The Steven Ford Brown Interview

[alan]

is now up at VOX.  SFB, as most of you know, is an active Foetry.com site member and supporter.  His work behind the scenes includes obtaining records from Iowa, investigation of the Vassar Miller Prize, and letter-writing campaigns.  He is a poet and translator with books from Milkweed Editions, UVA Press, and others.  More information can be found on his site.

Here's a snippet regarding the fear of speaking out against injustice in academia:

I know a younger writer at an east coast university who was driven out because of a sexual harassment allegation by a student against a prominent writer teacher. The younger writer went to the administration in defense of the student and her right to bring charges. The younger writer eventually had to leave and find a job at another university. The Writing Department as a whole turned on the younger writer in defense of the older writer despite the fact that the allegations were true and there were many witnesses to the incident.  A story was done on this incident at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Even today there are plenty of stories in The Chronicle about what happens when you stand up and raise your voice in an academic setting.

Read more.  Thanks for your strong voice, Steven!

[poetastin]

Now that's a juicy story. Who was the younger writer? Which university? Anyone?

[jimmy]

He means BU.

[Steven Ford Brown]

The story is a decade old. It happened at an east coast university with very prominent faculty. Everyone would know the names. The younger writer was able to find another job and has been at his current university for a decade now. No need to shine the light on him now as I know he was mortfied by the attention the matter brought to him and the writing program, which he directed at the time. He moved on and has resumed his career sucessfully. The accused writer was eventually forced to resign. The disappointment was in the blind allegiance by other writing faculty to someone who had a well documented problem with alcohol and being too friendly with his students, especially female students.

There are many similar stories in the Chronicle about what happens when someone speaks out against more powerful faculty members or a group of faculty members.

[N. Joy Vey]

It's an old story, but I keep meeting academics and intellectuals,et al who never heard it---

Louise Lamphere, an anthropology professor at Brown U (in the days before CD and Forrest) was initially denied tenure.  Although the internet was not available, one faculty member wrote on paper to another something along the lines of, 'she's too ugly to give tenure to'.

Thankfully this became public and there was eventually a class action suit against Brown on behalf of numerous qualified women faculty who were denied tenure.  Brown settled out of court and agreed "voluntarily" to increase significantly the # of tenured women faculty...

I arrived in Providence in 1982, and missed all of the above, so please correct, clarify my mistakes...I do remember a Judge Pettine eventually releasing Brown from its agreement on the basis of the "success " of the remediation.

Louise is now in New Mexico and was the pres of the American Anthropological Association recently...

The academic world is sometimes pretty ugly from my vantagepoint.

Thank you Steven and Ed and Alan and you all know who you are!   N