It really depends upon the journal. Those that are from the “Identity Studies” area tend to be more ideological, although ideology tends to permeate all professions. I have seen good papers rejected from economic journals because the content of the paper was contrary to the known ideology of the editor.

By the way, even the hard science journals have gone this way. Part of the problem is that much of modern science is government-funded, and the political process is likely to be a part of the subject of the funding.

And, let us be honest, a lot of academic publications are not exactly academically rigorous, including some that have published my papers!

But this I think it a pretty servicable example of the thinness of your whole project here—of attacking KC. On KCs side are being absolutely right about the issues of guilt/innocence, whether or not the 88 signatories were wise to act, the failure of Duke to follow and enforce its own guidelines, and so on. Against him is the fact that he used rhetorical shortcuts while engaged in a high profile, almost single-handed debate/PR battle with among others the mainstream media—who of course never use tricks of any kind.
I am sorry. I just do not see a lot of juice in it and I wonder if you really do either.

Mr. Red Mountain mentioned the Dec 15 hearing as the point when many in Durham began to change their minds. You know, the main outcome of that hearing was that it became obvious that Nifong was going to be eviserated by the NC bar. He screwed up too badly in actually getting CAUGHT hiding exculpatory DNA evidence. The frame was over at that point and everybody sensed it - and wanted to run clear of the A bomb coming down that now had Nifongs name on it.
But was that the first time he obviously lied? Er, no. It wasn’t. But maybe Durhamites are more inclined to give their new local hero the benefit of the doubt because the psychic cost of admitting to being so wrong about him and his biggest case was prohibitive.

As far as I can tell nobody who’s taken the trouble to know what they’re talking about claims that the banner was “produced by Duke people.” Some people accociated with Duke were involved in the protest, but the potbanger’s didn’t emanate from Duke or represent it. In general their attitude towards the university seems to have been suspicious if not hostile. There’s an good article on Liestoppers about all that—I referred to it when I first wrote about them (at the time I also said my piece about the need to repudiate the banner). Johnson draws on it too:

The potbangers were a loose coalition of three factions: a handful of professional protesters; some far-left Duke graduate students and professors (like Kim Curtis); and Trinity Park residents who disliked Duke undergraduates.

He was also working from a collection of intra-potbanger email messages. I can’t imagine that he would have kept it to himself if that correspondence implicated a lot of Duke people or the institution.

Some of the comments in the post (those that were linked) came from publicly available sources. The others came from e-mails circulated among the potbangers. These e-mails were forwarded to me by a former potbanger who grew embittered by the movement’s behavior. The person agreed to forward the documents to me provided I not reveal his or her name publicly; since these were documents, I was willing to make the promise.

Johnson didn’t mention the banner until Jan. 07, and then he took it up with all the integrity of a witch hunter, so the issue is not “rhetorical shortcuts.” And I’m pretty sure the defense of Truth was no longer his sole burden by that time.

The problem as I see it is that Prof. Barnett really does not go into the guts of the case. She assumes that for nine months, the possibility that Reade, Collin, and David really had raped Crystal Mangum was real, but that in the late hour, additional information was found that negated the charges.

Have you considered that this view might actually have been the majority view at the time from the general public? Even among those that followed this case on a daily basis many were not convinced until after the December 15th hearing. Just something to consider and it would certainly put her ideas about the framing of the case from a PR standpoint in perspective. I don’t believe Duke’s efforts in this area were intended for the likes of TalkLeft and LieStoppers membership.

Unfortunately, the paper pretty much is boiler plate modern feminism, complete with all of the requisite cliches and the like. Even though I personally like Prof. Barnett, I cannot say, academically speaking, that it is a “good paper.” (But, I have published a few bad ones in academic journals myself.)

The problem as I see it is that Prof. Barnett really does not go into the guts of the case. She assumes that for nine months, the possibility that Reade, Collin, and David really had raped Crystal Mangum was real, but that in the late hour, additional information was found that negated the charges.

Thus, she reasons, Duke should have engaged in all of the usual “sexual abuse” programs that people like Prof. Barnett believes should be in place. She never really seems to understand what actually happened, or why the charges were filed in the first place. Instead, she assumes that the legal system was working just fine, but the cops and prosecutors simply made a mistake. It never occurs to her that this was a frame from almost the beginning.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that K.C. Johnson just does not see this kind of “scholarship” as legitimate. He is from an older school of academe, in which one does not wear one’s ideology on one’s sleeve for academic publications. It is not that ideology disappears, but rather that one needs to try to keep some objectivity in the process.

An interesting and thoughtful reaction. I can’t respond to the reading of Barnett’s paper because I haven’t read it myself. For me, the question of whether it’s a good analysis is a lot more important than the question of whether it belongs in an academic journal. I don’t dismiss any of these impressions, and I’m quite sympathetic to the idea that ideology should not be the driver when writing for academic publications.

First of all, the news doesn’t become something simple and unproblematic because you look it up on Lexis/Nexis. And no, I don’t think and didn’t imply that Johnson “got his information … by watching a lot of TV.” I did refer to two situations in which he specifically cited TV news stories but used them in a way that’s sloppy or naive or self-serving or some combination of those things. With respect to the “Castrate” banner, Lexis/Nexis was revealing, but not in a way Johnson could bring himself to acknowledge.

I’m sure that many points I’ve made are arguable. It would be nice to get some real argument-argument that’s aimed at the things I’ve actually written and that’s open to a more complex and ambiguous sense of the people involved.

To critique what you’ve actually written would take time and effort. What a ridiculous request.

