A reader, who asked for anonymity, writes: "I was struck by Butler letter's uncanny echoes of Jacques Derrida's 2004 letter in defense of vampire theorist Dragan Kujundzic, the UC-Irvine professor sanctioned over allegations of sexual harassment. In particular, how both appeal to nepotism and prestige rather than disinterest and due process."
Here's the threatening letter Derrida sent to UC Irvine; bolded bits do, indeed, suggest that the current "theory" illuminati learned from the master:
For years, as you probably know, I have made a gift of all my archives (I emphasize gift because I know that such papers are generally sold and sometimes at a very high price)... I underscore the long-standing and deep nature of these ties so as to convince you that everything regarding the future, the reputation, and the worthiness of our university profoundly touches, concerns, and involves me.
Even though I am not qualified to make a judgment concerning a confidential file and although I wish to trust the Senate Committee and yourself, Chancellor, as well as the sense of justice that guides you, I believe it is my duty to bear witness here as what is called in France, but also I believe in the United States, an “amicus curiae.”
It would seem that the allegations of the plaintiff are unfair and in bad faith (I will not yet say perverse). When there has been neither any coercion or violence brought to bear on her, nor any attack (moreover very improbable!) on the presumed “innocence” of a 27- or 28-year-old woman, where does she find the grounds, how can she claim to have the right to initiate such a serious procedure and to put in motion such a weighty juridico-academic bureaucracy against a respectable and universally respected professor?
For more than twenty years, I have followed and admired his work, his intelligence, his rigor, and his integrity, his strict sense of ethical, intellectual, and academic responsibility. (In particular, I know him to be absolutely incapable of using or abusing his power with students, abuse being implied, in the strict sense, by the concept of “sexual harassment”).
One cannot imagine or measure the gravity of the damage that a sanction, no matter how light, would do to our university, to its most interesting and fruitful activities, as well as to its honor and the image it has on the outside... The truth is this: if the scandalous procedure initiated against Dragan Kujundzic were not to be interrupted or cancelled, for all the reasons I have just laid out, if a sanction of whatever sort were allowed to sully both his honor and the honor of the university, I would sadly be obliged to put an end, immediately, to all my relations with UCI.
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