1. ED ERWIN'S ESSAY "THE NEW McCARTHYISM: BLACKLISTING IN ACADEMIA"
1. The Essay
A
number of philosophers have now been blacklisted in the
philosophy profession. This practice raises extremely
important moral issues of which there has been very little
discussion at all. Professor Edward Erwin of the
University of Miami, however, published a very thoughtful
essay on this topic, "The
New McCarthyism: Blacklisting in Academia," in the
magazine Quillette, which I have now posted here as well.
2. The Magazine Quillette
For those not familiar with Quillette, here is a brief description from the website:
What is Quillette?
Quillette is a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress. Quillette aims to provide a platform for this exchange.
Who are we?
Claire Lehmann – Editor in Chief, Sydney | claire@quillette.com
Jamie Palmer – Senior Editor, London | jamie@quillette.com
Jonathan Kay – Canadian Editor, Toronto | jon@quillette.com
Toby Young – Associate Editor, London | toby@quillette.com
Paulina Neuding — European Editor, Stockholm |
paulina@quillette.com
3. References to Professor Erwin's Essay on Philosophy Blogs?
Given the importance of the ethical
questions raised by the practice of blacklisting, and given
that Professor Erwin mentions a number of instances within our
profession, one would have hoped that the result would have
been a significant amount of serious discussion by
philosophers online. What is the situation?
A recent Internet search turned up only one website
where anyone refers to Professor Erwin's essay – and that
was Leiter Reports – A
Philosophy Blog, where Professor Brian Leiter refers to
Professor Erwin's Essay (Erwin on the "blacklisting" of sexual
harassers, suspected and otherwise - http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2018/08/erwin-on-the-blacklisting-of-sexual-harassers-suspected-and-otherwise.html),
and
says,
"Philosopher Ed Erwin (Miami) further explores the topic I touched upon a couple of weeks ago in connection with his posting about the issue. I agree with the general principle: someone sanctioned for sexual harassment may still be qualified to teach, and certainly to publish and contribute to scholarship."
The link to Leiter's earlier discussion "The lawsuit against U of Miami and Colin McGinn growing out of the sexual misconduct allegations of 2012," is
and there Professor Leiter
says,
"I do want to highlight a point Professor Erwin makes:
"Before the case was brought, McGinn, like Peter Ludlow, was blacklisted from academic philosophy. He was denied a one year Visiting Position at East Carolina University; he has been asked to withdraw his contribution to an anthology on Shakespeare and Philosophy because other authors threatened to pull theirs (Peter Ludlow has suffered the same fate), and more recently, he has had a contract for a Shakespeare book cancelled specifically because of the allegations in the case; he has had speaking engagements cancelled, and, although he has applied to several other academic positions, he has failed to make the short list for any of them.
"I want to note my agreement with Professor Erwin
that this kind of treatment is unacceptable; as I wrote in a
CHE column awhile back:
Liberals who no doubt believe
that convicted felons 'deserve a second chance' sometimes
sound like they think that accused or university-convicted
sexual harassers should never be heard from again. But how
could that be right?
"Punishments should be proportional to the offense; that is a widely accepted principle of punitive justice. No one thinks that a sexual harasser should be castrated or hung. One also hopes no one thinks a sexual harasser should be prohibited from earning a living ever again. (Even convicted murderers, released from prison, are allowed to work.)"
Professor
Leiter
is much to be commended for providing a link to Professor
Erwin’s Quillette essay, and even more for expressing
the views that he did on the blacklisting issue, for while I
suspect that many would agree with Professor Leiter and
Professor Erwin on this matter, the atmosphere in our profession
at the moment is such that it takes real courage for those who
are not, unlike me, very happily retired, to express such
views.
4. Other Philosophy Blogs? The Rest,
Apparently, is Silence
As I
mentioned, Internet searches do not turn up any other
references to Professor Erwin's essay on blacklisting. It may
be, of course, that there are other references that weren't
picked up by my searches. I did, however, check out one
well-known blog, namely Professor Justin Weinberg's Daily Nous, to see if
here has been any discussion of Ed Erwin's essay there.
My reason for looking specifically at Weinberg's Daily Nous was as follows. When I posted Professor Erwin's earlier essay on the lawsuit at the University of Miami connected with the Colin McGinn case, and checked some time later to see what discussion it had given rise to, I was confronted with the same outcome: an almost complete absence of any references to Ed Erwin's earlier essay, except on the aforementioned Leiter Reports - A Philosophy Blog. This led me to go to Daily Nous, and do a search, which turned up nothing concerning Professor Erwin’s essay. As a result, I wrote to Professor Weinberg as follows, in July, 2018:
"I
was curious as to how much coverage there has been of Ed
Erwin’s letter on the outcome of the lawsuit against him,
Colin McGinn, and the University of Miami, and which I posted
on my website (http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/) about 10
days ago. The Daily Nous
was among the sites that I searched, and while the search
turned up a piece in October, 2015, about the lawsuit, and
then one a year later announcing that the lawsuit had been
settled, there seems to be nothing yet on Ed Erwin’s letter.
