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CHE article on the letter defending Professor Ronell

Here.  A few striking (or in some cases, amusing) bits, with my comments:

[Judith Butler] said in an email to The Chronicle that the letter pulled from Leiter’s blog was an "incorrect version" and that it contained errors in the list of names. Butler declined to provide a correct version of the letter or explain how this version was incorrect.

It was obviously a draft version, sent out to solicit more signatories.  But what was not "incorrect" was the content, as the CHE article goes on to make clear:

[A]nother scholar listed as a signatory, Joan W. Scott, a professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, confirmed that she signed the letter and stood fully by her decision to do so….

When asked if the letter suggested that Ronell’s should be treated with dignity because of her international reputation or if the signers were trying to influence the outcome of an investigation, Scott agreed that the letter had some "inconsistencies" in it.

"Many people who signed the letter knew more than they could say," she said. She added that it was written and signed quickly because some of the signers had a growing and urgent sense that they had to do something. "The idea was to somehow testify that this was somebody who was beyond reproach not because of her international reputation, but because there have been no other allegations of this kind against her," Scott said.

Catharine R. Stimpson, an English professor and former dean of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, also signed the letter and stood by her decision to do so.

"I’m a believer in due process," she said. "I believe the timing was in response to a fear of possible revocation of tenure."

Professor Scott at least has the decency to distance herself from the disgraceful suggestion that Prof. Ronell is too "famous" to be guilty of a Title IX violation, though she endorses an almost equally preposterous position, namely, that Prof. Ronell could not be in violation of Title IX because she has not previously been alleged to be in violation of Title IX.  More striking is that the former Dean of the Graduate School at NYU (who must presumably be familiar with Title IX and its retaliation provisions) offers no qualifications about signing the letter.

CHE notes that,

Scott took issue with Leiter’s characterization of the the letter’s signatories, saying his comments revealed a bias against their field. He wrote in his blog that "the signatory list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of ‘theory’ (as they call bad philosophy in literature departments)."

Having a low opinion of the intellectual level of the work of some of the signatories is not a "bias," it's just a low opinion.  My opinion is also irrelevant:  the content of the letter speaks for itself, and that's what's really significant here.  Fearing that their friend's job was in danger, the "theory" illuminati acted quickly and in so doing made clear how they really think, namely,that Prof. Ronell must "be accorded the dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international standing and reputation" and that she must be acquitted or else NYU's adverse decision "would be widely recognized and opposed" and "would rightly invite widespread and intense public scrutiny."  This is a polite threat, but a threat nonetheless:  acquit our friend or else.  This is how the powerful always think, from Trump on down (or is it up?) to Butler.

Butler did not specify what was "incorrect" about the draft letter I published, I'm sure, because the "correct" version eliminated only typographical errors and the like, leaving intact the shameful elitism and the defamation of the complainant in a Title IX action as a liar motivated by malice.  (Needless to say, if the complainant really is a malicious liar, then the letter is not defamatory!)

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