Saturday, October 20, 2007

Reflections on the Piot Principles

[A few updates on this post: (1) Piot, who also chairs the AAAS Department, continues to suppress the videotape of the February “Shut Up and Teach” forum upon which his article was based.

(2) The Transforming Anthropology editors admitted to one DIW reader that it was not peer-reviewed before publication, a remarkable policy for a scholarly journal. Even so, there would seem to be no justification for the editors not ensuring that the article was factually accurate.*

(3) Piot has declined to respond to repeated requests as to why he did not reveal that one professor his article defended was, in fact, his partner, Anne Allison. Most people would doubt the objectivity of a figure who, in covertly defending his partner, appeared to allow his emotions to get the best of him: “[Using] a rhetorical strategy characteristic not only of right-wing media in this country (from Limbaugh to O'Reilly) but also of totalitarian thought and authoritarian regimes the world over . . . Johnson's . . . characterizations are not only consistently wide of the mark but deploy surveillance tactics that the right-wing Horowitz machine has canonized and that recall nothing so much as the campus witch hunts of the McCarthy era. ]

“Clarifying” professor Charles Piot has published his attack on the blog—promised in his appearance at the February “Shut Up and Teach” forum, in which he said that critics of the Group of 88 should “shut up and teach”—in the most recent issue of Transforming Anthropology.

In reading this post, keep in mind: above all else, the Piot article gives a sense of what is considered a scholarly publication in his field.

The “Piot Principles,” as laid out in his article:

  1. Ignore contemporaneous documents, if doing so will advance the metanarrative.
  2. Don’t mention conflicts of interest.
  3. Even into spring 2007, at least one Duke professor continued to use class time for questionable non-academic activities.
  4. In a scholarly publication, authors should avoid citations when making their most difficult-to-sustain points.

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1.) Ignore contemporaneous documents, if doing so will advance the metanarrative.

a.) Reflecting the new party line, Piot claimed that the “intent” of Group members “was never to speak to the events at the lacrosse party.” Indeed, he asserted, “the ad in question was never about the lacrosse players nor about the party they hosted in spring 2006.” He cited instead—incredibly—Hurricane Katrina as a possible motivation.

Unfortunately for Piot, Wahneema Lubiano, the author of the ad, said exactly the opposite—in the cover e-mail inviting professors to sign the ad. Wrote she, “African & African-American Studies is placing an ad in The Chronicle about the lacrosse team incident.” There was no mention to broader concerns with racism or sexism, and no mention of Katrina. It’s hard to get much clearer than Lubiano’s statement.

How did Piot—who, as a member of the AAAS and Cultural Anthropology departments, certainly received Lubiano’s mass e-mail—deal with this document, which disproves his thesis?

His article did not mention the Lubiano e-mail.

b.) Piot conceded that the Group of 88 ad did, in fact, say, “To the protesters making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard.” According to Piot, however, the 88 signatories (who collectively committed themselves to “turning up the volume”) were under the impression that readers would not believe that the ad thanked the protesters who had received the most media attention—the potbangers and those who blanketed the campus with “wanted” posters:

It is important to note that there were multiple campus protests going on at the time. The ones that the ad referred to . . . were never the “potbanger” protests that Johnson cites over and over again, but rather those taking place at the open mike outside the Allen Building.

Such a claim, of course, strains credulity. It asserts that 88 Duke faculty members—who included more than a dozen professors of English or Literature—were incapable of writing a sentence stating that they only referred to one specific protest; and months later, when many of the same people signed the “clarifying” ad, remained incapable of doing so. It also ignores that at least two Group members (Susan Thorne and Alberto Moreiras) admitted, in writing, that the wording of the ad did thank all of the anti-lacrosse protesters.

Nonetheless, set aside logic and common sense, and accept Piot’s words at face value. Here are some photos of the “open mike” protesters who Piot now claims were the only protesters that the Group was thanking:



And here is Emily Rotberg’s description of the open-mike event from the Chronicle:

“This is a matter of white privilege,” senior Tiana Mack said. “When I read what was going on, it made me think about Jim Crow.... If these three culprits get away with it, it will prove to me that Duke does not honor the black woman’s body.”

Some demonstrators wore T-shirts with slogans such as “Men’s Lacrosse? Not fine by me” and “Men’s Lax, Come Clean.”

Senior Jay McKenna alluded to the widespread belief that the lacrosse players are not fully cooperating with the investigation.

“The fact that this wall of silence has been constructed only adds to the mystery, which adds to the speculation,” he said, noting that he knows members of the team.

To sum up: According to Piot, in writing “to the protesters making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard,”:

  • the Group of 88 was not thanking protesters who carried “castrate” banners and blanketed the campus with “wanted” posters.
  • the Group of 88 was thanking protesters who wore T-shirts reading “Men’s Lax Come Clean”; posted writings condemning the players’ presumption of innocence; and asserted, “If these three culprits get away with it, it will prove to me that Duke does not honor the black woman’s body.”

That’s the best after-the-fact rationalization he could offer?

2.) Don’t mention conflicts of interest.

Piot’s discussion of the Campus Culture Initiative provides some insight into the integrity of his approach. Here’s how his article described the blog’s critique of the CCI:

A constant refrain [of the blog] is that the committee recommendations—which were unusually mild—were railroaded by the presence of three faculty members who were ad signatories. In advancing this claim, Johnson bizarrely assumes that three people could influence the opinions of a committee of twenty-four.

Since even President Brodhead—who Piot, in February, described as a supporter of the Group of 88's statement—all but dismissed the CCI’s recommendations, it seems that Piot is in the minority in terming the CCI’s agenda as “unusually mild.”

Piot’s passage also left out two rather important items. First, though he elected, for reasons he failed to explain, to conceal their names, the three professors referenced (Peter Wood, Karla Holloway, and Anne Allison) were not simply members of the CCI—they were chairs or co-chairs of three of the CCI’s four subgroups. They ran the athletics, race, and gender subgroups. (Piot erroneously stated that Peter Wood was a Group of 88 member. Wood was not, and I never made such a claim.)

The blog focused less on the influence of the trio than on what it said about the CCI’s agenda that anti-lacrosse extremists were assigned to chair or co-chair three of its four sub-groups. Indeed, the Chronicle made a similar point, referencing Wood, Allison, and Holloway: “The composition of the CCI's steering committee has hurt its credibility . . . Stacking the CCI with critics of ‘white male privilege’ suggests that the initiative was created to pacify countercultural professors, rather than to shape a new and improved campus culture.” Beyond this point, however, Piot’s insinuation that subcommittee chairs had no more power than any other member of the committee is naïve at best and disingenuous at worst.

Even more striking, however, Piot chose not to mention that one of the three CCI figures whose performance his article defended was his partner, Anne Allison. (Here’s a passage from Allison’s Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan: “It was my partner, Charlie Piot, who first suggested this book, and he has been tireless in offering assistance and encouragement of all kinds throughout its production. It is he who wrapped its everyday labors within joys both profound and mundane. I have no words to express my feelings and thanks.”) DIW posts critiqued not only Anne Allison’s CCI work but also her spring 2007 course, “Group of 88 for Credit.”

Perhaps Piot would have penned the exact same article had he never met Anne Allison. But basic ethics—if not a formal conflict-of-interest policy—require disclosure of such a deeply personal connection, so readers can determine whether the author has an insurmountable bias.

I e-mailed Piot to ask whether he believed an author should disclose when writing about the conduct of his current or former partner. He did not reply. I also e-mailed the journal’s editors to ask about their policy on such matters. They, too, did not reply.

3.) Even into spring 2007, at least one Duke professor continued to use class time for questionable non-academic activities.

The assertion in Piot’s article that the Group’s ad—a statement published in the “most easily seen venue on campus” signed by 88 faculty members and (allegedly, if, as we know now, improperly) endorsed by five academic departments—had no impact reflected another element of the Group defenders’ new party line: It “was a virtual nonevent on campus.”

Piot noted but essentially dismissed the fact that the ad provoked negative commentary, within a week of its appearance, from a Chronicle editorial and op-ed. He didn’t even mention that the lacrosse players noticed the ad immediately and expressed deep dismay about it. From the summer 2006 Chronicle article:

“This is a social disaster.”

That was the tagline of a paid advertisement signed by 88 members of the Duke faculty that appeared in the April 6 issue of The Chronicle.

“I think that all of us kind of checked over our teachers to make sure they weren’t on that list,” [Bo] Carrington said.

Such evidence, obviously, undermines Piot’s preferred storyline. As with the Lubiano e-mail announcing the ad’s existence, Piot simply ignored it.

Piot also—falsely—implied that defense lawyers became concerned about the Group’s ad only after coverage of it appeared on the blog. The reverse, in fact, is true: as revealed in interviews with both several players and nearly every defense attorney involved in the case, the lawyers noticed the ad as soon as it appeared in April 2006, and were horrified that such a statement could have been published by Duke professors. Piot did not contact any defense attorneys to obtain the truth about his theory.

But perhaps most disturbing were the following items from Piot’s article:

No student of the over 100 I polled knew about the existence of the blogs, let alone had heard the name KC Johnson . . . Another colleague asked a 110-person Intro class in spring 2007, a class filled with athletes and lacrosse players, how many had heard of the Group of 88, and only three raised their hands.

Piot did not reveal where he conducted his poll; perhaps he camped out on Buchanan Blvd. and asked student passersby. The unnamed professor’s conduct, on the other hand, raises a host of disturbing questions:

a.) What was the academic rationale for a Duke faculty member using class time to conduct a survey about the Group of 88?

b.) How did the unnamed professor frame the question? Given Carrington’s statement above, did the unnamed professor understand that using class time to ask a question about the Group’s statement could be considered applying inappropriate pressure on the lacrosse players and other athletes in his/her class?

c.) Were the students informed that their responses would be used as data in a scholarly publication? If so, did they sign informed consent forms—as Institutional Review Board guidelines would seem to require?

d.) As early as January 2007—according to Group member Cathy Davidson—the statement’s signatories understood that they might be subject to a civil suit from lacrosse players. (Davidson admitted, “I have had lawyers look at the original [Group] ad and ambiguity of the language could be made, in a court of law, to seem as if we are saying things against the lacrosse team.”) A claim that the ad had no impact might have been one line of defense in such a lawsuit. Did the unnamed professor inform his or her students that their responses might be used as evidence to defend the faculty in a civil suit filed by their fellow students?

I e-mailed Piot to ask him whether he or the unnamed professor had obtained informed consent forms from the 110 students. He did not reply. I also e-mailed the journal’s two editors, to ask if they had ascertained from Piot whether he had complied with IRB policies. They, too, did not reply.

4.) In a scholarly publication, authors should avoid citations when making their most difficult-to-sustain points.

Two Piot assertions were particularly remarkable in this regard.

a.) “To claim that a group of faculty whose intent was never to speak to the events at the lacrosse party [sic] was in some way responsible for a university’s, a town’s, and indeed an entire nation’s ‘rush to judgment’ speaks volumes about Johnson’s own ideological agenda.”

Piot’s citations for this statement: None.

In more than 1,000 posts totaling more than 870,000 words, the blog never made such a claim or even anything resembling such a claim. Indeed, the blog never discussed any linkage of any type between the Group’s activities and “an entire nation’s rush to judgment.”

In interviews (and, occasionally, in the blog) I discussed one possible linkage between the Group’s ad and events in Durham: that in spring 2006, in the crucial weeks before the D.A. primary, an undecided voter of good faith in Durham could easily have taken from their own professors denouncing the players a belief that Mike Nifong’s crusade was justified. But the blog never (in, again, more than 870,000 words) discussed any linkage between the Group’s activities and “a town’s . . . rush to judgment.”

That Piot spent so much effort attempting to disprove points that the blog never made raises questions about whether he even read the posts he cited elsewhere in his article. The blog (as reflected in its subtitle) focused on two interrelated, but distinct, questions:

  • (1) What did it say about Durham’s legal culture that a prosecutor like Mike Nifong could construct a case on a tissue of massive procedural violations, and then sustain the case for months?
  • (2) What did it say about Duke’s academic culture that, ignoring the academy’s traditional role as defenders of due process, dozens of arts and sciences professors instead made statements condemning the victims of Nifong’s procedural abuses—even to the extent of issuing a full-page ad, paid for out of Duke funds, and allegedly (if, it turns out, falsely) endorsed by five academic departments?

Discussions of the Group of 88’s ad, obviously, have appeared in the blog’s attempts to answer the second question. To my knowledge, none of the myriad reviewers of either Until Proven Innocent or the blog—with the sole exception of Piot—have indicated any difficulty in understanding this point. That Piot failed to comprehend a point that every other reviewer easily discerned says considerably more about his competence than about mine.

b.) “The virulence and ad hominem nature of his attacks on Black females far exceeds that reserved for their White male counterparts.”

Piot’s citations for this statement: None.

In more than 1,000 posts totaling more than 870,000 words, the blog never engaged in such behavior. The blog criticized black female professors (Wahneema Lubiano, Karla Holloway). It criticized white male professors (Bill Chafe, Peter Wood, Alex Rosenberg). It criticized white female professors (Anne Allison, Cathy Davidson, Diane Nelson). It criticized black male professors (Mark Anthony Neal, Houston Baker, Maurice Wallace). It criticized Hispanic professors (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Antonio Viego). It criticized mixed-race professors (Grant Farred). The common element in the critique was the professor’s position on issues relating to the lacrosse case and the race/class/gender trinity upon which the Group’s approach was based.

A follow-up question: Why did the journal’s editors not demand from Piot citations to support his unsubstantiated claims?

These are only the two most flagrant examples of Piot (without citation) inventing items that never appeared in the blog. He did so on more minor matters as well. For instance, the article accused the blog of presuming that [Group members] courses are designed to indoctrinate students with left-wing propaganda.” Piot provided no citation for his claim.

Indoctrination” is a concern of some right-wing academic critics, especially David Horowitz. Yet, since Piot claims to have read the blog closely, he knows that I’m an Obama supporter who backs gay marriage and abortion rights. I’ve also (in, again, more than 870,000 words on the blog) never once expressed a concern with indoctrination. Indeed, Piot could have used the blog’s search engine for indoctrinate or indoctrination to find the one and only entry of the blog’s more than 1,000 entries that use the term. The post, from September 2006, chastised President Brodhead for using language similar to that of Horowitz to justify his handling of the lacrosse case. I considered such language beneath his status as an academic leader.

Why, then, did Piot assert that the blog had accused Duke faculty of attempting to indoctrinate” students, when no evidence existed to substantiate his claim? And why did the Transforming Anthropology editors allow him to print the uncited allegation?

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The remainder of Piot’s article displayed a similarly peculiar approach:

  • As John in Carolina pointed out, Piot demonstrated a Luddite’s understanding of how the comments section at a blog works—particularly a blog like DIW, which had more than 90,000 comments.
  • Having compared me to an (unnamed) African dictator in his February talk, Piot retreated to U.S.-only examples for Transforming Anthropology: he contended that the blog recalls “nothing so much as the campus witch hunts of the McCarthy era.” For good measure, he added comparisons to Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, FOX News, and David Horowitz. What behavior typifies this McCarthyite/O'Reilly/Limbaugh/FOX News/Horowitz attack on the Group of 88? “[Johnson] posts the titles of classes they are teaching and surveils their syllabi.” Astonishing.
  • Piot fantastically asserted that my (a “White critic”) noting Mark Anthony Neal’s description of himself as “thugniggaintellectual”—which the Group member offered (in the University alumni magazine, no less!)—invoked “the aura of a racial epithet.”
  • In a footnote, Piot stated that the official, departmental websites of Duke cannot be trusted on so basic an issue as faculty affiliation with the department. Website information, he suggested, needs to be verified personally with the department chair. This line of argument would be expected from a professor at a third-tier community college, which might lack funds for a complete website. To see it presented by a professor at a top-ten university is almost comical.
  • Piot offered the following item—as another footnoted source: “As a colleague in the English Department commented: ‘If his reading of the ad is representative of his reading practices generally, KC Johnson would have failed Intro to Reading.’” What does it say about the values of Transforming Anthropology that it allows an author to offer anonymous ad hominem attacks as scholarly evidence?
  • Piot suggested that Group members didn’t need the CCI’s proposed Group of 88 Enrollment Initiative because “the classes of professors in the so-called group of 88 were overflowing.” Here are some figures on recent Group members’ enrollments, as opposed to total slots available: 7 of 40; 16 of 40; 9 of 17; 16 of 40; 18 of 30; 18 of 30; 4 of 15; 8 of 16; 9 of 40. Most people, I suspect, would not consider such figures overflowing.
  • According to Piot, “Johnson has also suggested that the quotes in the original [Group of 88] ad were made up by the ad's author, Wahneema Lubiano.” As with so much in his article, Piot provided no citation for his allegationperhaps because a blog search for Lubiano coupled with “made up, “invented, or any synonym of the term reveals, unsurprisingly, no matches. I did take note of the Chronicle of Higher Educations uncontested report that “Wahneema H. Lubiano, an associate professor of literature and African and African-American studies who had been taking notes during the forum, volunteered to write the ad, using those notes and students comments from newspaper articles.
  • Piot complained about how other media (the Chronicle, ESPN) had allegedly misquoted Group members—as if such misquotings, which were not made by the blog, could be used to indict the quality of the blog. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if Piots beef was as much with the mainstream media (the Chronicle, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, ESPN) as with the blog. In his version of reality, it seems, everyone got the story wrong except for the Group of 88.
  • Piot went to great lengths attacking the blog for not immediately accepting at face value the Group’s claim of vile e-mails—overlooking the fact that Group members waited months before releasing any of these e-mails (a total of two, in his article, plus a phone message transcript), while they had described clearly innocent e-mails as “harassment.”
  • Piot concluded his article by defending the perspective of—remarkably—Shadee Malaklou. He did so, even more oddly, in a passage where he conceded that I did not begin my involvement in this case as a reflexive defender of the lacrosse players or critic of the Brodhead administration. I have followed the evidence as I have learned more about the case; Piot, for reasons he never explained, seemed to view such behavior as a negative.

