
Last night on my train ride home from Philadelphia I got caught up in a Twitter exchange devoted to the recent controversy at Duke Divinity School. If you are not familiar with this case, I have assembled some links here. If you follow these links you will get up to speed.
Most of what we know about this case comes from six documents. They all appear on Rod Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative. You can read them here.
Dreher and nearly everyone else who has read these documents have done so in order to figure out who is right and who is wrong. This is a worthwhile exercise and people are going to have strong opinions on both sides.
But I wonder if we really know enough about what happened at Duke Divinity School to make an honest assessment one way or the other. It is easy in the age of social media and blogs to rush to judgement and start posting about it. (I know because I am sometimes guilty of this myself). Yes, the voices are loud and people seem to be responding with moral certainty, but unless understanding precedes criticism, such statements of moral outrage will be shallow.
Here are some of the tweets from last night’s exchange:
Excellent analysis by @JohnFea1. Unfortunate all around even more b/c we know about it b/c of @roddreher immaturity https://t.co/zG1Z0E9Emy
— Dan Chappell (@danchappell) May 9, 2017
@danchappell @JohnFea1 Circle the wagons all you want, darlings. Not going to help matters.
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) May 10, 2017
CIrcle the wagons? What wagons? Did your read my post? Darlings?https://t.co/2p8eHZqu4i @roddreher #dukedivinity https://t.co/LTMYucr931
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@roddreher What do you see in the post that you’d characterize as “wagon circling”? What am I not seeing? @danchappell @JohnFea1
— Amy Cavender (@acavender) May 10, 2017
@roddreher @danchappell @JohnFea1 I agree with @JohnFea1. Hardly a “wagon circling event.” A prof acted immaturely, and an administration (imho) overreacted. Hello academia.
— David Kelly Phipps (@KellyPhip) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher John, in the 21+ years I was editing B&C, I had a chance to encounter a lot first-rate scholars. I don’t know Paul Griffiths well at all…
— John Wilson (@jwilson1812) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher We met & talked at a couple of conferences over the years. He was an exceptional scholar: brilliant, passionate about his faith. I often …
— John Wilson (@jwilson1812) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher disagreed with his books & articles, but I read him w/ great attention and never felt I had wasted my time. I asked him several times to …
— John Wilson (@jwilson1812) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher write for B&C; he said no each time, and I stopped asking. So my reaction isn’t based on friendship–it’s based on a mix of nausea & …
— John Wilson (@jwilson1812) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher disbelief & sadness & anger at what’s going on not only at Duke but on so many campuses. What a travesty.
— John Wilson (@jwilson1812) May 10, 2017
Seriously @roddreher, not sure how your un-nuanced & strident attack on Duke fits with #benop? Looks like old fashioned culture wars to me.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher I haven’t read his book, John, but does RD say that #behop precludes commenting on contemporary affairs? Essentially tactical comments?
— Michael J. Connolly (@Drcurmud) May 10, 2017
I don’t think so. But I would think it means engaging in affairs in a nuanced way that seeks understanding before a call to arms. https://t.co/gR6DsWUE70
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@danchappell @JohnFea1 @roddreher Smugness aside, seems Dreher has helped the persecuted here. Is that not something you do as a justice advocate?
— Paul Franks (@WPaul) May 10, 2017
Seems a lot more complicated than that, Paul. The “persecuted?” https://t.co/0xkiYt53Ra
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 @roddreher I see how some of the response at Duke was problematic, but it started w/ a rather immature, unprofessional mass email. Not the right battle
— Nathan Kitchens (@nwkitchens) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 Paul griffiths is hardly the “persecuted”
— Garrett Bowman (@garrettybowman) May 10, 2017
1/2 As I said @insidehighered today. Challenge at Xtian school is to balance academic freedom & community https://t.co/XEEVtIbcIh
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
2/2 Duke admin. seems to have failed on academic freedom front. Griffiths seems to have failed on community front. https://t.co/2p8eHZqu4i
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 What do you call disciplinary warnings/actions, being barred from meetings, racism accusations, etc?
— Paul Franks (@WPaul) May 10, 2017
Again, it seems a lot more complex than this. We don’t know the whole situation. https://t.co/5c8pCqiMZ6
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 I honestly think this is wrong–the issue is Griffiths tone and the posture he has taken towards other faculty who disagree with him
— Garrett Bowman (@garrettybowman) May 10, 2017
@garrettybowman It did not help that the administration said he was being racist, sexist, or bigoted. Both are to blame here. #imho
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@WPaul Don’t see how one can read these sources & not see mutual culpability. There’s also a larger context we know nothing about #whystudyhistory
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 We have the initial email plus responses. What evidence of more complexity do you have?
— Paul Franks (@WPaul) May 10, 2017
Again, it seems a lot more complex than this. We don’t know the whole situation. https://t.co/5c8pCqiMZ6
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
@JohnFea1 Eh–there are stories of faculty leaving faculty members in tears–we have lost several prominent faculty of color
— Garrett Bowman (@garrettybowman) May 10, 2017
Fair enough. This goes back to my point about context and the tensions between academic freedom and community. https://t.co/yRhnFtamrA
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
The difference between how a historian treats evidence and how a philosopher treats evidence. #whystudyhistory https://t.co/NTRrqdNXvp
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 10, 2017
Aren’t historians expected to give evidence for their assertions #whystudyphilosophy https://t.co/4KKbV8Yc2k
— Paul Franks (@WPaul) May 10, 2017
There is a lot to chew on here. I should also add that not all of these tweets connect directly to the point I want to make below.
As I participated in this discussion and read these tweets again, I was struck by the fact that historians tend to approach documents very differently than other kinds of thinkers. The primary documents that Dreher posted tell us a lot, but they don’t tell us everything. (Any historian knows that we need more than just a handful of isolated documents to understand the past). Any judgments we make about Duke or Griffiths must be made tentatively and cautiously because we don’t have all the information we need to make a definitive (or close to definitive) interpretation of why this incident happened. The “why” is important. Historians are interested in causation. We are also interested in context. Does Garret Bowman’s tweet about the racial tensions that existed at Duke before the Griffiths incident help us to better understand what happened in this particular case? Of course it does. Do we need to know more about the way Griffith has behaved in past faculty meetings? Yes, that would help. Does the fact that Griffiths has signed statements and spoken out in defense of marginalized and diverse groups give us any insight into his controversial remarks? I think it does.
All of this adds to the complexity of the entire situation and should be factored into our interpretation.
Because I am quoted in the article, and because I want to be fair, I want to clarify that I was not asserting that Griffith’s behavior was the cause of said “tears” at faculty meetings (I am not privy to what happens inside of those meetings), nor do I know that Griffith’s presence contributed to (or didn’t contribute to) the decisions of numerous faculty members to leave Duke for other institutions over the past few years. Rather, I just wanted to make the point–which I think John recognized–that there is a larger context within which these events are occurring at Duke, that is negated by Dreher’s “expose” on his blog.
What I am most grieved about, as someone who has spent the last several years at Duke, is that this has been brought to light in a way where people seem only interested in reading the sparse (woefully incomplete) details that have been revealed in ways that confirm prior assumptions and narratives. Likewise, I am still befuddled as to why anyone would think Rod Dreher is the person to bring this conflict to light, much less add beneficial commentary.
Good comments on the historian’s approach. You demonstrate how this type of interesting controversy (as sad as it is) could be used in a classroom (group work micro-labs) to teach principles of historical interpretation–and lots of other things on the side.