[Discussion] ABD'de medya ve akademik skandal

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Academic Scandals and the Broadcast Media
Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner


In 2005, the mainstream media provided a rare focus on academic scandals,
including Harvard President Larry Summer's remarks about how women's 
inherent
biology was a key reason why there were not more women in academic science
positions. In addition, Ward Churchill, a Professor in Ethnic Studies at the
University of Boulder and an American Indian rights activist, came under 
assault
for his comments on the 9/11 terror attacks. Churchill had been invited 
to speak
at Hamilton College and in February, 2005, the college newspaper published
excerpts from an essay he had written three years before called "Some People
Push Back; on the Justice of Roosting Chickens." Churchill had described 
some of
the people killed in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns," in 
that, he
argued, they were not innocent victims, but part of a "technocratic 
corps at the
very heart of America's global financial empire."

Conservative television pundit Bill O'Reilly relentlessly skewered 
Churchill on
his widely watched Fox news channel program The O'Reilly Factor, 
denigrating him
as anti-American and characterizing his statements as bordering on 
treason, a
crusade taken up by scores on the Right. Not only was Churchill's 
invitation at
Hamilton College withdrawn (after weeks of negative criticism and threats of
violence), but the governor of Colorado called for his resignation and 
charges
of plagiarism and fraud (regarding both his writings and his claims to 
American
Indian ancestry) were raised. Indeed, the case of Ward Churchill is now 
fodder
for the mainstream media as well as academic chronicles.

Radical professors and the cultural wars were visible on a second season
broadcast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, "Anti-Thesis," broadcast 
October 13,
2002. In this episode, a controversial African-American professor, 
modeled on
Cornel West, clashed with the president of a prestigious Eastern 
University over
his teaching style and production and performances of a rap album. The 
American
Studies professors in the episode provided stereotypes of your campus 
feminist,
queer theorist, multiculturalist students of color, and other conservative
nightmares.

It is interesting that in the past year, three books have been published on
academic scandal, Ron Robin's Scandals and Scoundrels (2004), Jon Wiener's
Historians in Trouble (2004), and Peter Charles Hoffer's Past Imperfect 
(2005).
Consequently, academic scandals have become an important part of the 
escalating
role of media spectacle in contemporary society. The role of media and new
technologies in disseminating and criticizing scholarly work and unethical
behaviors is one of the key themes of Ron Robin's Scandals and 
Scoundrels which
describes and analyses a number of academic scandals within the fields of
history and anthropology1. As Robin explains it: "Scandals exposed in public
avoid complexity and ambiguity, and therefore foster the melodramatic. The
scandal as a media event is driven by blockbuster mentality: a 
sensationalist
repetition of well-worn dramatic principles, such as the morality tale 
of pride
leading to the fall. It draws on sensational language, polarized rhetoric,
personalized conflict, and familiar mass-media images. Deliberations on 
academic
wrong-doings are retooled to fit the media's interpretative frameworks" 
(23).

Jon Wiener's Historians in Trouble (2004) details a large number of academic
sins, but argues that, for the most part, the cases that become media 
spectacles
of academic scandals usually involve more radical historians who are 
targeted by
rightwing groups, while more mainstream historians who error are often 
protected
by conservative groups and avoid media scrutiny and scandal2. Indeed, 
organized
rightwing groups have been systematically targeting leftist professors for
years, as well as attacking alleged "liberal media" and helping shape 
mainstream
media discourse3. It is ironic, however, that two of the most outspoken and
aggressive critics of leftwing professors and "liberal media" are themselves
hardly paragons of virtue, as Rush Limbaugh has been accused of drug 
addiction
and illegal purchase of prescribed medication, while Bill O'Reilly has been
charged with sexual harassment4.

Wiener opens with three studies of conservative academics who were 
charged with
a variety of academic violations ranging from behavior to scholarship, but
escaped media spectacle and academic penalty; indeed, the three have been
recently awarded prestigious national posts by the Bush administration.
Conservative anti-feminist Elizabeth Fox-Genovese had been accused by 
numerous
students and colleagues of brutal harassment, exploitation, and vendettas
against those who would not submit to her autocratic ways. One colleague,
Virginia Gould, sued Fox-Genovese, and Emory University negotiated an
approximately million dollar settlement (Wiener, p. 15). Yet 
Fox-Genovese was
not disciplined further by Emory and was championed by conservatives as 
a strong
anti-feminist and militant (conservative) scholar; the Bush administration
awarded her with a National Humanities Medal in November 2003 (Wiener, 
p. 13).