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It goes without saying that no record exists of either Piot or his partner making any statements or taking any other public act to defend due process for all Duke students during the last 18 months.

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Two items to conclude:

1.) The Piot article is the only evidence offered by Professor Prasad Kasibhatla to justify his recent claim that the “narrative put forward by critics like Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson” represented a “tragic rush to judgment” about the Duke faculty. In addition to being repeatedly contradicted by the documentary evidence, however, the Piot article went to press more than 100 days before UPI even appeared in print.

[Update, 3.25pm: I sent the post to Prof. Kasibhatla. His response: “I do not have any desire to read your blog further.”

Having expressed what some would consider a stunningly closed-minded attitude, he added that he would “continue my efforts to mobilize mainstream voices of reason within the Duke community.”]

2.) This article represents what passes for a scholarly publication in Piot’s field. Indeed, it is listed as a “representative publication” on Professor Piot’s CV.

*--modified for clarity. This statement strikes me as a distancing, but I don't want to distract from the main point, which is that the editors still had an obligation to ensure the factual accuracy of the piece.

361 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Jim in San Diego said...

"Is there any oversight within a University, of Department hires? Does someone above a department head have any authority to monitor or challenge the quality of department hires?"

If I recall previous discussions correctly:
(1) It varies from university to university.
(1a) Known examples:
The history department at CUNY Brooklyn was told to tenure a well-published historian even though he's obnoxious and disliked*.
The political science department at DePaul University was told not to tenure an antisemitic Jew with a poor publication record, even though they all liked him.

(2) At Duke the Provost has quite a bit of power to override departmental decisions.
(2a) In recent years, the Duke provost has mostly tended to use this power to promote "diversity" at the expense of quality.

[I don't kow what the situation is at other universities, but it appears that at Duke the administration/trustees are at least as big a source of the PC disease as the faculty, if not more so. After all, so far as I know it's not the faculty that decided to upgrade AAAS from program to department. Why the trustees and administration think this decision is in Duke's or their personal interest is a puzzlement I still haven't gotten a good answer to, just lots of speculation - I have a feeling that much that is now cloudy would become clear if I understood their motivation.]

* Before anyone complains about my ingratitude towards our host, go watch the movie "1776" and note who I'm comparing him too.

mac said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"Using profane language to criticize Duke, Prof. Piot and others is offensive and draws attention away from the point the writer seeks to make. It also forecloses any possibility of a constructive exchange of views between those with different points of view."
No constructive exchange can be had with the likes of Piot. The question is how to get him fired, and how to prevent others like him from being hired.

Anonymous said...

"Nifong is asking the state of NC for legal aid"

The state should ask him what he needs a lawyer for if he didn't do anything wrong.

Anonymous said...

anonymous at 3:09 says...

"There can be no doubt that, until conservatives break the extraordinary power of [calling someone 'racist'] in American debate, they will never get control of the culture."

As I've said before, before venturing into a debate with the 88ists, you should stand in front of a mirror and scream "RACIST! SEXIST! HOMOPHOBE!" at yourself 100 times. It will inoculate you against their best "argument".

Anonymous said...

"Nifong is asking the state of NC for legal aid"

According to N&O, Dick Ellis of Admin. Office of the Courts said that "our lawyers are looking at this"..."We are trying to decide if we're legally obligated".

Does legally obiligated=only pay for Nifong's defense if we must?

Anonymous said...

To the 2:45

Here are some examples of language that I don't find very helpful. I've cut and pasted them without idenifying which posts they come from. If anyone's interested, the quotes will be easy enough to find:

1. so that you don't get bullshit self-certifying itself."

2. To teach wimps how to become assholes."

3. The small circle of people who publish this crap are fools to let outsiders know about it. It shows what a tremendous fraud their field is.

4. BTW, for those who don't know: deja moo is the sensation that you've heard all this bullshit before

5. Ouch. Another phony Duke "intellectual" gets a public bitch-slapping by K.C. Johnson.

6. But part of the problem at Duke and presumably elsewhere is that the tenure and promotion committees are participants in the circle-jerk journal

7. What's needed is much more supervision from outside departments and fields of study, so that you don't get bullshit self-certifying itself

8. What mechanism do you propose for testing my H1 above? If the departments of Astrology and Creation Science can build a set of journals that follow the mechanics of peer review and careful detailed study of total bullshit, do you believe you should treat them as equals?

9. I was starting to write an analysis of the common themes and tactics in Fish's bullshit, but I think I've wasted too many minutes of my life on him already.

10. If you don't think he's a master sophist, who do you know who's better at making total rank bullshit seem plausible?

But it's not the use of such language alone - there isn't that much of it. There are also a number of instances where people are called liars and frauds.

And then there are the posts written with a tone of complete disdain and disgust. Cathartic and maybe justifiable but......

The combined effect of those things is - perhaps just for me - a bit tiresome. Anger and disgust, even if not characteristic of a majority of the posts, seem to dominate.

As for satire, I enjoy it. But here it seems there is more sarcasm than satire, or maybe I'm just spoiled by The Dailey Show and The Colbert Report.

Even if none of the posts were offensive in any way, even if they all were factual and civil, I wouldn't expect members of the Gang of 88 (or Stanley Fish) to participate in this blog. As it is, a member of the Gang of 88 who even thought for a moment about appearing on this blog would be totally justified in fearing that he or she would be the online equivalent of pilloried.

Maybe it would be useful if there were a debate at Duke or somewhere else about the academic issues raised in this blog. For that to happen there would need to be enough trust in and respect for the process chosen for the debate for there even to be a possibility of something productive coming from it. Not likely to happen but could be very interesting if the participants were civil and better yet civil and respectful.

There was a knockout in round one (Prof. Johnson's rebutal to Prof. Piot). By comparing Prof. Johnson's rebutal to Prof. Pirot's article, one can learn something, one can compare what was said, how it was said and the basis (or lack thereof) for it.

After that, sure, some folks made very interesting points. And let's assume that all the criticism is justified and that the Gang of 88 or some members of it "asked for it." Reading through the posts, more than anything else - at least for me - what often comes through is anger and disgust. Well...that's probably just my problem. After a certain point I don't find either anger or disgust useful.

I don't blame anyone for this. Exchanging ideas via blogging can only accomplish so much. Add to that annonymity and the fact that "the other side" is not participating and one has a process that has severe limits.

I know ........ I don't have to tune in.

Anonymous said...

" There are also a number of instances where people are called liars and frauds."

Would you ask us to discuss the Enron case without ever using the words "lie" or "fraud"?

mac said...

4:30
Apology humbly accepted. And if you actually WERE a protege of Piot, you would have NEVER, EVER corrected yourself. My apologies, too, humbly rendered.

5:04
Good points. Good research. Good argument. I don't mind those particular examples, personally, which is why I didn't see what you were talking about. In any case, you have a right to your own preferences and tastes. National Lampoon was satire, too, but it wasn't Colbert nor Stewart. Different brand. Take the good and ignore what you don't like.

If you've been here long enough, you'll have noticed that the 88er anons just show up to throw monkey doo. They rarely make a case. (Prime case for Devolution.) Piot, at least, made a case, even if it was silly and petulant and ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

By George, you've got it, Anonymous 2:45.

"You don't have to tune in."

In any event, your in-depth observations and thoughtful critique is definitely appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 5:04

Re: Your Scholarly Criticism: You said:
1.“Exchanging ideas via blogging can only accomplish so much. Add to that annonymity and the fact that "the other side" is not participating and one has a process that has severe limits.”

(Add: criticism was signed by Anonymous !!!!!)

2. “As for satire, I enjoy it. But here it seems there is more sarcasm than satire, or maybe I'm just spoiled by The Dailey Show and The Colbert Report.”

(I can’t speak for the others, but my agent wants a cut, if I provide humor.)

“Frankly my dear, YOU are full of male bovine manure.”

Anonymous said...

Inre: 5:04 "...a tone of complete disdain and disgust..."

Are you not disgusted by the actions and inactions of the Duke faculty and administration?

How may one not be disdainful?

We can do better, we must do better...

Given what has/is happeing at Duke the tone of this blog and commentators is remarkably civil.

Jim in San Diego said...

to 2:45

I respect your post.

I think you make too much of the inarticulate language of some posters, however.

Anger and disgust are not unfair emotions in reaction to what has happened this past 18 months on the issues blogged here.

The idea of an open debate is exciting. Can we elaborate on the rules? Open is important. Recorded, of course. Broadcast live? What details do you suggest? How can we promote this idea to fruition?

I do not care much for blog anonymity. If you care to, please let us know who you are.

Jim Peterson

Anonymous said...

I fear, 10/15 5:04 PM, as well-intentioned as you obviously are, that you are urging a meeting of the minds across a cultural divide that no longer can be bridged.

On one side you have a dwindling remnant of traditionalists who regard the humanities as disciplines for the discovery and preservation of rationally-derived and ultimately transcendant ideals of the good, the true, and the beautiful; on the other, a movement that regards these same ideals as artificial constructs with no further purpose than the maintenance of political power, which may be supplanted by any other set of constructs by any other group wishing to establish its own dominance, i.e., the traditional liberal arts as political propaganda. (KC's newest post, "Update: The Group's Openly Political Agenda," is just too depressingly clear on this point-- and all he does is quote them.)

These two views inform every other aspect of the two groups' disparate approaches to the humanities, from the reliance on evidence and logic by one side to advance its arguments versus the essentially emotional and psychological appeals of the other to the essentially "disinterested" approach to knowledge by the one side ("truth is where you find it," "let the chips fall where they may") to the intensely personal and politically-invested approach of the other ("truth is what we speak to power.")

There isn't a lot of common ground for dialogue. And much of the anger and frustration you've correctly discerned on these threads stems reflects the growing exasperation of one side at pretending there is one. The other side has never pretended.

We'll never know how much dialoguing went on between the North Africans and the Romans in the third and second centuries BCE (well, classical historians would know), but in the end the two cultures proved irreconcilable. The most memorable phrase to survive the era was repeatedly endlessly-- like a lot of bloggers' comments-- by Cato the Elder ("Carthago delenda est"), and after all was said and done, the Romans leveled the city of Carthage, and sowed the ground with salt.

The frankest posters here are advocating not much less than that.

How would you reconcile the two sides? What are the values you find that both sides share? I respectfully submit that you'll find them a lot harder to identify than references to bovine scatology on these threads.

mac said...

One question for the educators here, including KC:

Are students supposed to seek knowledge for themselves (with assistance?)

Or are students merely offered knowledge that others hand-feed them?

Anonymous said...

5:04 puts forth an olive branch. And I have been chewing on something for some time now. I want Duke to be a preeminent research university, respected for advances to knowledge, human understanding and the alleviation of human misery. Duke University, for me is an anchor of my youth -- a remembrance of both good and bad and indifferent, but nonetheless, a part of my being. I want that part of my being to be a good thought and not a bad.

Now, I know that many on this blog would think it heretical to suggest the possibility of a collegial discussion with those who teach in the humanities (a more cordial term for the '88). As well, many would view a statement that a view of history must, almost by definition, include a perspective, a bias, a compass providing direction, ... to be antithetical to a perhaps well-intentioned agenda.

KC Johnson would surely acknowledge the interpretative and judgment laden burden of the historical observer. To include one fact while leaving others unnoticed may illuminate in some cases,...in others, to do so may leave history unwritten or, even worse, re-written. (And for those who parse words with Occam's razor, I am not suggesting that this was or was not done.)

I am not suggesting that anyone on this blog has stated anything unworthy of repetition as fact, nor am I defending those who have written that which surely cannot be posited as fact.

I am suggesting this. Search for truth oftentimes involves a deep introspection and a good will for mankind, one's fellow man. I am as guilty as anyone of harboring deep-seated negative views of those who provided fuel for the flames of the Duke Lacrosse Burning. But now I pause to reconsider. Sometimes truth lies within one's self.

The lolly-gagging adherence to a KC agenda (whatever that is), however, is certainly not advancing anything that various commenters here have espoused. Many here would be much better served in viewing KC's work (which, by the way, I truly admire) with a more agnostic bias. To walk in someone else's shoes, so to speak. Then, if the facts and the analysis withstand the scrutiny of such an agnostic view, the strength of KC's work will gather a patina, a glow of right and justice.

And I do think that many (if not most) here are truly advocates of truth, right and justice.

I think, as well, that many of the '88 -- humanities professors and other signatories to the listening statement -- are also interested in truth and right and justice. Their articulation of those concepts may come in a different form, but nonetheless can be read and heard. I sense that they are hesitant to give voice to those thoughts for fear of reprisal -- intellectual, emotional, physical -- real or imagined.

Now, the enlightened and the learned and those who want to memorialize those concepts -- truth, right, justice and yes honor, -- in the collective conscious of America, and all who dream to be American, and all who hold dear the diverse heritage of America, can surely find a kind dialogue.

With best regards and due repects to all, I shall remain, a devoted follower of this blog, this beacon of light in a sea of injustice,

Tom Inman
______________________

PS: I shall wait with baited breath for the most certain to arrive Diva, off-the-wall and hystrionic calumny for even suggesting that anyone provoke grey matter in self-evaluation and/or critique of KC. C'est la vis. And in the spirit of adventure and knowing that I will be asked to surrender these views, I'll quote General Anthony McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st Airborne, responding to a German request for his surrender: "Aw, nuts!".

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:04,
So the fact that tenured professors are allowed to teach classes from their soapboxes seemingly unchecked isn't cause for disgust? That these same professors encouraged, and in some cases participated in, the unjust treatment of three falsely accused Duke students isn't cause for anger? By all means, you are entitled to your opinion. But, with all due respect, if the people who followed this case had shared your viewpoint, those three young men could be in prison. This case and all of the details involved in it, including the behavior of Duke professors, is angering and disgusting. And if the Duke faculty members don't want people (apparently KC in particular) to write about or refute their comments, arguments, justifications, insults, or accusations, perhaps they shouldn't make them public. In other words, don't dish it out if you can't take it.

Anonymous said...

Piot and Nifong are virtually interchangeable.

Steven Horwitz said...

Mac asks, presumably rhetorically:

One question for the educators here, including KC:

Are students supposed to seek knowledge for themselves (with assistance?)

Or are students merely offered knowledge that others hand-feed them?


Good teachers are mentors who equip their students with the tools students need to seek knowledge and make informed judgments on their own. Sometimes those tools are pieces of information that we "give" them, e.g., intro econ students need to know what "marginal cost" and "marginal revenue" mean. Sometimes those tools are the ability to write, speak, and research well, which come from both instruction and guided practice.

And sometimes those tools are ones the students help create themselves when faculty members create classroom environments that encourage students to learn through independent investigation or by working with and learning from their peers.

As students progress through the four years of college, our mentoring should be increasingly light-handed, with students assuming more responsibility for their own education.

We need to reach down and help them get started climbing an intellectual ladder that they will eventually be able to climb themselves.

Anonymous said...

"I think, as well, that many of the '88 -- humanities professors and other signatories to the listening statement -- are also interested in truth and right and justice."

(1) Whatever their motives, their actions had the opposite effect. Are they fools or knaves? Don't know. Don't care.

(2) After their behavior - making a huge mistake and refusing to admit it - they have lost the right to the benefit of the doubt about their competence and good intentions, and now have to prove them.

(3) Your impulse to extend an olive branch is laudable, and worthwhile so long as it has even the tiniest chance of success. But rememeber that (in the Catholic tradition at least) forgiveness follows repentance.

Anonymous said...

"Even if none of the posts were offensive in any way, even if they all were factual and civil, I wouldn't expect members of the Gang of 88 (or Stanley Fish) to participate in this blog."

I am no more interested in having a dialogue with these people than I am in having a dialogue with Mike Nifong.

My primary concern with Nifong was communicating to those who had the power to remove him from the position he was abusing the necessity of doing so. Expressing anger and disgust at his actions was not detrimental to that end, it was part of how it was achieved.

My primary concern with the Gang of 88 and their ilk is communicating to those who have the power to remove them from the positions they are abusing the necessity of doing so. Expressing anger and disgust at their actions is not detrimental to that end, it is part of how it will be achieved.

Anonymous said...

Steve Horwitz said:
It is one of the problems of the humanities that there is no "wrecking ball" test to show that an area's ideas have gone off the rails (by wrecking ball I mean that we can always prove the laws of physics by swinging one - there are no such unambiguous tests in the humanities and social sciences).

In a sense the Duke Lacrosse Buring has been such a test. Faculty of the humanities involved themselves in a real-world situation. The actions they took were based on the methods and beliefs they learned and now teach.

They actions they took were consistently completely wrong, both in substance and method.

The ball did not swing the way they expected it to. Their "knowledge" has been experimentally shown not to match the way the world really is.

Anonymous said...

At 11:54, refering to Anon 5:04 Bella wrote:

But, with all due respect, if the people who followed this case had shared your viewpoint, those three young men could be in prison.


That is nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Anon 8:58 wrote:

I fear, 10/15 5:04 PM, as well-intentioned as you obviously are, that you are urging a meeting of the minds across a cultural divide that no longer can be bridged.

---------------------------

Is it worth it to try? Is it worth it to offer the other side an opportunity to engage in a civil, respectful debate?

Anonymous said...

Regarding those who point out, correctly in my view, that the behavior of certain professsors provokes feelings of disgust and contempt, I agree those emotions are understandable and justified. But just as there can be too much of a good thing, in my view after a certain point, expressing contempt, anger and disgust doesn't do much good. There isn't much to learn from it. If nothing else, it's repetitive.

Anonymous said...

Snagged from a Chronicle board, by
"CHRIS DAVIS, HARVARD '73, NOT, REPEAT NOT A DUKE PARENT"

Let's review, once again: The real job description of the very model of modern university administrator, e.g., Brodhead at Duke, Faust at Harvard, is to run interference between the following groups: 1)out-of-touch, wealthy and nutty alumni; 2) the USG and all its wacky regulatory requirements for continued subsidies; 3)morally, legally, sexually, politically, culturally unsophisticated whiny students who share an unlimited sense of entitlement and are "shockingly" outraged at practically any and all injustices as long as those injustices affect themselves; 4)intellectually washed-up, third-rate tenured radicals who haven't had an original thought since they heard the last Crosby, Stills & Nash album, and of course, 5)who could possibly forget the lovely, lovely American media(the same people who bring you Brittany/Lindsay/Paris 24:7)?

