BY BIKO MANDELA GRAY, LORI LATRICE MARTIN, AND STEPHEN C. FINLEY
“Hello?”
The number on the caller ID is an unfamiliar one, but you know the area code; recently, you gave a job talk in that area or submitted your tenure or promotion portfolio. And so, you hope that this is the phone call—that phone call for which you’ve been working for the last six, seven, eight, maybe even nine, years.
It’s the phone call to which you’ve devoted innumerable hours in the library, the field site, or the lab. If you have access to healthcare, this is the phone call that has made all of those hours on the therapist’s couch worth it.
It’s the phone call that has regulated your behavior; you’ve endured various microaggressions and sometimes outright verbal and symbolic violence in the hopes that this call would come.
It’s the call that confirms that maybe, just maybe, hard work does pay off.
You respond. “Yes, this is me.” And indeed, it is that phone call. The chair of the committee is “happy to announce that the department has offered you the position,” or “the university has granted you tenure,” or “the university has made you a full professor.” You smile. You are thankful. Even if this is one of many of these kinds of calls, you nevertheless feel blessed; not everyone gets this chance.
You tell your friends, and after you’ve worked out all of the details, you post to social media that you are proud to announce your position or promotion. The likes pour in. Your “friends,” both real and digital, are happy for you; they congratulate you, and wish you well.
You are happy. But you know this is a gift, so you work hard/er to establish or maintain the rigor that made such achievement possible. You’re working hard—too hard, probably—but it doesn’t matter. Things are looking up.
Until they find out about that tweet, that podcast that you forgot about, that lecture you delivered, that article you wrote with the provocative title, or that Facebook thread…..
Then comes the email or call from the chair of your department, or the dean, maybe even the provost or university president. This is serious.
People, named and anonymous, or pseudonymous, have made your administrators aware of your words, which are in the public sphere now.
You thought that what you said was self-evident. The data supported it. It was theoretically sound.
Now come the threats to your livelihood because your administrators are concerned about “inclusion,” “discrimination,” “bias,” and the protection of academic values, which they say you violated.
And then the death threats….
You thought academic freedom and the right to free speech protected you.
Apparently, they do not.
***
This happens all too often. Maybe it has happened to you. Perhaps it has happened to us. Some of it.
We write about this in our article, “‘Affirming Our Values’: African American scholars, White Virtual Mobs, and the Complicity of White University Administrators,” in the Journal of Academic Freedom, and we talked about this article in a recent podcast entitled “On Not Affirming Our Values.”
By “affirming values,” these white administrators actually operate in a form of bad faith; for, more often than not, these faculty members were hired and promoted because of their critical work on racism and discrimination. This violence isn’t only physical or symbolic. We argue that this kind of public castigation amounts to nothing less than an assault on academic freedom.
Black professors unwittingly find themselves the subject of what we call white virtual mobs in the course of simply doing their jobs. Likewise, black professors find themselves on “watchlists,” conservative sites, and message boards, branded as racists and/or baited through a process commonly referred to as phishing into discussions that appear academic in nature only to find their tweets, words, and scholarship used against them to fuel the flames of an anti-intellectual and anti-black fervor.
Since the white virtual mobs that fuel and feed on the fervor rely on white administrators, who often give them legitimacy by disciplining black scholars or by remaining “neutral,” scholars are compelled to mark this relationship, making it visible. Some white scholars experience threats, too, when their work is critical of whiteness. Then, they have a temporary glimpse into the life experience of black scholar.
Unfortunately, when administrators at PWIs affirm the values of white virtual mobs by failing to condemn their violence and threats, they simultaneously undervalue or altogether negate the value of other groups–namely individuals who are members of historically disadvantaged groups.
Guest blogger Biko Mandela Gray is assistant professor of religion at Syracuse University. Guest blogger Lori Latrice Martin is professor in the department of sociology and African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University. Guest blogger Stephen C. Finley is associate professor of religious studies and African and African American Studies and director of the African and African American Studies Program at Louisiana State University.
The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. The Journal is published online annually, and is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.
I encourage everyone to read the full Journal of Academic Freedom essay. However, I don’t see any evidence that administrators “constitute important structural support in the violent functioning of white virtual mobs” if they criticize a controversial professor’s comments. These mobs usually are driven by right-wing ideologues, who care little about the vague comments by administrators. But there is a danger that official statements by a college can make students and faculty leery of expressing similar ideas. That’s why an outspoken rejection of violence and threats (and criminal investigation of them), but a neutrality toward ideas, is usually the best approach for a college dealing with controversial professors.
The right-wing National Association of Scholars has been calling for the University of Chicago to speak out in defense of Rachel Fulton Brown because of accusations of racism against her. https://www.nas.org/articles/an_open_letter_for_a_besieged_academic
I don’t think universities should be defending or denouncing professors due to criticism of their offensive ideas.
I think it is clearly wrong to say that white administrators “give them [white virtual mobs] legitimacy by disciplining black scholars or by remaining ‘neutral,…’” To equate discipline (which is a very serious violation of academic freedom) with “remaining ‘neutral’” (which is an entirely proper response of a university) is a terrible mistake.
