a twelve year old prostitute. That is important work. Tenure baby!
DeleteSeeing as how according to Snowden Second Life was rife with intelligence agents -- so much so that they kept running over each other and had to come up with a system to avoid interfering with each other -- you may be right that the PTB were upset somehow with his activities on Second Life.
DeleteDoes anyone ever read Schliesser's Digressions and Impressions? Talk about an echo chamber.
ReplyDeleteHere's the Ghent Balloon's formula:
Delete1. Lengthy quotation (two or three paragraphs, at least, without line breaks)
2. Tenuous bridge paragraph connecting topic of opening quotation to whatever Eric was thinking about last night
3. Side-swipe at colleagues, with links that imply the sideswipe is justified (recall) but that have nothing to do with the topic at hand
4. Irrelevant brown-nosing links to other, more hip colleagues (recall)
5. Lengthy and irrelevant autobiographical note, including references to Eric's recent career developments. Implications without substantiation that those in the know (that is, early modernists who work in Eric's extremely narrow field) already know what he's saying (what that thesis is, of course, remains unclear)
6. An empty comment box
Rinse and repeat, folks. Rinse and repeat.
this is genius
DeleteTo whomever wanted to start naming sexual pariahs by name in the field of philosophy, please add Brian Leiter to that list. Although I don't count him as a philosopher given his own institution doesn't seem him a member of the philosophy department, the conversation he on his website is disgusting, to say the least. And the way he responds to critics of the conversation just proves he is the biggest sanctimonious ass in higher education.
ReplyDeleteBeg pardon, 11:41? Are you accusing Leiter of sexual impropriety? Speak up.
DeleteNo 12:06, 11:41 is using the fact that BL is hosting a conversation the politics of which she disagrees with to justify accusing him of being a 'sexual pariah'. This is how 'sexual harassment' is being redefined by the Title IX fanatics. If I disagree with your sexual politics, you are sexually harassing me.
DeleteI think you're right.
DeleteWhat disgusting pieces of human garbage these Title IX fanatics are.
"If I disagree with your sexual politics, you are {strikethrough} sexually harassing me {/strikethrough} disgusting pieces of human garbage."
DeleteFTFY
11:41, if you think the discussion is "disgusting" is that because it is about sex? Or is that because it is on a professional blog? Or is that because you think the content of conversation, what people are expressing, is disgusting? I didn't notice anyone describing noxious or smelly substances so I don't get why number three would be true. If you think it's disgusting because the convo is carried out on a professional blog, why don't you just write Leiter a little note suggesting another location for the conversation to be copied to and further carried out. As for the first possibility of why you might be disgusted, if you're disgusted because the conversation is about sex I am not sure what to say.
Delete1:08, if you think the two things are remotely parallel, you're out to lunch.
DeleteWe're not going around destroying the careers of Title IX fanatics. We're not putting them out of a job. We're not dragging them through the courts. We're calling them out for introducing extreme injustice and the absence of due process into our lives. They lie in legal documents, they subvert justice, and they treat mere accusations of guilt as sufficient to condemn others. They deserve nothing but contempt.
It's as if you're responding to people saying "Serial killers deserve to be imprisoned" by telling us we're just as bad because we agree with the ethical views of serial killers.
Or maybe you feel disgusted because you think it is about rape and power and dominance. In that case, I would agree with you, IF that's what I thought the conversation was about. But that view about the subject matter begs all sorts of questions.
Delete1:17 is meant as an addendum to 1:14 and is addressed to 11:41
DeleteIgnore 1:08. It's tu quoque. And anyone who doesn't see the difference isn't worth more than ridicule if he's a tu quoquer.
DeleteOf course it's a tu quoque. You guys are always going on about how the New Consensus demonizes its opponents; I thought you would acknowledge that some comments here indulge hyperbolic demonization as well.
Delete"Weaponizing Title IX is really destructive and I have to wonder not just at the judgment, but even the character of those who misuse it like that" would be perfectly within the bounds of rational though impassioned discourse.
"Disgusting pieces of human garbage" seems, well, like a meltdown, to use one of the favorite phrases of the PMMB.
If I were trying to create a fascist state, one of the main things I would see to early on would be to make the philosophers and other intellectuals claw at themselves and scar and dismember themselves. It seems like it would be rule number 3 or 4 in the directions for creating a fascist state.
DeleteTrue, 2:57.
DeleteYou know, until the wild feminized attacks on McGinn and Ludlow, I can't think of any time when this happened in philosophy after the McCarthy hearings.
