It was a mistake for the Department of English to invite Mohammed El-Kurd, a deeply unserious “influencer” and plain antisemite, to campus. It was equally a mistake for some students to call on the Department to condemn its own event. In response to that call, Jeff Dolven, Acting Chair of the English Department, set out his department’s policy of not issuing statements. His rationale for such a policy: “It is an important principle that neither I nor anyone else among [my colleagues] attempts to speak for a diverse collective.”
All of that sounds nice, of course. But Dolven doesn’t believe a word of it. His department displays a nakedly partisan, hotly contestable “anti-racism” statement on its website, clearly signaling a departmental orthodoxy, and clearly purporting to “speak for a diverse collective.” Below is an email exchange I recently had with Dolven, in which his hypocritical commitments are on full display. Pay particular attention to the very last paragraph. My emails—but not Dolven’s—have been lightly edited for clarity.
My initial email:
Professor Dolven,
I was heartened to read in your response to a recent letter raising concerns about your department’s sponsorship of an event featuring notorious anti-semite Mohammed El-Kurd that “the Department as a whole does not issue statements.” You elaborated that “it is an important principle for [your department] that neither [you] nor anyone else among [your colleagues] attempts to speak for a diverse collective.”
Institutional neutrality is supremely important. The University of Chicago’s famed Kalven Report captured an important aspect of the university’s essence with this pithy maxim: “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” As the Kalven Committee understood, when universities, university departments, or university officers issue official statements regarding controversial political matters not directly threatening the university’s mission, they establish dogmas that can suggest parameters on the scope of acceptable inquiry. Even where such dogmas are not strictly enforced, scholars, students, and faculty are softly (but not subtly) boxed into a culture that admits of little dissent without significant social and academic reproach. Whenever this happens, the truth-seeking mission is wounded.
I therefore lend my services to you: after briefly auditing your department website, I uncovered a statement of the sort you insist you do not issue. Your department’s anti-racism statement clearly articulates a hotly contested diagnosis of the “racism problem” in the English academy. For example:
“In [our] work we confront literary study’s long history as a prop to the worst forces of imperialism and nationalism, and its role in underwriting crimes of slavery and discrimination. Such a history compels us to continually reflect on how we read and teach literature and to actively dissociate literary studies from their colonial and racist uses. With renewed urgency, we can read the long history of dissidence and free imagination that is the best legacy of books across time and tradition. In this work we will depend upon the vast energies of writers now writing, in whose words the causes of abolition and racial justice burn with wisdom and exigency.”
Surely you, having so clearly and admirably articulated your department’s policy on not issuing statements such as the above, will understand my surprise at finding this statement on your website. Though you signed this statement in 2020, I take it your position on its propriety has now changed. To avoid any hypocrisy, this statement must be removed with utmost haste!
Please do let me know once it is removed. If you decide not to remove it, I will read with much curiosity your attempt to square it with your department’s policy as you articulated it above.
Yours,
Myles McKnight
Dolven’s response:
Dear Mr. McKnight,
Thank you for your message (and your offer of assistance!—I have not gotten so many of those). In fact the University is now reviewing its guidance on the propriety of departmental statements. You can read about the review here. (The relevant paragraph is as follows: “I [President Eisgruber] recently asked a faculty committee to consider whether Princeton should have a policy regulating the discretion of academic or administrative units to publish opinions on behalf of the unit. I expect the committee to make recommendations to the faculty in the spring semester.”) Our current policy in English is not to issue collective statements. When the review is complete, it will be an occasion to assess our current policy and our past actions together.
With all good wishes,
Jeff Dolven
My unanswered reply:
Professor Dolven,
Thank you for your prompt response.
Whatever policy President Eisgruber’s ad hoc committee recommends in the coming months makes little difference to my request that the Department remove its “anti-racism” statement today. Departmental statements pose important questions of propriety because of their tendency to signal departmental dogmas, which, as I explained this morning, pose threats to academic freedom and the honest search for truth. The inappropriate “signaling” occurs not only at the moment a department issues such a statement, but every time someone encounters the statement and comes away with the message: “Doctrine/position/commitment x is operative in this department.”
So while you have a current policy of not issuing statements, any and all statements still operative signal a departmental orthodoxy for as long as they remain up. In this sense, their issuance is ongoing. For as long as this “anti-racism” statement remains on your website, it stands as a clear violation of the doctrine you neatly articulated two days ago: “It is an important principle…that neither I nor anyone else among us attempts to speak for a diverse collective.”
Finally, I’m not sure why you would have articulated this principle if you and your colleagues are simply refraining from issuing statements until President Eisgruber’s committee finishes its work. If the University ends up permitting but not requiring the issuing of such statements, I take it that you will nonetheless remove your “anti-racism” statement on the grounds that it violates your own judgment as to the propriety of statements like it. Please confirm that you will remove the statement in such a situation.
Yours,
Myles McKnight
The above is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
(Photo courtesy of Khürt Williams)
Copyright © 2024 The Princeton Tory. All rights reserved.