It is never a good idea to start an argument with a logical fallacy. This would appear to be an argument from authority, but in reverse:
"What standing does Herman have to write on this topic? He appears to be a scholar of the Renaissance. I am confident that if Inside Higher Ed sought to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Jessica Krug’s decision to pass as Black, you could have found any number of scholars who specialize in ethnic studies or fields more closely related to contemporary race identification questions."
22 comments:
Much of this concern about whether or not a piece should ever have been published comes, I think, from the misconception that the publication of an essay causes a certain number of people to believe what it says, rather than merely occasioning them to think about it.
The people who worry about "standing" might, of course, generally believe everything they read and are therefore outraged when the next thing they read causes them to change their minds again. I can see why that would be exhausting. But they need to learn both how to read and how to think.
It's a crappy piece.
...he really misunderstands the scholarship on this. That is why standing. It's uninformed, misled and misleading.
I don't have the standing he does in Shakespeare studies.
I still the rebuttal would be stronger without the reverse appeal to authority. Then what gets debated is whether someone has standing to engage in the debate at all.
It's that it is such oxygen thievery. That would be fine if the piece were anywhere up to date or were not a rehearsal of dumb faux common sense that has been widely and publicly rebutted before. The question is why IHE chose this as their op-ed on the Krug issue. That's why the letter writer asked this.
I'm friends with the author of this IHE piece, by the way. He's a good guy but he has his retro moments. The ignorance in this piece appalling, and the request that this respondent rebut instead of asking why it was published is amazingly arrogant. Rather than deign to look at the huge body of work that exists, you require one MORE patient response to this kind of fatuous argument. Is your objective to finally learn, or is it simply to exhaust the explainers?
This New Yorker piece on the issue is much more interesting. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-layered-deceptions-of-jessica-krug-the-black-studies-professor-who-hid-that-she-is-white
Also Margaret Soltan and her commenters, although telegraphic, and give some context re what Peter's home context.
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=64768
It's unclear to me what scholarship Herman gets wrong. I don't doubt that there is scholarship on these issues (and that he's probably out of step with it), but is an opinion piece in IHE a contribution to "scholarship"? Should our opinions as citizens (and even academics) be constrained by the available range of opinion in the research communities that claim expertise on the subject we're thinking about?
Compare: I have opinions about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. I have no standing in the field and I'm aware of a number of points where I break with the received wisdom of SETI researchers. Should I not be able to express my opinions (e.g., that it's a waste of science funding) in a place like IHE? Should the first move in a critique of my views be to point out that I have no "standing" in the field?
The IHE does not a particularly high standard, and publishes ridiculous pieces (along with some more solid ones) from a wide variety of perspectives. I wouldn't expect to find pieces of New Yorker caliber there. I've been called arrogant numerous times before, but I will always have that reaction to this particular argument, and not just about this issue. It sounds like the letter writing is saying that IHE should represent only the consensus of those who think contemporary identity politics is great.
I've seen other articles that say that the Krug case shows "white privilege." Here's a white woman who shows women of color the right way of doing things, accusing them of not being radical enough and performing the boricua identity as a caricature, with phony accent and a performative way of "dressing the part." From the opposite perspective, I've seen the argument that her imposture shows the emptiness of identity politics in the first place. What everyone agrees about is that she is a horrible person. The video of her justifying the gang murder of a teenager is absolutely chilling.
It's a low standard even for IHE -- not that the protest letter is well written.
But about the oxygen thievery: it may be that you two don't recognize that Peter's piece voices, once again, various of the standard and by now fairly belligerent misconceptions on these things. Here's what one of our smart friends said on it:
"I'm not sure who the 'we' is here. The use of the collective pronoun seems to imply that the 'contradiction' here is something that simply needs to be 'resolved' or settled in some way. Er, what? At present, 'we' as a nation are confronted with a president who uses racist dogwhistles. And massive protests over the disproportionate use of deadly force against Black citizens (protests which are being used by the administration to justify its 'law and order' rhetoric that only heralds *more* such violence). These are things that 'really matter' to a lot of people who wouldn't share or concede the author's sense of what is 'real.' 'We' can't resolve these issues simply by straightening out definitions or resolving 'contradictions.' I've seen this odd recourse to positivism a lot these days, and frankly I think one of its main functions is to assert narrative control and possession and authority as well as to assert an apparently 'balanced' and 'objective' middle ground against radicals on both sides, rather than to think both critically and historically about issues and experiences of race. It's a form of condescension. The conflation of white supremacists and progressives here on functional-definitional grounds stems from the illusion/fallacy that their 'definitions' are formally alike and so they are therefore factually and substantively and socially equivalent. It's just not a good argument."
