Said Georgetown professor Carol Christine Fair, quoted in "A Conservative Quits Georgetown’s Law School Amid Free Speech Fight/Ilya Shapiro, who tweeted that a 'lesser Black woman' would get a Supreme Court nod, was cleared by a school investigation. He decided to leave anyway" (NYT).
Fair is one of the professors Shapiro quoted in his resignation letter. He used her as an example of a Georgetown professor who'd tweeted something that was offensive but was not treated as harshly as he was. As the NYT puts it:
[She] tweeted about a “chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement” during the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes,” she continued.
Professor Fair said on Monday that at the time she made the tweet, she was already a target of death and rape threats, and her posts had become “performative.” The fallout, including threats to “elderly ladies working in the dining hall, students in the library,” had been so bad for the community that she had taken a research leave to go to Afghanistan, where she felt safer.
Professor Fair said she was one of only a few Georgetown faculty members who signed a petition supporting Mr. Shapiro after the ruckus about his posts. And she said that without knowing him, she did not think his tweet was racist, given that “he actually put forward a person of color.” But student complaints are “the death knell,” she said.
Thanks to Professor Fair. I like her word "performative." Are professors free to publish "performative" statements on social media? Can students and faculty be challenged to understand "performative" speech? Is it art? Should we understand it the way we understand literature? Do we understand literature? The thing about cancel culture is there's an eager effort to misunderstand, to jump when there's any material that can be used against your antagonists. And that too is performative... in the great ruckus that is present-day elite education.
By the way, the New York Times elided part of what Fair tweeted. The full text, quoted in Shapiro's Wall Street Journal column, is: "Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes."
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57 comments:
"The fallout, including threats to “elderly ladies working in the dining hall, students in the library,” had been so bad for the community that she had taken a research leave to go to Afghanistan, where she felt safer."
She had to go to Afghanistan...to feel safer? Yikes!
Based on the “evidence” at the confirmation hearing, a Georgetown law professor called Justice Brett Kavanaugh “a serial rapist.”
Why wasn’t she fired?
Correction. Fair isn’t on Georgetown’s law faculty.
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules. When you get into cancellation without rules, censoring without guidelines, without knowing the good from the bad, the real from the pretend, it's hard to stop it from coming around at every one of them- or us. Eventually the disease of wokeness becomes a virus that comes for everyone. It's an ouroboros, eventually consuming its own.
It's so much simpler to just not get offended at every word uttered by anyone outside of your current circle of nodding-in-agreement, panicked souls. That goes for Prof. Fair as well, who had to run to Afghanistan because she was so terrorized by replies sent on social media? Here's an idea- drop social media. Stop reading it. And get hold of yourself.
Also- go take lessons on how to use a 9mm.
Our administrators, leaders, influencers need to be held accountable for being led on this by teenagers. Allowing themselves to take part in this medieval sort of witch-hunting. I mean...who runs Georgetown, that fabulous university?
Fair is using a variation of the playbooks used by Stern and Stewart. 'I didn't mean it, it was the my character I play publicly' and 'I was just performing a part, reading the lines.'
Tempting is right. If you don't want to be held to your social media posts under a strict liability standard, you should back away.
Misuse of performative. Performative speech is speech that does something, like "I now pronounce you man and wife." J.L Austin introduced the term with language examples to defeat positivists, who thought they could calculate everything including morality.
Nothing says “fundamentally principled” like having to weasel out of your public statements by calling them “performative”.
Of course, calling yourself fundamentally principled is like saying: “I’m very honest and ethical”. It tells all but the dullest that you’re crooked.
The left/woke crowd is struggling with the limits of human memory. We can only keep in mind "7 plus or minus 2" items. So, some people and in some situations that means remembering only handle 5 things, or up to 9 things.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895717703900835
When the left adopts new topics, the old ones must slip from awareness. Racial justice + feminism + support for sex workers + green + vegan diets + unions + support immigrants + correct Western imperialism + correct the oversteps of Christian missionaries + ban guns + tolerance for Islam + tolerance for China + universal health care + remove plastic from the oceans + end coal pollution + mandate renewable energy + stop ocean rise + Occupy Wall St / wealth redistribution + punish Trump + ANTIFA / end White supremacy + stop nuclear weapons + stop nuclear energy + transgender support + punish Russia for invading Ukraine + ...
Inevitable contradictions and lapses arise.
The right wing has fixed and standard rules, so they don't typically think about all this stuff (at once). They often don't adapt either, but tend do tend to be predictable. Some on the left are forgetting or discarding various causes and thereby creating new forms of conservatives. MUST CHANGE NOW!!! Must change what?
Less unexpectedly Shapiro supports her too.
I applaud this. The Academy needs to suffer losses which will make gains elsewhere. It's a big tent.
