By Catarina Dutilh Novaes
Those of you who can’t get yourselves to be offline even during the Xmas break have most likely been following the events involving Brian Leiter (BL), Jonathan Ichikawa (JI) and Carrie Jenkins (CJ), and the lawyers’ letters regarding the legal measures BL says he is prepared to take as a reaction to what he perceives as defamatory statements by (or related to) Ichikawa and Jenkins. As a matter of fact, a blog post of mine back in July seems to have played a small role in the unfolding of these unfortunate developments, and so I deem it appropriate to add a few observations of my own.
On multiple occasions (and in particular in comments at Facebook posts), Leiter claims to have been directed to Jenkins’ ‘Day One’ pledge by this blog post of mine of July 2nd 2014, in defense of Carolyn Dicey Jennings. It begins:
Most readers have probably been following the controversy involving Carolyn Dicey Jennings and Brian Leiter concerning the job placement data post where Carolyn Dicey Jennings compares her analysis of the data she has assembled with the PGR Rank. There have been a number of people reacting to what many perceived as Brian Leiter’s excessively personalized attack of Carolyn Dicey Jennings’s analysis, such as in Daily Nous, and this post by UBC’s Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins on guidelines for academic professional conduct (the latter is not an explicit defense of Carolyn Dicey Jennings, but the message is clear enough, I think). [emphasis added]
Leiter claims that this observation is what led him to Jenkins’ post in the first place, which he perceived as a direct attack on him. He also claims that this is what the passage above implies, and continues to repeat that the post “was intended by Jenkins as a criticism of me (as everyone at the time knew, and as one of her friends has now admitted), and thus explains my private response, which she chose to make public.” However, there is nothing explicitly indicating that the post was intended as a criticism of BL beyond the fact that he read it this way and keeps repeating it.
My own post was explicitly a defense of Carolyn, and also voiced criticism of BL’s handling of his disagreement with Carolyn’s analysis of placement record data; indeed, I mention him by name. CJ did not such thing, and while I (and perhaps others as well) read her post as at least in part intended to express support to Carolyn, this may well have been a misinterpretation of the post on my part. Still, even if it was not: the step from the post being a defense of Carolyn to it being an attack on BL is a very substantive one, and yet he seems to be conflating the two things.
As is well known, these events in early July then set in motion a whole series of developments, culminating in the September Statement. BL now claims (through his lawyer) that the September Statement defamed him, in particular by stating that the episode impacted CJ’s health, her capacity to work and her ability to contribute to public discourse. BL maintains that this statement is not accurate, in fact his whole case for defamation seems to rest on questioning the actual distress incurred by CJ as a result of her ‘interactions’ with him. He seems to be suggesting two things: in the period after receiving the email, CJ continued to work and participate in public discourse with no significant changes with respect to her usual behavior (he seems to suggest that he has evidence to this effect); whatever distress she may have incurred would have been related to previous facts about her health and overall condition, not directly provoked by the unfortunate correspondence.
The question I want to raise now is: does any of this matter for the main issue? BL seems to think that the signatories of the September Statement were ‘misled’ into thinking that he had caused CJ great harm, and for this reason alone signed the Statement. Naturally, I can’t speak for the other signatories, but speaking for myself, I can say that the actual impact of his email on CJ’s wellbeing was not what prompted me to sign it. Had this not been the case (as suggested by BL’s ‘hypothetical scenario’, but as appears to be the case for example of Noelle McAfee, who as far as I know has not been affected by the hostile emails she received from BL in the same way), I would most certainly still have signed the Statement. What made me sign it was BL’s behavior in the first place – in particular the appalling emails, which were actually merely the culmination of a long history of patterns of interaction with colleagues that I consider inadequate. As well put by Justin over at Daily Nous: “As far as I can tell, the only person in philosophy who has harmed Brian Leiter’s reputation is Brian Leiter. He should sue.”
That BL’s behavior has impacted a colleague in a particularly negative way is very regrettable, but is not the heart of the matter. If CJ was made of steel and had not been impacted in any way ('hypothetical scenario'), it would not have made the slightest difference for my signing of the Statement, so I fail to see in which ways the signatories could have been ‘misled’ in this way. This is a red herring. (It may not be a red herring from a legal point of view; I am in no position to judge the legal implications here. But I fail to see the relevance of the ‘accuracy’ point from a moral point of view.)
It is clear at any rate that the September Statement has been harmful to BL’s standing in the profession, in particular by significantly diminishing the participation of evaluators in the PGR (as painstakingly analyzed by Mitchell Aboulafia), and thus making it less credible — despite BL's continuous reassurances that all is good and dandy with the PGR. But is this the kind of actionable harm that should reasonably lead to a courtroom? The September Statement was signed by those who declined to volunteer their services to the PGR, in particular (but not exclusively) as potential board members and evaluators. So one might think that the September Statement did call for a kind of 'boycott' of the PGR, on grounds of alleged professional misconduct by its main editor.