No 2:29, we are going on about how the new consensus conspires to ruin the professional standing of their opponents. That's the difference your tu quoque ignores. So take your tone policing back to the tribe and tell them it won't work here.
Delete"always going on about X" is a colloquial saying in American English for a common theme for a group of people; it's not a literal invocation of ubiquity, so pointing to a case where X is not a narrow focus of discussion doesn't detract from the claim that X characterizes a group.
DeleteSo are you denying that "the NC demonizes its opponents" is a common (though not ubiquitous) theme in PMMB threads? Because I sure seem to read it a lot here (and at Leiter for that matter).
Your tu quoque misfired spectacularly, and the focus on tone policing makes you look tonedeaf to the conversational context, which is the baseless insinuation of sexual impropriety in the OP.
DeleteEvery time Leiter hosts a thread in which non-NC views get expressed, someone on Facebook calls for a boycott of his blog. And then the usual crew chimes in to share that they stopped reading it years ago. This is all a show, though, and a sort of sickening one at that. So yeah, Leiter is a pariah of sorts, and in part because of his willingness to tolerate dissent on sexual matters; but this poor treatment of Leiter does not speak well of our profession!
DeleteYes, the New Consensus demonizes its opponents, and we say so. In saying that, we're saying that, **rather than** engage with their interlocutors as philosophers ought to, the New Consensus members **avoid** clear arguments provided by those interlocutors and instead use political and social pressure to prevent the interlocutors from speaking or being taken seriously.
DeleteSaying that Title IX warriors are scum or garbage does not involve refusing to listen to the Title IX warriors' arguments. In fact, we have repeatedly and clearly refuted, in fact torn to shreds, what feeble arguments the Title IX warriors bother to provide (they don't have to provide them, since they're in power). And yet they ignore our responses and refuse to settle the matter with a conversation. And so, **after having debunked** their arguments, we call them things.
See the difference?
Well said, 3.53.
Delete3:53, you seem to me to be engaging in premature self-congratulation about your defeat of your opponents. Of course *you* think you've won, and only resort to vituperation after the frustrating experience of having your victory go unacknowledged by your opponent.
DeleteI've no doubt, however, that they would say the same thing about their behavior. That seems to be the way people are: motes in your opponent's eyes vs beams in yours, etc.
^ Or maybe it's the polarization of internet groups.
DeleteWell said, 4:26. This kind of thing seems to be a common problem round here.
DeleteCan the FP crowd really be oblivious to the difference between accusing, by name, a person of sexual impropriety and calling the ANONYMOUS people who do that garbage? Or is it just a smokescreen for an ad hominem?
DeleteIt's not subjective motes vs beams. It's objective fact.
DeleteCan you think of a single time we sued someone for expressing an opposing opinion? Censored opinions we didn't like on our blogs? Attempted to have someone 'dispelled' from his grad program for expressing views we oppose, and using IP addresses to hunt down dissidents to ruin them?
These tactics are regular occurrences for the New Scolds. That's what we've been saying. It's not that they have an opposing view in the debate. It's that they constantly attempt to prevent the debate from happening, and try to destroy others in the process.
The FP crowd really is that inept at reasoning and being self-critically objective. When you think about it, nothing in their background ever taught them otherwise.
DeleteAlright assholes, dial it back a notch. You're probably talking to undergraduate hey-Jasons. They get their sense of justice from their facebook feeds straight to their brainstems. It's like beating up 5-year-olds.
Delete5:07: 3:53, to whom I was responding at 4:26, was talking about arguments, not legal or extra-legal tactics.
DeleteI'm 5:07 and 3:53. Read it again, carefully this time. What I said was that the New Scolds avoid engaging with our arguments and instead use social and political pressure to shut us down. That pressure includes trying to 'dispel' people, censorship, lawsuits, etc.
DeleteOkay, fair enough, you do say that in the first paragraph of 3:53. You also say in the second paragraph "In fact, we have repeatedly and clearly refuted, in fact torn to shreds, what feeble arguments the Title IX warriors bother to provide (they don't have to provide them, since they're in power). And yet they ignore our responses and refuse to settle the matter with a conversation."
DeleteThat was the target of the "premature self-congratulation" gibe.
However, I don't think it is factually true that the NC folks refuse to argue. It seems to me that many threads at DN, LR, FP, and even here contain arguments by your opponents.