I think voicing misconceptions is generally a good use of oxygen. They are presumably a defining characteristic of the "them" that our friend can't find room for in the national "we".
At the risk of sounding pedantic, Herman isn't conflating progressives and white supremacists. He's just comparing them.
I don't think anyone is proposing to resolve anything simply by logical analysis. But pointing out a contradiction (as we see it) is a very ordinary move in a discussion. Certainly, someone who is unbothered by a contradiction shouldn't be put off by a little conflation?
And I don't see the workable alternative. What happens when we take away Herman's oxygen? Do his misconceptions "simply" suffocate?
I think the best idea is for everyone to air their views.
PS. I found that last remark about "Kwame" irritating. Herman had correctly used the author name on the paper he was citing. The idea that not keeping up with a scholar's identity work is "sloppy" and probably "racist" feels very "there but for the grace of God go I" to me.
I've run into this with one scholar who had recently decided to be non-binary (they/them), but who had in the past received a prize for distinguished women scholars at "her" (at the time) institution and was still referred to by "she" on he department's website. Offense was still taken when someone failed to gender them properly in print.
Appiah goes by Kwame Anthony Appiah. I know he wasn't using his first name in 1985 but he has done consistently for years now. It's not considered polite to refuse to recognize the names / genders the person in question is themself using.
Well, Herman *did* air a view, and this letter writer objected. IHE asks that people write letters to the editor rather than comment on posts. I suppose they or someone could have asked for a space for rebuttal but his piece is boring, it's a kind of laundry list of the things anti affirmative action guys always say, and it's written when they're about to get an ethnic studies requirement at Peter's place, so you can see why he's upset, but it's just not very interesting to once again make those explanations to some condescending...person.
The Krug case itself is more interesting, although I wrote a pretty good post on Peter's thing here, with some help from my friends. https://profacero.blog/2020/09/27/what-i-have-to-say-about-that/ But I think the Krug problem is a problem of "diversity" in its neoliberal version, and could stand a lot of comment from that point of view.
The sticking point here is whether the letter writer objects to the view or its airing. The letter writer chose to begin with the latter. It would have been better to say something like what you've been saying here, i.e., that these are tired ideas that are easily rebutted with strong arguments made elsewhere.
These arguments can be cited. And then everyone is smarter, including the (presumably many) people who share Herman's views, having not looked at the relevant scholarship either. It's the sighing over even having to correct people that I find tiresome. The more familiar a misconception is, the more matter of factly we should counter it. It should become easier every time we do it. We should become better at it.
I don't think Herman refused to do anything. He simply wasn't aware. We're allowed to cite the work of people whose current life projects we're not following. I agree that it reveals his lack of "standing" in whatever community has been aware of his preferences for years, I just don't think it's fair to call him either "sloppy" or "racist" for referring to an author by the name he put on the work Herman was citing. Or for that matter to characterize his usage here as a "refusal", or a failure to be "polite".
It is *the* piece IHE put out on that topic and it's legitimate to ask IHE why they put out that particular piece, why they were rehearsing this particular set of stale talking points and misconceptions.
The Krug case *is* fascinating and it *is* problematic that universities have gone for corporate style "diversity" but rescinded affirmative action. Peter confuses certain kinds of corporate policies with actual civil rights work and also legal and other scholarship, and he dismisses it all with the right-wing slur "wokeism." It is clear he isn't interested in untangling these things, and the real question is why IHE is promoting this confusion, what their agenda is.