.Temujin
You suggest not getting offended as if one can choose that path. How about...nobody's offended but the Dance allows for feigned offense and Authority pretends to believe drastic action must be taken to mollify the fakers?
"Performative" means "Protected by Leftism". Who knew?
The law forces you to fight the wrong battle. The right battle is that the university is the unique place where you can profess anything that you think is true.
I am amused by how careless these highly educated, credentialed people are with the English language. Words matter. Would Shapiro have been in such hot water if he hadn't used the word "lesser" and should Professor Fair have thrown an "alleged" in there somewhere, to make her comments seem at least a little more thoughtful?
I wonder what made her feel safer in Afghanistan.
"Misuse of performative. Performative speech is speech that does something, like "I now pronounce you man and wife." J.L Austin introduced the term with language examples to defeat positivists, who thought they could calculate everything including morality."
There is a concept in philosophy, but you can tell from the context that's not what she meant. The word "performative" wasn't taken out of general usage by the philosopher. And she did not use the term "performative speech." I think she meant something like performance art or the performing that is done by an actor or a standup comedian.
There is something in law that is related, the idea of speech as conduct. It's a way to get into an exception to free speech rights. The reason government can punish incitement and true threats is that these are conceptualized as conduct. There was a strong move made by law professors circa 1990 to characterize pornography and hate speech as conduct. Look for the phrase "words that wound."
The argument is not between Shapiro and Fair. Shapiro cited Fair's tweet as one that was very similar to his in referencing racial and sexual identities (but clearly using much more inflammatory language) and the Georgetown University administration ignored it.
Also, the star chamber Georgetown U assembled didn't clear Shapiro. It decided after several months of meetings that it had no jurisdiction to punish him because he wasn't employed by Georgetown U when he published the Tweet while making it clear that it would have done so had he waited a few days before expressing his opinion.
There is a concept in philosophy, but you can tell from the context that's not what she meant. The word "performative" wasn't taken out of general usage by the philosopher. And she did not use the term "performative speech." I think she meant something like performance art or the performing that is done by an actor or a standup comedian.
I took it in the philosophy way (and of course it didn't make sense) so it's not a general term. By contrast you can deal with ambiguous terms very easily, so it wasn't a case of ambiguity. Call hers "performance speech" and it makes more sense as the general term anyway.
If you don't know about performative speech then you're not led astray and can figure out the meaning (ah, must mean she's performing with it) but you're still coining a term that will produce an unnecessary conflict.
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules. When you get into cancellation without rules, censoring without guidelines, without knowing the good from the bad, the real from the pretend, it's hard to stop it from coming around at every one of them- or us.
Let’s not forget charges without evidence.
How many times have we heard, “He said something x-ist,” rather than repeating what was actually said for the reader to judge?
People are retweeting judgements so as not you be linked to the actual words, lest they be accused of spreading them.
Temujin: "This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules. When you get into cancellation without rules, censoring without guidelines, without knowing the good from the bad, the real from the pretend, it's hard to stop it from coming around at every one of them.."
To Maoist totalitarians, that's all a feature, not a problem.
Claiming others deserve death and castration is a principled position against cancellation?
"I am a fundamentally principled person." Sounds like she might indeed have actual principles, that is, ones that don't depend on which side you're on. Well done.
The Wikipedia article about C. Christine Fair includes the following passage:
In January 2017, Fair was involved in a Twitter dispute with Asra Q. Nomani. In response to Nomani's tweet that as a Muslim, she voted for President Trump, Fair tweeted that she had "written [Nomani] off as a human being" and that Nomani had "pimped herself out to all media outlets." Nomani responded by filing a complaint with Georgetown University, Fair's employer, alleging discrimination and harassment.
In May 2017, Fair began an altercation with white nationalist Richard B. Spencer at a gym in Alexandria, Virginia. While the two were working out, Fair approached Spencer and accused him of being a Nazi, along with a number of other accusations, leading a third gym patron to intervene on behalf of him. This incident resulted in Spencer's membership being terminated by the manager of the gym.
In January 2018, Fair was involved in an incident at Frankfurt Airport. When her bag was flagged for possibly containing explosives, it was searched and German Federal Police instructed Fair that she would have to dispose of a liquid deodorant or transfer it to her checked bag. German police stated that Fair was uncooperative, as she accused them of sexism and of being Nazis and thugs, and directed expletives at them. Fair was charged with slander under Germany's defamation law. She subsequently published an article on HuffPost partially rejecting the police account of the incident.
In the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings in September 2018, Fair tweeted that Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were "entitled white men justifying a serial rapists' arrogated entitlement" and that they "deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps." She made additional comments expressing support for post-mortem castration and corpse desecration of the senators.
At least one student expressed the fear that Fair's comments would cause students who hold opposing views to feel threatened. Georgetown University responded by saying that her expressions did not violate the university's policies. The university later responded by moving up her scheduled international research leave.
