• Mentally Ill Lesbian Prof. Avital Ronell And The Lie of The Feminist Ac

    From Deplorable Redneck@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 23 10:10:47 2018
    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/
     

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