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The Edge of the American West 
35 comments
April 11, 2010 at 5:37 am
Erik Lund
I’m not sure I see the problem. If we guys don’t exclude girls from our club, not only will we get cooties, there’ll be less jobs for us. (Ha! Clearly logic isn’t hard for boys!)
April 11, 2010 at 6:50 am
Jason B.
Or maybe it is. You’ve clearly succumbed to the ad cootius fallacy.
April 11, 2010 at 12:23 pm
AYY
Erik, the problems are:
a, the headline on Dana’s post is misleading. The post she links to says nothing about women and logic or women’s intellecual ability, so if Dana want to read it in she should be telling us why she’s reading it in;
b, there’s nothing in the post she links to that says that the person who brought up the matter with Feminist Philosophers was authorized to violate what might have been a confidence;
c, there’s nothing in the post that shows that it’s accurate or complete,
d, there’s nothing in the post that says whether the director who made the demand is a man or a woman, and
e, if it is accurate, then keep in mind that the demand comes from a European institution, which is likely to be run by leftists. Once the smoke clears, we’ll find that if it’s true, then there’s likely to be something in the fine print on page 129,873 of the fourth appendix to the European Union Constitution that requires the Director to do something like this.
April 11, 2010 at 12:56 pm
kathy a.
this post has had me sputtering with rage since it went up. i truly cannot envision that male participants would be ordered to present proof of adequate child care arrangements on such a short timeframe or have their invitations withdrawn. [unless the philosophical end of academia is a whole lot weirder than my profession, law.]
i hope the person involved has gone upstairs, raised some hell, and gotten this thing worked out.
April 11, 2010 at 1:29 pm
kathy a.
i should add that my rage is because i was sick and tired of crap like this 25-30 years ago but believed then it was mostly in the past, and i am profoundly disappointed that it keeps cropping up. i know! humorless and thin-skinned after all these years!
April 11, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Erik Lund
AYY said:
“Erik, the problems are:
….
b, there’s nothing in the post she links to that says that the person who brought up the matter with Feminist Philosophers was authorized to violate what might have been a confidence…”
.
You know, I like to post tongue-in-cheek, and since I’m not as funny as I think I am, much of it goes by the board. So I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt here, AYY. That “run by a leftist” thing? That cracks me up. Because Europe? A whole continent of ’em. They’re no good in the corners, either.
But as one congenitally unfunny guy to another, I find the one I quoted a little …over the top. It’s okay to discriminate if you do it in confidence. “We don’t hire darkies around here, but I’m telling you that in confidence, so don’t go complaining?” That’s such a bizarre construal that I’d almost think that you were ttrying to be taken seriously, so as to start some kind of Internet-fight or something.
April 11, 2010 at 3:44 pm
ben
My god, AYY, you cannot be for real.
April 11, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Kieran
Best comment ever.
April 11, 2010 at 4:53 pm
AYY
Sheesh Eric, you missed the point. What’s in confidence is not the alleged discrimination, but rather the e-mail from the person who supposedly received the e-mail from the institute to the person who posted on Feminist Philosophers. The person who received the e-mail from the director might not have wanted it made public. At least there’s nothing in the post that shows that the person who actually recieved the e-mail from the director wanted it to go beyond the person she told.
I don’t know the answer to this, but how often does an institute that invites a person to a conference ask if you’re bringing a child? Don’t you normally just get to go without having to disclose whether you’re bringing a child. So how does the director know she’s bringing a child? The post on Feminist Philosophers doesn’t say. It might be interesting to know. I suspect there’s something more here than we’ve been told.
Also, European educational institutions are run by leftists.
Hi Ben, glad to see you on this thread.
April 11, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Chris Johnson
I vote concern troll
April 11, 2010 at 5:16 pm
kathy a.
second chris’ vote.
April 12, 2010 at 1:51 am
kid bitzer
i’m not so sure, chris. not every obnoxious fuck is a concern troll.
April 12, 2010 at 5:07 am
Blume
So how does the director know she’s bringing a child?
A program like this likely has housing provided. In which case she’d need to say something.
April 12, 2010 at 5:19 am
Chris Johnson
i’m not so sure, chris. not every obnoxious fuck is a concern troll.
True. But most concern trolls are obnoxious fucks. Interesting logic problem.
April 12, 2010 at 6:58 am
AYY
Kathy, as an attorney you must certainly know what hearsay is. If someone made an allegation against your client based on evidence as flimsy as the one that appears in the Feminist Philosophers blog, you’d have the case thrown out of court for lack of evidence.