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 10/17 9:39:

Is it worth it to try? Is it worth it to offer the other side an opportunity to engage in a civil, respectful debate?

Why is it incumbent upon this blog (or any individual or institution) to "offer the other side an opportunity to engage in a civil, respectful debate?" (Although it does. KC has invited serious discussion by the other side repeatedly.) Why doesn't the other side just engage in civl, respectful debate?

As opposed to writing the sort of article (Piot's) that generated this post and thread in the first place.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Ralph Phelan@10/17 8:35 AM: having endangered the lives and liberty of their students by their actions, the other side has forfeited the benefit of the doubt from reasonable men, and the onus now falls on them to demonstrate their competence, good intentions, and reasonableness of their ideology that informs both. They need to "just do it," with or without an olive branch extended by anyone else. I would recognize doing the right thing as a value I share, and there might then be some common ground for dialogue. But, again, as Phelan noted: forgiveness follows repentance.

Minor point on the repetiveness of the contempt, anger, and disgust that you note on this blog (There isn't much to learn from it. If nothing else, it's repetitive.): It may seem repetitive in toto, but the expressions are by indivduals who aren't necessarily repeating themselves. The most articulate and recurrent commenters (Horwitz, Mac, Phelan, RRH, One Spook, to name a handful-- there are many others) offer far morein the way of constructive insight than they do disdain. However, it may be the nature of the case that inspired this website, that separating one from the other, as long as the status remains quo, is impossible.

Anon@8:58... aw, call me "Dave"

Anonymous said...

anonymous says...

Is it worth it to try? Is it worth it to offer the other side an opportunity to engage in a civil, respectful debate?

10/17/07 9:39 AM


Every day this blog is open is another opportunity "the other side to engage in a civil, respectful debate?" This blog = the water; they = 88 horses.

Anonymous said...

ralpyh Phelan said...

"Even if none of the posts were offensive in any way, even if they all were factual and civil, I wouldn't expect members of the Gang of 88 (or Stanley Fish) to participate in this blog."

I am no more interested in having a dialogue with these people than I am in having a dialogue with Mike Nifong.

My primary concern with Nifong was communicating to those who had the power to remove him from the position he was abusing the necessity of doing so. Expressing anger and disgust at his actions was not detrimental to that end, it was part of how it was achieved.

My primary concern with the Gang of 88 and their ilk is communicating to those who have the power to remove them from the positions they are abusing the necessity of doing so. Expressing anger and disgust at their actions is not detrimental to that end, it is part of how it will be achieved.

10/17/07 8:59 AM


Well-said, as usual, Ralph. It's sad that some people cannot see that the 88ists are the moral equivalents of Mike Nifong. Both sought to use the nappy-headed hoax to make political hay.

If I can borrow an analogy recently used by another commenter, the struggle between the supporters of meritocracy and the supporters of diversity racism is not like Rome vs. Greece; it's Rome vs. Carthage. Unfortunately, it is our side that has been losing the Punic Wars.

Anonymous said...

Three words for Mr. Piot's "piety:"

Pa Thet Ic. Really.

Keep it up, Prof. Johnson. You have them on the run. If this is the best they have, they'll be in administrative hearings for the next 10 years, trying to justify themselves. And stay long enough to get their Nifong-inspired pensions, too.

Anonymous said...

This was a strong post from someone who has obviously been paying attention:

"Ralph Phelan said...

Steve Horwitz said:
It is one of the problems of the humanities that there is no 'wrecking ball' test to show that an area's ideas have gone off the rails (by wrecking ball I mean that we can always prove the laws of physics by swinging one - there are no such unambiguous tests in the humanities and social sciences).

In a sense the Duke Lacrosse Buring has been such a test. Faculty of the humanities involved themselves in a real-world situation. The actions they took were based on the methods and beliefs they learned and now teach.

They actions they took were consistently completely wrong, both in substance and method.

The ball did not swing the way they expected it to. Their 'knowledge' has been experimentally shown not to match the way the world really is."

One Spook said...

ralpyh phelan @ 8:59 writes:

ralph phelan @ 9:03 writes:

Ralph?

Did you grow a "Y" when the rest of us weren't looking or is someone trying to impersonate you?

One Spook

Anonymous said...

"is someone trying to impersonate you?"

Yeah, some thick-fingered bozo who can't be bother4ed with teh previeww bttuuon.

Anonymous said...

anon 3:02

To me it's a pretty obvious observation.
The problem is getting "scholars" in the humanities, university administrations, parents or funding agencies to care.

Anonymous said...

11. "nappy headed hoax." (Don't know what the writer means. But in the New York area, a radio host got fired for saying something that included the words "nappy headed."

It now seems clear that in the unlikely event there were a debate Mr. Phelan would prefer not to serve as moderator.

Basing a decision not to talk with the Gang of 88 because they are the moral equivalent of Mike Nifong raises - for me - an interesting point. Someone should have talked to Mike Nifong. That no one did - or if they did, that no one got through to him - is one of the most serious failures brought to light by the Nifong case. I'm sure someone (more likely just about everyone) will say that it is too late to talk to the Gang of 88 just as it is too late to talk to Nifong. But is it too late? Is all lost? Is each of them in the vice-like grip of ideological purity that prevents them from considering other points of view?

I know what the chorus will say. But, I am not so pesimistic. Why? Well, I guess it's a choice. I'm a firm beleiver in self defense and in stickng up for the right thing. But I also think that often a wilingness to listen increases the chances of something constructive happening and decreases the chances of otherwise avoidable destruction. I don't equate not being pesimistic with being naive. I equate it with being willing to risk some time - that's all - to listen.

Admittedly with very little to go on, I've been trying to understand what is sometimes referred to as the Angry Studies and those who teach them.
This is what I've come up with: they are people who believe there is racism, sexism and inequality in the world and that each of those things is, if not man made, then perpetuated by the powers that be. And they want to do something about those things. One of the things they want to do is teach people how to identify racism, sexism and inequality and to adopt a radical attitude to them, i.e. to mobilize their students to "fight the good fight." If the Listening ad is a REPRESENTATIVE example of how they "fight the good fight," and of what they teach their students........then everyone should know that and be forewarned. Of course from the failure to apologize one could draw the conclusion that the Listening ad was all but representative, but, for now, I am willing to think of it as a horrible mistake in judgment, which they are too stubborn or too embarrassed to admit. If any member of the Gang of 88 is reading this, it is not too late to apologize and/or to explain why you signed on to it and what you thought you were doing as well as what you think of the reaction to it. Maybe, some would be willing to make anonymous apologies or explanation - if there were a way to ensure they were authentic. Don't know how that could be done, but there probably is a way.

There is racism, sexism and inequality in the world, including the US. I assume there is geneal agreement that those are not goals that a society strives for. But after that, the discussion (if there were a discussion) gets very, very complicated starting with how does one define racism, sexism and unjustifiable inequality? And what are their causes?

I get the feeling - sorry no data - that some professors see racism, sexism and inequality everywhere and that they know what causes it: Us.
I'm oversimplifying, but if I'm on the right track, it might explain the Listening ad. The people who signed on to it made a horrible assumption. In doing so, they didn't commit a crime in the literal sense, but they did something terribly wrong and unfair. (There is a difference between teaching and demagogery. Would someone from the Gang of 88 explain the difference as well as under which heading the Listening ad belongs.) I would like to understand why they did. Up to this point, I can only guess.. They thought they were doing something good. Why did they think that? Why haven't they apologized or explained themselves? Now if Prof. Piot speaks for everyone who signed the Listening ad and for everyone who hasn't apologized (none of them have, have they?) - if they elected him to be their spokesman and if they explicitly and publically ratify what he wrote - then, I give up. Not forever. But for now. I would like to understand. To understand one has to be willing to listen. I'm willing to listen. I hope no one's blood pressure is going up. That I'm willing to listen does not mean I don't agree with everything KC wrote in his rebuttal. It doesn't mean I am critical of the individual points of view expressed on this blog. It just means that I - just one person -am willing to listen.

Someone will write, "Don't hold your breath." I'm not going to hold my breath. I don't expect anyone from the Gang of 88 to offer to meet me over a cup of coffee. But maybe, somewhere down the line, in a different forum, there will be a debate/discussion. If there is, I'd like to attend. That's all. I think it would be interesting and I think I would learn something. Not sure what.

Comparing Duke to Enron invites one to ... well.... compare them. Non-profit educational institution v. publically traded corporation; top officials at Enron indicted, some plead guility and go to prison, some go to trial and then to prison, one commits suicide, another dies after trial, thousands of people put of work, thousands more ruined financially v. teaching the "Angry Studies" to apparently not very many student - granted in this court of public opinion, several Duke professsors have been tried in absentia and convicted of......well everyone knows what they did and that they deserve whatever comes their way. Right? So for me comparing Duke to Enron seems about as appropriate as calling Prof. Piot's article scholarly.

Sometimes it seems that there is contest, a fight:
Angry Studies v. Angry Critics. Both sides are certain that their views are right and their emotions completely justifiable and even healthy, and that their opponent is not just wrong but completely hopeless and even actually evil. If you're not with us, you're against us. Reminds me of a certain foreign policy.

One solution: UFC - a cage match.

Another solution: a debate on the Jerry Springer Show

(These are attempts at humor.................ok.....i'm not getting a job writing for The Daily Show or Colbert Report)

Maybe there could be a back channel effort to start a dialogue......

Finally:

1. Thank you to the witty person who offered this comment:

“Frankly my dear, YOU are full of male bovine manure.”

Your personal touch means perhaps more than you know.

2. And for the "Olive Branch" and "well intentioned" comments, thanks very much.

I tried.

AMac said...

I asked a Transforming Anthropology editor about their peer review policy. (Their website reads, "We invite the submission of research articles for peer review, as well as short commentaries, research reports, review essays, interviews, and other innovative formats.").

The editor responded, "research articles are peer reviewed and short commentaries and other sorts of formats are usually not. Dr. Piot's essay is 'short commentary.'"

Steven Horwitz said...

Ralph writes:

In a sense the Duke Lacrosse Burning has been such a test. Faculty of the humanities involved themselves in a real-world situation. The actions they took were based on the methods and beliefs they learned and now teach.

I find this argument to be pretty persuasive. A wrecking ball of its own, as it were.

Anonymous said...

You wonder, reading this tripe from Piot et al, what these people would be doing if they had to work in the real world. Would they be capable of, say, running a convenience store or an insurance agency? I doubt it. Thank God for the academy...where mutual self-delusion is the coin of the realm.

mac said...

Professor Horwitz,

Thanks for your response! I agree with you - and looking at the update post (The Group's Openly Political Agenda) it appears that they don't. Of course.

I've had profs who were fundamentalist Christians, profs who were radical leftists, and even these - the best ones - allowed students to learn, without indoctrination. The best teachers lead and inspire, regardless of their personal positions.

Anonymous said...

“As a colleague in the English Department commented: ‘If his reading of the ad is representative of his reading practices generally, KC Johnson would have failed Intro to Reading.’”

I was surprised to learn that Duke's English department offered "Intro to Reading."

I guess admissions standards have slipped a bit.

Anonymous said...

FROM CHRIS DAVIS, HARVARD '73

If you believe in the underlying value of Western Civilization, it is not just "worth it to try", but it can actually be quite possible to relish the battle against the forces of moral and intellectual inferiority. This culture hasn't been maintained through "listening tours", but through endless armed struggles with deadly serious opponents.
I see no moral reason on earth to grant defeatists like the Group of 88 any quarter in the constant struggle for cultural legitimacy vs. moral relativism and collectivism. Anger is justified, but exposure, analysis and unrelenting attack are infinitely more effective(think KGB) against a serious and entrenched enemy.
Shoving them out of their jobs by any means at hand merely restores the status quo ante -- it should not be considered a "victory", but a "necessity."
In the mid-1930s Leon Blum's France had a hundred divisions in the field compared to Hitler's seven or eight, but even by that point it was too late -- the French had lost all will to fight and they were enslaved.
There's nothing wrong with a good fight, with confrontation in the service of a great cause, and pushing radical hucksters out of American academe forever is a great cause.

Anonymous said...

" Someone should have talked to Mike Nifong. That no one did - or if they did, that no one got through to him - is one of the most serious failures brought to light by the Nifong case."
Plenty was written and said to which he responded defiantly. This failure was in Nifong. After a while, stopping the damage an individual is doing becomes more urgent than reforming the individual.

" The people who signed on to it made a horrible assumption. In doing so, they didn't commit a crime in the literal sense, but they did something terribly wrong and unfair... I would like to understand why they did."
You'll get a lot better insight by reading KC's analysis than by listening to their self-justifications. I'm gonna go a bit over the top here & say you'll learn more about Charlews Manson's motivations by talking to a psychiatrist than by talking to him directly.

To some extent it's the "forgiveness follows repentance" thing. As soon as any of them admits to having made a mistake, I'm willing to start having a conversation. But any conversation that doesn't start with the acknowldgement that the "listening statement" was wrong is like trying to talk science with a creation theorist - the fundamental assumptions are so different that there's just no point.

"Sometimes it seems that there is contest, a fight:"
Yes, there is. When they tried to put innocent people in jail and publicly supported mob violence, they turned it into more than just a debate. These people have clearly indicated that they would like to see me imprisoned, castrated or killed just because of my sex and skin color. I think that fits any reasonable definition of "enemy."

Anonymous said...

http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2007/10/absolutely-posi.html#comments

Rich said:

"Seriously, what is the point of this? That the Group of 88 approved of protest wholesale, when many of the protestors assumed the guilt of the lacrosse students? Yes, we know that; it's why I wouldn't have signed the statement. But that does not make the Group's explanation of what they did incorrect. They wanted to encourage protest because they they thought that societal moments like this one were the only times when long-standing issues of racism really got addressed. You can think that their judgement was bad without saying that they were lying about what they were trying to do, or making some kind of weird narrative about horrible protestors -- these being, I have to say, the most sedate college protestors I've ever seen."

In the blog acephalous, the above comment[er] clearly advocates hefting the ill-intentioned G88 race/gender/class political agenda onto the backs of innocent students. Why? Because “[theG88] thought that societal moments like this one were the only times when long-standing issues of racism really got addressed.”

So, Rich, what “listening statement” or any other statement addressing race issues was published in the public arena directly after Katrina? Why didn’t you cite it? Indeed, not only did the G88 lie about their intentions, they used both an inappropriate venue and scapegoats to address their thinly veiled hatred. Their problems have little to do with what they claim to advocate as they instead focus(ed) on persecution. They’ve thrown their dirt against the wall and it stuck only where their choir lies. Advocacy for the minority? Try using a factual example FROM Katrina. I do agree with your point inre: to the sedate protestors; that the protestors didn’t have the conviction to carry out their threats of “castration” and “dead man walking.” Durham’s blind eye to justice surely would have presumed innocence on them, unlike the Lacrosse players.

A second thought; SEK in his blog assumes Prof. Johnson’s guilt by association with D. Horowitz yet he uses neither demonstrated facts nor citations to buttress this claim. Additionally, SEK uses the damned if you do, damned if you don’t approach to criticize Prof. Johnson’s “examination of the field” in order to “further(s) his agenda.”

“He makes statements hoping that no one notices them, because it's a win-win proposition. If no one does, his pack feasts upon the meat he's thrown it. If someone does, he plays the role of the judicious pack-leader, and his pack respects him all the more for his honesty…”

SEK argues that no matter what Prof. Johnson opines about the G88 and their sycophants, he’s simply wrong, regardless of however fortified his argument is with facts.

And that is exactly the attitude of those who damned the Lacrosse players was to begin with. Whether the players were guilty or innocent, whatever they did was bad enough to persecute them.

Given, SEK is a grad student; one would think he would judiciously investigate his subject and consider the facts. Instead, much like his beloved “professoriate” he not only ignores the facts (the fact that Piot listed his article in his CV) but propagates the Maoist mentality that leftist rhetoric IS factual and any alternative opinion be suppressed. In Hate Studies, the “alternative” is truly the status quo. Acephalous would do better to opine with a head.

Eric

Anonymous said...

"SEK in his blog assumes Prof. Johnson’s guilt by association with D. Horowitz..."
D. Horowitz is opposed to leftist politicization of the academy.
Therefore anyone else who is opposed to leftist politicization of the academy is an ally of Horowitz, and thus a tool of the devil.
Q.E.D.

Anonymous said...

Eric commits a non-sequiteur:
"SEK is a grad student; one would think he would judiciously investigate his subject and consider the facts."

Huh? He's not a grad student in science or engineering, he's a grad student in the humanities. He's doing exactly what he's been trained to do, and very well too!

Debrah said...

Eric @ 11:06 AM--

A magnificent dissection of the fetid "SEK".

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Piot is simply outclassed and outgunned in this case.

The learned professor cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas in the "outside world" where there's no bully pulpit to hide behind so expect him to retreat to the sanctity of his classroom where he has total control and can intimidate his young students at will.

For a brief glimpse of the current faculty-student relationship at Duke, take a look at a this sad exchange of thoughts recorded on The Chronicle's comment pages between a Duke Grad Student, Prasad Kasibhatla along with a third poster who felt the need to issue a "Warning."


POSTED BY "Grad Student"

Dr. Kasibhatla, I just went over this thread... read your initial message, a couple of silly responses, a couple of cogent responses, a number of extremely rational rebuttals and questions for you... nothing more from you, though. Perhaps you are in class right now, but I would really appreciate you actually answering to those questions, one way or the other. I will check this board again, later.

kind regards,
one of yr. many faithful students.


POSTED BY "Dr. Kasibhatla"

Hello -

If this is an authentic post from a student - if you are truly interested in discussing, I will be happy to chat face-to-face. If you are interested, please email me off-line - perhaps we can chat over lunch or coffee next week?

