XPost: school.teachers, ny.syr, alt.politics.obama
XPost: soc.women
When law and philosophy prof Brian Leiter revealed academic and
feminist superstar Judith Butler’s disgraceful and flagrantly
hypocritical letter defending her sister superstar, NYU prof
Avital Ronell, I was ready to pull the trigger. I have a post,
dated June 13, 2018, fully written, but never published. I knew
something Leiter didn’t.
At the time the Butler letter was sent around for signatures,
threatening NYU with the wrath of scholars if Ronell wasn’t
exonerated, the university had already found Ronell responsible.
The only remaining question was what to do about it, one of the
university’s brightest academic lights had sexually harassed a
gay male student under her care.
This wasn’t one of the faux Title IX cases of post-hoc regret,
but the real deal. Ronell was grad student Nimrod Reitman’s
doctoral adviser. He came to NYU because of her, to study under
her. And from the start of his graduate studies, she turned him
into her boy toy upon the implicit threat of destroying his
career. And it continued throughout his graduate studies, as
proven by Ronell’s emails.
Professor Avital Ronell used her academic power over Reitman to
coerce him to be her sexual plaything for years, or else.* And
the feminist academy, via Judith Butler and myriad other
signatories to a letter, demand that NYU lay off Ronell, or
else. And it’s incredible to believe that the finding of
responsibility wasn’t the impetus for the threat letter. Yet,
these scholars sought to coerce a university into silence and
impotence to conceal Ronell’s conduct.
The New York Times has the story, so there’s nothing to hold me
back now.
“Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have
all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor
Ronell,” the professors wrote in a draft letter posted on a
philosophy blog in June. “We have all seen her relationship with
students, and some of us know the individual who has waged this
malicious campaign against her.”
Critics saw the letter, with its focus on the potential damage
to Professor Ronell’s reputation and the force of her
personality, as echoing past defenses of powerful men.
“We testify to the grace, the keen wit, and the intellectual
commitment of Professor Ronell and ask that she be accorded the
dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international
standing and reputation,” the professors wrote.
What’s wasn’t known at the time Leiter posted the letter was
that Ronell “guilt” was already found. Ronell certainly knew it,
although NYU never publicly announced its findings, and then
this letter, maligning the victim, extolling the irrelevant
virtues of the abuser and threatening the school, appeared. It
was worse than Leiter imagined. It didn’t just seek to influence
the outcome, but to challenge NYU to bury Ronell’s actions or
become an academic pariah. It was an extortion letter and it’s
inconceivable that its authors and signatories, and Ronell,
didn’t realize it.
So why didn’t I post about this at the time Leitner revealed the
letter? Reitman’s lawyer, Donald Kravet, is my oldest and
dearest friend. He was the best man at my wedding. I was the
best man at his. He had consulted with me about the case well
before this happened. When Leiter blew the lid off the letter,
he ultimately decided that it wasn’t in his client’s interest to
go public with the fact that Ronell had already been held
responsible.** So I bit my tongue. Confidences are what lawyers
keep.
So now it’s out, and how do Ronell’s cronies defend her
harassment of her academic advisee?
Diane Davis, chair of the department of rhetoric at the
University of Texas-Austin, who also signed the letter to the
university supporting Professor Ronell, said she and her
colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr.
Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a
feminist.
In the minds of purported feminists, Title IX is no law
protecting against sex discrimination in academia, but a
“feminist tool.”
“I am of course very supportive of what Title IX and the #MeToo
movement are trying to do, of their efforts to confront and to
prevent abuses, for which they also seek some sort of justice,”
Professor Davis wrote in an email. “But it’s for that very
reason that it’s so disappointing when this incredible energy
for justice is twisted and turned against itself, which is what
many of us believe is happening in this case.”
For those who claim the mantle of “justice,” it’s justice for
them, not for anyone else. When one of their own gets caught
dirty, it’s justice “twisted and turned against itself,” for
justice is what these feminists want from others, not what they
do to others.
Professor Avital Ronell has been suspended for one year by NYU,
likely a deeply considered ploy by the university to impose a
punishment significant enough to create the appearance of
seriousness without invoking the wrath of feminist academia on
behalf of their beloved friend, colleague and sexual abuser.
Had this been a male professor, even a superstar, who sexually
abused a female student under his care, he would have been
immediately fired and his career obliterated to the deafening
cheers of feminist academia. But then, this isn’t about
preventing sexual abuse by scholars of their students, but a
feminist tool.
Forget the jargonized rhetoric about power dynamics and
oppression. To these feminist scholars, Title IX is just a
bludgeon to beat men into submission, and they fought to protect
one of their own from facing the consequences of her sexual
abuse. And largely succeeded.
*Reitman filed his Title IX complaint against Ronell two years
after he received his Ph.D., after he refused Ronell’s advances
and she punished him with “pro forma recommendations,” the kiss
of death in academia.
**To be clear, there were two prongs to the accusations. The
first was sexual harassment, which was undeniable based on
documentary evidence, the emails. The second was Ronell’s sexual
assault on Reitman, to which he testified in detail and was
corroborated by the emails. NYU split the baby, preferring not
to “believe the victim” as if it was merely a “he said/she said”
situation despite the corroboration by delightful emails such as:
“I woke up with a slight fever and sore throat,” she wrote in an
email on June 16, 2012, after the Paris trip. “I will try very
hard not to kiss you — until the throat situation receives
security clearance. This is not an easy deferral!” In July, she
wrote a short email to him: “time for your midday kiss. my image
during meditation: we’re on the sofa, your head on my lap,
stroking you [sic] forehead, playing softly with yr hair,
soothing you, headache gone. Yes?”
And yet, NYU found this inadequate.
The Title IX report concluded that there was not enough evidence
to find Professor Ronell responsible for sexual assault, partly
because no one else observed the interactions in his apartment
or her room in Paris.
Fire the bitch. Any heterosexual would already be unemployed.
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2018/08/14/prof-avital-ronell-and- the-lie-of-the-feminist-academy/
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)