‘No officer of the MLA speaks for the MLA unless expressly authorized to do so’
When renowned gender theorist Judith Butler used her position at the Modern Language Association in signing a letter defending an alleged groper at New York University, she triggered a petition calling for her resignation as president-elect.
The University of California-Berkeley professor isn’t losing her MLA position for the moment, but she’s been thrown under the bus by MLA leadership.
Butler violated the academic organization’s Statement of Professional Ethics when she signed the letter as MLA “president-elect,” Anne Ruggles Gere, the current president, wrote in an email to members.
The letter defended fellow feminist Avital Ronell, the subject of a Title IX investigation at NYU and a recent sexual harassment lawsuit by her former male graduate student, Nimrod Reitman. It also impugned the character of Reitman and suggested Ronell should be believed because of her “international standing,” even as it acknowledged it hadn’t seen the evidence uncovered by NYU’s investigation.
MORE: Petition calls for Butler’s resignation over using MLA to defend Ronell
Butler also violated the Executive Council’s “own document outlining the legal duties of care and loyalty the council owes to the association,” Gere told members:
The Executive Council is a broadly representative, member-elected body, with no single member accorded any more decision-making power than any other, and no officer of the MLA speaks for the MLA unless expressly authorized to do so.
Professor Butler has apologized for allowing the MLA to be associated with the letter and has expressed regrets for arguments in it. The officers have accepted her apology.
Without making a judgment on the merits of Reitman’s allegations and NYU’s yearlong suspension of Ronell, Gere wrote that the association “recognizes the power disparity between faculty members and graduate students, and we affirm our strong commitment to graduate student rights and welfare and to academic professional rights and responsibilities.”
Signatories of the letter defending Ronell have been backtracking and explaining their decision, most recently a University of Texas-Austin instructor, Diane Davis. She said her initial defense of Ronell was based on the “campy (and reciprocated) language use” between Ronell and Reitman in their digital communications.
MORE: Another professor backs off earlier defense of Ronell
h/t Inside Higher Ed
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