Best,
Prasad


POSTED BY "Warning"

I see Prof. Kasibhatia then challenged your authenticity as a student and said that if you asked your questions "face-to-face" then he would give you the secret answers that he won't provide in public.

If Prof. Kasibhatia was REALLY interested in answering the questions you want answered, would he be demanding that you first reveal your identity? If you're white and your GPA is at all important to you, then you'd have to be an idiot to reveal yourself to an 88ist professor at Duke, given the university's quiescence with grade retaliation against white students. (And why not, given its own admissions discrimination against white students?) In the current climate of diversity-racism at Duke, you can't take the chance.


POSTED BY "Grad Student"

Dr. Kasibhatla, of course this was an authentic post from an authentic student, and thank you so much for your response. Unfortunately, I cannot respond to your kind invitation. In the context of fear created by faculty practice of accusing their students of things they have not committed, I would be afraid to even meet you over coffee, and be later falsely accused of being confrontational, or accused of having attempted to sexually or otherwise harass you, with no evidence whatsoever, while your faculty colleagues would gregariously join the lynching attempt, in a show of unconditional "solidarity," beyond good or evil. "My faculty, right or wrong" seems to be the newest embodiment of the old Samuel Johnson saw, about the last refuges...
I was hoping for a real answer from you, as I used to respect you, and I still believe you are a brilliant scientist, regardless of your morals. When I will meet you on the corridors, I will still say "Hi," because I am a well-mannered person, and a respectful student, but I hope you won't mind my intensely despising the core of your ethics, in my heart. Probably it doesn't matter much to you, anyway.

What a sad state affairs for a great university.

10/15/07 10:46 AM

Anonymous said...

The Group 88 core members are running an aggressive agenda. Does anyone know what they want? All of us have access to the same violent crime demographics. White people present no significant physical threat to black people - at Duke University or in Durham. We all know that. Fear? It would seem that Duke's white employees fear it's black employees. Fear of being branded the big "R". Like being branded a Commie in 1953. Is there an end-state that they envision? Or is this intimidating behavior a smokescreen to deflect scrutiny of their scholarship?

Anonymous said...

"surveillance tactics"

Prof. Piot:
"Do you know why I failed you?"

Student
"No sir, I thoroughly researched my subject, properly noted my citations, and made a reasoned argument! All this was in your syllabus, I don't..."

Prof. Piot:
"Listen you elitist, privileged snot. You're gettin' all bourgeoisie on me. I do not want my proletariat to engage the capitalist, Horwitzian... look, I'm trying to re-educate you here. You're working too hard. When I said I wanted a reasoned argument you first simply need to understand who the enemy is. When you know who the enemy is, deconstruct him with the post modern progressive theory I've shoved down your throats the past 10 weeks. The citations my comrade, start and end in this department. And if you've been listening, the subject field is a narrow, moving target. Now go out there and blame someone!"

Student:
"Mom, Dad, remember when you..."

mac said...

I think Charlie Piot managed to send his manuscript to the wrong journal, and had intended to send it to "Transforming Arthropodia."

That would, indeed, be the best journal to describe the 88, in any case. That's why "Transforming Anthropology" has seemed to distance itself from the publication of Piot's "evil, pustulent prose" -(Mac; dif. thread)

Note: the 88 don't shower: they moult.

The also contain some of the most toxic species, such as Latrodectus Mactans, the Black Widow, which is toxic and delivers a very painful toxin. Historically, L. Mactans has displayed a tendency to:
1) Bite male homo sapiens.
2) Bite male homo sapiens who are sitting in outhouses.
3) bit male homo sapiens in whatever appendages dangle below the set of the outhouse.

Fortunately, in that regard, L. Mactans' toxicity is not a local toxin, but systemic. it would be more unfortunate if it were to resemble the L. Reclusa bite, the species of K. Rudy.

These arthopods also come in parasitic forms. The parasitic forms, of course, are the chief Duke variety. There are several types of parasitic forms among these (Wikipedia,) including "Cheating" or "exploitation types of parasitism" and "social parasites." There is also a "Kleptoparasitism." (The latter clearly described the "borrowing" mechanisms of scholarly work by a former professor from Colorado.)

However, the 88 as a whole probably regard themselves as "Parasitoids," which Wiki describes as "parasites that use another organisms tissue for their own nutritional benefit until the host dies from loss of needed tissues or nutrients.." (Wikipedia) They are also known as "necrotrophs," and like most parasites of that kind, are not particularly concerned about the death of the host, as long as there is another favorable host (see G. Farred, Cornell University) willing to be sucked or otherwise drained.

The flaw in Piot's manuscript was that he not only sent the article to the wrong journal, but that he misidentified the organisms surveyed. Consider this to be a peer review of his poorly concluded, poorly researched article, one that was even sent to the wrong address.

Humbly submitted to the Editors of National Lampoon (this IS National Lampoon, is it not?)

Mad Mac, III

bobo1949 said...

To no one in particular:
As I recall the Listening Ad, at the direction of The Chronicle staff, had to be rewritten before the paper would publish it. Has anyone seen the original "Listening Ad"? If so, can you comment on its' contents?
Mike Rayfield
Spring, TX

Anonymous said...

This is how we got Charlie Piot:

Charles Piot gets an endowed chair at Duke

Anne Bass is a trustee on the BOT. Perhaps she needs to reconsider her endowment.

Anonymous said...

Anon wrote

"The Group 88 core members are running an aggressive agenda. Does anyone know what they want?"

Its leaders are bullies. Like all bullies, they try to hide their lack of self-esteem by intimidating others. (Note their methods of "argumentation.") And like all bullies, they seek to control others. In particular, the academic bullies at Duke want unearned power, prestige, influence, access to students, money.

Duke Prof

Debrah said...

So many have appealed to Chucky Piot to step up to the collegial plate, yet he refuses.

It must be difficult when you write such a comically inaccruate article in an obscure publication---whose editors were, admittedly, MIA---as did our Chucky P.......but for his own reputation within the academy, he must account for his shoddy and distastefully mendacious work.

What do you say, Chucky?

Let me go back into musical history and pose the question.....Are you tuff enuff?

Steven Horwitz said...

A musing on the presumption of innocence:

A running theme of KC’s as well as many other observers of the whole Hoax has been to rightly criticize all of those people who failed to maintain a public presumption of innocence around the lacrosse players. One of the arguments made by those defending the lack of such public pronouncements, recently echoed in the comments here, is that public statements of the presumption of innocence are also public statements of the belief that the accuser is a liar. So, say these folks, it is “fairer” to just say nothing, rather than imply that the accuser is a liar.

This argument, as others have noted, utterly misunderstands the way the legal process works and why the presumption of innocence exists. The presumption of innocence is just that, a presumption. It is not an argument or a belief that the accused are innocent, but just a presumption. That presumption simply means that the burden of proof in criminal cases is on the accuser – hence, innocent until proven guilty. The presumption of innocence is a statement of agnosticism. It is a statement that we do not know what happened, and that until we have the opportunity to hear all sides, we start by assuming the accused are innocent and demand that the accuser provide the proof of guilt.

Our system works this way because the denial of liberty (with death being the most extreme version) is the worst form of punishment we can administer, hence we take that so seriously that those who would deny liberty face the burden of proof in criminal cases. The source of the aphorism “better that X number of guilty people go free than one innocent person go to jail” is our recognition of how high the stakes are when human liberty might be denied. We value liberty so highly that we are willing to make many errors of omission to avoid just one error of commission. This is the source of the presumption of innocence and why constant public reminders that the burden of proof remains on the accuser are so necessary, especially when the case hits social flashpoints of race, gender, and class as the Duke case did.

Repeating constantly and publicly that the players are innocent until proven guilty does NOT equate to saying that Crystal was a liar. It simply says “the burden is on the accuser to provide the proof of guilt.” It does not judge the veracity of her claim. It only reminds us that the demonstration of its veracity is on the state to offer.

And that is the way it should be in a society that values human liberty. Societies in which the accused are expected to prove their innocence, which is what happens if we by default accept as true the claims any criminal accuser makes (rape or otherwise), are totalitarian by implication, as they assume one’s life belongs to the state unless one can “prove” otherwise. Societies dedicated to liberty are ones where the state and the accuser must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the deprivation of liberty is justified.

It’s easy, now that we do know the truth, to criticize the lack of public statements of the presumption of innocence. However, such statements are MOST important precisely when WE DO NOT KNOW what happened, as they remind us of where the burden of proof lies and of the high value we place on human liberty.

Reminders of the presumption of innocence do not imply that the accuser is a liar. They only claim that until we do know what happened, the burden is on the accuser (and the state) to demonstrate the validity of her claim. To argue otherwise is to implicitly reverse the burden of proof and lapse into assumptions more akin to totalitarian societies than free ones.

AMac said...

Eric wrote (10/18/06 11:06 AM) --

A second thought; SEK in his blog assumes Prof. Johnson’s guilt by association with D. Horowitz yet he uses neither demonstrated facts nor citations to buttress this claim.

Eric, the charge that Prof. Johnson has associated with David Horowitz' website FrontPageMag.com was laid in the bilious thread of an earlier Acephalous post by commenter Rich P.

Apparently, in the center and left parts of the Academy (i.e. the Committed Left to Extreme Left of U.S. society) Horowitz is anathema for sometimes-slipshod claims and for promoting an "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR). Allowing essays to be reprinted on FrontPageMag.com is thus a serious matter indeed. It's enough for DiW's regular Five O'Clock Charlie commenter to ask:

Is KC Johnson a Communist, er, I mean, a Horowitzian?

That's about all I know. Perhaps a commenter with a better sense of the controversy (Prof. Horwitz, no-2nd-o?) could suggest some light background reading on the subject?

Anonymous said...

KC:

I have finished reading your superb dissection of Professor Piot's article.

It is, without a doubt, as complete a public humilation as I have ever witnessed.

I suspect Professor Piot has read it and must be seething with rage. As is the case with most bullies, he is afraid to respond.


Ken
Dallas

Debrah said...

Last evening when I was out for dinner I deliberately brought up the subject of the lacrosse case with the bartender.

This was at one of my favorite Italian restaurants. The place gets lots of traffic. It's located outside one of the best malls in the Triangle.....although, inside Durham County.

Because of its geographical location--off I40 on the way to the airport-- it attracts shoppers from Chapel Hill and Raleigh, and all over, actually.

Another example of overflowing revenue Durham receives, yet if they aren't careful, they will destroy this "cash cow" as well.....like they destroy everything else.

The bartender said there was still lots of talk about the case and that opinions always run along the proverbial black-white line.

Unfortunate, but who invented this hoax? Who supported it? Who continues to argue that it's ok to harm some innocent people?

To this day, I am still shocked that so many allegedly educated and enlightened people see nothing wrong with all of this.

I wasn't able to check out the Barnes & Noble store nearby--(Diva kibitzing and vino sessions took priority)--however, I have to go to my Apple Store tomorrow afternoon, and I want to check out their UPI display then.

Maybe I will cause a scene if it's not in the window. That would make the Sunday steeples lean.

LOL!!!

Gary Packwood said...

mac 9:13 said...

...One question for the educators here, including KC:
...Are students supposed to seek knowledge for themselves (with assistance?)
...Or are students merely offered knowledge that others hand-feed them?
::
In my view American undergraduate universities are all about transforming lives with everyone on-campus working together towards that goal.

The transformation process is student centered and it is understood that attempts to indoctrinate defeats the purpose of undergraduate student centered learning.

In such an environment, those faculty who attempt to indoctrinate usually find themselves without students to teach or scholars to read what they write.

Students who are hand-feed knowledge are usually working towards a vocational degree (welding, for example)at a vocational school where transforming lives is not an issue.
::
GP

Anonymous said...

JLS says...,

I am not sure if this has been mentioned on any of the thread here, but this is another case to look into:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3071405

Yet another woman making her second rape allegation against an athlete, PSU in this case. I don't know the details of this case, but I do know the rape shield laws should not keep prior false claims from juries.

Gary Packwood said...

Anonymous 2:47 said...

...Wow, excellent rebuttal. However, I have one question about Professor Johnson's claim that he never insinuated Lubiano made up the anonymous quotes in the ad. In an April 6 posting, he said, "We now know that the anonymous quotes from alleged Duke students actually came from Wahneema Lubiano’s 'notes' of a student gathering."
...It's true that this quote is consistent with what Professor Johnson says in the blog post above. But what was the import of that observation made on April 6, and other times, if not to insinuate Lubiano made up the quotes or at least massaged them a little bit?
::
Just allow the reader to decide if the notes actually represent truths spoken by the students. If the students do not wish to speak for themselves what other option do you recommend?

Ultimately the reader will consider the source and accept or disregard the comments attributed to the students.
::
GP

Gary Packwood said...

Duke Prof 10:55 responding to Anon said...

...Anon wrote
..."The Group 88 core members are running an aggressive agenda. Does anyone know what they want?"

I...ts leaders are bullies. Like all bullies, they try to hide their lack of self-esteem by intimidating others. (Note their methods of "argumentation.") And like all bullies, they seek to control others. In particular, the academic bullies at Duke want unearned power, prestige, influence, access to students, money.
::
I certainly agree with your observation that they are bullies but suggest that we first need to determine if a small minority of the gang are articulate but delusional.

The literature in behavioral medicine is replete with case studies of highly educated and articulate people who have persecution type delusions. The Susan Polk case in California, for example.

Young students would have no referent point to sort out a delusional professor or staff member and in fact, may 'buy into' the persecution delusion hook, line and sinker.

A strong commitment to 'fact checking' will usually flush out the delusional however someone in charge has to actually do something with the delusional person as they sure are not going to admit to their own delusions. They are after all, delusional about being persecuted.
::
GP

Anonymous said...

The value of a college education is that it teaches you how to think. You need some process of sorting through conflicting data and forming an informed opinion. While the quality and quantity of data has changed since I graduated the basic process of thinking has not.

The problem with the groupthink is that it does not help you to analyze. There is no sorting of data only an indoctrination of dogma. Additionally it does not help you with a vocation so the obvious question is what good is it?

Anonymous said...

Re: Reflecting on Charles Piot’s KC’S World Katrina comment

".... events surrounding Hurricane Katrina to suggest that events such as these have social roots and ramifications beyond the events themselves."

At first I thought the stretch Piot made between Katrina and the Listening Statement was comical. Upon reflection, I do see some similarities. We saw here, how the Gang of 88 jumped upon a situation to further their own little causes, with no regard for the truth.

Katrina offered up the exact same situation, but in a big way. Now we know: That some of the news stories were greatly exaggerated. That the Democrats wrote e-mails saying that President Bush must not come out looking like a strong leader. That somehow local and state agencies that were first responders, did little or nothing. That all the blame went to FEMA, that has never been a first responder. That the most blane went to President Bush, who should not meddle in state matters unless requested to do so.

Most of the racial rhetoric was for political gain, not real sympathy for the BLACK or white victims of a true national disaster.

The liberal media beat their little drums over, and over, and over. The echo went out far and wide. Why did anyone fall for that garbage? That same “blame the white folks” hysteria, and the liberal media mindset was visible here during the lacrosse hoax. We saw the media’s initial reporting, and the G-88 ad.

The difference in the two scenarios is that KC and others, soon made both radicalized professions realize that their “drumbeat and echo journalism” would not be tolerated here. One of the real disasters of Katrina was that a huge outpouring of love, concern, and help was lost in the hate mongered tsunami that followed. I have another Katrina thought, but for now, I have gnashed by teeth enough already. Good grief, I wish KC would let us swear!

John said...

To Duke Prof from 10:55 a.m.

What could the Group of 88 possibly want?

In an essay on multi-culturalism at the University of Texas several years ago, Wahneema Lubiano (together with professors Ted Gordon) wrote:

(quote) What we are talking about here is no less than transforming the university into a center of multi-cultural learning: anything less continues a system of education that ultimately reproduces racism and racists. (end quote)

(See New York Times, Books of The Times, Can Politically Correct Ever Be Incorrect? (February 4, 1992) (written by Michiko Kakutani))

Steven Horwitz said...

Horwitz on Horowitz, in reply to Amac:

I'm not sure that I can provide you one source that will sum up this whole controversy, but I'll give you my (fwiw) take on things.

The first thing is that Horowitz is a former leftist turned conservative. That makes him either a pariah and/or a sellout. The usual line is that going "right" was a career move, because after all, conservative intellectuals get paid big bucks by corporate America for doing their bidding, while leftist intellectuals get bupkiss. (I do hope my sarcasm was clear enough.)

More seriously, DH has raised some good issues and ones that rightfully make many left-leaning academics uncomfortable. At his best, he does what KC has done here, which is shine the light on the words and actions of said faculty. Nothing wrong with offering one's views of publicly available information.

Where DH, in my view, goes off the rails, is with things like the Academic Bill of Rights and the like, where he appears to be calling for (or at least encouraging by others) governmental attempts to enforce intellectual/political diversity in higher ed. The ABOR is just as big a mistake as the speech codes of the left (as KC himself has argued in his attempt to get the AHA to adopt a motion criticizing both). And, as I've argued here before, getting government involved creates more problems than it solves.

Plus, Horowitz plays fast and loose with the truth. The same sorts of charges of incompleteness and unfair interpretations that have been laid at KC have been laid at DH. I think the charges against DH have more validity than those against KC and it's certainly part of what pisses folks off.

More generally, academics throw the charge of "McCarthyism" at him because of the way in which he's targeting people for their ideas (like his book on the 100 worst professors). And to the extent he has directly supported or indirectly encouraged STATE action, I think that's a valid complaint. However, it is not, IMO, "McCarthyism" to simply shine a light and offer an opinion, even if that opinion is wrong or unfair. That's all part of the give and take of intellectual interchange. You don't like it? Respond and show the world why DH is wrong.

One complaint that leftist faculty often make is that students, especially conservative ones, perceive legitimate intellectual challenges by faculty in the classroom to be "attacks" or attempts at "indoctrination", e.g., challenging the student to provide an argument or evidence for some claim in the classroom. (BTW, this is exactly what faculty should do - I just hope my leftist colleagues challenge the students who agree with them as vigorously as those who do not.)

