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    Internet shaming

    By: Eric Winsberg

    The question is inevitably arising as to whether there is, at present, a phenomenon of internet shaming going on on the various blogs and other social media.   I think we should take seriously the concern that there is.   That's one thing I like a lot about this post by Simon Cabulea May.    He makes it perfectly clear what are and what aren't the issues that are worthy topics of discussion.     I would go further and say that nobody in the profession's moral character should be a topic of public discussion.*   What is a suitable topic for discussion is whether or not the profession as a whole believes it is being well-served by having Brian Leiter as its de facto spokesperson and the orchestrator of its de facto official ranking system. Or whether, contrarily, those things are harming the profession.  Whether or not he would admit it, Professor Leiter chose to fuse together for himself the roles of editing the PGR and being the de facto spokesperson for the profession.   And we members of the profession have the right to try to remove him from that role if we think it is harming the profession.  No viable theory of academic freedom guarantees him the right to maintain that role.   But we do all of ourselves a dis-service if we let the discussion wander away from that narrow topic and engage online in activities that legimate a concern about internet shaming.  

    *In cases, such as the ones we have seen recently, where members of the profession have been alleged to have acted in ways that would provide obvious evidence of bad character, my claim holds so long as bad acts that they are alleged to have engaged in are being addressed by the relevant agents in their relevant institutions.   I agree with Professor Leiter on this issue that not much is gained when the community piles on after the fact. 

     

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    6 responses to “Internet shaming”

    1. Rebecca Kukla Avatar
      Rebecca Kukla

      This strikes me as exactly the right response to the current controversy. Very measured and fair and to the point. Well said.

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    2. Q Avatar
      Q

      Winsburg: What constitutes “piling on” in your opinion?
      Reply: Misspelling my name, for starters! 😉
      If you don’t like the term “piling on” so be it. The point I am making is simply that various criticisms of the current campaign could be avoided if folks concentrated on making the claim that matters: that we no longer want Brian Leiter to be the voice of our profession and that we think insofar as he edits the PGR he maintains that de facto status.
      Anything in the service of those two claims is fair game; anything beyond that and which is reminiscent of the various ways people on the internet sometimes express their disapprobation just for the sake of being in the crowd that does it strikes me as gratuitous. I’m not here to say where that line lies, exactly. Only that it exists.

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    3. Carolyn Dicey Jennings Avatar
      Carolyn Dicey Jennings

      “I would go further and say that nobody in the profession’s moral character should be a topic of public discussion.…In cases, such as the ones we have seen recently, where members of the profession have been alleged to have acted in ways that would provide obvious evidence of bad character, my claim holds so long as bad acts that they are alleged to have engaged in are being addressed by the relevant agents in their relevant institutions.”
      I think this is true only if the relevant agents at the relevant institutions also manage to prevent the future harms that are all too likely to occur in the case of someone with bad tendencies/character (especially in the case of a person who has shown no interest in changing those tendencies/that character). In the case of reputational harm, for example, it seems to me that openly discussing the credibility of the one who tends to exact such harm is a way of potentially preventing some amount of future harm. (But note that I have not attempted to achieve this in the current case, despite thinking it likely that this description fits the case, since I prefer to focus on positive change.)

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    4. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      I think I was being a bit too cryptic in my *: I was referring there to recent cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault. And I took it to be part of the notion of “addressing” those bad acts (by the relevant authorities) that one work to prevent future harms. In any case, I certainly agree that anyone whose reputation is attacked by another has ample right to seek to undermine the attacker’s credibility and to seek the (legitimate) support of others in so doing. In fact, I think taking away someone’s de facto status at the voice of the profession is one way of diminishing their credibility. But that is very different than the process of everyone slapping themselves on the back about how much better their own moral character is then the target du jour, which I think is constituative of “internet shaming”, and which is NOT exemplified by, for example, the signing of the september statement, or most of the other internet activities that people have engaged in in this case.

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    5. Ed Kazarian Avatar
      Ed Kazarian

      Hi Eric,
      I have to say I’m not entirely sure what you’re thinking of under the heading of shaming in the current case. I’ve seen a lot of stuff that objects to, or tries to exhibit, certain specific behaviors that are problematic. I’ve seen some discussion of what’s wrong or harmful about these behaviors, or about the institution of the PGR run in ways that are consistent with some of those behaviors. I’ve also seen some statements where people ask about or analyze how all of this relates to larger issues of climate in the profession. I think, to be honest, that this counts as the majority of what I’ve seen (certainly the majority of what’s been said in public fora), but I’m not clear why any of it counts as shaming.

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    6. JJ Avatar
      JJ

      https://leiterevents.wordpress.com/about/ might help to answer some of Ed’s questions, perhaps.

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