Historian Allan Weinstein had long been controversial when a Russian
collaborator on a Cold War history of the Soviet Union claimed that 
Weinstein
had not adequately consulted with him before publication of The Haunted 
Wood:
Soviet Espionage in America (1999), and misrepresented many of the documents
(Weinstein does not know Russian). Weinstein was also attacked for his 
1978 book
Perjury on the Alger Hiss case where he made the sensational claim that 
Hiss was
guilty of Soviet espionage; six of his major twelve sources, however, 
claimed
Weinstein had totally misrepresented them. Weinstein repeatedly promised 
he'd
make available his transcripts and key documents and kept shoving their 
release
back in time. Despite the constant academic criticism of him, Weinstein 
largely
escaped media scrutiny and was nominated by the Bush administration for 
the post
of National Archivist and now serves an indefinite term.

Wiener's third case of how conservatives escaped potential scandal involves
Harvard historian Stephen Thernstrom who was accused by three black 
students of
racial insensitivity in an introductory history course. Thernstrom 
claimed that
the Harvard administration did not adequately defend him of the charges, a
debatable claim as Wiener argues. Subsequently, Dinesh D'Souza and other
conservatives made Thernstrom a hero of rectitude in the face of university
"political correctness," leading the Bush administration to appoint him to a
term on the National Council on the Humanities in 2002.

The next three cases in the section "Targeted by the Right" are studies 
of how
leftist professors were savaged and in some case had their career ruined 
because
of attacks by rightwing groups and media spectacle around their cases 
that were
prejudicial to a scholarly appraisal of their work. Emory historian Michael
Bellesiles' award-winning 2001 book Arming America was subject to a fierce
attack by the NRA and conservative gun groups, seriously impugning his
reputation, and forcing him to resign, as we will see below. Princeton 
historian
David Abrahams's book on Weimar Germany was subject to a vendetta by
conservative historians, whose case was well publicized in the media, 
and he was
not able to get a tenured history position, despite strong 
qualifications, and
moved over to the field of law. And Mike Davis' popular books on Los Angeles
City of Quartz (1990) and Ecology of Fear (1998) were savaged by 
conservative LA
booster groups and regularly pilloried in the Los Angeles Times, creating
obstacles to getting jobs he applied for in Southern California, 
although Davis
did get a tenured position at the University of New York at Stony Brooke and
continues to write controversial and popular books and articles.

Given the nature of the academics involved, especially their celebrity 
status
within the university and some public domains, in conjunction with a growing
hostility towards intellectuals in the United States, it is hardly 
surprising
that these kinds of scandalous situations have become more popular within
mainstream media. In addition to the importance of the broadcast media and
journalism for how academic scandals are identified and addressed, Robin 
argues
that the expansion and accessibility of cyberspace technology, internet 
forms
and web blogs contributes to their dissemination and hype. "Internet 
discourse
is democratic, immediate, and accessible. It is, as well, spontaneous 
and often
inflammatory" (Wiener, p. 25).

The significance of broadcasting media and cyberspace within the 
academic realm,
is also related to epistemological shifts in the humanities and social 
sciences
which champion subjective narratives and multiple truths, while eschewing
dominant modes of thoughts promoting empirically based, scientifically
"objective" studies. New post-1960s radical scholarship and the increasing
fragmentation of disciplinary boundaries have made it difficult to establish
authoritative professional associations, panels of experts, and 
peer-reviewed
scholarly journals to identify and arbitrate disciplinary disputes. As Robin
explains it: "Alternative methods of disciplinary enforcement are
thriving… Alternative and highly visible forums of adjudication become
visible and vocal when conventional avenues for projecting rules are 
contested,
reassessed, reframed, or rendered obsolete by cultural and technological 
shifts
" (p. 231). However, these forums are hardly discreet and move these 
kinds of
matters from the relatively private domain of the university into the public
domain of popular culture. It is within this context that questions 
about the
legitimacy of a scholar's research can become a pretext for character
assassinations which can be motivated by professional jealousy or 
mediated by
political issues.

Yet, the kinds of "academic crimes and misdemeanors" documented in 
Robin's and
Wiener's provocative texts, lead to serious questions about the 
pervasiveness of
plagiarism, falsification and misrepresentation within the university by not
only students, but by those who have attained the status of experts and 
mentors,
as well as superstar historians Stephen Oates, Doris Kearns Goodwin and 
Stephen
Ambrose who frequently appear on television and regularly win awards and
recognition within both academia and other forums.

While earlier accusations of plagiarism in major historical scholars 
like Philip
Foner, who was accused in 1971 of copying sections of James Morris's 
master's
thesis, in his book on The Case of Joe Hill, tended to be ignored in the
mainstream media, media-promoted demonstrations of plagiarism by popular
historians, like Stephen Oates, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose 
were
widely circulated through print and broadcast media. All three frequently
appeared on television as commentators on history and current events and 
their
fame and celebrity brought focused media attention on them. Robin argues 
that,
Oates and Ambrose cross-over into the popular realm elevated them from
historical scholars to celebrity heroes and opened them up to media and 
internet
assault5.

