Academic Freedom and Social Media

So this decision by the Kansas Board of Regents has been making the academical news today: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/19/kansas-regents-adopt-policy-when-social-media-use-can-get-faculty-fired. Basically, it's a policy outlining under what circumstances a faculty member could be penalized, even fired, for remarks made via social media. It is also very vaguely and broadly worded in parts, giving the Board of Regents and university administrators wide discretionary powers when it comes to enforcing the policy. I urge you to read the linked article for a much more detailed breakdown of the policy and the associated debate.

I have to admit, that I am of two minds about this, and it's very interesting that this hits at the same time as the A&E/Phil Robertson news.

Academic freedom is a vital component to higher education, and allows instructors to introduce new ideas and information, challenge existing theories, and develop critical thinking in students. From my own experience I know that part of being a good historian is reading works by scholars whose views you may radically disagree with, not merely to understand the whole of a particular historical debate, but to refine and hone your own thinking on a given subject. It is also important for students to be exposed to differing interpretations, or even to idea which are almost universally considered abhorrent (for example, a class on Nazi Germany might include Mein Kampf  or excerpts from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels in the students' reading assignments. Not because the instructor agrees with Hitler and Goebbels' ideology, but because these are important primary sources for understanding the history of the time and men who made it. Without academic freedom, however, there is a possibility of the instructor being accused of Nazism and of spreading fascist ideology, and being fired because of baseless allegations.) All of that being said, academic freedom has its limits, just as the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Just as inciting people to violence is not protected speech, neither does academic freedom allow instructors to endanger the physical safety of their students or others. Both are examples of common-sensical limits to freedom of action in the public square.

No one is suggesting that academic freedom as currently understood be further limited in the classroom (at least, not in this particular case. That's what the larger push to eliminate tenure in universities is all about). The question is to what extent instructors can be held responsible vocationally for their comments, postings, etc on personal social media accounts. I think most would agree that an employer has every right to set policies on how electronic media provided by and directly connected with that employer are, and are not used. You don't write your state legislatures using your state-provided university e-mail. That's why God gave us personal gmail accounts. You also don't use the University of Wherever's Twitter account to raise hell about the president. Again, you save those gems for your personal account. What the Kansas Board of Regents are doing, however, is to set policy for people's personal, public social media accounts, and honestly, I think maybe they can, and might even ought to.

In response to the push-back against A&E's dismissal of Phil Robertson from future episodes of Duck Dynasty, which is largely (and erroneously) being portrayed as a freedom of speech issue (it's protection from the government, not from private sector employers like cable networks), is that Mr. Robertson freely spoke his mind publicly, many people publicly decried his comments, and the network responded to pressure from its viewers and advertisers (i.e. where their money comes from) and decided to put Mr. Robertson on an indefinite hiatus. Okay, I can agree with all of that. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences. Yet, if this is true for Phil Robertson, should it not also hold true for academics?

Social media like Facebook and Twitter are inherently public spaces, no matter how savvy you are with your privacy settings, or how discriminating you may be in accepting friend requests or allowing followers. I know way too many people with lots of workplace friends who unhesitatingly rant about work some days, and do so very specifically, rather than just "Whew. Rough day today!" These people should not be surprised if their remarks have some ramifications for them at work the next day. They might have pissed off one of their friends who was involved in the same situation, or their boss, or co-worker, or whoever. Self-editing is a vital social skill, folks, and there's a reason they're called social networks. So if an instructor goes off on some hateful rant on social media and (surprise, surprise) that rant goes a bit viral (don't forget all of those friends of friends of friends who can see your posts and may vehemently disagree with you), then maybe s/he should get pulled up short by his/her employer - just like Phil Robertson was.

When posting on social media, even when using our personal accounts, we are speaking in a public space, where everything we share becomes at least semi-permanent, and we should always be aware of that fact. That doesn't mean that we're not free to say what we wish, it just means that we must always be aware that our speech carries consequences, intended and otherwise. Violentacrez is a despicable human being whose trolling and pornographic postings on Reddit cost him his job, even though his postings took place outside of work, on his own time, and on his own personal accounts. He paid the price for being a sleazeball, and very few folks will weep any tears on his behalf, but just as he had every right to be a sleazeball, society retains the right to react to his nastiness, even in ways which he doesn't approve of. It's not a violation of his rights, its just the consequences of his actions.

