More on KC Johnson's Durham in Wonderland; or, "Horowitzian," adj.

KC Johnson was bemused by my characterization of his argument as "Horowitzian," because, it seems, one can't share argumentative tics with someone who's publicly denounced you.  But Timothy's comments further down what has turned into quite an exceptional thread have helped me hone my complaint against KC vis-a-vis his Horowitzian tendencies. 

His recent post about Duke University Press provides a paradigmatic example.  He writes:

In looking through the Group [of 88]'s c.v.'s, an interesting pattern emerges: sixteen have published books with Duke University Press.

One of those sixteen is Priscilla Wald—who, as I mentioned earlier, was the impetus behind my first post—as her Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form was published by DUP in 1994.  According to this profile of her, she wasn't hired by Duke until 2000. 

What Johnson considers invidious, then, is that Wald now works for the institution whose university press published her book six years earlier.  That Johnson fails to note that is telling. 

Also omitted is that it's published under the aegis of Donald Pease's prestigious New Americanist series.  While KC would preface half its number with a "[naturally]," the New Americanist series is the series for Americanists.  It published my advisor's book (New Deal Modernism: American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State) as well as Sean McCann's Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism, both solid works of literary historicism.  Timothy's comment captures why they would want to publish with DUP even if they were currently employed by Duke:

One reason that I think someone might publish with their "home" press is simply that it's the best or most reputable press in the subject area that they're publishing in. Duke is certainly one of the top presses in cultural studies and cultural history, for example. If I were at the University of Ohio, for example, it would be strange not to consider publishing with the very prestigious Social History of Africa series that has moved to that press from Heinemann.

So Wald's crime, KC suggests, is publishing Constituting Americans with the most reputable press in her field a full six years before being hired by Duke.  I sleuthed all these facts in five minutes, but in the course of writing a book, KC somehow failed to come across them?  I don't think so, and this is what disturbs me.  As Timothy writes (again regarding the character of university presses) in another comment:

Different scholarly publishers definitely have an identity, a particular reputation with regard to specialization, and KC knows that perfectly well. At least I hope he does: it's a pretty basic facet of the scholarly world.

The emphasis is mine, because that phrase captures the definition of "Horowitzian."  To wit:

Horowitzian, adj.  (of a writer) belonging to or characteristic of David Horowitz, esp. as regards intentionally withholding profession-specific information when speaking before a general audience in order to incite it to commit acts of rhetorical violence.

This is the Ur-Horowitzian move, and if you make it, it doesn't matter how many times the man himself has denounced you.  You're behaving in a Horowitzian fashion, and should be called out on it.  Given his presence in the post (and in my thinking about it), it seems only fitting that Timothy should have the last word.  Responding to KC:

You're not responsible for your commenters' biases, but you can do a better job at discouraging them from seeing their biases confirmed by the way you're writing ... Read your commenters on Duke U. Press. They're definitely coming away from your post assuming that you are arguing that the number of Duke U. faculty serving as editorial advisors means that the output of the press is effectively valueless, without peer review, a vanity output, and the like. I think you can be a lot clearer about discouraging that reading.

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

embedded in the seamless matrix of wingnuttery

That's a wonderful line, Rich, and so very true.

[Tortmaster]

To CR: Yes. That was a terrible paragraph! I would re-write it as follows:

"The link between serial killers and a history of animal cruelty is valuable information. That is not to suggest that the Gang of 88 are serial killers. I am, however, interested in knowing how academia in Durham could go hand-in-hand with what seemed to be purposeful and malevolent ignorance. If your real, implicit concern is based in a fear of "Academic Profiling," I would suggest your concern is wasted unless you intend to metaphorically lynch your own students (or fly planes into buildings)."

Still, it is not a good paragraph, but I really wanted to introduce the idea of academic profiling. I would like to know if that is a legitimate concern with academia or whether it will be a red herring thrown out by a few desperate folks to try to compartmentalize Professor Johnson? Please note that I will be very suspicious of anyone who claims there is a legitimate reason to fear academic profiling. I have seen too many people involved in this case either too eager to speak or too fearful to speak the truth.