Wiener notes that while Doris Kearns Goodwin was forced to resign from the
Pulitzer Prize committee and to give up her position as a news 
commentator on
PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Hour, she was, nonetheless, able to return to the media
stage by 2004 with an NBC contract to appear on CNBC News, Chris Mathew's
Hardball, Meet the Press, and other programs. The New York Times exposed 
that
Goodwin was working with Democratic Party political consultant Bob Schrum to
organize letters of support from prominent historians and politicians, 
including
Ted Kennedy, and TV appearances on David Letterman and other shows as a
come-back campaign (Weiner, p. pp. 185ff).

The majority of the most highly visible academic scandals, however, involve
conservative groups attacking more liberal or radical scholars. 
Vitriolic media
and cyberspace attacks by primarily conservative factions, in particular the
NRA, on historian Michael Bellesiles' book on gun-ownership in the U.S. 
lead to
critical questions about the veracity of some of his data, in particular 
his use
of probate material, documenting what he claimed was much less gun ownership
that previously believed from the American revolution to Civil War. 
Bellesiles
argued that gun culture in the US was much less prominent than believed by
providing a spectrum of data that argued that there were many less gun 
owners
and a less prominent gun culture in the first century of the Republic than
previously noted. The NRA and conservative groups fiercely attacked 
Bellesiles,
assaulting his evidence and arguments, driving him, after intense 
pressure, to
officially resign from a tenured position at Emory University.

Robin describes Bellesiles's case as a "noble lie" or example of 
"presentism,"
which involves the "erroneous construction of the past as an explanatory 
device
for contemporary reality" (10). However, many scholars would contest this
assessment and support Bellesiles' revisionist thesis that the US had a much
more restrained gun culture in pre1850's America than had previously been
imagined, while still acknowledging that there were some problems with his
empirical findings and data charts. Wiener claims that Bellesiles was 
the only
scholar caught up in recent academic scandals who lost his job because of
enormous pressure by organized outside groups, and not professional 
historians,
and that this case and others show that there is a strong element of 
political
power in how the so-called academic scandals are framed and played out.

Although the media-political wars were not involved in the incredible 
case of
the Pulitzer Prize winning, renowned historian, Joseph Ellis's bizarre 
inflation
of his past, including false claims concerning his role in Vietnam and the
anti-war and civil rights movements. Robin blames Ellis' fixation on 
celebrity
status and especially his "almost pathological identification with Thomas
Jefferson," which led him to make false heroic claims concerning his role in
recent events. Indeed, his invention of an imaginary personal biography 
speaks
to the growing propensity of academics, and especially "hybrid scholars," to
gain credibility and appeal to their students and media audience through the
creation of a public persona. This, Robin argues, was a rhetorical 
device for
persuading audiences to endorse his interpretation of the past "(11) He was,
perhaps, enticed "by the siren sound of ‘experiential' history" 
(104). Yet
there is division amongst scholarly, professional and public critics, as to
whether Ellis's fakery constitutes serious misconduct or just narcissistic
embellishment.

In a discussion of "Scandals in Anthropology," Robin demonstrates how 
the fame
of scholars can provoke academic scandals which are designed for media
spectacle. The case of Derek Freeman's attack on Margaret Mead's 
landmark study
of sexuality and adolescence development in her classic 1928 text Coming 
of Age
in Samoa, has become infamous due, in large part, to media exploitation. 
Indeed
as Stephen Toulmin points out: "the public controversy was never a genuine
academic discussion: rather it was made into an event by the press and
television….But [Freeman's] worst mistake was that he let Harvard
University Press sensationalize his book in advance. As a result, he was 
sucked
into a promotional campaign on the very terrain of public opinion where 
Margaret
Mead's influence was most powerful and his own at its weakest."6

Bias, on the part of Mead, questionable research methodology, and her
susceptibility to what he identified as a prank, played on her by some 
of her
informants, are some of the charges made by Freeman in his 1983 book 
Margaret
Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. The
significance of media, the internet and public relations campaigns, 
initiated by
scholars and their publishers to boost sales and promote academics and
professional writers to celebrity status, is also part of the controversy
provoked by journalist, Patrick Tierney's 2001 book Darkness in El 
Dorado: How
Scientists and Journalist's Devastated the Amazon. Tierney attacked the 
research
and findings of geneticist James Neil and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon in
relation to the Yanomami, an indigenous South American people, who live 
in the
Amazon basin spanning Brazil and Venezuela. Cyberdebates, which were 
taken up by
the alternative and popular press, concerning Tierney's accusations that 
Neil
was involved in an aggressive, racist, possibly government sponsored genetic
research program, and that Chagnon advanced sociobiological and Darwinian
evolutionary positions, and promoted and incited violent behaviour on 
the part
of Yanomami men, raged before the book was even published. This media 
mediated
scandal, however, provoked an investigation, by the AAA (American 
Anthropology
Association) into these charges.

