Cenotaph: Mini-Play. For your reading pleasure.

K [sits quietly beside the old cenotaph, strokes her greying beard]

J [walks up confidently]: I hear this cenotaph is one of 70 that meet the criteria. It contains the cancellation, the intimidation, the mob letters, the petition!
K: Hello. Welcome. I have been here for a while. This cenotaph contains no such things. It has been thoroughly investigated. I have documented my own searches. Over there, in that box, are my notebooks. Have a look if you like. [returns to the posture of stroking her beard] Image
S [enters stage]: Ah! There have been more and more of these graves! Filled with dead bodies. Only efforts like the Harper's letter are slowing them down. It is not even about more graves and dead bodies, it is about the new culture of arbitrary mobs screaming for dead bodies! Image
K: Funny you should think that. I have investigated. See this box? Here's one of my notebooks. Have a look.

S: It has dead bodies in it. From mob justice. Disproportionate punishment destroys our culture.

K: There is no body in there. I have looked. Image
K: You can read my notebook. In it I say the following . . .

S: You can only have found a dead body. The mob spoke of a dead body. They made this grave. There must be a dead body in it, as per the accusation. Which, BTW, should only elicit "hmm, quite strange" as a response. Image
K: Ha, I wonder what you know about cenotaphs.

J: I mean the accusations should really have been something else.

S: And it shouldn't have mattered.

J: I vaguely recall something, something strange. But yes, it shouldn't have mattered an inch. Image
S: Yeah, those accusations that shouldn't have mattered are issues some other people may bother about. They should not be relevant here!

J: I think it was related to some work.

S: Work is a wide field! Not much further afield should matter to it. Image
J: I agree, I agree. I don't know what's in this monument. But the whole structure reeks of rotting dead bodies. And looks just like other mob cancellation graves.

S & J [walk off stage, still talking]

K [puts notebook back in box; sits down beside cenotaph; looks at the sky]

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Dr. Katja Thieme 👀

Dr. Katja Thieme 👀 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Katja_Thieme

30 Apr
Poignant question, good discussion in the comments.

Here's what I do. It's geared to my own beliefs and abilities while teaching. Other methods work for other people. 1/

#PublicPedagogy #WritingStudies #CdnWrds
These days, reading drafts and commenting on them is time- and energy-consuming for me. There's burnout and loss of ability to focus at play. Also too much time sitting with screens looking at texts. So, I have to start from the premise that it costs me something to agree. 2/
My sense of equity in teaching dictates that if I agree to do it for one student, I have to present it as an offer for the other students as well. Not everyone thinks that way, others reward the initiative displayed by the students who request it. That's not my way, I guess. 3/
Read 10 tweets
29 Apr
#EricKaufmann has some, what shall we call it--authoritarian?--idea for warning labels to be placed on some university courses. So students are foretold if they are to encounter material that anti-academic hacks indiscriminately call "CRT."
I, too, am eagerly awaiting the day when universities employ a syllabus inspektor to whom course materials must be submitted in time, and who will then put little red stamps beside course numbers where evidence of "CRT" subversiveness has been found.
Here is the top of the thread in which Kaufmann is responding. I put "CRT" in quotation marks because as soon as you're in a conversation where Chris Rufo is participating, you've got to distinguish his fever dream from the work of actual critical race scholars. Image
Read 9 tweets
28 Apr
I have yet to be convinced that "cancel culture" is a workable concept. In the famous cases of cancellation from within academia, the public perception of cancellation comes often from the fact that there were very loud screams in social media networks: "this is cancel culture!"
The perception of cancellation is frequently not borne out when you look into the details of the actual cases. There were complaints. Administrators handled those complaints--perhaps imperfectly. If they didn't handle them perfectly, there is evidence of pushback.
Some complaints are dismissed, as they should be. Others have significant evidence behind them: an investigation ensues, and there will be a form of discipline. We will have to allow that sometimes universities rightfully terminate faculty, given evidence of serious misconduct.
Read 6 tweets
18 Apr
A few days ago, in this thread on #EricKaufmann's #AcademicFreedom report, I thought I would let other points slide in favour of this point: that the upper end of this 7-18% of NA faculty who he says support academic freedom violations is inflated by bad survey design. 1/
But my mind gets stuck on certain issues sometimes and this time it kept reminding me of what I didn't elaborate. So here goes: the lower end of this figure of 7-18% of NA faculty is inflated, too, by the choices Kaufmann made in processing his survey results. Let me explain. 2/
Here are two of the questions that led to the 7% lower edge of that range. You'll note that half the participants were given option A and the other half option B (or so I presume). 3/

Read 17 tweets
18 Apr
I suspect my Twitter fights could be much improved if this pedagogical insight was put more consistently into practice. :)
I would like to come to a place where those who keep espousing the principle of "only ever talk about the data, not about the people who handle it" change their tune, you know? Reputation matters. People who through past discussion have shown themselves more trustworthy. . .
. . . in their production of quantitative work and its interpretation tend to produce more trustworthy interpretations. It matters to know that and to talk about it.
Read 4 tweets
18 Apr
Dear everyone,

Just a warning. My "Oooops." is very powerful. You might want to take a few steps back to keep yourselves safe given this "Oooops." is virulently defending censorship."

Don't blame me if the silly string hits you.

Yours,
Woke Sauron
Missing an opening quotation mark in the above tweet, sorry.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!