The amusing part is that many of those same faculty turn around and do *the exact same thing* when people like KC or DH shine a light on their work and expect them to defend it. They claim they are being "attacked" or "silenced" or "censored." God forbid, it seems, they have to actually deal with an intellectual argument from a conservative or a libertarian. It's not censorship to be criticized. It's not censorship to have to defend yourself against such criticisms every time your state your views. It is not censorship if an organization decides they don't wish to have you speak because of your views. That there are consequences to having particular views is not censorship. It sucks and it can be unfair, but it's not censorship.

So...that's the context of KC's Horowitzian sins. No doubt, KC does share many of DH's concerns about academia, but as far as I can tell, he does not share the solutions to that problem that have been associated with DH. The fact that KC has written for DH publications should not be taken to imply that he agrees with DH's whole agenda. Those labeling KC a "Horowitzian" in the sense they mean it should be looking more carefully at KC's stated views, and especially his role in the AHA resolution on speech codes and the ABOR stuff.

kcjohnson9 said...

I actually have written one article for Horowitz--on the decision of the Brooklyn College administration to disband the Student Government after the SG passed an academic bill of rights measure. (Intervention from FIRE forced the administration to rescind its action.) Horowitz's site has reprinted other items I originally posted elsewhere; other sites have done the same. My general approach to such issues has always been that any blog, anywhere, can reprint anything I write, as long as I am given credit. My goal in blogging has always been to circulate my ideas.

The Kaufman site had one vehemently pro-Group of 88 reader who (inaccurately) termed such reprints original publications. He also suggested that the fact that I was interviewed by Horowitz's site should be counted as indicating my sympathy for Horowitz. Does that mean the fact I was interviewed by Indy shows I'm sympathetic to Hal Crowther?

In general, I think Horowitz's proposed solution--the ABOR--is off target. Horowitz believes that left-leaning profs regularly use their classrooms to push their agenda and, especially, to punish students who don't conform.

I think there's very little evidence to believe this is a major problem. It happens: Kim Curtis is an example; we had an ugly example at Brooklyn a few years back in the Education Department. But it's very rare--and so passing Horowitz's proposed legislation would leave all of the problems in higher ed still in place, with the added problem of overt government intervention. The latter would be especially problematic in science classes, where pro-Horowitz legislators have seen ABORs as a vehicle to bring creationism into biology classes.

My preferred approach, as I've tried to argue in this blog and elsewhere, is more activism from within the system--from trustees, alumni, parents, students--to apply pressure. That said, if current trends continue and the faculty becomes more and more extreme, I have no doubt that one or more legislators eventually will pass an ABOR, under the belief that things are so bad that government intervention can't make them worse.

That's why, it seems to me, people who actually care about academic freedom should be urging the academy to do something about the ideological and pedagogical one-sidedness in contemporary higher ed. If we don't address the problem, the government eventually will--and once that happens, academic freedom will be lost.

Debrah said...

I have no patience left for this constant handwringing...as to whether or not Mangum and her insane supporters are offended about something.

Or whether we get the language just write regarding the legal system's gyrations of guilt or innocence.

Unlike the insane supporters of Mangum--who, effectively, supported harming innocent people--when I first heard the news of a "gang rape" I felt concern for the supposed "victim" and wanted the supposed "perpetrators" brought to justice.

Knowing they were white men and Mangum was black did not inform my emotions as it does so many race-baiters of the world.

Like the OJ Simpson case, only when the black community began to whip up fantasies and use this case as a perverted orgasmic rendezvous with cosmic justice did I--and most normal people--begin to issue disgust.

We can revisit the thousands of pages of documents resulting from this case all day long; however, it's not that complicated.

Have any of you ever had sex?

Do you know what a heated session is like?

When I heard that there was a gang rape of a woman and that no DNA evidence was found to match these men, it was all over for me.

No one needs to tell me the legal responsibilities of going through the motions of a case such as this; however, when this became public, no one in his or her right mind who has not led a life of total celibacy could have bought into this charade.

Which is why I remain so repulsed by it all.

It was an insane case from the start.

If Crystal Mangum had been a white woman, she'd already be dismissed to a mental institution.

Steven Horwitz said...

KC-

In your update, I'm not sure you're being fair to Transforming Anthropology on the issue of peer-review. Their own editorial statement says:

We invite the submission of research articles for peer review, as well as short commentaries, research reports, review essays, interviews, and other innovative formats.

The clear separation of "research articles for peer review" from everything after "as well as" makes it quite clear that their editorial policy is such that not everything in the journal should assumed to be peer reviewed. Your description of their accepting Piot's paper without peer review as "a remarkable policy" is at the very least ambiguous, and probably unfair.

If you are criticizing their editorial policy of even accepting non-peer reviewed papers, then you should say so and make that separate from the specifics of the CP paper.

If you find remarkable their accepting CP's specific paper without peer review, then that's not fair as there's nothing remarkable about it, given that their own policy is pretty clear that they publish some things that are not peer-reviewed. It might be a bad policy, but there's nothing "remarkable" about publishing *this specific paper* as they are quite up front about the policy and are clear to distinguish such papers from peer-reviewed research.

I guess my point is that the way it reads right now, it sounds too much like you are criticizing them for accepting THIS paper (CP's) without peer review, which isn't at all remarkable, as they say right up front they publish non-peer-reviewed items. It might be remarkable that they do so IN GENERAL, but I think you need to clarify that in your point (2).

The last sentence of that point, however, remains very clear and well-taken.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous 9:39
You said: “ This blog = the water; they = 88 horses”

That is brilliant! I dub you: Sir Colbert.

Now go get a blog name so I can find you here, and on other blogs.

Debrah said...

"That makes him either a pariah and/or a sellout."

Oh, my.

While I might agree that David Horowitz is extreme, he is extreme against an extreme disease of radicalism that has taken hold of the academy.

Horowitz is someone who has seen the belly of the beast....long before any of us were old enough to care about such things.

Here's a man with black grandchildren who is regularly called a racist, among other sordid monikers, simply because he fights fire with fire....and most assuredly speaks truth to power.

I find it amusing that one would have to distance themselves from such a man.

Anonymous said...

CHRIS DAVIS, HARVARD '73, NOT A DUKE PARENT:
re:PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE AND THE AMERICAN MEDIA vs. THE UK

One of the most exasperating cultural tics of Americans is the assumption, no matter what combination of legal, cultural, philosophical or intellectual and historical issues are under discussion, that we, somehow, always enjoy the best combination thereof when compared to other, relevant countries, say, in the OECD, just to name one sample group, when nothing could be further than the truth.
FOR INSTANCE: in the UK, the fact that a criminal case is high profile, in no way provides the media with an excuse to run off half-cocked, endlessly repeating cover phrases like, "alleged rapist", "alleged pedophile", "alleged murderer of Princess Di", etc., etc. WITHOUT INCURRING THE RISK OF VERY SIGNIFICANT DAMAGES FOR LIABLE. In fact,
if I were one of the Duke defendants/now plaintiffs, I would ask Brendan Sullivan to research whether cable trash talker, Nancy Grace, was syndicated in the UK during her auto-da-fe of the lacrosse players, and if the response was positive, I could possibly sue the shit out of CNN in that jurisdiction and actually collect.
What we see with high profile cases in America today is exactly the opposite of the presumption of innocence with defendants overwhelmed by swarms of media "reporters", acting as immediate judge and jury, more often than not like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, permanently tainting and/or obscuring big cases by their idiotic presence.
For example, the American public was fed the fabulist tale that against all military and intelligence practices, a low-level White House staffer, Oliver North, somehow singlehandedly ran the entire Iran-Contra conspiracy from his office, which, itself, was grossly misreported. And the mindless American media's continued fixation on North contributed in a major way to confuse the exposure of the actual operations on the ground.
In the case of the Kennedy assassination, once again, mainstream media could only explain Jack Ruby's immediate silencing of Lee Harvey Oswald as a temporarily insane act committed out of misplaced,John Hinkley-like feelings for the president's widow, Jackie. In Europe, this anaysis was treated as the absolute farce that it was, with French intelligence actually going to the trouble to publish a critique, aptly entitled, "Farewell America." (Btw later research done by the House Subcommitte on Assassinations revealed Mr. Ruby's thirty-year-long connection with the Chicago "Outfit")
In response to the predictable whine that, "you can't be saying that the media is censored!! Can you?", my reponse is, of course, it censors itself out of fear of losing infinitely valuable monopoly broadcasting licenses issued by the FCC provided
by the governent it's tasked with investigating.
(For instance, the broadcast license for WABC, New York, is probably worth some $500 million, while the equipment required to run only costs $20m, for a net gain of $480m)
I would argue that in America 1)in high profile cases there is no presumption of innocence, once you take media interference into account; and 2)many of the media "accounts" about national security-related events are unreliable, incomplete, misleading bowlderized and self-censored; and 3)contrary to what Americans believe about their hallowed "freedom of the press", citizens in other countries are not exactly totally unaware of the situation mentionned in items No. 1 & 2.

Anonymous said...

Damn good response to that pathetic, "scholarly" article, Professor.

Let's get real: that article was nothing more than an incompetent "brief" written by an untalented professor/advocate to rationalize the existence of affirmative action and the black-victim metanarrative. And I don't believe the racist emails he cites came from racists. I suspect they were written by G88 supporters. Curious that Piot did not refer to the central argument for extirpating Angry Studies from Duke: 1) it foments antiwhite racism, and 2) it is unworthy of funding.

The biggest lie contained in Piot's failed brief is this whopper, in the 1st graph: "[post-Crystal Duke] was a time of backlash against African American students." Gee, could this "backlash" have anything to do with the evils of affirmative action and black racism? Give me a break!

I'm glad this lightweight is angry with you and the blog.

Citizens of Rome, I salute you.

Anonymous said...

Re: More Katrina landfall:

Michelle Malkin has an interesting Louisiana article:
"Even the New York Times thinks Bobby Jindal will win."

(Jindal, is a conservative minority Republican.) Oh how can this be?

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/20/even-the-new-york-times-thinks-bobby-jindal-will-win/

There is hope. - There, is hope. - There is, hope!

Mrs. Greeby, did you note that I did make use of your lesson?

Anonymous said...

To KC: Durham-in-Wonderland STAYING ALIVE

I am wondering if someone could act as your grad student blogger? Perhaps one of your former star students. They could send you documented news, with a short narrative. You could post the item as is, or quickly add your personal touch. Your regulars can take it from there.

The current comment bloggers can sift out more details to post, and add interesting comments as usual. You wouldn’t have to do all the work. Of course, you would maintain control of the blog comments.

With a daily post again, the comments might stay at a more manageable level. This 150+ posts per article is unreal. The most important goal is faculty reform, and that is not as farfetched as it seemed, before you entered the fray.

It may be that this lacrosse case will drag on more than a year, and you will be back. I can’t think you would want to miss the grand finale, whatever it is. We could just hold down the fort, so to speak. As I wrote that, my mental picture is that we are the ones outside the fort!

PS: This last Piot post is sooooooooo long. By the time I scroll to the comments section, I forget what I wanted to write.

Debrah said...

A small, yet compelling need, for a tiny correction to 2:07 PM:

Obviously "write" should have been right.

:>)

kcjohnson9 said...

To Steve:

In effect, yes, I am criticizing the TA editors specifically for the Piot piece apart from their general policy.

The say, as you note, "We invite the submission of research articles for peer review, as well as short commentaries, research reports, review essays, interviews, and other innovative formats."

Of the non-peer reviewed categories, Piot's clearly isn't "research reports, review essays, interviews, and other innovative formats." So I suppose the TA editors are calling it a "short commentary."

Yet it's not particularly "short"--it's nine pages, printed. It's not identified (at least in the copy that Piot has posted) as a "short commentary." It has more than a dozen footnotes, a synopsis, keywords, and even a photo--items a casual reader would associate with a regular article, not a "short commentary." And, of course, its author classified it as a representative publication. (I assume all his other academic pubs. were peer reviewed.)

So, basically, it's structured as a peer-reviewed article, yet it wasn't peer reviewed.

Ironically, Piot himself would have benefited from a peer review. He went to great lengths to conceal that he was defending his partner--so I doubt a peer reviewer would have caught that item. But the unsubstantiated claims should have been flagged, even by a sympathetic peer reviewer.

Debrah said...

TO "traveler" (3:25 PM)--

Your idea for DIW stayin' alive is an interesting one......

.....and one I have heard voiced over and over on these fora.

I think a number of people could contribute posts; however, I would not want to be without KC to handle things.

:>)

Debrah said...

"[Using] a rhetorical strategy characteristic not only of right-wing media in this country (from Limbaugh to O'Reilly) but also of totalitarian thought and authoritarian regimes the world over . . . Johnson's . . . characterizations are not only consistently wide of the mark but deploy surveillance tactics that the right-wing Horowitz machine has canonized and that recall nothing so much as the campus witch hunts of the McCarthy era.”

LOL!!!
LOL!!!

Every time I read this recycled and predictable refuse from Chucky Piot, I can't believe it.

Does he not understand how worn out this stuff is?

I initially thought he might be smarter than little Orin, but I seriously doubt it now.

It also seems that the Gang of 88 and their friends are so incestuous. A partner here....a Mrs there....no doubt, a significant other in yet another corner of the Quad.

All rubbing together to produce their osmotic value....chain smokers looking for their next pack.

Grendal said...

"Ironically, Piot himself would have benefited from a peer review."

If Piot's paper was honestly peer reviewed, it would have ended up in the shredder.
His entire article is based on an obviously false premise.
My junior high school niece was able to pull apart Piot's thesis in about 5 minutes.

Steven Horwitz said...

To be clear Debrah, the words of mine you quoted about DH being a "pariah or sellout" was my characterization of how the academic Left views him, not my own view.

I have my disagreements with him, but anyone who makes a major ideological move as he did should carry a presumption of good faith until the preponderance of evidence is otherwise.

Anonymous said...

So when will we see the Lax Three honored on TV, who, after all, they aren't criminals at all?

Two Of 'Jena Six' Present BET Award

Two of the teens enmeshed in the nationally known "Jena Six" case helped present the most anticipated award during Black Entertainment Television's Hip Hop Awards show broadcast Thursday night.

Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis were introduced by Katt Williams, a comedian and the awards show's host, as two of the students involved in a case of "systematic racism."

"By no means are we condoning a six-on-one beat-down," Williams said during his introduction of the teens, one of whom is still facing attempted murder charges in connection with the attack on white student Justin Barker. "... But the injustice perpetrated on these young men is straight criminal."

As Jones and Purvis walked onto the stage at the Atlanta Civic Center, where the awards show was filmed on Saturday, they were greeted by a standing ovation.
"They don't look so tough, do they?" Williams joked as the teens stepped up to the podium.

Both Jones and Purvis thanked a number of people, including family, friends, the "Hip-Hop Nation" and the thousands who came to their small hometown to rally behind their case.

Purvis said the Sept. 20 rally proved "our generation can unite and rally around a cause."

The teens assisted Williams in presenting the Video of the Year honor to Kanye West for "Stronger." Purvis handed the award to West, who in turn shook hands with both teens.

Anonymous said...

I just have a hard time understanding why anyone but lubiano would want to defend and explain the AD. After all she was the one who wrote it and would be the only one who would actually understand what was meant by the AD. Of course we have to believe her that it was about the lacrosse team since that is what she stated in her e-mail. I dont know, maybe everyone who signed the AD got confused because the original AD had to be revised so much that no one really remembers how degrading to some of the Duke students, specifically, the lacrosse Duke students, the AD was. God only knows what the original AD had to say. I notice that no one who writes about it now as an anthropology masterpiece does not even approach that aspect of the AD. No wonder some teachers at Duke cant return answers to KC's e-mails. These Duke teachers are as confused as ever about the AD. lol lol would I take a class from them? no way. I dont need to become that confused in my life.

Debrah said...

TO Steven (4:47 PM)--

Thanks for the clarificaton.

Most in the academy exhibit borderline hatred for the man.

No matter what he does.

An infestation of the Piot principle.

Anonymous said...

I think I will make up my own mind about David Horowitz, even though I appreciate your criticisms, (AMAC - "slipshod") and (Horwitz - "fast and loose with the truth"), nothwithstanding.

I would note that you made those conclusory demeaning allegations, (defamatory if you ask me, as they specifically deal with Horowitz's profession), without citation to a single instance of academic misconduct or citing a single source.

I have seen folks like Duke Professor Piot make similar allegations that were completely baseless and unfounded. I have seen Duke Professors Kasibhatla and Coleman make spurious claims of poor scholarship. For my claims regarding Piot, Kasibhatla and Coleman, I will provide D-in-W as my source.

Does Professor David Horowitz's reptutation deserve less protection or impartial scrutiny than the reputation of Gang of 88 professors or the journal Transforming Anthropology?

I guess it is o.k. to attack Horowitz with no citation or source or specific definable instance because he is .......?

I'm sorry, but I will do my own research and come to my own conclusions.

I AM THE WALRUS

Debrah said...

I was very glad to see that Ken Larrey and DSED posted the video of KC's talk at The Regulator bookstore.

Someone who was supposedly there came to Wonderland and posted that KC looked tired that night.

Not a big story...except I like to judge such things for myself and since I didn't see him there, I took it as being true.

That weekend, KC was also participating in the conference at Duke...so it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that by nighttime one might be "tired".

I've got the Page appearance and the Duke panel appearance archived on the Diva IMAC, and I just watched the Regulator appearance today.

KC is not "tired" in this video.

If anyone has been to the cellar of that bookstore you know how cramped it is...and at that time the temperatures in the Triangle were still very high.

KC had his shirt sleeves rolled up....no jacket....and a chalcedon bowtie.

There wasn't a thing "tired" about it.

Also, there were a few interesting comments from the audience; however, I don't feel I missed too much since the story is vivid to all of us inside Wonderland.