As for the pressure tactics: Brogaard's "dispel" thing seems to have been a one-off (thankfully); whether DN, LR, or FP "censors" when they don't allow comments is disputed by the proprietors there (vociferously, by Leiter); and the lawsuits in the past years have been brought by Ludlow and the NU undergrad (not the grad), by Barnett and Kaufman against CU (and threatened by Leiter against Jenkins and Ichikawa).
Unless you are counting Title IX complaints as "lawsuits." That would be a little loose terminology, but whatever, this is a blog, so let's go there. Then we have the original Miami complaint (and the subsequent complaint to the OCR that Miami's action was inadequate), the CU complaints, and the NU undergrad and grad complaints against Ludlow and then against Kipnis and others.
In any case, if you have a narrow sense of "lawsuit" none of the NC people have brought suit to my knowledge (but maybe I'm forgetting one, or maybe you want to include the NU undergrad here, which I'll concede, though it does seem to stretch the sense of "NC"), and if you have a wide sense of "lawsuit" (that is, including Title IX internal complaints) even then I don't see legal or quasi-legal action as solely used by NC people.
Thanks for conceding that point, 6:31. Hm... you're definitely not the Femtroll, since she never concedes anything. My respect for you has definitely risen there, seriously!
DeleteYes, I'm counting Title IX complaints as lawsuits. Here's another way the NCs have tried to stifle debate: the Colorado Site Visit report forbade people from taking a negative attitude toward feminist philosophy.
That doesn't really engage with 6:31's comments, 6:53. Are you conceding, at least, that lawsuits (even broadly speaking) are not solely used by NC people?
DeleteAlso, it would be good if you could provide the evidence from the Site Visit Report that supports the claim that tit 'forbade' people from taking a certain attitude toward feminist philosophy. I ask because that is not what I recall. I thought it was closer to a recommendation that there were some situations where it is better to refrain from expressing total disdain for the field, or something. Although I might be remembering wrong. But I do think it matters, because I don't think the view that there are some times and places (and ways) in which discussions ought to take place and some times and places and ways in which they shouldn't is the same as the view that it is right to deliberately attempt to stifle those with opposing views.
I'm a feminist and according to me it is perfectly OK for anyone at any time to express disdain for the view(s) or any other view.
DeleteOf course, I wouldn't want to have colleagues who did express disdain for feminism, especially if they did it constantly and in a disrespectful way to actual people they worked with. I would want them to express their discerning judgments in other ways than to spout off to arbitrary anyone at arbitrary any time. I would hope that my department would hire collected people who don't spout off about things, about which their opinions are ill-informed. Still, let's have as few rules as possible about who can have or express which attitudes.
This makes me wonder whether at the CU site visit they tried to correct for rudeness to women colleagues by requesting that people be polite to a certain view -- feminism -- rather than requesting that people be polite to certain people -- women or philosophers who work on feminism. Did they confuse feminism and women again?
Hi, feminist at 8:30. (I'm a feminist too, but certainly opposed to the NC crowd).
DeleteI think you've hit the nail on the head. The Site Visit team is incapable of distinguishing their putative job, which is making philosophy departments comfortable to women, with a very different job of promoting feminist philosophy and a feminist outlook.
8:16, here's the passage. It's from pages 6 and 7 of the Site Visit report for Colorado.
"Realize that there is plurality in the discipline. If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy (or being engaged in any other sort of intellectual or other type of pursuit), they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for plurality in the discipline. Even if they are unable to reach a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students, in formal or informal settings on or off campus."
I'm a feminist. And I'm a philosopher. But I also hold that 'feminist philosophy' is a load of horseshit. I believe I have good grounds for thinking so. Now, I won't deny that there are intelligent people who have looked at the facts and conclude otherwise, but nonetheless this is my position. And I see nothing wrong with that position, and nothing wrong for that matter with anyone else holding, say, that metaphysics is nonsense or that logic is worthless and inapplicable, etc. And to say that I can't even say these things to a sympathetic or unsympathetic colleague off campus is lunacy.
It's also patronizingly question-begging to suggest that those of us who have read some 'feminist philosophy' and concluded that it tends to be utter bullshit need to "reach a level of appreciation" but are "unable" to do so, as if the fault must be ours for failing to see the wonderful merits of what we take to be a bogus and embarrassing subdiscipline.
You see how this works. Once this is put in place, the following conversation becomes taboo:
A: This department has a widespread sexual harassment problem.
B: What? Oh dear. Where's the evidence?
A: You don't need evidence for that. A woman said it. Listen to the women.
B: But some women are saying there's no problem. I'm one of them. Shouldn't I listen to them also?
