On June 11, Christiane Voss, a media studies scholar at Weimar, sent a letter in German to various humaniites colleagues in Germany soliciting signatories to the now infamous Butler letter; a humanities professor in the U.S. forwarded it to me. I reprint the crucial paragraphs in the original German, below the fold. But here's what's striking about them. First, Professor Voss reports that Professor Ronell told her and Prof. Astrid von Busekist, at an event in Tel-Aviv, about her 7-month ordeal at NYU (the original Title IX investigation) and apparently revealed that she had been cleared by the university of sexual harassment, but that the university was still investigating a claim of non-sexual harassment based on the language she used in e-mails to the former PhD student. Prof. Voss reports that the complainant has seven lawyers, a fact she presumably also learned from Prof. Ronell. The letter implies that Prof. Ronell might still lose her job, not because she did anything wrong (naturally!), but because universities are adverse to negative publicity that might affect enrollments.
This solicitation to sign the Butler letter suggests that Prof. Ronell has been sharing details of this case (which may or may not be confidential, that I don't know) and may even herself be involved in soliciting support (the latter is a speculative inference from the evidence, but if, in fact, the complainant has seven lawyers, they will no doubt be investigating this for purposes of pursuing retaliation claims). I know that many Germanic and literary studies scholars are appalled by these shenanigans, as well as the embarrassingly feeble efforts to excuse them, but the irony is that the efforts by Butler et al. to help their friend have undoubtedly now made her situation much worse.
Here is the original relevant portion of Prof. Voss's solicitation letter:
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