This goes to show that you have to experience and see something for yourself instead of listening to the fly-by-night opinions of others.

Anonymous said...

RRH @ 4:49

I am disgusted at the 'honor' shown the Jena boys on BET. And more, I'm disgusted that Sheila and Robert Johnson made billions by creating a forum where such obvious racialist propoganda is lauded by the beneficiaries of the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's societal largesse and collective guilt ... as well as the moral compass of some very good men on the Supreme Court. It is unfortunate that their opinions, opinions that dragged this country into an era in which equality could be defined in substance in addition to theory, have been corrupted by an academy that can attach meaning to unintended nuance, a nuance of meaning that many realists outside the acadmey cannot fathom nor find.

Professor Piot's piece is an example. I'm quite confident he believes (a) that what he stated is the truth and (b) that it is definitionally correct. Once one asserts that the "listening ad" was not about the lacrosse case, the pivotal a priori assumption, then a lot of what he states has substance. As many others here, I do not agree with the a priori assumption (and can quote chapter-and-verse facts thats belie it), but there are many that do support such a notion (at least 88 by my count). For them, truth rests on an interpreted foundation.

Such is the Constitution. It is in that context that the stakes become huge. While not a Constitutional scholar (heck, I'm lucky enough to be able to spell the word), I am now beginning to understand the notion of a strict constructionist view of the Constitution as it affects law and the foundations of democracy. For once the high court (and lower courts as well -- and the officers of the court -- such as a DA) starts to observe nuance and meaning that is expedient for a political purpose, then the United States may be lost.

Please excuse the obvious unintended double entendre, but the United States Supreme Court needs to get back to black and white. Nuance be damned.

Anonymous said...

Kasibhatla has no more interest in reading KC's blog probably because he has grown weary of continually bringing a stick to a gunfight and has grown weary of continually suffering the inevitable consequences of showing up

Or because he has a good head on his shoulders, and many better things to do with his time.

Anonymous said...

"Or because he has a good head on his shoulders, and many better things to do with his time."

"10/20/07 7:06 PM"

Actually he's made it exceedingly clear that his head is somewhere else....

mac said...

7:06 pm

Professor Kasibhatla may have "many better things to do with his time...?" Better than to endorse a lie or set of lies?

Perhaps he also has better things to do with his reputation than to lend it to Piot.

Anonymous said...

Thanks to John for this quote from Lubiano:

"What we are talking about here is no less than transforming the university into a center of multi-cultural learning: anything less continues a system of education that ultimately reproduces racism and racists."

That reminds me of a quote from the UCLA general catalog:

"The University has *no higher priority* than to advance the ethnic diversity of its students, faculty and staff." (emphasis added)

That is a racist priority. And it is used by schools such as Duke to hire faculty, confer departmental status, create new programs, promote faculty to deans. That priority caused Duke to betray the lacrosse players. And it allows the G88 to get away with murder.

Duke Prof

Anonymous said...

This is what K.C. Johnsonhad to say about Charles Piot's publication:

"This article represents what passes for a scholarly publication in Piot’s field. Indeed, it is listed as a 'representative publication' on Professor Piot’s CV."

The component parts of that short paragraph are: (1) a statement of the author's belief, followed by, (2) a citation to a source. In this instance, Professor Johnson cited Professor Piot.

Professor Charles Piot, on his official Duke University on-line curriculum vitae, lists "C. Piot, 'KC's World,' Transforming Anthropology vol. 15 no. 2 (2007): 158-166. [PDF]" as a "Representative Publication[]."

Not only does Professor Piot list the article as a "Representative Publication[]" on his official Duke University webpage, but he lists it first. This is significant because the Duke professor does not list his publications in chronological order.

Piot also indicates that this article is so important that it is available not only in "Transforming Anthropology," but also in PDF format.

So, essentially, if you are arguing that "KC's World" is not representative of scholarship in the area of Cultural Anthropology, then you are saying either:

A. Professor Charles Piot is a liar; or

B. Professor Charles Piot has negligently misrepresented his article by calling it "Representative" on his official "Cultural Anthropology" website on "Duke.edu."

NOTE: I posted this at Acephalous.typepad.com.
___________

I am happy to see that all the great satirists on this board will not go gently into that gut nacht just because the impossible is our charge.

Oh, and Debrah's "say what" cat video was both laugh-out-loud funny and extremely creepy at the same time! It was like watching a real-live vampire doing stand up, mostly blood jokes. MOO! Gregory

bobo1949 said...

To No One in Particular:
Earlier I asked if anyone knew what the original Listening Ad said. I thought it might bring to mind one of the most overlooked issues in the meaning of the Listening Ad debate. I don't know to what the G-88 originally agreed. It is my understanding that the ad was so egregious that it had ton be re-written. How could Piot or any member of the G-88 say the ad wasn't about the lacrosse case if that rumor is in fact accurate.
Mike Rayfield
Spring, TX

Anonymous said...

7:06

Or because he has a good head on his shoulders, and many better things to do with his time.

Unlike you, who will show up to shill for him by making snarky comments based on nothing but hubris. Part of your 24/7 responsibilities, right?

Anonymous said...

K. C. Johnson should submit a "short commentary" to "Transforming Anthropology". It apparently need not be peer reviwed; see the comment above (10/17/07 5:09 PM). If, as expected, it is rejected, he should point out to the editors that they must provide the opportunity to correct misstatements of fact in their journal. The responses (or lack of them) will be one more demonstration of the ethics (or lack of them) of Gang of 88 sympathizers across the country.

On the other hand, maybe Johnson doesn't want to take the chance of polluting his CV with an entry in "Transforming Anthropology". (Of course, he could always simply not list it.)

Stuart McGeady said...

With all due respect, Debra, I really take exception to the curve ball you throw David Horowitz:

"Most in the academy exhibit borderline hatred for the man. No matter what he does. An infestation of the Piot principle."

(Besides, you seem to spin 180 from your previous post at 2:26 PM, with which I agree. How do you really feel about this man? I respect him, and have to agree on this one with Professor Horwitz and I AM THE WALRUS.)

Perhaps 'some' in the academy dislike him. Anybody who stands up for truth and what's right makes enemies.

Perhaps your opinion of Horowitz would soften after you peruse a few issues of Heterodoxy, which he and Peter Collier published from 1992-2000.

Collier writes, "David and I began Heterodoxy at about the time of the occupation of Washington by the Clintons which seemed to us at the time to be the political equivalent of the triumph of Faulkner's Snopes family in Yoknapatapha County. Their rise to power was paralleled by that of the tenured radicals in the universities, some of them people we had known on the Left in the 60s. Back then their deepest ambition had been to burn the university down. Failing in that objective, as in so many others, they had dived back into academia and gotten onto the tenure track when the revolutionary going got rough in the late 70s. They had accomplished the destruction of the university firelessly, so to speak, by marrying the thoughts of fascist leaning foreign intellectuals such as Paul De Man who denied the objective existence of truth to the thoughts of Marxists like Antonio Gramsci in the intellectual equivalent of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. This putsch, which had taken place silently and in slow motion, had produced a new and sinister phenomenon opponents were calling political correctness which spread outward like an airborne toxic event into the larger culture. George Orwell's "smelly little orthodoxies".seemed to be taking over the world. A cultural war had broken out, but our side didn't have an army in the field. We decided that there was only one antidote for the new orthodoxy: Heterodoxy."

In the great culture war we face at the outset of the millennium, I want David Horowitz on our side.

Anonymous said...

To those who want scrutiny of the gang of 88 to stop:
You must not have any connection to higher education. Otherwise, how could you be indifferent to the implications of a scholarly journal printing something chock full of obvious lies?

Anonymous said...

IsPiot a Communist?

Anonymous said...

Some people have alleged that K.C. Johnson was misleading in stating that Charles Piot's article was "representative" of scholarship in the field of Cultural Anthropology. That argument is ridiculous for a number of reasons:

1. K.C. Johnson QUOTED Piot's own on-line resume for this proposition.

2. Professor Piot has two additional Duke websites that make the same "representative" claim. They are here and here.

3. The Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke University has a webpage containing ONLY representative scholarship from professors in that department. Piot's "K.C.'s World" article is listed on that webpage.

If someone is going to claim that Piot's article is not representative of Cultural Anthropology, then that person is also, by implication, putting a stake into the heart of the entire Duke Cultural Anthropology department. MOO! Gregory

Anonymous said...

Is it Monday in Israel yet?

Anonymous said...

To Chucky Cheeze Piot and his sexually-phallused, class-confused, racially-angry band of Anthro-apologist revisionariat...

IT'S SUNDAY MORNING, TIME TO CONFESS.

Debrah said...

(11:18 PM)

Sorry "Stu Daddy". I was too vague.

My comment was meant to be a light allusion to the way Chucky Piot feels about David Horowitz.

KC has used the phrase "Piot principles" to describe Duke Chucky's weird relationship with the truth.

I was not referring to Horowitz. Just the people in the academy who are against him.

:>)

Anonymous said...

The argument that Piot's piece is a representative publication of Transforming Anthropology, and so of Cultural Anthropology, is beyond settled. The scarier implication is that Piot's piece is a completely accurate representation of the man.

dave

Steven Horwitz said...

The Walrus asks:

I guess it is o.k. to attack Horowitz with no citation or source or specific definable instance because he is .......?

I'm sorry, but I will do my own research and come to my own conclusions.


Please do.

For those who want a sense of the debate, here's a piece from Inside Higher Ed from May 2006 that covers the issues, complete with links to the most well-known critique of DH from "Free Exchange on Campus."

The comments in the IHE link are interesting reading as well if you want a sense of the debate.

Steven Horwitz said...

dave says:

The argument that Piot's piece is a representative publication of Transforming Anthropology, and so of Cultural Anthropology, is beyond settled.

No sale dave. The implicit premise in your argument is that entire field of study (Cultural Anthropology) can be judged by one article in a journal which is hardly one of the top ones in the discipline, and an article that was not part of that journal's peer-reviewed publications.

I would not want people to judge the economics of the family as a scholarly endeavor by non-peer-reviewed pieces I might publish in any outlet.

If you want to judge the validity of Cultural Anthropology as a field, go to the best journal in the field. My quick look suggests it's which is an official publication of the American Anthropological Association, which is the main professional organization of anthropologists in the US. You can read the journal's mission statement there, you can see tables of contents, and you can even get abstracts of current articles.

And my quick look suggests that the pieces there are of a very different sort than the Piot article. Whatever its many problems, taking that article as representative of an entire (sub)discipline is horrifically unfair. Use it to criticize his lack of attention to the facts and use it to question the judgment of TA in publishing it, as those are all fair game I think.

But dismissing the field? It's that kind of "argument" that just provides fuel for the fire that people here don't understand academia and thus the *legitimate* issues that get raised in criticized Piot's piece will get dismissed as well.

kcjohnson9 said...

On the Piot issue:

I tried to choose my words carefully in the post--"what passes for scholarship in the field."

That's undeniably true--T.A., while clearly not the field's most respectable journal, nonetheless has an editorial board of more than a dozen senior professors in the field, and has been publishing for more than a decade.

It would be reassuring, of course, if some (one?) respectable anthropologists wrote letters to the editor of TA complaining about the decision to print the Piot piece. I'm not holding my breath, however.

Anonymous said...

Steven Horwitz said……” Free Exchange on Campus."
---------------

That is an excellent site. I have been reading it a couple of hours now today. One article links to another, you know how that goes. I was going to post about Free Exchange on Campus myself when I saw Steven’s post. I would say “Like Minds,” but that would ruin his day for sure. I do have a life, but the Green Bay Packers aren’t playing today.

Re: Horowitz-Student’s Rights-Academic Freedom

The web site: http://www.freeexchangeoncampus.org/ has comments about the student’s rights debate raging in many colleges. David Horowitz is certainly at the center of much of this debate.

The good thing about this site is that it seems to be student comments on both sides of the subject. I chose the article below at random, but there could be a good discussion on dozens of the articles. Other Topics:
ABOR Initiatives Academic Freedom ACTA Blog Roundups Free Speech Horowitz & Co. Interviews Professors Real Issues Related Stuff The Classroom

Free Exchange article:
“IT’S GREAT!….IT’S GREAT….It’s Great…it’s great
The [film Indoctrinate U] where they finally sneak into the fortress of higher education and expose the conspiracy that goes on in faculty meetings and classrooms.”
http://www.freeexchangeoncampus.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=744&Itemid=51

Anonymous said...

Professor Johnson

I perused the journal, and I thought of Wahneema Lubiano. What good is a "peer review" when the peers are affirmative action lightweights?

I presume California taxpayers are subsidizing the "transformation."

Steven Horwitz said...

sorry about the unclosed tag up there!

Anonymous said...

KC

Last year, you were quick to join the beat-down of an obviously fragile false accuser who was poorly served by an overly-conscientious southern prosecutor, who was merely trying to compensate the symbolic victim of centuries of evil. Your side won a preemptive struggle in the press, but the “not guilty” jocks would have been exonerated in court if due process had been followed instead of trial by media. Big deal.

Now an actual hate crime has surely occurred in your very city of residence, and this time the police and university officials are responding slowly, probably too slowly because they feel intimidated by the ridicule and invective foisted on the nominally guilty but mostly misguided Nifong by bloggers like you. If you find injustice so compelling, where is your commensurate interest in this case? Indeed, given its proximity, your interest should be amplified; and given the windfall of fame you gained from the Duke case, your impact would be much greater. Why are you not calling for Columbia officials to forcefully demand appropriate due process? Why are you not demanding that the NYPD investigate every lead and clue? More importantly, why are you not calling for your followers and fellow bloggers to aggressively follow and report on this case until the perpetrator is found and punished?

kcjohnson9 said...

I'm going to assume that the 2.28 is something of an over-the-top satire . . .

If not, for the record, my current "very city of residence" is Tel Aviv.

John said...

Duke Prof -

The words "multicultural learning" on their face are more or less inoffensive (China Achube is as worthy of inclusion in a lit course as not, I suppose). But, just as our President referred to the "Dred Scott decision" in his last campaign as a code word for a certain type of conservative judicial activism, the phrase as voiced by Lubiano and others of her ilk is also now a kind of code, with scary implications for free speech and open debate. The like minded - I guess the Group of 88 - know exactly what is meant when those words or spoken.

Anonymous said...

"If it were not for the Email from McFaddyn to his friends, the email being let loose to the public, the email "Going to tell all" from an annonymous sourse, supposed statements from a nurse,lies to the GJ and many more "IFs", this thing would have been "stopped in its tracks". Folks don't get it - nothing and no one was stopping Nifong - This thing was about votes and an election - not rape.

Anonymous said...

And BTW, if wishes were horses, beggers would ride. No conspiracy here folk - just an election grab.

Gary Packwood said...

Anonymous 2:28 said...

...KC
... Why are you not calling for Columbia officials to forcefully demand appropriate due process? Why are you not demanding that the NYPD investigate every lead and clue? More importantly, why are you not calling for your followers and fellow bloggers to aggressively follow and report on this case until the perpetrator is found and punished?
::
This blogger is not interested in this case at Columbia because there is no suggestion that faculty and staff members at Columbia knew for years that crimes were being committed.

Unlike the Duke rape hoax situation with the G88 and their staff and student friends, there is no suggestion that Columbia faculty, staff and students were aiding and abetting or accessory to the commission of crimes at Columbia.
::
GP

Gary Packwood said...

John 3;15 said...

...Duke Prof -
...The words "multicultural learning" on their face are more or less inoffensive (China Achube is as worthy of inclusion in a lit course as not, I suppose). But, just as our President referred to the "Dred Scott decision" in his last campaign as a code word for a certain type of conservative judicial activism, the phrase as voiced by Lubiano and others of her ilk is also now a kind of code, with scary implications for free speech and open debate. The like minded - I guess the Group of 88 - know exactly what is meant when those words or spoken.
::
That is absolutely the truth and the phrase 'multicultural learning' has replaced 'leadership studies' of the 1990's as the number one award winner for choice academic pork.
::
GP

One Spook said...

Anon @ 2:28 writes:

"Your side won a preemptive struggle in the press, but the “not guilty” jocks would have been exonerated in court if due process had been followed instead of trial by media. Big deal."

No matter how hard KC and other commenters try, some folks do not ever get it. One more time, Anon ... If due process had been followed NO ONE would have had a need to be "exonerated in court" because NO ONE would have ever been charged. Did you study Public Law under Richard Brodhead?

Then this same Anon adds:

"Why are you not calling for Columbia officials to forcefully demand appropriate due process? Why are you not demanding that the NYPD investigate every lead and clue?"

Gosh, Anon ... ya know ... KC can't do ALL of the work to fight all of the injustices in America! Goodness! He's only one man!

Why don't you start a website examining the detailed facts of the Columbia case? Post the link to your site here.

If you can do as good a job as KC has done on his Blog, then maybe some of us will frequent your site and you can have some "followers and fellow bloggers" all of your own!

You name may end up in lights ... imagine!

Or is it that you're just a supercilious blowhard consumed with jealousy for Professor Johnson ...

One Spook

Anonymous said...

WOW 3"44 You have it right. It is also the reason attracted so many bloggers = the due process violations. That is what the Feds should have investigated nineteen months ago. Gottlieb and Himan are small fry = it was Nifong and the judges who violated these guys civil rights. Ben Bradley " it is only the constituation here..."

Anonymous said...

anonymous said at 5:28...

I think I will make up my own mind about David Horowitz, even though I appreciate your criticisms, (AMAC - "slipshod") and (Horwitz - "fast and loose with the truth"), nothwithstanding.

I would note that you made those conclusory demeaning allegations, (defamatory if you ask me, as they specifically deal with Horowitz's profession), without citation to a single instance of academic misconduct or citing a single source.


Yes, Steven, we in the great unwashed can be forgiven if we wonder about the animus academicians show for DH. We wouldn't be surprised if faculty around the U.S. engage in "Two Minutes Hate" rituals of the type described in the novel 1984 that focused on the mythically malevolent "Goldstein".