The equation works both ways. Mr. Robertson should face consequences for his public statement about homosexuals and African-Americans under Jim Crow, but David W. Guth has to accept the same kind of responsibility for publicly wishing that the next people to die in a mass shooting be the sons and daughters of NRA members. The left (where I usually hang my political philosophic hat) can be as guilty of despicable hate-speech as the right, and deserves to be called upon it just as strongly. Scholars too, are human beings with opinions, emotions, knee-jerk reactions, and prejudices, and when those things become hate-speech, libel, or outrageous vitriol in public forums like social media - then, yeah, they deserved to get called on it, and to face the consequences.

By the way, even if you are right, if your speech has every ethical and moral precept known to history backing it up, you are still open to the consequences of that speech - good and bad. Better people than us have spoken truth publicly and paid terrible prices for doing so, even when we today find their positions self-evident and proper. No one is exempt - ever. It behooves all of us to think before we speak, and when we do speak to be prepared to face the consequences that arise from our words.

D-Day + 69 Years

Today is 6 June 2013. Sixty-nine years ago today, American, British, Canadian, French, and Polish forces joined in the largest amphibious assault in human history, coming ashore along the Normandy coast of France. Here in the US, we tend to view the Normandy landings as a primarily American affair, and to sound solemn tones of national triumph and unity. In tooling around social media today, I've seen lots of pictures of Higgins boats disgorging American soldiers who rush bravely into the water, and a few old propaganda films celebrating the invasion as the turning point of the war. What strikes me about these memorials is their bloodlessness. I think, perhaps, that while we celebrate the heroism of the young men who went ashore 69 years ago, we should also remember the cost behind those sanitized images:

Wounded American soldiers at "Omaha Beach" on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Over 45,000 Allied soldiers died that day, and over 173,000 were listed as "wounded or missing in action." The survivors would move inland, and into almost another full year of war which would see replacement rates in some front line American regiments top 1000%.

The sacrifice of these men (often terribly young - Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in US history, was all of 19 years old when Germany surrendered in May of 1945) is almost incomprehensible. Despite our romanticized memories of World War II, the vast majority of American soldiers were draftees, and their memoirs reveal little or no mention of the flag, nationalism, or the Four Freedoms, but a tremendous emphasis on their comrades in arms, on day-to-day survival, and on a heartbreaking longing just to make it back home alive and mostly whole. Even when physically whole, many were deeply wounded with 3 million American veterans coming home from World War II with some form of neuropsychological disorder, which all too often went unrecognized and untreated.

The thing to remember about these men is that they were not supermen, not even necessarily "the Greatest Generation" of Americans. They were just people, men and women from all across the country, from all economic backgrounds, from all levels of education. African-Americans fought for democracy abroad while Jim Crow ruled at home. The Japanese-Americans of the 442 Regimental Combat Team made their unit the most highly decorated regiment in the history of the US Army while their families were imprisoned in concentration camps in the California desert. Navajo code-talkers risked everything for a nation that had forced their people onto reservations. Tens of thousands more regular American kids left their lives and homes for the most horrific conflict in the entirety of human history and fought and suffered and died with astonishing bravery and courage in spite of their all too human fear. Not because they were imbued with some kind of super-patriotism, but often simply because the shortest way home was through the enemy.

These young folks were us, and a few of their descendants carry on their tradition today in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect these modern men and women also think more about their buddies and getting home than they do anything else, and they still fight, suffer, and die for both. So today, step back from the flag-waving and bloodless black and white stills for a moment and remember the reality of what these people endured, and not just in Normandy and France, but also in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Southern France, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa, and Burma, among too many other places made into Hell on Earth between 1936 and 1945. Take the time too to remember the young men and women from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, France, and the Soviet Union who fought beside us, and died in their millions.

General William T. Sherman noted not only that "war is hell," but also that "war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." Remember today the young men who endured that hell and cruelty, and who inflicted the same on those who took them from their homes.

