On Being Complicit with Sexual Predators

Peter Ludlow is one of the few contemporary elite professional philosophers that has distinguished himself by using his analytical skills in high profile, national media in order to clarify and interpret the significance of the expansion of the national security state, the unjust demonization of "Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden," and the fate of a journalist that has exposed the corruption of the rule of law.*

Yesterday, many in my profession, academic philosophy, learned that Ludlow is mentioned in a shocking federal lawsuit against Northwestern University. According to reports the suit claims that the school mishandled a student's complaint "that a professor sexually attacked her after getting her drunk in 2012."--The Chicago Tribune. According to the suit the university's Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention had found that after investigating, that "Ludlow “engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances,” including “sleeping with his arms on and around (the student) on the night of February 10-11.”"--The Daily Northwestern. (The most detailed account of the suit's version of events can be found in the Evanston Review.)

I hope that the case is not settled prematurely, so that undisputed facts will be revealed during the court proceedings or through investigative reporting. 

How a story is framed makes a huge difference. Above I focused on the features in Ludlow's profile that have made him a source of admiration to me.

The Chicago Tribune, which lets its readers imagine that it is of national importance, writes: "Her accusations shine a light on the sometimes tricky issues for universities facing sex crime allegations." The newspaper goes on to connect the event to the highest political levels: the "Obama administration has stepped up efforts to hold schools accountable and to draw greater awareness of campus sex assault in the wake of several high-profile cases," including those involved in national college sports. The Tribune hints at the fact that university administrations often invoke 'privacy' concerns in order to protect their own reputations rather than to protect their students.

 

By contrast, The Daily Northwestern and the Evanston Review both treat the story as a local campus, human interest event. For example, the Evanston Review reports (presumably from the suit) that "The professor remained on campus and the student ran into him several times, bringing on anxiety that rendered her unable to leave her home, she claims."

All three newspaper accounts mention that Ludlow is a philosopher in passing. (Chicago's NBC5 affiliate omits that.) The Daily Northwestern uses its campus familiarity to add the only (so far) undisputed fact about Ludlow's case: "he is teaching two 300-level philosophy classes this quarter." (UPDATE: this may have changed already.)

Within professional philosophy, the story is interpreted through a pre-existing, intense increasingly disciplinary-wide discussion about the hostile work climate for women in academic philosophy and the systematic pattern of excluding women (and other minorities). A dedicated group, feministphilosophers, has done a lot of work educating the profession on the problems and proposed ways to address it. Over the last year this discussion has spilled into wider media. Just this past week (recall) there was discussion of a report by American Philosophical Association Committee's on the Status of Women (CSW), Site Visit Program that found that one of the leading departments of philosophy (Boulder) "maintains an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior." The very last remark points to a wider issue of un-collegiality and fierce intellectual boundary policing that (I suggested) may well be endemic to my academic tradition.

A few months ago the Leiter Reports announced that "Peter Ludlow (philosophy of language, mind, cognitive science, & linguistics), Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where he will also have an appointment in and serve as Director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science." Within professional philosophy Rutgers is widely considered one of the very best, elite departments. I only met Ludlow once, when I was visited Santa Barbara (fall 2011), where he gave a very impressive, invited departmental talk on his research about and in linguistics.** As his Wikipedia page reveals, he has contributed to debates within epistemology, metaphysics, and logic--all subjects central to our self-understanding as a technical discipline. He has also pioneered philosophical reflection on cyber-culture, which has brought him wide recognition outside professional philosophy. Within the profession, he has been praised as an early important mentor by a leading philosopher.

In short, Ludlow is a significant participant to a lot of what is the very best in contemporary, professional philosophy. He has shown himself worthy of admiration by taking politically dangerous moral stances in public. The suit against Northwestern university alleges that he has ruined the life of a young journalism major. I hope the trial exonerates him fully; I want him to continue to be a leading voice of integrity in America's public affairs. But if what she says is true, then, while we are not named in the suit, we in professional philosophy are complicit in a horrible crime because we have done too little to late to discourage sexual predators from flourishing in our midst.

The Department maintains an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior. - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/02/the-irretrievable-shame-of-professional-philosophy.html#more

The Department maintains an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior. - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/02/the-irretrievable-shame-of-professional-philosophy.html#more

The Department maintains an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior. - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/02/the-irretrievable-shame-of-professional-philosophy.html#morea pattern of exluding women (and other minorities) in which cases of sexual harrasment by senior males are

 

 

*I praised Peter Ludlow for this in public, called attention to how he wrote about the Manning case at the Huff Post, and wrote him a private note about his blogging at Leiter Reports.

** Invited department lectures are often themselves an important expression of one's status/recognition. After his talk, I wrote him to re-express my criticism of some features of linguistics (that he seemed to be defending), but he never responded.

Comments

[Ole Koksvik]

I find the last claim plausible, but wish it was backed up by more argument, or at least surrounded by more reflection. Feels like a lot of setting up, and then we're left hanging once the punch-line arrives.

[Eric Schliesser]

Do we still need arguments for the conclusion?
Recall this post:
http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/07/sexism-in-philosophy-or-the-everybody-did-it-tedi-syndrome-or-hiding-in-the-herd-hith-mentality.html

[David Wallace]

Eric: complicity in sexual discrimination is very different from complicity in sexual assault. I don't think the conclusions of your NewAPPS post (e.g., about how insiders benefit from it) hold up under substitution. (Which is not to say that there are no connections between the two.)

[Eric Schliesser]

David, why wouldn't it hold up under substitution? I am coming to believe that sexual harassment and sexual assault are among the means by which sexual discrimination is caused in the profession. (I am not claiming it is most important proximate cause.)

[David Wallace]

I had a quick go at writing this up properly but I can't do it quickly and I'm short of time; if you think it does work then fair enough. In the abstract, I suppose: I understand how your intentionally abstract framework is instantiated in the discrimination/underrepresentation case, not in the assault case; I also think it's much harder to make the case for a pattern of sexual assault, whereas underrepresentation is easy to demonstrate. And I don't think I can be said to benefit, net, from a high level of sexual assault in my institution, given that there's some probably in any instance that it will be someone known well to me and that that will be both traumatic and time-consuming.

[Ruth Groff]

I understood Eric to be saying that everyone who is not organizing-against is complicit-in in that there is an environment of endemic sexism in place that facilitates sexual harassment (and which sexual harassment and assault play a role in reinforcing). The idea that men as a group (an artificial, abstraction of a group, since at a minimum "men" doesn't take race into account) -- the idea that men as a group benefit from the largely unacknowledged/denied environment (including, thereby from the mechanisms through which it is enacted and reproduced) seems different from the idea that men as a group benefit from those rare cases when there is a public accusation. I don't know what I think about the latter scenario. But even that is different from the issue of whether any one man will be upset by it, I think.

[Ole Koksvik]

Err, yes, we do. For one, you don't restrict the 'we' at all, and you obviously should, since some actually do stuff, even if collectively it's too little too late.

[Alex Guerrero]

A small point: "ruined the life of a young journalism major" is not how I'd put it. Horribly mistreated, wronged, harmed. But let's hope her life has much left to it, and that it is not "ruined." (The suit does not actually allege this, does it?)

[Eric Schliesser]

Alex, if you read the descriptions in the reports, her life is ruined. Hopefully, it won't stay so. (I didn't write her 'whole life.')