As readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD know, Rebecca Tuvel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, got quite a bit of nasty backlash from her peers in university perches over an article titled “In Defense of Transracialism” that appeared the most recent issue of Hypatia, an academic journal devoted to “feminist philosophy.”
Tuvel argued that if Caitlyn Jenner can identify as a woman, former NAACP official Rachel Dolezal, who actually grew up as a fair-skinned blonde, ought rightfully to be allowed to identify as an African-American.
Just as the real-life Hypatia, a fifth-century philosopher, was torn to shreds as a heretic by an angry mob wielding oyster shells, a mob of angry feminist philosophy professors wielding figurative oyster shells tore Tuvel’s Hypatia article to shreds for committing the heresy of violating the canons of “critical race theory and trans theory” as well as ignoring the “intersectional” experiences of black women who might suffer “harm” from a piece defending Dolezal.
Their self-described “open letter” included a “demand for a retraction.” On May 1 a group styling itself as “a majority of Hypatia’s Board of Associate Editors” entered a post on the journal’s Facebook page that essentially agreed: “Clearly, the article should not have been published.”
Naturally, when the story broke in the online press, there were quite a few cries of “witch hunt,” not least among other philosophy professors who pointed out that the whole point of philosophy was supposed to be airing philosophical arguments in pursuit of truth, and that academics who disagreed with Tuvel ought to be mustering said arguments in their articles instead of denouncing what she had written and calling for its smothering. Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago, hardly a conservative, suggested that Tuvel hire a defamation lawyer.
The response among the feminist signatories to the open letter was essentially to double down. One of them, Shannon Winnubst, chair of the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Ohio State University, wrote on May 8 in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
She also lobbed a few extra oyster shells in the direction of Tuvel, accusing her of “subpar scholarship.”
Now, on May 18, the board of directors of the nonprofit that publishes Hypatia (including the board’s ex officio member, Hypatia editor Sally Scholz) have, in a lengthy statement posted on the Daily Nous, finally come to Tuvel’s defense. Well, sort of to Tuvel’s defense—because much of the statement was devoted to criticizing the “outsiders” in the press and elsewhere who had “dismissed” the polemics of Winnubst et al. “as nothing more than the censoriousness of hypersensitive groups.” The statement continued:
Furthermore:
But the statement did get around to putting in a good word or two for Tuvel and her article:
Tuvel must be muttering “Gee, thanks!” right now. The mealy-mouthed quality of the Hypatia board’s statement wasn’t lost on some of Nous’s philosopher-commenters. One of them was the notoriously acerbic libertarian Jason Brennan, a philosophy professor at Georgetown. Brennan wrote of the board:
But you have to give Hypatia credit for at least nodding in the direction of scholarly integrity—which is more than you can say about most of academia these days.