Book O' the Fortnight: Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors

Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors
 by Jennifer K. Stuller

Regular readers will recognize the author of the current Book O' the Fortnight from previous mentions here in connection with Slayage and Geek Girl Con, and it is well known that she's one of my favorite people. I met Jennifer K. Stuller at Slayage 4 in St. Augustine, where she gave an incredible presentation on pop culture influences on Joss Whedon's works. At the same conference, we bought her book Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, which she was kind enough to inscribe for Dale and me. I'm kind of ashamed to say that it took me until late last year to sit down and read it cover-to-cover. Don't get me wrong, her book wasn't sitting idle. I dipped into it regularly, reading a chapter here, skimming a section there, diving from index to mid-chapter to see what she had to say about a particular interest here and there, but I just hadn't settled in for the entire journey.

I'm glad I finally did!

Stuller self-identifies as a pop culture historian, and Ink-Stained Amazons  shows the truth of that claim. Her research and methodology are impeccable, and she presents her findings in a narrative that is both fascinating and fun, using a wide ranging, multi-disciplinary approach that sets her work firmly within the changing historical context of the past century or so. More, her writing is immediately accessible, and thoroughly enjoyable. She begins by briefly outlining her focus, being female characters in popular culture which meet at least two of four criteria: 1.) a narrative that "borrows from, or resonates with, classical themes and/or elements of world mythology," 2.) has "an element of the fantastic," 3.) "a uniquely identifiable skill or power," 4.) and "a mission or purpose that benefits the greater good." These criteria set, she then gives the reader an excellent historical overview of female superheroes from William M. Marston's Wonder Woman to Dark Angel's Max Guevara, covering kick-ass female heroes in comic books, comic strips, books, movies, and TV along the way. Importantly, Stuller places the development of these figures within the larger socio-cultural context of (particularly) American culture and the emergence, growth, and change of the feminist movement.

Stuller is also unflinching in her analysis of the successes and failures of both the larger culture and the feminist movement's various "waves." She maintains an admirably clear and unbiased historical lens throughout (which trust me, Readers Mine, is an incredibly difficult thing to do when writing about a subject  that one is passionate about!). From classic historical narrative, Stuller moves in the second section of her book to the mythological and cultural underpinnings and story-structures of female superheroes, combining history, feminist criticism, Jungian archetypes, Campbellian comparative mythology, and fan-love into a powerful in-depth analysis of the successes an failings of specific characters and narratives, from The Avengers to Modesty Blaise, to Xena the Warrior Princess, Charlie's Angels, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,  Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, and Dark Angel to name just a few. She examines the strange lack of female to female mentoring, positive maternal figures, and realistic female relationships in popular culture, as well as pointing out where such stories have appeared.

With some of the problems and potentialities of fdemale superhero narratives outlines, Stuller concludes with a look at the women who are creating the modern crop of female superheroes. From actors like Nichelle Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg, Lucy Lawless, Lynda Carter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, among others, all of who take their positions as potential role models very seriously, to writer/blogger/activists like Mary Borsellino, Gail Simone, Trina Robbins, and Angela Robinson, who are on the front lines of creating today's female superheros and working against old tropes and entrenched male-centric storytelling, Stuller gives the reader an inside look on the still growing, still evolving history of the female superhero who today is more and more often being brought to life by women.

Stuller's final chapter asks the question "Where do we go from here?" Which she answers with an unflinching "foreward!" In spite of failures, in spite of resistance, in spite of steps forward being accompanied by steps back, the next step is to continue, that each of us, whatever sex, whatever gender, may find in these modern myths the stories that inspire us, and that, in Jennifer K. Stuller's own words, enable us to  find "heroes to relate to, and ways to live heroically."

It is a remarkable, fun, moving and inspiring book, one that I'm glad is on my shelf, and who's author I am so very proud to call a friend. Go buy it.

The "First Triumvirate," in Review

The last decades of the Roman Republic were dominated by the ambitions and machinations of three figures: Cn. Pompieus Strabo Magnus (Pompey), M. Licinius Crassus, and C. Julius Caesar. Any examination of the period from 70 to 44 BC inevitably hinges on one, two, or all three of these men at any given time, and therefore their biographies become essential to the student of the period. In their attempts to reveal and evaluate the lives of these figures, Robin Seager’s Pompey the Great: A Political Biography, Allen M. Ward’s Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, and Richard A. Billows’ Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome, present the reader with both the best and worst of the art of historical biography.