Now, this is of course something BL is well familiar with. Remember the Synthese affair almost 4 years ago? The two scenarios are strikingly similar, except that 4 years ago BL was the one calling for a boycott of an academic institution – the Synthese journal – on account of alleged professional misconduct by its editors-in-chief. BL’s ‘campaign’ back then certainly caused harm to the reputation of the journal and the then-editors-in-chief (though 4 years later, the journal seems to be doing fine, under different editorship). While there may well be important disanalogies between the two sets of events, it seems to me that they are sufficiently similar so as to challenge BL’s (moral, if not legal) right to object to the September Statement on account of the harm it would have caused to his reputation. His prior actions tell us that he does not shy away from urging others to decline their services to particular institutions when faced with professional behavior he deems objectionable.
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64 responses to “Observations on the Leiter vs. Jenkins-Ichikawa affair”
Cathy Kemp’s comment is very good about evolving norms. I would add that it seems to me that there is already a perfectly natural, i.e., widespread, usage of “colleague” and “collegial” that goes well beyond either those at one’s own institution or those one have met to include not only other philosophers but also other academics, whether we have met them or not
For instance, within philosophy, I don’t work at Marquette nor have I ever met Cheryl Abbate in person, but I certainly felt it natural to call her my colleague and I certainly felt a collegial obligation to support her.
Further, within academia, I don’t work at Illinois or Virginia Tech nor have I ever met Steven Salaita in person, but I certainly felt it natural to call him my colleague and I certainly felt a collegial obligation to support him.
So, for those who don’t feel that collegial obligation, I encourage you to develop it and having developed it, to act on it. You might need support directly sometime, should you be attacked, and, human beings being such as we are, some people might be more willing to help you if they know that you feel them to be colleagues and that you have displayed collegial solidarity before to others.
But even if you don’t ever need direct support, feeling collegial obligation and acting on it will have indirect benefits to you, as the display of our solidarity to other philosophers and to other academics may help reduce the chances of you or your institutional colleagues being attacked.
Finally, it’s a lot less lonely to feel you have colleagues beyond those at your school, or even, those at your school whom you have met. C’mon in, the water’s fine!
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Several of us raised similar worries above, but OP dismissed them out of hand. “We talk about lots of other things, so why not talk about this too?” she seemed to be saying, as if that at all justified talking about this. (OP also suggested that Leiter might somehow be responsible for the deplorable conditions of the job market. She offered no evidence to support this conjecture. So, I suspect she does not really stand by it.)
So the question remains: Why should anyone other than those who are friends with the principals care about this whole thing, much less blog about it? Isn’t the massive interest in this fight at best irrelevant and (most likely) at worst a distraction from real problems while at the same time reinforcing the massive social capital Leiter, Jenkins, and Ichikawa enjoy from their perches on top of the profession?
It seems to me that people’s very, very public animosity towards BL is way out of proportion to his significance for the health of the discipline. To me, this obsession with Leiter’s poor behaviour – and it is poor! – is more about these people seeking to generate conditions in which they can feel maximum schadenfreude once BL really crashes and burns (and no wonder people desperate for jobs don’t care about that since they have much bigger fish to fry).
Perhaps, the natural response to persistent and rude attention-seekers is try to ignore them and their rantings, and to urge others to do the same.
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Exactly. All of those who think it is a waste of time to talk about this episode are cordially invited to refrain from reading the post as well as engaging in comments here. Nobody’s forcing you to stick around.
More seriously: for whatever issue in the world, there will always be other more pressing, more unjust issues. So to people dying in wars or starving in poverty, the complaints of those who suffer in the US academic job market are bound to sound like much ado about nothing. Indeed, it follows from your considerations that we should all be talking about the real issues in the world rather than the plights of people struggling in the academic job market while enjoying a war-less life with (probably) a decent amount of food. (Obviously, that’s not a view that I hold, but it seems to be a consequence of what’s been said here.)
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Notice also that the mere fact that I approve your comment, despite its highly unpleasant and (I would even say) disrespectful tone is a sign that I do not take these observations lightly.
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To John: it’s possible (a) that we’re talking past each other, or (b) that this rests on a deep political disagreement. But let me push a little further. Do I in fact care about issues involving other academics (e.g. the Salaita affair) than issues of comparable (or greater) significance involving non-academics? Sure.
Is that something I need to justify? Not really, I think: almost all our ethical or political concerns are a bit parochial, and prioritising concerns about people in my profession seems at least as reasonable than prioritising concerns about people in my nation. But I’m not sure it’s more reasonable, and taken to extremes it’s open to the same criticisms; I confess to finding some of the more vituperative criticisms of people in university admin roles, and of academics temporarily in admin roles, rather deeply uncollegial in my sense of the word, and that seems to be fed partly by the academics-against-all mentality that’s the extreme (though by no means required) limit of collegiality in your sense.
(Is it something that’s morally obligatory? I’m less sure; I can see arguments both ways.)
