Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog



Avital Ronell: Under SuspicionWhat do the charges against the American professor of literature Avital Ronell mean?Where does abuse of power begin? There is no answer to this question, only rough approximations. Interpretations which try to determine whether a person or institution has thought themselves to be beyond all doubt. For that reason, the analysis of power and authority is the intrinsic terrain of interpretive disciplines like law and literary studies – the terrain of Avital Ronell.For more than two decades the 66-year old professor of literature has taught at New York University (NYU). The intellectual charisma of her work on Goethe, Nietzsche, Kafka reaches far – Ronell is a star of international humanities, illuminated as well by the aura of her friendship with the thinkers of postmodernism, for instance with Jacques Derrida.AMBIGUOUS COMMUNICATIONNow Avital Ronell stands in the center of a legal and at the same time hermeneutical investigation. Last week it became known that a so-called Title IX procedure against Ronell is under way. The introduction of such a procedure means: someone at NYU has submitted a complaint, and the university is investigating. Such Title IX complaints include a wide range of charges in the realm of discrimination and sexual harassment, ranging from physical assaults to institutional discrimination to ambiguous communication.The person who leveled the charges, the content of the complaint, and the interpretation of it remain concealed by the university, as called for by the investigation. Neither Avital Ronell nor NYU or other people in this sphere can comment.Still, the case – more precisely: the fact, that there is a “Ronell case” at all – became known. Leiter Reports, a widely read philosophy blog in the scene, leaked a letter of support for Ronell.The letter, which is addressed to the university administration, stresses Ronell’s professional and institutional achievements: she has shaped literary studies at NYU as much as all of Europe, she is an engaged teacher to her students. Although they have no access to the documents in the investigation, they know the person who has accused Ronell in a “malicious campaign” and caused this “legal nightmare.” “If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized,” it reads. Ronell deserves “a fair hearing,” one that expresses “respect, dignity, and human solicitude.”The letter is signed by more than fifty professors, among them international stars such as the philosophers Judith Butler (her signature is in the first position) and Slavoj ?i?ek. Prominent German professors of literature have also signed, for instance Rüdiger Campe and Barbara Vinken.Support letter treads a fine lineBarely public, the letter became a scandal. The law professor Brian Leiter, on whose blog the letter was leaked, commented: one can imagine the “howls of protest,” had such a letter been composed in defense of a male professor. “Blaming the victim is apparently OK,” he writes, when the accused is a feminist literary theorist. The university magazine Chronicle picked up on the debate, as well as the news site Breitbart. One should note, it read here, that the signatories were the “architects of the women’s movement,” but are obviously inconsistent with respect to their own standards. The Freitag interpreted the letter as an academic esprit des corps, which was typical for the “power of professors.”Without knowledge of the circumstances of the investigation, the interpretations formulated the incisive charge that in the letter of support, egregious misconduct is balanced out by academic merits – so the letter was the expression of a seedy double standard, calculated by people who vehemently criticized powerful circles in the #MeToo-debate. Such an interpretation has already passed its judgment, not just on Avital Ronell. It puts into question the integrity of the humanities – and its self-understanding as a sociopolitical corrective to institutional and sexual power.INVESTIGATION WITHOUT CHARGES?To be able to understand the letter, one must first understand Title IX investigations: these have to do with a law from 1972 which says that no person can be hindered from taking part in American educational institutions on the basis of their sex. At the time this was directed at participation in sports, which resulted in an upswing in women’s sports.Since 2011, however, students have also used the law to defend themselves from sexual harassment, by holding the institutions themselves responsible for an atmosphere that permits harassment and thereby hinders students in their education. At first this strategy seemed like a liberation. Universities started paying attention to the structures that enabled sexual assault.OPAQUE INVESTIGATIONS LEAD TO SPECULATIONSIn the meantime, however, Title IX has become a buzzword for an out of control culture of litigation. Wanting to make reparations for decades of structures of abuse, many universities prosecuted individual cases swiftly and vehemently, often with the consequence that people were professional and privately devastated. The lack of publicity of investigations made it difficult to appeal against the charges and against the university itself, which was not required to give an account of the criteria behind its decision.So the letter of support treads a fine line: in order not to compromise the investigation legally, the signatories said nothing about the case itself. But they alluded to knowing the complainant and therefore being able to give their own assessment in Ronell’s favor.Judith Butler said to ZEIT about the Title IX investigation: “I am in no way of the opinion that professors should be protected from sexual harassment complaint investigations on the basis of their achievements or excellent reputation. But I believe that every suspect deserves a fair investigation.” She was concerned that someone could be rashly presumed guilty, and complaints could be taken as proof without sufficient examination. The non-public, opaque university investigation leads to speculation. “I see no way out of this dilemma,” Butler commented.IS TITLE IX FAIR?Avital Ronell, according to people who know her, is a charismatic, fascinating person. A thinker for whom German studies is not paperwork, but rather an intellectual way of life that bears on the core of people and relationships and always contains an ethical dimension.The investigation itself raises the question whether Avital Ronell is objectively guilty of misconduct. But to the observers of the debate it is about more: a fundamental calling into question of the fairness of intramural investigations under Title IX.This question goes far beyond Avital Ronell. Answering it is the task of all those who placed their names under the letter of support. ................
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