Olivia Wertz
Deciding who deserves a seat at the academic table can no longer be based solely on an impressive curriculum vitae. No, the black and white days of academic acclaim are over. We now enter into the era of #MeToo, an era where victims are coming forward to identify and justly rebuke their abusers. The actions of such era are penetrating the seemingly utopian realm of scholarship. A once bright and scholastic territory is currently engulfed in a gray daze, a gray that leaves us struggling for the right answer. This paper will focus on that gray, the unsettled answer to the question, “When scholars are accused of detestable actions, how do we proceed with their contributions to academia?”
In this paper, I will examine both routes: The route that allows abusers, harassers, and misogynists to remain residing inside our academic spheres, as well as the route that dispels such people from a field believably held to a higher standard. Both routes contain controversy, but both routes are necessary to explore in order to verify the most appropriate academic manner in which these people should be dealt. By the end of this paper, I hope to shed light on a topic that is so often swept beneath the university rug. Rayna Green once stated, “I am accustomed to telling my students and colleagues that scholars appear to have forgotten that theory is intended to pose interesting questions, not to give final, for-all-time answers” (3). This paper calls for a unified moral standard across intellectual institutions, but that it my theoretical position, and I believe that our main priority is initiating the conversations about these gray areas. To read, or to reject? For that, I will call upon you to decide.
Ultimately, the publicity of these sexually classified cases causes the struggle. If we now know these people have done bad things, what do we do with that knowledge? As much as scholars yearn for knowledge, it’s only obvious to point out the bliss in the ignorance of these situations. If we do not know about the personal happenings of these scholars, then we can simply enjoy their academic contributions without any strings attached. Yet, with technological receipts, activists and movements, and a sudden surge of empowered peoples, information is pouring in and we have a duty to seize and secure all that we learn. In 2017, Karen Kelsky posted “A Crowdsourced Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Academy.” The survey was anonymous, and posted through the popular, The Professor Is In blog. From December 2017 to August 2018, this survey generated over 2,400 accounts of sexual assault from professors, department chairs, lecturers, deans, and other academic faculty members (Kelsky). Yet, we don’t know how many of these faculty members were turned in. We don’t know what happened to them if they were turned in. But we can almost guarantee that nothing happened to the scholarship they produced.
It is one thing when rumors circulate through the department, but it’s another thing when allegations against your favorite professor show up on the cover of The New York Times. This type of publicity forces recognition. When millions of women march, you see them, and you are forced to hear their chants, their cries, their demands, and their pleas. When women like Tarana Burke and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford risk their sanctity to expose their accusers, you see their faces and hear their testimonies. In an era of #MeToo, these alleged victims come forward to make those who have wronged them anything but ignored.
The publicness of the accusations is what forces the academic realm to struggle with this dilemma. The publicness imposes responsibility on more than just the accused. Suddenly, entire departments and even universities must choose between standing beside alleged predators or severing ties and saving their own reputations. Professors and instructors are forced to reexamine their lessons: Do they continue teaching about people with such repugnant reputations? Decisions must be made because entire realms of academic persons are suddenly aware of their colleagues’ predatory and/or discriminatory habits.
The publicity is what initiates the very struggle within this gray realm. While publicity initiates a shared knowledge, opinions on the matter vary. Publicity sparks debate, outrage, opposition, and petition. Sometimes the publicity aids in assisting these victims, and other times the publicity causes them more turmoil. The public acts just as decisively toward the alleged predators. However, it is important to remember that the public does not decide anyone’s fate, nor does the public get to determine who is accountable, but instead, we leave that up to the institutions that house the accused. So let us drive down the slowly widening road of accusations, and examine each possible route.
Let’s say that you decide the work is what’s important. You decide that refusing to acknowledge such accredited scholarship is a disservice to all of those utilizing the academic sphere. However, as all decisions do, this path comes with consequences. You must decide to defend your choice to cite someone with such an atrocity attached to his/her name: Will you preface the inclusion of the accused’s work with a defense, or will you simply be prepared to combat anyone that questions your choice? On the other hand, you can simply adopt the Death-of-an-Author-route by choosing to ignore the allegations, permanently detaching the person from their work. Truthfully though, ignorance can only survive so long in the world of academia. Sooner or later, you will be forced to recognize the personal history of the person you cite. Maybe it will be an inquisitive student or questioning colleague that will initiate the conversation about the allegations, but who is not the matter, so much as when. If you decide to promote the work of someone with such allegations against them, you must be prepared for pushbook.
Although for some, that pushback jolts a natural reflex. Often scholarly work receives question and academics are forced to testify for their intellectual choices. The concerns from some to include accused academics in one’s scholarship may come as normal scholastic inquiry. In other words, this academic inquisition may be welcomed rather than disputed, for some scholars anticipate such challenges. However, it is possible that these pushbacks can cause a deviation from the purpose of the citation or teaching. When people rally against your choice, you must now equip yourself to deal with such a distraction that your entire point is unearthed.
Above all, some scholars may choose to cite people with allegations because they feel that it is their academic duty to include all relevant scholarship, despite the personal troubles attached to these academic contributors. In fact, in Brian Leiter’s article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, he advises, “You should not — under any circumstances — adjust your citation practices to punish scholars for bad behavior. You betray both your discipline and the justification for your academic freedom by excising from your teaching and research the work of authors who have behaved unethically” (“Academic Ethics”). Leiter’s advice is direct and cautionary, and embodies a Roland Barthes-like essence: If we do not consider the author when examining the text, then we completely detach any and all influences from the author’s personal realm.
