Through the dark and twisty miasma of the #MeToo era that is precipitously altering American societal norms, arises the boorish behavior of self-entitled feminist theorists who have spit-polished their double standard to a garish shine in the land of academia.
Avital Ronell, a philosophy professor at New York University (NYU), is under investigation by the university’s Title IX offices. She stands accused of sexual misconduct with a student, causing shrieks of “witch hunt” to emanate from her allies in the ivy-walled world.
If you are into ivy-elite chatter, you can check out the stars of academia who penned a letter to NYU on behalf of Ronell. The letter was published and the signatories identified on the Leiter Report, otherwise known as the sniping blog from Chicago University’s philosopher extraordinaire, Brian Leiter.
One of such signer of prominence is gender theorist Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, who has an interesting “theory” on Hezbollah and Hamas organizations whom she refers to as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.” As an apparent feminist, she evidently doesn’t have anything against the way these Islamist groups treat women.
Brian Leiter is crying foul at the double standard. And America should as well.
The Dismissive Missive
Leiter was handed a copy of the letter and was quick to dissect and dismember every nugget of minutia, from sentence structure, unfortunate grammar usage, and word choices. Not everyone has an extra six hours per day to do such tedious detective work, so the rest of the world should thank him for taking one for Team Justice.
But the letter itself can be regurgitated in a much briefer fashion to paint a picture of the hypocrisy:
“Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor Ronell and accumulated collectively years of experience to support our view of her capacity as teacher and a scholar, but also as someone who has served as Chair of both the Departments of German and Comparative Literature at New York University. We have all seen her relationship with students, and some of us know the individual who has waged this malicious campaign against her.”
So, in fewer words, they know nothing about what was alleged, yet they have decided that the student and the accusations are “malicious”. But note, the identity of the student and their gender is not included in the letter.
In liberal-speak, it’s simply collusion. They obviously feel they are exempt from the glare of a #MeToo movement that points the finger at women, as well as the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.
Accomplishments Override Justice
The accolades of the letter are from a cult of single-minded people protecting the strides they have made in demeaning men, creating a movement toward a gender-neutral constituency of confused people and furthering the far-left liberal agenda in our secular institutions. Brian Leiter, who must surely be a liberal feminist ally, has identified and published an argument against this faction. And if he is alarmed, well, the rest of America should be terrified.