A: Ah look, you're digressing and derailing to stop action from being taken.
B: No, I'm not. You have no reason to impute that motive to you.
A: Yes I do. I know what I'm talking about.
B: You know no such thing. Where's your justification?
A: Epistemology doesn't work like that. Read some feminist epistemology.
B: If 'feminist epistemology' entails that you can justify your beliefs the way you just did, then it's a bunch of horseshit.
A: I'm telling!
A probing critique 10:04.
DeleteLook, I have never posted on this blog, and I am sure people will find some way to attack me for this, but I wanted to give you guys a piece of information. Do what you want with it. The site visit report at Colorado was written by the site visit committee to be viewed internally, by the department. And, since I was interviewed for it (and since I am very familiar with the situation there), I feel like I have to tell you that some of the stuff in it that has been interpreted by the public as part of the feminist conspiracy was not intended that way (though perhaps some of it was). The passage you've quoted is one example. There's a problematic trend in the department with certain faculty and students who work on feminist/political stuff, where they constantly disparage those who work on any other area of philosophy, practice exclusionary tactics, and so on (in particular running the hard line that if you're not doing feminist philosophy, you're automatically "part of the problem", you're living your life wrong, you're not a morally good person, etc.). At the same time (and, I think, partly because of this), there are people "on the other side" who go out of their way to say similarly nasty things about feminist philosophy. I agree that the passage you quoted is far too strong, and I don't agree with it as stated. But it's worth noting that it was meant to be a message to the department about people on both sides of this divide cleaning up their act and not being dismissive a**holes about their colleagues' work and lives. (And not being so dogmatic about it that this trickles down to their students, causing the same result among the grad students.) Okay, in short, yes, the passage sucks. But it's also (trust me) hard for most of you to imagine just how much seething hatred and acrimony there was in that department when it was written--and the hatred and acrimony was being perpetuated by both sides of the divide, and the site visit committee knew that. So, while being clear that I disagree with the passage, I think that given the context, it isn't the worst message ever, just too strong.
DeleteThanks for sharing, 4:38. What you say sounds reasonable, and it is consistent with what I know about Boulder. I still wish, though, that the report had been written more thoughtfully.
DeleteYeah I totally agree--even knowing that there was some background context to some of it that made it a bit more palatable, I still thought it was pretty damn annoying.
DeleteInteresting stuff, 4:38. Thanks. If that's true, it makes me feel a little better about that passage in the report.
DeleteI must object when you say it was meant for internal readers only. That is what the sure visit committee members falsely claimed, and in fact they only were able to get the confidential information they did by telling people that. But then they released the whole report to the administration, which they had specifically promised in writing they would not do. Since the administration was known to trample on men's and women's academic freedom in the name of creating a 'safe' environment, and since it was also known that the admin was out to destroy the Philosophy department, the subsequent press conference and release of the report to the media was easy to predict, as were the draconian conditions imposed at the recommendation of the report (e.g. the ban on all email exchanges on any topic between department members).
Michael Tooley still has an explanation and links to original source material to show all this at his website.
I'm less enthused about 4:38's explanation. The issue is not whether the report was compiled in a context in which advising particular people that they shouldn't be so dismissive of the work of others is the right thing to do. We can grant that as a truth, and still the way this passage is written betrays a lack of concern for basic norms of careful word selection that a professional philosopher writing in a situation like this should not be allowed to lightly elide. And this was written by a committee of professional philosophers, unselfconsciously telling us it is "totally unacceptable" to denigrate feminist views (among others!) in front of anyone teaching or attending the university, graduate or undergraduate, on or off campus. The fuck is your problem?
DeleteFurthermore, the fact that the committee did not expect CU administrators not to release the report is irrelevant (although, as the facts stand, it looks like the Committee was not forthright about who the document would be shared with). The language the report uses is culpably misguided regardless of whether it reaches the light of day.
Incidentally, the recent move by some feminists to defend their shoddy treatment of detail by claiming that their statements were meant to be semi-secret is a monumentally horrible tactical move. In addition to betraying a casual disregard for honesty, it makes it seem like you are patsies to a political agenda.
At any rate, with the kind of phrasing one sees in a document like the Site Visit Report, or Lockwood's affidavit, we should all be concerned about the intellectual and (because of their institutional power) ethical bona fides of the people running this circus.
I eagerly await 11:41's Title IX complaint against U of Chicago.
ReplyDeleteI am microaggressed by this brazen disregard for the feels I get when someone disagrees with my politics.