Perhaps, maybe you decide to reject the work of the accused. This path, like the one I
previously mentioned, comes with its own set of obstacles. If you deter from citing work that has been established by people with shameful allegations against them, you may, as Leiter explains, miss out on vital contributions to our fields of study. This deprivation of information could be costly to your own understandings or the learning of others. For example, imagine a world in which we examine capitalism without Marx, or deconstructionism without Derrida.
This route, also, comes with pushback. Disregarding the work contributed by allegedly
horrible people can cause disarray within your own teachings or work. Certain references require the acknowledgements of certain frameworks. You cannot simply make claims about specific aspects of your field without giving credit due to those who established the groundwork. Without crediting those academic pioneers, you risk subjecting yourself as an academic and the work you produce to scrutiny.
Yet, some would argue that their moral rights allow them to pick and choose the works that appear in their citations. These academics feel morally obligated to hold their personal beliefs in line with their scholastic endeavours. For these people, they choose avoidance and substitution over the promotion of wrongdoers. Nikki Usher writes, “. . . Do we still keep citing the scholarship of serial harassers and sexists? Within their institutions, they may finally get the fate due to them (or not). But their citational legacy will live on . . .” (“Should We Still Cite the Scholarship of Serial Harassers and Sexists?”). It seems that if we continue to teach sexual predators and misogynists, then we create an eternal realm where these men and women become immortal. The path of avoidance of these scholars, of course, incites negotiation, but then again, what school of thought doesn’t?
There is no doubt that this issue is polarizing. Our modern world festers with the problem of predators, sexists, and harassers. It seems simple enough to deem these people as “bad,” but that definitive labeling grows vague as we encounter these appalling people within our academic realms. Suddenly, the morality of scholarship is undefined, and we find ourselves trying to recalibrate our brains to distinguish who we encounter personally from who we encounter in scholarship.
So, we’ve racked our brains, weighed the pros and cons, and yet we still yearn for the right answer. I know which side I lean towards, but even after an exhaustive examination of the question, I still wonder whether or not I can plainly choose a path. This struggle exemplifies the need for a moral translation within our academic spheres. We, as academics, need to consciously define a scholar’s stipulations in the academic community. We need to designate clear-cut roles: We need to determine whether these men and women are simply professionals, assessed only by the academic contributions made in their name, or if their personal ventures undoubtedly bleed into their professional personas, therefore tainting the work they produce.
Sexual assault and harassment are often considered gray areas because the accusations often stem from experiences that only allegedly involve two categories of people: the victim(s) and the abuser(s). If these cases lack witnesses and physical evidence, then cases are decided based on only the words of the people involved. Yet, words are are so highly valued in academia, so it seems surprising that a field that relies on rhetoric and discourse would undervalue the words of some victims. When the victims are suddenly accusing those within academic spheres, we are left to speculate about how their accusations affect the professional aspects of the accused, rather than given a clear answer as to how the accuser will be punished. This area becomes even more unclear when we wonder what we should do with an accused person’s work. As recent as last year, some universities weren’t even giving a clear cut punishment to accused professors, let alone defining how the repercussions of their actions would modify their
scholastic legacy.
The purpose of this paper examines the unexplained, more so than it formulates an answer to the questions I have presented. I realize that I may have not made the murky waters of this issue any clearer; I have not pulled a black or white conclusion from the gray. I do not think that that clarity is my responsibility alone to elucidate. Instead, I demand that those in our academic spheres come together and define if and how morality exists within our institutions. Academics must have distinctly classified roles: A role that embodies the person and the professional, or personal and professional roles that occur autonomously. This is the initial black and white categorization that must exist before we venture further into the realm of acceptance or rejection of an accused person’s work. I am not asking you to disengage from your personal moral beliefs, but instead I am asking that you bring forth your convictions to our academic institutions. Theses institutions must administer explicit regulations so that universally we can receive and understand work analogously within these confines. At this moment in time, we may not have the right answer at our disposal, but the demand for a conclusive answer would commence our ascent from out of the gray.
Works Cited
Green, Rayna. “‘It’s Okay Once You Get It Past the Teeth’ and Other Feminist Paradigms for
Folklore Studies.” Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore, ed. By Susan
Tower Hollis, et al., University of Illinois Press, 1993, pp. 1-8.
Kelsky, Karen. “A Crowdsourced Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Academy.”
TheProfessorIsIn, 1 Dec. 2017, https://theprofessorisin.com/2017/12/01/a-
crowdsourced-survey-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-academy/. Accessed 19 March 2019.
Leiter, Brian. “Academic Ethics: Should Scholars Avoid Citing the Work of Awful People?” The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 Oct. 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/
Academic-Ethics-Should/244882. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018.
Usher, Nikki. “Should We Still Cite the Scholarship of Serial Harassers and Sexists?” The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 Sept. 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Should
-We-Still-Cite-the/244450. Accessed 17 March 2018.
Biography
Olivia Wertz is a first-year graduate student pursuing her MA in English Literature at West Virginia University. She completed her bachelor's degree at Penn State University. After completing her MA, she hopes to continue her education by entering into a PhD program. She is interested in understanding literature and pop culture through a feminist lens.
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