Pretty much the same thing with the historians. If the only evidence they had of something was the type that was on the Feminist Philosophers post they’d want something more. My point wasn’t that it was okay if it happened, it was that we should have more evidence before assuming it happened. No one has addressed that. For all we know it could be another Keri Dunn situation.
April 12, 2010 at 8:29 am
Walt
Reading internet comment threads has made me realize I can no longer believe in the existence of a beneficent God.
April 12, 2010 at 8:37 am
dana
My god, AYY, you cannot be for real.
Points to ben!
April 12, 2010 at 10:09 am
kathy a.
y’all are just mean. i’m *totally* convinced by AYY’s superior logic, experience, and wisdom. and dudes, “hearsay”!!!!!111!!! makes my heart swoon, because it is soooo logical ‘n legalish-like.
from now on, i will take the advice of an actual state supreme court justice called “bubba,” who advised me and the other “lady lawyers” joining that state bar that year to dress appropriately and “don’t wear those dangly earrings.”
April 12, 2010 at 10:16 am
kid bitzer
yeah, i wasn’t sure whether ayy was a concern troll or not.
but now i see the problem: something was not scrupulously documented on the internet.
i can see why ayy was concerned.
April 12, 2010 at 10:21 am
PorJ
Interesting update here:
NEH Faces Viral Furor Over Unconfirmed Report
The National Endowment for the Humanities faced a storm of online criticism this weekend over a report — first posted on the Feminist Philosophers blog — about how a grant recipient reportedly was treated. The report said that the woman, a single mother, indicated to the NEH that she wanted to bring her son with her to the European city where an NEH financed seminar will take place. She was told, according to the blog item, that she had 12 hours to “demonstrate that she has full-time child-care arrangements for her son” and that failure to get these arrangements approved would result in her losing her spot in the program. The readers of the blog were outraged and posted comments calling the NEH’s conduct “outrageous,” illegal, sexist and more. Some readers suggested that word be spread about the situation, and it promptly turned up on Facebook and at other blog sites, again drawing outrage. While some bloggers noted their lack of direct knowledge of the situation, more criticism was heaped on the endowment.
A spokeswoman for the NEH said that efforts over the weekend to identify which recipient was involved — to figure out exactly what was said and why — were not successful. The spokeswoman said that the endowment would never ask mothers or fathers about child care in the way described — and that the NEH works hard to make sure its programs are open to all. In some cases, she said, someone running a program might give a tight deadline to a grant recipient to indicate whether he or she would be attending a program, so that alternates may be offered the place if someone isn’t able to attend. The spokeswoman said that, lacking all the facts, there were limits on what she could say — but that the facts, as described in the blog posts, were not consistent with NEH policies.
I hope there is a follow-up here, but this could also be *very* damaging to the philosopher in question (as well as the NEH employee). So I guess I’m hoping – if this is authentic – that the NEH rep be fired and the philosopher in no way be punished.
April 13, 2010 at 1:52 am
Jender
Hi Dana,
Just wanted to thank you for helping to spread the word! The woman in question is getting in touch with the NEH, heartened by all the support she’s had on the internet and by the NEH spokeswoman’s statement that her treatment is against NEH policies.
April 13, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Mike
Hooray for small victories.
(Well, not for the philosopher in question…but for the field, it’s a small but positive step.)
And I always doubted the power of blogs…
April 13, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Tybalt
“Kathy, as an attorney you must certainly know what hearsay is. If someone made an allegation against your client based on evidence as flimsy as the one that appears in the Feminist Philosophers blog, you’d have the case thrown out of court for lack of evidence.”
This demonstrates such a muddled conflation of legal concepts, and of legal procedure with the real world, that I don’t know where to start. Please suspend all Law & Order watching for the next 12 months and try very hard not to speak to anyone in the interim. Kthxbye.
April 14, 2010 at 11:23 am
dave
The NEH’s position is all well and good, but what if it turned out that for some bizarre reason there’s a real legal requirement in this mystery European country for the information requested? I suppose it’d be time to roll out the ‘Invade the Hague’ Act…
April 14, 2010 at 11:48 am
elizardbreath
There’d still be no excuse for the late announcement of the requirement. And if it were countrywide, people would be generally familiar with it; the European commenters at CT would be clucking sadly and saying, “Luxembourg. Whaddya gonna do?”
April 14, 2010 at 12:09 pm
dana
some bizarre reason there’s a real legal requirement in this mystery European country for the information requested?
