Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

This is a confidence that any self-respecting administration should regard as inviolable, as absolutely sacred. It is staggering that Schapiro has so recklessly and entirely undone the legitimacy of that confidence. This is an absolute betrayal.

talk about melodrama

https://www.facebook.com/janice.dowell.58/posts/10152939033266156

http://dailynous.com/2015/05/30/northwestern-and-title-ix-whats-going-on/

more on kipnis, against and against

doesn't sound like she's blaming the administrators more than the policy.

agree

think her point is problems are systemic atm— i.e. “anyone with a grudge, a political agenda, or a desire for attention can quite easily leverage the system”; there’s problematic asymmetry in speech risks/ consequences, which (as s.c says) “raises questions about the tradeoffs of the title IX retaliation stuff, however well intentioned it might be.”

think her point is: even if in certain particular case from certain angle student may be “right” (e.g. professor said something indisputably assholish), what current policy prescribes as response is wrong qua policy: in the balance, current ability/ incentive for students to resort to this kind of academic litigation has deleterious consequences for speech on campus— e.g. self-censorship that’s not motivated intellectually or ethically but purely out of fear (of frivolous reprisal etc)

ps actually not sure if she's criticizing the system more than those who misguidedly misuse the system

(and of course just bc a system fucks up doesn't mean there's some better alternative)

she is certainly criticizing the current system, which allows people to "misuse" it.

and that facebook post linked above is far too elliptical and vague to be of any use.

If the dailynous article is correct, that's pretty fucked up, though.

correct about what?

That Kipnis misrepresented a rape-charge, refused to correct her original misrepresentations, and that the student she is misrepresenting can't respond do to fear of being sued.

even if she did (and i think kipnis's original article was dumb), a Title IX complaint is not the way to go about correcting those misrepresentations.

there is no perfect victim (of abuse of Title IX complaints)

Since the facts alleged by the student and the professor are in dispute, it seems premature to say, as the Nous article does, that the opinions expressed by Kipnis are contrary to the facts or misrepresents the facts. Kipnis is no more in possession of the facts than is Justin, the author of the Nous article. If the result of the investigation proves Kipnis' representations of the alleged rape as "melodrama" were to some extent defamatory (which is possible, if the rape charge is upheld) then would be the time to react appropriately.

Eh. But what do I know. It's a tangled mess and Kipnis' choice of writing the original article could be justly described as very questionable judgment. The filing of a Title IX grievance against her in reaction was not particularly good judgment either imo. I'll let the parties directly involved duke it out.

No, Kipnis pretty obviously misrepresented the facts. I mean, that isn't really in dispute, the magazine corrected the article. From the bottom:

Correction (3/3/2015, 2:40 p.m.): This article originally stated that several lawsuits brought by a student at Northwestern University had been thrown out of court. Only one such suit was thrown out. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.

Clarification (3/30/2015, 10:45 a.m.): This article originally stated that a philosophy professor at Northwestern University sued, among others, a former graduate student of his whom he had previously dated. It would be more accurate to say that he had dated her according to his complaint. The article has been updated to reflect this clarification.

An article from someone who tried to get corrections: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathryn-pogin/melodrama-notes-from-an-ongoing_b_6805676.html

And also, the original article seems to conflate the two cases, talking about a slippery slope from 'alleged fondling' to 'rapist', as if fondling is the worst thing Ludlow has been accused of.

I want to make clear, though, that I also think Title IX proceedings sound pretty draconian.

Title IX proceedings are like that because they are being implemented in response to federal investigations of over 100 colleges and universities for systematic mishandling of sexual assault cases on campus in various ways, such as ignoring them or referring cases to the judgment of untrained campus judicial panels. Even under the supposedly-draconian regime of toughened up Title IX investigations it's uncommon for an assault survivor to secure any remedy from the school through the process more significant than a change in housing circumstances for them or their attacker.

i think the main thing clear to me is this isn't "pc creep" or "i was offended by somebody writing an article i disagreed with and that's harassment" but, however things ended up in the specifics, a much messier more individual situation that doesn't necessarily fit into one or another national narrative (except maybe the narrative of painful, fraught moments in people's lives becoming stupid political football)

huh? a lot of people are very consciously creating a narrative of "rape culture" on american campuses and much of what we're seeing follows from that.