Cn. Pompeius Strabo Magnus

Robin Seager makes no bones about his intent with his Pompey the Great: A Political Biography, stating in his preface that “the subtitle of the present work is intended to warn the reader to expect no treatment of the detail of Pompeius’ wars and no estimate of him as a commander,” and indeed, the following sixteen chapters give only the briefest treatment of Pompey’s military career. Seager begins with a brief introduction giving an overview of Roman political history from 133 – 79 BC, and begins his biography proper with the career and death of Pompey’s father, Cn. Pompeius Strabo senior. He then proceeds chronologically through Pompey’s life, paralleling political events in Rome with Pompey’s overseas dispositions, paying particular attention in both cases to Pompey’s time in the East from 66 – 62 BC. Seager presents a portrait of Pompey as a man of overweening ambition and political acumen, whose desire for public recognition from the Senate as the traditional ruling body of the Republic was both in opposition to his life-long willingness to stretch the unwritten Roman constitution and traditions, the mos maiorum, to the breaking point, and yet also functioned as a restraint on that same ambition. As Seager concludes, “[Pompey’s] eagerness for honors to be granted him willingly had compelled him to acknowledge the right of the senate and people to deny him if they chose. He had wanted to be the dominant figure in the senate, but in a senate that was still the ruler of Rome… Pompeius then did not want to destroy the republic.” Seager places the blame for that squarely on Caesar’s shoulders, but does not neglect to point out that Pompey’s own actions did little or nothing to preserve the system he so desperately sought command of and approval from.

M. Licinius Crassus

Allen M. Ward presents the reader with another political biography with his Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic. Here again, Crassus’ military career is only briefly described, and his final, fatal campaign against the Parthians almost not at all. Ward too devotes his first chapter to setting the historical scene, and uses chapter appendices to this and chapters VIII and IX to provide the reader with detailed prosopographical data which serves to illuminate his research process and the conclusions reached in the chapters themselves. These appendices strike a nice balance between relying on overly long footnotes and the traditional consignment of the appendices to the back of the book, and serve well in providing the reader with further information without bogging down the primary narrative, which proceeds in chronological order from the scarce sources surrounding Crassus’ birth ca.115 BC to his defeat and death at Carrhae in 53 BC. Ward is particularly painstaking in his analysis of the known political and legislative events in Rome with an eye to discovering the probable prime movers behind various proposed laws, prosecutions, defenses, speeches, and other public performances in Rome during Crassus’ career. Ward presents Crassus as something of a moderate optimate; an inherently conservative politician who was nonetheless generally amenable to compromise when possible, and who “often tended towards the via media,” the middle road.

            

C. Julius Caesar Dictator

Richard A. Billows’ Julius Caesar: the Colossus of Rome, is part of Routledge’s Roman Imperial Biographies series, and proves to be a readable and concise addition to the many biographies of Caesar. Billows begins with a prologue that also serves as a bibliographic essay with an emphasis on works which challenge the traditional interpretations, and which Billows, while not necessarily in agreement with them, credits as valuable lenses for providing fresh perspectives on his subject. Billows also provides historical background and context in his first chapter, devoting fully a fifth of his text to the history of Rome and Italy in the second century BC, before proceeding chronologically through Caesar’s life, with the exception of chapter VIII: “Caesar’s Place in Roman Literature and Culture,” a thematic interlude placed between the flight northward of the tribunes M. Antonius and Q. Cassius in late 50, and the crossing of the Rubicon in early 49. Billows’ Caesar is a popularis through and through, becoming the central figure in a movement that Billows sees as springing from, and directly connected with the Marian and Cinnan movement of the 80s BC. He also fixes Caesar as the lynchpin in what Ronald Syme has termed the “Roman Revolution,” and his associates and followers as the power behind it both during Caesar’s life, and beyond.

