XPost: school.general, alt.politics.clinton, ba.motss   
   XPost: soc.men   
   From: deplorable.redneck@nytimes.com   
      
   When law and philosophy prof Brian Leiter revealed academic and   
   feminist superstar Judith Butler’s disgraceful and flagrantly   
   hypocritical letter defending her sister superstar, NYU prof   
   Avital Ronell, I was ready to pull the trigger. I have a post,   
   dated June 13, 2018, fully written, but never published. I knew   
   something Leiter didn’t.   
      
   At the time the Butler letter was sent around for signatures,   
   threatening NYU with the wrath of scholars if Ronell wasn’t   
   exonerated, the university had already found Ronell responsible.   
   The only remaining question was what to do about it, one of the   
   university’s brightest academic lights had sexually harassed a   
   gay male student under her care.   
      
   This wasn’t one of the faux Title IX cases of post-hoc regret,   
   but the real deal. Ronell was grad student Nimrod Reitman’s   
   doctoral adviser. He came to NYU because of her, to study under   
   her. And from the start of his graduate studies, she turned him   
   into her boy toy upon the implicit threat of destroying his   
   career. And it continued throughout his graduate studies, as   
   proven by Ronell’s emails.   
      
   Professor Avital Ronell used her academic power over Reitman to   
   coerce him to be her sexual plaything for years, or else.* And   
   the feminist academy, via Judith Butler and myriad other   
   signatories to a letter, demand that NYU lay off Ronell, or   
   else. And it’s incredible to believe that the finding of   
   responsibility wasn’t the impetus for the threat letter. Yet,   
   these scholars sought to coerce a university into silence and   
   impotence to conceal Ronell’s conduct.   
      
   The New York Times has the story, so there’s nothing to hold me   
   back now.   
      
   “Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have   
   all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor   
   Ronell,” the professors wrote in a draft letter posted on a   
   philosophy blog in June. “We have all seen her relationship with   
   students, and some of us know the individual who has waged this   
   malicious campaign against her.”   
      
   Critics saw the letter, with its focus on the potential damage   
   to Professor Ronell’s reputation and the force of her   
   personality, as echoing past defenses of powerful men.   
      
   “We testify to the grace, the keen wit, and the intellectual   
   commitment of Professor Ronell and ask that she be accorded the   
   dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international   
   standing and reputation,” the professors wrote.   
      
   What’s wasn’t known at the time Leiter posted the letter was   
   that Ronell “guilt” was already found. Ronell certainly knew it,   
   although NYU never publicly announced its findings, and then   
   this letter, maligning the victim, extolling the irrelevant   
   virtues of the abuser and threatening the school, appeared. It   
   was worse than Leiter imagined. It didn’t just seek to influence   
   the outcome, but to challenge NYU to bury Ronell’s actions or   
   become an academic pariah. It was an extortion letter and it’s   
   inconceivable that its authors and signatories, and Ronell,   
   didn’t realize it.   
      
   So why didn’t I post about this at the time Leitner revealed the   
   letter? Reitman’s lawyer, Donald Kravet, is my oldest and   
   dearest friend. He was the best man at my wedding. I was the   
   best man at his. He had consulted with me about the case well   
   before this happened. When Leiter blew the lid off the letter,   
   he ultimately decided that it wasn’t in his client’s interest to   
   go public with the fact that Ronell had already been held   
   responsible.** So I bit my tongue. Confidences are what lawyers   
   keep.   
      
   So now it’s out, and how do Ronell’s cronies defend her   
   harassment of her academic advisee?   
      
   Diane Davis, chair of the department of rhetoric at the   
   University of Texas-Austin, who also signed the letter to the   
   university supporting Professor Ronell, said she and her   
   colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr.   
   Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a   
   feminist.   
      
   In the minds of purported feminists, Title IX is no law   
   protecting against sex discrimination in academia, but a   
   “feminist tool.”   
      
   “I am of course very supportive of what Title IX and the #MeToo   
   movement are trying to do, of their efforts to confront and to   
   prevent abuses, for which they also seek some sort of justice,”   
   Professor Davis wrote in an email. “But it’s for that very   
   reason that it’s so disappointing when this incredible energy   
   for justice is twisted and turned against itself, which is what   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)