As the Dutch news is now reporting, this week several of my colleagues in my department and faculty have received anonymous death threats and antisemitic hostility because they politely protested a student group's invitation to Jordan Peterson (here's an English version). (One of the targets, Polly Pallister-Wilkens, shared some of the threats on twitter.) For those of you who care about such matters: there was no suggestion to rescind the invitation or to prevent the student group from hosting him. One public letter did propose adding a critical speaker/respondent to the event. (In his measured response, Peterson called his critics,‘cowards, denouncers and totalitarian wannabes’.) I did not sign any of the letters because I do not wish to contribute to Peterson's branding strategy, which clearly relies on courting and escalating such controversy.
Unlike such events Stateside, the event was organized by a non-partisan student group, which has a strong preference for captains of industry, celebrity academics [sic], and political insiders. The regular series started during the financial crisis with a sense of urgency, but the interviews have generally become utterly anodyne, and the main benefit it provides, I think, is a networking opportunity for the students involved. Because it is so regular, and devoid of irony, the series gives a nice window into the public thinking of the social elites of Holland (and Europe). One day a historical sociologist will find it very useful record.
That criticism of a Peterson-event would lead to threats ought not surprise anybody who has a twitter account. Predictably, the cheerleaders of Peterson in the Dutch press ignore the death threats and attack my colleagues for being critics of free speech (etc.) [and routinely conflate free speech and the various (note the plural) academic missions of the university (something I have blogged a bit about, recall , say, here, here, here. here, here, and here.)] I use 'predictably' because Peterson is not the first to produce death threats in his wake. Other colleagues in my department, most of us are rather old-fashioned Weberian social scientists (with expertise on populism, migration, refugees, political trust, elections, communication, gender, etc.), have received threatening e-mails when certain right-wing Dutch websites report on them.
A few years ago I signed a letter protesting Dutch policy change on refugees. Readers of an extreme-right site then nominated all us for a list of traitors. (In our case, the proposed punishment was not death but a one-way ticket to an insane asylum, after the revolution.)
My first taste in such matters occurred much longer ago, in 2010, when I tried to publish a (road-to-serfdom inspired) piece about the rise of Geert Wilders, in which I claimed he was a consequence of the corruption of the rule of law among Dutch political elites. No Dutch mainstream outlet was willing to take the piece. I then self-published it at NewAPPS, An entrepreneurial friend then advertised a Dutch version on Google, and the piece went viral in the then still somewhat underground world of alt/extreme right websites.* For a few weeks I got anonymous emails with loads of threats and antisemitic slogans. Most were too vague to really concern me. Because we had a newborn child I decided to keep quiet. We did not need more stress.
One letter was different. It was articulate and signed by a real person, who introduced himself as a business owner. I responded to his letter, and we had a surprisingly amicable correspondence about my argument and Dutch politics. That exchange petered out.
Either way, public interventions on certain topics can lead to anonymous harassment or intimidation. This is true even in professional philosophy (recall this post).** It is no surprise that awareness of this mechanism leads to anticipatory forms of self-censorship and second-guessing. Did I not sign because because I do not wish to contribute to Peterson's branding strategy or did I want to stay below the radar of local hotheads? Mill wrote that "unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions," but I think he missed that unmeasured vituperation will create a prevailing opinion because it deters people from professing contrary opinions.
In my environment, grant agencies and university presidents want public impact. But they do nothing to protect their employees against the intimidation or help them navigate law enforcement issues. (I'd love to hear otherwise.) So, there is much room for despair. Left to our own devices, we respond by caring for each other and acknowledging to each other that this side of the job exists.
My own response to these developments has been to study how to be a public thinker (even wrote a book about it), to ignore most anonymous commentary, and to become more strategic about my public interventions. I have already shared (recall) my general strategy on public philosophy, and I would reiterate how important is to plan one's public interventions with some worst-case advance planning. But the reality of being in an environment, a culture really, of permanent harassment directed at academics who do not conform to the routine vitriol directed against refugees, immigrants, and Muslims (etc.), and who defend rule of law against authoritarianism meant that I speak less to a wider public (fewer editorials, fewer public events, etc.) and aim to communicate more directly with decision-makers, opinion-makers, or educations (like you).+ I tell myself this also fits my academic personality better.
I admire my courageous colleagues who keep serving the public publicly. Perhaps, my prudence is adaptive, or base cowardice.
*Amazingly, now the original Dutch piece is only preserved on one of those sites.
**This blog routinely gets attempted comments by people fearful to share their name. It is my sense most worry about the responses of tenured left-radicals, but a few also worry about the anonymous underground philoso-bros-who-know-they-deserve-better-employment-than-you.
+I still sign my name to public petitions!
Comments