Life imitates art

In Robert Grudin's academic satire, Book, there's a scene in which a fatuous professor of literary theory, one "E.F. Taupe", files a complaint that another professor's book has "intellectually raped" her by exposing her to ideas which she dislikes.

Comes now the faculty of the Mansfield campus of Ohio State University, which last month voted unanimously to investigate reference and instruction librarian Scott Savage for alleged harassment based on sexual orientation. Savage is a member of a conservative Quaker group and the author of two books about living simply and avoiding unnecessary use of technology, one of which (A Plain Life) I've read and enjoyed. It appears that he has come to a somewhat eclectic meeting of the minds with technology, on the one hand using e'mail and other electronic resources in his job, but on the other hand commuting to that job by horse-drawn buggy instead of automobile.

His crime? As a member of a campus committee tasked with recommending books for first-year students to read, he recommended four controversial books by politically conservative authors. Savage reportedly stated that other books suggested for the list reflected a liberal political bias, one that he wished to counterbalance. One of the books he suggested was The Marketing of Evil, by the editor of WorldNetDaily, a popular right-wing news webpage. It reportedly criticizes homosexuality as one of the "evils" endangering modern society.

At least one previous recommendation by Mr. Savage, Freakonomics, was turned down for not being controversial enough, not likely enough to spur debate. It's safe to say that this batch of suggestions didn't have that flaw. In response to his book suggestions, three OSU faculty members filed a complaint of harassment against Mr. Savage, claiming that his recommendation that students read these four books made them feel "unsafe" and "threatened".

Various conservative webpages and weblogs have discussed the matter over the past couple of days. For more details, see here, here, here, etc. Fiend has pointed out to me that most of the sources covering the story appear to have a conservative bias. This might be a result of conscious bias on the part of liberal commentators, but it seems more likely that it's a result of information about the situation being disseminated through conservative news alerts and advocacy groups who saw one of their own academic oxen being gored. (It appears that Mr. Savage appealed for aid to at least one such group when it became clear that he was the target of a leftist academic lynch mob.)

If liberal commentators have knowingly failed to discuss the matter, it's a black mark against them, not agasint Savage or the validity of his position. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who reports it.

Now as it happenes, this has lately become a moot point... at least for the present. It seems that after considering the matter, OSU officially cleared Mr. Savage of wrongdoing. The timing of this decision, though, casts some doubt on its motivation. It came one day after a conservative advocacy group went public with the story. (Note: the comments following this article make for very interesting reading, not least because they include Mr. Savage's take on the events.) Savage, and others in similar positions, can only wonder whether the university, in the absence of a glaring spotlight of politically-tinged publicity, would have simply "put him away privily". It remains to be seen whether OSU will target him for retaliation later on, when the spotlight has moved elsewhere. Especially if he does not enjoy the privilege of academic tenure.

My take: the books recommended by Savage, especially The Marketing of Evil, may be of dubious academic merit, but recommending that people read them doesn't constitute "harassment" of anybody. Especially when the express purpose of the recommendations was to spark discussion and debate, which could easily include critiquing the books' flaws and biases. The OSU faculty's treatment of Savage is embarrassingly bigoted.