One thing's for sure: David Horowitz was right about the 88ists before there was an "88". In one of the most amazing coincidences of the whole Lax Hoax, Horowitz had been at Duke just days earlier and had directly warned both Pres. Brodhead and the Duke student body that the Duke faculty was infested with and controlled by 88ists. Despite this and other acts of extraordinary prescience, Horowitz is mindlessly denounced by people who tell us they should be taken seriously.

Then there is the repeated pronouncements by Steven (I don't want the post to be confused with surnames) and others, including KC, that "government control of college curricula would be baaaaaaad". Such statements ring hollow when they are not accompanied by calls for an end to government funding of the same colleges. A legislator once told me, "We don't fund what we don't control." And properly so! The independence of college faculty -- to teach whatever and however they want -- is a quaint relic from pre-Great Society days. When they get off the taxpayer teat, then we can treat their calls for independence seriously. Until then, their demands of the public to "Pay Us and Shut Up!" sound increasingly insulting.

And I hate to keep picking on Steven, but he repeats at 12:05 the mantra of the defenders of Cultural Anthropology that the field cannot "be judged by one article in a journal which is hardly one of the top ones in the discipline". First, those of us who regularly get called "racist rednecks" have to marvel at how the "right kind of people", both here at at acephalous, can sniff at minority controlled and oriented institutions without at least a sense of irony. Second, as KC has pointed out, to date none of the "top" Cultural Anthropologists have written to complain about the article or to suggest it is not representative of the field. Why do you feel the need to do their fighting for them?

Anonymous said...

KC - How about a few essais on the school, the city and the job in Tel Aviv? I would love to read your thoughts and experiences "over there."

Anonymous said...

anon @ 2:28 said
"Now an actual hate crime has surely occurred ...

...referring, of course, to the existence of a noose.

Well. I don't consider the existence of a noose symbolic of anything other than the old West and frontier justice. To me it doesn't represent a hate crime. Others however surely see it as such and I can understand their point of view. And I can behave in a way to respect that sensibility.
______________________

Now ....

For me, the following are hate crimes with subastantial symbolic content that provoke terror in me, terror about the future of this country and the Constitution:

(A) Burning the American Flag, -- for anyone who does that is displaying hate for the United States. Flag burning is a symbol that, from my perspective, represents a "hate crime."
(B) Baggy pants worn by young men (of any race) when the pants are worn so that several (or many) inches of underwear are showing -- that to me is symbolic of a contempt and hate for authority directed to those whose heritage is northern European (and accordingly, their "national origin") and represents a civil rights hate crime directed at those of that national origin.

There are others, ... but my point is this ... there is not a snowball's chance in hell that what I preceive as hate crimes would ever be viewed as such by the great unwashed masses. You see, it takes being a Black (or being a member of some other identified minority group) to co-opt the notion of being victimized by a hate crime.

Hate, like time, is deemed to be uni-directional only, by those who practice a nuanced interpretation of the words and symbols of the US and its history. (The '88 are particularly good at interpretation and redefinition.) That's a fundamental law of racial (or minority) physics.
_________________________

Now, if the noose is around a person's neck and that person is hanging from a tree, ... well that IS a hate crime.

IMHO

Steven Horwitz said...

rrh:

First of all, I HAVE called for reducing the amount of government funding. I am, after all, a libertarian, and in my idealized world, gov't would be out of the education business completely. So please retract the charge of hypocrisy.

And as for Transforming Anthropology... I didn't said it was an awful journal. I just say it wasn't fair to judge an entire field by a small niche journal. You want to judge economics? Go to the American Economic Review. Don't go to smaller journals, including the ones I tend to publish in. It's not about race, it's about how the institutions of academic work.

And as for people stepping up to condemn it, the number of people who read TA is probably pretty small and likely does not include a lot of the major players and scholars in the discipline, who are more likely to be publishing in CA.

It's like someone saying "Horwitz is a really crappy economist, why don't you 'real' economists complain about how his papers are undermining the discipline?" The reaction of major economists would be "who?" and then "his piddling scribbles matter not at all for how our discipline is perceived."

The reality is that commenters here have an over-inflated sense of how many people give a shit about these issues. Cultural Anthropology will survive the onslaught of fed up DIW commenters. :)

I feel compelled to defend it because there for the grace of God go I. The attack on an entire discipline based on one article in a minor journal is rooted in ignorance (if not malice) and it's unfair to the many serious scholars in Cultural Anthropology, just like a similar attack on aspects of economics would be a threat to serious scholars there, of which I count myself.

The problem with you Hamilton is that you seem so hell-bent on attacking the people/institutions that don't fit your world-view that you'll grab any arrow in the quiver to do it, no matter how legitimate, fair, or reasonable it is.

Maybe that's why people call you the names they do.

Aren't you the one who wants people to be judged individually and for us to recognize the best and brightest among us? Aren't you among those who want the humanities to teach the "best" of humanity not the worst, because that's how we should be judged?

If so, physician heal thyself and apply the same standards to the academic disciplines.

Debrah said...

A most interesting discussion.

I have to agree with "RRH" about the prescience of David Horowitz with regard to the strain of humanoids known as the Duke Gang of 88.

This was mentioned before....months ago.....but he spoke at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill a few years before the Lacrosse Hoax and a very radical element of the campus there tried to disrupt the proceedings...even attempted to intimidate the people attending the lecture.

One might not like his message; however, Richard Brodhead and the Gritty Gang have illuminated everything he has been saying all these years....for the world to see!

Dicky and the Gang are doing his work for him......extending to university campuses all over the country.

KC has a talent for presenting the facts without offending as many people as does David Horowitz; however, neither man is responsible for the element of grotesque scum who think nothing of victimizing their own students.

I just wish that both men could find more common ground.

Anonymous said...

IMO, this is the most unbelievable conspiracy since Whitewater. I am so glad to see true journalists not fearing exposing the TRUTH. Our government has perpetually lied to the public, and by neglecting the thousands of requests for Federal Intervention has fallen on deaf ears, and further proves to the citizens that we cannot trust our elected officials. This is a dangerous concept. Slowly our rights are being chipped away. Does anybody really care?

The message they are sending is one of being "Untouchable." This is not the nation my father and ancestors fought and died for. They did not risk their lives to salute an American flag made in a communist country. These men went by blind faith into wars to give us the rights we should have today. This is not the USA I want to live in. It has become a police state, and is only getting worse. When we shout for reform, they call us crazy and heretics. When confronted with absolute proof, they morph it into psychological contortions.

I never would have imagined our countries leaders to be so foul. I have completely lost faith in our system. Numerous governmental agencies have the time to monitor blog sites, but do not have "our" best interests at heart. They have no hearts. Their fuel is deceit and division. I commend those of us who are not "afraid" to use our real identities. Staying anonymous shows fear that people are frightened of "repercussions?!"

These are truly dark days. I am ashamed of our leaders, and pray now only for "DIVINE" intervention, in God I can trust, in people I cannot. Oh, what a world indeed.

Rhonda Fleming
Cleveland, Ohio
Still fighting for justice for my murdered brother,
and all of the families Durham NC have neglected

Debrah said...

On my way out of the Apple Store today, I dropped by the Barnes & Noble which is right next door.....separated only by a walking area with seats and some foliage.

UPI is on a display shelf in that window facing the Apple Store.

It's also in the 'True Crime" section and they have lots of copies available.

Their displays are not the usual type. At the end of each aisle of books they construct shelves on which they place whatever book they want to be viewed from outside the window.

It's not a display like you would see for a clothing store or something.

UPI is in a prominent place because there's always lots of traffic at the Apple Store and the other stores surrounding it.

This particular Barnes & Noble is very large...with a huge upstairs....rather like a library.

But they never have enough people working to adequately help customers, IMO.

I told the girl who was helping me that they would have to get revved up for another promo when the movie is finished. She appeared to be a university student--about that age--and she was so excited!

LOL!!!

I would like to know if the publisher or HBO intends to do a promo.....for real.

One Spook said...

Anon @ 4:06 PM writes:

"KC - How about a few essais [sic] on the school, the city and the job in Tel Aviv? I would love to read your thoughts and experiences "over there."

(**** EXTREME satire warning ...***)

This is a photo of KC lecturing at Tel Aviv University taken and sent to me by a dear friend of mine who is with the Mossad. My friend took the photo right after a student had asked KC the question, "Do you plan to Blog about any Tel Aviv professors who have an overt emphasis on race, class and gender in their scholarship and teaching?"

One Spook

Anonymous said...

One Spook

I'm concerned that you would even speak of knowing someone in the Mossad.

I hypothesize that a nexus, once established, could undo an entire intelligence network.

With that said, and so that I am not outdone, I knew 3 people in the KGB and 2 in the STASI and 4 in MI-5. Plus, as a bonus question, Baghdad Bob is my cousin (10 to the 3rd generations removed, but a cousin nonetheless).

That's a full house and beats your flush.

Pay up.

Anonymous said...

Some people still don't seem to be able to get it. Here is my take:

A. Professor Charles Piot claimed his article was "representative."

B. The Duke Cultural Anthropology Department, by including Piot's article in their publications "Hall of Fame," have represented that it is representative.

C. The cultural anthropology academic journal “Transforming Anthropology,” by including Piot's article in its pages, has represented that the article is representative.

It may or may not be representative of current anthropological scholarship. I certainly hope not.

But if Professor Piot, the Duke University Cultural Anthropology Department and the editors of "Transforming Anthropology" are stupid enough to imply that it is, then Professor Johnson has every right to point that out. This is especially true since Piot attempted a personal attack of Professor Johnson (albeit weakly).

I have been following this debate for the past week, and I have enjoyed it immensely. Frankly, it is instructive to see people attacking K.C. Johnson when the Duke University Anthropology Department has the silly article in their “Hall of Fame” of publications.

It tells me something: People are demanding more from Professor Johnson than from your standard-issue Angry Studies professor. Is that racist? Sure, a little (I know that, in this case, Piot is white). Is it political? Almost certainly. Now, that is the real story, and I appreciate the fact that Professor Johnson had the courage to delve into it.

Why would Professor Piot publish a really crappy article that would impugn his reputation as a credible scholar?

Why would “Transforming Anthropology” publish a really crappy article that would impugn the journal’s reputation as a credible scholarly review?

Why would the Duke University Cultural Anthropology Department include on its “Hall of Fame” list of publications a really crappy article that would impugn the department’s reputation as a credible academic department?

These are my proposed answers to those questions:

1. They have not felt the sting of real criticism before and did not expect it in this case.

- K.C. Johnson was supposed to be in Israel.

- PC concerns usually keep people quiet about the emperor’s clothes.

2. Their goal of promoting Correctology and crushing criticism is more important to them than the appearance of academic integrity.

- Professor Johnson exposed this beautifully. It was a delight to watch.

- They thought a whisper campaign needed to get started, and it would require that first whisper.

- Having been so insulated from real criticism in the past, they did not realize how badly the Piot article made their case.

3. They had to respond, and this was the best they got.

- Ad hominem is all they got.

- If Duke’s best and brightest can only come up with this, then they started from a position of unimaginable weakness.

What am I missing? MOO! Gregory

One Spook said...

inman @ 6:23, sipping Sunday Scotch, writes:

"I'm concerned that you would even speak of knowing someone in the Mossad."

Tom ... reread this part:

(**** EXTREME satire warning ...***)

And, just for the record, although nobody cares, you won't beat me in a contest of "how-many-foreign-intelligent-agents-do-I-know" ...

One Spook

Anonymous said...

Whitewater was not a conspiracy = WTF. And the Clinton lost money. I am an American Firster - I am not a love it or leave it person, but if folk don't like it here, there are lots of places to move to in the world.

Debrah said...

I forgot to mention that the book displayed beside UPI is the one written by Duke alumnus Nader Baydoun and R. Stephanie Goode, the woman who tries to write a book on every crime that occurs, it seems. I think her last one was about the Natalie Holloway case.

Barnes & Noble is definitely trying to push their book "A Rush to Injustice" by displaying it beside UPI.

I had never heard of it, but I'm sure it has been out there and I just overlooked it.

KC and Stuart's approach has been on firmer ground.....with Stuart's long history of similar projects and KC's unmatched research and attention to detail.

Nothing sensational about it like the other books.

Although both Baydoun and Goode have backgrounds in law, Goode seems to be closer to Kitty Kelly. On her website she has taken photos of Reade with the book in his hand perusing it. LIS!!!

Can you imagine KC and Stuart doing something that idiotic?

LOL!!!

As has already been stated, UPI is the definitive book on the Duke lacrosse case.

Anonymous said...

KC Johnson said...
Of the non-peer reviewed categories, Piot's clearly isn't "research reports, review essays, interviews, and other innovative formats."

I disagree. It depends how you understand the phrase "innovative formats." Publishing a "libelous rant" in an academic journal is unusual enough that some might honestly consider it "innovative."

Anonymous said...

Regarding the representativeness of Piot's article:

Duke's department of cultural anthropology appears to consider it a scholarly work, lists it on their departmental website, and has not yet removed it out of embarrassment or shame.

Thus it's undeniably the case that, whether or not they also produce any worthwhile scholarly work, Duke's cultural anthropolgy department also tolerates abject bullshit, and it is up to the consumer of their works to determine whether any given publication from them is another example of same. They do not provide the "quality control" function, that the work associated with them is guaranteed to meet minium professional standards, that a real academic deparment is supposed to provide.

In a few minutes of googling around I've found nothing to indicate that Duke's department of Cultural Anthropolgy is considered a comtemptible joke by the rest of the field. If so and I've missed it, the field may contain useful knowledge.

If not, the field as a whole suffers from the same lack of standards rendering all its work untrustworthy.

When I pick up a "professional" journal in an active field I expect to read stuff with errors, as they are an inherent part of progress. I do not expect to read poorly sourced papers that are about personal vendettas rather than the facts of the subject at hand. I most especially do not expect to read bald faced lies.

Professor Horwitz, you seem to underestimate the damage this does to the trust necessary to the normal operation of scholarship. In the sciences, being caught fabricating data destroys the career of the person caught and seriously damages students, colleagues, administrators and anyone else in the vicinity. It is seen by journals and departments as an emergency in need of response to show that the rest of what they do can still be trusted.

That Piot's article is still up on Duke's server tells me something about the academic values of Duke's department of Cultural Anthropology, and of Duke as a whole.

Similarly, that Michael Bellesiles is still a professor and still a member in good standing of professional associations of history tells me something very, very alarming about the state of history as an academic discipline today.

Anonymous said...

One Spook...

Are you saying that you had four of a kind? Dang it!

Oh ... and I wasn't sipping.

Anonymous said...

steven horwitz (@10/21 12:05 PM):

Sorry I missed the party. The argument that Piot's piece is a representative publication of Transforming Anthropology, and so of Cultural Anthropology, is beyond settled was not, itself, an "argument," but an affirmation of what’s already been cogently argued by KC Johnson since the top of the thread, and particularly MOO! Gregory @10/20 9:59 PM; 10/21 12:36 AM. I note now that his 6:39 PM put it even better. There’s simply no question that Piot and Duke think the piece is representative of his field.

In any case, I was more interested in wondering what kind of scholar or man would think that: what that said about the man and his field. That is not the same as “judging” or “dismissing” an entire field of study on the basis of one man, one article, which I recognize as a basic inductive fallacy of reasoning from a particular part to a generalized whole. "Is representative" does not demand a necessary inference that A=A to Z, but I'd have been better advised to have said "Piot BELIEVES his piece to be representative..." to spare you subsequent sparring. Not that a good time wasn't had by all.

One quibble. AnthroSource is the American Anthropological Association’s electronic archive of anthropology journals, including “current issues of the 15 of AAA’s most critical peer-reviewed publications.” On the site's holdings page Transforming Anthropology is listed as one of the journals for which AnthroSource offers current issues, presumably placing TA in the “top 15” of the 32 journals listed (although I counted 19 titles with current issues) in AnthroSource’s holdings. Top 50th percentile, and one of AAA’s “most critical peer-reviewed publications” is a little above “hardly," while it would seem that AAA regards the journal as "representative." I note also that the ethnography-oriented journals give roughly “equal time” to the peer-reviewed scholarly articles and to the “call and response” occasional pieces in total page count, something I haven’t seen in other fields. A few articles and lots of book reviews, yes, but not half scholarship-half opinion/commentary. Other journal articles appear to cite the “call and response” pieces as “scholarship.” All of which is to say, if Piot is not representative of what’s going on in his field, he’s not un-representative, either.

Finally, although anthropology has fractured into a gazillion sub-disciplines (and this is supposed to be the “holistic” study of human behavior), American Anthropologist and American Ethnologist, the granddaddy and smarter older brother of anthropology journals in my college days, probably remain the most important to cultural anthropology.

Transforming Anthropology purports to cover the same territory as American Anthropologist as it “advances scholarship across the four fields and beyond.” Cultural Anthropology (Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology), on the other hand, only publishes “ethnographic writing.” To tell the truth, Transforming Anthropology really doesn’t seem to have ventured into the other three fields from ethnology, either, but claims a broader scope than Cultural Anthropology. The real flagship journal of the CA field, however, is American Ethnographer.

Anonymous said...

again, steven horwitz @10/21 12:05 PM:

sigh... you go blue, I leave off my name. comment isn't up yet, but will be a long one just before this one with an AnthroSource link from

dave

AMac said...

Thomson’s ISI Web of Knowledge website (subscription req'd) has information on scholarly journals in the sciences and the social sciences. One of the categories within the Social Science Citation Index is “Anthropology.” Thomson ranks 53 journals in this field by Impact Factor.

The journal with the highest Impact Factor in the social sciences is “Behavioral and Brain Sciences,” with an IF of 14.96.

The top IFs of the journals in “Anthropology”:
IF 3.27 “Human Evolution”
IF 2.14 “Yearbook of Physical Anthropology”
IF 2.14 “American Journal of Physical Anthropology”
IF 1.92 “Social Networks”

At the bottom of the ranked journals:
IF 0.11 “Anthropos”
IF 0.00 “Chinese Social Anthropology”
IF -- “Man in India”

The journal “Transforming Anthropology” is listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge (e.g. their ISBN number is noted), but I couldn’t find any Impact Factor. It does not appear among the 53 journals ranked under “Anthropology”. (That seems strange--perhaps another commenter could vet this?)