I also wanted to explain that my use of "hyperbolic language" was an aid in describing my ideas, not solely to claim somebody else's were "invidious." A subtle difference, I know. Finally, the sentences are NOT good example sentences for the definition of "Horowitzian" above. Please read that definition again.

To Sisyphus: Are professors who have written 10 books then bionic, and those who have written 15 some type of alien life form? I enjoyed your use of hyperbole. Do you like mine? Good night all!

[tomemos]

"He goes on and on about Marcotte, a person who as far as I can tell has little to do with the whole Durham scandal"

In all fairness, Rich, this isn't accurate: Amanda has implied repeatedly that the Duke players were guilty, and has stated outright that the dismissal of the charges (both by the courts and by the media and public) is due to the white male power structure rather than the facts of the case. To my knowledge, she has never retracted or revised this view. All of this is, in my view, absolutely crippling to her credibility on any other topic.

[Sisyphus]

To Sisyphus: Are professors who have written 10 books then bionic, and those who have written 15 some type of alien life form? I enjoyed your use of hyperbole. Do you like mine? Good night all!

Uh, no, you don't seem to understand the word hyperbole if you thought I was exaggerating when I said writing books is "hard" and someone who writes the rough equivalent of six books is "fucking amazing." The rest of my description, the explanation of how different types of scholarly research are done, was factual. I think you'll find way more profs, worldwide, who've published a single book than 10 or even 6 books.

And in other news,

That is not to suggest that the Gang of 88 are serial killers.

yes, you did suggest this. You just wrote this. Twice. You may try to deny it at the same time you suggest it, but that's a cheaper rhetorical trick than anything SEK or even KC has written (no offense to either of them).

[Wingo5]

With regard to the hatred being directed at academia, I shudder to think that the posters over at DiW are somehow representative of the general population. I seriously doubt this to be the case.

The fact of the matter is that people are still sending their kids to Duke. Students are still applying in large numbers, and matriculating in the same. This is something of an inconvenient truth for the posters at DiW.

[sharon]

There are 44 faculty listed at Princeton University's History Department website. Of these, 15 have published books with Princeton University Press, according to its own catalogue (that includes at least some out-of-print titles, but the number should be regarded as a minimum). That is to say, more than one third of Princeton's history faculty have published books with their own university press. What results would the same exercise produce with other prestigious universities? Telling us that 16 out of 88 Duke faculty have published with Duke University Press is completely meaningless without comparative data on other institutions.

It took me 10 minutes' work with two browser windows to extract that information. I'm tempted to do the same with the rest of the Ivy League and the Russell group as well, but, you know, it's my lunch break and I have more interesting things to do. It's not my responsibility to get this information, since I'm not the one writing the blog posts and the book on the subject.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Tomemos, is Amanda Marcotte an important public figure? Do her opinions about the case lead substantially to a failure of justice for the accused, because what she writes poisons the well of the jury pool? I would say no. Focussing on Marcotte was used as a way to get to Edwards. And in the process, KC ignores the distinctions, which he had to be familiar with, between official and personal blogging.

Here are some quotes from KC:

From here: "After James Taranto brought attention to the words above, Marcotte deleted them (so much for “transparency” in the Edwards campaign)." Of course KC knows that Amanda's personal blogging is not part of "the Edwards campaign". But he later in the same post refers to Amanda deleting some of her posts as the "'Edwards Cover-Up'".

He repeats that coy kind of scare-quote accusation here: "Now, Overlawyered has the story of Marcotte deleting many of her most outrageous comments. Is this the message that Edwards is intending to send? Some might call it a cover-up."

From here: "This statement begs the question: if "the tone and the sentiment" of some of the duo's posts offended the candidate, and did not meet the standards for his employees, why did Edwards hire the duo in the first place?".

And from his case narrative: "As other groups pored through Marcotte’s writings, it turned out she was an equal-opportunity author of vile material, and soon thereafter she resigned from the campaign."

Characterizations like "an equal-opportunity author of vile material" have nothing to do with the case, nothing to do with academia. They are, simply, politics. If KC Johnson wants to play politics -- including approving links to Free Republic -- fine, but he should be treated as someone in politics, not as an academic.

[Timothy Burke]

I think the point about books being hard to write is also crucial.

