Why I Donated to fund a Lawsuit Against a Fellow Professional Philosopher

After a tip from Feministphilosophers, I just donated a US$100 to this fundraiser to a young woman to sue the university and "the professor who sexually assaulted her." Some prominent philosophers have preceded me. I can't speak for the other donors, but I can explain why I did so, and I hope this will encourage my readers to help out, too.

Judging by the fund-raiser's description, the case-history of the victim (reported as 'case 2' in the Yale Daily News), and some asking around the accused perpetrator is a famous philosophy professor. This matters to me. As most readers of this blog know by now, I have come to believe that the systematic pattern of exclusion of women in philosophy is, in part, due to the fact that my profession has allowed a culture of harassment, sexual predating, and bullying to be reproduced from one generation to the next. While I hope that the vast majority of men in professional philosophy want nothing to do with this culture, we have been complicit in it by not speaking up and by looking the other way when the perpetrators were talented philosophers in some sense. It's easy to be outraged over harms done to powerless others; it's very hard to intervene if the harasser is  your friend or a friend's friend, especially if either is admired by your peers and superiors.* So, this has facilitated a culture of silence in which my peers and I pretend that people are 'distinguished' or 'eminent' as professionals despite these very same folk abusing professional 'success goods' for immoral ends like harassment and sexual violence as well as corrupting the norms of impartiality within the profession (recall).

In well-functioning systems of administration, friends are not put in the position that I have just described. Unfortunately, as is by now well documented, universities have a poor record defending the victims of harassment. Moreover, even when universities discipline misdeeds, universities have used privacy rules to protect perpetrators and their own reputations.

When I got nudged into my online 'activism' on such issues a few years ago, I fully expected that more senior, more prominent, more established professional philosophers (than I) would show public leadership and take over a campaign to improve the situation. As a profession we have a well-established sense of professional hierarchy; if you want a job in professional philosophy it's best to obtain your PhD in a limited number of top departments (ceterus paribus). If you want your work to be discussed in special issues of journals, it's best to have some prestigious affiliation. (Such privilege is compatible with sincere interest in the truth and with an openness to criticism and to alternative viewpoints.)

The way I used to understand the profession, the 'tone' and 'norms' of the profession are set by the top departments in the ways folk are socialized and through the many formal and informal levers of power accumulated there. Judging by my inbox, many folk in top departments are fed up with the scandalous behavior of some of their peers. Even those that do not express much concern for the victims are aware that our discipline is now lurching from one scandal to the next--an unfolding slow-motion train-wreck. But, despite such enlightened self-interest, the profession has been incapable of self-reform and to do something about it's culture of silence.

At this moment in time, lawsuits and the harsh light of publicity are the best means to destroy the culture of silence in the profession and to give everybody incentives to do the right thing (protect victims and to ensure that success goods are not abused). It's a sad fact that the victims and relative powerless are the ones that are now the best hope for reform and wisdom. But that's how the situation looks to me now. 

That's why I gave money to this appeal. If you are a professional philosopher, or a true friend of our discipline, you should, too.

 

*I am not claiming that it is impossible to intervene; nor am I suggesting that non-intervention has to be accompanied with cruelty toward the victim!

Comments

[Vernon L. Smith]

Thanks for posting this. I will contribute also.