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 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 professor at the moment is such that it
takes real courage
for those who, unlike me, are not 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 that there
are other
references that weren't picked up by my searches. I did check
out one
well-known blog, however, namely Professor Justin Weinberg's Daily Nous.
My reason for looking at the latter 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 total blank, except for 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 on October of 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
turned up
no reference to Professor Erwin's essay on the topic of
blacklisting in
academia.
It's possible, of course, that Justin is simply unaware of Ed's most recent essay. Given, however, Justin's earlier unwillingness even to post a link to Ed's essay on the outcome of the lawsuit at the University of Miami, I think it is somewhat more likely that the rule at the Daily Nous is that there will be no reference to any views that Justin regards as ideologically unsound, and thus as likely to lead to unwelcome discussions in which some readers may either express or wind up embracing those unsound views. Nor will any links ever be posted to such material.
This
is a sad commentary on the way that Justin views his readers,
and on the depths to which our profession has fallen.