A lot of men are creating a culture of rape sooooo

depends on where you look. unless you set a very low threshold for what can reasonably constitute "a culture," it is not very useful to say that a "rape culture" exists on american university campuses.

example of a rape cultures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_States

this isn't to say that people aren't raped on campus. they are. so in a sense whether or not to label it "rape culture" might seem like so much semantic parsing. but the rhetoric that makes it seem as though campus rape is an epidemic that is tacitly encouraged by officialdom (which isn't the case) often leads to rash and unhelpful quasi-solutions to the problem that aren't anything like real solutions, viz. the above discussion of abuse of Title IX complaints and the potential consequences for academic freedom, not to mention the injustices to both victims and the falsely accused.

you're not understanding the intended concept of 'rape culture', amst, it's societal in scope and not merely officially encouraged

to my understanding, "rape culture" implies that rape is a normative behavior, with some kind of official or quasi-official sanction. can you point to elements in american society that apologize for rape? sure. is rape truly a normative, sanctioned behavior in american society? i don't believe it is.

if you think i am misinterpreting this term as it is commonly used, let me know.

we could argue about this all day, but my main point was--in responding to sterling--that the events at northwestern are very much part of a national narrative that stems in large part from the "dear colleague..." letter sent by the DoE. this has encouraged american universities, for fear of being sued, to take a very broad interpretation of the enforcement of Title IX. which has led to abuses, injustices, etc. and the DoE letter was itself driven by a lot of efforts to cast rape on campus as some kind of growing epidemic, a conclusion based on very flawed research.

i should qualify that there are sub-cultures of american society, such as in state prisons, that better fit the definition of "rape culture" as i understand it.

i don't see how this relates to what i was saying which is that this particular case is full of lots of things going on. there's stuff to consider, sure. but like taking v. seriously a complaint about retaliation doesn't seem to be part of a "problem". if in this case, as it seems, the "retaliation" is just a crummy, inaccurate editorial, then it gets dismissed, which it did.

so, like, that element of the system worked already.

Amateurist you are misinterpreting the term rape culture as it is commonly used. Also I am going to bed and not looking to pick internet fights about patriarchy but yes you are misinterpreting it.

that's the most common interpretation i've read and has been given to me. if "rape culture" is not a culture in which rape is normative, routinely excused, or tacitly accepted, then what is it? simply a culture in which rapes take place?

i'd appreciate it if you could explain how you think i'm misinterpreting the concept, but i understand if you don't feel you have the time/patience/energy.

so, like, that element of the system worked already.

― entry-level umami (mild bleu cheese vibes) (s.clover), Sunday, May 31, 2015 12:43 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you read kipnis's second article about it?

you mean the one detailing the title ix investigation? the one that (according to another recent link) "yielded no finding of retaliation against Kipnis"?

yeah

right, so she didn't get fired. you still think that the nature of the investigation -- with her forbidden to know the charges until she was questioned about them, and not being permitted to have a lawyer attend the investigation -- was alright?

btw i'm still not sure what this thread is about as a whole!

The only way speaking about 'rape culture' at campus is misleading is because it might give the impression that there's no rape culture off campus. But new study in Journal of Adolescent Health, June Issue, of a north eastern college, shows that 15% of freshmen women reported completed or attempted incapacitated rape and 9% reported completed or attempted forcible rape. In the first year alone. How many studies do we need before we stop trying to dismiss them all? And how high must the number be before we can call it a cultural issue, amateurist?

I still think proceedings of Title IX sound draconian. I also think it indisputably does more good than bad. That doesn't mean that it should continue, it might be fundamentally flawed, and there might be other, better ways to deal with campus rape culture. But Title IX has been a good thing, this discussion has been good. And Title IX didn't invent asymmetrical power relations on campus, and with regards to free speech. It has just inverted them, every now and then.

Kipnis:

TITLE IX UPDATE: After 72 days I've heard that as far as the Title IX complaints against me, "A preponderance of the evidence does not support the complaint allegations." The complainants have ten days to appeal. The charges that I violated university policies are still outstanding and now go to the university for consideration, according to the letter from the investigators.

I thought I should wait for the appeals period to be over before doing any victory laps, but a site called Daily Nous announced it yesterday—and outed the name of my faculty support person, now up on Title IX complaints himself. If you want to read the essay and aren't a Chronicle subscriber, I posted a pdf on my website.

i thought 'rape culture' meant what am did - a culture in which rape is either sanctioned or encouraged but now i see the term is just synonymous w/ 'a culture where rape happens.'

the whole redefining of general use words is pretty creepy liberalism imo

fwiw it's probably best to understand it as a tacit toleration of "boys will be boys"/victim blaming/slut shaming/date-rape/etc rather than "rape is ok."

rape culture, that is.

like am said, there's no question there are communities where "boys will be boys"/victim blaming/slut shaming/date-rape/etc are tacitly tolerated, but a campus where you can embroil a professor in a legal controversy for even questioning whether the epidemic is real (or get a professor charged/fired easily for actual or accused harassment) is not one of those places. or as kipnis puts it about an event in the publishing industry:

What struck me most, hearing the story, was how incapacitated this woman had felt, despite her advanced degree and accomplishments. The reason, I think, was that she imagined she was the only vulnerable one in the situation. But look at the editor: He was married, with a midlevel job in the scandal-averse world of corporate publishing. It simply wasn’t the case that he had all the power in the situation or nothing to lose. He may have been an occluded jerk, but he was also a fairly human-sized one.