I’m not inclined to give a lot of weight to this hypothesis, if only because the only place it has shown up is as speculation in blog comments as part of the search for a justification. No one else has said, “Oh, yes, the infamous 12-hour requirement. That’s typical of leftist countries like Freedonia, actually, and no one takes it seriously” or “Oh, that old thing. Yeah, it’s a shame, and they really shouldn’t hold seminars there because it’s a perennial problem” or “Oh, we had to deal with that a couple of years ago and it turns out that the Freedonian law can be satisfied by naming a soccer ball “Caregiver” and letting the child play with it on the college grounds. No worries, eh?” It’s surely relevant that this is atypical.
Besides all that, I can imagine that were I running a seminar in a place with such a bizarre requirement, I would have done everything I could to reassure the participant that it wasn’t my will, but the will of the state, perhaps offering helpful suggestions or workarounds. I don’t think I’d respond to a legislated requirement by demanding that someone meet unspecified criteria within a very short time period.
April 16, 2010 at 3:28 am
dave
But then, if it’s a pointless crock o’shit how did it happen? It’s a rather egregious brain-fart otherwise.
April 16, 2010 at 8:02 am
kid bitzer
the summer institute in question is “cultural hybridities”.
the scholar in question is [editor’s note: we have removed the name and institutional affiliation of the scholar in question on the chance that this person does not want to be identified].
the evidentiary basis for my assertions will not satisfy concern trolls.
you should probably have me thrown out of the internets for lack of evidence.
April 16, 2010 at 11:29 am
kathy a.
kid, what was the point of that post? except possibly to direct concern trolls to a particular person, in which case i wonder, why? what is your fucking point? what do you hope to accomplish?
i have no idea if your “evidentiary basis” is correct or not, but i think it is really crappy to “out” someone on the web when they have not asked to be outed, and are not personally trying to make a big fat public deal of some rotten development. naming names does not add a single thing to the gist of this post, which is about rotten things that still keep happening to women, even accomplished ones.
dave, my guess from considerable distance and no personal knowledge is that this was a big brain fart. and the problem is that the farts are inflicted on women disproportionately, and this is a long-lasting phenomenon. sometimes it is a low-level clerk — like the one who told me that i could only get a passport for my newborn daughter born overseas IF I CHANGED MY SURNAME TO MY HUSBAND’S. and sometimes it happens with people who should know a whole lot better — like the judge who asked me in open court, before a couple hundred people, about the results of a personal obstetrical procedure. when i was there for some actual court business. and, well, we could rack up a bunch of instances if i kept going and others chimed in, but the general gist is — brain farts still happen.
April 16, 2010 at 2:07 pm
kid bitzer
the point of that post was to dispel any lingering concern that there was something inaccurate in dana’s original post. it was not an urban myth. it was accurate.
adding corroboratory detail does add something to a post about rotten things that keep happening to women, if that post was met by the response that rotten things do not happen to women, or that this rotten thing didn’t happen, and if no one was able to corroborate the fact that some particular rotten thing has indeed happened to some particular woman.
friends of prof. [editor’s note: we have removed the name of the scholar in question on the chance that this person does not want to be identified] have begun a letter writing campaign. they have done so with her advice and oversight. i was apprised of the letter-writing campaign, and of her advice and oversight. i wrote only after having this assurance that i was not revealing personal facts that the person involved wished to remain concealed.
if i had outed someone when they asked not to be outed, that would indeed have been a crappy thing to do.
April 16, 2010 at 2:31 pm
kathy a.
my profound apologies, KB. it should be evident that i know nothing personally about this situation. what you last posted hit a raw nerve or two for me; it was not at all clear that you had assurance the professor in question wouldn’t mind being named.
thanks for the good news that she is getting support from colleagues.
April 16, 2010 at 8:32 pm
kid bitzer
no apologies needed, kathy. your response was natural.
April 16, 2010 at 8:39 pm
ari
Sometimes I don’t hate this blog. Thanks to both of you for acting like decent human beings. (I mean, I know it was a stretch for you, kb.)
April 17, 2010 at 6:06 am
kid bitzer
oh sure. make fun of the emotional cripple. i don’t mind. i’ll just go where i’m liked.
for instance, on ta-nehisi’s blog. i’ve been “liked” over 200 times, mostly for recycling civil war trivia that i picked up here (intellectual arbitrage: buy low-brow, sell high-brow). they click on this little button next to your comment, and pretty soon it says “4 people liked this comment.”
and those “liked” points mean that i can get tote-bags, mugs, discounts on air-fare, even attendance at special events, like commenting on blogs.
you guys should think about enabling a little button like that here, so people could click on my comments. or maybe it could read “liked, but not *well* liked”.
in any case: clearly time to flame ari. i hear he has been saying mean things about ron paul again.
April 20, 2010 at 7:31 am
kathy a.
feminist philosophers reports that the problem is fixed! http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/the-neh-responds/#comment-21617