We've noted this before, but this latest piece offers more evidence of declining standards at IHE. Reading this article, you'd get no sense of the appalling defamatory harassment to which classicist Thomas Hubbard was subjected: being falsely called a pedophile is defamation per se, meaning no damage needs to be proved for Professor Hubbard to prevail.
The latest lawsuit (earlier one) brought by Professor Hubbard against his defamers named a graduate student at UT Austin as the defendant, whose tweets, if false (some plainly are), are also clearly defamatory. She was put on notice about the tweets and was asked to remove them; she did not. Now she is being sued.
The New Infantilism has spread to classics, apparently, where some professors are under the mistaken impression that graduate students cannot be liable for tortious wrongdoing (the New Infantilism has clearly spread to IHE: note the title of the article, "Power Differentials," rather than a more neutral "Professor sues graduate student for defamation.") Comments from some of the faculty who signed the statement against Professor Hubbard indicate that they have no idea what academic freedom is:
Liv Mariah Yarrow, a professor of classics at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who signed the classicists’ statement, said, “Suing over speech, especially that of a graduate student, is a threat to academic freedom and free discourse. Freedom of speech is a fundamental right; even when I disagree with Hubbard's views, I acknowledge his right to express them. However, our academic freedom does not guarantee an audience, much less a receptive one.”
Rebecca Futo Kennedy, associate professor of classics, women's and gender studies at Denison University, said Hubbard’s teaching and research are “protected as forms of academic speech. But the graduate student he is suing is also protected by academic free speech to criticize and comment on both the style and content of that teaching and on the impacts it has on the campus, department and academic community.”
Contrary to Professors Yarrow and Kennedy, there is no discernible academic freedom issue here: the graduate student's defamatory tweet does not reflect her disciplinary expertise or competence, it is purely extramural speech attacking another member of her field. There is a freedom of expression issue here, but the comments of Professors Yarrow and Kennedy reflect the familiar juvenile view that free speech means "you can say anything you want without consequence," which it doesn't, not even in the United States. Lots of speech is unlawful in the U.S.: defamation, threats, speech constituting sexual harassment in the workplace, and so on. If the graduate student's tweets were only arguably defamatory, one might worry about the chilling effect on valuable expression of this lawsuit. But this isn't a close case, and it would be good to chill this kind of irresponsible and unlawful expression. (How hard is it to express one's views without accusing someone, falsely, of pedophilia?) As the IHE article notes, Professor Hubbard also tried to avoid litigation:
The students were all informed by my attorney that their statements were provably false and defamatory over nine months ago, and were given the chance to withdraw or correct them. None of them did. Every legal scholar I have consulted agrees with my attorney that these were statements of fact, not mere expressions of opinion, and thus not protected by the First Amendment. Ms. Thomas, who has never met me or discussed any of her concerns with me, asserted that I was a ‘threat’ to her ‘safety’ and that of other students, and accused me of ‘behaviors’ including ‘pedophilia,’ ‘misogyny,’ and much else for which she has not one shred of evidence.
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