Fair has accused the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty of sexual harassment.
"Temujin said...
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules."
Not just the "problem with", but the "point of".
We must wear the ribbon, because we are told to wear the ribbon.
"Performative" my butt. It was a rant. Plain and simple.
It is an awkward situation, though. Prof. Fair did the right thing in supporting Shapiro and she apparently doesn't support cancel culture, so using her as an example of Georgetown's hypocrisy is unfair to her, but it is nevertheless a great example of Georgetown's hypocrisy.
the New York Times elided part of what Fair tweeted. The full text, quoted in Shapiro's Wall Street Journal column, is: "Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths..
Well Of Course they did! If they'd left THAT PART in; it would have made her sound Bad. Can't Have That!
I am surprised and pleased to read this. Far more integrity than one might have expected.
"I am a fundamentally principled person" says the woman who says she wants to castrate all white men and feed their penis' to pigs.
That's some serious mental illness right there. My God, how is this person employable anywhere?
Another teenager in a position of responsibility in a once-respected institution. This one has violent fantasies. Let's see if she tries to acquire an AR-15.
Ah, well- she was pissed.
I understood performative as performance/artistic license, as well. Probably b/c I never thought of it’s proper usage lol. She did seem a bit over enthusiastic about it, though. And- I believe she was wrongwrongwrong about the man.
You know, enough rope and all that…
When Georgetown hires faculty members primarily because they are women or other "marginalized people", then Georgetown runs the risk of hiring reckless, trouble-making embarrassments like Carol Christine Fair.
"Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes."
Perfomative speech? Sounds more like toxic penis envy to me.
“There was a strong move made by law professors circa 1990 to characterize pornography and hate speech as conduct. Look for the phrase "words that wound."“
Stupid stuff like that wounds me. In fact, I felt a few brain cells die just reading that sentence. Who can I sue?
This isn't the first time I've heard an academic state that lots of professors are terrified of their students. I suspect the reason is because they reasonably fear that one complaint can end their career. I suspect that the reason the administrators act on student complaints is that they are terrified of a lawsuit. It sounds like there needs to be significant reform of Educational and Workplace anti-discrimination laws. The laws may have started from an earnest desire to create spaces where everyone felt comfortable to learn and work, but it has now turned into a system where the intended protectees have become tyrants. The threat of them complaining has created an environment where people don't feel comfortable to teach, learn or work. People shouldn't have a cause of action and neither should the government because someone said something that is perceived, or even actually is an attack on a person's group identity. Now I'm not saying these types of opinions deserve legal protections. But the law shouldn't provide a sword to rout them either. It is impossible for government to police social interactions beyond the most clearly defined, and clearly understood negative actions. These are things like don't steal from people and don't physically assault people. But don't create a hostile educational/working environment? It turns out there is no clearly, nor easily, nor consistently understood standard. Keep the laws focused on policing actions, not words or ideas.
Temujin: "No one knows the rules."
A feature, not a bug, of the prog regime. Keep 'm guessing: power tool.
In the short run, there is no solution. But #Resistance possible. Shapiro showed one way. To her credit, as blog hostess Althouse shows another.
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules.
Of course there are rules. One of the primary rules is that rules are for suckers. They only apply to the people on the right.
The rules don't apply to people on the left. Especially the elite.
Until they do.
Cancel Cancel Culture. Two negatives may make a right. Lose your ethical religion. #HateLovesAbortion
" No one knows the rules."
That is what Room 101 is for.
When I saw this yesterday, the her posts had become “performative” caught my eye, too. I presumed that she meant what AA suggests, 'performance art' etc etc. But I remain confused about who she was performing for or indeed what sort of people were making the nasty threats to her. The 'flight to Afghanistan' has to be 'art', right? Then I skimmed her Wikipedia page and, who knows, she looks to have a wide variety of potential threat-makers; I'd never seen her name, I think.
Perhaps I don't understand this correctly. If someone says awful things then says it's "performative," that lets them off the hook. Do I have that right?
Does this work for comedians or just professors at Georgetown?
I think she meant something like performance art or the performing that is done by an actor or a standup comedian.
So it is more of a 'clown nose on, clown nose off' situation. 'I didn't really mean what I said, it was just a joke. But seriously, he is a serial rapist who should die a miserable death while we laugh', if I may be permitted to put words in her mouth.
And so we all loose again. He won his place back after being maligned and mistreated. However, he knew he would never be deemed acceptable again by his colleagues. By his absence the University is diminished substantially. Diminished permanently since they will never voluntarily hire someone with his actually centrist but relatively right leaning views.
I understand why he did this but it doesn't change the reality of the loss to the world.