I read your posts and frequently see things I could counter with valid critiques. Not in the sense I could destroy the argument but I could pick at the edges or force you to admit the tone or emphasis is over the top. I don’t for two reasons. One is that a point by point discussion of why I think Karla Holloway’s Bodies of Evidence or Cathy Davidson’s op-ed were bs from start to finish would require a long detour down a path that would take you away from your central project which is analyzing what Johnson has written. The other reason is I keep waiting for some one else to do it (otherwise known as pure laziness).

The lack of intelligent comments or critiques has fascinated me. I would guestimate that 90% of the comments you receive are contra your positions and fully 80% of those do more to help your case than undermine it. The remaining 10% (such as the Barbra Barnett comment) don’t really help you.

I can only speculate on the reasons for paucity of sharp commentary. On the liberal side I think they have already made the critiques on KC that they think are valid, the remaining fish are too small to bother frying and they don’t want to do anything to support the Duke faculty. On KC’s side I think that most of the intelligent people have moved on and the remaining ones attach a cloak of infallibility to KC. I see KC as some one who was nearly completely right but made a few mistakes. Engaging your posts intelligently would require some concessions and I don’t think most of KC’s supporters are willing to to that.

But when you say that I’ve presented very little, and say that I seem to think I made an airtight case but don’t say what I seem to think I’ve proved, what I suspect is that I haven’t been writing about the things that you think are important.

I read the blog for analysis of the rhetoric. How did KC construct the argument and how do you attack it. I think you are holding KC to an extremely stringent standard and glossing over what the objects of his scorn have done. It doesn’t all boil down to two wrongs make a right or yea but look what they said arguments. In the Baldwin exchange you linked to Weigman’s letter, printed the text of Haynie’s email and then asked the question “is there a hint of political correctness in Haynie’s email?”. The answer is no but there sure was in Weigman’s letter. You also need to follow a link to find out that Baldwin later apologized for only the language of his comment. Do you think he might have been pressured to do that? The way you presented the exchange made it easy to undermine Johnson’s argument. The key to me was Baldwin apologizing for language that wasn’t racist at all. The Devil is in the details.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone who’s paying attention that I’m fascinated by language and by the way arguments are made and understood, and with those interests in mind, DIW is a remarkable specimen. It’s also obvious that it hits a nerve, and there’s no question that limits my objectivity. Some months ago I went out trolling for feedback, and what I found is that people were, first of all, pretty settled in their opinions, and also tired of the long, bitter, and abrasive debate. Just scrolling through those comment threads on Acephalous is exhausting (the links are in my post). So one way to look at it is that I was about 6 months late to get much response from others critical of Johnson.

The Baldwin thing is definitely arguable in the way you suggest. My fundamental objection, though, is that Johnson didn’t look any deeper than he had to in order to tell the story he wanted to tell, and the story is essentially prefabricated, at that. Or else he did find out more but withheld it because it didn’t fit the story. I don’t think it’s too much to expect him to live up to basic journalistic standards, especially if he’s using other people’s email for evidence. In some ways I may have weakened that point by editorializing about how I saw the episode. But if I’d avoided that kind of editorializing I think I would have risked doing one of the things that bothers me most about DIW. Johnson’s approach to criticism is to inflict maximum damage with minimum risk, and when it comes to constructive criticism, DIW is exceptionally thin.

And I see he’s crushed another fearsome enemy in the latest post. Bully that he is, he never picks a fight unless the odds are wildly in his favor.

I’m curious as to whether this applies to Chaffe, Mark Anthony Neal and Davidson or some of the lesser lights among the G88 like Cathy Curtis and Grant Farred who you haven’t covered in your blog?

You seem satisfied that you’ve constructed an air tight case against Johnson but I’m not convinced. In course of twenty five or so posts in nearly a year you really have presented very little. When I glance at your previous post I think half the points are arguable. Given the size of DIW’s archives it’s a paltry list of transgressions.

I look forward to your wrap up post and would ask you to consider this question. Do you think your rhetoric and tactics have come to resemble Johnson’s or not?

The comment about when he picks a fight doesn’t hold water. But when he writes about quotes or articles or “scholarship” from the other side it’s typically not so much criticism as demolition. The DIW commentariat (the current remnants, especially) routinely takes this as evidence that all those liberal/leftist/feminist/etc. professors are idiots who can’t think their way out of a paper bag. As far as I can tell what’s behind these demolitions isn’t brilliant criticism, it’s a selective and manipulative approach to the text he’s attacking. So what I had in mind was his habit of destroying a facade instead of a real opponent.

I’m sure that many points I’ve made are arguable. It would be nice to get some real argument—argument that’s aimed at the things I’ve actually written and that’s open to a more complex and ambiguous sense of the people involved. Without that kind of criticism I’d be foolish to to think I’d made any kind of airtight case. But when you say that I’ve presented very little, and say that I seem to think I made an airtight case but don’t say what I seem to think I’ve proved, what I suspect is that I haven’t been writing about the things that you think are important.

I’ve thought quite a bit about whether and to what extent I’m engaging in the rhetoric and tactics that I’m criticizing. I’ve tried not to. It will take someone else, or some distance, to say how well I’ve done. The commonality that bothers me the most is that we’re both writing about people whose are drastically and inexcusably wrong in some fundamental way. That’s not a very good basis for insightful criticism.

Yes, it seems that she was an english major.

I wonder if this is the same Barbara Barnett that is shown in this link: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/rape_teachabt.html

Interesting discussion 12 years ago with some well know participants. It is not fair, in my opinion, to label Barbara Barnett in such a way that KC has based on on snippets from one article. Just my two cents.