One of the likeable things about our pseudonymous, serial purveyor of "literary rascality" Juan Non-Volokh is that he admits he is a coward. Mr. Non-Volokh has decided that because he is concerned about getting tenure, he must remain anonymous while he smears and misreads those who own their words in the light of day. But, to his credit, he admits this is cowardice, which, of course, it is.
Less likeable, but predictable, is the suggestion at various conservative sites participating in the pity fest for Mr. Non-Volokh that it's easy for someone like me, who has tenure, to demand that those without tenure own their words in public. The implication is that I'd be a coward too if I were in poor Mr. Non-Volokh's situation.
Here's a piece of news (not to anyone who knows me, of course) that should be a matter of public record: I used to be a tenure-track academic and a graduate student, and at neither time was I a coward, certainly not of Mr. Non-Volokh's proportions.
My first two sole-authored publications, before I had even gone on the teaching market, were "Intellectual Voyeurism in Legal Scholarship," Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 4 (1992): 79-104, and "Nietzsche and Aestheticism," Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1992): 275-290. The former article was a scathing attack on the misuse of philosophy by law professors, naming names and citing examples, and targetting some very prominent legal academics. The second was a less scathing, but extremely critical assessment of what was at that time the most influential reading of Nietzsche, Alexander Nehamas's (Nehamas was then at Princeton).
I did not publish these pieces pseudonymously. And I didn't have tenure. And I didn't even have a job.
I also didn't publish The Philosophical Gourmet Report anonymously during my years in graduate school and on the tenure track, even though, as subsequent events showed, that had even more potential to inflame passions.
In 1988, well before I went into teaching, I had a fairly intense exchange in the pages of Tikkun with Robert Gordon (then of Stanford Law School, now at Yale Law School) regarding his defense of Critical Legal Studies. You may guess which side I was on. I used my real name, needless to say.
Throughout my time in law school and graduate school, I wrote opinion pieces for the school newspapers defending a political point of view essentially the same as the one expressed on this site. I published all those under my own name too. My views were so well-known (or notorious, depending on whom you asked), as it were, that in the joke Michigan Raw Review the year I graduated, it was suggested that Ann Coulter (a year behind me in law school, and not much different than she is now) and I would marry and have children. (This wasn't thought to be a match made in heaven!)
I imagine that in right-wing fantasy land it is thought that my political views are typical in the academy. I think they are...in Canada and Britain, for example, but certainly not in the United States, and particularly not in law schools. The American academy is liberal, to be sure, but its liberal core looks askance at both its right and its left, and often more so at its left, because there is less of it.
But put the politics aside, and return to my first two sole-authored articles, noted above. I suppose if I had had Mr. Non-Volokh's level of moral and intellectual fortitude, I would not have published either of these articles at all, or would have tried to publish them under a pseudonym. I learned later on that the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities article did hurt me on the law school teaching market at some schools, which reacted badly to my critique of their friends and colleagues. So it goes.
In choosing a scholarly career, one chooses to pursue and investigate the truth about one's subject matters, as one is best able to ascertain it, and to be serious about that means one sometimes takes risks. Perhaps because Mr. Non-Volokh's kind of cowardice is not rare, I've noticed that my penchant to be direct and clear about where I stand wins me a certain number of friends and allies, folks who are relieved, as it were, that "someone finally said that." But that's not a reason to be clear and direct, it's just a side benefit. Integrity of intellectual purpose demands that, except in unusual cases, one own one's words (most importantly, one's critical words) and accept the consequences. I have done that as a graduate student, as a tenure-track professor, and now. Those who don't have made their choice, though it is certainly not one that warrants anyone's respect.
Recent Comments