ryan otm. And thinking that 'rape culture' would mean that people actually were pro-rape is pretty incredible. But how else to explain percentages in the high tenths for something as awful as rape, in affluent places like colleges, if there isn't something culturally wrong?

one issue i think is that while you hear arguments that american society sexualizes young, underage women, you'd sound pretty radical to claim that this proves that the US is a 'pedophile culture.' it's one thing to argue (and it's important to keep in mind that all of these arguments that ppl find so self-evidently so are rarely accompanied by evidence demonstrating casualty) that a society displays features that may contribute unproductively to social ills (underage pop stars flaunting their sexuality may contribute to incidence rate of pedophilia - idk). but the 'rape culture' argument tries to do it one further by claiming that the culture actually promotes rape, or excuses it. some of the reason this argument gets to be made w/out much reflection is that there are certainly places (like steubenville) where the second thing is true. the community willfully turns a blind eye to rape and even tacitly promotes it through the way it talks about gender relationships, 'slut shaming,' 'victim blaming,' etc. but steubenville is not nyc or most college campuses. but then you get this elision whereby the term means both things - a rape in steubenville that is ignored (except when it's being celebrated) by the authorities, and an accusation on a college campus. and so ppl can't even really tell you honestly what it means, bc the elision is fundamental to how the term works. if you say it just means 'women roles in film are often passive and that might encourage rape' then you're not really saying anything bc society contains all kinds that exist in relationship to social ills. but to say it's a rape culture is to say it's a drug culture and a murder culture and an incest culture and a thieving culture and a...

on some level human culture is all those cultures bc it contains all of them in it, but when you say a culture is a 'rape culture' you have to be aware of what you're implying about the people who participate in the culture. fred, i think this is an analogy you might find compelling - what do you think about what critics say about islam as a culture? also a 'culture' where undeniably bad things happen. but there i think you understand the subtext of what calling it a 'culture' means. or inner-cities 'cultures of violence.' the term is always used to condemn people who live in that culture, often people who hate the behavior under discussion and find it disgusting and would never approve or promote of it.

Also, I don't know what to say about 'redefining general use words = creepy liberalism'. Like, have you heard of this thing called poetry? Slang? Metaphors? Continental philosophy? Discourse? Ideology?

It's not a left-wing speciality. Words like 'pro-life' does not mean what it sounds like either.

Mordy, the difference is, that I can - imo - explain 95% of inner city 'murder culture' or arab 'violence culture' through references to history and socio-economic issues. But how the fuck to explain rape-rates of 15% and 9% a year at a north-eastern college?

there is a trend tho among certain ppl in the left to redefine the meaning of words and then to act as though that was the meaning all along. i first ran into this w/ 'racism' when i was told that racism actually always refers to institutional discrimination against minorities - and therefore could never refer to an act or speech about white people. this obv differed w/ the definition i heard growing up and read in dictionaries that it referred to bigotry based on racial categories. i guess what i find really creepy is not the meaning shifting, but the pretense that 'it has always meant this thing.' it's very newspeak. xp

a ton of xposts but i'll post anyway, and then i have to go to the library (though not to read about this stuff!)

How many studies do we need before we stop trying to dismiss them all?

well, i'd be interested to see the new study! i'll find it and read through it soon.

re. the earlier studies, it doesn't mean anything to say that a series of studies shows "x" if those studies were extremely flawed, as they were. a plethora of flawed research is still flawed research.

perhaps more important, studies have often been misused/misinterpreted. for example, in one study even events that the participants in the study did not find to be 'assault' were categorized that way by the study authors. and then, in reporting on the study, many journalists/advocates elided the distinct between unwanted sexual advances/sexual assault/rape.

then there's the larger issue that so much unwanted sexual advances, etc. on campus occur in the context of multiple parties being intoxicated. the current climate fostered by the DoE makes it difficult for campuses to responsibly discuss alcohol use in this context, for fear of "blaming the victim." also, many studies--as well as many campus policies--define as "sexual assault" any sexual encounter in which both participants are intoxicated/"incapacitated" by alcohol. this is a gender-based assumption that runs into its own Title IX problems. (it also does nothing to clear up cases of sexual assault that occur between two people of the same gender.) this aspect of the issue taken up by a number of feminists, who argue that the current kid-gloves approach infantilizes college women.

can you explain this within the context of post-colonialism? xxp
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/35c31d41d00241ea8ff2f6f78a798fe8/suicide-bomber-attacks-shiite-mosque-saudi-kills-4

or is it that people are shit all throughout the world and to the extent that they aren't shit is probably bc of the awesome ameliorating impact of society, and not vice-versa. we aren't bonobos who have been ruined by civilization (though now that we're talking about it i do see how this kind of pastoral vision of pre-modern humanity has inflicted the left). humans are comprised of violent murderers who have been tempered by society. so i'm not surprised that there is violence + assault anywhere bc humans.