Since the only reference to the posting of Ed’s letter at the
moment appears to be on Brian Leiter’s blog, perhaps you’re
not aware of the letter? In any case, I thought that I’d drop
you a quick line to ask if you’ll let people know of the
posting, and also whether at some point you’ll be commenting
on Ed’s letter. If you do comment, I’ll certainly post a
link to your comments on my website."
Justin responded to my letter, saying "Regarding the material regarding the specifics of the McGinn case and settlement, I would want to get more than just Erwin’s side of the story (given that he is a friend of McGinn’s) before posting about this, and this is just something I don’t have time to go into right now. (And for all I know, other parties may not be able to even say, because of the confidentiality agreement, whether Erwin’s account is mistaken or disputed in any way.)"
As
Justin's response contained no answer to one of my questions,
and was not entirely clear on another matter, I wrote back to
Justin as follows:
"In
any case, there were a couple of things that I wasn’t entirely
clear about. When I first read your letter, I thought that
when you said 'I would want to get more than just Erwin's side
of the story (given that he is a friend of McGinn's) before
posting about this', you were just saying that you yourself
would not be posting your own thoughts about Ed's letter at
this point, but then it occurred to me that what you might be
saying was instead that you wouldn't be posting comments by
anyone on Ed's letter at this point. So is the latter the
case?
"Secondly, in my letter I said: 'I thought that I'd drop you a quick line to ask if you'll let people know of the posting'. I didn’t see a clear answer to that question, but I wondered whether your thinking is that it would be bad for people even to read Ed's letter until people have 'more than just Erwin’s side of the story', and, therefore, that you would not even be informing your readers of the posting of Ed's letter on my university website."
Justin never replied to this letter.
This
experience led me to go to the Daily Nous and do searches on "Erwin" and
"blacklisting". Those searches
not only turned up no reference to Professor Erwin's essay on
the topic of blacklisting in academia, they turned up nothing
at all concerning blacklisting in the profession.
I
later learned the Ed Erwin had sent his paper on blacklisting
to Justin Weinberg, who replied to Ed, saying, "Yes, I
decided to not publish it because I do believe it lacks
merit." Justin then attempted to support this judgment, but at
no point did he offer any reason for thinking that
blacklisting is not a problem that needs to be addressed by
our profession, nor for thinking that the blacklisting, for
example, of Colin McGinn, or of Peter Ludlow, are morally
justified actions. But given the result of the failed
lawsuit in Colin McGinn's case – a failure that Justin has
deliberately refused to inform readers of his Daily Nous
blog about – it does not seem at all plausible that the
blacklisting of Colin McGinn is morally justified, while as
regards Peter Ludlow, that case is discussed at length by
Laura Kipnis in her book Unwanted Advances (p.
44-90), and here, too, it seems very improbable that the
blacklisting is justified.
Justin
might argue that the relevant issues do get discussed on the Daily
Nous blog, and that the two essays by Ed Erwin and the
discussion by Laura Kipnis in her book are unsound, and thus
would only muddy the waters. It seems to me, on
the contrary, that the writings of Ed Erwin
and Laura Kipnis are very scholarly and well argued, but even
if I am wrong about that, why not inform the readers of the Daily
Nous about the existence of such discussions,
and allow readers to arrive at their own judgments? In
addition, it is false that the relevant issues
are discussed there. As regards the Colin McGinn matter, there
is no discussion of the outcome of the lawsuit, and of the
significance of that outcome, while as regards blacklisting in
the philosophy profession, a search on Daily Nous using
the term "blacklisting" drew a complete blank on 2/18/2020.
Finally,
it is perhaps worth noting that others have expressed a view
of Ed Erwin's piece on blacklisting that is rather different
from Justin's view that it "lacks merit":
"An
excellent piece" –– Tom Nagel
"An
excellent article" –– Ned Block
The paper has "evident merit" –– The New Yorker
" . .
. what a persuasive case he makes . . . so true that
blacklisting is not a 'venial sin'." –– George Stephanopoulos
"An
excellent article" –– Steven Pinker
The conclusion seems inescapable. Given pieces on important matters that defend views that Justin Weinberg deems to be ideologically unsound, not only does Justin not allow any discussion of those issues, he also refuses even to inform his readers about the existence of relevant pieces, and to provide links to those writings – even when asked to do so – fearing, it would seem, that that might well lead to unwelcome discussions in which some readers would either express or wind up embracing those unsound views. Justin's policy, then, seems to be to not even post any references to such writings.
This
is a sad commentary on the way that Justin views his readers,
and on the depths to which our profession has fallen.