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In the pages of the New Republic, Josephine Livingstone says what needs to be said about the sexual harassment scandal at NYU.

And she says it well. Excerpts:

[Avital] Ronell’s [background here] supporters have swarmed to defend her. But rather than expose a hypocrisy or invalidate the #MeToo movement, this has only underscored the point that #MeToo feminists have been making along — about the nature of power and the way it fosters abuse.

… [Avital’s defenders admit] they have had no access to the dossier of claims against Ronell. But they called [her accuser’s] allegations “malicious,” while emphasizing Ronell’s seniority and prestige — precisely what the allegations accuse her of exploiting. The signatories said they have “collectively years of experience to support our view of her capacity as teacher and a scholar, but also as someone who has served as Chair of both the Departments of German and Comparative Literature at New York University.” Later in the letter the group noted, “As you know, [Ronell] is the Jacques Derrida Chair of Philosophy at the European Graduate School and she was recently given the award of Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French government.”

In the last few days, further defenses of Ronell have appeared online from well-known figures in cultural studies and literature like Chris Kraus, Lisa Duggan, and Jack Halberstam. Duggan … dressed up harassment in the guise of sophisticated theory. The language of Ronell’s emails must have baffled the investigators, she asserted, because they could not understand the sexualized language that passes between queers (Ronell and Reitman are both gay). “The nature of the email exchange resonates with many queer academics, whose practices of queer intimacy are often baffling to outsiders,” she wrote. This reasoning echoed the philosopher Colin McGinn’s denial that he sent sexual overtures to one of his graduate students, saying he referred to masturbation in an email only to teach her the difference between “logical implication and conversational implicature.”

Yes, I know it’s getting funny. That’s why, in an earlier post about this scandal, I used the term “tragicomic.” Another Ronell defender, Slavoj Zizek — a person in all ways indistinguishable from Chauncey Gardiner — believes he has disposed of the power-corrupts essence of the case in this way:

To explain the accuser’s participation in the game with Avital through her position of power is ridiculous. If he effectively felt oppressed and harassed, there were ways of signalling this, which would have definitely not hurt his position.

This is the vacuously oracular Chauncey Gardiner with Lady Augusta Bracknell thrown in – the comedy lying in the clueless conviction that anything asserted by a person of … magnitude? … becomes true.

Livingstone again:

Furthermore, other former students have accused Ronell of abusive behavior, with one anonymous student accusing her of a variety of unethical practices on Facebook, including breaking her students’ self-esteem, humiliating them in front of others, then using the newly malleable student to do menial tasks for her, like folding her laundry. Andrea Long Chu, who was at one time Ronell’s teaching assistant, wrote on Twitter that the accusations track “100%” with Ronell’s “behavior and personality.”

So how surprised can we be by the obvious parallel with the brutal coaches also in the news lately? Same hierarchy, same closed ranks, same self-pleasuring abuse of subordinates. As I said in an earlier post, whether it comes from the most reactionary or the most revolutionary arm of the university, abuse of power would seem to be the constant, the name of the game. On the field of corrupt behavior, the coach, the Continental, and the cheering squad meet.

“If even one-quarter of what [Ronell’s accuser] describes … is true, it suggests a more intense, more extreme, more abusive instance of a pervasive imbalance of power in academe,” concludes Corey Robin.

Margaret Soltan, August 21, 2018 8:57AM
Posted in: professors

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19 Responses to “In the pages of the New Republic, Josephine Livingstone says what needs to be said about the sexual harassment scandal at NYU.”

  1. theprofessor Says:

    It’s getting ugly, UD. She’s being called a fauxmosexual and straightbian at this point by some of the opposition. I’m waiting to see what the Gay Coder Defense League fires back.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    tp: LOL. Where do you find this language? I’m not familiar w/ any of it. Thank you!

  3. Rita Says:

    But if the real problem here is the “imbalance of power” between teachers and students, then the solution would seem to be to balance their power, so they are equals. How would we do that?

  4. theprofessor Says:

    Fauxmosexual has been around for some time. I first heard it used sniffily in reference to GUGs (“Gay Until Graduation”), which is actually a thing in these parts. Straightbian I saw for the first time the other day; there is a funny page here. I know that she is trying to be humorous, but geez, I can actually put names to many of those subtypes!

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Hi Rita! Power differences will always be there; the solution is for organizations to make sure, to the extent possible, that people in positions of power use it responsibly.

  6. dmf Says:

    there is almost no oversight of prof/student relations and with the current economics/politics of higher ed this is only likely to get much worse, I’m sure someone is building a related app to add to many programs already being deployed on campuses to “capture” lectures, plagiarism, etc.
    One doesn’t have to read Foucault to see the irony in:
    https://www.panopto.com/blog/how-to-record-class-lectures-with-lecture-capture-software-and-apps/

  7. Rita Says:

    I agree, but I don’t think either Livingstone or Robin does. Their complaint seems to be about the existence of power differentials, not that some individuals in power are using their power irresponsibly. This is in line with arguments about sexual harassment as a problem of oppressive “structures” rather than oppressive individuals.