Some of Tierney's most serious allegations were refuted, especially 
those which
accused Neel of embracing eugenics and "abetting the spread of a deadly 
measles
epidemic among the Yanomami," charges that were rejected by the committee.
However, many of his critiques of Napoleon Chagnon, and what some 
described as
checkbook anthropology, lead the AAA to criticize some of Chagnon's
methodological practices and ethical behavior, especially in regards to the
deleterious consequences of his depiction of the Yamomani people. "Even 
though
the AAA task force declined to pass judgment on Chagnon's promotion of 
violence
and his disruption of custom through gift giving, the report concluded that
‘his representations of Yanomami ways of life were damaging to 
them and
the that he made insufficient effort to undo the damage'" (Robin, p. 151).

Robin astutely points out the significance of the role of cyberspace and 
media
contestation in revealing serious conflicts within historical and
anthropological scholarly studies. What is missing from Robin's study is 
that
underlying many of these scandals are critiques of patriarchal 
ideologies, and
especially, challenges to the dominant scholarly canons of thought.
Conservatives have been taking the culture wars very seriously and often 
attack
radical scholars who take on conventional conservative wisdom and critique
dominant institutions like patriarchy, the military, or gun culture. 
Wiener is
surely right that which academic scandals become media spectacles and 
how they
are presented is a function of the power of rightwing groups to 
influence media,
ranging from Talk Radio, to TV broadcast, to the Internet, and press. Weiner
concludes: "The real need over the longer term is to find ways to 
counter the
excessive power of right-wing groups. On many issues today, the right adopts
uncompromising tactics and a combative stance. Those who don't share their
values, who are in the political center as well as on the left, often 
lack the
single-minded zeal of activists on the right and have priorities in 
their lives
other than fulfilling particular political agendas" (pp. 213-214).

Wiener suggests that professional academic organizations, like the American
Historical Association, and prestigious academic journals like the American
Historical Review, need to get involved to adjudicate scholarly 
controversies
and not leave it to the vicissitudes of media spectacle and organized 
campaigns
by powerful groups. Media critics as well need to unpack both the form and
content of media presentation of academic scandals and how certain 
groups deploy
campaigns to advance their point of views. The flow of television 
encompasses
everything from the most trivial events of pop culture to the most serious
academic and political issues, and TV criticism needs to be broad enough to
embrace a wide range of issues and controversies that flow over the
ever-proliferating broadcast channels and new media.

U.S. National Archives and Records Association

Image Credits
NPR

Notes

1 Ron Robin, Scandals and Scoundrels: Seven Cases That Shook The Academy.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

2See Jon Wiener, Historians in Trouble: Plagarism, Fraud, and Politics 
in the
Ivory Tower. New York: The New Press, 2004; Weiner has a web-page on his 
book
that updates academic scandals.

3 On how the rightwing echo chamber mobilizes television, talk radio, the
Internet and other media to promote conservative hegemony, see Douglas 
Kellner,
"Media Spectacle and Crisis of Democracy," in FLOW.

4 See "Limbaugh admits addiction to pain medication," CNN, October 10, 
2003 and
John Pacenti, "Limbaugh allegedly ‘doctor shopped' for pills," 
Palm Beach
Post, December 5, 2003, as well as "O'Reilly Sued for Sexual 
Harassment," CBS
News, October 13, 2004 and Howard Kurtz, "Bill O' Reilly, Producer Settle
Harassment Suit," Washington Post, October 29, 2004. Conservative Republican
William Bennett used to play the role of official morality czar, but 
when his
Las Vegas gambling addiction became public, laced with stories of use of S&M
prostitutes, he suddenly became less visible on the media radar as the 
scourge
of immorality.

5 One wonders why, however, Robin downplays the significance of Doris Kearns
Goodwin's plagiarism scandals, focusing instead largely on Oates and 
Ambrose.
Robin implies that Goodwin's sin was simply inadvertent plagiarism from 
Lynne
McTaggart in writing her Fitzgerald-Kennedy family book for which she 
apologized
and paid off in an out-of-court settlement (Robin, p. 32). Yet a August 
4, 2002
Los Angeles Times article demonstrates with copious documentation that 
Goodwin
systematically plagiarized in a whole series of her major works; see 
Peter H.
King, "As History Repeats Itself, the Scholar Becomes the Story," Los 
Angeles
Times, August 4, 2002.

6 See Stephen Toulmin, " The Evolution of Margaret Mead," The New York 
Review of
Books, December 6, 1984.