Robin: Let's make some distinctions here. Smear campaigns are the 
wrong way to object to anything, and the more recent of the alleged 
events is at least questionable, though it's hard to understand 
exactly why Kelby sued. "Everyone has a right to face his or her 
accusers. That's why I sued Boston University. I wanted to discover 
if Professor Walcott was actually harassing me. At first, I thought 
he was joking. Anyone who knows him knows that it is his way to be 
sexual, to push the envelope of both decorum and good taste. I didn't 
really want to think that this man whom I placed so much trust in, 
and had so much affection for, would actually be bartering sex for 
favours. It didn't seem possible. But as events unfolded, I needed 
clarification. Do I think that it's appropriate for a professor to 
joke about sex with a student? No. I do not. Many years ago my 
daughter Hannah died, so I understand how dangerous the world can be."

I'd love for somebody to make sense of this for me. Try substituting 
a car accident. "I sued the city of Plymouth because I wanted to find 
out if Walcott had crashed into my car. I know the world is a 
dangerous place because my daughter died." Either the woman, or the 
editor, is deranged. From my point of view that she thinks Walcott is 
the world's greatest poet is a further symptom.

She probably sued the university because her lawyer told her what any 
lawyer would tell her--go after the money. Universities are richer 
than professors, and they're likely to settle more quickly.

As I said, smear campaigns are the wrong way to protest. But this is 
an election for a bureaucratic post, and it operates on different 
rules. The probity of the candidate is very much an issue--the poetry 
chair represents the university in the public eye. "Anyone who knows 
him knows that it is his way to be sexual, to push the envelope of 
both decorum and good taste." That in itself should be disqualifying, 
and there are lots of credible stories about Walcott out there.

It's extremely unlikely that race played a part in the 1982 business, 
and a sample of two hardly proves the point (to assume it does is 
also a sort of smear). Universities have been historically reluctant 
to chastise male professors for inappropriate behavior--the behavior 
has to be both very blatant and part of a pattern--it has to threaten 
the reputation of the institution. At about the same time such 
behavior started being outed at a lot of American universities. 
Sometimes a newly-energized female student body would push things way 
too far, and universities would resist, as they have also in 
chastising even profs who spout neonazi propaganda in class. But 
there's no doubt that young women are often targeted. One situation I 
know well (I'll be hazy on the particulars because I don't want to 
identify the people involved, but this isn't inuendo--I really know 
about this) involved the head of a creative writing program. He had 
succeeded the founder of the program, who was notorious for chasing 
students but had retired before there were any consequences. The new 
guy picked up where the old guy had left off. There was a whole 
dossier of protests from female students, and one sued in court, but 
the university did nothing. When a second suit was brought and the 
story made headlines in the local paper the school quietly removed 
the new guy from his chairmanship, but he remains a prof in the 
department and he still pursues students. Apparently the chairmanship 
was too public a position, with too much potential harm to the university.

This sort of thing happens in all departments, even in the face of 
the very stringent rules that now exist at most US universities. I 
suspect that it's more common in arts programs, not so much because 
artists have special needs and feel themselves to have special 
privileges as because the career path to teaching in the arts has 
only very recently been professionalized. Among other things, six to 
eight years of university training to arrive at a terminal MFA or a 
PhD in creative writing serves to reinforce the values of the 
institution. Me, I think that's a way too costly solution. The 
professionalization of the arts and teaching of the arts has been a 
disaster for the culture. If it were up to me there would be no 
formal teaching of writing at universities. But that's another matter.

Best,

Mark




At 08:00 AM 5/15/2009, you wrote:
>Shame on you, Martin, I take this issue *seriously. <g>
>
>(As I should, given the amount of braincells I've wasted on this recently.)
>
>What more and more strikes me is that we are (leaving the penumbra 
>of blogs and gossip aside) confronted by both inept scholarship and 
>inept [with the exception of Fenton] journalism.
>
>Nobody seems (surprise, surprise) to have actually looked at the 
>"scholarship" behind _The Lecherous Professor_.
>
>As to journalism, it's a little unnerving that the best documented 
>piece on the current events is still that published in a student newspaper:
>
>        http://www.cherwell.org/content/8744
>
>Oh bloody hell, just when you think it couldn't get any weirder, the 
>person involved in the 1996 suit just posted this to the Cherwell:
>
>"Derek Walcott" by Nicole Mary Kelby
>Posted: 16:12 GMT, Thu 14th May 2009
>I wish you all would reconsider the vote on Saturday. Derek deserves 
>better than this smear campaign. 
>http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/poetry/article6288023.ece 
>"
>
>            You really *couldn't make this stuff up!!!
>
>Robin
>
>(Yeah, I know, "how come we know this isn't a false name?" but I'd 
>credit the kids on the Cherwell with having at least the nous to 
>back-check the author of this -- N.M.Kelby isn't that difficult to contact.
>
>R.)