These institutions are corrupt from top to bottom. A few will live on with reputations established 100 years ago. Pretty soon, these "elite" institutions will be all that is left of "higher education." Kids and their parents are figuring this out. The student loan fiasco will be recognized for what it is. A signal that most college educations, aside from science, are worthless.
Temujin said...
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules.
That's actually a feature.
Whatever happened to that leftist conceit “Speaking truth to power?” Anyone heard that lately? Or is that only used anymore when super big corporations that have revenues bigger than entire continents decide, in combination with the entire media and government, to attack little old nuns in a convent?
Just wondering what “speaking truth to power” is today….
Temujin said...
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules.
Everyone knows the rules.
Whatever serves the Regime and allows them to shape the bounds of acceptable discourse is the rule.
What they cannot do is be honest about what they are doing.
Democrats and leftists in the end are just shitty controlling people.
The full text, quoted in Shapiro's Wall Street Journal column, is: "Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes."
Just curious how you can continue to support an openly dishonest and evil publication like this with constant attention and traffic.
This is the problem with the entire Woke Empire. No one knows the rules.
To those using it, that's not a bug, it's a feature. That's a sign of the real purpose, which has nothing to do with avoiding treating people well or avoiding offense.
No performative defense for Jan6 insurrectionist?
All the selfies and videotaping notwithstanding.
"I am a fundamentally principled person."
A brief biographical review shows this statement to be fundamentally untrue.
Is 'performative' like 'her truth'?
Or is it just the standard fallback for a privileged white woman when she gets caught?
Lord, I feel embarrassed from having graduated from GULC. Thank God, I will never need to use my resume again, and I wouldn't acknowledge it here except for the partial anonymity this site provides. I can't but believe that all of this must be costing the school serious money in financial support from alumni.
So let me see if I understand this correctly: Professor Fair is a "fundamentally principled person," but her vitriol-filled tweets are "performative."
Hey Professor - - I'm not sure that squares up. A "principled person" would say what {insert favorite pronoun here} means and mean what {insert favorite pronoun here} says. That's about as far as one can go.
C'mon man!
Some support for my theory that "higher education" is in trouble.
Enrollment declines continued to worsen this spring. Total postsecondary enrollment fell to 16.2 million this spring, marking a one-year decline of 4.1 percent or 685,000 students. Enrollment declined this spring at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Following a 3.5 percent drop last spring, postsecondary institutions have lost nearly 1.3 million students since spring 2020.
Undergraduate enrollment accounted for most of the decline, dropping 4.7 percent this spring or over 662,000 students from spring 2021. As a result, the undergraduate student body is now 9.4 percent or nearly 1.4 million students smaller than before the pandemic.
Performative speech in her case seems to mean expressing extreme anger, as in losing one's temper. To judge by that Wikipedia entry, she has a persistent problem here.
"Are professors free to publish "performative" statements on social media?"
That is up to the people paying them. And whoever that is, I wish they would stop.
"The fallout, including threats to “elderly ladies working in the dining hall, students in the library,” had been so bad for the community that she had taken a research leave to go to Afghanistan, where she felt safer."
This is all complete and utter bullshit.
Let me make a guess: she offers not the slightest shred of any evidence for the threats to “elderly ladies working in the dining hall, students in the library,”
Rabel said...
"I am a fundamentally principled person."
A brief biographical review shows this statement to be fundamentally untrue.
as Al Smith would say.. Let's Take A Look, at the record..
In January 2017, Fair was involved in a Twitter dispute with Asra Q. Nomani. In response to Nomani's tweet that as a Muslim, she voted for President Trump, Fair tweeted that she had "written [Nomani] off as a human being"..
In May 2017, Fair began an altercation with white nationalist Richard B. Spencer at a gym in Alexandria, Virginia.. Fair approached Spencer and accused him of being a Nazi, along with a number of other accusations, leading a third gym patron to intervene on behalf of him. This incident resulted in Spencer's membership being terminated by the manager of the gym.
In January 2018, Fair was involved in an incident at Frankfurt Airport. When her bag was flagged for possibly containing explosives, it was searched and German Federal Police instructed Fair that she would have to dispose of a liquid deodorant or transfer it to her checked bag. German police stated that Fair was uncooperative, as she accused them of sexism and of being Nazis and thugs, and directed expletives at them. Fair was charged with slander under Germany's defamation law..
In the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings in September 2018, Fair tweeted that Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were "entitled white men justifying a serial rapists' arrogated entitlement" and that they "deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps." She made additional comments expressing support for post-mortem castration and corpse desecration of the senators.
At least one student expressed the fear that Fair's comments would cause students who hold opposing views to feel threatened. Georgetown University responded by saying that her expressions did not violate the university's policies.
Which raises the Question.. What WOULD violate the Georgetown University polices???
Tenure shouldn't make you a made guy.
Just saying.
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