Inauguration Day


Thanking Milo for standing up for freedom of speech, 
even as protestors try to shut down his talk at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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Lobstercide

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Apropos that Google memo...






The players, in order of appearance  Fuzzy Bear, a gamer Rules Bear, a stickler Dragon, a creature  Medal Bear, a gentleman  Fencing Bear, an athlete History Bear, an academic Mammoth, a socialite  Bear of Hearts, friend of Mammoth Clown Bear, another friend  Script by Master Bearson  Production note: As I originally envisioned this morality tale, it was going to be entitled “Sexism 101,” but my son insisted that I be more subtle. And since the point of the piece is about the way in which women take over men’s games, and I had asked for his help giving the toys a game to talk about...it was only fair that I listen to him! Fencing Bear wanted to be much, much bitchier.
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Would you sign a letter in my support?

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The National Association of Scholars has written a letter addressed to my university and to the Medieval Academy of America asking them, as institutions, to affirm that I remain a scholar in good standing based on my conduct over the past year while under fire from my own colleagues in academia.

The issue is not about politics so much as it is about the culture that we would like to have in academia: whether it is to be a culture in which we support vigorous academic debate or one in which name-calling (“fascist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist”) is going to be allowed to shut down debate. As Milo put it in his coverage of the NAS appeal,
Although universities generally refrain from taking sides in academic debates, the NAS open letter is asking Chicago and the MAA to do something different, and merely affirm that Fulton Brown is an academic in good professional standing who has not harassed or discriminated against her colleagues. This is a matter of historical record, and should not be …
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One Angry Judge

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What would you do if during the course of a job interview you were accused of crimes so heinous that they would not only disqualify you for the position, but also land you in jail—justifiably, if you were guilty—for the rest of your life?

According to some 2,400 members of the American legal profession, including some of my own colleagues at the University of Chicago, Brett Kavanaugh is incapable of serving as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States because he was “intemperate” when accused publicly not just of high school and college drunkenness, but of rape, gang-rape, and attempted rape.

In their words:
Judicial temperament is one of the most important qualities of a judge....   We are law professors who teach, research, and write about the judicial institutions of this country.... We regret that we feel compelled to write to you to provide our views that at the Senate hearings on Thursday, September 28 [sic*], 2018, the Honorable Brett Kavanaugh displayed a …
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Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me

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I have never met Dorothy Kim. I do not know why she decided to make me her target in January 2016. Since it is clear that many even in our field of medieval studies do not know – or are refusing to admit that they know – what she has been saying about me on social media, I will show you.

On June 5, 2015, I posted a short blog post, listing three “cheers” that I suggest we talk about as products of Western, a.k.a. European, a.k.a. “white” civilization. I entitled it “Three Cheers for White Men.”

On January 18, 2016, I learned from friends on Facebook that Dorothy Kim had found this post and was encouraging her friends in the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Facebook group to condemn me for posting it. Here is her initial post:

In response, I wrote a long series of blog posts clarifying what I had meant in praising “white” men for idealizing chivalry, consensual marriage, and women’s full participation in our representative democracy. These posts are linked in the original “Thr…
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Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

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1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love, white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced.

2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented, white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves.

3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism, white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education.

And before you start telling me about all…
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