On K.C. Johnson's Durham in Wonderland and Until Proven Innocent

(The second installment can be read here.)

With all due apologies to Ralph, Scott, Timothy, Miriam, and the rest of the good folk at Cliopatria, I've got to say: keeping K.C. Johnson on the roster does the rest of the contributors a disservice.  He divined the truth of what happened in Durham on the night of March 13th long before the police announced the results of their investigation.  He was correct.  Those who believed three Duke lacrosse players had raped an African-American women were incorrect.

Granted.

But I spent an hour this afternoon catching up with Johnson's Durham-in-Wonderland.  If the research presented on the blog is indicative of the content of his soon-to-be-published book—Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case—then I can only conclude that the book'll be positively Horowitzian in tenor and substance.

Like Horowitz—and clocks twice a day—Johnson occasionally nails his target.  Consider his series of profiles of the "Group of 88."  That Wahneema Lubiano is a tenured associate professor in the Program in Literature with one edited volume on her CV and two monograph that've been perpetually forthcoming since 1997 infuriates me.  It also infuriates every academic struggling for tenure, so the notion that her position is indicative of a general rot in the academic humanities is willfully misleading.

One down, eighty-seven to go.  Only he's not going to get to all eighty-seven.  He's shutting down the blog when Until Proven Innocent's published in September, and as of August 30th had only written fourteen—and even that's being charitable, since the final three were group profiles.  I can imagine the response: "So what?  He's found fourteen intellectual frauds in a group of only eighty-eight professors!  That's a damning percentage."

It certainly is.  Were he a baseball player, he'd be hitting a Ruthian .159.  But he isn't even hitting that well.  Consider his profile of Joseph Harris, the director of Duke's University Writing Program.  He's published three books and numerous articles.  His articles are published in the most important journals in the field of composition studies.  He has what can only be described as a stellar publication record for someone working in composition and rhetoric.

Johnson's dismissive description of the books—"each of which discuss how to teach writing"—is a blatant attempt to minimize the work of the entire field.  (A field, I should add, whose lack of respect is often lamented by conservative critics when they bemoan the reading and writing skills of the contemporary college student.)  What really galls me about Johnson's profile of Harris is his attempt to mislead his readers into believing statements like the following point to the liberal bias of Duke composition classes:

In a 1991 essay, he asserted that composition classes should "teach students to write as critics of their culture," with "teaching itself as a form of cultural criticism, about classrooms that do not simply reproduce the values of our universities and cultures but that also work to resist and question them."

That's about as benign a description of a course devoted to critical thinking as you'll ever find.  But if you conflate "criticism" with "condemnation," as Johnson invites you to, then it seems as if the University Writing Program's a haven for anti-American indoctrination.  To wit:

In another 1991 essay, he opposed using English classes as an opportunity to "pass down and preserve the legacy of high [W]estern culture." Why? Because students "need to use language to question the demands their society makes upon them." 

The first thing to note is that Harris published two articles in 1991.  The second is that Johnson capitalized the "w" in the phrase "high western culture."  The third is that what Harris says here is supremely uncontroversial.  He wants students to develop the ability to think for themselves in a language not borrowed unthinkingly from their parents.  This is not indoctrination: it's teaching.  He doesn't advocate teaching students to draw a particular conclusion, merely their own.

This isn't to say Harris isn't insidious.  I mean, look at him here, opposing the "corporate" nature of the university:

Too many academics, he complained, favor a meritocratic approach, concentrating on their own individual achievements rather than recognizing that they are "mid-level bureaucrats in large corporations." Harris, for one, described himself as "from a union family and . . . troubled by my position as a manager in a system that treats so many of its teachers unfairly."

Anti-corporate is anti-American, ipso facto it's anti-American to oppose the hiring of adjuncts.  That such hirings are deleterious to the departments that do them, the composition programs that rely on them, and the level of instruction university-wide is beside the point.  Johnson wants to improve the quality of education, whereas Harris wants to improve the quality of education.  Wait, what?  When someone pointed this out to him—in a comment which dispassionately, but damningly, condemns the practice of hiring adjuncts—Johnson disingenuously replied:

Given that, it's rather hard to argue that the academy is organized in a "corporate" fashion—that's a pretty big difference between the academy and the average corporation.

Translation: "I've worked in academia for years, yet somehow (wink wink) I'm not aware that the move to hire adjuncts is related to the desire of many university systems to adopt a more corporate model."

Or: "I have no response to your to comment, so I'll just call Harris 'shallow' again and hope you don't notice that I'm willfully donning blinders to make my point."

Both translations point to Johnson's fundamental commitment to making an argument which entails either willful misreading or gratuitous uncharitableness.

Take your pick.

To return to the baseball metaphor, Johnson's not merely hitting .159, he's hitting an empty .159.  He may have hit a double with Lubiano, but if he trawled the Group of 88 for equal bursts of power and stopped shortly after Harris, he has problems.  He had to force Harris into the mold of which he's but one of many exemplars.  What does that say about the other seventy-four professors whose profiles he hasn't posted?

The impetus behind this post was simple: I noticed that Priscilla Wald belonged to the Group of 88, and wondered why he hadn't profiled her—or, for that matter, any of the scholars with whose work I'm familiar.  (Also, why not Michael Hardt?  I mean, really, why not Hardt?  Wouldn't he be Johnson's perfect foil?)  Then I thought about it: if he tried to characterize their work, he'd give his readers the "wrong" impression; namely, that most of the members of the Group of 88 are responsible, well-respected scholars.

That would've been inconvenient.

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

I no longer believe any unsupported statements by KC Johnson or Ralph Luker, therefore I thought that it would be worthwhile to at least minimally check out the "KC Johnson opposed ABOR" claim. I found the article here.

What does this article say? That Ralph Luker, KC Johnson, and another professor tried to condition the opposition to ABOR on opposition to campus speech codes. That's a typical tactic of the right -- to take a proposal that has little chance of being passed, like ABOR, and use it to try to win concessions, in this case concessions that wold normalize racist speech on campus. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole Horowitz/Johnson spat was kabuki.

[Ralph Luker]

Rich is entitled to his opinion that speech on campus must be less free than it is in the rest of the United States if he chooses. His characterization of our AHA resolution, however, is wrong. It equally opposed speech codes and ABOR. Speech codes on public campuses, btw, Rich, are unconstitutional. One court case after another is finding them so. Sadly, some people on the left have not allied themselves with freedom's cause, in this respect. We've brought these speech codes on ourselves.

[ProfD]

As much as I abhor racist speech, I've never understood the justification for campus speech codes. I would prefer the racists reveal themselves for all to see rather than be asked to remain quiet, thanks.

[Karl Steel]

Ralph: please respond:

To recap: I pointed out a working association between Johnson and Horowitz; you argued that it was likely not the case; but in fact it is the case, and you either didn't know that or you withheld information in order not to have your argument muddled. Perhaps there's a third option, or others.

[Ralph Luker]

Karl, Congratulations on "proving" n-degrees of separation between KC Johnson and David Horowitz. No doubt, if you put your mind to it, you could show n-degrees of separation between me and the Bush administration. That I signed a faculty petition against an honorary degree for GHW Bush in 1975 and have voted against Bushes in every primary and general election in which I've had the opportunity since then would not be considered exculpatory evidence against your n-degrees "proof". Heavy stuff! KC Johnson's was an important voice against the Academic Bill of Rights. D'Ho hasn't forgiven him.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"His characterization of our AHA resolution, however, is wrong. It equally opposed speech codes and ABOR."

Ralph, here's why I find your statements to be more troublesome than the Group of 88's. They wrote a public statement that presented a political opinion -- the opinion that, due to the history and currency of racism, it was important to protest now no matter what the outcome of the case. You may disagree with that opinion -- I do -- but it is not a claim of fact, such as "the lacrosse players are guilty", much as the tendentious misreadings of KC Johnson and others try to make it so. That political opinion of the Group is protected under all the same free speech codes that I assume that you support. It can be condmened, of course, but I at least think that there are far more pressing matters for condemnation at the present time.

You, on the other hand, keep getting matters of fact wrong, or misrepresenting them. Saying that your AHA resolution equally opposed ABOR and campus speech codes is not a contradiction of what I wrote, and it is deceptive to present it as such.

Now, in your last reply to Karl, you make another claim of fact: "D'Ho hasn't forgiven him." Is that true? Well, who knows what is in anyone's heart. But at the level of observeable behavior, Horowitz' site within the last month published a KC Johnson article. You've already floated the "he did it without permission" trial balloon; that appears to be inoperative. If it turns out that Horowitz knew about it, can we take that as disproof of the "he hasn't forgiven him" claim?

[Karl Steel]

Karl, Congratulations on "proving" n-degrees of separation between KC Johnson and David Horowitz. No doubt, if you put your mind to it, you could show n-degrees of separation between me and the Bush administration.

Really? You list work on your CV that you did for the Bush administration?*

In other words, the "n" here is not an empty variable. It's a link from a CV to an op-ed. And lots of other op-eds in publications that I find politically reprehensible (The NY Sun, the NY Post) taking stances that I find politically reprehensible (support for Lieberman, opposition to grad student unions). All that helps me understand how I should read Johnson's forthcoming work. Do you want to argue that it shouldn't?

Again: Johnson's professional credentials point out his connection to Horowitz, a connection that you tried to call into question. When I first pointed out the Horowitz connection, or, indeed, when SEK noted the similarities between Johnson's line of attack and Horowitz's, you might have said, 'well, yes, Johnson did some writing for Horowitz a few years ago, and yes, Horowitz has reprinted some of Johnson's recent work on his site, but despite this evidence, Johnson doesn't in fact have anything to do with Horowitz. In fact, Horowitz doesn't like him! (evidence to counter my evidence).' You would have captured my benevolence by playing the game out in the open. As it stands, it looks like you're trying to slip one by me.

Now, Horowitz is an angry, paranoid buffoon. You say he hasn't 'forgiven' Johnson, but I imagine that the list of people Horowitz hasn't forgiven increases by a factor of 2 every day. But, sans evidence, I find the claim hard to believe, given that, as Rich points out, Horowitz has recently promoted Johnson's work on Frontpage.

Please reread my posts, Ralph. I haven't claimed to have 'proven' anything. I've just noticed a connection that runs counter to some of the material presented in this thread. I think this connection is important for understanding Johnson's forthcoming book. If you don't think the connection is germane or true, I'm more than happy to hear your argument. Why? Because I think it's a serious charge to link an academic with Horowitz. Clearly you do too, since you've tried to exculpate Johnson from that charge. I'd rather not be making it myself. But so far your counterarguments have been--and forgive me for my puerility--'who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?"

I'm being sincere when I say that I'd like to see something better.

* BTW, I don't think the analogy holds. Frontpage is not equivalent to the snakepit that is the Bush administration, where one might do work for Rice but be opposed by Cheney, &c. Horowitz, so far as I can tell, is Frontpage. The only snakepit there is in D'Ho's own mind.

[Ralph Luker]

This is a pretty boring and petty game you guys are playing. If you go to Front Page Rag and click on "columnists", KC's name doesn't turn up at all. But we all know that something or other by him has appeared there at one time or another. I know that he told me it appeared there without his permission. If he links to its appearance, so what? I wouldn't link to it if D'Ho published something of mine without permission. But that's me. I wouldn't have stood for an interview there, like Burke and Berube did. But that's just me. Unlike you guys, I'm not freaked out when someone I respect turns up over there. Mark Bauerlein appears there with some regularity. So what? I still read Mark Bauerlein and learn from him. Are you really so desperate to claim that since KC's had a piece appear at Front Page Rag, it justifies calling KC's work "Horowitzian"? Is Bauerlein "Horowitzian"? Are Berube and Burke "Horowitzian"? I suspect that you're just interested in the smear -- not in the truth. With that, I'll call my part in this discussion quits.

[OhIsee]

Given that KC is going to be on 'Good Morning America' tomorrow, we'll be able to see for ourselves how he's going to try to sell the public on the trahison des clercs. KC has certainly set himself up in the style of a modern-day Julien Benda.

[Karl Steel]

Ralph, it's not just the one piece. It's four. I provided the link above. I don't know why you missed it.

If he links to its appearance, so what?
Ralph, it's his CV. A record of his professional life. Maybe I'm just too tenderfooted here--defending the diss. on Thursday--but it strikes me that listing writing for Horowitz on one's CV is a matter of some significance. I certainly consider my CV a portrait of how I want the world to know me.

The Bérubé comparison doesn't work. Bérubé has loudly and persistently gone after Horowitz. Bérubé has loudly and persistently defended academic unions and progressive politics of many sorts. He did this sort of work, in fact, in the interviews with Frontpage. From what I can see, such is not the case with Johnson. Johnson's writing on Frontpage is in harmony with Horowitz's goals. With that in mind, I should sharpen my point: it isn't simply Johnson's association with Horowitz. It is, as I said, his "working" association, by which I mean that it's clear that Johnson and Horowitz are in harmony on many points.

You said above that Horowitz hasn't forgiven Johnson. I replied that this didn't matter. Horowitz's a crank. The point is rather whether Johnson has forgiven Horowitz.

I might also take this pause to commend Bérubé for his prescient caution on the Duke case.

I suspect that you're just interested in the smear -- not in the truth. With that, I'll call my part in this discussion quits.

That's convenient.

Ralph, here's what I've been able to determine: if someone told me an academic, the victim? of a famous tenure battle over 'collegiality,' had written a book on the Duke Lacrosse thing, had a book blurbed by George Will, had written for the NY Sun, the NY Post, and Frontpage, and was anti-grad student union and pro-Lieberman, what kind of book do you suppose I could expect? If you think I'm being "smeary" by simply listing these facts, all of which I've gleaned from Johnson's own professional web site with very little effort, then I suppose I don't know what smeary looks like. It seems that smeary at least involves a creative use of LexisNexis and taking quotes out of context rather than, say, linking to entire articles. And I've repeatedly asked you for a better defense of your frequent collaborator Johnson. If what I'm saying is wrong, it should be so extraordinarily wrong, because the charges are themselves so extraordinary, that they shouldn't be that hard to knock over.

Sheesh.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Ralph, I commented before that Bauerlein wrote for FrontPage. I don't think that it is automatically a horrible thing to do, although I do think that it's odd to question a connection with Horowitz while writing for him. So the "freakout" is not over the mere appearance, it's over the concealment. As Karl said, evidence to counter the evidence -- or even dismissing it as unimportant, at a much earlier stage of the discussion -- would have been sufficient. It's the denial at every stage that annoys.

Well, the smears are annoying as well. You still are equating Berube's and Burke's hostile interviews on FrontPage as being in some way equivalent to writing an article for the site. I don't know about Burke, but I'd guess that Berube would find that to be a smear. Actually, a very Horowitzian one.

In the meantime, if KC Johnson really didn't give permission for Horowitz to publish his material, I suggest that he demand that it be taken down. In case he can't keep track, here's a handy, partial list of non-interviews, from a minute's Google:

Terrorist Lawyer on Trial: 7/2/2004

Global Studies, Universal Bias: 8/6/2004

The Bankruptcy of Cold War "Revisionism": 12/31/2004

Academic Freedom on the Front Lines: 1/11/2005

Duke's Party Line: 5/24/2006

Ward Churchill And The Diversity Agenda: 7/30/2007

I suspect that, instead, KC Johnson may want to add some of these to his CV. Let it never be said that I've never done him any favors.

[Sisyphus]

After the Jennifer Ho debacle--when someone posted under a third party's name and made all sorts of claims, claims that KC took to be true, which he then went on to talk about in the main part of his blog--I wouldn't believe something that is tailor-made for KC's audience but completely unverifiable.

OHISEE, could you point me to where this happened on that blog or paste it over here? Or give more detail, somehow? Was Jen ever informed about this?

This brings to mind the owner of Whole Foods getting caught posting all sorts of stuff about his company and himself on, I believe, the Yahoo stock boards, under a pseudonym. People have mentioned on this thread that blogging is a "new academic medium" that hasn't had all the kinks worked out yet. Well, the ability to post as someone else or as someone other than oneself, or multiple selves, adds a very dangerous wrinkle to this whole topic, especially when so many of the DIW commenters are so angry and using the whole Duke incident as cover for pushing an agenda rather than having a discussion.

[AMac]

Sisyphus 7:48pm --

Here is a link to the D-i-W post More Academic Embarassment.

The post attracted quite a bit of traffic to the cited posts at Prof. Ho's blog. Some commenters were rude, some were sarcastic, and some were reasoned and polite. Essentially all challenged her view of the case. Ho wrote lengthy responses to many of her commenters.

Ho's initial remarks appeared to emphasize the transcendent importance of her overall views on gender, race, and class, with little evidence that she had much familiarity with the details of the case, and little evidence that she had thought through the implications of her pronouncements. (These are my opinions, obviously.) Over the course of the exchanges in her blog's comments, she didn't show much if any additional insight, though she tried to be respectful to her new commenters. Again, IMO.

This is from memory, as Prof. Ho shortly decided that this newfound attention wasn't such a good thing, and closed her blog to all but invited readers.

There were some (two, IIRC) comments in the linked D-i-W thread that were signed by Jennifer Ho. I recall thinking that they matched what Prof. Ho had written on her blog, in both style and content. Prof. Ho then apparently contacted KC Johnson, said that the D-i-W comments were not from her, and asked him to delete them, which he did. As I recall, there was no discussion of the IP address of the machine from which those D-i-W comments had been posted.

Hope that helps.

[OhIsee]

Hi, Sysiphus. Yes, Jennifer Ho was informed about it and the fake comments were yanked. The incident happened on the 27th and 28th of July, 2007. My understanding is that KC knows who posted the hoax comments, and that person or IP was banned. KC intimates that the only reason he is taking down his response to Ho's supposed comments is because she herself asked him to do so, disclaiming authorship. Apparently in her request to him she also told him that he did not have permission to quote from her email. Why do this? Precisely because KC quotes out of context and smears his interlocutors. He is going live on GMA with the "academic McCarthyism" smear. McCarthyism? And this man has a Ph.D. from Harvard and does research in American history?! The GMA site has a excerpt from the book. There he (or, rather, Stuart Taylor) writes, "Politically correct leftist professors were in vogue nationwide, and the leftward slant of Duke's humanities and social sciences faculty accelerated in 1995, when President Nannerl Overholser "Nan" Keohane named History professor William Chafe as her new dean of faculty."

PC Leftist professors were in vogue? Like chihuahuas on the arm of Paris Hilton? We can't afford ourselves a scientist, let's stock up on PC Leftist professors? Is this code-language for faculty who did research on women? peoples of color? or is this code-language for women *and* peoples of color?

Where to even *begin* to unpack and disentangle the characterizations of Duke, its faculty, and its student in the description offered of the university in Taylor and Johnson's work? It beggars the imagination, but it will make a very interesting chapter in someone's book about how power, privilege, and ressentiment operate. It's also clear that whatever you want to call the narrative of the Taylor/Johnson book, it isn't scholarship. That's not an indictment so much as a calling out to recognize it for what it is.

[OhIsee]

And at what point does KC's "work" rise to the level of a legal definition of defamation?

According to the Chilling Effects Clearlinghouse project of the EFF and a consortium of law schools, including Harvard and Stanford,

"The elements that must be proved to establish defamation are: (1) A publication to one other than the person defamed; (2) of a false statement of fact; (3) which is understood as being of and concerning the plaintiff; and (4) which is understood in such a way as to tend to harm the reputation of plaintiff."

KC clearly wants to harm the reputation of individuals at Duke. At what point does the assertion that the faculty wanted to "throw their students under the bus" (to use one phrase that appears often in the comments of DiW) become defamatory? Does it?

[Tortmaster]

Very shortly after the Duke case, Professor Chafe of Duke University wrote about it in a newspaper as follows:

"That is why most lynchings of black men in the late 19th and early 20th century were justified by accusing black men of lusting after white women - even thouth there was LITTLE EVIDENCE that such attacks ever took place." (emphasis added)(irony in original).

Should Chafe be sued for libel? Should K.C. Johnson be sued for libel because he may have quoted Chafe's public statement?

Duke University settled with the students for civil wrongdoing. I am sure that the settlement included a release on behalf of the professoriate of all possible claims based upon the laws of libel and slander. K.C. Johnson, on the other hand, will have a best-selling book.

[Duke family]

Those of you criticizing KC Johnson on this board: are you sure you are not jealous of his success? KC Johnson has done a great service to the society with his Durham in Wonderland blog and how anyone can deny that is beyond me. Perhaps, you should be a little more honest with your own feelings and views.

[Observer]

To many (but not all) who have commented above,

Your apparent lack of familiarity with the factual details and legal aspects of the Duke LAX case seems to be preventing a very comprehensive understanding of Professor Johnson's admirable role in its resolution. Also, I get the distinct impression from some, including Chisee, Ahistoricality, and RP, for example, that inquiry into the patterns of thought and habits of scholarship of the faculty members who played a deplorable role in the case is really off limits--at least in polite academic circles. For the record I am surprised that there is not more interest in ferreting out not only why this group of faculty members blatantly and indignantly flouted Duke's stated standard of care in dealing with students but why considerations of race, class, and gender seemed to extinguish entirely their interest in truth and concern for due process. As for the future of AS, AAS, and Women's Studies, I expect most people recognize these areas as perfectly legitimate areas for scholarly study; the issue is whether scholars in those fields can resist the temptation to bastardize scholarship (and even good citizenship) in the name of politics, especially since "activism" seems to be of paramount importance to at least some working in those fields.

[PG]

Publisher's Weekly had what sounds like an accurate take on the book:

"But these facts are embedded in repetitiously hammering home the basic points, sarcasm and ranting against the political correctness (i.e., obsession with the race-class-gender triad) of academia and the media. The authors challenge the academic credentials of the black faculty members who attacked the team and criticize the Times's Selena Roberts for choosing to live in lily white Westport, Conn."