DeleteSigned,
11:41's id.
Hi Rhys!
DeleteWill nobody think of the children?
ReplyDeleteIn the past month there have been 12 posts on NewApps, with a total of 11 comments. Is it time to call it? (In the medical sense.)
ReplyDeleteThe editor of the new APA blog is Lewis Powell, who has no less than 10,500 tweets to his name. Anyone want to scour these for racist, misogynistic, ableist, ageist, slut-shaming, size-shaming, transethniphobic, or transphobic content?
ReplyDeleteNo need, 10:12. Ed Kazarian, Jon Protevi, Mark Lance, Heidi Lockwood, and the rest of the morons will do that in their spare time.
Delete"Realize that there is plurality in the discipline. If some department members have a problem with people doing non-feminist philosophy or doing feminist philosophy (or being engaged in any other sort of intellectual or other type of pursuit), they should gain more appreciation of and tolerance for plurality in the discipline. Even if they are unable to reach a level of appreciation for other approaches to the discipline, it is totally unacceptable for them to denigrate these approaches in front of faculty, graduate or undergraduate students, in formal or informal settings on or off campus."
ReplyDeleteJesus H. Christ. Did a committee of members of our profession, sanctioned by the APA, write this in summary judgment? What an embarassment. Whatever they were trying to say, they fucked it up good.
They did indeed, 10:31. You can read the document at http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/The_Site_Visit_Report_and_Administration_Summary.pdf .
DeleteAll the members of the site visit committee work, not coincidentally, on feminist philosophy.
We really need to bring about a sea change at the APA if our discipline is going to last another decade. We're losing ground in the university due to budget cuts and a lack of positive public attention to philosophy. The APA administration, headed up by a woman who is not even a member of the profession but instead is a self-described 'feminist activist', ignores all this and is devoting all its attention to these little pet projects, farmed out to the NCers at everyone else's expense.
Comment 62 at the recent LR thread on the CHE article cites this 2000 law review article claiming non-support for the 2% false rape accusation rate: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2216&context=llr
ReplyDeleteThis 2010 social science journal article by Lisak et al however, based on its own study which arrives at a 5.9% figure, plus a review of 8 other studies, puts the number between 2 and 10%: http://www.icdv.idaho.gov/conference/handouts/False-Allegations.pdf
Do folks know of critiques of the Lisak et al 2010 study?
The thing to keep in mind with Lisak and many other researchers on false rape claims is that, as Lisak says explicitly many times in the study, they are looking at how many cases law enforcement originally took seriously enough to investigate but that were later *discovered* to be false. Since rape accusations normally can't be directly proved or directly disproved, it's not surprising that cases in which the accusation is shown to be false are quite rare.
DeleteVastly more common are cases in which there is no clear evidence either way, so for all we know the accusation was false. Lisak doesn't count these in his total, so the rate of false reports could be anywhere from 2-8% at the very low end to 50% or even higher.
Anyone who uses Lisak 2010 to say that fewer than 10% of accusations are false is confusing demonstrated falsity with actual falsity.
Also, Lisak's work, like pretty well all work in the field, deals only with accusations made to law enforcement, where there's a stronger disincentive against making a false accusation. In cases like the Ludlow one, where no report was made to the police, the likelihood of a report being false should be considerably higher, since a false accuser has less to lose.
The correct comparison of Lisak's figure is with conviction rate, giving roughly his figure, 5% proved false, some other feminists figure, 5% proved true, therefore we should conclude the false accusation rate is roughly 50%.
Delete8:40: thanks, those are interesting points and I'll keep them in mind.
Delete11:08: Unless I'm missing something, you're saying that of the 90% of charges not resulting in conviction, half of them are "false." That would be 45% of the total charges, plus the 5% proven false. But why would *half* of the non-proven be "false"? Why assume that the symmetry between proven false and prove true holds for the non-convictions?
Lockwood pretends to be a third party observer and defends herself by name in comments sections.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxgSvJINlU
ReplyDeleteNominated for the DN theme song?
I really don't like the non-literal use of "rape" (as when, for example, victorious video gamers are described as "raping" their opponents), but Brad Stone doesn't seem to have a problem with it in his comments on Daily Nous:
ReplyDelete"Roof is himself raping White women by relegating their sexual reproductive abilities to his own (racist) ends."
Eww.
Excellent point.
Delete"White supremacy itself that is raping White women."
DeleteAre you serious? What kind of offensive garbage is this? Pretty sure it is men (of various races) making the decision to rape that is raping women, white and otherwise.