Taken together, these three biographies provide an uneven look at the three men who comprised what historians refer to as the First Triumvirate. Ward is working from the fewest sources, and thus is necessarily the most reliant on prosopographic and legislative analysis. Though he is careful to acknowledge the problems inherent in this approach, his analyses are impressive, and more often than not, convincing. He also provides a valuable counterpoint to the traditional portrayal of Crassus as a paragon of ruthless greed, pointing out that both Pompey and Caesar became far wealthier than Crassus, yet were not condemned for their wealth due to the way in which they acquired it: by conquest. Crassus, who made his money through business deals and speculation which were considered beneath the Roman nobility, “became the subject of a hostile literary tradition that was set by his political enemies, who scorned the methods Crassus adopted…” Nonetheless, due to the paucity of source material, and the fact that Crassus seems to have often preferred to work behind the scenes rather than openly on the public stage, makes Ward’s efforts, even at their best, more speculative than not.

Seager confronts similar problems, and handles them poorly. His political and legislative analysis often seems to be naïve, as when he states that the assignment of the forests and cow-paths of Italy as the provinces of the consuls of 59 was not a move by the optimates in the senate to curtail Caesar’s growing power and ambition by denying him the prospect of a foreign war. According to Seager, “at the time when the allocation [of provinces] was made… Caesar had not yet been elected, and even if the optimates had already felt certain that he was bound to take one place, they would not have wanted to rob their own candidate Bibulus of a proper command.” To suggest that the optimates, no strangers to the realities of Roman politics, could not foresee that Caesar, who had won election to every magistracy on the cursus honorum up to the praetorship in the first year he was eligible, and whose status, wealth, and political power had only increased during his propraetorian command in Spain, was almost certain to secure the consulship, is bordering on the absurd.

Seager’s greatest fault, and one shared with Ward, is his choice to largely omit any examination of Pompey’s military career. The distinction between civil and military power in ancient Rome was nonexistent, and each affected the other profoundly. In the case of Pompey, his entire political career was predicated on his military activities, and largely consisted in repeated attempts to secure special commands, and with them, praise and power in Rome. It is not going too far to say that without his military achievements and ambitions, Pompey would have had no political career, or if he had it would have been a far different, likely much less pivotal one. In a very real way Seager gives the reader half a man, and half the story.

Ward too fails to detail Crassus’s military career, though he does slightly better than Seager with his discussions of Crassus’ service during Sulla’s civil war, though Crassus’ role in the victory of the Battle of the Colline Gate in 82 BC does not receive nearly the attention which it deserves, nor does his successful campaign against Spartacus in 72/1. Most unfortunately, however, Ward chooses not to detail Crassus campaign leading up to Carrhae at all, thus omitting the vital ending to Crassus’ tale. Again the choice to focus on the political at the complete expense of the military, particularly when examining Roman statesmen, proves to be a grave error.

Billows, does not fall into this trap, and combines astute political analysis—though not, perhaps, at the level offered by Ward—with a thorough understanding of the importance of Caesar’s military career to the man and his life as a whole. Billows does an excellent job of covering Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, and the Civil War against Pompey while also tying these campaigns into the larger picture of Caesar as statesman. Indeed, over all, Billows’ work is of high quality, and made even more impressive for being so complete within the space of some 263 pages. The one place where he stumbles is in the thematic chapter VIII, mentioned above. Though it provides valuable information, it is oddly placed within the narrative, and disrupts the heretofore chronological structure of the historical narrative to no truly good end. This chapter might have been of better service as an appendix, or even woven into the primary narrative as part of Caesar’s life in the 60s BC. Another glaring weak point lies in Billows claim that the young Octavian was to have served as Caesar’s Master of the Horse during the Parthian campaign planned for 44/3, a claim for which Billows presents no source or argument, and which the present reviewer’s research turned up no evidence. These oddities aside, Billows provides the best of the three biographies reviewed here, and certainly one of the best resources for a student of the period, combining his bibliographic prologue with a standard bibliographic list at the end of the text.

            

Though each of the biographies reviewed here has its strengths, neither separately nor together do they provide a complete picture of the First Triumvirs, or of their time. At best they provide a starting point for further research, and a general overview of the period from which to begin such research. There is still much to learn, and one hopes many more biographies on all three of these men to come.