The slur "wokeism" is meant and commonly used to disable the matter-of-fact countering you recommend. This is a key problem in his piece and with the idea that one should patiently engage him on these issues.
Hermann is a full professor of English, not in modern literature, but still. Kwame Anthony Appiah is exceedingly well known, including way out of discipline (I'm in Spanish). The article Peter cites from 1985 is classic, and he is citing Appiah because he is classic and very very well known -- as in, Presidential lectures, etc., where all faculty meet the person.) It is highly unlikely P. does not know the name Appiah has used the last 30 years, although this was a weird citation situation and perhaps the letter writer was mean to pick at this.
We lost sight of an important part of Jonathan's argument. It wasn't so much the objection to publication, but the objection on the basis of "standing" that was the issue. In a sense, all very critical "letters to the editor" are asking, "Why did you publish this crap?" (In a sense, Jonathan is saying they shouldn't have published the letter.) But there's a difference between saying that the piece is bad and saying that the author is unqualified to write on the subject.
I always think of the disclaimer that preceded Ezra Pound's broadcasts from Rome: "In accordance with the Fascist policy of free expression of opinion for those who are qualified to hold it..." (or something like that).
Bringing in Pound is not the best step here... ?!
I never said they shouldn't have published the letter. I just said I disagreed with this particular style of argumentation. Letter writers are free to use any argument they want, and the the publication can do what it wants with the letters it receives.
Of course, the argument can be made that the badness of the original piece is evidence that the writer is unqualified. For example, I draw conclusions from a mistaken definition of musical terms that the author of a book doesn't know about music. But I would not START by saying someone has no standing to write about music. It might be a subtle difference.
Publishers ask about standing all the time. Every time I've ever sent out a book proposal they have wanted to see a vita. Most op-eds I see are by people with expertise in what they're talking about.
To be clear, I find the unintentional irony of the fascist policy amusing. I don't invoke Pound as an authority on free speech.
I take back the point that there's a sense in which a critique of a published piece of work (including a letter to the editors) is always also a critique of the editors who decided to publish it. The "sense in which" probably isn't helpful here.
The difference we're discussing is indeed subtle, but important, and I lean to Jonathan's side on it.
"You have no standing in the field," is obviously an ad hominem. But it's sometimes legitimate -- as in the case of deciding whether or not to publish your book. I seems to me that Herman was here just expressing his views and was in principle open to being corrected on the substance. The dismissal of his views on "standing" was inappropriate and not constructive.
And I do think the editors of IHE should have told the letter writer to go after the ball, not the man. They could even have made that a condition of publishing the letter. As it stands, they let her suggest he's a racist. Of course, she's right that there are obvious weaknesses in Herman's piece that could also have been caught before publication.
So we're just talking about two flawed pieces that got through an imperfect editorial process. That's why I prefer to let the "why was this even published?" question remain implicit. It's a waste of oxygen, I guess.
As I say, when you dismiss a good century of scholarship as "wokeism," particularly with that word, you're explicitly signaling your disrespect. Then there was this careful, yet uninformed / insincere effort to cover all bases, look "objective," while willfully misconstruing the very texts to which he referred.
As I say, I'm friends with him and wouldn't say he "is a racist." But he makes a racist argument in this piece.
Anyone can write an op-ed about anything, sure. It is still odd that something as visible as IHE would choose an op-ed this ill informed as their sole one on the Krug case.
Maybe I'm being too charitable in my reading, but doesn't he affirm the Du Bois-Appiah tradition (not to mention the Shakespeare-MLK tradition) to challenge "contemporary wokeism", which he does not identify with a body of scholarship, but a popular movement that seems to have forgotten the tradition of (anti-essentialist) scholarship that inspires it, and which it often explicitly invokes (while seemingly ignoring its anti-essentialism)?
Again, I don't know enough about this tradition to say he's right it, but to say he "dismisses" a century of scholarship as wokeism seems unfair to me. He is clearly making a distinction between the "science [that] backs up literature, sociology and philosophy" and the activism that seems (to him) to have misunderstood it. It's only the later that he calls "wokeism".
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