But this sense of collegiality doesn’t seem salient to the issue of who sues who. To repeat my previous point: that could only matter here if Leiter’s legal action would have been acceptable had he only sued a journalist or businessperson. I don’t think anyone is saying that, which means “collegiality” is a red herring, and the real issue is whether his lawsuit is ethically acceptable in of itself. (Come to think of it, a notion of collegiality that abstracted away from the actual ethical case for action would presumably condemn the original September Statement as wildly uncollegial to Leiter!)
To Anon Post-Doc: I don’t know about “a distraction from real problems” but for my part I mostly read philosophy blogs as a distraction from real marking. I suspect that will not reassure you, though.
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Hi David, an observation will have to do for now, as I need to go to school to do some admin work this afternoon in my role as chair of the department. 🙂
But w/r/t our discussion here, it’s perfectly possible, and indeed perhaps likely, that we are both talking past each other AND have deep political differences!
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Good point! Inclusive ‘or’…
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I’m going to close comments now. The post has been up for a week, and the discussion seems to have run its course. If anyone has something to add to it which they feel is truly important, please get in touch with me and I can see about re-opening the discussion.
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I’m re-opening comments temporarily, as some readers have expressed the desire to add a few more considerations.
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Thanks for briefly re-opening, Catarina. I appreciate it.
First, I want to suggest that most of us typically at least mostly agree with Leiter that there are not normally special “collegial” duties that apply to people, merely because they are in the same field, that would rule out a lawsuit in a case like this. I believe he was largely right on this in his original posts (and updates) on the matter, here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/12/carrie-jenkins-boycott-statement-september-falsehoods.html To see the point, consider that we don’t think that one lawyer or doctor or whatever can’t sue another one because of “collegial” obligations, do we? It seems dubious to me to think that something more applies in the case of philosophers who do not know each other, don’t work in the same university or even field, etc. If that’s so, then the general claim for “collegiality” being relied on here doesn’t seem so plausible. And, if Leiter’s approach is “uncollegial”, than it seems that the same charge easily applies to the behavior of Jenkins and others, if Leiter’s claims are true.
Secondly, and, I think, less controversially, Protevi and Koepsell are presenting a very distorted idea of arbitration and mediation in comments and tweets by Koespell above. (Koepsell at least ought to know this, as a lawyer, though whether he does or not isn’t clear to me from what he writes.) Both of these methods of dispute resolution are non-judical, in the sense that the decision reached isn’t reached by a judge, but work at all only because they are backed by the law. This is especially so in the case of arbitration. (One of my areas of legal expertise is international business transactions, where arbitration is very important. It would not be important if there were not courts standing behind it, but there are.) In arbitration, parties agree (typically via legally enforceable contracts) to use non-judicial means to settle a dispute. But, very importantly, that decision is then legally and judicially enforceable. It’s only because of this that arbitration is used at all. So, it’s highly misleading to present it as a “non-legal” method of dispute resolution, as Protevi and Koepsell do in the comments. Mediation is a bit more tricky, but that’s because it’s more voluntary. Usually what happens is that, after a suit has been filed, parties agree to mediation, where they try to reach an agreement outside of court, with the help of a mediator (who is often appointed by the court.) After they reach an agreement, it is approved by a court, and the agreement is then legally enforceable, just as a judgment in court would be. If they parties cannot reach an agreement in mediation, the suit continues just as before. So, again, it’s at least highly misleading to present this as a non-legal means of settling disputes. Even the method of having “mom” settle disputes among kids that Koepsell suggests in a tweet has it’s law-like qualities. If I recall from growing up, we’d do what mom said at least largely because we knew that we’d get in trouble if we didn’t, so even there, we had a law-like entity standing behind the decision. (And, of course, adults can’t appeal to “mom”, making the point spurious as well.) Given all of this, I think that, at best, Protevi and Koepsell are pretty much completely wrong, and offering a highly misleading, at best, presentation, and that Leiter’s claim about the law here is pretty much correct.
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Look, BL made an over-broad and demonstrably false statement when he claimed that lawsuits or the law in general are the only civilized method of resolving disputes. Mediation and arbitration have pre- or extralegal roots in social reality, and my examples demonstrate both (an arbitrator serves like a judge, like mom, whereas a mediator finds middle ground). Regardless of their current legal uses, these extralegal phenomena occur all the time, and most civilized disputes are resolved without recourse to law or lawyers, thankfully.
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And actually, non-binding arbitration is NOT legally enforceable, as you probably know.
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Matt makes an empirical claim as to the typicality of his intuition that Leiter does not violate a disciplinary collegiality obligation with his threat of a lawsuit. I disagree that his intuition is widely shared; I make a contrary empirical claim that Leiter’s threats here are very widely seen as non-collegial.
Given this situation of conflicting empirical claims I suggest a poll that would provide evidence for which of us is right.
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Friendly amendment to John’s proposal for a poll: ask whether people approve or disapprove of the threat of litigation in these circumstances, instead of whether or not it is collegial, unless disagreement over the meaning of collegiality is an essential part of the empirical question, in which case, carry on.
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