Remember the “terrible” (as Masha Gessen called it) Avital Ronell letter? (UD‘s posts about it are here.) Remember the regret its authors eventually expressed after it turned out they got the facts (about whether Ronell sexually harassed a graduate student) wrong, and in a very unseemly way threw their institutional weight around, and thus further abused an innocent grad student?
So… the fools who wrote the anti-Steven Pinker letter everyone’s currently laughing at maybe could have consulted that bit of history before marking up their own missive, with its overripe racism claims and its rich mix of real and forged signatures. Ask the authors of the Ronell letter whether it pays to be a bit … epistoleery…
July 18th, 2020 at 10:33AM
Isn’t their a question of possible academic fraud in this case? Avital Ronell built her academic reputation, in large measure, on being lesbian and feminist. Well, how do she prove that, given the apparent gravitas gained by proclaiming such? Would her work have been less influential if she was straight, not a proclaimed feminist, however she defined that classification? It seems quite a few people have spent more time developing a mystique, rather than letting their work speak for itself. Could it be that NYU profited by marketing Avital Ronell as something she wasn’t.
I apologize if I’m coming across as hostile. It just came out that Mother Theresa’s org has been accused of baby selling, among other things. The Vatican had no problem using the MT myth for some damn good propaganda. So, excuse the hell outta me if I’m not feeling this “leading light” crap anymore…
July 18th, 2020 at 11:09AM
charlie: The baby selling story came out in 2018, from what I can tell – this is the most recent story about it I was able to find. One nun is still awaiting trial, so the story is ongoing. The scrutiny seems to have persuaded the MT nuns that they need to register w/ the government adoption agency, and stop denying children to single women who want to adopt.
All I can say is: Hitch, you would have loved this.
On Ronell: People are free to be as gender fluid as they like. But as to whether NYU has been intellectually well-served… that’s another question.
July 18th, 2020 at 11:34AM
Thanks for clarifying, UD.
Given all of the academic fraud your blog covers, from bogus CVs, pilfered research, stolen funds, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a uni would engage in reputation burnishing…