"Roof is himself raping White women by relegating their sexual reproductive abilities to his own (racist) ends... The logic does not need any actual Black man/White woman rape to take place, for it is White supremacy itself that is raping White women... White supremacy rapes and takes over."
DeleteOh dear. The most charitable conclusion I can reach is that Brad Stone does not know what rape is.
Stone's commentary was really astounding. It was incredible to read someone consider an abominable racist mass murder of black men and women and essentially say, "the real take away here is how this relates to the oppression of white women!"
DeleteMuch like the "diverse" all white conference advertised on FP, this is just another case where some NC members reveal that their commitment to diversity only extends to helping the careers of white women.
Privileged white women who had financial support and family support all the way along.
DeleteThe people in this thread are dumb. During the shooting, Roof reportedly said, "I have to do it. You RAPE OUR WOMEN and you're taking over our country, and you have to go." This of course fits into an historic pattern, in which the supposed rape of white women is used again and again as a pretext for white violence against blacks. So, it seems fair for a philosopher to address this element of the shooting, to address what Roof himself claimed justified his shooting.
DeleteThat said, I appreciate that the readers of this blog have very delicate sensibilities, and don't like it when people talk about rape or analogize behavior to rape or say that certain actions (e.g., the treatment of white women under white supremacy) have the key bad-making features of rape. So, I really do think that Stone should have issued a trigger warning, to protect you as his readers.
Charitably, I think the objection is not that the Stone addresses this historical pattern of justifying racist violence by appealing to protecting white women but that in doing so, Stone repeatedly uses "rape" in a non-literal sense. Since Roof (as far as I know) did not physically penetrate "White womanhood," construed generically, I'm not sure what Stone means here. I think he means something like "Roof supports a social system in which white women have no agency over their sexual choices."
DeleteWe might say that the objectors to Stone in this thread were not reading Stone maximally charitably. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to those who criticize Continental-y or critical theory-style writing when it uses highly loaded language, often better applied to cases of literal physical violence, in a non-literal sense. It sounds more dramatic and may feel more rhetorical powerfully and persuasive to say that "Roof himself rapes white women" (generically construed) than to say "Roof supports a social system in which white men have all the control over white women's sexual and reproductive choices." But I happen to think that the former sort of reformulation ("Roof rapes women") should be avoided. It has a strong whiff of emotional manipulation and it makes it harder to counter the claim. For example, one might disagree that Roof supports a system in which white men have all the control over white women; they might argue that White Supremacy and its associated ideologies is more charitable to white women than that.
Finally, some people just think that "Rape" should always be used in its literal sense. Possibility they are concerned that widespread confusion over the meaning of "rape" creates conditions that make it difficult to address cases of (literal) rape in society. Their objection isn't that the word "rape" offends their "delicate sensibilities" but that using the word in a non-literal fashion contributes to a widespread and difficult problem, having to do with explaining and communicating about actual instances of literal rape.
Nice to see Prof Carolyn Dicey Jennings returning at NewAPPS to the topic of "placement data", as part of a "collaborative project" kindly funded by APA.
ReplyDeleteCuriously, the new "placement data" doesn't indicate gender. As CDJ puts it, "any categories that have not been made public (e.g. name, gender, race/ethnicity) will be provided to researchers with IRB approval from their home institutions".
One wonders if CDJ can explain why gender is not included. A detailed analysis of CDJ's hiring data for "the publication patterns ... for the cohort of those hired during 2012 and 2013 into tenure-track and post-doc positions from no prior position" is given here
http://genderandprestige.blogspot.com
Three highlights of this analysis are
1. " ... by and large, men publish more than women do: The average publication rate for women hired was about 0.8. The median number of publications for a woman hired was 0. The average publication rate for men hired was about 1.5. The median number of publications for a man hired was 1. .... a majority (54%) of women hired had no publications, as compared with 40% of men".
2. "For the Top 15 journals, 27% of men hired had at least one such publication, while only 11% of women hired had at least one. For these journals, the average publication rate for men hired was 0.42 publications, while for women hired it was only 0.14 publications".
3. "The statistical findings, at least as far as philosophy job hiring in 2012 and 2013 were concerned, indicate the existence of both prestige and gender bias in philosophy job hiring: Against lower prestige male applicants. For high prestige female applicants. As noted above, the correlation amongst those hired between being unpublished and gender is statistically significant".
Does the American Philosophical Association want to bury statistically significant evidence of anti-male bias in job hiring?