{"id":2521,"date":"2008-04-23T09:45:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T09:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/23\/curse-you-georgia\/"},"modified":"2008-04-23T09:45:06","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T09:45:06","slug":"curse-you-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/23\/curse-you-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Curse You, Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Inside Higher Ed<\/cite> this morning, there’s an article with the headline At U. of Georgia, Furor Over Clarence Thomas<\/a>. As always when I see such things (or, say, complaints about having Mike Huckabee speak on campus here), my first thought was “Curse you, Georgia, for making me think, even for a nanosecond, that David Horowitz might have a point.”<\/p>\n

This turns out not to be the expected contorversy over Thomas’s politics. Instead, it’s about his past:<\/p>\n

\n

Rather than sparking debates about Thomas’s jurisprudence or his politics, though, the announcement has led to a flurry of criticisms drawing parallels between the allegations made at the associate justice’s infamous 1991 Senate confirmation hearings — during which a former employee, Anita Hill, testified that he’d sexually harassed her — and more recent accusations of sexually suggestive behavior on campus that have led to a broad mandate to overhaul the way the university handles such cases.<\/p>\n

Now some faculty members say that having Thomas as the undergraduate commencement speaker sends the wrong message at a time when the university is in the midst of a process that could change the way sexual harassment is dealt with in the campus judicial system.<\/p>\n

“Given all of this work, and what felt like progress, the news that Justice Clarence Thomas is to give the commencement address this year has been met by dismay,” said Chris Cuomo, director of the Institute for Women’s Studies and a professor of philosophy, in an e-mail message. “Members of the UGA community who are concerned about the problems with enforcement of the university’s own policies against harassment wonder if the university administration is sending an intentional message that they believe matters of sexual harassment and gender equity are trivial.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know, I think I would actually be happier if this were about his somewhat sketchy jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect that the only message the administration is trying to send here is “Look! We got a Supreme Court justice to speak at commencement! Woo-hoo!” Reading anything else into it is classic obsessive faculty behavior.<\/p>\n

Yeah, Thomas was accused of sexual harassment in 1991 (well, he was accused of harassing Hill at some point several years before that, and it just came up during his 1991 confirmation hearings). Note the verb: accused. There were long, dull hearings on the subject (I was in college then, and followed the news avidly), and they were ultimately inconclusive. No legal charges were filed, and he was never convicted of anything.<\/p>\n

And this all happened when the graduating seniors he will be addressing were in pre-school. Outside of the occasional non-traditional student, none of the undergraduates at Georgia are likely to have any conscious memories of the Thomas hearings at all. There are probably some Ph.D. candidates in the humanities who were just starting grad school then, but for the vast majority of the audience this is ancient history.<\/p>\n

While I don’t think much of Thomas as a jurist or a person, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that an accusation<\/strong> of wrongdoing, no matter how reprehensible, makes the man untouchable seventeen years later. Especially given his current position on the Supreme Court– getting him as a commencement speaker is a coup for the university, and ought to be celebrated.<\/p>\n

If faculty at Georgia insist on clinging to these old allegations, why not use this as a teaching opportunity? None of the students there now are likely to remember the Thomas hearings, so this is an excellent hook for discussing them and, really, the entire political circus that surrounded his nomination to the court. The whole thing was a fascinating mix of every dicey factor in American politics– race, sex, class, a whole spectrum of political issues. I’m sure that multiple Ph.D. theses could be written (and probably have) about various aspects of the whole incident. Having him come to speak presents a fabulous opportunity to explore all of these issues with students, in a way that makes them immediately relevant.<\/p>\n

But no, we get complaints about letting him speak at all<\/strong>, and hand-wringing about messages that are coded so deeply you need a quantum computer to ferret them out.<\/p>\n

Incidents like this make me feel vaguely ashamed of being an academic. So curse you, Georgia, for reminding me that I share a profession with these people.<\/p>\n

(Of course, I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t partly about his politics– do you think that there would be a similar furor if they had invited, say, Ted Kennedy to speak?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Inside Higher Ed this morning, there’s an article with the headline At U. of Georgia, Furor Over Clarence Thomas. As always when I see such things (or, say, complaints about having Mike Huckabee speak on campus here), my first thought was “Curse you, Georgia, for making me think, even for a nanosecond, that David… Continue reading Curse You, Georgia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}