    But how do you fix the “structures” without destroying the authority relationship that makes teaching possible? And even if all you want to do is police student-teacher relations more extensively to avert Ronell-type events, that means more administrators, more time-sucking faculty and student “trainings,” more paperwork and mandatory syllabus warning notes, etc. I’m not sure I see a clear payoff in the end.

  8. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Rita: I hear you. Foisting the problem onto structural this and that is a handy way to evade – or help your cronies evade – moral responsibility. And just as bad – as you say – is the business of policing these things ever more extensively.

    I’m a big fan of Laura Kipnis, since she does the important work of reminding us that many of these relationships are between adults, and, no matter how unequal the power, they’re really no one else’s business. (As a senior at Northwestern, I had one of these student/prof flings, and I initiated things.) For the most part, she’s right about this – let it alone.

    When obvious bad actors like Ronell emerge (multiple testimonies to her abuse of her power are emerging), I think we should avoid the temptation to generalize in any particular direction, and focus our attention on what matters: An apparent pattern of misconduct from one human being, who should answer for it within the administrative structure of her university.

    Finally, I agree with you that there’s nothing wrong – and a lot right – with the traditional authority relationship underlying serious teaching. I find repellent the whole exhausted ‘sixties rhetoric of how authoritarian authority is. Blech. No doubt on some level Ronell told herself her behavior was somehow about this…

  9. theprofessor Says:

    @Rita–yes, the amount of time wasted is staggering. Was there ever a predator prof deterred by one of these 90-minute on-line click-a-ramas that we are forced to take? Did the Powerpoint presentation painfully read verbatim by the Title IX deanlet ever make the scales fall from Prof. Octopus’ eyes? It often seems the case that a huge amount of institutional energy is expended on pretending that there is a structural problem rather than dropping the hammer on the culpable individuals, who are almost always notorious.

  10. charlie Says:

    Question was asked who has power in this relationship? Well, where does the money come from that allowed Dr. Ronell the ability to annoy the hell outta one of her students? Uh, other students, or precisely, their loans. After all, without their tolerance to debt, this debate wouldn’t be taking place. The problem is that the undergrads, for the most part, have no understanding of their worth, due mainly to the “college is worth a million dollars more over your career than if you hadn’t attended” narrative peddled by school functionaries.

    But there are indications that’s changing. A few of my students have been offered some pretty hefty tuition discounts by several private unis. Those unis are attempting to stave off irrelevance by making those bargains. The number of admits has been stagnant for a few years. Just as with any ad campaign, if the message isn’t altered, no amount of PR will make the lies any less deceitful.

    While the theme of the thread seems to be what’s proper conduct between teachers and students, the point that if someone is mature enough to decide to take on massive debt, then they should be quite capable of dealing with whatever relationship issues they encounter..,,

  11. Rita Says:

    Yes, but I think what you’re saying is quite different from these writers. Some bad actors use their power to get sexual favors or at least to get passivity in the face of their sexual aggression, sure, and maybe that’s more about enjoying power than acting on sexual desire. In that sense, such cases are “about” power. But they’re not “about” power in the sense that power itself is the problem rather than the individual who misuses it.

    I also agree that we seem weirdly unable to view the victims as adults once they make their complaints public. With college students, this infantilization is more reasonable. Some are mature and know what they’re getting into, and some are naive. But graduate students? Everything I’ve seen on social media about the Ronell case describes the student’s complaint as “horrific,” but because I am a terrible person, it looked more like material for satire than tragedy to me. She asked him to read her poetry as she slept! To fold her laundry! To tell her he loved her every day! The messages she sent! How did he not immediately tell all his friends about this pathetic behavior and mercilessly mock her? It’s true that one is professionally and maybe to some extent psychologically dependent on an advisor’s good opinion in grad school, but presumably this does not require total loss of common sense? How can you even maintain this sense of dependence when its object is so totally lacking in admirable qualities? Ronell certainly deserves to be punished for her nutjob behavior, but I have to wonder about an adult who would put up with it for three years in the first place for any reason other than to gather material for an academic satire.

  12. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Rita: ‘Tis why in my initial comments I referenced Oscar Wilde and Jerzy Kosiński. It’s also why (in a comment) I linked to her pointless, lugubrious, right out of David Lodge (see Fulvia Morgana) NYT piece on her depression and Hurricane Sandy and her anguished need to escape to Paris.

    Maybe also somewhat hidden in a comment is a kinder place for me to put my basic human sense of this situation, which tracks exactly with yours. The material revealed in the emails is 99% satire, 1% pathos.

    FWIW: I’m sure he DID in fact regale his friends with Ronell-ribaldry. I suspect that he milked it for humor as long as he could (the way we’re doing), until it started getting pathological.

    The fact that he was a grad student is, I think, relevant, as you suggest. I know of a powerful professor – a woman – who over years chose her boyfriends one after another from that year’s crop of male admittees. No one ever complained, far as I know, and no scandal ensued. Nor should it have, assuming she was not abusing her power (to write letters of reference, etc. — the sort of thing Reitman is complaining about).