In the other thread, KC noted that he would have some sympathy for a faculty member whom I described whose contributions to his institution were largely pedagogical and in terms of service rather than in research output, and who would have been denied tenure as a result (he chose to leave and has become a prominent international leader instead). In other words, KC recognizes (I think) the folly of fetishizing quantity as the gauge of academic worthiness. But look at what some of his supporters have come to believe, I think partly through his profiles of the Group of 88: that the scholar who publishes 15 books is not just the exemplar but the standard.

It reminds me a little of what a friend of mine was once told the standard for tenure at his institution was: to write as much and as well as one of the most extraordinarily accomplished and versatile historians of the last forty years before coming up for tenure. This is roughly like saying that the standard for working middle management in an automobile factory is to have personally designed the best-selling automobile of the last forty years and also to have founded a successful company.

It's not only an unrealistic standard, it's one that anyone who cares about the paying customers of higher education (which most of Durham-in-Wonderland's commenters say is the thing they care about most) should never, ever want to endorse. There are extremely rare and wonderful professors who are prolific AND original in their research output and yet who are also extraordinary teachers. But usually, a person who writes 15 books in 10 years is a person who is entirely about research output, frankly something of a ghost with regard to the classroom or the committee meeting. From the standpoint of students and of institutions, the value of that kind of productivity is rather abstract--a notion that somehow the production of knowledge is a greater priority than teaching or institution-building. That seems to me a view *more* likely to create the kinds of disconnections that fed into the Group of 88 signing that statement than the other way around.

Another insider truth that I think KC might helpfully share with his readers. At least some of the people who've written 15 books? They've written the same book 15 times, more or less. A further thought: I'm not sure that having *more* books is doing ANY of us any good. It's choking off the ability of both a general public and a scholarly public to actually know anything. What's driving that overproduction? To some extent, the prestige systems that some of KC's commenters naively reproduce. I'd rather have my colleagues write two or three subtle, rich, wise, widely communicative books than 10 narrowly specialized monographs, truthfully--for my sake, for their sake, and for the sake of our institutions.

[Steve Horwitz]

Tim wrote:

From the standpoint of students and of institutions, the value of that kind of productivity is rather abstract--a notion that somehow the production of knowledge is a greater priority than teaching or institution-building. That seems to me a view *more* likely to create the kinds of disconnections that fed into the Group of 88 signing that statement than the other way around.

I've been trying to make this point over and over to the DIW crowd (and one that KC has, in fact, generally agreed with) but to little avail. In my view, the real connection between the G88's professional lives and the Listening Statement is not that the latter is a predictable outcome of their scholarship, but that it's a predictable outcome if it is the case that they spend too little time in direct contact with undergraduates and colleagues whose views differ from their own. Put differently, it's harder (though not impossible) to imagine faculty at teaching-oriented institution, where they are in direct contact with 75 undergraduates every semester in intense ways, throwing those students under the bus the way the Duke faculty did. The Listening Statement and later silence is notable for its lack of empathy for students who may well have been (and were later determined to be) falsely accused.

Isn't one of the ideas behind expanding diversity in higher education the claim that ongoing engagement with those different from you can create empathy that you didn't have before? If so, shouldn't the same logic apply to the differences between the culture of faculty and the culture of undergraduates? And if so, the fetishizing of the hyper-productive researcher is sure to breed more faculty contempt for undergraduates.

Tim's point is very well-taken.

[Ralph Luker]

*As if*, Rich, the attack on KC isn't academic politics. And those on the academic left who've attacked him here for "cherry-picking" evidence do so by -- what? -- cherry-picking their evidence. Whoever is doing it, evidence that's cherry-picked is still evidence. With all due respect to my friend, Sharon, and those who've had books published by Duke University Press, listing Chicago faculty who've had books published by Chicago Press or Princeton faculty with books by Princeton Press doesn't answer questions about Duke University Press. It is no where near so strong as Chicago's and Princeton's. It is much lesser university press that has invested heavily in cultural studies, which has often proved a dubious enterprise. *Social Text*, anyone?

[David R. Block]

Good. So now the book is finished. I'll reserve judgment on it until I see it. Until then, everybody be free to tie themselves in knots.

All in all, I find this rather amusing.