i do wonder if the whole 'rape culture' meme indicates a kind of frustration that as a society we have stigmatized rape to the point where it's one of the most horrific crimes a person can commit, and yet it hasn't gone away. so we can't just work on shaming the perpetrators anymore bc it's not sufficient. so we're moved onto shaming the non-perpetrators and as long as that sticks to ppl who really do enable it (coaches/teachers who look the other way, police/DA/judges who fail to process kits, etc) that's fine. but shaming everyone for the actions of a depraved minority seems pretty shouting at the wind.

I am far from being at the center of the action, but from what I have read in the past few years when this issue has been widely discussed the central issue and the key to both the origin of and the solution to the problem is that colleges and universities have been reluctant to direct rape complaints to the police and to allow the criminal justice system to handle them. To my mind this is the entire problem in a nutshell and what is required is obvious. Treat rape as exactly the same crime wherever it occurs. This bypasses the entire question of whether or not campuses have a "rape culture" that is in any way different than the culture at large.

Having academia run an entirely parallel system of justice by which to regulate the students on campus for behavior that is properly addressed by the code of law just perpetuates the root cause of the problem. Rape is a crime. Treat it as a crime. Students and faculty should not be exempt from the criminal justice system that everyone else must deal with in such cases, but neither should they be doubly jeopardized by two separate systems operating independently of one another, using entirely different rules and standards.

Unfortunately, the tradition of universities being their own fiefdoms able to operate as a law unto themselves goes back to the middle ages and they will give up that privilege very reluctantly. At least, that's how it looks to this academic outsider.

x-post: Surely, much of every suicide bombing can be explained through a look at regional history of asymmetrical warfare? Even if IS doesn't really need it to attack shiites, still a lot of infra-structure for that kind of thing, which has it's own awful logic.

I do agree that people are shit, and that society is mostly good at educating them. Rape culture is more like a systemic lack in that education, in my view.

Do you personally know a single person who doesn't openly condemn rape and rapists? Bc I don't which is why this conversation is always confusing to me. Everyone I know hates rapists more than they hate anyone besides maybe pedophiles or nazis.

What about racists, everybody hates them too dont forget. Even racists!

i do wonder if the whole 'rape culture' meme indicates a kind of frustration that as a society we have stigmatized rape to the point where it's one of the most horrific crimes a person can commit, and yet it hasn't gone away.

i don't know about that, mordy. i think people quite reasonably are appalled by rape and by a history of victim-blaming that accompanies it some contexts. some police dep'ts do have a serious history of not treating some rape victims with respect, to put it mildly (though i often think people understate how much progress has been made in this area). but some people seem to have drawn from that a conclusion that these things are better handled by poorly-trained campus administrators rather than by the legal system. which seems a major tactical mistake to me.

xposts -- what aimless said!

to get back to the underlying reasons for the current campus-rape crisis rhetoric: what we're seeing on many (not all) college campuses right now is an overcorrection to a very real problem, an overcorrection that threatens important principles of justice and free speech, not to mention often not really helping the problem in the first place (since colleges are primarily interested in not being sued, their policies aren't necessarily ideally helpful to either victims or the accused).

there's also a somewhat icky class issue lurking behind all this. rape is more prevalent among young people /off/-campus (or so indicates the best research from NIH etc), but most of the media attention seems to be focused on the plight of campus women, who as a group tend to be whiter and more privileged than women of the same age not attending college. also, historically women of color and poor women are much more likely to be victims of indifference and hostility from police/the legal system in general, esp. when it comes to sexual assault/rape.

that's not to say there aren't lots of feminists and anti-rape activists who aren't as vocal about rape in society in general as on campus. but the amount of gov't/policy attention that's given to campus rape, which isn't any more prevalent than rape elsewhere, strikes me as indicative of class privilege.

i guess i sound like i'm concern trolling, but i don't think i am. i should say that my position in academia might give me a kind of distorted view of how visible these debates are in general.

as usual, multiple xposts, sorry.

Unfortunately, the tradition of universities being their own fiefdoms able to operate as a law unto themselves goes back to the middle ages and they will give up that privilege very reluctantly

i think you've got this backwards, actually.

it's the dept of education who pushed this stuff on campuses, by basically saying if they don't adjudicate cases of sexual misconduct/assault/rape themselves, they could be threatened with Title IX-based lawsuits. so the whole infrastructure of campus tribunals, etc. stems from federal policy.

of course the universities' main goal is always to protect themselves, so the tribunals--writ large--end up dispensing something quite other than justice, both to victims and the accused.