I agree that white administrators can often be biased and that radical black scholars can often be the targets of condemnations by these administrators. But that’s a reason to call for colleges to denounce violence against anyone and otherwise remain neutral on the content of expression by professors.
This is an important debate, and one that appears on surface as well-intentioned on both sides. My question would be whether it is racial or class bias that fuels virtual mobs. For instance, if a black administrator overlooks the concerns of white NTT faculty who are struggling, is that.because of race or class?
What is at least clear here is that all academics should assume that when they try to assert academic freedom in their individual roles as faculty, they should expect some kind of virtual mob at some point in whatever career they manage to have. It’s a tough business.
given the often knee-jerk support for free speech absolutism seen frequently on this blog, I am glad to see this piece here. i find myself typically on a different side of these matters than John K. Wilson, and here again, where it appears the free speech rights of bigots are more important than making it possible for members of those groups historically disenfranchised by universities to become part of them. free speech has been weaponized by the right, and by corporations, and the idea that it is absolute and more important than all other rights is far more historically and locally specific than Wilson wants to grant. I urge others to look at states that have more balanced approaches to these topics (Canada, post-apartheid South Africa): it is possible to balance free speech as a fundamental democratic right with other rights such as dignity and equality. the problem with free speech absolutism is that it fundamentally derogates other rights as lesser ones. those who have drafted constitutions in the past 50 or so years have recognized this thinking and incorporated it into their legal structures; in the US we see what happens when we pretend that somehow absolute free speech trickles down into all the other rights we care about. it doesn’t, and it too many ways it contradicts other rights we care about when taken to the extreme.
I also wish Prof. Wilson would do some soul-searching, and think about the appearance of himself as a white man jumping immediately on this site to disagree with the work of 4 minority professors. this is a pattern. it does not look good, and it does not look good because it fits with many other patterns.
one minor quibble about the Rachel Fulton Brown story, and if I have my details wrong I apologize; they may have changed since I last looked in on it. The requests I heard were for the University of Chicago to distance itself from statements that Brown made on what appear to be official University of Chicago websites maintained by her Department, branded with the U-Chicago logo, and on their servers. This makes her hateful statements appear to be endorsed by the University. Unless Wilson and others believe that human beings are incapable of distinguishing between racist hate and other forms of expression–in which case universities should also be compelled to post encomia to Hitler and Mussolini should a professor choose to post them–i see absolutely no conflict with academic freedom in Chicago distancing itself from such statements and even removing them from its websites. This does not restrict Prof. Brown’s “freedom” to have herself photographed with Milo Yiannapolous or express far-right white supremacist views, but it does suggest that the University has a duty to uphold core values and no duty to give what appears to be institutional backing to forces that have literally terrorized people in the US for hundreds of years.
Whether Brown could or should be disciplined or admonished or even fired for her views is a far more complex question, but whether Chicago has the right and even the duty to remove hateful material from its own websites is, in my ethical view, pretty clear.
i also feel I must add that as sympathetic as I am with AAUP principles and as much as I attempt to rely on them and follow them (hence my frequent reading of this blog), the knee-jerk absolutism of Prof. Wilson in particular prevents me from joining AAUP, and I would imagine prevents many others from doing so. I hope those inside of AAUP who have a more nuanced view of the role of free speech in the panoply of human rights will consider doing the hard work of coming up with something better than what I can’t help but call “free speech uber alles.” and this is not just a barb: anyone who believes in that absolutism needs to do themselves the favor of reading right-wing reddit, Daily Stormer, Breitbart, and so on to see how intensely the right has now for years taken free speech absolutism even more than second amendment absolutism as its philosophical core. When “our” slogans and principles are the same as those of Nazis, some serious self-examination is in order.
I find this argument bizarre. You complain that no one involved with the AAUP is critical of free speech—on an AAUP blog post about an AAUP journal publishing an article agreeing with you. You should support the AAUP because you support their principles. If you are really rejecting the AAUP because it refuses to ban people like me from expressing our views, I suspect you don’t really support the AAUP’s principles. As for the notion that we should reject free speech because some Nazis pretend to endorse it, that makes no sense. If a Nazi says we must endorse Dr. King’s “content of their character” idea and ban affirmative action, would you reject Dr. King and everything he stands for? Or should we eliminate the right to protest because some Nazis support it?
Technically, I’m not a free speech absolutist, I’m a free speech extremist, since I do support some very specific limits on free speech (threats, harassment, fraud). I have absolutely no hesitation criticizing anyone I disagree with, including minority professors, even if it is a “pattern” that “does not look good” (whatever it is you’re insinuating). The overwhelming majority of my writing has been devoted to attacking white men (including three books devoted to exclusively criticizing a white man and often showing why he’s racist), but I’m happy to criticize anyone.
You regard censorship as a zero-sum competition: If we censor Nazis more than our side gets censored, then we win. I regard any censorship of our side as a disaster, and censorship of the other side as accomplishing no good result. Thus, I want to see free speech for everyone protected. I think human rights are something we need to expand, not balance against each other. You think that human rights are also a zero-sum competition: If we are only willing to sacrifice some human rights, like free speech, we can expand other human rights such as non-discrimination. I disagree. I think free speech in general protects other human rights.
Great work! #DriversView