Anonymous said...

1:55

That is quite a statement. It is going to take me some time to gather a response.

My compliments!

Anonymous said...

Another comment re: anon @ 1:55

I just finished reviewing the various web sites that were linked.

Your comments are perhaps one of the best I have ever seen ... in that you have provided a wealth of information about source material, material that one can use to learn and understand.

You sir/madam deserve praise for offering such a bountiful menu of scholarly pursuit.

Your confidence in so doing is quite evident and worthy.

While one can surmise that some of this material is marginal, much if not most is certainly quite good, if not superb.

My interest is piqued.

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, inman:

"Beyond the Glitter: Belly Dance and Neoliberal Gentrification in Istanbul," Cultural Anthropology (Nov 2006, Vol. 21, No. 4, 633-660) certainly piqued my interest.

dave
(aka 1:55 PM, cf., 2:08 PM)

AMac said...

Following up on my comment of 10/22/07 4:09 PM --

I wrote Thomson's customer service folks about the absence of Transforming Anthropology from the "Web of Science," and got this response:

"The journal 'Transforming Anthropology' is not currently indexed in the Web of Science... For information on our journal selection process, please visit here."

For Thomson's purposes (looking at academic journals with the greatest impact in their fields), their staff don't appear to consider Transforming Anthropology to rank higher than 54th among journals that publish articles on anthropology.

Anonymous said...

Just some observations by someone who teaches forensic rhetoric.

1. Piot refers to Nifong as a "whipping boy" who has "bungled." Every standard definition of "whipping boy" is a person punished for the sins of others. Who can call Nifong a "whipping boy"? And can you call criminal conduct "bungling"?

2. Piot says that the ad was "triggered" by the lacross party, but wasn't "about" it. Lubiano's email puts the lie to that claim -- especially since she uses the very work "about" that Piot stridently denies. So do the several references in the ad to the event. And, for good measure, when Piot later defends the right of the faculty to speak out, he says that at the time of the event to not speak out would have been irresponsible. Well, now we have Piot himself joining Lubiano and the authors of the ad to confirm that the ad was indeed "about" the event.

3. In the passage about the media frenzy, he says that "multiple players" and "diverse/conflicting interests -- both on and off campus" were "brought to a boil." OK, so is he saying that the faculty were somehow uniquely immune from that process? (If so, I'd like to hear about how they alone were immune.) Or is he conceding that the faculty, like others, was at a "boiling" pitch? (If so, I'd like to hear him say it frankly and address it forthrightly.)

4. He delivers a rhetorical whipping to those who attribute negative characteristics to race and gender, then himself indulges in projection and prejudice along racial and gender lines: "[Johnson's] demonizing of [black women faculty] would appear to be rooted in deep anxieties about Whitness and masculinity."

5. Piot complains about misattribution of speech and attitudes and then attributes to Johnson all the attitudes of anyone who commented on the blog. And then when Johnson did censor outrageous comments on the blog, that fact somehow also counts against Johnson. (Piot never really explains how that works, but no matter.)

6. Piot says that when Johnson and others refer to Professor Neal with the moniker Neal use for himself, it becomes "a racial epithet."

Anonymous said...

Just curious, amac, what were Thompson's IF's for
American Anthropologist
American Ethnologist
Cutural Anthropology

and
Ethos?

Not surprised that Transforming Anthropology would be off Thomson's hit list, simply because it can't possibly be competitive for hits. TA publishes biannually, with only 2 or so "peer-reviewed" articles per issue (of course, the "call and response" articles appear to be cited as if they were the real deal-- Piot's piece already has a hit from Professor Kasibhatla). That's only 4 citable articles per year, versus American Anthropology or Ethos, which are quarterlies publishing 5-8 articles each issue, i.e., 20-30 or so citable articles annually.

It still could be that Transforming Anthropology is “representative” of the field (as the peer-reviewed articles appear to be), and highly-regarded by those who prize quality above quantity– or at least get published there.

dave

AMac said...

dave --

2 top Anthro. journals by Impact Factor:

IF 3.27 #1 "J. Human Evolution"
IF 2.14 #2 "Yearbook of Physical Anthropology"

The 4 you asked about:
IF 1.00 #14 "American Anthropologist"
IF 1.00 #14 "American Ethnologist"
IF 0.80 #21 "Cutural Anthropology"
IF 0.36 #36 "Ethos"

The bottom 2:
IF 0.00 #52 "Chinese Social Anthropology"
IF 0.00 #52 "Man in India"

Re: "It could be that Transforming Anthropology is “representative” of the field..., and highly-regarded by those who prize quality above quantity"--well yes; beauty, eye, beholder. According to the Thomson website, selection criteria are part quantitative and part qualitative. E.g., timeliness of publication is valued above frequency--the editors should have a backlog of good papers and be well enough organized to meet their self-imposed deadlines. A journal with fewer articles that are highly cited should do better than one with many rarely-cited articles. Articles must be peer-reviewed, however, and if the print edition of T.A. doesn't clearly distinguish those that are from those that aren't, that may be a disqualifier.


Anon 10/23/07 11:35pm --

You make six perceptive points.

Anonymous said...

AMAC, You have done a great deal of excellent research for all of us. Thanks!

I posted this at Acephalous.typepad.com. It seems to me to be a grave problem of academic integrity. It is so blatant, I have to ask: "What am I missing." Here is what I posted:

In his only article on the subject, Professor Piot also failed to mention that he signed the "Clarifying Statement," which was a response by various Duke faculty to the "Listening ad." How could he write extensively about the "Listening ad" and NOT mention that he had signed the "Clarifying Statement"? Sounds like a conflict of interest to me, seeings that Piot's reputation is now unfortunately intertwined with the "Listening ad."

In short, Professor Piot was part of the story, then wrote about the story, but he did not acknowledge his role. Readers must know this so that they can intelligently judge his credibility and possible motivations. Anything less is not academically honest. These are my opinions only as always. MOO! Gregory

Anonymous said...

amac:

Thank you for the data. It would appear that physical anthropology has taken precedence of interest over the other three fields. Not entirely surprising. Physical anthropology is the nearest to the hard sciences (actually, most of the sub-disciplines are hard science), and would stand to benefit, in Thomson rankings, from more cross-referencing from related scientific fields.

One of its sub-disciplines, forensic anthropology, has immediate and important "practical" value, and would be a subject of interest to every coroner and forensic investigator in the country (think "Bones" on tv). More hits for Thomson. I noticed somewhere that archaeology (my own source of interest in all of this, along with related ethnographic studies) appears to be more closely-aligned with physical anthropology these days, as well.

Of all the fields of anthropology, cultural anthropology (social and socio-cultural anthropology or ethnography) is the most susceptible to social and political advocacy, as perusal of the some of the journals' "mission statements" and titles reveal. An extremely high percentage of articles are devoted to anti-capitalist (anti-imperialist, anti-white male Protestant) analyses of the contemporary impact of global capitalism (always adverse) on... pretty much everything. Contemporaneous "analysis" (highly politicized) of current events, notably and most recently Hurricane Katrina, is common and encouraged. (Piot's piece ostensibly is about the contemporary phenomenon of "blogging.")

Cultural anthropology has a history of this, or of being used for this. In the 1950s, we were all sexually-repressed and in need of liberation. Frequently invoked as both utopian vision and societal alternative was Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by one of the pioneers of ethnography, Margaret Mead. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) had added-value for pacifists and advocates of matriarchy, as well.

A half-century and a Sexual Revolution later, Derek Freeman did serious damage to Margaret Mead's reputation with two books: Margaret Mead and Somoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (1983) and The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research (1999). Attacking both her methodology and data, he argued, essentially, that Mead had been gulled by the Samoans, who told her what they thought she wanted to hear about sexual freedom in Samoa. (Naturally, Freeman's attack gave rise to a dozen defenders, a few of whose books I've also read. Most concede (if only implicity), that Mead got her facts wrong, but she was right on gender relations. Sound familiar? The "narrative" counts more than the facts?)

More recently, Mead's been called into question on her findings in each case of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Jim Roscoe ("Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Mountain Arapesh Warfare," American Anthropologist, Sep 2003, Vol. 105, No. 3: 581-591) has challenged her study of the Mountain Arapesh, Nancy McDowell did the same with Mead on the Mundugumor (modern Biwat), and Deobrah Gewertz on Mead's on the Tchambuli (modern Chambri). Turns out the groups were conventionally patriarchical and fiercely proud of their warrior ancestries. I don't have time to link to all of this, but google any of the names cited above and you'll plunge right into the controversies.

The point is, cultural anthropology, which obviously is a legitimate and useful discipline, also has a tainted history of political advocacy. While Piot may lack the methodological rigor of Margaret Mead, he may be no less representative.
_____________________

Re "quality above quantity," I hope my tongue wasn't implanted too firmly in cheek. You are right: if a seminal journal published only once a year, with only 1 or 2 articles, but every article a "must-read," spawning a dozen other articles, one would expect it to receive a higher Thomson IF than an average journal publishing more articles. We're left with the possibility that Transforming Anthropology is simply an average journal, competing with serious publication disadvantages against other average journals for impact. Or that it's truly marginal, AAS be damned. Which still doesn't prove that it isn't "representative" of the current state of cultural anthropology, judging from the comparatively higher IF's of publications in other fields of anthropology over anything in cultural anthropology.

There's a lot more to be said about the similarities of Piot's article to the political advocacy that characterizes a certain kind of ethnographic writing today (Anon @10/23 11:35pm does indeed perceive the rhetorical tactics of a larger political strategy), but that's a post for another day. I apologize for the length of this one.

dave

Anonymous said...

MOO! Gregory @10:24 10:28 AM

"academic integrity"... is that like "military intelligence"?

dave

Anonymous said...

Dave, my friend, you are stereotyping; but it was funny, which, in turn, means it was at least, in part, true, present company excepted. LOL! MOO! Gregory

P.S. I really am looking for input about my question regarding "academic integrity" as it applies to Professor Piot's article and his failure to note his status as a "Clarifying Statement" signatory. My main questions:

1. I read through the whole thing, and I did not see any reference to Piot's status vis-a-vis the "Clarifying Statement." Did I miss it?

2. In my field, whether in the courtroom or publishing in law reviews, an omission of that magnitude, as relevant as it is to the arguments made by Piot, would be seen as about the best possible evidence of impeachment. Is it so different in other fields, or am I missing something?

Anonymous said...

anonymous 3:24:

"Is it so different in other fields, or am I missing something?"

It really is different in other fields. In the sciences it would also be devestating, not only to the work in question, but to one's career.

But things are different in the "humanities":

A few years ago a history professor named Michael Bellisles got a bunch of awards for a "groundbreaking" book showing that gun ownership in early America was alot less widespread than previously believed. Unfortunately for him some amateur historians managed to show that his work was completely fabricated - he had done things like cite records that were destroyed by fire a hundred years ago, or had never existed in the first place. The whole thing was one big lie - it made Dan Rather with his memos look honest.

Bellesiles is still a professor, and none of his awards have been rescinded.

AMac said...

dave --

You had a lot to say at 1:26pm, making the comment's length juust-right. I learned a lot, thanks.


MOO! Gregory --

1. I don't see any reference to the Clarifying Statement in Piot's article.

2. For more than a decade, it seems every manuscript submitted in biology requires each author to declare potential conflicts of interest; most journals list them (or their absence) near the article's end. However, this means financial conflicts. e.g. a relationship with a company that might be impacted by the findings. Nature magazine's Competing Financial Interests Policy is here.

Suppose I loathe Dr. Doe (e.g. he insulted my spouse), and I write a blistering edited-but-not-peer-reviewed commentary (say, for Nature's "News & Views" section) in an attempt to debunk the Doe theory of Epigenetic Patterning. Would I have to disclose my animus as a potential conflict? I don't think so. (Although N&V Authors are not allowed to discuss work in which they are involved or work from their own or colleagues' institutions.)

How about if I had originated a petition denouncing Dr. Doe for supporting (or opposing) David Horowitz's ABOR? I don't think that most journals' policies would mandate disclosure of that, either (but I'm not sure).

Of course, "everybody important" would know about the AMac/Doe spat, and my anti-Doe essay would likely undergo a very stringent review by the editors. After all, who wants to be made to look like they've been pwned in the service of somebody else's vendetta?

Oh.

Anonymous said...

MOO! Gregory (may I call you MOO?):

1) What can anyone add? I read the piece several times and concur with your observation: the guy supressed a highly-relevant fact related to his personal self-interest in writing about KC's blog.

Even ethical journalists– oxymorons abound today– manage to insert an "As a matter of Full Disclosure..." paragraph in their stories these days. I think that disclosure of personal or financial conflicts-of-interest (even potential ones) is still expected in the corporate and financial worlds (the exceptions get pretty spectacular and unflattering media coverage), but in academia?

An appearance of intellectual disinterestedness and honesty still seems to go with the territory, but the reality is that it may be on its way to becoming another tribute that academic vice pays to scholarly virtue. Piot's a disingenuous hypocrite, and you've impeached him. Doubt if his colleagues will.

2) In my field, concealing relevant information to gain an advantage is considered shrewd business practice, and the most successful practitioners become top agents and studio heads.

Hope others will comment on your point about Piot.

dave

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the comments, Ralph, AMac & Dave! I enjoyed all of your well-thought-out responses. I really appreciate the opportunity to learn that is presented on this blog. MOO! Gregory

Anonymous said...

amac:

Just so I'm real clear about this, because I can't always access through a university library system, did you notice if Thomson had separate categories and journal rankings for the "four fields" of anthropology? They're so disparate now, I wondered if perhaps Thomson considered them to be completely separate disciplines, as they are, really. The "four fields" are

1) physical anthropology (evolutionary anthro; forensic anthro, as Sagan would have said, billions and billions of sub-disciplines)-- clearly everyone's IF favorite;
2) cultural anthropology (sociocultural anthro, ethnography)-- the hip-hop happen' now field (and least cited it would seem);
3) archaeology; and
4) linguistics (linguistic anthro).

Personal curiosity. BTW, good comment at Progressive Historians website, and you should repost your 10/24 4:14 on the latest thread. Last paragraph-and-a-fraction, priceless.

MOO! Gregory:

Thank you. The firepower directed to this blog is stunning at times. It is a tremendous learning opportunity for me as well, and we just need to convince KC Johnson that the civil suit hearings should start up any day now... just keep the blog going... any day now... yup, I hear papers shuffling... one more post, KC, one more post...

Anonymous said...

I think I forgot to sign my just-submitted 10/25 AM comment to amac and MOO! Gregory.

But since you guys are among the sharpest tacks in the box, and Ralph Phelan can say in about 3 words what would take me 25 if I could even think of it, and we're the only ones here the last few days, by process of elimination you can deduce it's

dave

Anonymous said...

Anon at 1:10 wrote:

"MOO! Gregory:

Thank you. The firepower directed to this blog is stunning at times. It is a tremendous learning opportunity for me as well, and we just need to convince KC Johnson that the civil suit hearings should start up any day now... just keep the blog going... any day now... yup, I hear papers shuffling... one more post, KC, one more post..."

I'd like to second the "firepower" (and KC keep-it-up) point.

In my ten years at Duke, I've never had such intellectually stimulating discussion.

Duke Prof

AMac said...

Dave,

> Does Thomson have separate categories & rankings by sub-field?

No, just the 53 titles listed under "Anthropology." I suppose many titles must get double- or triple- listed: I don't know if they code IFs for fields by journal or by article. (For instance, Nature would have a "high" IF for physics, but is its physics ranking pulled up by its doubtless "super-high" biology IF?)

If each journal kept to one own anthro sub-field (I'm sure they don't) and we knew which title went in which of the four bins, we could construct IF rankings for the sub-fields. It would probably go in the order you suggest.

Thanks also for the kind words.

AMac said...

Duke Prof,

I always enjoy reading your comments (except when I miss 'em, as apparently at 10/25/07 3:39PM, two up). Drop me a line if you feel like it:
amac-2007 at usa dot net
Cheers, AMac

Anonymous said...

amac @10/25 4:59 PM:

I don't know if they code IFs for fields by journal or by article.

The fact that an anthropology journal, Journal of Human Evolution, which limits itself to a sub-discipline of a sub-discipline (palaeoanthropology, subset of physical anthropology), can out-IF the flagship of the American Anthropological Association, American Anthropologist, which used to bestride all "four fields" like a colossus, suggests that Thomson may be IFing by article, not by journal.

Anything in genetic and "environmental" research is hot hot hot right now, no? So the Journal of Human Evolution, which, in addition to paleoanthropological work, publishes articles in "comparative studies of living species, including both morphological and molecular evidence," as well as "palaeoecological and palaeogeographical models for primate and human evolution" profits by the added hits from geneticists, biologists, climatologists, ecologists, and so on, a fair number of its articles possibly being double- or triple coded to their fields, as well. American Anthropologist, presumably exercising an "equal time" or "fairness" doctrine, can devote only a quarter of its space to the same areas, and might not accept articles as specialized. (I noticed that the preponderance of its articles from the last several quarters were "cultural anthropology.")

That's my guess, anyway. But my real purpose for this post:

As T. S. Eliot reminds us, "Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal."

If you don't disseminate, in one of the latest threads, your hilarious insight into Professor Piot's subornation of Transforming Anthropologywho wants to be made to look like they've been pwned in the service of somebody else's vendetta?– I will. : )

Anonymous said...

and again, amac, mine at 10/26 4:42 PM should have been signed,
dave

AMac said...

Ah, Dave, I made you chuckle, maybe Gregory as well. To steal a quip from Shrek, that'll do.

Anonymous said...

The contrast between KC Johnson's thoughtful point-by-point post on this article, and Brian Leiter's unsupported generalities could not be clearer. (And how revealing that Johnson allows comments, while Leiter does not!) Suffice it to say that Piot's article already spoke for itself as a piece of rubbish.

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