The College Fix

Letter argued that accused feminist professor should be treated differently

A prominent academic in the field of gender theory is attempting to walk certain elements of a letter defending an accused sexual harasser after the letter generated backlash for its demand that the accused harasser be treated differently because of her pro-feminist politics.

That letter, which came to light earlier this summer and which the academic Christina Hoff Sommers called “astonishing” and “so bad, some say it’s a hoax,” argued that New York University Professor Avital Ronell, accused of sexual harassment by a male student, should be given special consideration by the university’s administration due to her contributions to academia.

“We testify to the grace, the keen wit, and the intellectual commitment of Professor Ronell and ask that she be accorded the dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international standing and reputation.  If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed.  The ensuing loss for the humanities, for New York University, and for intellectual life during these times would be no less than enormous and would rightly invite widespread and intense public scrutiny,” the letter read, in part.

Now, one of the signatories of the letter, Judith Butler, is attempting to walk back certain parts of the document. In a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Butler writes, in part, that the letter writers “should not have used language that implied that Ronell’s status and reputation earn her differential treatment of any kind. Status ought to have no bearing on the adjudication of sexual harassment.”

“All faculty should be treated the same under Title IX protocols, that is, subject to the same rules and, where justified, sanctions,” Butler states.

Not everyone is buying Butler’s walk-back. In a letter to the blog “The Leiter Report,” a website run by University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, Harvard philosophy librarian Eric Johnson-DeBaufre called the document “an apologia or defense of self:”

While Butler clearly recognizes the obvious wrongness of “attribut[ing] motives to the complainant” and “impl[ying] that Ronell’s status and reputation earn her differential treatment,” her apologia repeatedly aims to minimize and downgrade the seriousness of these acts. It does this at the outset by of this section by claiming that “the letter was written in haste,” the clear implication being that the objectionable nature of these views is merely the product of carelessness and haste on the part of the writers. It asks us–busy academics all–for a charitable reading of these regrettable sentiments. Haven’t we all, it suggests, been guilty of infelicitous expression at one time or another?

Moreover, the “apology” aims to minimize our objection to these views by misrepresenting what the letter in fact does. Butler says that she “should not have used language that implied that Ronell’s status and reputation earn her differential treatment of any kind.” As more than one reader of the Ronell letter has noted, there is nothing implied at all in the letter–Butler and her fellow signatories assert that Ronell is deserving of differential treatment due to her international eminence.

As Leiter demonstrates, if everything in the initial to which Butler (now) objects were removed, then the entire missive would go from three paragraphs to one.

Read Butler’s letter here, and Leiter’s post here.

MORE: Petition calls for resignation of prominent academic feminist

IMAGE: Sergey Furtaev / Shutterstock.com

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter