I recently interviewed Rebecca Tuvel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College and self-identified Leftist and feminist, who in the spring of 2017, was viciously mobbed online after publishing an academic paper on transracialism — the idea that some individuals choose to identify as a particular race that is different from their racial background. She had asked whether there were parallels between being transgender and being transracial. It was a provocative argument, one that has been posed by some conservatives in the past, and I thought well within the bounds of legitimate academic discussion.
Instead of engaging with Tuvel’s points, however, other academic scholars took to social media to attack her, calling her “transphobic” and “racist,” and threatening her academic career. Hypatia, the journal that published Tuvel’s paper, issued an apology, and two members from Tuvel’s dissertation committee, Lori Gruen at Wesleyan University and Lisa Guenther at Vanderbilt University, signed an open letter denouncing the work. This is the level of shaming and ostracisation Tuvel faced for merely posing a question.
Tuvel told me what she endured has had lasting effects on her field, with academics steering clear of projects pertaining to gender and race. I saw a lot of this sort of thing during my time as an academic researcher — that in devising new research projects, some colleagues would intentionally avoid topics that could be interpreted as even potentially controversial. One such subject, for instance, is gender dysphoric children. Unless a researcher is supportive of the early transitioning approach, they have no hope of surviving in academia. In my case, writing about this issue led to my own decision to leave upon finishing my PhD.
It only takes a few loud voices, as we’ve seen, to send a wider trend of fear and intimidation throughout the ivory tower, silencing entire areas of inquiry. Higher learning is being killed by student activists, who claim they are doing what is best for society while dictating what professors are allowed to say in their classrooms.
In a given 70-hour work week, professors are conducting original research and writing papers, submitting grants, mentoring their graduate students, teaching classes, and fulfilling administrative duties. The last thing they want is to be pursued by a mob excoriating them on social media and in the press, and possibly showing up at their door. In its most drastic form, students will default to physical violence, as we saw during the 2017 protest at Middlebury College that left a professor concussed and in a neck brace as she attempted to shield Charles Murray from his attackers.
Of all people, academics should be protected from this behaviour, because we have no other way of vetting the truth. Instead, mobbing is not only encouraged, but celebrated. Even if an academic survives a bout with the mob, rarely is an apology issued. Many are instead hounded out of the academy, their professional reputations so tarnished that they have no alternative but exile.
This extends beyond publishing controversial work. Just look at those various academics who have voiced ‘unacceptable’ opinions, such as Nobel laureate Tim Hunt, who was hung out to dry after making an innocuous joke about his experiences working with women, or Nicholas and Erika Christakis, who resigned from positions at Yale University after advocating that students choose their own Halloween costumes, and physicist Alessandro Strumia, who was suspended from his position at the European nuclear research centre CERN for presenting data suggesting the sciences have become sexist toward men.
An academic’s purpose isn’t to promote ideas that are crowd-pleasing and sanctifying. It is to interrogate our beliefs in order to come away with a better understanding of the world. When academic institutions are unable to facilitate honest discussions in search of this truth – the very thing they were built to stand for – the academy has lost its way. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, but this isn’t a reason to pretend that it doesn’t exist, or to punish those who wish to explicate it.
In a perfect world, currently existing journals would stand up to the bullying, intimidation, and silencing, and academic institutions would protect their faculty. In our febrile, fearful world, anonymity will have to do.
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