  13. theprofessor Says:

    I wonder whether the field the graduate students are in makes a difference. I can understand that some people in lit. studies, where it is famously difficult to get a decent position, convince themselves that they have to grovel to get the endorsement of The Great Man or The Great Woman. Even in some areas of science, like particle physics where the equipment is hideously expensive and relatively few big projects are where the action is, I can imagine that people are prepared to accept a lot of crap in order to gain entry into the club.

  14. Rita Says:

    Ha, I hadn’t seen that NYT essay. What a self-indulgent piece of schlock.

    It is a bit surprising to me that universities are so eager to protect people like this, particularly when it’s not just one accusation but a track record of nutjob behavior that’s very likely to become an imminent source of public humiliation (I’m thinking also of Dominguez at Harvard recently), and in light of the tenuousness of so many other academic positions. If they did just sack these people promptly, then maybe the rest of us could be spared all the trainings and workshops which, as TheProfessor points out, are not likely to discourage anyone from this kind of behavior.

  15. Anon Says:

    Rita and UD: Did I just see you two defending the occasional consensual fling between professors and students?? There is no f*cking excuse for this, ever. Doesn’t matter if the student initiates it. The negative effects of these relationships go well beyond the particular student and professor. They completely corrupt the learning environment for the other students by giving the perception of favoritism, and they can contribute to a hostile environment for other faculty, especially female faculty in male-dominated fields. Come on.

    Let me share with you all my Title IX presentation, gratis: Don’t f*ck your students. Students, don’t f*ck your profs. Can’t bear to be apart? Then you need to remove yourselves from the professional relationship. You don’t want to do that? Then keep it in your pants. And an advisor sleeping with their grad student? That is never ok. Never.

  16. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Anon: Can’t speak for Rita, but I do have a different view. Laura Kipnis states it like this:

    Kipnis quips that “bona fide harassers should be chemically castrated.” Similarly, she thinks professors guilty of quid-pro-quo harassment, in which sexual favors are demanded in exchange for something like a good grade or a promotion, should be fired, as should gropers and rapists. (“In cases where somebody’s directly supervising someone, that should be off-limits,” she told me, admitting that she could have been clearer about that in her first Chronicle article.) But she believes that the “leakiness” and “idiocy” of sexual desire cannot be contained by regulation; people need to learn to deal with it themselves. She disagrees with the idea, popular among some younger feminists, that true consent is impossible within a framework of asymmetric power. For Kipnis, it is precisely the dynamics of power — of status, money, appearance, age, talent — that create desire.

  17. Rita Says:

    The purpose of my comments here has only been to question the claim that power disparities are inherently dangerous in higher education, not to endorse turning them into sexual relationships.

    But I also don’t think abolishing teacher-student relationships will do much to root out favoritism. Favoritism is baked into grad school – advisors like some students more than others and invest more in those students. We might wish for such preferences to track talent alone, but they often track methodological and ideological proclivities and personality traits instead, or in addition. In my experience, faculty-student romances are much less frequent than these other, more banal reasons for favoritism.

    So I’m not sure why these relationships would necessarily result in a hostile environment for others, unless the people in them are behaving badly in some way that goes beyond just having a relationship. If people behave in the ways Kipnis describes, then sanctions are merited. But I see no compelling reason to proscribe normal relationships between willing adults who spend a great deal of time together in a context that promotes both erotic desire and shared interests and outlooks.

  18. theprofessor Says:

    Anon, I am with you on the basic principle–I was in the losing faction when we had the big argument 15 years ago about a ban on sexual relationships between faculty and currently-enrolled students (the great majority of students here are undergrads) and wishy-washy language “discouraging” such relationships was adopted. The head of the faculty task force studying the issue was, by the way, a serial dater of students who subsequently married one of them a couple of years later. To be fair, they are still together.

    That being said, if we put such bans into place, do we police them aggressively by allowing or even encouraging denunciations (anonymous or otherwise) to the now omnipresent “see something, say something” hotlines? How do we square such bans with our unending stream of rhetoric that students are adults, have to make their own choices, we’re not their parents, etc.? Even if we appeal to the practices of many business that ban dating between employees, the reality is that those bans are, as far as I can see, inconsistently enforced, especially at the higher levels. All the on-line courses, presentations, and Powerpoints have zero impact on the people who do this sort of thing. They simply see their relationships and behavior as different.

  19. Margaret Soltan Says:

    … And, as your example of the couple still married suggests, tp, sometimes these relationships are in fact different. I sometimes think of it this way: There are perhaps six people in the world desperately interested in the soil composition of the ancient gardens of Pompeii. One of them is a Yale professor; another is a Yale grad student. They spend four years bunched up together in New Haven and Italy squinting at soil in a kind of mutual bliss no one else could possibly understand. Can we be surprised, or begrudge them, when, at some point during this relationship, they end up in bed, and subsequently end up married?

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