[Luther Blissett]

Ralph, Scott already pointed out that Duke UP's "New Americanist" series is considered one of the most important groups of Americanist scholarship out there today.

And actually, Priceton's and Chicago's Presses are not tops across the board. Chicago's poetry series often makes dreadful decisions. A university press might be top of the line in one field or area of specialization and middling in another.

Finally, all of this is incredibly misleading. Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected places for literary scholarship, has a deal with the University of Pennsylvania: professors need not send book proprosals. Cambridge wants first dibs, so they ask Penn English professors to send manuscripts to them first. Is this dishonest? Of course not. It simply means that Cambridge UP's staff knows that a Penn professor is likely to have a great book manuscript. So while very few Penn English professors are published with Penn's UP, a great deal have published with Cambridge.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"*As if*, Rich, the attack on KC isn't academic politics." No, Ralph, you don't get to class all attacks on KC Johnson's misrepresentations as academic politics. Some people are interested in historical truth, after all. And it's not cherry-picking to ask what kind of accuracy KC Johnson is using in his writing. The time-travelling essay is an elementary mistake that would call any academic work into question.

Nor is it academic politics that I'm talking about; it's plain politics.

[Ralph Luker]

This "Americanist" cannot recall ever having looked at a Duke University Press book in the last 30 years. Maybe I have, but I can't recall doing so. I've published in the _South Atlantic Quarterly_, but that was before it, too, joined the cultural studies parade. And, Rich, you might consider the irony of your appeal to "historical truth". Would that a couple of Duke's prominent historians only were, finally, willing to acknowledge, for all the world to see, that *there was no rape*.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Ralph, I'm not a Duke historian, nor have I written one word about any aspect of the Duke case until this thread. Your attempted tu quoque is misdirected.

It seems to me that by classing KC Johnson's work as politics, I'm defending him. It would be exceptionally shoddy as scholarship. But, of course, the statements by the Duke historians were also politics, not scholarship. KC Johnson can't have one standard for himself and another for his political opponents -- or, rather, he can, but I see no reason why anyone but his ideological confreres should listen to him.

[Ralph Luker]

What an odd thing to say, Rich, *unless* you've read KC's book -- which I doubt you have. I continue to be amused by those who talk about blogging as fragmented, not-yet-ready for prime time reflections, but who are insistent that KC's blogging must be held to a standard they don't themselves meet and would resist were it demanded of them.

[Rich Puchalsky]

None of the Duke people published a book, Ralph, yet KC Johnson is holding them to standards of accuracy in their public statements. Again, it seems that his own statements should be criticized using the same standards that he applies to others.

[Ralph Luker]

I'm sorry, Rich, but your comment is a sort of madness. If I take it literally, of course, many of the Duke 88 _have_ published books, unless you've missed a large part of this discussion. But you don't mean it literally. You mean that the Duke 88 have not published books about Duke lacrosse. Of course, they haven't. I suspect that most of them would just wish that the thing would go away. But how is it comparable that KC has published a book about Duke lacrosse and they haven't. He's at hundreds of miles distant; and they are on the scene. Must I not publish about people who were caught up in events, who said very foolish things in the midst of them, and who subsequently just wished the whole thing would go away? I've never held that KC's public statements shouldn't be criticized, but those who've criticized his blogging as lacking scholarly standards just haven't thought about that criticism in terms of their own blogging. The Duke 88 have had many months to reflect on their public statements. They've yet to acknowledge that *there was no rape* and that they'd assumed the guilt of Duke's lacrosse players.

[Timothy Burke]

Didn't know you felt that way about cultural history and cultural studies as an entire intellectual enterprise, Ralph.

[Ralph Luker]

Tim, I'd guess that you would argue that it was a smart move for a press like Duke's to become a flagship for cultural studies. I'm prepared to learn from people who do cultural studies. But I just have this nagging suspicion that it construes a world in which it is o.k. to live in the sort of denial of responsibility that most members of the Group of 88 seem to. Denial isn't peculiar to academics. It's probably not pecular to those who do cultural studies, but Duke suggests that denial has become a respectable posture in some academic communities. And, since it is respectable, those who -- like KC -- monomoniacally point it out must become pariahs.