Rebuke the Wrongdoers, The Spreaders of Lies

Update below the fold--Margaret Soltan's take at University Diaries
More Update Below the fold--Michael Drout rebukes all around, with masterly illumination of the logical fallacies. "I do care very much about the ways that people like Churchill, Frisch and the guy at Wisconsin are damaging the institution of academia. [snip]... rather than defending 'our own' we academics should be the strongest and most intellectually rigorous critics of those who trade on the good names of universities, painstakingly built over many years, for their own selfish purposes. They are eating our seed corn, and we will not find it easy to replace the stores thus depleted.

Ann Coulter says terrible, untrue things to sell her books.  (Coulter Syndrome, Coulter on dyslexia, Coulter's intellectual shortcomings, Pharygula post #1
and #2 and #3 and #4 and #5 and #6).  I do not know of a conservative or right-wing blogger who is addressing her ethical and professional shortcomings.  If I am wrong, correct me. (Classical Values, RightWing Nuthouse, The Political Pitbull--but these are all about the "Jersey Girls" story, not her plagiarism or the vacuity of her evolution "arguments".) (Update: Language Log on Coulter's plagiarism)

But people on the other side of the political spectrum  behave badly too.  Take the case of Deborah Frisch.  She has defended Ward Churchill (here too)  She has written threats against a child.  The Anchoress has a lot of links.

Now Frisch says she is sorry. Sort of.  Update: not really  and it what's the matter with you people, can't you understand it was just a joke.   

Talk Left says, "Whether she is a liberal blogger or not, she is not a member of any group I am aware of or want to be associated with. She speaks for herself and very poorly"  Nitpicker says, "I'm going to do something that the right has yet to do: Shun this crazy person. She doesn't represent me and has forfeited the right to my--or anyone else's attention."

This is a pattern: Deinonychus antirrhopus,  Left2Right, Professor Bainbridge,  Left2Right again,  Deinonychus antirrhopus again D. Frisch on Bainbridge.

It doesn't wash, Deborah Frisch.  Your behavior is inexcusable.

One assumes that the horrid behavior Frisch displayed online was not just online--but in the classroom.  It makes Magaret Soltan furious--with both the professor in question and the univerity that hired her.

Our students come to the classroom at places like the excellent public universities where Barrett and Frisch taught naively. Very naively. They don’t know and don’t care about our articles and professional associations and conference presentations. They care about our knowledge and our teaching ability. They assume -- they have every right to assume -- that the person they meet at the front of the room on the first day of class has the full faith and credit of the university behind her.

It’s heartbreaking to read the comments that students who’ve been betrayed by their universities write at Rate My Professors. These students almost always begin by mentioning their excitement about taking the course, their interest in the subject. They then flatly state that exposure to this professor has killed forever their interest and excitement. A series of questions usually follows. Why is this person teaching? Why does this person get paid to teach? Why is a university classroom like this one? I thought it would be different, going to a university…

It’s not about the professors themselves apologizing or quitting or whatever -- the sort of people we’re talking about are incapable of understanding what they have done. It’s about the universities that hired them making formal apologies to their students, and vowing to do everything they can to avoid appointing people like them again. Universities unable to distinguish between academic freedom and academic malfeasance need to do some thinking. The technology of exposure isn’t going anywhere.

A rather long snip of what Michael Drout said:

But, lest you think the "Left" was covering itself in glory here or that individuals on the "Right" were the only boneheads, I offer you the tu quoque fallacy, one of my favorites. Back in my youth in New Jersey we used a version of this fallacy when we would say: "yeah, well so's your mom" (usually punching followed). Continue with that comment thread at Inside Higher Ed and you'll see a whole slew of people saying "well, Frisch might be wrong, but look what 'Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, ?? Hannity [I don't know his first name], Karl Rove, etc. do." Nope. Doesn't matter. Frisch's behavior has to stand on its own. If what she did was blatantly wrong (and bringing a two-year-old into an insult fight, and using sexually suggestive and violent rhetoric about that two-year-old is blatantly wrong), then what someone else does, particularly someone who never engaged in a discussion with Frisch, is irrelevant.

Then there's my favorite comment, which I didn't archive unfortunately, and which I can't be bothered to track down, but which said "Whatever Frisch said, it's not as bad as what Bush is doing killing thousands of Iraqi children, etc." This is a truly beautiful example of ignoratio elenchi, also called the "red herring," in which one injects an entirely new thesis into the argument in order to attempt to change the subject.

[snip]

So I don't care about talk show hosts. But I do care very much about the ways that people like Churchill, Frisch and the guy at Wisconsin are damaging the institution of academia. A lot of my colleagues are very leftist in their politics, but none of them engage in this kind of behavior (plagiarizing, making sick sexual comments about children, teaching false theories in which they have no actual expertise --i.e., Wisconsin guy isn't an engineer). The politics that drives people to defend this stuff is mindless sports-fan ('my team, right or wrong') rooting: rather than defending 'our own' we academics should be the strongest and most intellectually rigorous critics of those who trade on the good names of universities, painstakingly built over many years, for their own selfish purposes. They are eating our seed corn, and we will not find it easy to replace the stores thus depleted.

Comments

[DrumsNWhistles]

After wading through the links, I can only come to the conclusion that she is certifiably whacko -- the same conclusion I came to about Ann Coulter months ago.

Of course, the problem is that people like this are the squeaky wheels who convince the uninformed and often judgmental population at large that ALL liberals/conservatives /substitute your own group here are whackos just like them.

What an incredible waste of bandwidth when intelligent discourse would accomplish so much more.